“This singular favour of Providence”

In 1890 the Pennsylvania Magazine published the transcription of a letter from Gen. George Washington, supplied by John Blair Linn of Bellefonte.

This letter was to James Potter, a brigadier general in the Pennsylvania militia. It enclosed the good news from Saratoga, especially welcome since the British army had just taken Philadelphia and beaten the Continentals at Germantown.

Washington wrote:

This singular favour of Providence is to be received with thankfulness and the happy moment which Heaven has pointed out for the firm establishment of American Liberty ought to be embraced with becoming spirit—it is incumbent upon every man of influence in his country to prevail upon the militia to take the field with that energy which the present crisis evidently demands. I have no doubt of your exerting yourself in this way—In the post which you now occupy you may render the most important services by cutting off the enemies convoys and communications with their Fleet, for this purpose you shall strain every nerve—

That letter never went into a scholarly repository, remaining in private hands. When the editors of the George Washington Papers included it, they had to rely on the Pennsylvania Magazine publication.

Washington’s letter to Potter has now surfaced. Most of it is in the handwriting of aide de camp John Laurens, with the commander’s signature at the end. I see a few small differences between its text and the published transcription, but nothing to change the letter’s meaning.

The Raab Collection is offering the document for sale with a price of $275,000.

ArtNet reported that this letter “It is the only wartime document in which the President invoked ‘Heaven’.” That’s not true. But that word is part of the selling strategy since the Raab Collection says: “We are not aware of any letter of Washington referencing Heaven having publicly sold.”

Lee and Laurens Finish Their “Transaction”

As related yesterday, on 23 Dec 1778 Col. John Laurens and Gen. Charles Lee (shown here) met for a duel on the aptly named Point No Point Road, leading to what’s now Bridesburg, Pennsylvania.

Laurens’s second was his friend and fellow aide de camp to Gen. George Washington, Col. Alexander Hamilton. Lee’s second was one of his aides, Maj. Evan Edwards. Lee had been in a duel to the death before. (Obviously, it hadn’t been fatal for him.)

When we left the fun, Laurens’s pistol shot had hit Lee, from a distance of “five or six paces.” But the general, declaring that it was just a flesh wound, wanted to proceed with a second exchange of fire.

Edwards and Hamilton protested that one shot was enough to satisfy the officers’ honor. Edwards was a little more persistent about that. Finally the duelists allowed their seconds to negotiate, though those two men were already in agreement—the sticking-point was getting the parties themselves to settle down.

Here’s the rest of the account, from Hamilton’s pen:

Col Hamilton and Major Edwards withdrew and conversing awhile on the subject, still concurred fully in opinion that for the most cogent reasons, the affair should terminate as it was then circumstanced. This decision was communicated to the parties and agreed to by them, upon which they immediately returned to Town; General Lee slightly wounded in the right side.

During the interview a conversation to the following purport past between General Lee and Col Laurens—On Col Hamilton’s intimating the idea of personal enmity, as beforementioned, General Lee declared he had none, and had only met Col. Laurens to defend his own honor—that Mr. Laurens best knew whether there was any on his part.

Col Laurens replied, that General Lee was acquainted with the motives, that had brought him there, which were that he had been informed from what he thought good authority, that General Lee had spoken of General Washington in the grossest and most opprobrious terms of personal abuse, which He Col Laurens thought himself bound to resent, as well on account of the relation he bore to General Washington as from motives of personal friendship, and respect for his character.

General Lee acknowleged that he had given his opinion against General Washingtons military character to his particular friends and might perhaps do it again. He said every man had a right to give his sentiments freely of military characters, and that he did not think himself personally accountable to Col Laurens for what he had done in that respect. But said he never had spoken of General Washington in the terms mentioned, which he could not have done; as well because he had always esteemed General Washington as a man, as because such abuse would be incompatible with the character, he would ever wish to sustain as a Gentleman.

Lee’s remarks about Washington as a general went back to their dispute at the Battle of Monmouth. About which Lee had had a lot to say, though not necessarily what Laurens had heard.

But that conversation was apparently enough to make Laurens and Lee agree with the advice their seconds came back with. Everybody headed home.

Hamilton wrote out this account of the duel, and he and Edwards both signed it on 24 Dec 1778. They concluded: “Upon the whole we think it a piece of justice to the two Gentlemen to declare, that after they met their conduct was strongly marked with all the politeness generosity coolness and firmness, that ought to characterise a transaction of this nature.”

Lee never attained another command after Monmouth and his subsequent court-martial (which he had requested); he died of a fever in 1782. Laurens had died a couple of months earlier from battle wounds. Edwards died in 1798. Hamilton lived until 1804 and then…you know.

An Appointment for Lee and Laurens

On Christmas Eve, 1778, Col. Alexander Hamilton was busy writing out this account of a potentially troublesome event that he had witnessed the day before, 237 years ago today.

Fans of the musical Hamilton will recognize this as an episode from that play. Or perhaps not, because Lin-Manuel Miranda’s adaptation of history has different people involved.

Here’s the real story from Hamilton’s own pen:

narrative of an affair of honor between general [Charles] lee and col [John] laurens [shown here]

General Lee attended by Major [Evan] Edwards and Col [John] Laurens attended by Col [Alexander] Hamilton met agreeable to appointment on Wednesday afternoon half past three in a wood situate near the four mile stone on the Point no point road.

Pistols having been the weapons previously fixed upon, and the combatants being provided with a brace each, it was asked in what manner they were to proceed. General Lee proposed, to advance upon one another and each fire at what time and distance he thought proper. Col Laurens expressed his preference of this mode, and agreed to the proposal accordingly.

They approached each other within about five or six paces and exchanged a shot almost at the same moment. As Col Laurens was preparing for a second discharge, General Lee declared himself wounded. Col Laurens, as if apprehending the wound to be more serious than it proved advanced towards the general to offer his support. The same was done by Col Hamilton and Major Edwards under a similar apprehension. General Lee then said the wound was inconsiderable, less than he had imagined at the first stroke of the Ball, and proposed to fire a second time.

This was warmly opposed both by Col Hamilton and Major Edwards, who declared it to be their opinion, that the affair should terminate as it then stood. But General Lee repeated his desire, that there should be a second discharge and Col Laurens agreed to the proposal.

Col Hamilton observed, that unless the General was influenced by motives of personal enmity, he did not think the affair ought to be persued any further; but as General Lee seemed to persist in desiring it, he was too tender of his friend’s honor to persist in opposing it.

The combat was then going to be renewed; but Major Edwards again declaring his opinion, that the affair ought to end where it was, General Lee then expressed his confidence in the honor of the Gentlemen concerned as seconds, and said he should be willing to comply with whatever they should cooly and deliberately determine. Col. Laurens consented to the same.

Would Hamilton and Edwards convince the duelists that honor had been satisfied?

TOMORROW: Throwing away their shot?

Individuals to Follow through the Revolution?

Yesterday Ray Raphael described a challenge he set for himself: find a bunch of individuals to follow through the Revolution whose stories could also tell the story of the founding of the U.S. of A. He chose seven people. As a proud owner of a copy of the resulting book, Founders, I can’t fault those choices. But just for fun, I can second-guess them.

Ray wrote that George Washington is virtually a given. So naturally, to be perverse, I have to question that conclusion. Henry Knox (shown here, later in life) spent nearly the whole war at Washington’s side, so it would be possible to follow the Continental Army’s top command through his eyes rather than through the commander’s. And Knox would bring some further advantages:

• He was present at the Boston Massacre and may have been a crucial informer for Paul Revere just before the war.
• After Washington’s first farewell in 1783, Knox became Secretary of War for the Confederation while the commander went home to Mount Vernon.
• Knox’s alarmist letter to Washington about Shays’ rebellion convinced the older man to throw his prestige behind a movement for a new constitution.
• Knox served as Secretary of War again under President Washington.
• Knox’s personal story from fatherless apprentice bookseller to general, large landowner in Maine, and founder of the Society of the Cincinnati exemplifies the social mobility possible in the Revolution.

Following Nathanael Greene offers some of the same possibilities: involvement in prewar conflicts (Greene was probably involved in the Gaspee incident of 1772) and social mobility. In addition, his handling of the Continental forces in the southern states was crucial to the end of the war. Greene’s support for black soldiers is interesting, as is his turn to being a southerner with his own slave-labor plantation.

Such a book would need to follow someone deeply involved in running the American government—i.e., the Continental Congress—during and shortly after the war. My perverse suggestion for that figure is James Lovell. Son and assistant of the Loyalist master of Boston’s South Latin School, he was a Whig politics newspaper essayist and orator. The British military arrested him as a spy in 1775 after officers found his letters on Dr. Joseph Warren’s body. He was reportedly taken to Halifax in chains.

After James Lovell was exchanged and returned to Massachusetts, the state elected him to the Congress. He supported Gen. Horatio Gates over Washington in 1777, and wound up virtually running American foreign policy and intelligence efforts since no one else wanted those responsibilities so badly. His father and siblings were in exile, and his illegitimate son was in the Continental Army. For added interest, in Philadelphia he reportedly roomed in a brothel while his wife and children were back home in Boston. On the down side, Lovell’s a hard man to understand—John Adams reportedly paced the floor in Holland, trying to figure out what his official instructions meant—and to sympathize with.

Another potentially exemplary character is Thomas Machin, a British veteran who ended up as a captain in the American engineering corps. He oversaw the effort to build a chain of obstacles across the Hudson River to prevent the Royal Navy from sailing too far north—a major industrial undertaking in a sparsely settled area. Later Machin was one of the artillery officers who accompanied Gen. John Sullivan on an expedition against the Crown’s Native American allies in upper New York. And, as a kicker, the standard story of Machin before joining the Continental Army in 1776 is a lie; this immigrant (or his descendants) reinvented his life in the New World.

For a southern perspective, I might consider John Laurens: son of a bigwig in Congress, young Continental Army officer, proponent of emancipation, prisoner of war, diplomat, and army officer again. Regardless of what far one concludes that Laurens went with Alexander Hamilton, the close relationship of those two young men shows how military service shaped them.

A book like this needs at least one female figure. Since most women, even those who became involved in political causes, stuck close to their homes, I’d look for candidates in the Middle and Southern states where most of the fighting was. Those women saw the most of, and suffered the most from, the war.

One possibility would be Esther Reed of Pennsylvania: wife of a Continental Congress delegate, military officer, and governor. In 1777 she had to flee from her home. Three years later she organized an effort to support the army, struggling against both wartime shortages and Washington’s expectations for women.

Another candidate is Annis Boudinot Stockton of New Jersey, who became a refugee in 1776. She wrote some political poetry, and had a close-up look at developments in the government through her brother, Elias Boudinot; son-in-law, Dr. Benjamin Rush; and husband, Richard Stockton. Unfortunately, little of her writing is very personal.

And of course a book like this needs to reflect the American enlisted man’s experience. One possibility would be to stitch together three or four people’s accounts of serving in the ranks, both to cover the waterfront and to emphasize how the army was composed of many men working together rather than individuals standing out on their own. (Yes, that goes against the very idea of focusing on individuals that Ray set out to try.)

Among the soldiers who left enough personal material to follow might be fifer and private John Greenwood, privateer sailor and prisoner of war Ebenezer Fox, and soldier’s wife and camp helper Sarah Osborn. Adding dragoon Boyrereau Brinch to that mix would mean bringing in the rarely documented African-American soldier’s experience.

Folks might notice that a lot of my choices lean toward people from greater Boston, simply because I know that region best. In addition, my list leaves out some really obvious candidates. I didn’t pick any of the people Ray Raphael followed in Founders, even if they’d be my first choices as well—which is a good clue to the names he actually picked.