Hearing about the Seven Years’ War, Top to Bottom

Yesterday by chance I listened to two podcast episodes about the French & Indian War that were so diametrically different in approach that they ended up being good complements of each other.

One recording was from the History Extra podcast, issued by B.B.C. History Magazine. It was in that podcast’s “Everything You Wanted to Know” series, interviewing an expert about a historical topic using basic, far-reaching questions drawn from listeners and internet searches.

(Though this “Seven Years’ War” episode is restricted on the magazine website, it appears to be freely available through advertising-supported podcast services.)

In this case the interviewee is Jeremy Black, professor emeritus at the University of Exeter. Prof. Black came through Lexington fifteen years ago, as I reported back here. He tends to speak with a great deal of authority, based on a great deal of knowledge. Among his remarks about the French & Indian War were:

• It was really two wars laid on top of each other, one involving lots of countries on the European continent and one between Britain and France in their imperial territories (with Spain making a poor choice to join in late).
• Though often called a “world war,” should we really apply that label when China’s huge population wasn’t involved? Hadn’t European powers fought in many parts of the globe simultaneously before?

Those remarks give the sense of how this conversation took a big-picture approach.

In contrast, the 2 Complicated 4 History podcast from Dr. Lynn Price Robbins and Isaac S. Loftus get into small details on “George Washington, The Seven Years’ War, & Post-traumatic Stress.” Their guest was Daniel Cross, who portrays Col. Washington for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation (as shown above).

Using Washington, his fellow Virginians, and British army officers as case studies, Robbins, Loftus, and Cross looked at the painful effects of warfare, particularly Braddock’s defeat. They suggest that George Washington’s marriage to Martha Custis gave him not only wealth and status but also the stability he needed to recover from the turmoil of the preceding years. Other men weren’t so fortunate.

The Rev. Dr. Charles Chauncy’s “Letter[s] to a Friend”

Yesterday I took note of a pamphlet that the Rev. Dr. Charles Chauncy published in 1774 about the Boston Port Bill couched as a “Letter to a Friend…” and ascribed to “T.W. A Bostonian.”

The form of a friendly letter to a fellow gentleman was a common trope for framing such commentary on current events and issues. Chauncy had published his first such essay nearly twenty years before.

That pamphlet appeared in August 1755 under the title:

A Letter to a Friend; Giving a concise, but just, Account, according to the Advices hitherto received, of the Ohio-Defeat; and Pointing out also the many good Ends, this inglorious Event is naturally adapted to promote: or, Shewing wherein it is fitted to advance the Interest of all the American British Colonies. To which is added, Some general Account of the New-England Forces, with what they have already done, counter-ballancing the above Loss.

That was a political and theological response to Gen. Edward Braddock’s defeat at the start of the French & Indian War. As in his 1774 essay, Chauncy adopted the signature “T.W.”

That publication was such a hit, or rather military affairs moved so quickly, that before the end of the year Chauncy added:

A Second Letter to a Friend; Giving a more particular Narrative of the Defeat of the French Army at Lake-George, By the New-England Troops, than has yet been published: Representing also the vast Importance of this Conquest to the American-British-Colonies. To which is added, Such an Account of what the New-England Governments have done to carry into Effect their Design against Crown-Point, as will shew the Necessity of their being help’d by Great-Britain, in Point of Money.

Even that title page makes clear “T.W.” was commenting on political matters.

In between the imperial crises of 1755 and 1774 Chauncy used the “letter to a friend” trope differently in a couple of his religious pamphlets:

The Opinion of one that has perused the Summer Morning’s Conversation, concerning Original Sin, wrote by the Rev. Mr. Peter Clark, In TWO Things principally: FIRST, That he has offered that, which has rendered it impossible the doctrine of the imputation of Adam’s guilt to his posterity, should be true in the sense it is held by Calvinists. SECONDLY, That tho’ he pretends to be a friend to the Calvinistical doctrine of imputed guilt, yet he has deserted this doctrine and given it up into the hands of its enemies, as it teaches the liableness of all mankind, without exception, to the torments of hell, on account of the first Sin. To which is added, A few remarks on the recommendatory preface by five reverend Clergymen. In a Letter to a Friend.

That one, from 1758, was signed “A.B.”

A Letter to a Friend, Containing Remarks on certain Passages in a Sermon Preached, by the Right Reverend Father in God, John Lord Bishop of Landaff, before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-Bow, February 20. 1767. In which the highest Reproach is undeservedly cast upon the American Colonies.

This one actually had Chauncy’s name on the title page and his own initials at the end.

Finally, toward the end of 1783 Dr. Chauncy published:

Divine Glory Brought to View in the Final Salvation of All Men: A Letter to the Friend to Truth

This pamphlet had no author’s name or initials, but it laid out the liberal theological ideas Chauncy had become known for in Boston. By labeling this “A Letter to the Friend to Truth,” he turned the label from suggesting a friendly private letter between gentlemen into a challenge to the reader. Don’t you want to be a “Friend to Truth”?

Walpole on Young Washington

Horace Walpole, the son of British prime minister Robert Walpole and at the end of his life the fourth Earl of Orford, died in 1797.

A quarter-century later, Baron Holland edited and published Walpole’s review of the 1750s, ultimately titled Memoirs of the Reign of King George II.

In his manuscript, Walpole wrote this about the year 1754:

In August came news of the defeat of Major [George] Washington in the Great Meadows on the western borders of Virginia: a trifling action, but remarkable for giving date to the war. The encroachments of the French have been already mentioned; but in May they had proceeded to open hostilities. Major Washington with about fifty men attacked one of their parties, and slew the commanding Officer. In this skirmish he was supported by an Indian half king [Tanacharison] and twelve of his subjects, who in the Virginian accounts, is called a very considerable Monarch.

On the third of July, the French being reinforced to the number of nine hundred, fell on Washington in a small fort, which they took, but dismissed the Commander with military honours, being willing, as they expressed it in the capitulation, to show that they treated them like friends!

In the express which Major Washington dispatched on his preceding little victory, he concluded with these words; “I heard the bullets whistle, and believe me, there is something charming in the sound.”

On hearing of this letter, the King said sensibly, “He would not say so, if he had been used to hear many.” However, this brave braggart learned to blush for his rodomontade, and desiring to serve General [Edward] Braddock as Aid-de-camp, acquitted himself nobly.

Young Washington’s comment about whistling bullets didn’t appear in an official dispatch about this event but in an earlier letter to his little brother, as discussed here. That letter made it into the press in both Virginia and London. Walpole appears to be our only source for George II’s response, but there’s solid evidence Londoners were talking about Washington’s callow bravado.

Walpole immediately went on to discuss another episode in the coming of the Seven Years’ War in the same gossipy style:

The violence of this proceeding gave a reverberation to the stagnated politics of the Ministry: in a moment, the Duke of Newcastle assumed the hero, and breathed nothing but military operations: he and the Chancellor held Councils of War; none of the Ministers, except Lord Holderness, were admitted within their tent. They knew too well how proper the Duke was to be consulted: of course they were jealous, and did not consult him.

Instead of him, they summoned one [Horatio] Gates, a very young officer just returned from Nova Scotia, and asked his advice. He was too sensible of their absurdity, and replied, that he had never served but in Nova Scotia, and it would be impertinent to give his opinion; he was ready to answer any questions.

In this manuscript, Walpole never mentioned that the “very young officer” he wrote about was his own godson, named after him. Walpole’s mother had employed Gates’s mother as a housekeeper.

Winner and Finalists of the 2016 Washington Book Prize

Last week Mount Vernon, Washington College, and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History announced the winner of the 2016 George Washington Book Prize, created to honor “the best new works on the nation’s founding era, especially those that engage a broad public audience.”

The winner was Flora Fraser for The Washingtons: George and Martha, “Join’d by Friendship, Crown’d by Love.” The award announcement says:

While many books have chronicled George Washington’s life and public service, no other has so thoroughly examined the marriage bonds between him and his wife. Few primary sources exist on the life of Martha Washington, who destroyed all but one of the couple’s personal letters. But Fraser’s diligent research has resulted in a more comprehensive understanding of the nation’s first First Lady—and through her important story, a fuller sense of the nation’s first President. Fraser portrays a couple devoted to each other and steadfast in their loyalty: from their short courtship, through raising a family at Mount Vernon, to the long years of the Revolutionary War, to the first U.S. Presidency, and to retirement at their beloved Virginia plantation.

Living in London, Fraser’s previous books have been about European women. She’s a third-generation biographer, a granddaughter of Elizabeth Longford and a daughter of Lady Antonia Fraser.

In addition to The Washingtons, the finalists for this year’s book prize were:

• Mary Sarah Bilder, Madison’s Hand: Revising the Constitutional Convention
• Kathleen DuVal, Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution
• Robert Middlekauff, Washington’s Revolution: The Making of America’s First Leader
• Janet Polasky, Revolutions Without Borders: The Call to Liberty in the Atlantic World
• David Preston, Braddock’s Defeat: The Battle of the Monongahela and the Road to Revolution
• John Sedgwick, War of Two: Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and the Duel That Stunned the Nation

Plenty of good reading there.

“Several ask me if it was true that he had Challang’d you to fight”

Yesterday I described how the battle at Fort Necessity on 3 July 1754 didn’t reflect well on Lt. Col. George Washington, but really didn’t reflect well on Maj. George Muse. Other officers accused Muse of cowardice, and he resigned in a huff.

Another officer on that expedition was William La Péronie, an immigrant to Virginia from France. On 3 September, he made sure Washington knew what Muse and others were saying in Williamsburg:

Many enquired to me about Muses Braveries; poor Body I had pity him ha’nt he had the weakness to Confes his Coardise him Self, & the inpudence to taxe all the reste of the oficiers withoud exeption of the same imperfection. for he said to many of the Cousulars and Burgeses that he was Bad But th’ the reste was as Bad as he.

To speak francly had I been in town at the time I Cou’nt help’d to make use of my horse’s wheup for to vindicate the injury of that villain.

he Contrived his Business so that several ask me if it was true that he had Challang’d you to fight: my answer was no other But that he Should rather chuse to go to hell than doing of it. for had he had such thing declar’d: that was his Sure Road—I have made my particular Business to tray if any had some Bad intention against you here Below: But thank God I meet allowais with a goad wish for you from evry mouth each one entertining such Caracter of you as I have the honnour to do my Self

La Péronie was sucking up especially hard since Washington was helping him win a higher commission in the Virginia forces. He got the promotion, but died the following year while serving under Gen. Edward Braddock.

In addition to giving La Péronie that commission in 1754, the Virginia legislature issued a resolution thanking all the officers at Fort Necessity by name—except for George Muse and one other man.

Nonetheless, Muse was entitled to some of the western land claims granted to all the officers on the expedition. That meant he and Washington continued to share an economic interest in western settlement for decades. They met with other landowners, lobbied government officials, and in 1770 agreed to trade land back and forth.

Then in December 1773 Muse sent Washington a letter complaining about some aspect of those grants and how Washington was handling them.

TOMORROW: Washington angrier than I’ve ever read him.

A Remarkable Instance

Early last week I shared some predictions about John Hancock and Dr. Joseph Warren that didn’t turn out to be that far-sighted since there’s no evidence they were written before the late 1800s.

This post is about another forecast of significant activity by a man who came to prominence in the American Revolution—in this case George Washington.

On 17 Aug 1755, the Rev. Samuel Davies addressed a company of Virginia troops. It was a little more than a month after Native and French soldiers had devastated the expedition of Gen. Edward Braddock in the Pennsylvania wilderness. Virginians were anticipating a longer, bigger campaign, and Davis titled his sermon “Religion and Patriotism the Constituents of a Good Soldier.”

The minister had that sermon published the next year in Philadelphia, and then a London printer put out an edition as well. Here’s the title page of the London printing:

Davies told the new soldiers before him:

Our Continent is like to become the Seat of War; and we, for the future (till the sundry European Nations that have planted Colonies in it, have fixed their Boundaries by the Sword) have no other Way left to defend our Rights and Privileges. And has God been pleased to diffuse some Sparks of this Martial Fire through our Country? I hope he has: And though it has been almost extinguished by so long a Peace [Britain hadn’t been at war against France since 1748, or a whole seven years], and a Deluge of Luxury and Pleasure, now I hope it begins to kindle: And may I not produce you my Brethren, who are engaged in this Expedition, as Instances of it?

Davies meant that rhetorical question to inspire his audience. In the printed version he added a footnote to that passage, as shown on page 12.

As a remarkable Instance of this, I may point out to the Public that heroic Youth Col. Washington, whom I cannot but hope Providence has hitherto preserved in so signal a Manner, for some important Service to his Country.

Davies was referring to how Washington had survived Braddock’s defeat without being killed or even wounded. The day before he spoke, Gov. Robert Dinwiddie had commissioned the ambitious young planter as colonel in charge of all the Virginia troops. By the time Davies published his sermon, he knew that he was recruiting men who would fight under Washington.

Col. Washington stepped down from his military post at the end of 1758. Davies became president of the college at Princeton the next year, and then died in 1761 (five weeks after delivering a New Year’s sermon with the repeated refrain, “This year you may die…”). It’s not clear whether Davies considered that Washington had by then rendered “some important Service to his Country” worthy of his providential preservation.

Washington must have seen this sermon circulating in Virginia. He was probably flattered by it, perhaps intimidated. In late 1777, a London admirer sent him another copy. Davies’s prediction was a lot to live up to, especially in that gloomy season.

One last note: in 1791 Davies’s son introduced himself to President Washington by writing: “I am the Son of a Prophet, whose prediction with respect to yourself hath been remarkably verified—I am much, very much in want of an office of profit…”

The Prince’s Gift for the Late President

To close off my poking around in the record of the Braddock sash, I found more information about how and when it came (back) to Mount Vernon.

The published records of the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association for 1920 include this passage:

Prince Yoshihisa Takugawa’s gift to Mount Vernon in 1919, “to be used for the purpose of purchasing some Washington relic appropriate to be placed in Washington’s home,” has enabled the Association to have returned to Mount Vernon the sash worn by General [Edward] Braddock at the time of his defeat, and upon which he was borne mortally wounded from the field of battle by his aide, Colonel George Washington, and two soldiers. General Braddock gave the sash to Colonel Washington who brought it to Mount Vernon in 1755; here it was kept until after his death, when it passed into the possession of his nephew who married “Nelly” Custis. In 1846 Colonel Butler, of Louisiana, who married their daughter, presented the sash to General Zachary Taylor after his victories on the Rio Grande, and, while General Taylor was President of the United States, the sash was in the White House. His daughter, Mrs. Bliss, brought it to Virginia after President Taylor’s death, and last summer it was purchased from one who had inherited it.

The request made by the Japanese Prince, that “his name might be associated with the relic, as this act on his part is but an expression of sentiment,” should be complied with.

Thus, by 1920 the association had “purchased” the sash “from one who had inherited it.”

The Japanese donor’s family name is usually spelled “Tokugawa” now. As I understand it, Yoshihisa Tokugawa was a son of the last shogun and a nobleman but not a member of the imperial family. For folks who can read Japanese, here’s his Wikipedia entry in that language.

Evidently the ladies of Winchester, Virginia, appear to have preferred to think of the sash being “a perpetual loan” to Mount Vernon, as Katherine Glass Greene wrote in her 1926 local history, rather than sold outright. But money and property changed hands by 1920, so that looks like a sale to me.

How Many Sashes Are at Mount Vernon?

Some recent books on Mount Vernon refer to a “Washington sash” in its holdings. For example, The George Washington Collection (2006) shows a woven sash and posits that it might be one that eager young George Washington bought near the start of his military career in 1754, as discussed here. We also know his Philadelphia supplier sent him another sash in late 1774, as quoted here.

The funny thing is that the photos of the “Washington sash” appear to show the same sash that other books (such as George Washington Remembers) identify as the sash of the late Gen. Edward Braddock.

George Washington: The Man Behind the Myths expresses doubt both that Washington wore that sash in his 1772 portrait and that it’s really connected with Braddock. But the date woven into the sash, 1709, has no apparent link to Washington and a possible link to Braddock, as I suggested earlier this month.

At this point, I’m guessing that:

• Washington ordered a crimson sash in 1754 and probably had himself painted in it eighteen years later.
  
• He accepted a second sash from the dying Braddock in 1755 and preserved that as a relic instead of wearing it. (It’s apparently still stained with the general’s blood—hardly what one should wear while commanding new troops.)
• He ordered a third sash in 1774, but didn’t make that part of his Continental Army uniform.

The second is probably the one and only historic sash preserved at Mount Vernon today, returned after a trip to the White House. The other two probably don’t survive.

Sashes in Washington’s Early Military Career

I decided to use the Founders Online to further explore a topic I addressed earlier in the month: George Washington’s military sashes. In the mid-eighteenth century, a long sash was viewed as part of the necessary insignia of a genteel army officer.

When Washington threw himself into a military career in his early twenties, he ordered a “Rich Crimson ingr[ained] silk Sash,” as specified on this 23 Oct 1754 invoice.

The next year, as a volunteer aide de camp, Washington accompanied Gen. Edward Braddock’s expedition into the Pennsylvania wilderness—an expedition that reportedly ended with the commander being carried away, mortally wounded, in his sash. After his performance under fire, Washington was commissioned colonel of the Virginia troops.

Washington’s regard for the details of an officer’s uniform comes through clearly in his regimental orders for 6 July 1756, when he was commanding those provincial troops at Fort Cumberland:

Colonel Washington expressly orders, that no Officer do provide himself with any other kind of Clothes than those ordered the 17th of September last: as they will not be allowed to appear in them. Every Officer who has not complied with that order, to do it immediately—and they are all to procure Sashes, if to be had—They may be supplied with Hats, and waistcoat-lace, at Mr [Robert] Peters’s, Rock-Creek—and sword-knots…

Those orders treated sashes as not required but nonetheless very desirable. The young colonel was no doubt gratified that his attention to such details had earned the respect of regular British officers, as his friend George Mercer wrote him on 17 Aug 1757:

…we have been told here by the Officers that nothing ever gave them such Surprize as our Appearance at entering Hampton, for expecting to see a Parcel of ragged disorderly Fellows headed by Officers of their own Stamp (like the rest of the Provincials they had seen) behold they saw Men properly disposed who made a good & Soldier like Appearance and performed in every Particular as well as coud be expected from any Troops with Officers whom they found to be Gent. to see a Sash & Gorget with a genteel Uniform, a Sword properly hung, a Hat cocked, Persons capable of holding Conversation where only common Sense was requisite to continue the Discourse, and a White Shirt, with any other than a black Leather Stock, were Matters of great Surprize and Admiration & which engaged Them all to give Us a polite Invitation to spend the Evening, & after to agree to keep Us Company which they had determined before not to do—agreeable to what they had practised with the other Provincial Troops. We have lost that common Appellation of Provincials, & are known here by the Style & Title of the Detachment of the Virga Regiment.

Fifteen years later and happily retired from the field, Washington had Charles Willson Peale paint him with a military sash over his shoulder in 1772, as shown above.

COMING UP: Ordering sashes for another war.

Tying Up the Twisted History of the Braddock Sash

As I said yesterday, Katherine Glass Greene’s 1926 local history Winchester, Virginia, and Its Beginnings, 1743-1814 contains a confused history of Gen. Edward Braddock’s sash. Greene credited that part of her book to Mary Spottiswoode Buchanan (1840-1925). Genealogy sites reveal that Bettie Taylor Dandridge, Zachary Taylor’s daughter and owner of the sash from 1850 to 1910, had married Buchanan’s uncle.

Buchanan’s history of the sash explains for the first time fully how it traveled from Gen. Braddock to Gen. George Washington to Gen. Edmund Gaines to Gen. Taylor. However, it doesn’t explain how Buchanan came by that knowledge. Had she consulted Wills De Hass’s 1851 history? Had she picked up some lore from her aunt—and if so, how had her aunt learned anything about the sash before it reached her father? Had Dandridge or Buchanan learned more about the sash through conversations with old families in Virginia? There’s no way to tell.

Buchanan’s narrative starts with the dying Braddock (illustrated above) giving his sash to Washington, a young volunteer aide, and saying that it had belonged to his father before him. To my knowledge, that detail hadn’t appeared in any previous printed source. And there doesn’t seem to be any evidence to confirm it.

Weaver Carol James reports that the date “1709” is woven into the sash and suggests that Braddock’s father graduated from military school in that year. In fact, the elder Braddock was already in the Coldstream Guards as a lieutenant colonel (with the brevet rank of major general, just to confuse things). Instead, 1709 was one year before the younger Braddock joined the Coldstream Guards himself as a fifteen-year-old ensign. Thus, the sash might have been a sort of graduation gift for young Edward as he was about to embark on his own military career.

Buchanan then wrote that Washington gave the sash to his nephew Fielding Lewis (1751-1803), whose daughter married a “Colonel Butler of Louisiana,” and Butler asked Gaines to send it out to Gen. Taylor after his early victories in the Mexican-American War. But that doesn’t match the genealogical details of Fielding Lewis’s family.

However, I found another family line that matches some of Buchanan’s details, suggesting she received information that was garbled but originally well founded. I suspect the sash went to Washington’s step-granddaughter Eleanor Parke Custis (1779-1852), who married his nephew Lawrence Lewis (1737-1839), brother of Fielding. They had a daughter named Frances Parke Lewis (1799-1895). She married Edward G. W. Butler (1800-1888). His middle initials stood for “George Washington,” of course. After his father’s death he had become a ward of Andrew Jackson, just in case this story didn’t have enough generals and Presidents already.

According to the finding aid for his family’s papers (P.D.F. file), Edward G. W. Butler served as an aide de camp to Gen. Gaines, settled in Louisiana, and retired from the U.S. Army with the rank of colonel. He thus matches all the clues to the man who sent the Braddock sash off to Gen. Zachary Taylor’s army:

• his wife was a direct descendant of Martha Washington, thus a plausible owner of a garment from Mount Vernon.
• his wife’s father was one of Gen. Washington’s Lewis nephews.
• he was “Colonel Butler of Louisiana,” as Buchanan said.
• he was “a gentleman at New Orleans,” as De Hass understood.
• he had a close connection to Gen. Gaines.

So I suspect the Butlers, pleased with the early American success against Mexico, decided to pass on a precious family relic to a new hero of the American army.

One mystery that the different sources raise is whether the Butlers wanted their relic to go to Taylor himself or to a soldier whom that general deemed particularly worthy. Some of the stories hint at the latter. But Taylor thought the gift was meant for him, and it might have been too awwwkward to tell him otherwise.

In any event, the sash is back at Mount Vernon now, having spent decades in the custody of Taylor’s daughter. And though some of the stories told about it seem poorly supported and others garbled, I think the evidence suggests it’s an authentic artifact owned by Edward Braddock from 1709 to 1755 and by George Washington from 1755 probably to his death.

The Braddock Sash on Display

As I quoted yesterday, in 1894 Bettie Taylor Dandridge rediscovered Gen. Edward Braddock’s military sash amid her father’s old things. Her father was Zachary Taylor, President in 1849-50, and Dandridge was remembered for serving as his White House hostess.

There was another part of Dandridge’s life that she didn’t celebrate, but which shows up in the public record. After Reconstruction she petitioned Congress for financial support on the grounds that her father and first husband had given the U.S. of A. valuable military service, that in the Civil War she had lost a lot of property (probably slaves), and that she was in need—or at least in more need than the daughter of a President was supposed to be.

In 1880 Congress granted Dandridge and her daughter a pension. In 1890 they asked for more. And four years later, she found herself in possession of a historical relic which a famous British general had stained with his blood before bequeathing it to George Washington.

Given all that context, I suspect that the mention of two museums in the initial newspaper story reporting her find was Dandridge’s way of signaling that she was open to reasonable financial offers for her unique property.

They didn’t come, at least at the level Dandridge was looking for. In 1909, T. K. Cartmell wrote in Shenandoah Valley Pioneers and Their Descendants:

The sash, which was large and of perfect weave, carefully preserved as one of the many relics of this disastrous war, was presented to Genl. Zachary Taylor in 1846, when he was engaged in the Mexican War, with the understanding that he should present it to the bravest man in the army. The General, however, never understood it that way, and deemed it best to retain and endeavor to preserve it. At this writing it is in the possession of his daughter Mrs. Bettie Dandridge (formerly Mrs. Maj. Bliss). The Author has seen it; and feels safe in pronouncing it the sash used on the occasion mentioned [i.e., after Braddock’s death].

Later that year, on 25 July, Dandridge died.

In 1926 Katherine Glass Greene published Winchester, Virginia, and Its Beginnings, 1743-1814, which gives a confused history of the sash, which I’ll analyze tomorrow. That book says that “London newspapers became clamorous” about the artifact. Members of Braddock’s regiment, the Coldstream Guards, reportedly offered to buy it from Dandridge for $3,000, and she had turned them down. Given that she herself had raised the prospect of “disposing of” it to a British military museum in 1894, I have to wonder if the offer wasn’t high enough.

Greene’s book also describes how a “General Codrington” reacted to seeing the sash when he attended a ceremony dedicating a monument to Braddock. The 16 Oct 1913 Gazette Times of Pittsburgh confirms that Lt. Gen. Sir Alfred E. Codrington led the British delegation at that dedication ceremony.

By 1926, Greene stated, the Braddock sash was “on perpetual loan” from Taylor’s descendants to Mount Vernon. Her book showed the photograph above of the sash draped over six little girls “at George Washington’s Office Museum,” a site in Winchester. How that information squares with the statement on Mount Vernon’s website that it bought the Braddock sash in 1918 with Japanese money I can’t say. Perhaps the sash came back to Washington’s home that year but the transaction wasn’t finalized till later.

Or did it come back? None of the stories I’ve quoted about the Braddock sash explained how it went from Gen. Washington to the “gentleman at New Orleans” who had it sent off to Gen. Taylor.

TOMORROW: The last twists in the thread.

“The missing sash of Gen. Braddock”

Yesterday I quoted Wills De Hass’s 1851 account of how Gen. Edward Braddock’s sash passed through George Washington’s hands into the possession of Gen. Zachary Taylor in 1846. Taylor took the sash to the White House when he was elected President in the wake of the Mexican-American War. And suddenly he died in 1850.

De Hass’s remarks about the Braddock sash were repeated in various nineteenth-century histories, but no one added new information. But in 1894 a report appeared in the Winchester (Virginia) News, picked up in the 31 May Baltimore Sun. After a dramatic description of Braddock’s death (which I haven’t tried to confirm), the article said:

This red silk sash, stained and stiffened with his blood, was carried by General Washington to Mount Vernon, and by him given to Major-General Gaines. It was given by Maj.-Gen. Zachariah Taylor in 1848 [?] by Major-General Gaines after the Mexican War. It was only the other day, after great search, found by his only surviving daughter, the estimable Mrs. Betty Taylor Dandridge, of Winchester, who as Mrs. Bliss was so well known whilst presiding over the White House in the short year her father was President.

The history of the sash seems to be that on General Taylor’s sudden and unlooked-for death all of his personal effects were placed in his army chest and remained there until at the death of his widow they were sent to this city, the home of Mrs. Dandridge, his only surviving daughter then. There was no memoranda or inventory and no especial thought given it. The civil war coming on they were forgotten, and it was only the other day, her attention being called to the subject, that search was had and it was found, carefully wrapped up in linen and labeled “Braddock’s sash,” together with her father’s two military sashes. It is of very dark red, soft silk, some 13 feet long by 4 in width. At either extremity, near the heavy silk tassels, wove into a horizontal band, is the date of 1709, and near the center are three dark black stains as large as a man’s hand, the marks of his life blood.

The article notes that the sash was discussed in De Hass’s book and in the history of Braddock’s retreat by Winthrop Sargent (misspelled). The article doesn’t mention the New Orleans gentleman who De Hass said gave the sash to Gen. Edmund P. Gaines (shown above), however. It concludes:

The sash being of no value to the lady other than as a relic of the French and Indian war of 1740 [sic], will be in all probability disposed of by her either to the United Service Museum, Horse Guards, London, or to the Braddock Museum in Pittsburg.

The item doesn’t state what or who had prompted Dandridge to look for the sash among her father’s possessions. One possibility is an inquiry from that London military institution—why else would she have named it as a possible recipient?

That news from Virginia was retold in various American papers and in the September 1894 issue of The United Service: A Monthly Review of Military and Naval Affairs. Curiously, a year and a half later the 20 Oct 1895 Knoxville Journal ran an article citing the Washington Post that said:

A private letter from Winchester, Va., mentions the interesting fact that Mrs. Bettie Taylor Dandridge…has just discovered, after long search, the missing sash of Gen. Braddock, which was long supposed to have been lost.

Had the Knoxville paper just gotten the news? Or was Dandridge publicizing the story again? That article also went on to cite the “Ed Journal” in saying:

The sash in which the British General Braddock was carried from the field of his defeat and death, was presented to Gen. Gaines after his brilliant victory at Fort Erie, in 1814. In this battle the American forces, under our East Tennessee General, Gaines, killed and wounded more Englishmen than were killed and wounded in the war of 1812-15, except under Jackson, at New Orleans.

Obviously, that statement highlighting Gaines’s career came out of east Tennessee. This article didn’t even say anything about Washington and his ownership of the Braddock sash. I don’t think this report is reliable; it conflicts with what De Hass wrote in 1851, apparently based on speaking with someone personally involved in delivering the sash from Gaines to Taylor, and De Hass said Gaines were merely a conduit for the New Orleans gentleman. So that 1895 news story confirms how little solid information was still attached to the sash.

It also indicates that the sash, though “being of no value” to Dandridge, was still in her hands.

TOMORROW: Bringing the story full circle?

“General Taylor took the sash”

Yesterday’s posting showed Carol James’s recreation of a sash that Gen. Edward Braddock reportedly gave to young George Washington in 1755, as the British commander was dying of wounds in western Pennsylvania. [That action became part of the Seven Years’ War, the end of which is the subject of the “1763 and the Americas” symposium in Boston and Providence today and tomorrow.]

Braddock’s original sash is now in the collection of Mount Vernon, and its website says, “In 1846, the sash was presented to another war hero and future President of the United States, Zachary Taylor.” Mount Vernon also says it bought the sash in 1918 with funds donated by Yoshihisa Tokugawa (1884-1922), who was a son of the last shogun of Japan.

That leaves a lot of questions about provenance. Assuming Washington kept possession of the sash from 1755 to his death in 1799, who “presented” it to Zachary Taylor in 1846, when he was the American general in command of the Mexican-American War? And what happened in between?

The earliest answers I’ve found appear in The History of the Early Settlement and Indian Wars of Western Virginia by Wills De Hass, published in 1851. After describing Braddock’s death (which he attributes to friendly fire from a specific American soldier), De Hass wrote:

The identical sash worn by Braddock at the time of his defeat, and in which he was borne from the field bleeding and dying, recently passed into the hands of one of America’s greatest and most successful generals.

It appears that the sash referred to, some years since became the property of a gentleman at New Orleans. After the brilliant achievement on the Rio Grande in 1846, the owner of the relic forwarded it to Genl. [Edmund P.] Gaines, with a request that it might be presented to the officer who most distinguished himself on that occasion. The old general promptly sent it by special messenger, to the Commander-in-Chief.

Gen. Gaines had been Taylor’s commander for some time during the War of 1812. At the start of the Mexican-American War he was based in New Orleans and summoned volunteers for Taylor’s army before receiving any orders from the capital. In addition, Gaines was Taylor’s first cousin once removed.

The person who bore it, thus speaks of the presentation and interview. “General Taylor took the sash and examined it attentively. It was of unusual size, being quite as large, when extended, as a common hammock. In the meshes of the splendid red silk that composed it, was the date of its manufacture, ‘1707,’ and although it was one hundred and forty years old, save where the dark spots, that were stained with the blood of the hero who wore it, it glistened as brightly as if it had just come from the loom.

“Upon the unusual size of the sash being noticed, Gen. [William J.] Worth, who had joined the party in the tent, mentioned that such was the old-fashioned style; and that the soldier’s sash was intended to carry, if necessary, the wearer from off the field of battle. It was mentioned in the conversation, that after Gen. Ripley was wounded at Lundy’s Lane [in 1814], his sash, similar in form, was used as a hammock to bear him from the field, and that in it he was carried several miles, his body swaying to and fro between the horses, to which the ends of the sash were securely fastened. To a wounded soldier, no conveyance could be more grateful, or more appropriate.

The American general Eleazer Wheelock Ripley wasn’t wounded at Lundy’s Lane, but he was wounded at York (Toronto) and Fort Erie during America’s invasion of Canada.

To return to America’s invasion of Mexico:

“Gen. Taylor broke the silent admiration, by saying he would not receive the sash. Upon our expressing surprise, he continued, that he did not think he should receive presents until the campaign, so far as he was concerned, was finished. He elaborated on the impropriety of naming children after living men, fearing lest the thus honored might disgrace their namesakes. We urged his acceptance of the present; and he said, finally, that he would put it carefully away in his military chest, and if he thought he deserved so great a compliment, at the end of the campaign, he would acknowledge the receipt.”

The stirring events that have transpired since he made that remark, have added the laurels of Monterey to those he then wore; and the world, as well as the donors of that sash, will insist upon his acceptance of it.

Since writing the above, the old chieftain himself has passed from the living to the dead. He died—a singular coincidence, on the anniversary of that terrible event—the defeat of Braddock. But a few weeks previous to his death, the author, then on a visit to Washington, freely conversed with the distinguished chieftain upon the very subject about which we have been writing. He said, that the sash referred to, was still in his possession, and at any time we desired it, would have it shown. Knowing that matters of state pressed heavily upon him, we did not ask it at that time; and thus, perhaps, the opportunity has been lost forever;—certainly deprived of one of its most interesting features—to be seen in the hands of General Taylor. During the interview referred to, he spoke much and frequently of Washington’s early operations in the west, and inquired whether any of the remains of Fort Necessity could be seen.

Taylor’s death in office meant De Hass couldn’t say where the sash had gone. In fact, no one laid eyes on it for more than forty years.

TOMORROW: The sash resurfaces.

Respranging Gen. Braddock’s Sash

The Summer 2013 issue of Spin-Off magazine offers an article by Carol James about her work recreating a sash that the dying general Edward Braddock reportedly gave to his volunteer aide, George Washington, in 1755. The sash is made from silk with a weaving technique called sprang.

The recreation sash is shown here, courtesy of the Cuyahoga Spinners Guild. Mount Vernon displays a photograph of the original.

James’s blog offers several entries about the sash as a work-in-progress, including a test of whether such a sash could actually carry a wounded man.

A sash was a standard part of the uniform of an army officer in the British Empire during the mid-1700s. In 1772 Washington had Charles Willson Peale paint him with a sash over one shoulder. Around the same time Gen. Thomas Gage wore his sash around his waist, as shown here. Other portraits of British officers show both styles.

Here’s an example of an American sash reportedly worn by Thomas Wheat (1723-1822) and now owned by the Charlestown Historical Society.

I decided to look into the history of the Braddock sash. It turns out to involve four generals and every major American war from the Seven Years’/French & Indian War through the Civil War (at least). But, like the sash itself, there are a lot of holes in it.

TOMORROW: The Braddock sash goes to the White House.

Washington’s First Two Encounters with Colonel Louis

In early August 1775, or one month after he arrived in Cambridge to take command of the Continental Army, Gen. George Washington received a couple of visitors from the north. One was a New Hampshire militia colonel and Vermont settler named Jacob Bayley.

The other was, the general told the Continental Congress, “a Chief of the Cagnewaga Tribe, who lives within 6 miles from Montreal.” Months later Washington identified that man from the Kahnawake Mohawk community by name: Colonel Louis.

Louis had been born about 1740 near Saratoga. His mother was Abenaki, and his father was of African descent, possibly the enslaved servant (or cook) of a British army officer. Their baby was first named Lewis Cook.

During King George’s War (1744-48), a raiding party of French and Indians captured the family, or at least the mother and young boy. Seeing Lewis’s African features, a French officer wanted to claim him as a slave and perhaps to sell him. Lewis’s mother appealed to the Mohawk leaders in the raiding party, and they insisted instead on adopting both mother and child into their nation.

Lewis Cook thus received new names. One was Mohawk; I’ve seen it rendered as Akiatonharónkwen (“He unhangs himself from the group”) and Atayataghronghta (“His body is taken down from hanging”). The former translation seems like a better match for his character.

The other name was French, since the people at Kahnawake were allied with the French and had taken up Catholicism. From then on, Lewis spelled his name Louis, in the French style. (He’s also sometimes called Joseph Louis Cook, and I don’t know where the first name came from.)

Louis fought on the side of the French Empire in the next war, started by a young Virginia officer in 1754. Evidently at some point in that war Louis added the rank of Colonel to his name.

As a young warrior Louis was at the 1756 fight known as the Battle of the Mononghela, the Battle of the Wilderness, or Braddock’s Retreat. He helped to rout a British army column that included Gen. Edward Braddock, Lt. Col. Thomas Gage, Capt. Horatio Gates, and that young Virginian George Washington, there as an unranked volunteer.

I suspect that Colonel Louis and Washington didn’t dwell on that earlier event when they met in Cambridge in 1775.

COMING UP: What they did have to talk about.

(The image above is a sketch of Colonel Louis by John Trumbull. He was an aide de camp to Gen. Washington during Louis’s August 1775 visit, but Trumbull drew this nearly a decade later in preparation for his Death of General Montgomery.)

George Washington: “when I was young”

On 28 May 1754, Lt. Col. George Washington of Virginia was involved in an embarrassing skirmish that helped to spark the global conflict called the Seven Years’ War. (This little event is sometimes grandly called the Battle of Jumonville Glen.)

Three days later, the twenty-two-year-old officer wrote a letter to his brother John Augustine (Jack) Washington about the experience. It included the line: “I heard the bullet’s whistle, and believe me, there is something charming in the sound…”

That letter got to the Virginia press, and thence to other North American newspapers, and eventually to the August issue of the London Magazine. It made George Washington famous across the British Empire—as an idiot. Or at least a callow youth.

According to Horace Walpole, even George II commented on Washington’s claim to be charmed by whistling bullets: “He would not think so, if he had been used to hear many.”

Meanwhile, Washington suffered a well-deserved and embarrassing loss at Fort Necessity. The next year, he volunteered as an aide to Gen. Edward Braddock. That commander’s British column was caught in an ambush by Native and French soldiers, and Washington was the only aide not killed or wounded. He helped to lead the surviving British forces to safety, keeping the disaster from being even worse.

Once again, reports of that battle, many including Washington’s name, spread across the empire. On 31 Mar 1756, the Earl of Halifax wrote: “I know nothing of Mr. Washington’s character, but that we have it under his own hand, that he loves the whistling of Bullets, and they say he behaved as bravely in Braddocks action, as if he really did.”

More than twenty years after his first skirmish, Washington arrived in Massachusetts as general of the newly adopted Continental Army. The Rev. William Gordon wrote that at some point a gentleman—probably Gordon himself—asked the general about that old “heard the bullet’s whistle” line. Gordon said Washington answered, “If I said so, it was when I was young.”

Best Footnote of the Month

Number 14 on page 305 of Braddock’s March, by Thomas Crocker:

The first-hand accounts are conflicting and confusing as to where the flying column spent the night of July 1. Despite recent research on this phase of the march (see, e.g., Frank A. Cassell and Elizabeth W. Cassell, A Tour of Braddock’s Road from Fort Necessity to Braddock’s Field (Westmoreland Heritage) and article by Steeley, J. in Westmoreland History 7, no. 2, September 2002), historians and geographers will no doubt debate the exact location of the route of march and related encampments during the first days of July for years to come. For purposes of this narrative, however, it is sufficient to say that the army was in the middle of nowhere.

My thanks to the loyal Boston 1775 reader who alerted me to this paragraph.