Aritfacts Lost, Strayed, or Stolen

The Journal of the American Revolution regularly asks its contributors to share a short answer to an intriguing question—a favorite event or person, a what-if possibility, a little-known example.

Usually I get intrigued, think about possible answers, often type up something to edit down to the requisite length. And then other things land on top of the task pile and I end up never sending in an answer.

But I was able to muster a reply to the latest challenge for contributors: “an artifact from the 1765–1805 era known to have existed well into the nineteenth century, that has since been stolen or gone missing.”

The various answers include one painting and three medals stolen in the second half of the twentieth century, several items of clothing that have probably been tossed out or disintegrated, and an entire financial archive.

Plus, Elias Boudinot’s handwritten memoir (which was, thankfully, transcribed and published before disappearing from archive shelves), two cannon captured at Saratoga and recaptured one war later, and possibly an entire Hessian colonel.

Another example occurs to me now, but I’m not sure it meets the criterion of having “existed well into the nineteenth century.”

On 16 Feb 1836, the printer Peter Edes, son of Benjamin Edes of the Boston Gazette and the Loyall Nine, wrote to his grandson:

It is a little surprising that the names of the tea-party were never made public: my father, I believe, was the only person who had a list of them, and he always kept it locked up in his desk while living. After his death Benj. Austin called upon my mother, and told her there was in his possession when living some very important papers belonging to the Whig party, which he wished not to be publicly known, and asked her to let him have the keys of the desk to examine it, which she delivered to him; he then examined it, and took out several papers, among which it was supposed he took away the list of the names of the tea-party, and they have not been known since.

Benjamin Edes died in 1803, his widow Martha in 1809, and this encounter would have happened between those dates, probably earlier. There were two politically active Benjamin Austins in Boston, father and son; the first died in 1806, the second in 1820.

Did Benjamin Edes really keep such a list, and why? Did Benjamin Austin do away with that document? If so, did he act because of the names that were on it or the names that weren’t on it?

“To regulate the collection of duties”

As the U.S. House of Representatives discussed its first significant law, establishing import tariffs, the members took up two closely related challenges:

• how to actually collect those duties.
• a “tonnage” tax on ships entering American harbors.

On 21 April the House took up the latter question as a committee of the whole with James Madison proposing “a duty of six cents per ton on all vessels built in the United States” or owned by U.S. citizens as “necessary for the support of light-houses, hospitals for disabled seamen, and other establishments incident to commerce.”

That was a pretty low tax, but the legislators went on to consider vessels owned or partly owned by foreigners, whether those foreigners were from countries allied to the U.S. of A., and so on. These ships were to be charged five to eight times more. A bill was proposed on 7 May and approved on 29 May.

As to collecting the new taxes, the House as a committee started discussing that on 18 May. Members noted that the federal government’s approach had to be equal in all states. The next day, Elias Boudinot proposed establishing executive branch departments including a “Secretary of Finance,” soon changed to a Treasury. By British precedent, the collection of duties would fall under that department.

On 27 May, Rep. Thomas Fitzsimons of Pennsylvania presented his committee’s proposal “to regulate the collection of duties.” The House got down to details on 2 June, listing U.S. ports of entry (skipping Narragansett Bay since Rhode Island wasn’t yet participating in the federal government). A week later, the House agreed that the government should appoint a collector, naval officer, and surveyor for the nine biggest ports.

On 29 June Rep. Benjamin Goodhue (1748–1814, shown here) of Massachusetts reported that the committee had “prepared an entire new bill” to incorporate all the proposed changes.

On the first day of July, the House voted 31–19 in favor of the tonnage bill. The Senate concurred on 7 July. The House approved the bill on collecting duties on 14 July, the Senate two weeks later. Those bills went to President George Washington, who signed them on 20 and 31 July, respectively.

Disregarding the initial law that established oaths of office, those were the second and fourth laws of the new U.S. government. (The third established a Department of Foreign Affairs.)

Thus, the collection of revenue from goods imported into the U.S. of A. was the first substantive action of the first Congress, the first meaningful law signed by the first President. The U.S. government has been collecting tariffs on imported goods for over two centuries. There’s a system in place.

The current President appears ignorant of that history, ordering that three Cabinet officers “investigate the feasibility of establishing and recommend the best methods for designing, building, and implementing an External Revenue Service (ERS) to collect tariffs, duties, and other foreign trade-related revenues.”

Of course, that current President has long shown ignorance of how tariffs work. As the New York Times reported, “Trade experts said that, despite the name ‘external,’ the bulk of tariff revenue would continue to be collected from U.S. businesses that import products.” The members of the first U.S. Congress, having gone through a war with its roots in a conflict over tariffs, understood how those taxes worked.

“Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises”

The U.S. Constitution, in Article I, Section 7, states:

All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.

The next section begins:

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises,…but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;…

Under that Constitution, men elected to the U.S. House of Representatives met for the first time on 4 Mar 1789. They quickly saw they didn’t have a quorum. Those men gathered six days a week until 1 April, when finally enough Representatives arrived.

For the next couple of weeks, the House got itself organized: electing a speaker (Frederick Muhlenberg), choosing a clerk and other staff, establishing an oath of office, and composing rules. On 6 April members participated in counting the electoral votes. (Spoiler: George Washington won.)

On Wednesday, 8 April, the House “resolved itself into a Committee of the Whole on the state of the Union.” That bland language meant the legislators were taking themselves off the official record in order to discuss something that could be controversial—in this case, those import duties that the Constitution empowered them to enact. This was the first substantial issue the House took up, the first potential law that affected more than the workings of the government itself.

According to Debates in Congress, compiled decades later, Rep. James Madison of Virginia was first to speak on this subject “of the greatest magnitude.” He suggested starting with the “propositions made on this subject by Congress in 1783,” at least as “the temporary system.”

Madison read off the list of imported goods that the Continental Congress proposed should be taxed. Elias Boudinot of New Jersey endorsed that proposal. The next day, John Laurance of New York argued that an across-the-board duty would be easier and quicker than enumerating what to tax and how much. But there was general agreement that the federal government should start collecting import duties.

Meanwhile, messages started to come in from interest groups: manufacturers in Baltimore, shipwrights in Charleston, and so on. Domestic manufacturers wanted higher tariffs to help their businesses. Merchants wanted lower tariffs to keep down their costs. Ship builders and owners wanted preferential treatment for American vessels. As for consumers, who would ultimately pay higher prices, they weren’t really organized.

On 28 April, a House committee proposed a series of duties on various imported commodities and goods, from Jamaica rum and cheese to millinery and walking-sticks. There were higher tariffs on distilled spirits from “any State or Kingdom not in alliance with the United States” and on teas brought in on ships owned by foreigners. On 5 May, the committee presented the text of a law to enact those duties.

Tariffs have thus been part of American legislation from the beginning of the federal government—even before, considering how Madison was calling on a precedent from the preceding Congress. Those taxes were in fact the main source of revenue for the national government for many decades. But the first Congress understood two things:

• As revenue measures, those tariffs had to originate in the House, not be imposed by the executive.
• Imposing tariffs required discussion and careful balancing of the benefits and costs.

TOMORROW: Making law.

In Captivity with Gen. Charles Lee

Gen. Charles Lee was captured in New Jersey on 13 Dec 1776.

On 28 Jan 1777 he wrote from British-occupied New York to Robert Morris in Philadelphia:

I am extremely obliged to you for your kindness and attention—the money for the bill I am told I shall get to-day—I have nothing to request at present but that you will write to Mr. Nourse to take care of what belongs to me—and if that my servant Guiseppe is well enough you will send him and desire him to bring the Dogs with him as I am much in want of their Company—God bless you My respects to Mrs. Morris

“Guiseppe” was Giuseppe Minghini, an Italian whom Lee had hired as a personal servant while he was traveling in Europe. The general was asking Minghini to join him in captivity—and to bring the dogs as well.

It might not be surprising that Minghini didn’t immediately set out. Lee was still in New York on 4 April, and he renewed his instructions directly to the Italian:

If your health permits I desire you will without a moments delay set out for this place—your establishment & fortune depend on your compliance—bring with you as many summer cloaths as you can silk stockings, linnen wastecoats and breeches tights, boots and a new hat—some books likewise particularly Ainsworth’s [Latin] Dictionary & the six french books, l’histoire politique—if any of the Dogs are with you bring them. Mr. Rob Morris will furnish you with the necessary money. Addio—come immediately

Minghini brought one dog to keep Lee company until the trio was finally released on 21 Apr 1778. By then the general had also picked up a mistress whom Elias Boudinot called “a miserable dirty hussy…(a British Sergeants Wife).”

One might think that Minghini brought the general’s his favorite pet, Mr. Spado, but that dog wasn’t available.

TOMORROW: What happened to Spado?

Elias Boudinot’s Story of Gunpowder and Spying

In his memoirs of the Revolution, New Jersey politician Elias Boudinot included this ancedote, headlined “Scarcity of Powder at Boston”:

When our Army lay before Boston in 1775, our Powder was so nearly Expended, That General [George] Washington told me that he had not more than Eight Rounds a Man, Altho’ he had then near 14 miles of line to guard, and that he dare not fire an Evening or Morning Gun.

In this situation one of the Committee of Safety for Massachusetts, who was privy to the whole secret, deserted and went over to Genl [Thomas] Gage, and discovered our poverty to him.

This was apparently how Boudinot understood the story of Dr. Benjamin Church’s treachery. Church had indeed been a member of the Massachusetts Committee of Safety, and in that position had shared crucial information with Gen. Gage in early 1775. (I wrote about his disclosures in The Road to Concord.)

However, Church didn’t cross to the British side of the siege lines with news of the gunpowder shortfall. Instead, he was exposed and confined in Cambridge around the end of September.

Dr. Church had sent written messages into Boston during the siege, including one that traveled by Washington’s own secret communications channel. But it appears that Church never informed Gage about the Continentals’ gunpowder problem. In the letter that was deciphered and exposed him, Church told a British contact exactly the opposite, exaggerating the Continental supply:

Twenty tons of powder lately arrived at Philadelphia, Connecticut & Providence. Upwards of 20 tons are now in camp. Salt petre is made in every colony. Powder mills are erected and constantly employed in Philadelphia & New York.

Church even used those words at his trial to argue that he was trying to fool the British command, concealing the harmful information. However, Church had written that letter in July, weeks before the gunpowder shortage was recognized.

Of course, Washington and his fellow generals had to wonder if Church had disclosed their crucial secret in another way. Furthermore, Benjamin Thompson, who had been traveling around the siege lines, did desert to the British that fall; he didn’t know about the gunpowder, but the Continentals didn’t know he didn’t know. So Washington had to assume the worst and hope for the best, waiting for the British to act.

Here’s how Boudinot continued the story:

The fact [of the gunpowder shortage] was so incredible, That Genl Gage treated it as a stratagem of war, and the informant as a spy: or coming with the express purpose of deceiving him & drawing his Army into a snare, by which means we were saved from having our Quarters beaten up.—

There was no way for Boudinot or Washington to know how Gage responded to Church’s messages, Thompson, or any other intelligence source. They were, after all, on opposite sides of the war. Boudinot’s story about Gage looks like an assumption made to explain why the British weren’t more aggressive in the fall of 1775.

I was the chairman of the Committee of safety at Elizabeth Town, and had about six or Seven Quarter Casks of Powder, which on urgent application from Genl Washington were sent to Boston, with what could be spared from New York.

Boudinot could thus feel good about helping to prevent the British from “beating up” the Americans around Boston. But in fact by that time both Gage and his successor, Gen. William Howe, had given up on breaking out of Boston by land. Washington feared an attack that would never come, based on a disclosure that never happened.

“With great zeal I went to Genl Washington”

Elias Boudinot (1740-1821) was a Continental Congress delegate from New Jersey, eventually president of that body, and later a U.S. Congressman and director of the U.S. Mint. He was brother-in-law of Richard Stockton twice over (i.e., each married the other’s sister).

For a considerable period of the war Boudinot was the American commissary of prisoners, meaning he was responsible for feeding and supplying captured British and Hessian soldiers. As such, he often worked closely with the Congress, local authorities, and Gen. George Washington.

Boudinot left behind a manuscript in which he explained:

A great many interesting anecdotes, that happened during the American Revolutionary War, are likely to be lost to Posterity, by the negligence of the parties concerned, in not recording them, so that in future time they may be resorted to, as throwing great light on the eventful Crisis, of this important Æra—I shall therefore without any attention to order, but merely as they arise in my memory, set down those I have had any acquaintance with, attending principally to the TRUTH of the facts.

That manuscript was published in 1890 as Boudinot’s Journal or Historical Recollections of American Events during the Revolutionary War. It’s not really a journal since he didn’t record events as they happened; indeed, most of the stories aren’t tied to specific dates. But they’re valuable nonetheless.

Here’s one example:

In [April] 1777 Genl [Benjamin] Lincoln, was surprised at the Dawn of Day in his Quarters at Bound Brook. by Lord Cornwallis. who had marched from Brunswick passed his out Centinels captured or destroyed his main guard, and was at the Genls Quarters before he knew anything of it. He had but just time to escape out of a back door. Several men were killed and one or two pieces of ordnance taken.

It was sometime a mystery how this had been effected with so much secrecy, till I was well informed by a Gentn of note who was with the Enemy at Brunswick, that a certain Farmer whose name he mentioned and who lived in the midst of our Camp had communicated to Lord Cornwallis our Countersign, by which he had accomplished his intentions,

My spirit was very much aroused ags this Traitor and with great zeal I went to Genl Washington with the information, stating the substance of it. but keeping back the name of my informant; as he had assured me his life depended on my prudence & faithfulness to him; I urged the Genl, (to give) orders to sieze the Culprit without delay & make an Example of him. The Genl did not immediately answer me. on which I repeated my request.

He then said. did not you tell me that the life of your informant depended on your secrecy,—would you take up a Citizen & confine him without letting him know his crime or his accuser.—No—let him alone for the present: watch him carefully. and if you can catch him in any other crime. so as to confront him by witnesses. we will then punish him severely.——

My mortification was very great. to think. that I who had entered the Army to watch the Military & preserve the civil rights of my fellow citizens. should be so reproved by a Military man, who was so interested in having acted otherwise I recd it as a severe lecture on my own imprudence

When I read that story, I thought that the interaction with Washington could have come right out of the television show Turn: Washington’s Spies, given how it presents the commander’s character.

I’ve been reviewing the final season of Turn for Den of Geek; you can find my assessments here. Gen. Washington, played by Ian Kahn, remains one of the decidedly best parts of the show.

The Fate of Don Galvez’s Portrait

Yesterday’s posting described how in May 1783 Oliver Pollock gave the Continental Congress a portrait of Don Bernardo de Gálvez, who as Spanish governor of Louisiana had been a strong ally for the new U.S. of A. After being displayed for a day in the Congress’s chamber, the painting was moved to the house that chairman Elias Boudinot was renting in Philadelphia.

The next month, soldiers of the Pennsylvania Line marched on the capital to demand their unpaid wages. They surrounded the Pennsylvania State House. Some authors say they were upset with the Congress, some with the Pennsylvania Council—but since both bodies met in the same building, that didn’t much matter.

James Madison’s notes on the situation state:

The mutinous soldiers presented themselves, drawn up in the Street before the State House where Congress had first assembled. The Executive Council of the State sitting under the same roof, was called on for the proper interposition. President [i.e., Governor John] Dickinson came in, and explained the difficulty under actual circumstances, of bringing out the militia of the place for the suppression of the mutiny. He thought that without some outrages on persons or property the temper of the militia could not be relied on. Genl. [Arthur] St. Clair then in Philada. was sent for; and desired to use his interposition, in order to prevail on the troops to return to the Barracks. His report gave no encouragement.

Neither the state governor nor the highest-ranking army general thought he had enough reliable troops to force the mutineers away.

Boudinot wrote to his brother on 23 June:

I have only a moment to inform you, that there has been a most dangerous insurrection and mutiny among a few Soldiers in the Barracks here. About 3 or 400 surrounded Congress and the Supreme Executive Council, and kept us Prisoners in a manner near 3 hours, tho’ they offered no insult personally. To my great mortification, not a Citizen came to our assistance. The President and Council have not firmness enough to call out the Militia, and allege as the reason that they would not obey them.

Eventually St. Clair got an assurance from the soldiers that they’d let the politicians go to their homes. In a draft announcement on the event, Boudinot added:

Congress left the House & passed thro’ the ranks of Mutineers without opposition. When the President [i.e., Boudinot himself] had got half way home—6 or 7 of the Men followed him with their Arms & requested his return, but on his way one of the Sergeants met him & desired him not to regard the Men who had gone without order.

Various men, including delegate and colonel Alexander Hamilton, bustled about to resolve the crisis. But the Congress decided that it couldn’t rely on the local authorities for security and had to leave Philadelphia immediately. They adjourned to Boudinot’s alma mater at Princeton, New Jersey.

At first Boudinot moved in with his sister, Annis Stockton. Later he rented a house, moving his “Family and Furniture from Philadelphia” to Princeton. Varnum Lansing Collins’s The Continental Congress at Princeton reports that the move cost Boudinot £50, though that probably included six cartloads of Congress’s papers. The move also took a few months. On 11 August, the Continental Congress’s records addressed “an application from the President respecting the present deranged state of his household.” Some officials did venture back to Philadelphia to collect papers and finish up business there, but it would not be the nation’s capital again for several more years.

Boudinot might have left the Gálvez portrait behind in Philadelphia, or it could have been lost in the turmoil. Perhaps it became federal property in 1789 and was sent to Washington City, but then destroyed in the British invasion of 1814. I can’t find any further mention of it in the Congress’s published records. About a century ago, the National Portrait Gallery reported that nobody knew its location.

In 1976 Spain gave the U.S. an equestrian statue of Galvez, which as shown above now stands outside the State Department.

Congress’s Portrait of Bernardo de Gálvez

A couple of folks have pointed us to a Los Angeles Times article that begins:

Teresa Valcarce wants to see Congress keep a promise it made in 1783.

Back then, the year the Revolutionary War ended, Congress agreed to display a portrait of Bernardo de Galvez in the Capitol to honor the Spanish statesman’s efforts to aid the colonies in their struggle against Britain.

But in 1783, there was no “Capitol” for the Continental Congress to make any commitments about. That national legislature met in buildings it borrowed from other governments, including Pennsylvania’s state house (now called Independence Hall) for most of the war.

No one had even conceived of Washington, D.C., yet; the federal Congress agreed to create that national city only in 1790. The Capitol Building was started in 1793, opened for business in 1800, and wasn’t complete (in its first form) until 1826.

So what’s the basis of this newspaper story? On 8 May 1783, the Journals of the Continental Congress state: “A Portrait of Don Galvez was presented to Congress by Oliver Pollock.” North Carolina delegate Hugh Williamson wrote:

A letter was received from Mr. Oliver Pollock in which he informs Congress that having obtained a portrait of Don B. de Galvez, an early and zealous friend of the U. S., he begs leave to present the same to Congress.

Starting in 1777, Bernardo de Gálvez (1746-1786, shown above) was the Spanish governor of Louisiana. He supported the U.S. of A. in order to weaken Britain in North America, at first by supplying arms and loans and allowing weapons and men to cross Spanish territory. In 1779 the war widened, and Gálvez led Spanish forces in a successful defense against British attacks.

Pollock, who had settled in New Orleans as a merchant before the war, was the U.S. of A.’s agent in Louisiana. He worked closely with Gálvez, borrowing money for Continental troops and even reportedly serving as a military aide. When Pollock gave the Spanish governor’s portrait to the Congress, he was in Philadelphia angling to be appointed U.S. agent in Havana.

In response to Pollock’s gift, the Congress created a three-man committee headed by Thomas Mifflin, who drafted this resolution:

Resolved, That the Secretary inform Mr. Pollock that Congress accept his present of a portrait of Don Bernardo de Galvez late Governor of Louisiana.

Resolved, That the Secretary do cause the same to be placed in the room in which Congress meet.

The L. A. Times article says it’s unclear whether the portrait of Gálvez ever was hung. But in fact on 9 May the Congress’s chairman, Elias Boudinot, wrote back to Pollock:

I have the honor to infom you in answer to your favour of the 7th inst. [i.e., of this month] that Congress have chearfully accepted the portrait of Don Bernardo De Galvez late Govenor of Louisiania in consideration of the early & Zealous friendship of that Gentlemen frequently manifested in behalf of these States, and have directed me to cause it to be hung up in the Hall of the Presidents House.

By “the Presidents House” Boudinot meant the house where he himself was living. Thus, Gálvez’s portrait was kept for a day in the legislative chamber and then moved to the hall of a nearby rented mansion. The Congress never promised to display the portrait permanently, as the newspaper reports Teresa Valcarce interpreting the record.

TOMORROW: And what happened to that portrait?

“A young female coming out from the city”

This month’s discussion about the Deborah Champion legend expressed more than a little skepticism about that story of a young woman carrying important military information on horseback.

That tale, and similar stories of riders like Abigail Smith, Sybil Ludington, and Emily Geiger, have strong narrative and cultural appeal. Each offers an individual protagonist and a beginning, middle, and end. Such adventures show young women being active for America—though not, heavens forbid, using weapons themselves.

But just because those particular stories have little evidence to support them doesn’t mean that no young women were active during the war. In fact, there’s good evidence that some were, but, alas, that evidence doesn’t necessarily come neatly packaged as a story.

Here’s a first-person account from Benjamin Tallmadge (1754-1835), an officer in the Continental Army light dragoons from Long Island, New York. It was published first in Jeptha R. Simms’s History of Schoharie County and Border Wars of New York (1845) and then in the Memoir of Col. Benjamin Tallmadge (1858). In December 1777 Tallmadge (shown above in a portrait based on a sketch by John Trumbull) was a twenty-three-year-old major attached to the Continental Army at Valley Forge. His mounted unit received an assignment that called on their ability to travel fast and light. Tallmadge wrote:

being informed that a country girl had gone into Philadelphia, with eggs, instructed to obtain some information respecting the enemy, I moved my detachment to Germantown, where they halted, while, with a small detachment, I advanced several miles towards the British lines, and dismounted at a tavern called the Rising Sun, in full view of their out-posts.

Very soon I saw a young female coming out from the city, who also came to the same tavern. After we had made ourselves known to each other, and while she was communicating some intelligence to me, I was informed that the British light horse were advancing. Stepping to the door, I saw them at full speed chasing in my patrols, one of whom they took.

I immediately mounted, when I found the young damsel close by my side, entreating that I would protect her. Having not a moment to reflect, I desired her to mount behind me, and in this way I brought her off more than three miles up to Germantown, where she dismounted.

During the whole ride, although there was considerable firing of pistols, and not a little wheeling and charging, she remained unmoved, and never once complained of fear after she mounted my horse.

I was delighted with this transaction, and received many compliments from those who became acquainted with it.

That was apparently Tallmadge’s introduction to the world of intelligence. Eventually Gen. George Washington asked him to run the spy ring inside New York. Tallmadge was extremely circumspect about those activities when he composed that memoir for his children. Though his other papers include documents revealing his intelligence activities, including a codebook, in his memoir he wrote only that Gen. Washington “requested me to take charge of a particular part of his private correspondence.”

The Rising Sun tavern between Philadelphia and Germantown may have been a regular rendezvous point for exchanging intelligence in the winter of 1777-78. Commissary of prisoners Elias Boudinot wrote in his journal about going there to meet “a little poor looking insignificant Old Woman” who passed him important news hidden in “a dirty old needle book, with various small pockets in it.” John Nagy’s Spies in the Continental Capital offers strong evidence to support the family tradition that woman was Lydia Darragh, born in Ireland in 1729.

As for the young woman Tallmadge met, we don’t know her name. We don’t know the information she provided. At that stage in his career, Tallmadge probably wasn’t privy to the details, and later he learned to keep his mouth shut.

Since we don't know that young woman’s name or her mission or the results, we don’t have quite enough information make a compelling true story out of her three-mile ride with “considerable firing of pistols, and not a little wheeling and charging.” Which is a pity, because it seems to have really happened.

[This is an updated version of the posting that appeared on 1 Dec 2006.]

Still Debating What to Do with Doctor Church

We last left Dr. Benjamin Church back in the Boston jail in early July 1777. The Massachusetts General Court had agreed to trade him for Dr. James McHenry, but a crowd objected. The legislature then voted to certainly not trade him for Dr. McHenry without getting the Continental Congress to take the heat.

I’ve mentioned a letter from Joshua Loring, Jr., formerly of Jamaica Plain, proposing that prisoner exchange. Last night I found a copy of that document in the Papers of the Continental Congress material online at Footnote. It says:

New York 3d: June 1777

Doctr: Benj: Church,

Capt: [Colin] McKenzie of the 71st Regt: having made his Excellency Sir William Howe acquainted with your Situation; I have Authority to Assure you that on your Arrival here Doctr: McHenry of Philadelphia shall be immediately Exchanged for you.

I hope this Proposal will be accepted & that you may soon be sett at Liberty & in order the more speedily to Effect this purpose, I shall write to Mr. Boudinott on the Subject.

I am Sir Your Most Humbl: Servant
Josha. Loring Commis. of Prisrs.

It’s striking that Loring first proposed this trade by writing to Church himself, and only then promised to write to the American Commissary of Prisoners. I’ve found no evidence that Elias Boudinot, who had taken on that job less than a month before, passed Loring’s proposal on to Congress. (Boudinot’s picture later in life, above, comes courtesy of the U.S. Mint.) Rather, Church himself kept pushing the idea.

Even after the debacle in July, Church kept pushing. It wasn’t until 17 September that the president of the Massachusetts Council, Jeremiah Powell, wrote to Congress, enclosing a copy of Loring’s letter. He asked for a reply “as soon as possible” because “Doctr. Church has applied in a very pressing Manner for Liberty as soon as possible to proceed to New York.” At the same time, Powell insisted that the state did “not incline to sett him at Large to permit the Exchange without the Directions of the Congress.”

That letter went south in the week after the big British victory at Brandywine, when Congress was busy getting out of Philadelphia. Delegates reassembled in York, Pennsylvania, and on 2 October they considered Powell’s letter. John Hancock wrote back to Boston with the decision about his old colleague:

York Town: Pennsylvania, Octr. 3d. 1777.

Gentlemen,

Your Favour of the 17th ult[im]o. [i.e., last month] enclosing a Copy of a Letter from Mr. Loring Commissary of Prisoners, relative to the Exchange of Doctor Church for Doctr. McHenry, was duely received and laid before Congress:

In Consequence of which I am to inform you, they immediately, and in the strongest Terms, expressed their Disapprobation of the Proposal, and put their Negative upon it.

I have the Honour to be, with the greatest Respect, Gentlemen,
your most obed & very hble Servt.
John Hancock Presidt.

So Dr. Church remained in jail through the end of 1777.

TOMORROW: A breakthrough in the new year.

Richard Stockton’s Complex Story

I’ve been analyzing the legend of Richard Stockton, often said to be the only signer of the Declaration of Independence to be taken prisoner solely for signing that document. Most biographies of Stockton say that the British authorities treated him harshly, leaving him a broken man who died shortly afterwards. That version of Stockton’s life leaves out several awkward historical details:

• He was imprisoned for fewer than thirteen weeks, probably even less time than that.
• To gain his release he accepted an amnesty from the British commanders and promised to abandon the independence movement.
• There’s no evidence from Stockton’s lifetime or shortly afterward that he was mistreated. Even a generation later, his family described only exposure to cold and poor food, not the beatings, chains, and other tortures that appear in later accounts.
  
• Stockton had apparently recovered from the effects of his captivity before dying of an oral cancer.
  

A contrary image of Stockton has therefore developed. David H. Fischer’s Washington’s Crossing refers to him only as a prominent example of someone who “turned his coat” and switched sides during the war. I think that portrait is better grounded in facts than the traditional one, but too harsh in assessing the man.

First of all, to say Stockton became a turncoat by abandoning the Continental Congress leaves out the British point of view. He had already broken his oath of loyalty to the British Empire—as had every other American government and militia official who joined the independence movement. When Stockton accepted a seat on New Jersey’s high court from Gov. William Franklin in 1774, he swore to serve King George III. Yet two years later the judge was signing his name to a document that pledged “our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honour” to the cause of breaking away from that king.

Then around the start of 1777 Stockton accepted the British commanders’ offer of pardon and signed an oath that took this form:

I, A. B., do promise and declare, that I will remain in a peaceable obedience to his Majesty, and will not take up arms, nor encourage others to take up arms, in opposition to his authority.

And finally at the end of 1777 Stockton swore yet another oath of loyalty to the state of New Jersey.

We can agree that Stockton’s promises of obedience were flimsy, subject to whatever pressure he was feeling at the time. But at the same time I think he was genuinely torn between the empire and the republic. Stockton’s December 1774 proposal on the imperial crisis shows that he would have been happy to remain a British subject under the king as long as the North American colonies had more autonomy. (Most Americans would probably have agreed with that position at the time.) He came to the side of independence at nearly the last minute, after he arrived at the Congress in June 1776.

Furthermore, though Stockton kept swearing allegiance to whatever authority was pressing him at the time, it’s clear that he was under the most pressure of all after his arrest in late 1776. That imprisonment was neither as long nor as painful as later authors have said, but it must have been a shock to his system. As a genteel attorney and judge, he was used to dealing with men who were held in jail—not to being in a “common jail” himself. Cold and lack of good food aside, the hardest part of being imprisoned for Stockton was probably lack of control and uncertainty about his fate. He was a high-born, intellectual gentleman, and he was at others’ mercy.

In late 1776 the infant U.S. of A. appeared to be in the same dire straits. The Crown forces had pushed the Continental Army out of New York and New Jersey. Until the Battles of Trenton and Princeton, weeks after Stockton’s capture, they seemed unstoppable. Hundreds of other New Jersey men swore loyalty to the British king in that period. Those circumstances make Stockton’s choice easier to understand. He appears to have favored American independence, but wasn’t fervent enough to stick to it when it looked like a really lousy idea.

Furthermore, I think it’s significant that there’s no evidence that Stockton offered aid to the British military. In the fall of 1776, just before he was captured, the judge had been busy helping to organize the Continental defenses around Fort Ticonderoga. I haven’t come across any hints that he gave the British commanders sensitive information about that topic.

On returning home, Stockton interpreted his oath as a promise not to help the American side. However, close family members continued to support the independence movement. His son-in-law Dr. Benjamin Rush was a Congress delegate in 1776-77 and a top medical officer in the Continental Army in 1777-78. His brother-in-law (through both wife and sister) Elias Boudinot was commmissary general of prisoners 1776-79 and delegate to Congress off and on from 1778 to 1783. On 4 July 1780, the New Jersey Gazette published a story about ladies raising money for the Continental Army, and it listed “Mrs. R. Stockton” among those with “well known patriotism.” (I should note that the extended Stockton family also contained some Crown supporters as well.)

So I don’t think it’s accurate to say Stockton became a turncoat in 1777, meaning that he switched sides. Rather, I suspect the judge decided, for the sake of his emotional health, to get out of the game altogether. He spent the rest of his life on the sidelines.

TOMORROW: How legends are born.