John Sawbridge, M.P.

John Sawbridge (1732–1795) was of the radical Whigs who joined the Rev. John Horne in supporting John Wilkes during the 1760s, forming the Society of Gentlemen Supporters of the Bill of Rights, and then leaving that group to form the Constitutional Society instead, as discussed yesterday.

Sawbridge first tried to run for Parliament in 1763, but bowed out when a more prominent Kentish gentleman wanted the seat. Reportedly, Tories tried to keep him in the race in hopes he’d split the Whig vote—the first time he had to deal with the rough and tumble of genteel Georgian politics.

Five years later, Sawbridge entered Parliament as a member for the town of Hythe, succeeding Lord George Sackville (Germain). At first he appeared to be one of the Duke of Grafton’s men, but he started to push Wilkes’s cause. As a result, Lord Grafton dropped Sawbridge, but the city of London adopted him, making him a sheriff and an alderman.

Then came the split with Wilkes. In 1771 Sawbridge was up for the post of Lord Mayor of London, but Wilkes threw his weight behind the incumbent instead. That year, the ministry’s preferred candidate won the office—Wilkes and Sawbridge had split the Whig vote.

Wilkes became increasingly vituperative, saying that “in politics [Sawbridge], poor man,…[could] see no farther than his nose.” Sawbridge had a big nose, but the cross-eyed Wilkes was hardly the one to criticize someone else’s vision. When that didn’t work, Wilkes complained that Sawbridge was a “proud Colossus of pretended public virtue.”

In response, Sawbridge kept talking about the importance of remaining politically independent of parties and, more radically, serving the people by voting the way they wanted. Most politicians preferred the approach Edmund Burke argued for, voting the way that you knew was best for them.

In the spring of 1774 Sawbridge and Wilkes reconciled. Sawbridge bowed out of the race for Lord Mayor in favor of Wilkes, who promised support in the fall’s parliamentary election. Sawbridge lost his seat in Hythe but won one in London. The next year, he also succeeded Wilkes as Lord Mayor.

Both men opposed Lord North’s policy toward the American colonies, but they were part of a small minority in Parliament. Over the next few years, Sawbridge allied with the Marquess of Rockingham and the Earls of Shelburne and Chatham rather than the more radical opposition. As Charles James Fox rose to lead the Whigs in the House of Commons, Sawbridge deferred to him.

In 1780, Sawbridge supported the Roman Catholic Relief Act. That proved to be wildly unpopular; the Gordon Riots paralyzed the city. Sawbridge lost support among Londoners, apologized humbly for taking a position that they didn’t like, and still came in fifth in a race for four seats.

However, one of the four frontrunners, John Kirkman, died on the day the polls closed. There was a special by-election, and this time Sawbridge won with no contest.

Four years later, the new prime minister, William Pitt, spent £2,000 supporting his own candidate in London. His party called Sawbridge a “republican” and “an avowed enemy to the constitution, to monarchy.” It didn’t help that Sawbridge’s older sister was the celebrated republican historian (and now married widow) Catharine Macaulay Graham.

Sawbridge insisted he wanted only reform in the Commons and protection for “the Rights of the People.” He pulled out a win in 1784 by only nine votes. He promptly resumed pushing for parliamentary reforms, which still went nowhere.

In 1790, Sawbridge sought reelection mainly for old times’ sake, even asking for the privilege to die in political service to the city of London. Voters chose him overwhelmingly. But then he suffered a stroke, so while he remained an M.P. until his death he was at least partially paralyzed.

Though contemporaries and historians agree that John Sawbridge was an ambitious man, he also stuck to his principles, which were ahead of his time.

“Men in that kind of situation are not very prone to a change of government.”

As Parliament’s 31 Oct 1776 debate over the American War went on, the next speaker was Sir Herbert Mackworth, recently made a baronet.

The Parliamentary Register described his speech this way:

Sir Herbert Mackworth professed himself to be one of the independent country gentlemen, and declared, he feared that matters were much misrepresented; that he did not like to hear gentlemen so ready to find a plea for the Americans on every occasion, and even when they were beat, to hunt after a reason to shew that they could not avoid it, and that some particular circumstances occasioned it.

He said, he was ever most clearly against that House attempting to tax America, as America was not represented in that House; but he thought it highly necessary to maintain the right; and that it was but reasonable America should contribute something in return for the millions she had cost this country. He spoke highly in favour of some of the gentlemen in opposition, but applauded the ministry; finally declaring, that as an antient Briton, he felt for the honour of his country, and therefore wished her success; not but he would be glad that a proper treaty for reconciliation was on foot, and he owned he cared not whether it was with rebels in arms or without them.

If you’re unsure about how Sir Herbert came down on the issues at hand, the recorder took pains to clarify: “He was against the amendment.” In other words, for how to respond to the king’s speech, he supported Lord North’s government.

Thomas Townshend, a Whig, made several points about the king’s speech, among them:

There is, I think, one part of the speech which mentions a discovery of the original designs of the leaders of the Americans. In God’s name, who made them leaders? How came they to be so? If you force men together by oppression, they will form into bodies, and chuse leaders. Mr. [John] Hancock was a merchant of credit and opulence when this unhappy business first broke out. Men in that kind of situation are not very prone to a change of government.

In his wide-ranging speech, Townshend at one point noted that the prime minister had left the chamber.

Lord North returned and spoke at length—the first government supporter to get more than a paragraph in this Parliamentary Register. He started by expressing surprise at Townshend trying to make something of how he had left the chamber for “ten minutes, on a pressing business.” Among the minister’s other responses:

It has been more than once objected this night, that I have, since the commencement of the present troubles, held back such information as became necessary for you to know, in order the better to be able to decide upon measures proper to be pursued, relative to America.

Nothing can be more unjust and ill-founded than this charge. I have been ready at all times to communicate to this House every possible information that could be given with safety. I repeat with safety, because the very bad and mischievous consequences of disclosing the full contents of letters, with the writers’ names, has been already severely proved, and would, in the present situation of affairs, not only be impolitic, but might be to the last degree dangerous, if not fatal, to the persons immediately concerned.

He might have been referring to the leaks of letters from Gov. Francis Bernard, Gov. Thomas Hutchinson, and other royal officials in America.

Col. Isaac Barré, who had coined the term “Sons of Liberty” back in 1765, responded by stating that he believed Lord North was assiduous in attending debates. But he demanded to know “What powers were General [William] and Lord [Richard] Howe invested with as his Majesty’s Commissioners to treat with America?”

Lord North replied that the Howes’ commission had been published for everyone to see in the London Gazette, the government organ. Barré then pulled out a copy of the 5 Aug New-York Gazette and read a lengthy report of the Howes’ interactions with Gen. George Washington, suggesting more was going on.

Barré and North had another exchange over the threat of war with France and Spain, and whether certain warships were “nearly manned” or “partly manned.”

The Parliamentary Register quoted Barré saying, “Recall, therefore, your fleets and armies from America, and leave the brave colonists to the enjoyment of their liberty.”

This created a louder laugh than the former among the occupiers of the several official benches; which irritated the Colonel so much, that he reprehended the treasury-bench in terms of great asperity; he arraigned them with a want of manners, and declared, he thought professed courtiers had been better bred.

Barré wound up by suggesting Adm. Augustus Keppel be put in charge of the fleet. Keppel himself then made some remarks about the European powers’ naval readiness. (He wasn’t given an active command until 1778.)

Lord George Germain, secretary of state for North America (shown above), spoke to several points the opposition had raised, including:

As to the propositions which General Howe made to General Washington, they prove clearly, as the Americans themselves state the matter, that General Howe was eager for the means of peace and conciliation; but Washington against them. However, General Howe will doubtless be able to put New-York at the mercy of the King; after which the legislature will be restored, and an opportunity will thereby be given for the well affected to declare themselves, who are ready to make proper submission.

Germain was in no mood for compromise.

TOMORROW: Concluding remarks and the vote.

“My desire is to restore to them the blessings of law and liberty”

On 31 Oct 1776, Parliament opened a new legislative session. King George III addressed the assembled House of Commons and House of Lords.

The king spoke on behalf of the current government’s leaders, particularly prime minister Lord North and the secretary of state for the colonies, Lord George Germain.

The king strongly agreed with those men, so the remarks also reflected his own ideas about the American War:

My Lords and Gentlemen,

Nothing could have afforded me so much satisfaction as to have been able to inform you, at the opening of this session, that the troubles, which have so long distracted my colonies in North America, were at an end; and that my unhappy people, recovered from their delusion, had delivered themselves from the oppression of their leaders, and returned to their duty: but so daring and desperate is the spirit of those leaders, whose object has always been dominion and power, that they have now openly renounced all allegiance to the crown, and all political connection with this country; they have rejected, with circumstances of indignity and insult, the means of conciliation held out to them under the authority of our commission; and have presumed to set up their rebellious confederacies for independent states.

If their treason be suffered to take root, much mischief must grow from it, to the safety of my loyal colonies, to the commerce of my kingdoms, and indeed to the present system of all Europe. One great advantage, however, will be derived from the object of the rebels being openly avowed, and clearly understood; we shall have unanimity at home, founded in the general conviction of the justice and necessity of our measures.

I am happy to inform you, that, by the blessing of Divine Providence on the good conduct and valour of my officers and forces by sea and land, and on the zeal and bravery of the auxiliary troops in my service, Canada is recovered; and although, from unavoidable delays, the operations at New York could not begin before the month of August, the success in that province has been so important as to give the strongest hopes of the most decisive good consequences: but, notwithstanding this fair prospect, we must, at all events, prepare for another campaign.

In fact, three days before Gen. Sir William Howe had won a solid victory at the Battle of White Plains, part of the Crown’s recovery of New York City and Long Island into the British Empire. But of course that news hadn’t reached London yet.

After directing a request to continue funding the war through taxes to the Commons, as the British constitution required, the king concluded:

In this arduous contest I can have no other object but to promote the true interest of all my subjects. No people ever enjoyed more happiness, or lived under a milder government, than those now revolted provinces: the improvements in every art, of which they boast, declare it; their numbers, their wealth, their strength by sea and land, which they think sufficient to enable them to make head against the whole power of the mother-country, are irrefragable proofs of it. My desire is to restore to them the blessings of law and liberty, equally enjoyed by every British subject, which they have fatally and desperately exchanged for all the calamities of war, and the arbitrary tyranny of their chiefs.

Not everyone in the chamber agreed with that perspective.

TOMORROW: The Rockinghamites strike back.

Mrs. Macaulay, Dr. Franklin, and Habeas Corpus

In late 1776 the Scottish artisan James Aitken, after receiving some encouragement of American diplomat Silas Deane, left incendiary bombs in the Royal Navy dockyards at Portsmouth and Bristol.

The British authorities tracked down Aitken, who had become known as “John the Painter.” He was tried, convicted, sentenced, and hanged by 10 Mar 1777. (Read the whole story in Jessica Warner’s study The Incendiary.)

Lord George Germain led the national government in another response to Aitken’s attacks: a Treason Act. Like laws that Parliament enacted during previous wars, this allowed the government to hold anyone suspected of treason or piracy without bail or trial—i.e., to suspend the right of habeas corpus—for the rest of the calendar year.

Parliament renewed this law each year until the end of the American war. The Massachusetts General Court passed a similar law to deal with traitors, though it promised more protections for the accused. Eventually the U.S. Constitution would carve out a wartime exception to habeas corpus as well.

Britain’s Treason Act was on Catharine Macaulay’s mind when she visited Paris at the end of 1777. Though her country wasn’t yet at war with France, there were American rebels in the capital—Deane, Arthur Lee, and most famously Benjamin Franklin.

I assume Mrs. Macaulay and Dr. Franklin had met in London during the 1760s when they were both Whig celebrities, but I don’t know if they became more than acquaintances. In late 1777, the two figures were definitely at the same dinner parties. According to Elizabeth Arnold, “Mrs. Macaulay met him several times, among the literati of Paris, at dinners given on her account, but she never received him at her hotel.”

Macaulay made a point of not visiting Franklin or inviting him to visit her. She explained herself to him in a letter dated 8 December:

Sir

I have some affaires which demand my immediat return to England. You are very sensible that the suspenssion of the Habeas Corpus Act subjects me to an immediat imprisonment on any suspicion of my having held a correspondence with your Countrymen on this side the Water. This Sir is the only reason why I did not fix a day to have the honor of seeing you at my own Hotel and why I have not been more forward in availing myself of my present situation to hold converse with my American friends who reside in this Capital.

I am sure Sir that you and every generous American would be exceedingly concerned to hear that my feeble constitution was totaly destroyed by a long imprisonment and to see me fall a sacrifice to the resentment of administration unpitied and unlamented as an impertinent individual who would needs make a bustle where she could not be of the smallest service and especially Sir as I hope the whole tenor of my conduct must have convinced you that I would with pleasure sacrifice my life to be of any real use to the public cause of freedom and that I am now nursing my constitution to enable me to treat largely on our fatal civil wars in the History I am now about.

I am Sir with a profound respect for your great Qualities as a Statesman Patriot and Phylosopher Your Very Obedient Humble Servant.

By “our fatal civil wars,” Macaulay meant the war then taking place in America—the very war that made it dangerous for her to be seen as too close to Franklin. And once again, Macaulay made a point of her delicate health.

COMING UP: Back home in Bath.

A Suitable Suitor for the Widow Lavoisier?

On a very bad day in May 1794, Marie Anne Pierrette Paulze Lavoisier lost both her husband and her father to the guillotine.

Within a couple of years, however, more moderate French governments were restoring her property and clearing those men’s names.

Lavoisier kept busy editing her late husband Antoine’s scientific papers into an authoritative collection. She also wrote a denunciation of one of the officials who had sent her relatives to their execution, though she didn’t publish that under her name.

Multiple men proposed marriage to the wealthy, intelligent widow, including Pierre du Pont, who in 1799 emigrated to the U.S. of A. with his family, and Sir Charles Blagden, secretary of the Royal Society. However, it would take an exceptionally talented and determined man to win Mme. Lavoisier’s hand.

One candidate arrived in Paris in 1801. He had spent eleven years, from 1785 to 1796, as a minister of all trades for Prince Charles Theodore, Elector of Bavaria and Count Palatine. While in Munich he had reorganized the state’s army, reformed its poorhouses, invented a cheap but nourishing soup, designed public parks, developed a way to calculate a substance’s specific heat, and made other breakthroughs in thermodynamics (refuting some of Antoine Lavoisier’s ideas). For such services and feats the prince had named him Reichsgraf von Rumford, or Imperial Count Rumford.

Before that job in Germany, the count had served as an officer in the British army, commanding Loyalist cavalrymen on Long Island in the last years of the American War. Before that, he was secretary to Lord George Germain, Britain’s Colonial Secretary and the chief architect of the empire’s military policy from 1775 to 1782. Those activities had won him a British knighthood.

And before attaching himself to Germain, the count had been a young man from Woburn, Massachusetts, who through brains, hard study, ambition, a lucky marriage, and minimal scruples had transformed himself into a New Hampshire country gentleman with a wealthy wife by the time he turned twenty years old. Yes, it was our old friend Benjamin Thompson (shown above in 1783).

Thompson had left his wife and infant daughter Sally in New Hampshire when he ducked behind British lines in the fall of 1775, worried that he’d be outed as one of Gen. Thomas Gage’s spies. (Remarkably, Americans didn’t tumble to this aspect of Thompson’s career until the 1920s.) In the 1780s Thompson resumed correspondence with some of his American connections, including his mother and his friend Loammi Baldwin, but he was adamant they not tell his wife where he was.

In 1789 Thompson had a second daughter with the Countess Baumgarten, also mistress of Prince Carl Theodore. The count also had a long sexual relationship and friendship with Countess Baumgarten’s sister, Countess Nogarola. In the 1790s Rumford had an affair with Lady Palmerston while Viscount Palmerston had an affair with Emma, Lady Hamilton, later the love of Lord Horatio Nelson. In other words, Count Rumford had entered an aristocratic circle that wasn’t really committed to the traditions of marriage.

Even Count Rumford’s presence in France raised some eyebrows. After all, he was a former British army officer, still on half-pay, and Britain and France were technically at war. The armies of Revolutionary France had also invaded Carl Theodore’s territory twice while Rumford worked for the prince. But First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte was busy consolidating his victories with peace treaties. Starting in March 1802, everyone was supposed to be friendly.

Count Rumford met Marie Anne Lavoisier in Paris on 19 Nov 1801. In the spring of 1802 he made a brief visit back to Britain, then traveled to Bavaria with Sir Charles Blagden. There the new Elector offered him government jobs. On 30 November the count sent a letter to his daughter Sarah in New Hampshire that she summarized like this:

he alludes to his love concern; says he has got into full employment at Munich, but would rather be in Paris; and the certain lady would rather have him there.

In 1803, Mme. Lavoisier joined the count in Munich.

TOMORROW: To marry or not to marry?

Fort Plain Museum Conference, 11-14 June

The Fort Plain Museum has announced the speakers at its annual American Revolution Mohawk Valley Conference, scheduled for 11-14 June 2020.

I’ve attended this event in the past and enjoyed not only the speakers but the dedication of the organizers and attendees.

The scheduled presenters are:

• Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy, “The Architect of the British War for America: Lord George Germain”
• Craig Bruce Smith, “The Interests of Our Dearest Country: Honor and the Continental Army”
• James Kirby Martin, “A Contagion of Violence: The Human Slaughter in Frontier New York: 1775-1783”
• Mark Edward Lender, “John Brown’s Raid on Fort Ticonderoga in September 1777”
• Lindsay M. Chervinsky, “Councils of War and the Cabinet: How the Revolutionary War Shaped the Presidency”
• David Head, “George Washington and a Very Mysterious Business: Tracking Down the Newburgh Conspiracy”
• Eric H. Schnitzer, “The Value of Revisionism: Don Troiani’s Campaign to Saratoga—1777”
• Todd W. Braisted, “In Reduced Circumstances: Loyalist Women and British Government Assistance, 1779-1783”
• Katie Turner Getty, “Women Aiding American Prisoners of War and Escapees in New York”
• James E. Richmond, “War on the Middleline: The Founding of a Community in the Kayaderosseras Patent in the Midst of the American Revolution”
• Wayne Lenig, “Fort Plain, Fort Plank and Fort Rensselaer: the Revolutionary War Fortifications at Canajohary”

The Saturday dinner will be enlivened by Robert A. Selig speaking on “Battlefield Preservation Efforts in the Mohawk Valley.”

This conference usually also offers bus tours of the historic sites in the region on the first days with presentations on the weekend. Information about those opportunities, the conference facility, the fundraiser dinner, and other registration details will be available shortly. Watch this page.

ADDENDUM: Because of the pandemic, this event has been rescheduled until 10-13 September 2020.

What Do We Know about Gen. de Steuben’s Sexuality?

Last month The Nib published Josh Trujillo and Levi Hastings’s comic about Gen. Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben as a gay man.

I found it inaccurate at several spots. Yet the core message—that Steuben was both important to the Continental Army’s success and sexually attracted to other men—is almost certainly correct. It’s just that a lot of the details, especially those supporting that conclusion, are wildly exaggerated.

Most of the evidence about the Baron de Steuben’s sexuality appears in John Macauley Palmer’s 1937 biography, General von Steuben. Palmer admired Steuben greatly and disliked the idea of the baron being gay, so he tried hard to refute the evidence, leaving logical circles in the ground as he spun. But he did publish the relevant sources in English translation.

Many of the original European documents were probably destroyed in World War 2, along with others that might have been helpful. It’s therefore unlikely that we’ll find new evidence from Steuben’s lifetime. But we can do a better job than Palmer of interpreting those documents and spotting the most likely conclusions.

This comic instead overstates the evidence in various ways. It doesn’t cite sources but appears to have been based on articles written for American newspapers, magazines, and websites over the past twenty-five years since Randy Shilts’s Conduct Unbecoming focused attention on Steuben as a gay man.

I’ll go through the statements I think are exaggerated.

“Steuben lived openly as a homosexual before the term was even invented.”

It’s true that the word “homosexual” was coined in 1868. More important (as Trujillo and Hastings later acknowledge), people’s understanding of sexuality and expectations of how gay men behave were different in the Baron de Steuben’s lifetime and in our own. So what does it mean to say he “lived openly as a homosexual”?

Gen. de Steuben was a lifelong bachelor. He didn’t marry a woman while having affairs with men, as it was and is said of his monarch Frederick the Great of Prussia, Frederick’s brother Prince Henry, and Lord George Germain in Britain. The baron’s title was too new, his estate too small, to make a direct heir necessary. In that respect, Steuben was more like Horace Walpole or Charles Paxton.

But neither is there any evidence of Gen. de Steuben claiming a longtime partner or expressing sexual interest in males. When he set up a household with a young man late in life, he presented that man as his secretary.

Some of Gen. de Steuben’s letters express affection for other men more plainly than 20th-century male correspondents did, but there are similar letters between eighteenth-century men who had active heterosexual lives. Even in the baron’s circle, there’s a lot of joshing about young ladies, whether sincere or not.

So the comic’s statement that Steuben “lived openly as a homosexual” is highly questionable at best.

“Steuben was expelled from Germany on charges of sodomy.”

There was of course no political entity called “Germany” in Steuben’s lifetime. He was born in Prussia, but in the late 1760s and early 1770s he was a powerful government minister in the small principality of Hohenzollern-Hechingen. And then suddenly he wasn’t.

The baron met with American envoys Silas Deane and Benjamin Franklin in Paris in the summer of 1777, but they couldn’t promise him a rank and good pay in the Continental Army. He instead sought a position in Baden. An official from that small country wrote to the prince of Hohenzollern-Hechingen on 13 Aug 1777:

It has come to me from different sources that M. de Steuben is accused of having taken familiarities with young boys which the laws forbid and punish severely. I have even been informed that that is the reason why M. de Steuben was obliged to leave Hechingen and that the clergy of your country intend to prosecute him by law as soon as he may establish himself anywhere.

That’s the principal contemporaneous evidence for Gen. de Steuben’s homosexuality. We might even say the baron wasn’t accused of “sodomy” but of molesting children (in the original French, “d’avoir pris avec de jeunes garçons des familiaritiés, que les Loix defendent & punissent sévérément”). Again, the period’s understanding of sexual behavior is significant: the Prussian court appears to have revived the classical Greek admiration of adolescent boys as a noble way of expressing homosexual desire.

About five days after this letter was drafted, Steuben was back in Paris, over 300 miles away. Now he was quite interested in the Americans’ offer. By 4 September the baron had signed on to their cause, on 10 September he left Paris for Marseilles, and on 26 September he sailed for America, never to return.

All that said, no one has found evidence that Baron de Steuben faced formal “charges of sodomy” or that he was officially “expelled” from any country. Palmer even argued that the real problem in Hohenzollern-Hechingen was a budget crunch, and that the accusations of sexual misconduct were trumped up by Steuben’s court enemies—though he offered no evidence for such enmity. But the most likely explanation is that Baron de Steuben left his post and then Europe under a cloud because of those accusations of sexual misconduct, thus removing himself in a bid to keep the scandal as quiet as possible.

So again, The Nib’s comic takes the incomplete, somewhat murky evidence from Steuben’s lifetime and offers readers a definite statement reflecting modern expectations.

TOMORROW: What Franklin, Washington, and others knew.

Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy’s Massachusetts Tour

Prof. Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy of the University of Virginia will give two public talks in Massachusetts next week, both on his book The Men Who Lost America: British Leadership, the Revolutionary War and the Fate of Empire.

Here’s a précis of the book:

The loss of America was a stunning and unexpected defeat for the powerful British Empire. Common wisdom has held that incompetent military commanders and political leaders must have been to blame, but were they? O’Shaughnessy dispels the incompetence myth and uncovers the real reasons that rebellious colonials were able to achieve their surprising victory.

On Tuesday, 10 April, O’Shaughnessy will kick off the American Antiquarian Society’s Spring Public Lecture Series. That free event starts at 7:00 P.M. in Antiquarian Hall, 185 Salisbury Street in Worcester.

On Wednesday, 11 April, he’ll deliver the Lexington Historical Society’s Cronin Lecture. This free talk is co-sponsored by the Friends of Minute Man National Park and His Majesty’s 10th Regiment of Foot. The evening starts at 6:00 P.M. with a reception in the Lexington Depot, and the lecture is scheduled for 7:00 P.M.

At both events copies of The Men Who Lost America will be available for sale and signing. The book has won many awards, including the George Washington Book Prize, the New-York Historical Society Annual American History Book Prize, The National Society Daughters of the American Revolution Excellence in American History Book Award, and the Fraunces Tavern Museum Book Award.

It’s also a handsome, nicely packaged book. I’ve started to read it multiple times, and I keep running into the problem that Prof. O’Shaughnessy and I have fundamentally different ideas about how to use commas. But obviously other readers haven’t been stopped that way, and sooner or later I’ll try again.

Smelling the Revolution

Chemical & Engineering News recently reported on various ways chemists are investigating, systematizing, and recreating the smells of the past.

This effort includes analyzing the smells of decaying books and paper and identifying the chemicals involved in that process, as shown above.

Other chemists are on “quests to deconstruct and recreate the odors of the past”:

Besides the technical difficulties of assembling a large number of molecules in the proper proportions, historian Mark Smith at the University of South Carolina cautions that interpreting these odors may be more difficult still. In previous eras, the omnipresent stench of unwashed bodies, manure, rotting fish, and wood smoke formed a nearly unnoticed olfactory backdrop that would likely overwhelm modern noses. Even if scientists recreate this odor landscape down to the last molecule, a 21st-century American will have a different experience with each inhale than a ninth-century Viking or a 17th-century Parisian. What we smell today will have an entirely different meaning to what they smelled back then.

“You have to ask whether your act of smelling something is the same as it was for them,” Smith says. The effort of interpreting historic smells “tells us more about us than it does the past.”

One example of our changing odor landscapes is the famous potpourri found at Knole, a 600-year-old manor house in Kent, southeast of London. Recipes helped historians create an accurate reproduction that is now for sale in the house’s gift shop. But Bembibre says that the potpourri, whose recipe dates to the 1750s, doesn’t always appeal to modern noses. The combination of dried flowers from the Knole garden, including lavender, bay leaves, and geraniums, and spices like mace and cinnamon, are foreign to some modern visitors, who aren’t accustomed to this combination of scents.

The Knole potpourri recipe was written down by Lady Elizabeth Germain (1680-1769), who left most of her fortune to Lord George Sackville, a descendant of one of her late husband’s friends. That man then changed his name to Lord George Germain and used the money to solidify his political standing. In 1775 he became the Secretary of State who avidly prosecuted the American War. We might say, therefore, that the Knole potpourri is one authentic smell of the American Revolution.

Shorto on Revolution Song in Boston, 30 Nov.

Back in 2009, Ray Raphael contributed a “guest blogger” posting here about his book Founders, which traces the history of the Revolution through seven individuals.

Ray wrote: “One of the characters is a given: George Washington. There is absolutely no way we can tell the larger story of the war and the nation’s founding without him. We know this. But who else?” That question prompted a couple of days of discussion of candidates.

Now journalist and historian Russell Shorto has taken up a similar challenge with his book Revolution Song: A Story of American Freedom. It retells the Revolution through six figures:

• George Washington, of course.
• Lord George Germain, Secretary of State for North America from November 1775 to February 1782.
• Cornplanter, war chief of the Senecas starting in the French and Indian War.
• Abraham Yates, shoemaker, lawyer, and politician.
• Margaret Coghlan, daughter of British Maj. Thomas Moncrieffe.
• Venture Smith, former slave and father of a Continental soldier.

Coghlan brings some scandalous glamour to the project since she and Aaron Burr were reportedly an item early in the war and she later became a courtesan in London. In Revolutionary Ladies, Philip Young presented evidence that Coghlan died years before her Memoir was published, suggesting that at least some of its tales were fraudulent. Shorto argues instead that Coghlan faked her death and fled to Paris. So that’s interesting right there.

Shorto will present Revolution Song at the Massachusetts Historical Society on Thursday, 30 November. The event will start with a reception at 5:30 P.M., and Shorto will speak and sign books starting at 6:00. Registration costs $10.

“The Devil and the Crown” at Faneuil Hall, Nov. 4

On Saturday, 4 November, Faneuil Hall will host a reenactment of the Boston town meeting I described yesterday, setting up a non-importation boycott against the Townshend duties.

Meanwhile, in the surrounding marketplace volunteers will reenact an outdoor public demonstration against the royal officials who came to Boston to collect those duties. That protest took place on 5 Nov 1767.

Boston 1775 readers will recognize the Fifth of November as when Boston youths enjoyed raucous processions, with giant effigies representing the British Empire’s Catholic enemies and the political scapegoats of the day.

By coincidence, on 5 Nov 1767 three new Customs Commissioners, including Henry Hulton, William Burch, and the already unpopular Charles Paxton, disembarked from London. Lord George Sackville, later Secretary of State Germain, described how that worked out:

They landed on the 5th of November, and the populace were then carrying in procession the Pope, the Devil, and the Pretender, in order to commit them to the flames in honour of Protestantism. Mr. Paxton’s name being Charles, it was fixed in large letters upon the breast of the Devil, and these figures met the Commissioners at the water side and were carry’d before them without any insult through the streets, and whenever they stopped to salute an acquaintance, the figures halted and faced about till the salutation was over, and so accompany’d them to the [Lieutenant] Governor [Thomas] Hutchinson’s door…

The combined reenactment will be called “The Devil and the Crown.” Here’s the full schedule:

11:00 A.M. to 2:00 P.M.
Goods for Your Master, Taxes for Your King
Come try your luck as a young apprentice in this colonial marketplace game. Whether you buy, barter, or smuggle, the goal’s the same: bring all your goods back to your employer and get promoted! This drop in program is best for ages 6-10, Faneuil Hall, Education Space, basement.

1:00 to 4:30 P.M.
Talk of the Town
Meet reenactors portraying Bostonians of different social classes in Samuel Adams Park, directly in front of Faneuil Hall, and learn about why they are protesting the new laws.

2:30 and 4:00 P.M.
Revolutionary Town Meeting: Stand Up! Speak Out!
Join a lively meeting to debate Boston’s response to the hated Townshend Acts. Character cards are available. Free, 30 minutes, Faneuil Hall, Great Hall, second floor.

4:30 P.M.
Procession
Join a rowdy street protest and process around Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market to the Old State House.

5:30 to 6:30 P.M.
Museum Open House
Dive into Boston’s Revolutionary past and explore the galleries inside the Old State House. Admission is free to all.

The program will thus explore the formal politics of a town meeting and the informal politics of the street, the economy of transatlantic trade and the choices of local consumers, particularly women. (Recall how the list of goods that Bostonians were supposed to boycott included a lot of women’s garments and household items.)

This reenactment is being organized through Revolution 250, the coalition of local organizations commemorating the sestercentennials of events in Massachusetts leading up to the break with Britain. In this case, the sponsoring organizations are Boston National Historical Park, Minute Man National Historical Park, The Bostonian Society, and the Massachusetts Historical Society.

I started pushing for this event last year, saying that Revolution 250 shouldn’t miss the anniversary of a big political event involving giant puppets. But Jim Hollister of Minute Man Park really got the wagon rolling, along with such dedicated reenactors as Niels Hobbs, Matthew Mees, Ruth Hodges, and many others. It will be a once-in-a-lifetime anniversary!

Celebrating the National Park Service Centennial

On 25 August the National Park Service is celebrating the hundredth anniversary of the law that founded the agency. Parks are charging no fees on 25-28 August. In addition, many N.P.S. sites have special events planned.

Not all those events relate to the Revolutionary period, even in greater Boston. Boston National Historical Park, for instance, is focusing on World War II. But here’s a selection that fit our period:

Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters, Cambridge—
In addition to family activities, a teddy bear tea, a 1916 jazz concert, a poetry slam, and a teen centennial celebration on different days, the site will host a showing of the movie 1776 on the evening of Saturday, 27 August. This musical was part of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s inspiration for Hamilton; his book even quotes a line from its opening number. The showing will be outside after sunset, so hope that day’s weather is like Philadelphia in the summer of 1776: no rain and warm.

Minute Man National Historical Park—
At the visitor center near the Lexington-Lincoln border, activities scheduled all weekend include “Junior Ranger Centennial Activity Books.” There will also be a Battle Road Trail Walk starting at the visitor center at 12:30 P.M. on Saturday; “Bring plenty of water and wear comfortable shoes!” And there will be cake.

At the North Bridge in Concord, on Saturday at 2:30, there will be a presentation on “Sculpting an American Icon: Daniel Chester French and the Minute Man” by Donna Hassler of Chesterwood and David Wood of the Concord Museum. Rep. Niki Tsongas, N.P.S. Deputy Regional Director Rose Fennell, park superintendent Nancy Nelson, and local officials will also speak. And there will be cake.

On Sunday, the world-famous Middlesex County Volunteers Fife & Drum Corps will perform at the North Bridge at 11:00 A.M. No cake promised.

Adams National Historical Park, Quincy—
On Thursday from 10:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. the park will host visits from a young John Adams (as portrayed by Michael Lepage) and a matriarchal Abigail Adams (Patricia Bridgman), as well as John Quincy Adams (Jim Cooke) and his wife Louisa Catherine Adams (Judy Bernstein, 1:00-2:00 only).

For more details on each of these events and others, please visit the N.P.S.’s own websites.

Finally, Oxford University Press is honoring the Park Service by launching a webpage that “has brought together, and made freely available, some of its best online, scholarly content related to the National Park Service.” I can’t say I’m impressed with the range of resources so far, but I found the O.D.N.B. biography of Lord George Germain.

A New Look at Benjamin Thompson

This week HistoryTube.org announced [trademark symbol and all]: “A portrait of Benjamin Thompson, one of the most prominent scientists of the late 18th century, will be exhibited in the new American Revolution Museum at Yorktown® galleries to help tell the story of Loyalists.”

The announcement included a biography of Thompson that I thought could benefit from some translation. It said:

In the 1770s he lived in Concord (earlier called Rumford), New Hampshire, and became an officer in the 2nd Provincial Regiment.

After Thompson at age nineteen married a rich widow, Gov. John Wentworth made him a major in the New Hampshire militia.

He developed close associations with prominent British officers, incurring the wrath of citizens opposed to British rule.

He enticed deserters from the British army to his farm, worked them very hard, and alerted the royal authorities to come collect them when they started to miss army life (probably just before he had promised to pay them). He had an affair in February 1775 with Patriot printer Isaiah Thomas’s wife. By May, Thompson was sending Gen. Thomas Gage spy reports written in invisible ink.

Thompson made the decision to leave America and had a successful career as a scientist and inventor in Britain and on the Continent, known principally for his work in thermodynamics.

Thompson slipped behind the British lines soon after Dr. Benjamin Church was detected as a spy. In November 1775 he wrote a detailed report on the American army for Gen. William Howe, then sailed for England. Thompson worked his way into the household and office of Lord George Germain, possibly through sexual favors, and by 1780 was a top bureaucrat in the British government. He returned to America as a British army officer very late in the war, then went back to Europe for good.

Thompson was indeed an inventive scientist, as well as a capable and visionary administrator in Bavaria. He co-founded the Royal Institute in London. He and his one legitimate child, Sarah Thompson, left some substantial bequests to American institutions, causing them to be remembered well—until Thompson’s early spy reports were identified in the 1920s.

I don’t know if this portrait had previously been linked to Rumford; I don’t recall ever seeing it before. The HistoryTube.org article concludes:

The 18- by 24-inch oil-on-canvas painting by an unknown artist dates to 1785, a fact revealed during conservation. The portrait was acquired by the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation specifically for the American Revolution Museum at Yorktown, which will replace the Yorktown Victory Center by late 2016.

Rumford was a brilliant, fascinating figure, but I hope no one visiting this new museum takes him to be a typical American Loyalist, or typical in any way.

Secrets of the Federal Street Theatre

Today the Massachusetts Historical Society opens a new exhibit on the first public theater in Boston, a matter of great controversy back in 1794. The society’s Events webpage says:

“The First Seasons of the Federal Street Theatre, 1794-1798” documents the battle over the Federal Street Theatre through playbills from early performances as well as the letters and publications of supporters and opponents of public theater in Boston. The M.H.S. show is a satellite display of an exhibition titled “Forgotten Chapters of Boston’s Literary History” on display at the Boston Public Library.

The Federal Street Theatre exhibit will be on view through 30 July, and is free to people visiting on 10:00 to 4:00 on weekdays.

The first manager of that theater was John Steele Tyler, older brother of the playwright and jurist Royall Tyler. And his history is even slippier than his little brother’s. John Steele Tyler was a major early in the Revolutionary War, then a lieutenant colonel in the Massachusetts forces during the Penobscot expedition. In 1780, he sailed to Europe with John Trumbull, another former American officer, who wanted to study painting.

Tyler and Trumbull were sharing rooms in London late that year when Benjamin Thompson, secretary to Secretary of State Lord George Germain (and slipperiest of all), ordered their arrest as suspected spies. Loyalist friends warned Tyler, and he slipped away to France while Trumbull went to jail. The next year, Tyler wrote to Germain saying that the French alliance had turned him against the American cause and that he’d defect to the Crown for £1,000.

That letter didn’t come to light until Lewis Einstein’s book Divided Loyalties in 1933, so Tyler was able to return to America in the 1780s with a solid reputation. Privately John Adams called him “a detestible Specimen” (for unknown reasons), but publicly Tyler was an upstanding veteran and businessman. Family tradition says he’d even undertaken spy missions for Gen. George Washington. And perhaps that’s what Tyler really was up to in London. But that family’s voluminous traditions are sometimes contradictory and self-serving.

In any event, Tyler’s outward respectability made him a good public face for the institution that broke Boston’s long-standing taboo against theater.

(The image of the Federal Street Theatre above comes from the Boston Public Library’s Flickr collection.)