“The Colony of Connecticut must raise 6,000”

As I quoted last week, on 23 Apr 1775 the Massachusetts Provincial Congress resolved to raise an army of 30,000 men, 16,400 of them coming from outside the province.

In this Journal of the American Revolution article from last year, I discussed how early in 1775 the congress had set up liaisons with the governments of Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire in case war broke out.

The Massachusetts Patriots had alerted their colleagues in those colonies about the fighting on 19 April. And now they asked for troops.

In Connecticut, Gov. Jonathan Trumbull supported the Patriots. As soon as he heard the news from Lexington, he agreed to call the legislature into session to take official action. On 21 April, William Williams, the Connecticut assembly speaker and Trumbull’s son-in-law, wrote with two other politicians to the Massachusetts congress:

Every preparation is making to Support your Province— . . . the Ardour of Our People is such that they can’t be kept back;—The Colonels are to forward part of the best men & most Ready, as fast as possible; the remainder to be ready at a Moments warning

Some militia officers were already on the move. Israel Putnam was in Concord on 21 April as the Massachusetts congress met. He wrote back:

I have waited on the Committee of the Provincial Congress, and it is their Determination to have a standing Army of 22,000 men from the New-England Colonies, of which, it is supposed, the Colony of Connecticut must raise 6,000, and begs they would be at Cambridge as speedily as possible, with Conveniences; together with Provisions, and a Sufficiency of Ammunition for their own Use.

Col. Benedict Arnold and his volunteers left New Haven on 22 April and arrived in Cambridge one week later. On 23 April a letter from Wethersfield to New York said:

We are all in motion here, and equipt from the Town, yesterday, one hundred young men, who cheerfully offered their service; twenty days provision, and sixty-four rounds, per man. They are all well armed, and in high spirits. . . . Our neighbouring Towns are all aiming and moving. Men of the first character and property shoulder their arms and march off for the field of action. We shall, by night, have several thousands from this Colony on their march. . . .

We fix on our Standards and Drums, the Colony Arms, with the motto, “qui transtulit sustinet,” round it in letters of gold, which we construe thus: “God, who transplanted us hither, will support us.”

On 27 April the Connecticut legislature voted to enlist 6,000 soldiers—six regiments of about a thousand men each. Joseph Spencer was appointed general of this army with Putnam next in seniority. (David Wooster remained in Connecticut to oversee defending its coast or New York as needed.)

Notably, Connecticut asked men to enlist in its army only until 10 December, not the end of the year as other New England colonies did. That became a problem when December rolled around and lots of Connecticut companies wanted to leave early (as Gen. George Washington viewed it) or on time (as their enlistment papers said). I discussed that conflict back here.

TOMORROW: Rhode Island’s observers.

“To turn his back sullenly on his General”?

As discussed yesterday, on 19 July 1775 Gen. Joseph Spencer arrived back in the camps of what was now the Continental Army, bringing a letter from the governor of his home colony of Connecticut, Jonathan Trumbull.

Trumbull asked Gen. George Washington to understand how Spencer was miffed at seeing Israel Putnam promoted to major general over him. And merely because Putnam had led troops in the Battle of Chelsea Creek.

Delivering that letter was probably the first time Spencer had met Washington. And I imagine the discussion was as stiff and cold as the new commander-in-chief could be. As Maj. Samuel Blachley Webb (shown here) wrote on 11 July, Spencer’s departure “without leave or license from Gen. Washington,…displeased him much.”

Indeed, Spencer’s hissy fit had damaged his standing even among his own officers. He’d asked his subordinates to sign a protest on his behalf, and Webb reported:

I have since been to Roxbury, and find the officers, many of them, heartily sick of what they have done, in particular, Maj. [Return Jonathan] Meiggs,—who says he was forced to sign what the others did—to keep peace; and says he had rather serve under Putnam than Spencer.

You’ll find Generals Washington and [Charles] Lee, are vastly more fond, and think higher of Putnam, than any man in the army; and he truly is the Hero of the day. . . . Better is it for us to lose four Spencers than half a Putnam.

News of Putnam’s higher rank “gave universal satisfaction,” Webb added.

Webb was sending these observations to his stepfather, Silas Deane. On 20 July, Deane told his wife how the Continental Congress was responding to Spencer’s behavior:

You can be at no loss to infer what opinion is formed of him from this conduct, in doors and out. Suffice it to say, the voice here is, that he acted a part inconsistent with the character either of a soldier, a patriot, or even of a common gentleman. To desert his post in an hour of danger,—to sacrifice his Country, which he certainly did as far as was in his power,—and to turn his back sullenly on his General, a General, too, of such exalted worth and character,—will, I can assure you, unless he take the most speedy and effectual measures to atone, draw upon him the resentment of the whole Continent.

Neither Deane nor fellow Connecticut delegate Eliphalet Dyer ever pushed Spencer for promotion again. (He was made a major general in the fall of 1776 as part of a general wave of promotions.)

On 21 July, Gen. Washington reported to the Congress that Spencer had agreed to “serve under Puttnam, rather than leave the Army intirely.” The men’s relative ranks would not change.

The next day, Gen. Washington announced a new organization for the Continental Army around Boston. With three major generals under him, he put Artemas Ward in charge of a brigade on the southern side of the siege lines, Lee in charge of the northern wing, and Putnam in charge of the center.

Among the brigadier generals, he assigned Spencer to the southern wing under Ward. Thus, Spencer would answer to a general he’d already acknowledged as senior, not to Putnam. Gov. Trumbull had suggested a similar way of keeping the two Connecticut officers apart. Which wasn’t the sort of issue Washington wanted to face.

Spencer served the rest of the siege, making no distinct contribution at all. He never gained Washington’s trust, and after an unsuccessful Rhode Island campaign he left the army.

“General Spencer’s uneasiness, &c., at being overlooked, &c.”

According to the young Connecticut officer Samuel Blachley Webb, when Gen. Joseph Spencer learned the Continental Congress had ranked Israel Putnam over him, “He began to speak very freely; and finally, persuaded the officers, to remonstrate to the Assembly of Connecticut; and he set off immediately for home.”

Spencer was older than Putnam. He had raised a company for King George’s War in the 1740s while Putnam’s vaunted military career began in 1755. The Connecticut legislature had granted Spencer seniority, and he wanted to keep that status.

Forty-nine Connecticut officers signed a letter to their legislature that praised Spencer’s “exemplary life, good conduct, prudence, and courage.” It said:

You are sensible it will be with great reluctance our Troops at Roxbury could see their General superseded by an officer in previous lower command. We have no objection to the appointment of Generals [George] Washington and [Charles] Lee, and shall endeavour to preserve the good order and submission to their government as hath before distinguished this part of the Connecticut Troops whilst under General Spencer’s command; but the late arrangement so far removes General Spencer from his former command, that he cannot and will not continue in the service under this arrangement.

In his home colony, Spencer seemed to get the support he was after. In Lebanon on 13 July, Gov. Jonathan Trumbull showed his Council a draft letter to Gen. Washington about the issue. The official record of that meeting says the letter was

hinting at General Spencer’s uneasiness, &c., at being overlooked, &c., and that it was beside our expectations, &c., and proposing, &c., that said General Spencer may remain stationed at Roxbury with the body of Connecticut Troops now there, &c.; which are approved, though a small alteration was made in the Letter to gratify Gen. Spencer after he came in, &c.

Two politicians, Samuel Huntington and William Williams (the governor’s son-in-law and speaker of the assembly), went to the tavern where Spencer was staying to hear him out about “his dissatisfaction, &c.” They tried to “reconcile him cheerfully to pursue the service.”

That afternoon, Gov. Trumbull and the Council invited Spencer to join their meeting. They

had a long conference with him on the subject matter of his being superseded by the General Congress, in putting Gen. Putnam above him &c., which he thinks very hard of and resents &c., and is at length persuaded to return to the army and not at present quit the service as he proposed; and Genl. Spencer set out on his return to camp with the letters to Genl. Washington.

Trumbull’s letter to Gen. Washington said that “Generals [David] Wooster and Spencer will think they have reason to complain” about their ranking relative to Putnam and suggested a “Method to obviate the difficulties that are apprehended”:

The Army before Boston is necessarily thrown into two Grand Divisions. General Spencer with a Number of Our Troops hath hitherto been at Roxbury, and General Putnam at Cambridge —That Destination continued and Observed, may prevent uneasy Competition; preserve good order, and promote the public Service.

Spencer arrived back on the siege lines around Boston on 19 July.

TOMORROW: A triumphant return?

“Genl. Putnams fame ran so high”

Another consequence of the Battle of Chelsea Creek was that it raised the profile of Israel Putnam (1718—1790).

Putnam was already well known in North America. He’d fought for several years in past wars. He served in Maj. Robert Rogers’s rangers, on the Crown’s naval expedition against Havana in 1762, and even in Pontiac’s War.

People also passed around a story of Putnam crawling into the den of a wolf on his farm, so his personal bravery and strength were beyond doubt.

Around the start of 1775, a Pennsylvanian wrote to London to refute the idea that the Americans would need Charles Lee to command an army. That letter said:

the colonies are not so wrapped up in Gen. Lee’s military accomplishments as to give him the preference to Col. Putnam and Col. [George] Washington,—men whose military talents and achievements have placed them at the head of American heroes. There are several hundred thousand Americans who would face any danger with these illustrious heroes to lead them.

Then in early June 1775 reports of the fighting on and off Noddle’s Island reached Philadelphia. Those reports noted that Putnam, now a Connecticut general, had led the New England troops in the field. And successfully! (In fact, this was the only time Putnam would be present at a significant American victory for the rest of the war.)

Noddle’s Island was the latest news when the Continental Congress decided to adopt the New England army as the Continental Army in mid-June, appointing Washington commander-in-chief and commissioning more generals to serve under him. The Congress chose these men as major generals, in order: Artemas Ward, Lee, Philip Schuyler, and Putnam. Nine more men were given the rank of brigadier general.

As Connecticut delegate Eliphalet Dyer wrote, “Genl. Putnams fame ran so high as Induced the Congress to give him the Preference” over other candidates for the higher rank. Indeed, Putnam was the only general besides Washington whom the Congress elected unanimously.

Unfortunately, the Connecticut legislature had appointed its generals in this order: David Wooster, Joseph Spencer, and then Putnam. Spencer was on the lines in Massachusetts, thinking he had seniority over Putnam.

On 23 June, Roger Sherman told Wooster that he’d tried to convince his fellow delegates in Philadelphia to stick to the Connecticut ranking:

I informed them, of the arrangement made by our Assembly which I thought would be satisfactory, to have them continue in the same order; but as General Putnam’s fame was spread abroad, and especially his successful enterprise at Noddle’s Island, the account of which had just arrived, it gave him the preference in the opinion of the Delegates in general, so that his appointment was unanimous among the colonies.

Wooster was assigned to the Canada campaign under Schuyler, so he wouldn’t be serving under Putnam. Spencer, on the other hand, faced the prospect of taking orders from a man he’d just outranked. On 10 July, Washington wrote to the Congress:

General Spencer was so much disgusted at the Preference given to General Puttnam, that he left the Army without visiting me, or making known his Intentions in any Respect.

TOMORROW: Rank feelings.

“Discovered to be active in exposing our works to the enemy”?

Benjamin Boardman (1731–1802, shown here) graduated from Yale College in 1758, and two years later he became the minister in Middle Haddam, Connecticut.

When Gen. Joseph Spencer led Connecticut troops to the siege of Boston in the spring of 1775, Boardman went along as a chaplain.

He kept a diary from 31 July to 12 November, at least, and that document was published by the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1892.

Boardman recorded mostly events in the Connecticut regiments’ camp in Roxbury, particularly deaths, and news about big events elsewhere.

The minister’s frustration with rumors comes through in several places. On 9 November, for example, he wrote a detailed account of a British army raid on Lechmere’s Point in Cambridge and the Continental response. Then he added, “The above acct. cant be relied on,” and wrote down different details; “indeed there is no certainty can be come at,” he concluded.

Nonetheless, two entries stood out for me. On 31 August, the chaplain wrote:

I collected this day in cash for the encouragt. of Mr. Bushnels Machine the sum of £13.4.4. in cash out of our regt.

That must refer to the invention of David Bushnell, which turned out to be a small submarine and an underwater bomb or mine. This entry shows that Connecticut men were talking about the inventor’s work in the summer of 1775, even if they didn’t know the top-secret details.

On 31 October, Boardman’s entry was:

Bought me a flanel waistcoat this day, cost 9/2. We hear that Coll. [Joseph?] Gorham with about 40 tories are taken from ye. eastward who went after wood; also that Harry Knox, who married Secretary Fluckers daughter, and offered himself last July as a voluntary engineer to lay out our works, is taken & discovered to be active in exposing our works to the enemy.

At some later point Boardman returned to that entry, put marks around everything after the semicolon, and wrote: “Mistake of ye. clause in the crotchets.” In other words, never mind that thing about Knox. For that matter, the rumor about Gorham doesn’t seem reliable, either.

Nonetheless, this diary entry shows that some people in the American camp were suspicious about Knox’s family ties in the same month that Gen. George Washington had started angling to get him appointed to command the whole Continental artillery.

That October had started with news of “Doctr. [Benjamin] Church under an arrest for keeping up a correspd. with the enemy in Boston,” as Boardman wrote. Men were deserting both to and from the enemy. So it was easy to be suspicious about someone with such strong ties to the royal government as Knox had. Even if such rumors were quickly deemed to be unfounded.

Capt. Jonathan Hale at the Siege of Boston

Jonathan Hale was born in Glastonbury, Connecticut, on 1 Feb 1721, the eldest surviving child of Jonathan and Sarah (Talcott) Hale. As Jonathan grew up, his father held many public offices—town clerk, deputy to the Connecticut legislature, justice of the peace, and militia colonel among them.

The younger Jonathan Hale married Elizabeth Welles of Glastonbury in January 1744. Her father was likewise a legislator and militia colonel, so this marriage joined two of the town’s leading families. The groom’s father provided the couple with their own farmland.

Jonathan, Jr., and Elizabeth started having children the following December. Their first three were named, of course, Elizabeth, Jonathan, and Elizabeth—the first baby having died young. By 1770, Elizabeth had given birth to twelve children, eleven of them still alive.

Meanwhile, Jonathan’s younger brother Elizur went to Yale College and came back to Glastonbury to practice medicine. According to the 1885 guide to Yale graduates, “He is said to have been of dignified though rough exterior, witty and sarcastic, but benevolent and very useful.”

In 1772, Jonathan’s father died. He inherited more land and an enslaved man named Newport, and he got to drop the “Junior” after his name. By then he had become an officer in the Connecticut militia himself.

War broke out to the north in 1775. At the end of that year, the enlistments of New Englanders who had joined the army besieging Boston expired. In some desperation, Gen. George Washington asked the nearby colonies to send militia regiments for a few weeks to keep the British army bottled up.

Erastus Wolcott of East Windsor, son of a former governor, was commissioned colonel of one of Connecticut’s militia regiments. Among his captains was Jonathan Hale of Glastonbury—now a fifty-four-year-old grandfather. The regiment appears to have set out in early January 1776. It was assigned to the southern wing of the American forces in Roxbury under Gen. Joseph Spencer.

The Rev. Joseph Perry, a chaplain with those militia forces, wrote in his diary for 27 February:

About one P.M. when almost ready to dine came an alarm by General Spencers’ Sergeant brought it. The account was that the Regulars had landed on Dorchester point. Coll. Wolcott was ordered forth with to turn out with his Regiment. The Coll. sent the alarm to his Captins in every quarter to parade before his house immediately for an attack. . . .

Every face looked serious but determined and the thing was real to us. In a few moments the whole Regiment would have been moving to the expected scene of blood, but were countermanded by order from Genrl Spencer informing it was a false alarm. The men got out of the rain and mud as fast as they could and all was peace again.

Continental commanders were preparing to move onto the Dorchester heights and antsy about anything disrupting that plan. Washington wrote to Gen. Artemas Ward suggesting that he put “Six or Eight trusty men by way of Lookouts or Patrols” on that peninsula, “For should the Enemy get Possession of those Hills before us they would render it a difficult task to dispossess them.”

TOMORROW: March.

The Fate of the Rev. John Martin?

I promised more of the story of the Rev. John Martin, whom we left during the siege of Boston, preaching to the riflemen about how he’d taken command at Bunker Hill and perhaps marrying deserter George Marsden to young bride Wilmot Lee in Medford without recording their marriage.

Martin disappears from sight for many months, but in May 1777 he resurfaced in the diary of the Rev. Dr. Ezra Stiles (shown here):

12. I went to Providence, where this day where Rev. Mr. Martin of Ireld. was taken up by Gen. [Joseph] Spencer for a Spy & as havg a Commission from G. [William] Howe.

13. At Providence waited on Gen. Spencer who told me Mr. Martin had been over to the Enemy in the Jerseys & returned. One Dennison of Stonington informed the General that Mr. Martin had a Majors Commission & offered him a Captaincy. The General sent him off to Windham.

Joseph Denison (1707-1795) was head of the Stonington, Connecticut, committee of safety during the war, and the town had other men of that name.

Martin’s detention also appeared in newspapers of the time, such as the Pennsylvania Evening Post of 3 June 1777:

PROVIDENCE, May 17. Sunday last one Martin, a well known itinerant preacher, was apprehended here, and committed to close keeping, being charged with attempting to retail commissions for General Howe in Connecticut, to which state he has since been sent, under a proper guard.

The Freeman’s Journal of New Hampshire, 31 May 1777:

HARTFORD, May 26.
A few days since one Martin, a well known itinerant preacher, was apprehended at providence and committed to close keeping, being charged with attempting to retail commissions for Gen. Howe in this state: He has since been brought to Windham goal.

And the Independent Chronicle of Boston, 22 May 1777, was almost gleeful:

Last week a certain Rev. Mr. Martin, who is well known in this Town for boasting of his Exploits at Breed’s Hill, on the 17th of June, 1775, on the Part of the Americans, was taken up at Greenwich, State of Rhode-Island, recruiting for the Enemy.

I haven’t come across more about Martin’s case. I’m not convinced that the evidence against him was necessarily strong, given the atmosphere in New England after the Danbury raid. But he did get locked up.

In 1777, according to what he’d told Stiles, Martin was only twenty-seven years old. Therefore, if he survived the war in the U.S. of A., he might be the aged Rev. John Martin, a former itinerant preacher from Ireland, who lived in Otsego County, New York, in the 1810s. That Martin published an anonymous pamphlet titled Union the Bond of Peace in 1811.

The next year, that Rev. Martin got arrested for trying to bribe state legislators to approve the Bank of America. After a legislative hearing and a trial, he was sentenced to ten years. But the governor, who supported the bank, pardoned Martin after fourteen weeks. And then he slipped back out of the record.

David Coy Remembers His Service in April 1777

On 11 Mar 1853 a man named David Coy appeared before a magistrate in Kendall, New York, and swore that in 1777 at the age of eighteen he was drafted from “a Regiment of Militia to go and serve as a soldier in Rhode Island…, to serve as he believes for three months.” His commanding officer was Capt. Ezra Parsons.

But Coy admitted “That he has no dockumentary evidence; that he knows of no person whose testimony he can procure who can testify to his service.” All he had to convince the officials overseeing the pension system that he had genuinely served was the vivid authenticity of his memories.

Coy therefore offered up details of his weeks in military service more than three-quarters of a century before. For example, David Coy recalled that the date when his unit arrived in Providence was 1 Apr 1777 because of this recollection:

A boy came up to the Capt. and said, gentlemen, you have lost your kneebuckle,

the Captain looking said, no, I have not.

“on the other knee said the boy”

no that is not lost said the capt.

the boy running off said “April fool”.

Even Judge Samuel Sewall would have to acknowledge that April Fools’ joke ended up having some value.

Coy also recalled “That the General commanding at the time of his serving on that station he thinks was Spencer, who was at Providence and he thinks was not a brave man as they used to call him granny Spencer.” More on Joseph Spencer’s nickname here.

(I first met up with David Coy’s pension record as transcribed by Paula Naujalis. This week I checked the file and transcribed it myself.)

The Real Story of “Granny Spencer”

Boston 1775 reader Bill Welsch left a comment on the “Granny” Gates posting asking about another Continental general said to be nicknamed “Granny”: Joseph Spencer (1714-1799).

Connecticut appointed Spencer its top general in the spring of 1775, making him the oldest commander around Boston. But then the Continental Congress, probably influenced by reports of the “Battle of Chelsea Creek,” ranked Israel Putnam higher in its army. Spencer went home in a pet, hurting his reputation. He returned to the army, but his documented contribution to the siege is almost nil.

In 1777 the Congress assigned Spencer to drive the British out of Newport, Rhode Island. He spent many months gathering troops, including militia called up from the nearby colonies, and then called off the campaign.

In 1850 Benjamin Cowell wrote in Spirit of ’76 in Rhode Island:

One of the old soldiers from Massachusetts who is still living, but nearly a hundred years old, told the writer that one morning, General Spencer coming out of his Quarters, found the following doggerell in large letters placed in full view:

“Israel wanted bread
The Lord sent them Manna—
Rhode Island wants a head
And Congress sends a granny”

This was enough; after this, the Major General was called “Granny Spencer” as long as he remained in Rhode Island.

How solid is that story?

The nickname is very solid, according to mentions in Revolutionary War pension applications both before and after Cowell’s book:

• Benjamin Cole, 1832: “…the company belonged to the division of militia under General Spencer. The applicant says they used to call him ‘Granny Spencer.’”
• Jonathan Waterhouse, 1833: “The Genl. was called Granny Spencer, a Coward…”
• David Coy, 1853: “That the General commending at the time of his serving in that station he thinks was Spencer, who was at Providence and he thinks he was not a brave man as they used to call him Granny Spencer.”

In addition, in 1992 the New England Historic and Genealogical Register reported Daniel Matteson’s heirs applied for a pension by saying he “Served under General ‘Granny’ Spencer.” I bet a search of the files would yield even more references. And unlike the undocumented stories about “Granny Gates” (which I accepted myself until this month), Spencer’s nickname was not a fond one.

[As I wrote before, the image above comes courtesy of the Colonel Spencer Inn in Campton, New Hampshire. I have no idea if it’s an accurate portrait of the man.]

Gen. Washington’s “three Grand Divisions”

The day before Gen. George Washington wrote his letter asking Gen. John Thomas to stay with the Continental Army, he announced a new organization for those troops outside Boston. This was the first time the new commander-in-chief had changed how those forces operated, thus the first major exercise of his new authority.

Washington faced two short-term problems: the Boston and Charlestown Necks. Since the Battle of Bunker Hill, the British military controlled both those towns, well protected on their peninsulas. Washington feared that at any time the royal troops could charge out either isthmus, breaking through the Continentals’ lines. As soon as he and Gen. Charles Lee arrived in Massachusetts in early July 1775, their first priority was strengthening the fortifications at the base of those two necks.

Gen. Washington’s longer-term problem was strengthening the Continental Army as an institution. He wanted his soldiers, both officers and men, to think of themselves as protecting the united colonies, not as men from separate colonies committed only to officers they knew. Washington was also trying to soothe the hurt feelings that came from how the Continental Congress in Philadelphia had ranked the generals.

The 22 July reorganization of the American army into “three Grand Divisions,” each containing two brigades, addressed all those problems. Washington didn’t explain his thinking at length, so I can’t even say for sure what his purpose was or whether this was all his idea. But this is the effect of the change.

On his northern wing at Winter Hill and Prospect Hill, facing off against the British troops in Charlestown, Washington placed Maj. Gen. Lee, Brig. Gen. John Sullivan of New Hampshire, and Brig. Gen. Nathanael Greene of Rhode Island. Lee was the most experienced military man in the Continental forces, so he could bring along those young brigadiers, neither of whom had ever been in a war.

On the southern wing in Roxbury and Dorchester, protecting against a charge off the Boston Neck, Washington placed Maj. Gen. Artemas Ward, Brig. Gen. Thomas, and Brig. Gen. Joseph Spencer of Connecticut. Those officers were all war veterans, and Ward and Thomas had been the top New England commanders before Washington arrived, so he could trust them to handle whatever came up on the far side of the Charles River.

Finally, in the center at east Cambridge, Washington placed Maj. Gen. Israel Putnam, Brig. Gen. William Heath, and a brigadier to be named later. This division was to function as “also a Corps-de-Reserve, for the defence of the several posts, north of Roxbury, not already named.” Creating it had the added benefit of ensuring that Putnam didn’t oversee Spencer, who had objected to his former subordinate’s new rank, and Heath and Thomas needn’t have awkward discussions of their relative seniority.

As part of this reorganization, Washington assigned some of the many Massachusetts regiments to the northern wing even though it had no Massachusetts general. Soon he would mix in the new companies of riflemen from the south, assigning them to different brigades as needed. That was the start of Gen. Washington’s effort to meld regiments from different colonies/states into a single, national force.

TOMORROW: One last detail—does anyone remember Gen. Frye?

“Better…to lose four Spencers than half a Putnam”

As I described yesterday, the biggest managerial challenge Gen. George Washington faced when he arrived in Cambridge on 2 July 1775 was sorting out the generals who would serve under him. The Continental Congress had made a list of major and brigadier generals, but its ranking didn’t match the set of commanders Washington found in Massachusetts or how they had organized themselves.

Fortunately, the commander-in-chief had some help in solving the problem. The nearby colonial governments did their part. After Nathaniel Folsom saw that the Congress had chosen John Sullivan to be the one general from New Hampshire (based on the enthusiastic recommendation of Congress delegate John Sullivan), he went home. And New Hampshire put him in charge of its militia.

Similarly, the Massachusetts government saved face for John Whitcomb, who hadn’t been that enthusiastic about serving in the army, by electing him to its Council. During a Continental Army inquiry in late July witnesses still called him “General Whitcomb,” but the official record referred to him as “Colonel John Whitcomb, who is styled by the foregoing deponents General.”

Joseph Spencer had stormed off to Hartford, Connecticut, to complain that the Congress had promoted Israel Putnam over him. He brought a letter signed by many Connecticut officers supporting him. But that action hurt his cause by making him look selfish and unprofessional.

On 11 July young officer Samuel Blachley Webb wrote to his stepfather, Congress delegate Silas Deane:

I have since been to Roxbury, and find the officers, many of them, heartily sick of what they have done, in particular, Maj. [Return Jonathan] Meiggs,—who says he was forced to sign what the others did—to keep peace; and says he had rather serve under Putnam than Spencer. You’ll find Generals Washington and [Charles] Lee, are vastly more fond, and think higher of Putnam, than any man in the army. . . . Better is it for us to lose four Spencers than half a Putnam.

In Philadelphia, Deane and his colleague Eliphalet Dyer were so embarrassed they agreed not to seek any promotion for Spencer from the Congress.

Back in Hartford the colony’s Committee of Safety handled the matter:

Samuel Huntington and William Williams were desired to wait on General Spencer, at Gray’s, the tavern where he was just arrived, and confer with him on the subject-matter of his dissatisfaction, &c., and endeavour to remove, &c., and reconcile him cheerfully to pursue the service; which they did accordingly.

Spencer rode back to the siege lines, arriving on 19 July. In later years, Washington probably wouldn’t have accepted Spencer’s behavior, but on that date the commander-in-chief had been on the job less than three weeks. Spencer was almost two decades older and had served in King George’s War and the Seven Years’ War. His name was on that official Continental Army commission. It was easier for Washington to overlook Spencer’s hissyfit than to make an issue of it.

Nevertheless, Gen. Washington probably didn’t harbor warm feelings about this brigadier. And Gen. Spencer made no particular contribution to the siege. Later in the war he commanded one campaign, an aborted attack on British positions at Newport, and then served in a single session of the Continental Congress.

[The image above comes courtesy of the Colonel Spencer Inn in Campton, New Hampshire. I have no idea if it’s an accurate portrait of the man.]

TOMORROW: Saving Gen. Thomas.

The Generals in Cambridge: “Uneasiness among us”

When Nathaniel Folsom, newly appointed general of the New Hampshire troops, arrived at the siege of Boston in late June 1775, he found this chain of command:

Mr. [Artemas] Ward [shown here] is Capt. General, Mr. [John] Thomas Lieut. General, and the other Generals are Major Generals.

Those others included William Heath, Joseph Frye, and John Whitcomb of Massachusetts; Joseph Spencer and Israel Putnam of Connecticut; and Nathanael Greene of Rhode Island, as well as Folsom himself.

I wrote about Folsom’s difficulty asserting his authority over Col. John Stark back here. One week after the New Hampshire officers had worked out their differences, Gen. George Washington arrived in Cambridge and upset the whole arrangement.

There doesn’t seem to have been any resistance to the Virginian becoming the Continental Congress’s new commander-in-chief. Rather, he also brought along the Congress’s commissions for subordinate generals, and they didn’t match the situation on the ground. Ward had already written to John Hancock that the new appointments might “create Uneasiness among us; which we ought, at this critical Time, to be extremely careful to avoid.”

The Congress has decided to rank the generals under Washington this way:

• as major generals, Ward, Charles Lee, Philip Schuyler of New York, and Putnam.
• as brigadier generals, Seth Pomeroy of Massachusetts, Richard Montgomery of New York, David Wooster of Connecticut, Heath, Spencer, Thomas, John Sullivan of New Hampshire, Greene, and Horatio Gates.

Schuyler, Montgomery, and Wooster were assigned to the defense of northern New York/invasion of southern Canada.

The New England delegates in the Congress had tried to replicate the seniority of their colonies’ militia officers, and were also swayed by reports of the Battle of Lexington and Concord (which Heath had participated in) and the skirmish over Noddle’s Island (which Putnam had led). The Congress therefore elevated Putnam over Spencer even though Connecticut had ranked Putnam third among its generals. The Congress also made Heath outrank Thomas even though Heath was taking orders from Thomas.

In addition, the Congress hadn’t learned several things. Pomeroy had never accepted his general’s rank in the Massachusetts army (though he had fought in the Battle of Bunker Hill). Frye, Whitcomb, and Folsom were all exercising commands in the army outside Boston. And on 23 June the Massachusetts Provincial Congress had voted to make Col. Richard Gridley of the artillery regiment into another major general.

By the time Washington realized what a mess this was, he had already given Putnam his commission as Continental major general and couldn’t take it back. On 10 July he wrote to Philadelphia:

The great Dissatisfaction expressed on this Subject & the apparent Danger of throwing the whole Army into the utmost Disorder, together with the strong Representations made by the Provincial Congress, have induced me to retain the Commissions in my Hands untill the pleasure of the Congress should be farther known…

In fact, on 5 July, only three days after the new commander reached Cambridge, Spencer had convinced a large number of Connecticut officers to sign a letter to their legislature protesting the Congress’s decision and then set off for Hartford to deliver it himself. Or, as Washington wrote, “General Spencer was so much disgusted at the Preference given to General Puttnam, that he left the Army without visiting me, or making known his Intentions in any Respect.”

And Gen. Thomas was talking about leaving, too.

TOMORROW: Gen. Washington handles his first managerial crisis.