“Breathe their Last within the walls of his Detestable General Hospital”

As I quoted yesterday, in September 1775 commanders of the northern wing of the Continental Army besieging Boston were upset with how Surgeon-General Benjamin Church was ordering sick and wounded men moved to his hospitals in Cambridge.

Gen. John Sullivan and Dr. Hall Jackson complained that there were sick people at those hospitals! Meaning men would be more likely to catch infections there than anywhere else.

In addition, the doctors looked down on New Hampshire men as country bumpkins, and Dr. Church and his assistant surgeons weren’t as skilled as Jackson himself.

Well, Jackson didn’t come right out and say that last part (Sullivan did), but on 16 September he lambasted the central army hospitals this way:

Not an Officer or Soldier [from New Hampshire] will go to the Cambridge Hospital, they had much rather provide for themselves at Mistick at any expense, or even die in Camp with their friends than be forced into a General Hospital cram’d with the sick of 25,000 Troops; and attended by strangers from polite Places, who have never been used to the inquisitiveness and impatience of poor Country People, and are in general to apt to conster their simplicity into impertinence: it is the mind of General Sullivan, and all the Officers from New Hampshire, that unless some alteration is made, another Regiment will never be raised in that Colony.

Capt. [Henry] Dearbourn, with many others, are gone to Canada, for no other reason than to avoid the Sickness of our Camp, and dread of the general Hospital.

The arts, contrivance, and hypocricy, of some of the M—u—setts Patriots is dam—a—ble to the last degree. “A Struggle for Liberty”!—good God! my Soul abhors the Idea! If methodically to kill the wounded; to starve the sick, and languishing because they cannot Diet on Salt Pork, or will not submit to be severed from their dearest friends and relations, if these (my Dear Friend) are the Characteristicks of an Army raised for the defence of Liberty, I frankly confess I have no claim to an employment in the glorious Cause.

When Jackson wrote those words, however, the army had already formally looked into the dispute. On 7 September, Gen. George Washington laid set out a formal process in his general orders:

Repeated Complaints being made by the Regimental Surgeons, that they are not allowed proper Necessaries for the Use of the sick before they become fit Objects for the General Hospital: And the Director General of the hospital complains, that contrary to the Rule of every established army, these Regimental Hospitals are more expensive than can be conceived; which plainly indicates that there is either an unpardonable Abuse on one side, or an inexcusable neglect on the other—

And Whereas the General is exceedingly desirous of having the utmost care taken of the sick (wherever placed and in every stage of their disorder) but at the same time is determin’d, not to suffer any impositions on the public;

he requires and orders, that the Brigadiers General with the commanding Officers of each Regiment in his brigade; do set as a Court of enquiry into the Causes of these Complaints, and that they summon the Director General of the hospital, and their several Regimental Surgeons before them, and have the whole matter fully investigated and reported—This enquiry to begin on the left of the Line to morrow, at the hour of ten in Genl Sullivan’s brigade.

That inquiry ended a week later with Church being cleared of all charges. Jackson’s letter was thus carrying on an argument he had already officially lost.

There must have been similar disputes in other parts of the army because Washington ordered the same sort of inquiry in Gen. William Heath’s brigade in the central part of the lines, then in the brigades on the south wing. The commander-in-chief evidently felt that this process would force everyone to an agreement.

The second inquiry likewise ended in praise for Church. But by then the surgeon-general had left the front, pleading illness. Church even sent in his resignation from Taunton. Adjutant-General Horatio Gates wrote the doctor a flattering letter urging him to come back.

Then suddenly the conflict was resolved by an outside factor: The baker Godfrey Wenwood came to Washington’s headquarters from Newport with a ciphered letter that his ex-wife had asked him to send into Boston. Under questioning, that woman, née Mary Butler, admitted she had handled the letter for her lover—Dr. Church!

The 30 September inquiry in Gen. Joseph Spencer’s brigade was called off “on account of the Indisposition of Dr Church.” That phrase in Washington’s general orders was cover for the fact that Church was under arrest in one of his hospital buildings (shown above) for secretly corresponding with the British military.

On 4 October, Sullivan wrote in triumph:

You will by this Post Receive Intelligence from head-Quarters of Dr. Church’es having been detected in holding a Treasonable Correspondence with the Enemy—his Behaviour Towards our Sick & wounded long since Convinced me that he either was void of humanity and Judgment, or that he was Determined by untimely Removals & Neglect of Duty to Let all those under his care breathe their Last within the walls of his Detestable General Hospital.

On 17 October, Dr. Hall Jackson returned to Portsmouth. Since June, he had been working with no rank or salary. The next month, New Hampshire’s provincial government recognized his service with a commission as chief surgeon for the colony’s troops and back pay.

COMING UP: Back to Capt. Sylvanus Lowell, wounded in 1773. But first, a Sestercentennial event.

“To write one time no want of powder and at another not so great a plenty”

The 23 July 1775 letter from Dr. Benjamin Church, Jr., that I quoted yesterday never made it into Boston.

Church gave it to his mistress in Little Cambridge, Mary Butler, and she asked her ex-husband in Newport, the baker Godfrey Wenwood (or Wainwood), to pass it on to royal officials to take into Boston.

Instead, the baker sat on the document. But Dr. Church couldn’t know that. Just a few days later, he discovered a quicker way to send messages into Boston, piggybacking on Gen. George Washington’s own espionage route.

Eventually, Dr. Church realized the letter he’d sent by his mistress had never arrived, and he asked her about it. She asked her ex-husband. He grew even more suspicious and took the document to Rhode Island’s Patriot authorities on 26 September.

That set in motion the chain of events that led to the deciphering of the letter, Washington’s interrogation of Mary Butler, and Dr. Church’s arrest by the end of the month.

That summer, Church had sat through a series of inquiries about how he as Surgeon General ran the Continental Army hospitals. (Regimental surgeons disliked him encroaching on their territory.) On 19 September, Church asked for a leave to visit his family in Rhode Island. The next day, he sent Gen. Washington his resignation. Adjutant General Horatio Gates cited the commander’s “his unwillingness to part with a good officer” and asked Church to reconsider.

On 24 September, Dr. Church sent a new letter full of intelligence about the Continental camp into Boston. We know this one arrived because it survives in Gen. Thomas Gage’s files.

Among many other things, Church discussed the Continental gunpowder supply. As I quoted yesterday, back in July he had said there was lots of powder. In late September he wrote:

the Accot I sent you that our Army was Supplyed largely with powder is not so, instead of our peoples having Ninety Tons of powder from Philadelphia they did but Nine as I find by the Commessary and from New York Six for Sixty as is declared all over the Camp, but when it got down here it was no more than I now write you, they have got some little from different Quarters by some means but I am bould to say, not enough to stand a long Siege. We are made to believe that we are to have large Quantitys in a very short time, they have sent different ways, that I know, for powder and without every good look out they will get [difficulties?],

You will think me an odd fellow to write one time no want of powder and at another not so great a plenty—but Sir, never was a people lead on blindfold and so imposed on as this people have been with respect to Arms and Amunition: I am not alone in this matter I heard Mr. [John] Hancock Say the very day he came from Congress that we had more Powder on the Road coming to the Camp, than we could Expend in one twelve months, this was believed by all coming from Hancock.

The Army begin to inquire for themselves, about these matters, and are not satisfied to find themselves so deceived in a matter of so much importance. but our Chiefs say, it is absolutely necessary, nay Justifiable for such reports when all is at Stake, and the Courage of the Soldiers must be kept up high by some means or other.

This letter would have completely destroyed Church’s claim that his July letter showed he was exaggerating the Continental Army’s strength. After he learned about the gunpowder shortage, he passed that news on to the British commander.

It also hints at another source on the Continentals’ confidence about their gunpowder: none other than John Hancock, chair of the Congress. He visited Cambridge in mid-July and surely met with his longtime colleague there. Shortly afterward, Church sent his original dispatch describing how “Powder mills are erected and constantly employed.” By September, the doctor no longer believed that.

TOMORROW: More from Dr. Church’s letter.

New Study of Dr. Benjamin Church

John A. Nagy has written two books on espionage in the Revolutionary War: Invisible Ink: Spycraft of the American Revolution and Spies in the Continental Capital: Espionage Across Pennsylvania During the American Revolution.

For his third, he turned to the first notable Patriot to be revealed (somewhat) as secretly slipping information to the Crown: Dr. Benjamin Church, Spy: A Case of Espionage on the Eve of the American Revolution.

I say “somewhat” because Gen. George Washington and Massachusetts General Court couldn’t come up with ironclad proof of Church’s treachery. He admitted to sending his brother-in-law John Fleeming a letter in cipher that described the Continental Army in detail. But that description overstated the American strength. Did Church actually believe the figures he wrote? Was he communicating in some previously arranged code? Or was he playing a double game, trying to bluff the British out of attacking the Continental siege lines?

In the end, the American authorities couldn’t answer those questions solidly enough to convict Church of spying. (It didn’t help that the Continental Congress’s committee to write regulations for the army, originally chaired by Washington, hadn’t taken the possibility of such betrayal into account.) The Congress ordered Church confined without trial, tried to exchange him for a British officer, and finally sent him into exile.

The Revolutionary generation wrote a lot about Church, but much of it seems rooted in guesswork tinged by hindsight rather than hard evidence. Research over the past hundred years, especially after Gen. Thomas Gage’s intelligence files became available, has shed more light on the doctor’s activities. It’s clear now that Church was disclosing sensitive information to Gage before the war began. But how long before? How much did he reveal? What were his motives, and did they change?

John Nagy has gone back over all the evidence that’s come out about Church. This is the first commercial book to use my study’s revelation that Dr. Church’s mistress, who betrayed him under pressure from Gen. Washington, was most likely Mary (Butler) Wenwood of Marblehead, estranged wife of Newport baker Godfrey Wenwood. The book is sure to be thorough.

And who knows? More information may yet surface. At his blog Ed Witek has just shared images of the doctor’s younger brother Edward and his family. Edward is the doctor’s only close blood relative for whom we have a portrait, so peering at his face is the closest we’ll probably come to looking Dr. Benjamin Church in the eyes.