The Many Books of James Kirby Martin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The purport was, Boston was in action…”

One important element of the “Powder Alarm” of 1774 was that although the British army operation ended peacefully on the morning of 1 September, reports of what happened kept spreading for days.

And as those reports spread, they grew more dire.

Rev. Dr. Ezra Stiles recorded from an eyewitness that in Shrewsbury in the early morning hours of 2 September the rumor was “six men killed.”

Exaggerations like that brought thousands of Middlesex County militiamen into Cambridge that day. That event produced fear about more British military action, which apparently produced more rumors.

At noon on 3 September, Israel Putnam tried to rouse the militia around Pomfret, Connecticut, because of and with this news:

I have this minute had an express from Boston that the fight between Boston and Regulars [began] last night at sunset, the cannon began to and continued playing all night, and they beg for help

Early on 4 September, Titus Hosmer (shown above) in Middletown, Connecticut, was woken by the sheriff, who had received a letter from Putnam. Hosmer wrote:

The purport was, Boston was in action by the “troops sending out to seize all the powder in the country, especially at Framingham [sic] about 20 miles from Boston; which when discovered occasion’d the country people to collect and offer to rescue the powder [i.e., grab it back]. Six of the country people were shot dead at the very time, and many wounded—an Artillery planted at the Neck—the Ships were heard to fire all night of a Friday.

By noon that day, Hosmer heard a less drastic report via Hartford:

[William] Brattle at Cambridge, a high tory, had petitioned [Gen. Thomas] Gage for troops to protect him at his house, which Gage granted; a mob gathered and demand of Brattle to renounce his toryism or whatever you may term it; but after a short parley the troop fired, kill’d some right out, a large numr. wounded. No news from the town itself.

On Sunday, 4 September, the worst rumors reached Longmeadow, Massachusetts. The Rev. Stephen Williams heard that the Royal Navy was involved:

the Ships in ye Harbour—of Boston, & ye Army on ye Land Side were allso fireing upon ye Town so yt. it was like ye Town was Demolishd.

In Milford, Connecticut, young Joseph Plumb Martin heard the talk at church that Sunday afternoon and went to bed fearing redcoats would attack his family’s home before morning.

Of course, none of that happened. But it took a while for the real news to catch up.

TOMORROW: How the news reached the Continental Congress.

Paula Bagger with More on Marlborough

After my series of postings about Revolutionary conflict in Marlborough, Paula Bagger of the Hingham Historical Society filled me in on some details about the household of Loyalist merchant Henry Barnes. She has researched that family in the course of making important discoveries about the enslaved artist Prince Demah.

In particular, Paula identified the little girl whom Dr. Samuel Curtis quizzed about the two undercover British army officers who visited the house in March 1775. So I’m sharing Paula’s information as a “guest blogger” posting.

The “child” was undoubtedly Christian (“Chrisy”) Arbuthnot, the daughter of Christian Barnes’s brother William Arbuthnot from Hingham. Born in 1765, Chrisy would have been ten years old whereas the other young women who lived with the Barneses from time to time (Catharine Goldthwait and several Murray nieces of Elizabeth Inman) were older. The Barneses became Chrisy’s guardians when William Arbuthnot, a widower, died in the late 1760s.

Chrisy decamped to England with the Barneses in 1776 and died in 1782 in Bristol.

As for Catharine Goldthwait (1744-1830), who remained in Marlborough trying to preserve the estate in 1775, she traveled to England in the late ’70s or early ’80s. She spent time with her parents, Thomas and Catherine (the latter Henry Barnes’s sister), who had settled in Walthamstow outside London. But she seems to have spent some time with the Barneses in Bristol as well.

In July 1795, Catherine wrote Deborah Barker of Hingham to tell her that Christian Barnes had died in April. Henry Barnes died in London in 1808.

In England, Catharine Goldthwait met and married eighty-year-old Dr. Silvester Gardiner, a wealthy Loyalist widower [shown above]. They returned to America together. After Gardiner died, she married the merchant William Powell of Boston, a wealthy Patriot widower. She had no children of her own but adopted a niece and then two great-nieces.

Thanks, Paula!

One of the oddities I came across while researching this extended family is that Catharine Goldthwait’s sister Mary (1753-1825?) married Francis Archibald in Maine, was widowed, and fell into mental illness—the reason her teen-aged daughter came to live with Catharine Powell in Boston and eventually take her aunt’s last name. Mary Archibald lived on relief in the homes of various Maine householders, including now-famous Revolutionary War veteran Joseph Plumb Martin for several years.

COMING UP: Gossip about Marlborough’s Dr. Curtis.

Joseph Plumb Martin and One Shiny Dollar

This year I seem to have focused on reactions to the Battle of Lexington and Concord instead of the actual fighting.

Here’s another example, from the memoirs of Joseph Plumb Martin, who at age fourteen was living with his grandparents in Milford, Connecticut.

The previous September, Joseph had been scared by the dire rumors of the “Powder Alarm,” hearing a carriage wheel and thinking it was British soldiers coming to him:

I was ploughing in the field about half a mile from home, about the twenty-first day of April, when all of a sudden the bells fell to ringing, and three guns were repeatedly fired in succession down in the village; what the cause was we could not conjecture. I had some fearful forebodings that something more than the sound of a carriage wheel was in the wind. The regulars are coming in good earnest, thought I. My grandsire sighed, he “smelt the rat.” He immediately turned out the team and repaired homeward.

I sat off to see what the cause of the commotion was. I found most of the male kind of the people together; soldiers for Boston were in requisition. A dollar deposited upon the drum head was taken up by some one as soon as placed there, and the holder’s name taken, and he enrolled, with orders to equip himself as quick as possible. My spirits began to revive at the sight of the money offered; the seeds of courage began to sprout; for, contrary to my knowledge, there was a scattering of them sowed, but they had not as yet germinated; I felt a strong inclination, when I found I had them, to cultivate them. O, thought I, if I were but old enough to put myself forward, I would be the possessor of one dollar, the dangers of war to the contrary notwithstanding; but I durst not put myself up for a soldier for fear of being refused, and that would have quite upset all the courage I had drawn forth.

The men that had engaged “to go to war” went as far as the next town, where they received orders to return, as there was a sufficiency of men already engaged, so that I should have had but a short campaign had I have gone.

(The photo above shows the Eells-Stow House, a Milford house that Joseph P. Martin knew since it was built around 1700.)

“An Intimation of the Bombardment of Boston”

Today is the anniversary of the militia uprising in 1774 that Richard Frothingham dubbed the “Powder Alarm” in his biography of Dr. Joseph Warren.

On 2 Sept 1774 up to five thousand Massachusetts militiamen crowded into Cambridge, forcing every royal appointee in town to resign or apologize.

That event demonstrated the end of royal rule in the province outside of Boston, a few harbor islands, and (later) parts of Marshfield—places where the British military was stationed.

Those militiamen were reacting to the British army’s seizure of gunpowder and militia cannon on 1 September. Or, to be more accurate, many of them were reacting to exaggerated accounts of the previous day.

A traveling merchant named McNeil told the Rev. Ezra Stiles that in Shrewsbury he was woken in the middle of the night by “somebody violently rapping up the Landlord, telling the doleful Story that the Powder was taken, six men killed.”

From Hartford, Titus Hosmer informed Silas Deane that “[William] Brattle at Cambridge, a high tory, had petitioned [Gen. Thomas] Gage for troops to protect him at his house, which Gage granted; a mob gathered and demand of Brattle to renounce his toryism or whatever you may term it; but after a short parley the troop fired, kill’d some right out, a large number wounded.”

The Rev. Stephen Williams, minister of Longmeadow, and his congregation heard that “the [Royal Navy] Ships in ye Harbour—of Boston, & ye Army on ye Land Side were allso fireing upon ye Town so yt. it was like ye Town was Demolishd.” [For more of the Williams diary, visit the Longmeadow Library. Thanks to Ray Raphael for pointing me to that source.]

And one of my favorite responses came from young Joseph Plumb Martin, then thirteen years old and living in Milford, Connecticut:

In the afternoon, one Sabbath day [4 Sept 1774], while the people were assembled at meeting, word was brought that the British (regulars, as the good people then called them) were advancing from Boston, spreading death and desolation in their route in every direction. . . .

I went out of the house in the dusk of the evening, when I heard the sound of a carriage on the road, in the direction of Boston; I thought they were coming as sure as a gun; I shall be dead or a captive before to-morrow morning; however, I went to bed late in the evening, dreamed of “fire and sword,” I suppose; waked in the morning, found myself alive, and the house standing where it did the evening before.

The dire rumors traveled at least as far as Philadelphia, where John Adams wrote about “an Intimation of the Bombardment of Boston—a confused account, but an alarming one indeed.” More accurate stories about what had happened in Cambridge followed, but by the time they arrived people’s thinking about the royal government had started to change.

I devote the first two chapters of The Road to Concord to the gunpowder seizure and Powder Alarm of September 1774 because they’re so important to the political shifts in New England and the start of the Revolutionary War that started.

The Legend of Molly Pitcher—A New Source

Since I was on a Battle of Monmouth kick, I’ll jump to one of the most enduring American legends to come out of that fight: Molly Pitcher.

As Ray Raphael wrote in Founding Myths and this article for the Journal of the American Revolution, there’s solid evidence of a woman helping her husband in the Continental artillery at that battle. In his memoir, first published in 1830, army veteran Joseph Plumb Martin wrote:

A woman whose husband belonged to the artillery and who was then attached to a piece in the engagement, attended with her husband at the piece the whole time. While in the act of reaching a cartridge and having one of her feet as far before the other as she could step, a cannon shot from the enemy passed directly between her legs without doing any other damage than carrying away all the lower part of her petticoat. Looking at it with apparent unconcern, she observed that it was lucky it did not pass a little higher, for in that case it might have carried away something else, and continued her occupation.

There’s also contemporaneous documentation of the state of Pennsylvania awarding a pension to Margaret Corbin, who took her husband’s place at a cannon during the defense of Fort Washington in 1776.

But the specific legendary figure we’ve come to know as Molly Pitcher first showed up in the second volume of Freeman Hunt’s 1830 collection American Anecdotes:

Before the two armies, American and English, had begun the general action of Monmouth, two of the advanced batteries commenced a very severe fire against each other. As the warmth was excessive, the wife of a cannonier constantly ran to bring him water from a neighbouring spring. At the moment when she started from the spring, to pass to the post of her husband, she saw him fall, and hastened to assist him; but he was dead. At the same moment she heard an officer order the cannon to be removed from its place, complaining he could not fill his post by as brave a man as had been killed. ‘No,’ said the intrepid Molly, fixing her eyes upon the officer, ‘the cannon shall not be removed for the want of some one to serve it; since my brave husband is no more, I will use my utmost exertions to avenge his death.’ The activity and courage with which she performed the office of cannonier during the action, attracted the attention of all who witnessed it, finally of Gen. Washington himself, who afterwards gave her the rank of Lieutenant, and granted her half pay during life. She wore an epaulette, and every body called her Captain Molly.

Five years later the story was in print again, in two sources, one of which I don’t think has been discussed before. A Popular Cyclopedia of History, an oft-reprinted reference book compiled by Francis Durivage, stated:

In the beginning of this battle [of Monmouth], one Molly Pitcher was occupied in carrying water from a spring to a battery, where her husband employed in loading and firing a cannon. He was shot dead at last, and she saw him fall. An officer rode up, and ordered off the cannon. “It can be of no use, now,” said he. but Molly stepped up, offered her services, and took her husband’s place, to the astonishment of the army. She fought well, and half pay for life was given her by Congress. She wore an epaulette, and was called Captain Molly, ever after.

And here’s a source I don’t think anyone has spotted before, also from 1835: Allgemeine Beschreibung der Welt [General Description of the World] published in Philadelphia. This book was credited to E. L. Walz with editing by Heinrich Diezel of Lebanon County, Pennsylvania. It was printed in old Gothic type, and I’ve never studied German. I’m therefore at the mercy of Google’s O.C.R. transcription and translation services, but this is what I think that book says:

In Monmouth County siel im Revolutionskriege eine Geschichte vor, welche noch immer häufig in N. I. erzählt wird: Die Amerikaner unter Washington, und die Engländer unter Henry Clinton, schlugen sich hier wasser herum. Es war an diesem Tage heiß und schwühl. Mitten in der Schlacht sah man eine Frau, Molly Pitcher, die einigen Artilleristen Wasser zutrug, unter denen auch ihr Mann sich befand. Von einer Kanonenkugel getroffen, stürzte er leblos nieder. Molly that nun, was 1000 andere Weiber nicht gethan haben würden. Statt zu weinen, stellte sie sich an die Stelle des Gefallenen und versah mit wahrem Heldenmuthe seine Dienste. Sie kam glücklich davon. Von dieser Zeit an behielt sie bis zu ihrem Tode den Namen: Major Molly.

[From Monmouth County in the revolutionary war fell a story which is still frequently told in N.J.​​: The Americans with Washington, and the English under Henry Clinton, this also reflected around water. It was hot and schwühl on this day. In the midst of the battle some artillerymen saw one woman, Molly Pitcher, that was happening water in which her ​​husband was. From a cannonball hit, he fell down lifeless. Molly now did what 1000 other women would not have done. Instead of crying, she stood in the place of the dead man and adorned with true heroism his services. She got off lucky. From that time on she kept until her death the name: Major Molly.]

It’s notable that the story penetrated the German-American community so early. That might lend credence to the interpretation that the real Molly Pitcher was Mary (Ludwig) Hays, the daughter of German immigrants to Philadelphia. On the other hand, Mary Hays settled in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, after the war, and lived until 1832, a local character who also received a state pension. So it’s a little surprising that this book’s source for the story seems to come from New Jersey rather than two counties away.

Clearly this anecdote grew in the telling. Mary Hays was supposedly called “Sergeant Molly” after the battle and later in life. In these early sources the corresponding detail became “the rank of Lieutenant” and “Captain Molly,” then “Major Molly.” There’s no documentation to support the claims that this woman received such a rank or a pension from “Gen. Washington himself” or the Congress. But clearly by the 1830s Americans of many sorts were telling the story of Molly Pitcher.

TOMORROW: But there already was a famous Molly Pitcher.

“Such a boring account of such an epic war”

As long as I’m quoting Sgt. Joseph Plumb Martin’s memoir of fighting in the Revolution, I can’t resist passing on this assessment of the book from April on Goodreads:

The author said in the beginning of the book that this was his story and it was not remarkable, I very much agree with him. I had to read this book for history class but nevertheless I was excited to hear about a real account of the revolutionary war. Throughout the book it was a constant repetition of procuring piece of salt pork, stopping to rest, marching. I expected some action, but was thoroughly disappointed. One has to wonder why he even bothered writing down such a boring account of such an epic war.

Lest we think that April missed the point of the book, in this essay at Common-place William Huntting Howell argues that she identified Martin’s point exactly. The veteran, he argues, was writing an “anti-narrative” to counter the heroic depictions of the war. Of course, Howell uses many more words and goes into much more detail to make that point, viz.:

Martin’s prior descriptions of military engagement pale in comparison with his descriptions of the beef, its preparation, and its consumption; measured in terms of detail, the emotional (and extra-narrative) weight of the dinner far exceeds the emotional (and narrative) weight of the fighting. Only as an afterthought does he add the following: “We had eight or ten of our regiment killed in the action, and a number wounded, but none of them belonged to our company.”

Moments like this one proliferate: whenever the text threatens to fall neatly into a standard military story, Martin’s appetite drags it back out.

The main point of Howell’s provocative essay seems to be that Martin didn’t expect his memoir to be the first and only history of the Revolutionary War that people would read. But it might have to be the second.

“Upon a Leg of Nothing and No Turnips”

In the fall of 1777, Gen. William Howe defeated Gen. George Washington’s army at Brandywine, Paoli, and Germantown and took Philadelphia, the young republic’s capital. But up north another American army captured Gen. John Burgoyne after Saratoga. From its new headquarters in York, Pennsylvania, the Continental Congress put the best face on things by declaring 18 December to be a day of “Solemn Thanksgiving and Praise.”

One of the soldiers in Washington’s army, Pvt. Joseph Plumb Martin, later wrote of that holiday:

While we lay here [in “the Gulf”] there was a Continental thanksgiving ordered by Congress; and as the army had all the cause in the world to be particularly thankful, if not for being well off, at least that it was no worse, we were ordered to participate in it. We had nothing to eat for two or three days previous, except what the trees of the fields and forests afforded us. But we must now have what Congress said—a sumptuous thanksgiving to close the year of high living we had now nearly seen brought to a close. Well—to add something extraordinary to our present stock of provisions—our country, ever mindful of its suffering army, opened her sympathizing heart so wide, upon this occasion, as to give us something to make the world stare. And what do you think it was, reader?—Guess.—You cannot guess, be you as much of a Yankee as you will. I will tell you: it gave each and every man half a gill of rice, and a table spoon full of vinegar!!

After we had made sure of this extraordinary superabundant donation, we were ordered out to attend a meeting and hear a sermon delivered upon the occasion. We accordingly went, for we could not help it. I heard a sermon, a “thanksgiving sermon,” what sort of one I do not know now, nor did I at the time I heard it. I had something else to think upon; my belly put me in remembrance of the fine thanksgiving dinner I was to partake of when I could get it.—I remember the text, like an attentive lad at church, I can still remember that; it was this: “And the soldiers said unto him, And what shall we do? And he said unto them, Do violence to no man, nor accuse any one falsely.”

The preacher ought to have added the remainder of the sentence [from Luke 3:14] to have made it complete: “And be content with your wages.” But that would not do, it would be too apropos; however, he heard it as soon as the service was over, it was shouted from a hundred tongues.

Well—we had got through the services of the day and had nothing to do but to return in good order to our tents and fare as we could. As we returned to our camp, we passed by our Commissary’s quarters; all his stores, consisting of a barrel about two thirds full of hocks of fresh beef, stood directly in our way, but there was a sentinel guarding even that; however, one of my messmates purloined a piece of it, four or five pounds perhaps. I was exceeding glad to see him take it; I thought it might help to eke out our thanksgiving supper; but, alas! how soon my expectations were blasted! The sentinel saw him have it as soon as I did and obliged him to return it to the barrel again. So I had nothing else to do but to go home and make out my supper as usual, upon a leg of nothing and no turnips.

In his diary Lt. Ebenezer Wild recorded hearing no sermon, since his regiment had no chaplain, and a marginally better meal:

we had but a poor thanksgiving,—nothing but fresh beef & flour to eat, without any salt, & but very scant of that.

Shortly afterward Martin, Wild, and their regiments entered Valley Forge to spend the winter.

“Took Their Cockades from Their Hats”

As the Continental Army prepared to defend New York in 1776, the system of color-coded hat cockades that Gen. George Washington had instituted over a year before was still in place, as shown by this item in his general orders for 15 August:

Lieut. Holcomb of Capt. Anderson’s Company, and Col Johnson’s Regiment, tried by the same Court Martial for “assuming the rank of a Captain, wearing a yellow Cockade, and mounting Guard in that capacity”—it appearing to be done thro’ misinformation and want of experience, the Court are of opinion, he should be cautioned by his Colonel, to make himself acquainted with his duty, and that he be released from his arrest.

There were many new regiments coming into the army, with soldiers not knowing the officers of other units, so five days later Washington repeated his orders about cockades:

The officers who have lately come into Camp are also informed that it has been found necessary, amidst such frequent changes of Troops to introduce some distinctions by which their several ranks may be known—viz: Field Officers wear a pink or red cockade—Captains white or buff—Subalterns green

The General flatters himself every Gentlemen will conform to a regulation which he has found essentially necessary to prevent mistakes and confusion.

The “yellow or buff” for captains had changed to “white or buff”—which probably didn’t mean much.

Pvt. Joseph Plumb Martin recalled those cockades, though he thought they were meant to separate “officers of the new levies” from those of “the standing forces, as they were called.”

And how did the system work in battle? Here’s Pvt. Martin:

While we were resting here our Lieutenant-Colonel and Major, (our Colonel not being with us,) took their cockades from their hats; being asked the reason, the Lieutenant-Colonel replied, that he was willing to risk his life in the cause of his country, but was unwilling to stand a particular mark for the enemy to fire at. He was a fine officer and a brave soldier.

Gosh, do you think that last line was sarcastic?

Boston 1775 Twitter Feed, 14-16 Jan 2010

• Sarah Palin, stalling for time, says she admires "diversity" of Founding Fathers. Something else she doesn't know: meaning of "diversity." #
• RT @lucyinglis: Most hanged in 18thC London? Butchers (handy weapons?), weavers (poverty?), and cobblers (no bloody idea). #georgianlondon #
• RT @kwnewton: Satan sets Pat Robertson straight in a Letter to the Editor of MINN STAR-TRIB tinyurl.com/ybhdl9e #
• RT @LooknBackward: The Boston Newsboys' Republic in 1909 bit.ly/5UfyN1 #
• RT @2palaver: Somerville MA slave history highlighted in new book "Ten Hills Farm" by C S Manegold- bit.ly/73pObr #
• Nathaniel Philbrick to write account of Bunker Hill battle: bit.ly/4HMlUH #
• RT @rarenewspapers: Insight on newspaper circulations in the 1700s -- bit.ly/4nb2Rv // grain of salt #
• RT @rarenewspapers: Time lag in news w/analysis of Declaration of Independence printing in 1776 -- blog.rarenewspapers.com/?p=1650 #
• COMMON-PLACE: trying to parse inside jokes in an 1802 Newport caricature - bit.ly/7u0rYs #
• COMMON-PLACE: how a scholar approaches a history of emotion in 1700s Pennsylvania - bit.ly/6V9x4J #
• COMMON-PLACE: Pvt. Joseph P. Martin and a soldier's hunt for food: bit.ly/525ZPj With bonus Israel Putnam! #
• RT @history_book: Ireland and Medicine in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (The History of Medicine in Context). j.mp/77qmlT #
• COMMON-PLACE: overlooked list of books offers glimpse of George Wythe's and Thos. Jefferson's libraries: bit.ly/5jcmBe #
• RT @TJMonticello: Special Architecture Tour of Monticello, now thru end of Feb. (including a trip to the Dome Room) bit.ly/4yazUy #

Seven Founders

Last week guest blogger Ray Raphael laid out a challenge: Choose seven people to follow through the entire American Revolution whose stories, when combined, would tell the whole of that political, military, and social change.

I shared my thoughts, and Boston 1775 readers rose to the challenge with many more suggestions. I also promised to reveal the folks whom Ray chose to follow in Founders: The People Who Brought You a Nation, and here they are:

• George Washington. Virginia planter. Delegate to the House of Burgesses and the Continental Congress. Generalissimo. Chairman of the Constitutional Convention. President. You’ve heard of him, right?
• Joseph Plumb Martin. Native of Massachusetts raised in Connecticut. Private soldier from 1775 to 1783, reaching rank of sergeant. Settled in Maine. Published a lively account of his military career, most likely edited from his contemporaneous journals because of all the detail, in 1830.
  
• Mercy Otis Warren. Political writer. Sister of James Otis, Jr., wife of James Warren, friend of John and Abigail Adams. Active Whig, Anti-federalist, and Jeffersonian. The Woman Who Did Everything More Beautifully Than You.
  
• Robert Morris. British-born Pennsylvania merchant. Delegate to the Congress. Financier and financial manager of the U.S. of A., founder of the Bank of North America, lender of large sums to the new republic. Delegate to the Constitutional Convention and Senator. Land speculator and debtor.
  
• Timothy Bigelow. Blacksmith from Worcester. Local political organizer. Colonel of a Massachusetts regiment in the Continental Army. Developer of Montpelier, Vermont. Debtor.
  
• Henry Laurens. South Carolina planter. President of the Continental Congress after John Hancock. Diplomat and eventually one negotiator of the Treaty of Paris. Father of John Laurens. Highest-ranking U.S. government official ever captured by the enemy.
  
• Dr. Thomas Young. A New York country doctor, deist, and poet. Helped found the Albany Sons of Liberty before moving to Boston. Soon one of the town’s top Whig organizers. Fleeing the troops in Boston in September 1774, he joined the Patriots in Rhode Island. Then he moved on to Philadelphia, becoming a leader of the state’s radical party and an army surgeon. Coined the name “Vermont.”

Choosing these particular people allowed Ray to play them off each other. For example, Dr. Young was one of the most radical and democratic politicians of the period while Laurens was fundamentally conservative. Warren strenuously opposed Morris, who in turn distrusted Young.

Washington, Martin, and Bigelow were all in the army at Valley Forge and Yorktown, but, holding different ranks, experienced the war in different ways. Morris and Laurens were very important figures in the civil government while Warren and Young wrote political essays and exercised behind-the-scenes influence. Washington, Morris, and Bigelow all invested in land development after the war; Martin was one of the small farmers who settled on such newly developed land. Only one of these people didn’t live to see Britain acknowledge American independence.