Joyful News from Saratoga

On 18 Oct 1777, Gen. George Washington issued joyous general orders to the Continental Army outside Philadelphia:

The General has his happiness completed relative to the successes of our northern Army. On the 14th instant, General [John] Burgoyne, and his whole Army, surrendered themselves prisoners of war—

Let every face brighten, and every heart expand with grateful Joy and praise to the supreme disposer of all events, who has granted us this signal success—The Chaplains of the army are to prepare short discourses, suited to the joyful occasion to deliver to their several corps and brigades at 5 O’clock this afternoon—

immediately after which, Thirteen pieces of cannon are to be discharged at the park of artillery, to be followed by a feu-de-joy with blank cartridges, or powder, by every brigade and corps of the army, beginning on the right of the front line, and running on to the left of it, and then instantly beginning on the left of the 2nd line, and running to the right of it where it is to end—The Major General of the day will superintend and regulate the feu-de-joy.

According to Col. Timothy Pickering, the chaplains’ sermons were forestalled by a report that “the enemy were marching towards us,” so the soldiers had to muster for battle instead. But “the enemy pretty soon went back to their quarters.”

The evening celebration went on. Over on the British side, Maj. John André wrote in his journal, “at sunset firing was heard in the direction of the Rebel Encampment. This was a feu-de-joie on account of the taking of General Burgoyne and the Northern Army.”

(A feu-de-joie involved soldiers firing their muskets in rapid succession to make a long ratatat-tat-tat sound.)

Washington was especially pleased with that news because his own army was still reeling from losses at Brandywine, Paoli, and Germantown. He had just heard from Gen. Israel Putnam about British forces storming up the Hudson. The last letter he’d received from Gen. Horatio Gates indicated that Gen. Burgoyne’s campaign was still a threat.

Thus, the commander-in-chief was delighted when Putnam passed on a note from Gen. George Clinton in Albany dated 15 October:

Last Night at 8 OClock the capitulation whereby Genl Burgoyne and whole Army surrenderd themselves Prisoners of war was sign’d, and this morning they are to march out towards the river above fish Creek with the honors of war (and there ground their Arms) they are from thence to be marched to Massachusets Bay. We congratulate you on this happy event, and remain yrs &c.

In fact, that report was premature. Burgoyne and Gates started talks on 14 October, but it took three days before the British and Hessian soldiers actually surrendered. All the while, Gates was worrying about whether Crown reinforcements might arrive and change Burgoyne’s mind.

Now technically we could say Washington’s army didn’t jump the gun because the British army did surrender on 17 October, one day before the celebrations in Pennsylvania. But Washington was still operating on false information.

Discussing Saratoga gives me leave to note that the national park there has a new Chief of Interpretation starting today. Garrett Cloer previously worked at Minute Man National Historical Park, Independence National Historical Park, and Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historical Site, all places with serious Revolutionary history, in addition to his latest posting at the Herbert Hoover Birthplace in Iowa. He’ll be a real asset to Saratoga.

The photo above shows the Saratoga surrender site, which will soon also become part of the national park there. For the past two years that landscape has been managed and upgraded by the Friends of Saratoga Battlefield.

More Special Events in February

Here are a couple more events this month that caught my eye.

On Sunday, 11 February, at 12:30 P.M. the Pickering House in Salem will host a presentation on “17th- & 18th-Century Food and Cookery” by Karen Scalia of Salem Food Tours.

What would the Pickerings and their contemporaries have been eating back then? How would it have been cooked? What about spices? Utensils? Where did they get their ingredients? How dangerous was standing over a fire? What about our friend, the Rumford Roaster?

(That would be the type of oven invented by Benjamin Thompson of Woburn, later Count Rumford, shown here.)

This lecture includes a “mini spice tasting.” The cost is $25, or $20 for Pickering House members. Advance registration required through pickeringhouse1@gmail.com.

Down in New Jersey, Somerset County’s Heritage Trail Association will offer its “Five Generals Tour” on Sunday, 18 February.

The popular bus tour…gives participants an opportunity to visit five of the existing houses where Generals George Washington, Henry Knox, Baron Von Steuben, Nathaniel Greene, and William Alexander were headquartered during the Middlebrook Cantonment of 1778-79. The historic homes include the Abraham Staats House in South Bound Brook, the Jacobus Vanderveer House in Bedminster, the Wallace House in Somerville, the Van Veghten House in Finderne, and the Van Horne House in Bridgewater.

At the Vanderveer House, Bob Heffner of the American Historical Theatre in Philadelphia will portray Gen. Knox (as shown at right). The artillery commander used that house as his headquarters in the winter of 1778-79. Knox also established America’s first military training school in nearby Pluckemin.

The tour begins at the Van Horne House, 941 East Main Street in Bridgewater. Docents will welcome visitors at each home. The bus will return to the Van Horne House between each visit for refreshments. The entire tour will take a little less than three hours, with departures on on the hour from 11:00 A.M. to 2:00 P.M. Each tour is limited to twenty people. The cost is $25 for adults, $15 for students, free for children under age six. Register through the Heritage Trail Association.

“Then let Adams be sung by each patriot tongue”

Today is John Adams’s birthday (under the Gregorian Calendar, as he observed most of his life).

In his honor, here are the lyrics that Jonathan Mitchell Sewall (1748-1808) wrote in President Adams’s honor in 1798. Sewall followed the tune of “Hail, Columbia,” composed in 1789 and originally titled “The President’s March.” (It’s now the entrance music for the Vice President.)

SONG FOR JOHN ADAMS’ BIRTHDAY.

AMERICA, shout! thy own Adams still lives!
The terror of traitors and pride of our nation!
’Mid clouds of detraction, still glorious survives,
Sedition’s dread scourage, and his country’s salvation
Let his fame then resound
The wide universe round,
’Till Heaven’s starry arch the loud chorus rebound!
Such honors, pure worth must from gratitude claim,
Till the Sun is extinct and the Globe all on flame!

As bright Sol, whom the planets exulting obey,
Darts thro’ clouds those glad beams that enliven creation,
So Adams, midst tempests and storms, with mild sway,
Of our system the centre and soul, holds his station.
Tho’ dire comets may rise,
Let them meet but his eyes.
And in tangents they whirl, and retreat thro’ the skies.
Our Sun, Regent, Centre! then ever extol,
Till yon Orb cease to shine and those Planets to roll.

As gold try’d by fire leaves the dross all behind,
So, slander’d by Jacobin sons of sedition,
Adams bursts forth refulgent as Saints are refin’d
From the furnace of Satan, that Son of perdition!
Then let Adams be sung
By each patriot tongue,
And Columbia’s loud lyre be to exstacy strung!
These honors such worth must from gratitude claim
Till the Sun is extinct and the heavens on flame!

On Neptune’s vast Kingdom where oceans can flow,
Display’d is our Standard, our Eagle respected,
This change to great Adams and wisdom we owe—
Now our Commerce rides safe, by our Cannon protected.
Then three cheers to our Fleet!
May they never retreat
But with prize after prize their lov’d President greet!
And ne’er may Columbians grow cold in his praise
Till the Sun is extinct and the Universe blaze! 

But while our young Navy such rapture excites,
Our heroes by land claim our warm admiration.
With manhood and youth, ev’n the infant unites,
Sons of Heroes! boast, pride and defence of our Nation!
Such a spirit’s gone forth
Of true valor and worth,
’Twould be arduous to tame it, all pow’rs upon earth!
’Twas Adams inspir’d it—to him be the praise
Long as Cynthia shall shine or the Sun dart his rays!

But turn us to Europe—how fares it with France?
What! confounded, amaz’d, such astonishment ne’er rose!
From the North bursts Suwarrow! I see him advance,
That Victor of victors, that Hero of heroes!
Hardy Russian, Mon Dieu!
If this course you pursue
You will leave Mighty Washington nothing to do.
At that name the Muse kindles, and twining fresh bays
Blends with Adams’s glory, great Washington’s praise!

Not a nation on earth would we fear with such aid
(Heav’n save us alone from internal commotion!)
Not Britain, France, Europe—Columbia would dread
Their forces by land, their proud fleets on the ocean,
Our Heroes prepar’d
Would their progress retard,
Sage Adams to guide and great Washington guard.
Their Glory increasing as nature decays
In Eternity’s Temple refulgent shall blaze!

Sewall was raised by his uncle, Massachusetts Justice Stephen Sewall, and started his legal training under his cousin Jonathan Sewall, once a close friend of Adams but later a Loyalist opponent. The young man then moved to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, for further training with John Pickering. He was an ardent Federalist in the early republic, best known for his verse “War and Washington.”

Samuel Adams and Slavery: The Public Man

Back in November, biographer Ira Stoll published an opinion essay in the New York Daily News about Samuel Adams’s views on slavery, drawing a contrast between him and some of his Revolutionary colleagues on the issue. I think Ira might have overstated the case a little in proposing that “of all our founding fathers, he is the one perhaps most likely to have” dreamed of a black President.

Adams expressed a distaste for slavery and supported an end to the transatlantic slave trade (which was different from wanting to end slavery in the colonies or U.S. of A. themselves). But he was far from alone among American politicians in doing so. Even Continental Congress members whose entire lives depended on enslaved labor nevertheless tsk-tsked about the institution. Only a few ever took practical steps to limit it in their own states and estates.

Adams supported mild anti-slavery measures in Massachusetts. In May 1766, Boston’s town meeting—where he was an important organizer—instructed its representatives to the General Court to propose a law against buying and selling slaves in Massachusetts. This was, the town noted, a first step to ending slavery in the province altogether. The legislature (where Adams had just become Clerk of the lower house) instead enacted laws against importing slaves. That law wouldn’t have affected the slaves already in Massachusetts—except perhaps by making them more valuable. And the government in London vetoed the law anyway.

On 8 Jan 1774 Adams, still Clerk, wrote to John Pickering, representative from Salem:

As the General Assembly will undoubtedly meet on the 26th of this month, the Negroes whose petition lies on file, and is referred for consideration, are very solicitous for the Event of it, and having been informed that you intended to consider it at your leisure Hours in the Recess of the Court, they earnestly wish you would compleat a Plan for their Relief. And in the meantime, if it be not too much Trouble, they ask it as a favor that you would by a Letter enable me to communicate to them the general outlines of your Design.

Peter Bestes, Felix Holbrook, and two other black men had submitted a petition the previous fall, seeking their freedom. Adams and Pickering were on the committee that had recommended that it be held over. Eventually the House passed another bill—not to answer those men’s plea but again to prohibit the import of slaves. And to no one’s surprise, it too was vetoed.

Adams served for years in the Continental Congress, but never pushed on the slavery issue when it would harm the alliance of the states. During the debate over the U.S. Constitution, Abolitionists objected to the clause preserving the slave trade until at least 1808. Adams, once he came over to the Federalist side, argued that it was good that the document talked about ending the slave trade at all.

Overall, it seems clear that Adams opposed keeping African people and their descendants in bondage for life, but he never pushed that cause at the expense of others he thought were more important. When he wrote newspaper essays against “slavery,” he almost always meant the metaphorical slavery of white propertied men losing their political rights.

Might Samuel Adams have dreamed of a black President? I doubt the idea occurred to him, or to most other politicians of his time.

Colonial Boston Vocabulary: "caucus," part 2

I’ve been writing about Boston’s caucus system for discussing who should serve in town offices, which brought up (as Ron commented) the origin of the word “caucus.” Over nearly two centuries researchers have put forward three theories, none of them entirely satisfactory and none of them coming with a supporting paper trail. Those hypothetical roots are:

“Caulkers.” In his 1816 book A Vocabulary; or, Collection of Words and Phrases Which Have Been Supposed to Be Peculiar to the U.S. of America, attorney John Pickering (1777-1846) hazarded this guess, quoting the account of the Rev. William Gordon:

these meetings were first held in a part of Boston where “all the ship-business was carried on;” and I had therefore thought it not improbable that Caucus might be a corruption of Caulkers, the word meetings being understood. I was afterwards informed by a friend in Salem, that the late Judge Oliver often mentioned this as the origin of the word; and upon further inquiry I find other gentlemen have heard the same in Boston, where the word was first used. I think I have sometimes heard the expression, a caucus meeting. [i. e. caulkers’ meeting.] It need hardly be remarked, that this cant word and its derivatives are never used in good writing.

The caulkers of Boston were somewhat organized; the New-England Weekly Journal for 24 Feb 1741 contains an advertisement saying they had agreed to stop taking shopkeepers’ “Notes” or I.O.U.’s as pay.

However, there are big problems with this theory:

• First, Pickering distorted Gordon’s words, which were: “Mr. Samuel Adams’ father and twenty others, one or two from the north end of the town where all the ship business is carried on, used to meet, make a caucus and lay their plan...” Thus, caucus meetings weren’t held in the “ship-business” end of town; rather, a couple of men from that North End came down to the meetings.
• The men who met, as John Adams listed them in 1763, weren’t shipyard workers but office-holders and businessmen. It would have been odd for them to take on the guise of “caulkers”; not until the Jacksonian period did American political leaders try to identify themselves with the common man. And if the “caulkers” term was applied by enemies of the group to discredit it, as later authors suggested, why didn’t the 1763 critic make that connection instead of writing “Corkass”?
  
• Caulkers weren’t noted for being active in town politics any more than any other profession. Their 1741 agreement was an economic one, not political.

Noah Webster adopted this theory, stating that caulkers’/caucus meetings started as protests against British troops around 1770—but that was up to half a century after the caucus meetings began. Many authors followed Pickering’s and Webster’s lead, at least mentioning this theory, even as others piled up.

“Kaukos.” Scholar say this Greek term for a wine vessel became caucus in medieval Latin. Was such a vessel central to “Caucas Club” meetings? John Adams wrote of that group, “they drink Phlip I suppose,” and flip was an alcoholic drink. Antiquarian Alice Morse Earle described it this way:

It was made of home-brewed beer, sweetened with sugar, molasses, or dried pumpkin, and flavored with a liberal dash of rum, then stirred in a great mug or pitcher with a red-hot loggerhead or hottle or flip-dog, which made the liquor foam and gave it a burnt bitter flavor.

A punch-bowl would have been more reminiscent of a Greek kaukos than a flip mug or pitcher.

Furthermore, if the “Caucas Club” first gathered to drink and only later came to talk politics, then the term “caucus” should come up in non-political contexts, and it doesn’t. Some etymologists also argue that classically-educated British-Americans were unlikely to know a medieval Latin term, or to use it when British gentlemen didn’t.

“Kaw-kaw-was.” In the 1870s, James Hammond Trumbull suggested to the American Philological Association that the most likely source of “caucus” was this Algonquin term for “counselor” or a word from a similar root.

An informal abstract of Trumbull’s paper in The Academy said, “As the settlers were fond of adopting native names for their political gatherings, the suggestion seems highly plausible.” Gentlemen in the Middle Colonies did adopt the Tammany name for political clubs in the late 1700s, and an odd celebration of that Delaware leader occurred at Valley Forge in 1778. However, I don’t recall the same sort of behavior in Massachusetts. Bostonians blamed “Mohawks” for the Boston Tea Party precisely to distance that action from their political leaders.

Curiously, John Pickering was a scholar of Native American languages, publishing a treatise titled On the Adoption of a Uniform Orthography for the Indian Languages of North America, but didn’t see this connection.

Lexicographers today seem to lean toward the third of these theories, but they also say that no one can be sure where “caucus” comes from.