The Many Books of James Kirby Martin

This week brought the news that James Kirby Martin has died at the age of eighty-one.

Earning his doctorate at the University of Wisconsin, which used to have a huge American history department, Martin taught at Rutgers before moving to the University of Houston.

In 2018, more than thirty years later, he retired as the Hugh Roy and Lilli Cranz Cullen University Professor of History. He’d held visiting appointments along the way, of course.

When I started researching the actual war part of the Revolution, I knew I was going to use James Kirby Martin’s books. His biography Benedict Arnold, Revolutionary Hero: An American Warrior Reconsidered is an excellent scholarly dig into well-trodden ground, and his edition of Joseph Plumb Martin’s memoir, titled Ordinary Courage, is probably the best.

Martin and Mark Edward Lender wrote A Respectable Army: The Military Origins of the Republic, 1763-1789, as well as Drinking in America: A History, 1620-1980, and they edited Citizen Soldier: The Revolutionary War Journal of Joseph Bloomfield.

Then I found Martin was also coauthor with Joseph T. Glatthaar of Forgotten Allies: The Oneida Indians and the American Revolution. Collaboration seems to have been one of his skills.

And those are just some of his books. His oeuvre extends from Men In Rebellion: Higher Governmental Leaders and the Coming of the American Revolution to Insurrection: The American Revolution and Its Meaning, as well as edited collections. One of his retirement projects was a novel written with Robert Burris about an entirely different period of history.

At the time of his death, Martin was still working. His Revolutionary War projects included a book about Fort Ticonderoga and a study of just war theory. I hope collaborators can complete those projects.

It wasn’t till after I’d read some of James Kirby Martin’s books that I had the pleasure of meeting him at a conference produced by America’s History, L.L.C. Later I also saw him at the Fort Plain Museum conference. Because he studied the actual war part of the Revolution, Jim Martin knew that his work attracted a lot of interest outside the academy, and he was happy to chat with readers and researchers from all walks of life. We’ll miss him.

2023 Revolutionary War Conference in the Mohawk Valley, 9–11 June

On the weekend of 9–11 June, the Fort Plain Museum will host its annual Revolutionary War Conference in the Mohawk Valley.

This year’s session is called “Conference 250,” with several presentations looking back at events in 1773 and others looking forward to the Sestercentennial.

The lineup of speakers includes:

• James Kirby Martin in conversation with Mark Edward Lender, professor and former student discussing the Revolutionary War and its 250th anniversary
• Friederike Baer, “Hessians: The German Soldiers in the American Revolutionary War”
• John “Jack” Buchanan, “The Battle of Musgrove’s Mill, 1780”
• Benjamin L. Carp, “The Boston Tea Party at 250: Reflections on the Radicalism of the Revolutionary Movement”
• Vivian E. Davis, ”Over 250 Years Ago!: The Battle of Golden Hill, January 19, 1770”
• Holly A. Mayer, “Congress’s Own: A Canadian Regiment, the Continental Army, and American Union”
• Steven Park, “250 Years of Remembering: The Changing Landscape of Gaspee History”
• Nina Sankovitch, “The Abiding Quest of a Forgotten Hero: How Josiah Quincy Battled Overwhelming Odds to Bring Together the Northern and Southern Colonies in 1773”
• Eric H. Schnitzer, “Picturing History: The Images of the American War for Independence”
• Sergio Villavicencio, “St. Eustatius and the American Revolution”
• Kelly Yacobucci Farquhar, “Jellas Fonda, a Letter, and the Boston Tea Party: A Look Back 250 Years Later”
• Terry McMaster, “A Revolutionary Couple on the Old New York Frontier: Col. Samuel Clyde & Catharine Wasson of Cherry Valley”
• “New York State and the 250th: Where Things Stand” presented by Devin R. Lander, New York State Historian; Phil Giltner, Director of Special Projects, New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation; and Lauren Roberts, Saratoga County Historian
• Norman J. Bollen, Fort Plain Museum board chairman, “The Fort Plain Museum & Historical Park’s Grand Enhancement Plan: Rebuilding the Blockhouse for the 250th”

Before the conference and under a separate registration, there will be a bus tour of “Forts and Fortified Homes of the Mohawk Valley” led by Bruce Venter, Wayne Lenig, and Norm Bollen. This is a new, in-depth tour of the historic forts, fortified homes, and other sites that formed the defensive perimeter around Fort Rensselaer (Fort Plain). Lunch will be included.

The conference will take place in the theater of Fulton-Montgomery Community College in Johnstown, New York. Based on past events, I expect an excellent selection of Revolutionary history books to be on sale.

For the full schedule as currently planned, additional information, and registration forms, visit this website.

Getting Fort Plain Sorted Out

The year that The Road to Concord was published, I spoke at the American Revolution Conference organized by the Fort Plain Museum, and I had enough fun to go back in other years.

I’ve also enjoyed the Fort Plain Museum’s online bookstore, which stocks a wide range of books about the American Revolution, well beyond the titles on its region. The store often offers generous discounts on recent titles and free shipping for larger orders.

But on my visits I’d never had time to visit the museum itself, not until this week. It provides a thorough account of the fight between the U.S. of A. and the British Empire over New York’s Mohawk Valley.

I must confess I’d need to take better notes to sort out all the “forts” in the area, ranging from a large construction like Fort Stanwix to little more than a big farmhouse with shutters and a bunch of soldiers assigned to it.

I felt reassured, though, that I’m not alone in that confusion. In fact, the struggle to tell the Mohawk Valley fortifications apart apparently reached up to the highest level of the Continental Army. For this I’m relying on a roundup of period quotations from Norm Bollen (P.D.F. download).

As early as 1780, an invoice documents that people living around where Otsquago Creek joined the Mohawk River called their fortification Fort Plain. But when Gen. Robert Van Rensselaer made it his headquarters later that year, he dubbed it Fort Rensselaer.

There was a geographic and class division between the frontier farmers and Gen. Van Rensselaer, aggravated by a court-martial pitting him against the county’s militia officers. This resentment came out in people living near the fort continuing to call it “Fort Plain.”

Even when Col. Marinus Willett took over and proved more popular and more militarily successful, locals still sent him messages about “Fort Plain.” Willett regularly crossed out that name and wrote in “Fort Rensselear” (close enough by 18th-century standards).

In February 1782 the French military engineer Villefranche de Genton sent Gen. George Washington a “plan of a Redoubt with a Block-house the inside proper to contain two hundred men, and large magazines, as well for ammunition as provisions” for “Fort Ranceler,” as requested by Willett.

Washington thanked the engineer for his work, and in April sent a bunch of paperwork to Gen. Philip Schuyler, including a contract to finish that blockhouse at Fort Rensselaer. Schuyler was Gen. Robert Van Renssalaer’s brother-in-law, so we can be sure of what he called that location.

At the end of May, Col. Benjamin Tupper of Massachusetts took over at that fort. But when he wrote to Washington about the situation, he used the local name:

There is an unfinished Blockhouse at Fort plain which if compleated would be a strong barrior in that Country; I think if some money could be sent on for the Meterials we can procure workmen among the levies to compleat it.

Washington immediately wrote back to say it was “out of my Ability to furnish you with any Money for the Completion of the Block House at Fort plain.” This despite how he’d already asked Schuyler to start work on the blockhouse at Fort Rensselaer.

On 24 June, Gen. Washington traveled up to the Albany region to inspect the Continental posts and supply depots. As part of that trip, he appears to have learned that Fort Rensselaer and Fort Plain were the same place, and it still needed a blockhouse. On 2 July he ordered the quartermaster to send supplies there. Meanwhile, the latest commander of the post, Col. George Reid, was careful to refer to it in his letters to the commander-in-chief as “Fort Plain, or Ransler.”

After the war, the fortification was no longer needed. It disappeared by the end of the century. But the memory of it was strong enough that when the settlers living around Otsquago Creek needed a name for their village, they chose Fort Plain.