“When the stakes are as significant as life and liberty”

Earlier this week the president of Yale, Marie McInnis, offered inspiration to the graduating class from a work by much earlier graduate.

Here’s an article from the university:

A Yale-trained art historian, McInnis turned to an artwork from the Yale University Art Gallery collection for answers, focusing on John Trumbull’s celebrated painting “The Battle of Bunker’s Hill.” The canvas marks that moment, 250 years ago in June, when a band of American rebels stood their ground on a hillside in Charlestown, then just north of Boston, against the might of the British military.

In Trumbull’s painting, the scene unfolds beneath acrid plumes of smoke as British forces breach the revolutionaries’ lines. Joseph Warren, an American major general, lies mortally wounded in the arms of a comrade. A redcoat tries to bayonet the fallen general — but British Major John Small has stepped in to stop him.

“In that moment, one man preserves the dignity of a dying foe with an unexpected gesture of compassion amid chaos,” McInnis said. “One man, taming the passions of war, chooses mercy. Chooses to see the man who was his friend, instead of the general of an opposing force.”

In highlighting Small’s intervention, McInnis said, Trumbull invites viewers to recognize a frequently overlooked kind of courage: The ability to show compassion to a bitter adversary.

“Compassion, as I suspect Major Small understood, is not the absence of conviction. It is not weakness,” she said. “And it is certainly not retreat. It is, in fact, an act of radical strength in its rarest form. It is the idea that even in our most consequential disagreements — that even when the stakes are as significant as life and liberty — we must find ways to recognize our common humanity.”

And displaying compassion does not mean avoiding conflict or denying differences, McInnis said.

“In a vibrant, pluralistic society, disagreement is inevitable, indeed welcomed,” she said in her speech, titled “Overcoming divides and embracing our shared humanity.”

“But what I would like to impress on you today is that compassion can coexist with our most deeply held beliefs.”

Here’s the full text of President McInnis’s speech.

Historically, I have to point out that Trumbull constructed his scene to convey just such a message. According to Alexander Garden, Maj. Small himself said that the artist “paid me the compliment of trying to save the life of Warren; but the fact is, that life had fled before I saw his remains.”

Also, Trumbull produced multiple copies of this scene with subtle differences. The image shown above from Yale is one of his preliminary studies. The university also owns a finished, full-color version, as do the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the Wadsworth Athenaeum. (Notably, the colors aren’t the same on those two canvases, particularly in the flags Trumbull inserted into the scene.)

The Hartford Wits and the Voice of Anarch

The “Poetry and the Constitution” event I described yesterday made me think there must have been poetry about the Constitution, part of the debate around that document. So I went looking.

In October 1786, some fraction of the “Hartford Wits”—David Humphreys (shown here twenty years later), Joel Barlow, John Trumbull, and Dr. Lemuel Hopkins—published a poem in The New Haven Gazette and Connecticut Magazine.

Those verses were represented to the public as fragments of an ancient text found in a fort somewhere off to the west, like Ohio.

Over the next several months the Wits produced more verses for the newspaper, most supposedly pieces of a mock epic called The Anarchiad. This text told the story of a war between the spirit Anarch [boo! hiss!] and Hesper, “the guardian of the clime.”

By presenting these poems as “fragments,” the authors could eschew narrative or logical coherence and present their views on current troubles, such as:

• The Articles of Confederation just weren’t working out, and Connecticut hadn’t even participated in the Annapolis Convention to fix them.
• In western Massachusetts middling farmers were resisting taxes and shutting down courts while Rhode Island was issuing lots of paper money.
• A couple of local officials were being a real bother. (The Wits were already feuding with those men in the newspapers.)
• Young people today.

Here’s a short taste from Book IV, in the voice of Anarch:

Behold the reign of anarchy, begun,
And half the business of confusion done.
From hell’s dark caverns discord sounds alarms,
Blows her loud trump, and calls my SHAYS to arms,
O’er half the land the desperate riot runs,
And maddening mobs assume their rusty guns.
From councils feeble, bolder faction grows,
The daring corsairs, and the savage foes;
O’er Western wilds, the tawny bands allied,
Insult the States of weakness and of pride;
Once friendly realms, unpaid each generous loan,
Wait to divide and share them for their own.

Now sinks the public mind; a death-like sleep
O’er all the torpid limbs begins to creep;
By dull degrees decays the vital heat,
The blood forgets to flow, the pulse to beat;
The powers of life, in mimic death withdrawn,
Closed the fixed eyes with one expiring yawn;
Exposed in state, to wait the funeral hour,
Lie the pale relics of departed power;
While conscience, harrowing up their souls, with dread,
Their ghost of empire stalks without a head.

That installment was first published on 11 Jan 1787. A couple of weeks later, Daniel Shays’s Regulator force tried to seize the federal armory in Springfield. Militia general William Shepard and his men fought them off, killing four. “Behold the reign of anarchy,” indeed.

TOMORROW: More constitutional commentary.

“The notion of Vampyres” in Early America

The 1784 Connecticut Courant report about Isaac Johnson having the bodies of his children dug up, hoping to save other members of his family from consumption, didn’t use the word “vampire.”

Two years before, the Connecticut poet John Trumbull had used that word in the fourth canto of M’Fingal while discussing British prison commissary Joshua Loring:

Aloft the mighty Loring stood,
And thriv’d like Vampyre on their blood.

But Trumbull also included a footnoted explanation for his readers:

The notion of Vampyres is a superstition, that has greatly prevailed in many parts of Europe. They pretend it is a dead body, which rises out of its grave in the night, and sucks the blood of the living.

Clearly the concept of vampires wasn’t yet common knowledge for Americans, even those who read satirical poetry.

The word “vampire” appeared more often in American newspapers during the following decades. One source was European literature. In 1786, for example, the French author Louis-Sébastien Mercier published a collection titled Mon Bonnet de nuit, soon translated into English as The Nightcap.

On 24 Nov 1787 the Pennsylvania Evening-Post published one piece by Mercier called “Opulence: A Vision.” Its narrator described obtaining the philosopher’s stone, which leads to wealth and a pretty young wife. Then, when everything seems to be going well—

a crowd of Vampires entered the room, and began to unfurnish my apartment. In vain did I make signs to them to desist; they carried every thing away, making many low bows. . . .

Then I turned to my dearly beloved, and, in the effusion of my soul, said to her, “The Vampires have stripped me of all I had; but still I have thee.” She wept—I thought it proceeded from tenderness; but my wife so mild, so open, sprang from my arms, ran over the apartment with the looks and gesture of a fury, and, seeing it was stript, seized on a purse the Vampires had forgot in one of my waistcoat pockets, came to me, and, applying a vigorous stroke to my cheek, disappeared.

Stunned with this scene, I got up in bed, in order to run after my wife, for I loved her. I had grown fat from living well; but a little Vampire, thinner still than the others, sprang upon me, and began to suck me alive. He swelled on my body as I grew lank; he dried me up from head to foot, gorging himself with my blood, and I became so light, that the wind carried me off my magnificent bed with rich curtains through the window.

(Spoiler: It was all a dream.)

American newspapers also printed extracts from Dr. Erasmus Darwin’s Botanic Garden (composed 1789-1793), which made a poetic hero of Benjamin Franklin and included such lines as this:

So, born on sounding pinions to the West,
When Tyrant-Power had built his eagle nest;
While from his eyry shriek’d the famish’d brood,
Clenched their sharp claws, and champ’d their beaks for blood,
Immortal FRANKLIN watch’d the callow crew,
And stabb’d the struggling Vampires, ere they flew.

Darwin used vampires, sucking blood from innocents, as a political metaphor. American authors couldn’t resist doing the same:

• Joel Barlow: “Courts and Kings, / These are the vampires nurs’d on nature’s spoils” (Gazette of the United States, 14 July 1792)
• “The Versifier”: “You’ll foil that Treasury Vampire who from spite, / Sucks from our coin its blood night after night” (Connecticut Courant, 4 Feb 1793)

The word appeared in prose as well, such as this line from the 7 Mar 1800 Salem Gazette: “AMERICANS—Will you permit a few Democratic Vampires, which infect the United States, to lull you into a state of slumbering security, that they may suck the dearest blood of your country?”

In fact, one of the earliest uses of ”vampires” as a political metaphor in English had a link to the American Revolution. It appeared during debate over how Parliament should respond to the Boston Tea Party in April 1774, as reported in London newspapers and eventually the 9 June 1774 Massachusetts Spy:

Mr. [Edmund] Burke rose to explain, that he did not mean to cast the least slur upon the character of Mr. [George] Grenville; and concluded with saying, he would not raise the bodies of the dead, to make them vampires to suck out the virtues of the living.

That line isn’t as well remembered as the two-hour speech Burke had given earlier that day, usually titled “On American Taxation.” But it shows how the idea of vampires had penetrated British culture on its way to America.

Of course, poets and propagandists could write about vampires without believing that they actually existed. And New England farmers didn’t need to know the word “vampire” to hold out hope that digging up bodies and burning those that seemed too well preserved might cure the dying. But as the word became more common in the 1800s, the belief might have spread along with it.

“Where BOSTONIA lifts her spires”

It’s a Boston 1775 tradition to share a “carrier verse” at the turn of the year. Traditionally those were poems written and printed by newspaper apprentices as a way to cadge tips from their customers.

Often those apprentices commented on political concerns, but usually in a general, patriotic way, looking ahead to a better year. They didn’t want to put anybody in an ungenerous mood, after all.

In the early republic the high Federalist “Connecticut Wits” seized on the “carrier verse” form as a vehicle for their political satire. Without the same economic pressures as the apprentices, they dug deeper into domestic public affairs, lambasted their political rivals, and went on and on. And on.

Dr. Lemuel Hopkins (1750-1801, shown here as painted by John Trumbull, courtesy of the Yale University Art Gallery) wrote such a poem for the Connecticut Courant’s 1 Jan 1795 issue. Here’s just a snatch of it, the part dealing with Massachusetts politics:

Yet where BOSTONIA lifts her spires.
Like Phenix from devouring fires,
See federal Virtue take her stand,
And ward Destruction from the land.
Hail Nurse of Heroes! Statesmen sage!
The guard and glory of the age!

At the end of June 1794, a fire broke out in the ropewalk district of Boston’s South End. It consumed those proto-industrial buildings and many nearby houses before people could put it out. Hopkins praised Boston for rising above such disasters through the strength of its Federalist politics.

Above the mists of mouldering time,
Thy Fame, O ADAMS! soars sublime,
Who first the British lion spurn’d,
And gave the terms when peace return’d;
Cull’d from the lapse of ages past,
And fram’d a Work with time to last;
Display’d in truth’s celestial light,
How Freedom, Law, and Power unite.

Even though President George Washington hadn’t yet announced that he would not seek reelection, New England Federalists were coalescing behind John Adams as his obvious successor. These lines laud Adams’s early support for independence and his role in negotiating the 1783 Treaty of Paris. They couldn’t praise his accomplishments as Vice President since, of course, there weren’t any.

May choicest Sowers with tears bedew’d,
O’er thy brave WARREN’s grave be strew’d;
And long heroic LINCOLN stand,
The laurel’d bulwark of the land.

Here Hopkins referred to Dr. Joseph Warren and Gen. Benjamin Lincoln. Warren was a beloved martyr who for obvious reasons left no thoughts about the politics of the 1790s and therefore could be seized on by either party.

Lincoln had led the repression of the Shays Rebellion in between serving briefly as U.S. Secretary of War under the Congress and as lieutenant governor under John Hancock. Lincoln wasn’t really involved in politics anymore by this time, but he was a Federalist.

That praise out of the way, Hopkins turned to what the Connecticut Wits did best—saying nasty things about what they disliked.

TOMORROW: New Year’s wishes for one’s enemies.

The Myths of Lt. Col. James Abercrombie’s Death

Lt. Col. James Abercrombie (1732-1775) led the battalion of British grenadiers, detached from their regiments, at the Battle of Bunker Hill. He was mortally wounded, becoming the most senior British officer to die in the fight.

Not only did Abercrombie outrank all the other British dead, but he was known to be close to Gen. Thomas Gage and he was a Scotsman. Some combination of those factors meant that his death almost immediately began to accrete myths like barnacles on an underwater wreck.

Don Hagist wrote about Abercrombie at the Journal of the American Revolution, quoting from a letter the lieutenant colonel dictated to solidify the real story:

The grenadiers and light infantry were the first to land on Charleston Neck at a point out of American musketry range. Here they formed, the grenadiers into a line facing the rail-fence breastwork that extended from the redoubt down to the shore, the light infantry into a column for their advance along the beach to the right. Two regiments formed on the left facing the redoubt. While the grenadiers advanced with deliberate slowness as a distraction, the light infantry trotted along the beach. It was expected that the narrow beach would provide an avenue around the end of the breastwork. Unknown to the attackers, the Americans had constructed a barrier across the beach and manned it. . . .

It is not clearly exactly when the grenadiers became aware of the failure of the flanking movement, but they fatefully continued their advance towards the breastworks. Progress was perilously slow…because of a series of fences, brick kilns, enclosures and other obstructions. . . . The battered light infantry battalion, having withdrawn from the barricade on the beach, reformed into a line near their initial staging area. The shape of the coastline put them behind the advancing grenadier battalion. From this disadvantageous position they opened fire. The distance was too great to have any material effect on the enemy, but the impact on the grenadier battalion was disastrous.

This friendly fire incident is occasionally mentioned by historians, but the importance of it is largely overlooked. . . . In a letter dated three days after the battle, Abercrombie indicated that “our Light Infantry killed many of the Grends.” After ordering them to desist, the friendly fire abated for eight or ten minutes, but then the light infantry “gave me a plumper & killed two officers & 3 private.” He used the vernacular “plumper” to refer to a volley of lead. . . . Of particular importance was that the grenadiers’ commander, Abercrombie himself, was among the wounded.

In my own J.A.R. article about who really killed Maj. John Pitcairn, I quoted an 1880 Massachusetts local history which said Salem Poor shot Abercrombie “As that officer sprang on the redoubt.” That was how American sources described his death. But the lieutenant colonel had been taken out of action much earlier, before the final British push against the main provincial position. In addition, from 1775 the British press reported that Abercrombie was a victim of what we now call friendly fire—shot “supposed accidentally from some of his own soldiers.”

As with Pitcairn, Americans wanted to believe that their soldiers killed such an important officer at the climax of the battle. Therefore, Abercrombie was listed among the officers shot storming the redoubt on Breed’s Hill. And after both Peter Salem and Salem Poor got credit for killing Pitcairn, one American author decided that Salem Poor must have killed Abercrombie instead.

John Trumbull’s painting of the death of Dr. Joseph Warren reflects the American belief that Abercrombie should have died at the end of the battle and near the center of the action. The detail above portrays the lieutenant colonel lying dead at the redoubt as Maj. John Small steps over (on?) him. In the key that identified figures in the painting, Trumbull acknowledged that he didn’t know what Abercrombie actually looked like.

Another legend of Abercrombie’s death appeared in the 14 Oct 1775 Pennsylvania Ledger, quoting the Public Ledger of London:

A letter from an officer who was wounded at the late engagement at Boston, says, that when the troops were very near the trenches, the rebels called out to Col. Abercrombie, who was among the first of the troops, “Abercrombie, we won’t miss you.” However, the Colonel got into the trenches unhurt, and was run through the body. When he was dying, he told the officers about him, that if they took Gen. [Israel] Putnam prisoner, not to hang him as he was a brave fellow.

That story was reprinted in many American newspapers and, through Samuel Swett’s early history of the battle, many history books. It’s attached to inaccurate information—Abercrombie wasn’t “run through” but shot—and seems unlikely.

Lt. Col. Abercrombie didn’t die until 22 June. At first doctors didn’t think his wound would be fatal, but then infection set in. Back in 2014, I quoted a description of his death from the British press. The August 1775 Scots Magazine said the musket ball had pushed “a toothpick-case, which he had in his waistcoat pocket, along with it. . . . part of the toothpick being got so far, it baffled the art of the surgeons, and began to mortify.” Don’s article quotes the 17 Aug 1775 Edinburgh Advertiser saying something very similar except that the fatal foreign body was “part of the pen case…which he had in his side pocket.” I have no idea why those reports differed.

The Pennsylvania Ledger also quoted a speech that Abercrombie supposedly delivered two hours before his death:

My friends, we have fought in a bad cause, and therefore I have my reward, as the rest have had that have gone before me; had I fell in fighting against the enemy, I had died with honour, but posterity will brand us for massacreing our fellow subjects; therefore, my friends, sheath your swords till you have an enemy to engage with.

I’ve found this printed in the 27 July 1775 Middlesex Journal and Evening Advertiser, so it definitely circulated in Britain. It’s almost certainly propaganda from someone supporting the Americans, using Abercrombie’s good name to discourage men from joining the British military.

2018 Seminar at Fort Ticonderoga, 21-23 Sept.

The 2018 Fort Ticonderoga Seminar on the American Revolution is coming up on 21-23 September 2018. This is the fifteenth annual seminar in that august and scenic location.

Sessions on the schedule are:

• “‘Why does the Almighty strike down the tree with lightning?’: The Sullivan Campaign of 1779, William Tecumseh Sherman, and the Creation of Memory,” Dean Bruno, North Carolina State University.
• “The White Sands of Freedom: The Patriot-Spanish Alliance to Capture British West Florida,” Brady J. Crytzer, Robert Morris University.
• “‘Live in love with, and in the exercise of kindness to my fellow-soldiers’: The Continental Army as America’s First Band of Brothers,” Rachel Engl, Lehigh University.
• “The Court-Martial of Paul Revere,” Michael Greenburg.
• “A Coat Not My Own: Uniform Substitution in the Revolutionary Era,” Matthew Keagle, Fort Ticonderoga.
• “General Charles Lee in New York: Confronting Tories as well as the Boundaries of Military Authority,” Timothy Leech, Ohio State University.
• “Cook’s and Latimer’s Connecticut Militia Battalions and the Battles of Saratoga,” Eric Schnitzer, Saratoga National Historical Park.
• “John Trumbull’s Revolution in the North Country,” Paul Staiti, Mount Holyoke College.
• “‘This Horrid Trade of Blood’: The Revolutionary Transformation of Anthony Wayne,” Mary Stockwell.
• “‘Convinced of the Necessity of preventing…Anarchy and Confusion’: Benedict Arnold’s Declaration of Principles and Its Place in Early Revolutionary History,” Richard M. Strum, Fort Ticonderoga.

Last year’s seminar attracted about 120 people.

Fort Ti has also issued its call for papers for next year’s seminar, to be held 20-22 September 2019, saying:

The 250th anniversary of the American War of Independence looms on the horizon, but the anniversary of the political, social, and military events of the broader American Revolution are already upon us. Reflecting on the antecedents to the War itself may help scholars and historians to frame new approaches and contextualize the period better in the coming years.

The Fort Ticonderoga Museum seeks proposals for new research on this critical period of the 18th century from a variety of perspectives and participants. Established scholars, graduate students, and others are encouraged to submit abstracts of papers broadly addressing the origins, conduct, or repercussions of the War for American Independence. We are especially interested in topics and approaches that engage the international nature of the conflict, representing the variety of peoples and places involved.

We welcome interdisciplinary backgrounds and approaches covering the period from the 1760s to the 1780s. Papers may include or engage:

• Material Culture
• Biographical Analysis
• Social and Cultural Histories
• Global Theatres of War
• Archaeological Studies
• Indigenous Perspectives

Sessions are 30 minutes in length followed by 10 minutes for audience questions. Fort Ticonderoga may provide speakers with partial travel reimbursement.

To be considered as a presenter in 2019, sent a 300-word abstract and c.v. by 1 September 2018 to Richard M. Strum, Director of Academic Programs.

A Checklist of Carrier Verses

It’s a Boston 1775 tradition at the turn of each year to share at least one carrier verse or address.

Back in eighteenth-century America, apprentice printers would make those flyers and distribute them to customers around New Year’s Day as a way of asking for tips. The flyers offered a poetic review of the past year’s news, wishes for the customers’ prosperity, and reminders of the tough life of a newspaper carrier.

In 2000, Gerald D. McDonald (who that year turned ninety-five), Stuart C. Sherman, and Mary T. Russo published A Checklist of American Newspaper Carriers’ Addresses, 1720-1820. I treated myself to a copy this holiday season.

This book lists 1,001 carrier verses known from broadsides or republication in newspapers or books. The earliest appeared in New York in 1720, copying an English tradition. The custom continued after 1820, at least as late as the U.S. Civil War. The German-language newspapers of Pennsylvania provided their own examples. The book also lists 61 examples from Canada in both English and French.

As a bibliographic checklist, this book gives the basic details of each carrier address, including first lines if the text survives, but no more. Illustrations show several examples in full. That doesn’t replace the Readex Early American Imprints database that I used to be able to mine for interesting addresses, but it’s given me enough leads to fill a few more years.

A fraction of the addresses name the newspaper carriers who delivered them, and may have written them as well. Seven years ago I quoted the example from the Essex Gazette’s Job Weeden and traced his subsequent career. Five years ago I explored the life of Polly Beach of the American Telegraphe. Alas, I couldn’t find out anything more about Tobias Bond and Benjamin Welch, who delivered the Maryland Journal in 1780.

In a few cases, this checklist told me, famous authors wrote the verses for the carriers. Not just printers who became well known like Benjamin Franklin (he gets credit for the early Pennsylvania Gazette verses, but of course we give him credit for everything). Rather, gentleman poets like John Trumbull and Joel Barlow tried out the form. So I’m going to share one of those examples.

TOMORROW: A New Year’s greeting from the “Poet of the Revolution.”

Remembering Moses Parker

As described yesterday, Lt. Col. Moses Parker of Chelmsford died as a prisoner of war on 4 July 1775 from a leg wound he suffered in the Battle of Bunker Hill.

On 21 July the New-England Chronicle published an unusually long death notice, showing how much esteem people had for Parker. It said:

…through the several Commissions to which his Merit entitled him, he had always the Pleasure to find that he possessed the Esteem and Respect of his Soldiers, and the Applause of his Countrymen. In him Fortitude, Prudence, Humanity and Compassion, all conspired to heighten the Lustre of his military Virtues—

He also, at this important Day, when the Parent is stretching the Iron Hand of Power over her Children, and threatening them and their Posterity with Slavery; being possessed of the most sacred Veneration for the inestimable civil and religious Privileges of his native Country, again “unappalled by Danger,” with equal Firmness and Intrepidity, steps forth to meet her restless Enemies, and thus offers himself a Victim to the Shrine of Freedom.

God grant each Individual that now is, or may be, engaged in the American Army, an equal Magnitude of Soul; so shall their Names, unsullied, be transmitted in the latest Catalogue of Fame; and if any Vestiges of Liberty shall remain, their Praises shall be rehearsed through the Earth “till the Sickle of Time shall crop the Creation.”

But that’s not all. The Gilder Lehrman Institute owns a handwritten poem (or perhaps words to a hymn) by Samuel Richardson of Chelmsford lamenting Parker’s loss:

Col. Moses Parker of Chelmsford, In Newengland Who Died in Bostone on June 1775 of the Wound he Receivd. in the Bloody battle on Bunkers-Hill in Charlestown while he was Gloriously Fighting in the cause of Liberty and his Country,

Come all who have skill and Lament
and let your hearts and eys have vent
While you to memory do call
The Valiant Colonel Parkers fall

He bravely did with courage go
To Charlstown fight to meet his foe
And in his place was Valient found
And with great boldness kept his ground

But fighting for his Countrys goods
What Dangers roled like a flood
A Wound Rea[d]er in his thigh
Of which in Boston he Did die

While he was in Captivity
Before he of his Wound did die
We he[ar] was Com-mended high
By his Relations enmy

He was a Valant offiser
In the last Canadian war
And in this present war Did go
To face his Countrys bloody foe

Brave Parker their must bled and Die
To Save his friends from Slavery
Its with great grief we view they fall
When thee to memory we call

His Townsmen Do Lamet his fate
His nearer friends and Living Mate
With Sorow do condole his loss
And need Support to bear their cross

God grant this Loss may be their gain
May they not murmer nor complain
But with Submission kiss rod
And know that it is the hand of God

As they find creature screams Dry
O may their minds arise more high
To God in whome is perfat peace
And Solid joy that cannot cease

God is th joy of those mourn
That do to him through Christ return
And rest by faith upon his grace
Shall find relief in all Distress

His officers and Soldiers all
Who mourn their Valiant Leaders fall
May God inquire with courage Still
And giv Submission to his will

May Gods protection them Surround
And all their bloody foes confound
May they possess the gates of those
That Do our city now inclose

God Sanctify this Loss at all
Who Saw this noble Hero fall
And while his courage they relate
May they his virtue emitate

May oficers that yet Servive
Who by their God are kept alive
By courage and good conduct Shew
Their hearts to Liberty are true

May they be kept from Sinful way
Least they Should fall with foul Disgrace
And Sink beneath the tyrants rod
And feel the Vengeance of God

May they their Soldiers govern well
And in their places all excel
That Honour on their heads m[a]y ly
Both while, they Liv and when they Die

But British troops Digrace must Share
How can their Valour honour bear
Since they their flesh and blood Do fight
To rob them of their proper right

The greater Victories they gain
The more the Doth their honour Stain
Since God oppressors will pull Down
That the oppressor may wear the crown

Tho for a time they may rise high
And Kings and Nations terrify
Yet time will bring their Shamefull fall
Their crimes Shall be exposd to all

They may think they Shall have peace
And by this war their welth increase
Yet wealth thats got unlawfully
Like chaff Shall from the owner fly

Welth that men Do obtain by blood
Tho it increaseth like a flood
It will against the owner cry
And end in endless misery

The Stone Shall cry out of the wall
And timber from their Buildings call
For wrath from God Which Shall Distress
All Such as do the poore oppress

In 1786, there must have been some legal need to document Parker’s death. The Boston Public Library holds two documents from that effort:

• A surgeon’s certificate signed by Dr. Ezekiel Brown attesting to Parker’s death on 4 July 1775, signed 7 Feb 1786.
• Copy of Col. Ebenezer Bridge’s certification that Parker was captured at the battle, signed 8 Feb.

Finally, John Trumbull included Parker in his painting of “The Death of Warren.” Parker is the figure seated in the dark area on the far left, clutching his knee.

After Trumbull—Not After Copley After All

Back in January, I saw this painting on Twitter, identified as a portrait of Gen. George Washington by John Singleton Copley.

I replied that Copley never painted Washington.

The person who posted the image reported that the Art U.K. site actually identified the portrait as after Copley, meaning another artist had copied Copley’s original.

I replied that there’s no Copley painting of Washington to copy from.

But that’s indeed what the official information about the painting says. It’s hanging in Washington Old Hall, a manor in Britain now owned by the National Trust. The Washington family had roots there. And obtaining this painting seems to have been a tribute to the first President of the U.S. of A.

Presumably, the painting was acquired at a time when every second painting from Revolutionary-era America was hopefully identified as a Copley. But now we know better.

That canvas is clearly based on John Trumbull’s painting of Washington before the Battle of Trenton. Here’s a version of that image from the Metropolitan Museum of New York. (Trumbull may have painted other copies as well.)

Art U.K. has an online forum called Art Detective, which invites the public to crowdsource questions about artwork in the national collections. I posted a comment to that site with a link to the Met’s Trumbull, and a moderator invited Washington Old Hall to join in the exchange.

And that’s where the story stands, five weeks later. The discussion doesn’t appear in the public forum. The attribution still points to Copley “(after).” The Art Detective approach is intriguing, but in this case its potential hasn’t panned out.

John Adams Views Trumbull’s Painting of the Congress

In 1818 the Revolutionary War veteran and painter John Trumbull came to Boston to exhibit his depiction of the Continental Congress considering the Declaration of Independence.

Josiah Quincy, son of the Patriot lawyer of the same name, was then between his terms in the U.S. House and his terms as the mayor of Boston. That gave him time on 4 December to accompany Trumbull out to Quincy to dine with John Adams, the figure at the center of that painting.

Quincy’s diary entries, published in his son Edmund’s The Life of Josiah Quincy, described some conversation on that trip:

Trumbull, a gentleman of the old school, greatly delighted at the patronage given by the national Legislature to the series of his paintings commemorating four great national events.

The conversation turned on the character of Dr. [Benjamin] Franklin. Adams said, that the suggestion made against Dr. Franklin, as not being hearty in his support of the Declaration of Independence, was a calumny. To his knowledge, he supported that measure at its earliest period, with energy and perfect devotion.

Adams said, that he was present at the sittings of the Royal Academy of France, when Voltaire and Franklin both attended. As each appeared, the hall rang with acclamations. They approached each other. The cry was, “Let them embrace, let them embrace!” They accordingly began to hug and kiss. The room rang with, “Behold, Sophocles and Solon are embracing each other!”

That meeting occurred on 29 Apr 1778, as recorded in Adams’s diary. Voltaire died one month later.

The next day, Adams made the reverse trip to Boston. Quincy wrote:

President Adams came to town to view the “Declaration of Independence,” by Colonel Trumbull, now exhibiting at Faneuil Hall. President Adams, Trumbull, Prof. Farrar, Wm. S. Shaw, dined with me. Colonel Trumbull said, that every portrait in his picture was taken from a real sitting of the individual, or from some existing picture of him, except that of Benjamin Harrison, which was only from general description, received from his son, the recently distinguished General [William Henry] Harrison.

Adams said, that the portrait bore a general resemblance, but was not sufficiently corpulent. He well remembered, that, when engaged in signing the Declaration of Independence, a side conversation took place between Harrison, who was remarkably corpulent, and Elbridge Gerry, who was remarkably the reverse. “Ah, Gerry,” said Harrison, “I shall have an advantage over you in this act.” “How so?” said Gerry. “Why,” replied Harrison, “when we come to be hung for this treason, I am so heavy, I shall plump down upon the rope and be dead in an instant; but you are so light, that you will be dangling and kicking about for an hour in the air.”

Dr. Benjamin Rush had put this story into a letter to Adams in 1811, as quoted here.

Quincy’s son and biographer Edmund, ten years old in 1818, added:

I well remember being one of the party which accompanied Mr. Adams to see Trumbull’s picture. Faneuil Hall was full of spectators when we arrived, and what impressed the scene upon my boyish memory was the respectful manner in which all the men took off their hats when Mr. Adams entered leaning on my mother’s arm, and remained uncovered while he stayed. Room was made for him by common consent, so that he could see the picture to the best advantage. He seemed carried back to his prime of manhood, and to the most famous scene of his life, and he gave his warm approval to the picture as a correct representation of the Convention. “There is the door,” said he, “through which Washington escaped when I nominated him as Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army!”

(I think there’s reason to doubt Adams’s memory on that point, which I’ll write about some day.)

This picture must be always interesting as an authentic collection of portraits, and an accurate representation of the Hall of Independence; and it pretends to be nothing more. At one time a shade of ridicule attached to this painting, because of John Randolph’s splenetic description of it as “a great shin-piece!”—a most groundless sarcasm, as any one may see who will be at the trouble of counting first the heads and then the shins it portrays. That part of the subject is certainly as well managed as possible, if the venerable signers are to be allowed any legs at all.

Watching the Course of Human Events

I’m pleased to see that the Course of Human Events blog has started to post more frequently about the Declaration of Independence.

This blog is part of Declaration Resources Project, started by Harvard political science professor Danielle Allen, author of Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality and columnist for the Washington Post. The website explains itself this way:

The mission of the Declaration Resources Project is to create innovative and informative resources about the Declaration of Independence. By encouraging today’s Americans to take a deeper look at this document, and by taking advantage of digital literacy and new media, we hope to tackle the mysteries of the Declaration, replace folklore with equally-fascinating true stories, and demonstrate the ways in which engagement with fundamental primary sources can influence civic identity and education.

The blog contains “monthly highlights from our ongoing research” posted by research manager Emily Sneff.

At first the entries were coming once a month, but that accelerated this month. Some of the items:

• 4 April: Why Delaware delegate Thomas McKean’s name appears on some early printings of the Declaration but not others.
• 4 June: How the Federalist press credited President John Adams, not his rival Thomas Jefferson, as the principle mover for independence.
• 16 June: Adams and Jefferson’s correspondence on the “Mecklenburg Declaration” published in 1819 (unfortunately not accompanied by a clear statement that that document was composed around that year as an attempt to recall what Mecklenburg County Patriots actually enacted in 1775, which was preserved in newspapers at the time).
• 27 June: How a musical number cut from Hamilton relates to who was at the Continental Congress when the Declaration committee submitted its draft and who was simply there in John Trumbull’s painting.

“I do not like Madme. le Brun’s fan colouring”

Yesterday I mentioned the exhibit in New York about the French portraitist Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun. I wondered if any of the American diplomats in Paris had crossed paths with her, so I looked up her names in Founders Online.

In 1787 Thomas Jefferson went to an exhibit at the Académie Royale and reported on it to the American painter John Trumbull, then studying in London:

The Salon has been open for or five days. I inclose you a list of it’s treasures. The best thing is the Death of Socrates by David, and a superb one it is. A crucifixion by Roland in imitation of Relief is as perfect as it can be. Five pieces of antiquities by Robert are also among the foremost. Many portraits of Madme. Le Brun are exhibited and much approved.

Three years later, Jefferson was in New York starting work as Secretary of State. He wrote a letter to William Short, his former secretary who had succeeded him as the U.S. of A.’s top diplomat in Paris, about obtaining a portrait of Lafayette:

My pictures of American worthies will be absolutely incomplete till I get the M. de la fayette’s. Tell him this, and that he must permit you to have it drawn for me. I do not like Madme. le Brun’s fan colouring, and of all possible occasions it would be worst applied to a hero. This therefore is an additional reason to that of her extravagant price

Jefferson’s “fan painting” phrase appears to be an allusion to how Vigée le Brun’s father had painted fans as well as portraits and served as her first teacher. Jefferson evidently thought she retained too much of that style.

Vigée le Brun painted Lafayette’s mistress, the Countess de Simiane, but I don’t see mention of her painting the marquis himself. Eventually Jefferson received a portrait of Lafayette by Joseph Boze, which is now in the collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society. I’ve always found it…awfully pink.

“A humorous story told about town of one of the deserters”

On 20 Aug 1774, the young lawyer John Trumbull sent the following to his legal mentor John Adams, then on his way to the First Continental Congress:

There is a humorous story told about town of one of the deserters, though I cannot say it is absolutely to be depended upon as a fact: a soldier, whose name is Patrick, deserted sometime ago and settled in a country town at some distance, and there undertook to instruct a company of about fifty men in military exercises.

A sergeant and eight men were sent to apprehend deserters, got intelligence of him, and agreed with a countryman, for a couple of guineas, to conduct them to him. Patrick, it seems, was at that time exercising his company; however, being called by the sergeant and his men, he immediately came up to them. The sergeant demanded what he did there, told him he was his prisoner, and ordered him to return and join his regiment.

Sir, said Patrick, I beg your pardon, but I don’t think it possible for me to obey you at present. The sergeant repeated his orders in a very peremptory style. Patrick still assured him of the great improbability of his being able to comply with the command; but told him, as it was not absolutely certain, he would see what could be done about it.

You must know, said he, that we determine every thing here by a vote—and turning to his company, which had by this time come up,—gentlemen, says he, if it be your mind that I should leave the town and return to my regiment, please to manifest it. Not a single hand appeared in favor of the motion. He then desired that those who were contrary-minded should manifest it, which passed nem. con. [i.e., no dissenting votes]

The sergeant and his men, finding themselves in so small a minority, and seeing it in vain to oppose the general voice of the meeting, were about to return again in peace, when one or two of his men were desirous to have it put to vote whether they should not stay also. Patrick, as moderator, immediately put the question, which it was not difficult to carry in such an assembly, and the sergeant, knowing it vain to resist, returned with six men to his regiment.

It seems significant that not even Trumbull suggested this tale was factual. But it reflects how he and other New Englanders liked to see themselves in 1774: committed to traditional voting and group solidarity, capable of using force but preferring to use calm reason and numbers.

John Trumbull’s Entrance Exam

Yesterday I described the accomplishments of young John Trumbull, son of a Westbury, Connecticut, minister. His mother, daughter of another clergyman, taught him from an early age.

Then, as he wrote about himself, Trumbull started to eavesdrop on lessons by his father:

The country clergy at that time generally attempted to increase their income, by keeping private schools for the education of youth. When he was about five years of age, his father took under his care a lad, seventeen years old, to instruct and qualify him for admission as a member of Yale-College.

Trumbull noticed the tasks first imposed; which were to learn by heart the Latin Accidence and Lilly’s Grammar, and to construe the Select Colloquies of Corderius, by the help of a literal translation. Without the knowledge of any person, except his mother, he began in this way the study of the Latin language. After a few weeks, his father discovered his wishes, and finding that by the aid of a better memory, his son was able to outstrip his fellow-student, encouraged him to proceed.

The unfortunate teenager who got to see his tutor’s little son outstrip him was, notes by the Rev. Dr. Ezra Stiles show, William Southmayd (1740-1778).

In September 1757, the Rev. John Trumbull took his namesake son and his student Southmayd down to Yale to be “examined by the tutors” there. In 1897 Moses Coit Tyler wrote:

What were the requirements at that time exacted for admission to Yale College may be seen in the following statute printed in the year 1759: “Admissionem in hoc Collegium Nemo expectet, nisi qui é Praesidis et Tutorum Examine, Tullium, Virgilium et Testamentum Graecum extemporè legere, ad Unguem redere, ac grammaticè resolvere, et Prosâ veram Latinitatem scribere potuerit; et Prosodia ac Arithmetices vulgaris Regulas perdidicerit: atque Testimonium idoneum de Vitâ ac Moribus inculpatis exhibuerit.”

So that’s a pretty high hurdle.

Yet another teenager trying for admission that year was Nathaniel Emmons. He later claimed that he held little John on his lap during the tutors’ questioning.

The result was remarkable enough to be published in New Haven’s Connecticut Gazette on 24 Sept 1757, according to Henry Bronson’s History of Waterbury (1858). It reported the notable news that the boy “passed a good examination, although but little more than seven years of age.”

At the same time, the newspaper said, “on account of his youth his father does not intend he shall at present continue at college.” Or as the grown-up John Trumbull wrote:

Trumbull, however, on account of his extreme youth at that time, and subsequent ill health, was not sent to reside at college till the year 1763. He spent these six years in a miscellaneous course of study, making himself master of the Greek and Latin authors usually taught in that seminary, reading all the books he could meet with, and occasionally attempting to imitate, both in prose and verse, the style of the best English writers, whose works he could procure in his native village. These were of course few. The Paradise Lost, Thompson’s Seasons, with some of the poems of Dryden and Pope, were the principal.

On commencing his collegiate life, he found little regard paid to English composition, or the acquirement of a correct style. The Greek and Latin books, in the study of which only, his class were employed, required but a small portion of his time. By the advice of his tutor, he turned his thoughts to Algebra, Geometry, and astronomical calculations, which were then newly introduced and encouraged by the instructors. He chiefly pursued this course during the three first years. In his senior year he began to resume his former attention to English literature.

John Trumbull finally graduated from Yale in 1767, ten years after his admission. He stuck around some more years to earn a master’s degree, then a couple more as a tutor. After all, he didn’t want to go home to “his native village,” where he’d already read all the books.

(The photo above shows Connecticut Hall at Yale, built in the early 1750s.)

John Trumbull: “this weird urchin”

Last week I shared a portrait of John Trumbull (1750-1831), the author of M’Fingal and Connecticut jurist. He was a child prodigy, according to the biographical introduction to the 1820 collection of his work (which he apparently wrote himself):

Being an only son, and of a very delicate and sickly constitution, he was of course the favorite of his mother. She had received an education superior to most of her sex, and not only instructed him in reading, from his earliest infancy, but finding him possessed of an extraordinary memory, taught him all the hymns, songs and other verses, with which she was acquainted.

His father’s small library consisted mostly of classical and theological books. The Spectator and Watts’ Lyric Poems were the only works of merit in the belles-lettres, which he possessed. Young Trumbull not only committed to memory most of the poetry they contained, but was seized with an unaccountable ambition of composing verses himself, in which he was encouraged by his parents.

Trumbull appears to have offered more detail in 1788 to the Rev. Dr. Ezra Stiles (shown above), who took detailed notes on their conversation, eventually published in his Extracts from the Itineraries and Other Miscellanies:

Aet. [i.e., age] 2, began [New England] Primer & learned to read in half a year without School. Mother taught him all the Primer Verses & Watts’ Children’s Hymns before read.

Aet. 4. Read the Bible thro’—before 4. About this time began to make Verses. First Poetry, Watts’ Lyrics, & could repeat the whole—& only poetical Book he read till Aet. 6.

Aet. 5. Attempted to write & print his own Verses—Sample large hugeous Letters. This first attempt of writg. by himself—& before writg. after Copy. Scrawls.

Aet. 6. In Spring began to learn Latin & learnd half Lilly’s Grammar before his Father knew it—catchg. it as his Father was instructg. [William] Southmayd: same Spring as six y. old. Learned Quae genus by heart in a day. Tenacious Memory.

Aet. 9. On a Wager laid—to commit to memo. one of Salmon’s Pater Nosters in a quarter of an Hour—he effected it—recitg. by Memo. the Pater Noster in Hungarian and Malebar: & retains it to this day. I heard him repeat the Hunga.

In 1897 Moses Coit Tyler added this anecdote in The Literary History of the American Revolution, 1763-1783, citing Trumbull’s manuscripts:

Emulous, no doubt, of the laurels of the heavenly and much desired Watts, he began at about the age of four to make verses for himself, as much as possible in the true Wattsian manner; but not having as yet advanced so far in learning as to be able to write, he could only preserve these valuable productions by storing them away in his memory.

At five, being still unable to write, he hit upon the device of transcribing his verses by imitating printed letters. His first attempt of this kind consisted of four stanzas of an original hymn, and his “scrawl of it filled a complete sheet of paper.” Having perceived a want of connection between the third and the fourth lines of one of his stanzas, this weird urchin was greatly perplexed thereby; but “after lying awake some nights,” meditating upon the problem, he finally solved it by the proper verbal corrections.

So what do you do with a boy like that?

TOMORROW: Take him to Yale, of course.

A Painting of John Trumbull

It’s been noted that the phrase “a painting of Winston Churchill” can refer to a painting of the British Prime Minister, a painting by the British Prime Minister, or even a painting owned by that British Prime Minister.

This is a portrait of John Trumbull (1750-1831), the poet, lawyer, and jurist, by his cousin John Trumbull (1756-1843), the painter, and owned by each in turn. It’s now a painting of the Detroit Institute of Arts, which just helped its city work through bankruptcy.

Anthony Walton White Does Not Impress

On Thursday, I’m going to Gen. George Washington’s headquarters in Cambridge to speak about how he managed his generals and his staff. Back on 25 July 1775, a young man showed up at the same building hoping for a place on that staff.

Anthony Walton White (1750-1803) was a grandson of Lewis Morris, governor of New Jersey. He arrived with a recommendation letter from George Clinton of New York. His grandfather wrote another letter on his behalf, and his father wrote to Washington twice.

White wanted to join the Continental Army—but not, of course, at the enlisted level. All the New England regiments were fully stocked with officers or didn’t want anything to do with a stranger from New Jersey. So the only opportunity was in some sort of staff job.

The Continental Congress had authorized Gen. Washington to hire a military secretary and three aides de camp. As of late July, he had filled two of those aide positions with Thomas Mifflin and John Trumbull. So White stuck around.

In August, Mifflin took the more important post of quartermaster general. Two young men from Virginia, Edmund Randolph and George Baylor, arrived and became aides de camp. But Trumbull went back to the Connecticut troops, leaving an opening. And White still stuck around.

Washington wrote to White’s father about his “modest deportment,” but what worried him were White’s modest talents. In fact, he was more interested in the young man’s horse. On 3 October, the general paid White £48 “for a Riding Mare.” White may have needed that money to get home. He returned to New Jersey and sought a commission there instead.

Months later, Washington was still using White as an example of someone he did not want as an aide. In January 1776 he told former secretary Joseph Reed that it “pains me when I think of Mr. White’s expectation of coming into my family if an opening happens.” (In fact, there was still an opening at that time—Washington was keeping the secretary post vacant, hoping Reed would return.)

White never grew in Washington’s esteem. In September 1798 the former President told federal officials that the man hadn’t accomplished anything but “frivolity—dress—empty shew & something worse—in short for being a notorious L—r.” Authors have interpreted the last word as “liar,” but it could also have been “lecher.” And I doubt White developed any personal fondness for Gen. Washington.

The Truth about Thomas Machin

I’ve been discussing the early life of Thomas Machin, commissioned a lieutenant in the Continental Army artillery on 18 Jan 1776. But what had he been doing before then?

His family left an account that had Machin born to a distinguished British scientist, working for a duke, coming to America in 1772, and quickly joining the movement that led to independence. But there’s no evidence for any of that, and strong evidence against it.

And then there’s this 27 July 1775 entry from the journal of Lt. Richard Williams of His Majesty’s 23rd Regiment of Foot:

Last night Thos. Machin, soldier in our Regt. deserted when sentry on the fire boat in the river near the neck. he went off in the Canoe go to this float, he took the other man’s firelock with him, as it was that man’s turn to lay down, this fellow will give them good intelligence of our Works, for he was a pretty good Mechenik & knew a little of fortification. he invented a new carriage for guns on a pivot &c. his books & instruments were sent for to the General’s.

Lt. Col. Stephen Kemble also noted the desertion that night of a man from the 23rd, “a sensible intelligent fellow, some knowledge of fortification and Gunnery.”

The 23rd Regiment’s muster rolls record that Thomas Machin had enlisted in Maj. Harry Blunt’s company on 17 Feb 1773 and sailed to New York that spring. The regiment arrived in Boston in August 1774. Machin was thus in the army during the Battle of Bunker Hill—but in the British army.

Several people on the American side noted Machin’s arrival, though most didn’t record his name. Col. William T. Miller of Rhode Island wrote on 29 July that “it is thought [he] will prove a very serviceable man to our army, as he is able to give a plan of all the works and fortifications in Boston, and knows all their plans.” The old veteran Jedidiah Preble said he was “as sensible intelligent a fellow as I ever met with.”

Most important, Gen. George Washington wrote down “An Acct. of the Killed & Wounded in the Ministerial Army” based on a conversation with a man he recorded as “John Machin.” The commander-in-chief assigned the deserter to work with his young aide-de-camp, John Trumbull, to draw plans of the British fortifications. (One product of their collaboration appears above.) Later Machin worked for quartermaster general Thomas Mifflin and was most likely a scout during an 8 Jan 1776 raid on British positions at Charlestown.

Machin’s entry in American National Biography says nothing about that activity, accepting the family story of a genteel life in England and a respectable arrival in America. But Machin was a British army private, a deserter, and part of “Washington’s First Spy Ring” during the siege of Boston. I’ll divulge more secrets of the general’s early intelligence efforts this afternoon in Lincoln at an event sponsored by the Friends of Minute Man National Park.

(Thanks to Bob Vogler for posting the quote from Lt. Williams’s diary above to the Revlist in 2002. That sent me hunting for the elusive Thomas Machin.)

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.)

Washington’s First Two Encounters with Colonel Louis

In early August 1775, or one month after he arrived in Cambridge to take command of the Continental Army, Gen. George Washington received a couple of visitors from the north. One was a New Hampshire militia colonel and Vermont settler named Jacob Bayley.

The other was, the general told the Continental Congress, “a Chief of the Cagnewaga Tribe, who lives within 6 miles from Montreal.” Months later Washington identified that man from the Kahnawake Mohawk community by name: Colonel Louis.

Louis had been born about 1740 near Saratoga. His mother was Abenaki, and his father was of African descent, possibly the enslaved servant (or cook) of a British army officer. Their baby was first named Lewis Cook.

During King George’s War (1744-48), a raiding party of French and Indians captured the family, or at least the mother and young boy. Seeing Lewis’s African features, a French officer wanted to claim him as a slave and perhaps to sell him. Lewis’s mother appealed to the Mohawk leaders in the raiding party, and they insisted instead on adopting both mother and child into their nation.

Lewis Cook thus received new names. One was Mohawk; I’ve seen it rendered as Akiatonharónkwen (“He unhangs himself from the group”) and Atayataghronghta (“His body is taken down from hanging”). The former translation seems like a better match for his character.

The other name was French, since the people at Kahnawake were allied with the French and had taken up Catholicism. From then on, Lewis spelled his name Louis, in the French style. (He’s also sometimes called Joseph Louis Cook, and I don’t know where the first name came from.)

Louis fought on the side of the French Empire in the next war, started by a young Virginia officer in 1754. Evidently at some point in that war Louis added the rank of Colonel to his name.

As a young warrior Louis was at the 1756 fight known as the Battle of the Mononghela, the Battle of the Wilderness, or Braddock’s Retreat. He helped to rout a British army column that included Gen. Edward Braddock, Lt. Col. Thomas Gage, Capt. Horatio Gates, and that young Virginian George Washington, there as an unranked volunteer.

I suspect that Colonel Louis and Washington didn’t dwell on that earlier event when they met in Cambridge in 1775.

COMING UP: What they did have to talk about.

(The image above is a sketch of Colonel Louis by John Trumbull. He was an aide de camp to Gen. Washington during Louis’s August 1775 visit, but Trumbull drew this nearly a decade later in preparation for his Death of General Montgomery.)