Lt. Ragg in the Assault on Brooklyn

In June 1776, Lt. John Ragg of the marines was in Halifax, Nova Scotia, with the rest of the British military force evacuated from Boston.

In July, Ragg was in the fleet of forty-five ships that started unloading British soldiers onto Staten Island, New York.

More troop transports and Royal Navy warships arrived from other parts of the empire. By the end of July, Adm. Lord Richard Howe was overseeing more than one hundred ships while Gen. Sir William Howe commanded 32,000 soldiers.

Those numbers continued to grow in early August. Among the new arrivals were 8,000 Hessian soldiers.

On the morning 22 August, 4,000 redcoats moved onto Long Island. This was significantly more than the British force in the Battle of Bunker Hill, but it was only an advance guard, about a tenth of Howe’s entire land army.

The Americans drew back. By the end of that day, the British had landed 15,000 men at Gravesend Bay, with 5,000 more to follow a couple of days later.

The two armies dug in warily for the next two days. The Americans held the Brooklyn and Guan Heights, guarding the main passes.

Late in the evening of 26 August, Gen. James Grant (1720–1806, shown above) sent a force of about 4,000 British and Hessian men forward against the Continentals. The first major skirmish was around the Red Lion Inn. The British captured the American commander, Maj. Edward Burd, and sent his forces fleeing.

Gen. Samuel Holden Parsons of Connecticut managed to gather Continental troops along the Gowanus Road and to send for reinforcements. Gen. Stirling arrived with about 1,500 men from Maryland and Delaware. Under his command, the Continentals moved back toward the Red Lion Inn.

Meanwhile, Gen. Grant’s Crown troops were also growing, up to 7,000. That force included the 2nd battalion of marines.

According to a letter written on 4 September by a British officer to a friend in Aberdeen, and published in the Scots Magazine, the marine battalion “was sent from our right to support Gen. Grant.”

In the fighting on 27 August, those marines came under “several fires” from a unit dressed in blue uniforms with red facings. Those were the colors of some Hessian regiments while most of the Continental Army had no uniforms at all, so the British officers assumed that was friendly fire.

Lt. Ragg and twenty men from his grenadier company were “sent out to speak to” those Hessians.

TOMORROW: They weren’t Hessians.

McCurdy on Flavell’s The Howe Dynasty

John G. McCurdy, author of Quarters, recently reviewed Julie Flavell’s The Howe Dynasty: The Untold Story of a Military Family and the Women behind Britain's Wars for America for H-Net.

McCurdy starts with the challenge of getting close to the British commanders in the Revolutionary War:

Some of these generals and admirals are unknowable because of their aristocratic stoicism and others because their papers have been lost. The Howe brothers are particularly enigmatic for both reasons…

Flavell’s approach was to widen her lens, so her book looks at multiple generations of the Howe family. More important, it looks at the female Howes, who left longer paper trails than the brothers but haven’t been well studied. In particular, Flavell drew on the letters of their sister Caroline.

When a set of sources is the only material you have, there’s always a challenge not to overstate their importance or the importance of the people who produced them. But Flavell makes the case for Caroline Howe as an important contributor to the family’s rise within the British establishment:

George, Richard, and William all headed to North America for the Seven Years’ War and earned accolades for their heroic service. Yet their success would have been impossible without the clever politicking of their mother, sisters, and wives. Because “a great deal of public business was also transacted in private settings,” Flavell observes, the dinners, parties, and visits “gave women many informal levers of influence” (p. 51).

Following Britain’s victory in the war, the brothers returned to England with three simultaneously holding seats in Parliament. Wielding both official and unofficial power, the siblings constituted a formidable Howe “interest” (p. 103).

From inside Caroline’s residence at Number 12 Grafton Street, the Howes watched events in America build toward revolution. In one of the most compelling chapters of The Howe Dynasty, Flavell unearths that it was Caroline who arranged for peace talks between her brother Richard, Benjamin Franklin, and representatives of the cabinet in late 1774. Over a seemingly innocent game of chess, Caroline orchestrated “this last-ditch and secret government peace initiative” as the British government sought to prevent an imperial rupture (p. 137).

In 1776, Richard and William Howe were back in America, tasked with both commanding the imperial military and negotiating peace. A little more than a year later, William had taken the American capital while Richard maintained the Royal Navy’s command of the sea. That wasn’t enough.

Yet even indomitable women could not salvage William’s command after the British loss at Saratoga. Although William seized Philadelphia and dealt Washington’s army another blow, his decision to leave the Hudson Valley to General John Burgoyne was assailed in the British press once Burgoyne surrendered and the French entered the war on the side of the Americans. In May 1778, Sir William Howe departed for England, leaving the war to other men.

For the remainder of the American Revolutionary War, the Howes fought for their reputation in London. They demanded a Parliamentary investigation into their leadership, which they received although William was not exonerated. Even Caroline lost her influence. As the Howe interest declined, she was no longer “courted as a woman who had the ear of government ministers” (p. 313).

Because she didn’t. The family that rose together subsided together. Ultimately, however, Richard won a major naval victory against Revolutionary France, restoring the Howe stature.

“Men in that kind of situation are not very prone to a change of government.”

As Parliament’s 31 Oct 1776 debate over the American War went on, the next speaker was Sir Herbert Mackworth, recently made a baronet.

The Parliamentary Register described his speech this way:

Sir Herbert Mackworth professed himself to be one of the independent country gentlemen, and declared, he feared that matters were much misrepresented; that he did not like to hear gentlemen so ready to find a plea for the Americans on every occasion, and even when they were beat, to hunt after a reason to shew that they could not avoid it, and that some particular circumstances occasioned it.

He said, he was ever most clearly against that House attempting to tax America, as America was not represented in that House; but he thought it highly necessary to maintain the right; and that it was but reasonable America should contribute something in return for the millions she had cost this country. He spoke highly in favour of some of the gentlemen in opposition, but applauded the ministry; finally declaring, that as an antient Briton, he felt for the honour of his country, and therefore wished her success; not but he would be glad that a proper treaty for reconciliation was on foot, and he owned he cared not whether it was with rebels in arms or without them.

If you’re unsure about how Sir Herbert came down on the issues at hand, the recorder took pains to clarify: “He was against the amendment.” In other words, for how to respond to the king’s speech, he supported Lord North’s government.

Thomas Townshend, a Whig, made several points about the king’s speech, among them:

There is, I think, one part of the speech which mentions a discovery of the original designs of the leaders of the Americans. In God’s name, who made them leaders? How came they to be so? If you force men together by oppression, they will form into bodies, and chuse leaders. Mr. [John] Hancock was a merchant of credit and opulence when this unhappy business first broke out. Men in that kind of situation are not very prone to a change of government.

In his wide-ranging speech, Townshend at one point noted that the prime minister had left the chamber.

Lord North returned and spoke at length—the first government supporter to get more than a paragraph in this Parliamentary Register. He started by expressing surprise at Townshend trying to make something of how he had left the chamber for “ten minutes, on a pressing business.” Among the minister’s other responses:

It has been more than once objected this night, that I have, since the commencement of the present troubles, held back such information as became necessary for you to know, in order the better to be able to decide upon measures proper to be pursued, relative to America.

Nothing can be more unjust and ill-founded than this charge. I have been ready at all times to communicate to this House every possible information that could be given with safety. I repeat with safety, because the very bad and mischievous consequences of disclosing the full contents of letters, with the writers’ names, has been already severely proved, and would, in the present situation of affairs, not only be impolitic, but might be to the last degree dangerous, if not fatal, to the persons immediately concerned.

He might have been referring to the leaks of letters from Gov. Francis Bernard, Gov. Thomas Hutchinson, and other royal officials in America.

Col. Isaac Barré, who had coined the term “Sons of Liberty” back in 1765, responded by stating that he believed Lord North was assiduous in attending debates. But he demanded to know “What powers were General [William] and Lord [Richard] Howe invested with as his Majesty’s Commissioners to treat with America?”

Lord North replied that the Howes’ commission had been published for everyone to see in the London Gazette, the government organ. Barré then pulled out a copy of the 5 Aug New-York Gazette and read a lengthy report of the Howes’ interactions with Gen. George Washington, suggesting more was going on.

Barré and North had another exchange over the threat of war with France and Spain, and whether certain warships were “nearly manned” or “partly manned.”

The Parliamentary Register quoted Barré saying, “Recall, therefore, your fleets and armies from America, and leave the brave colonists to the enjoyment of their liberty.”

This created a louder laugh than the former among the occupiers of the several official benches; which irritated the Colonel so much, that he reprehended the treasury-bench in terms of great asperity; he arraigned them with a want of manners, and declared, he thought professed courtiers had been better bred.

Barré wound up by suggesting Adm. Augustus Keppel be put in charge of the fleet. Keppel himself then made some remarks about the European powers’ naval readiness. (He wasn’t given an active command until 1778.)

Lord George Germain, secretary of state for North America (shown above), spoke to several points the opposition had raised, including:

As to the propositions which General Howe made to General Washington, they prove clearly, as the Americans themselves state the matter, that General Howe was eager for the means of peace and conciliation; but Washington against them. However, General Howe will doubtless be able to put New-York at the mercy of the King; after which the legislature will be restored, and an opportunity will thereby be given for the well affected to declare themselves, who are ready to make proper submission.

Germain was in no mood for compromise.

TOMORROW: Concluding remarks and the vote.

The 2022 George Washington Prize Finalists

Last week the Washington College, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and Mount Vernon announced the finalists of the 2022 George Washington Prize.

This prize was created to honor the “best works on the nation’s founding era, especially those that have the potential to advance broad public understanding of American history.” It comes with a significant cash award for the author.

In alphabetical order, this year’s five honored authors are:

• Max M. Edling, Perfecting the Union: National and State Authority in the U.S. Constitution
• Julie Flavell, The Howe Dynasty: The Untold Story of a Military Family and the Women Behind Britain’s Wars for America
• Jeffrey H. Hacker, Minds and Hearts: The Story of James Otis, Jr. and Mercy Otis Warren
• Bruce A. Ragsdale, Washington at the Plow: The Founding Farmer and the Question of Slavery
• David O. Stewart, George Washington: The Political Rise of America’s Founding Father

As usual, the selection includes books about Washington himself but also books that examine the Revolutionary era more broadly.

Mount Vernon would be happy to sell copies of these five books.

Two Talks about the Women behind the Commanders

Here are two more online talks to consider, both happening on Thursday but fortunately at different times.

Thursday, 2 December, 1:00 P.M.
New England Historic Genealogical Society
Julie Flavell, “The Howe Dynasty”

Many historians have documented the lives and exploits of Howe men including Richard Admiral Lord Howe and his younger brother British General Sir William Howe, victor in the Battle of Bunker Hill. But few have measured the influence of the Howe women including sister Caroline Howe, a friend of Benjamin Franklin, and her savvy aunt Mary Herbert Countess Pembroke.

Drawn from letters and correspondence, The Howe Dynasty sheds new light one of one of England’s most famous military families and forces us to reimagine the Revolutionary War. Don’t miss hearing about this unique and riveting narrative work and Julie Flavell’s discussion with the celebrated historian Mary Beth Norton.

Julie Flavell was born in Massachusetts and now lives in Britain. Her first book was When London Was Capital of America. Mary Beth Norton is the Mary Donlon Alger Professor of American History Emerita at Cornell University, and her latest book is 1774.

Register for this event here.

Thursday, 2 December, 6:30 P.M.
Fraunces Tavern Museum
Martha Sexton, “Mary Ball Washington: George’s Good Enough Mother”

This lecture provides a sketch of the challenging life of Mary Ball Washington, who raised George and his four siblings largely alone—as well as her unfair treatment at the hands of his biographers.

Saxton’s book The Widow Washington is the first life of Mary Washington based on archival sources. Her son’s biographers have, for the most part, painted her as self-centered and crude, a trial and an obstacle to her oldest child. But the records tell a very different story.

Mary Ball, the daughter of a wealthy planter and a formerly indentured servant, was orphaned young and grew up working hard, practicing frugality and piety. Stepping into Virginia’s upper class, she married an older man, the planter Augustine Washington, with whom she had five children before his death eleven years later. As a widow deprived of most of her late husband’s properties, Mary struggled to raise her children, but managed to secure them places among Virginia’s elite. As such, Mary Ball Washington had a greater impact on George than mothers of that time and place usually had on their sons.

Martha Saxton is a professor of history and women’s and gender studies at Amherst College. She is the author of several books, including Louisa May Alcott: A Modern Biography.

This lecture will take place via Zoom. Register here by 5:30 P.M. on the day of the lecture.

There Once Was a Man from Virginia

Yesterday the Journal of the American Revolution observed Independence Day (Observed) by publishing contributors’ limericks about the Declaration of Independence.

I had one in that bunch, but I wrote others before choosing which to submit. Since the J.A.R. would publish only one, I’m sharing the rest here, you lucky people.

Here’s the verse that appeared in the J.A.R. round-up:

“Since our new circumstances allow,”
Said Congress, “we’ll separate now!”
But all the while,
Upon Staten Isle
A British advance force asked, “Howe?”

On 2 July 1776, the Continental Congress voted for independence, and on 4 July it approved its formal public declaration. In between, on 3 July, the British military under Adm. Richard Howe and Gen. William Howe began to land 10,000 troops on Staten Island.

Here’s one in the voice of Thomas Jefferson:

“With high-minded principles, my
Declaration nobly states why
We plan to leave, and says
Plenty of grievances,
But the bottom line’s ‘This is goodbye.’”

And speaking of grievances, some analyses of the Declaration’s complaints:

The king like a tyrant “assented”
To laws unjust and resented.
A well-founded cause?
A lot of those laws
Were never in fact implemented.

The king brought on “Indian savages,”
Well known for their “merciless” ravages.
That abuse was the worst!
(Though we did do it first,
So it all evened out in the averages.)

On John Adams’s immediate response to the vote:

Independency, John Adams reckoned,
Would be glorious, far-reaching, and fecund.
But as for the dating,
He foresaw celebrating
Not on the 4th, but the 2nd.

Finally, what turned out to be a well-founded anecdote about Benjamin Harrison, Elbridge Gerry, and signing the Declaration:

Big Harrison said to wee Gerry,
“After signing this, you should be wary.
When it comes time to hang, I’ll
Die quick, but you’ll dangle
For hours, and that will be scary.”

Enjoy the Fourth!

Sir William Howe’s Banner on Display in Penn

Yesterday Dr. Sushma Jansari of the British Museum shared this photograph in a tweet. She and her family had stopped at the Holy Trinity Church in Penn, Buckinghamshire, for tea, and found this banner displayed on a wall inside.

At the right of the banner is the name “Sir William Howe.” The recently made label nearby says that Gen. Sir William Howe had this personal emblem carried at the Battle of Bunker Hill. Naturally, that caught my interest.

However, the label also states that battle took place in New York, so it’s not fully reliable. At least it's more on target than some tourist guides to the church, which say that Sir William Howe won the Glorious First of June in 1794. That was his older brother, Adm. Lord Richard Howe.

The label describes the Howe coat of arms as featuring “Three black dogs’ heads with red tongues.” I’m sure the College of Heralds would prefer those animals to be identified as wolves. But that’s definitely the Howe family arms, and the Howes (a later series of earls) built this church in Penn in 1849 and supported it since.

What piqued my curiosity about this banner was that Gen. Howe wasn’t knighted until late in 1776, a year after the Battle of Bunker Hill. So his troops definitely didn’t carry the banner in this form, with “Sir William Howe” sewn into it, in Charlestown. Did they display it in 1777 and 1778 as Howe served as commander-in-chief in Philadelphia and New York?

I haven’t found any printed mention of Sir William Howe’s banner besides what’s connected with this church. I’m hoping that some people who study flags of the Revolutionary era might know about this emblem or similar ones.

According to that tradition (and again, our sources aren't flawless), Gen. Howe’s banner “hung for many years in Westminster Abbey.” I suspect it was part of the memorial to his older brother George, a beloved army commander killed in the French and Indian War. The statue anchoring that memorial was actually funded in 1759 by the grateful province of Massachusetts.

Up until 1884 there were “military trophies and flags behind” Viscount George Howe’s monument in a “window embrasure,” as shown in a sketch on the abbey’s website. But in that year the statue was moved “so that American visitors could see it more easily.” Sir William’s banner might then have been sent off to the church in Penn.

Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy’s Massachusetts Tour

Prof. Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy of the University of Virginia will give two public talks in Massachusetts next week, both on his book The Men Who Lost America: British Leadership, the Revolutionary War and the Fate of Empire.

Here’s a précis of the book:

The loss of America was a stunning and unexpected defeat for the powerful British Empire. Common wisdom has held that incompetent military commanders and political leaders must have been to blame, but were they? O’Shaughnessy dispels the incompetence myth and uncovers the real reasons that rebellious colonials were able to achieve their surprising victory.

On Tuesday, 10 April, O’Shaughnessy will kick off the American Antiquarian Society’s Spring Public Lecture Series. That free event starts at 7:00 P.M. in Antiquarian Hall, 185 Salisbury Street in Worcester.

On Wednesday, 11 April, he’ll deliver the Lexington Historical Society’s Cronin Lecture. This free talk is co-sponsored by the Friends of Minute Man National Park and His Majesty’s 10th Regiment of Foot. The evening starts at 6:00 P.M. with a reception in the Lexington Depot, and the lecture is scheduled for 7:00 P.M.

At both events copies of The Men Who Lost America will be available for sale and signing. The book has won many awards, including the George Washington Book Prize, the New-York Historical Society Annual American History Book Prize, The National Society Daughters of the American Revolution Excellence in American History Book Award, and the Fraunces Tavern Museum Book Award.

It’s also a handsome, nicely packaged book. I’ve started to read it multiple times, and I keep running into the problem that Prof. O’Shaughnessy and I have fundamentally different ideas about how to use commas. But obviously other readers haven’t been stopped that way, and sooner or later I’ll try again.

“Trial, for the supposed Murther of Henry Sparker”

On 3 June 1768, three Royal Navy officers went on trial in Newport, Rhode Island, for stabbing a local shoemaker named Henry Sparker.

That killing the previous month had reportedly caused an angry crowd to threaten to lynch the officers. Later chroniclers tied that tension to the political turmoil in America since the Stamp Act, but ordinary friction between the navy and civilian sailors, particularly over impressment, might have played a bigger role.

Oliver Arnold, the colony’s attorney general, prosecuted the case. Joseph Russell presided as chief justice, and the other judges that year were Metcalf Bowler, William Greene, Nathaniel Searle, and Samuel Nightingale. (Unlike in the Massachusetts system, Rhode Island superior court judges were elected for short terms instead of appointed for life by the Crown.) I don’t know who represented the defendants.

On 6 June 1768, the Newport Mercury reported on the trial:

Last Friday, at the Superior Court, held here, Mr. Robert Young, Mr. Thomas Carless, and Mr. Charles John Marshall…had their Trial, for the supposed Murther of Henry Sparker. The Jury, consisting of Gentlemen of Capacity and undoubted Reputation, having heard the Case plead, with the Evidences and Circumstances attending the unhappy Affair, went out, and in a few Minutes returned to their Seats, and declared the Prisoners not Guilty, the Verdict being to the entire Satisfaction of the Court; and accordingly the Prisoners were immediately and honourably discharged.—

N.B. Mr. Dexter, the other Person wounded, is now almost recovered: His Evidence was greatly in Favour of the Prisoners.

The Mercury printer, Solomon Southwick, clearly tried to present that outcome as just, emphasizing the jurors’ respectability and speed. A month before, a report had suggested that Philip Dexter “could not long survive”; this story insisted he was “now almost recovered.” It’s not clear whether Dexter testified that he didn’t think the officers were really guilty or whether his description of his own actions that night revealed that he had been the aggressor—as a report in the Boston Chronicle certainly suggested.

Actual court records may say more about this case. The newspapers don’t even state which officer was accused of fatally wounding Sparker, but nineteenth-century historians said that was Midshipman Careless.

According to Capt. John Henry Duncan’s diary, published in The Naval Miscellany, in 1776 Midn. Thomas Careless was assigned to the Eagle. That ship carried Adm. Richard Howe to North America as he came to take over the war. Unlike most of his fellow midshipmen, Careless never rose to the rank of captain.

Careless’s captain back in 1768, Thomas Cookson, died in November 1775—not in the war but at age sixty-five in London. His son George, then fifteen years old, had already entered the Royal Navy, but Lord North sent him instead to the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich instead, and he became an officer in the Royal Artillery in 1778. He fought through the wars with Revolutionary and Napoleonic France and ended his military career as a general.

Taking Stock of Richard Stockton

Back in 2008 I wrote a series of postings about Richard Stockton, a judge from New Jersey who signed the Declaration of Independence in August 1776. Four months later he was in the custody of the British army.

As I discussed in my first posting, the standard story of Stockton for the past century and a half matches this passage from the Society of the Descendants of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence:

Judge Richard Stockton was the only signer to be put in irons, starved and imprisoned under brutal conditions by the British four months after signing the Declaration of Independence.

He reportedly became ill, returned home to find his estate ruined, and died poor and sick as a result of his imprisonment.

My postings pointed out that after Stockton’s release his contemporaries, family members, and clergy didn’t speak of the British army treating him cruelly. (His colleagues did worry while he was in custody in December 1776 and they had little information.) Instead, as soon as Stockton came home, fellow members of the Continental Congress wrote ruefully about how he had “sued for pardon” and “Rec’d General How’s protection.” He resigned from the Congress; rebuilt his health, estate, and legal career; and died of an oral cancer in 1781.

In 2009 Loyalist expert Todd Braisted, now author of Grand Forage 1778, provided a gun with at least a wisp of smoke coming from it: a document showing that Adm. Lord Richard Howe and Gen. Sir William Howe had granted Stockton “a full pardon” by 29 Dec 1776. That cut the judge’s time in enemy hands to less than a month. It also strongly suggested he had reached some sort of deal with the Howes—if not a loyalty oath to the Crown then (as I rather suspect) an agreement between gentlemen to sit out the war.

My articles also discussed how the legend of Stockton’s suffering blossomed in the early 1800s as the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration approached. They really took off in the latter part of that century, despite some evidence to contradict the story and no solid evidence for its more extreme claims. That story turned Stockton into one of New Jersey’s most honored heroes, namesake of Stockton University and subject of a statue in the U.S. Capitol.

Christian McBurney has now rounded up all that material about Stockton and more in an article at the Journal of the American Revolution titled “Was Richard Stockton a Hero?” McBurney has become an expert on captures during the Revolutionary War, the topic of his books Kidnapping the Enemy: The Special Operations to Capture Generals Charles Lee & Richard Prescott and Abductions in the American Revolution: Attempts to Kidnap George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and Other Military and Civilian Leaders. The latter book covers the Stockton capture.

McBurney’s article concludes:

To summarize, I believe Richard Stockton showed great courage in signing the Declaration of Independence. For that reason, and for other work he performed as a Patriot, I believe he is a hero of the American Revolution. But because strong evidence indicates that he signed an oath of allegiance to the Crown, I do not believe he should be celebrated as one of New Jersey’s greatest heroes.

There will no doubt be pushback from fans, descendants, and others invested in the story of Richard Stockton as a martyr for independence.

A New Song: “The British Steel”

Earlier this year Michael Laird Rare Books of Texas offered for sale a rare chapbook printed in Newcastle, England, titled A Garland, Containing Four New Songs.

One of those songs, “The British Steel,” is still new to the standard databases, as is the little book itself. The title page has no date, but that song is all about the American War, so we can date the publication to the very end of 1776 or the first months of 1777.

The song extols British victories at Québec and New York. It even refers to “Undaunted Hessian heroes” and the Americans’ notorious “rifled guns.” The lyrics drop the names of several British commanders, including Guy Carleton, Allan Maclean, Henry Clinton, Percy, and John Burgoyne, but not that of Adm. Richard Howe and Gen. William Howe. Since those brothers were the commanders in America, and their name is easy to fit into verse, I wonder if their omission was intentional.

Here are the last two verses, with the error-ridden typography intact:

See yond, see yond, to yonder comes the great Burgoyne,
His well displin’d troops proclaim is warlike skills,
Curse Hancock and his Congress crew, who us into rebellion drew,
And caus’d great George our sovereign Lord our blood to spill.

A boon, a boon, these ungrateful monster’s cry,
Pardon your deluded sons long time been led astray,
By wandering dreams of liberty, henceforth good subjects will be,
And as in duty bound we will for ever pray.

John Overholt of the Harvard University library system tweeted this week that his institution had acquired the book, so it should soon be available to researchers there.

A Old English “Whites of their Eyes”?

On 1 June 1794, the Royal Navy fought a fleet of French warships in the eastern Atlantic, an action that became known (in Britain, anyway) as “the Glorious First of June.”

There are two connections between this fight and America. First, the French warships were escorting a grain convoy from the U.S. of A. to Revolutionary France, and Britain wanted to interrupt that supply.

Second, the British commander was Adm. Richard Howe, by then Earl Howe (shown above), who with his brother Gen. Sir William Howe had once commanded the British forces in North America.

Because that battle was so close to London, before the month was out the the Gentleman’s Magazine published a detailed account of the action dated 14 June from “a Naval Correspondent of high Rank.” Among his comments:

Never was so much havock, and so complete a victory, gained in so short a time. Earl Howe plainly convinced the Sans culottes that he could yet shew them the Old English way of fighting, “not to fire before he could see the whites of their eyes.” The crews of the ships that sunk all perished; a fine gang for Old Davy indeed!

This presents an interesting foil to the report that I quoted yesterday, about Gen. Israel Putnam saying he’d given an order at Bunker Hill for his soldiers not to fire until they could see the whites of their enemies’ eyes. In between when Putnam reportedly made that claim (before he died in 1790) and when it appeared in print (in 1800), a British commander was quoted as using the same phrase. To add to the irony, Admiral Howe’s brother had commanded the troops facing Putnam in 1775.

The Gentleman’s Magazine correspondent suggested that holding fire till you see the white of their eyes was “the Old English way of fighting” (presumably as opposed to new-fangled, Revolutionary, Sans culottes methods). One might therefore expect to find a lot of earlier uses of the phrase in British military sources. But I haven’t turned up any. An equivalent phrase is documented in German sources in the mid-1700s, but that’s not “the Old English way of fighting,” is it?

Great Men and Ordinary Americans

In his New York Times review of Joseph J. Ellis’s Revolutionary Summer: The Birth of American Independence, Andrew Cayton of Miami University argued that the book is missing a very big part of what constituted a revolution:

It simply won’t do to talk about a revolutionary summer in which the only voices are those of prominent white men and the recollections of 15-year-old Joseph Plumb Martin, written decades later. Ellis includes a handful of paragraphs on women, enslaved Africans and working-class artisans. But they read like generic concessions to critics who have chastised him for celebrating already celebrated white men rather than the rest of North America’s diverse population. The point Ellis misses is that attention must be paid to the people outside Congress not from a desire to make history more inclusive but because their voices were loud and their choices important, not least in their impact on the actions of the men inside Congress.

Incorporating more people would fundamentally change Ellis’s story, making it messier and less predictable. The “conspicuous consensus” on independence that emerged in Congress occurred nowhere outside of New England. Nor, again, were the maneuvers of the British Army the only challenges confronting members of Congress. It seemed obvious to many Americans that a state of war had existed with Britain since shots were fired at Lexington on April 19, 1775. Everywhere ad hoc committees were creating new political institutions, agreeing with Thomas Paine in his best-selling “Common Sense” that monarchy, not George III, was the basic problem. Honest men could govern themselves better than “the Royal Brute of Britain” could; on the day Americans proclaimed a new charter of government in which “the law is king,” they should demolish a symbolic crown and scatter its pieces “among the people whose right it is.”

This stunning proposition horrified other Americans. Just as thousands were choosing independence because it promised revolution in favor of natural rights and self-government, so thousands were choosing the British Empire because they dreaded a democratic revolution that they feared would degenerate into anarchy and popular tyranny. Many believed the imperial tensions reflected inept administration rather than structural failure. Ellis writes that “most probably, a poll of the American population” in September 1776 “would have revealed a citizenry more politically divided and receptive” to Richard Howe’s peace terms “than the Continental Congress or its diplomatic representatives.” It is a point he fails to develop. [John] Adams spoke for a small percentage of the population. So did [John] Dickinson. . . .

In short, what made the summer of 1776 revolutionary was the range of options, the cacophony of voices, the increasing resort to violence, the growing sense that nothing was safe. Americans like to believe that their revolution as well as their independence was a moderate affair in which the founding fathers were in control of events rather than the other way around. Unfortunately, “Revolutionary Summer” reinforces that perception.

In a big sense, Ellis already responded to that sort of critique of his work twelve years earlier in his preface to Founding Brothers:

The apparently irresistible urge to capitalize and mythologize as “Founding Fathers” the most prominent members of the political leadership during this formative phase has some historical as well as psychological foundation, for in a very real sense we are, politically, if not genetically, still living their legacy. And the same principle also explains the parallel urge to demonize them, since any discussion of their achievement is also an implicit conversation about the distinctive character of American imperialism, both foreign and domestic.

A kind of electromagnetic field, therefore, surrounds this entire subject, manifesting itself as a golden haze or halo for the vast majority of contemporary Americans, or as a contaminated radioactive cloud for a smaller but quite vocal group of critics unhappy with what America has become or how we have gotten here. Within the scholarly community in recent years, the main tendency has been to take the latter side, or to sidestep the controversy by ignoring mainstream politics altogether. Much of the best work has taken the form of a concerted effort to recover the lost voices from the revolutionary generation—the daily life of Marsha Ballard as she raised a family and practiced midwifery on the Maine frontier; the experience of Venture Smith, a former slave who sustained his memories of Africa and published a memoir based on them in 1798. This trend is so pronounced that any budding historian who announces that he or she wishes to focus on the political history of the early republic and its most prominent practitioners is generally regarded as having inadvertently confessed a form of intellectual bankruptcy.

Though no longer a budding historian, my own efforts in recent years, including the pages that follow, constitute what I hope is a polite argument against the scholarly grain, based on a set of presumptions that are so disarmingly old-fashioned that they might begin to seem novel in the current climate. In my opinion, the central events and achievements of the revolutionary era and the early republic were political. These events and achievements are historically significant because they shaped the subsequent history of the United States, including our own time. The central players in the drama were not the marginal or peripheral figures, whose lives are more typical, but rather the political leaders at the center of the national story who wielded power. What's more, the shape and character of the political institutions were determined by a relatively small number of leaders who knew each other, who collaborated and collided with one another in patterns that replicated at the level of personality and ideology the principle of checks and balances imbedded structurally in the Constitution.

Given how much power elite men wielded in eighteenth-century society, it does make sense to look at their words and actions. And Cayton doesn’t argue that Revolutionary Summer should ignore the arguments of the politicians in Philadelphia. Rather, he reminds us that those men were influenced by the populace around them, sometimes in ways they didn’t recognize. It’s valuable to study the Revolution from both the top and the bottom.

And the fact that Ellis misspelled the name of Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s subject Martha Ballard as “Marsha” undercut his implicit claim to have carefully considered other approaches.

Meanwhile, in New York Harbor

This is the anniversary of a major turning-point in the Revolutionary War. Not because in 1776 the Continental Congress was debating how to publicly declare independence from Britain, as it had voted to do the day before. Rather, on 3 July 1776 the British military returned to the thirteen colonies in force, raising the conflict to a new level.

When Gen. William Howe evacuated Boston in March 1776, all thirteen colonies that had delegates in Philadelphia became basically free of royal control. Patriot leaders knew that situation wouldn’t last, but they enjoyed de facto independence and moved toward formalizing that status.

That spring Gen. Henry Clinton and Comm. Sir Peter Parker commanded a force off the Carolina coasts. In June they tried to take Charleston, South Carolina, the fourth-largest port on the Atlantic coast. In the Battle of Sullivan’s Island on 28 June, American troops fought off that force, but it was relatively small: about 2,200 British soldiers and no more than a dozen ships.

However, the next day a larger British fleet arrived in New York harbor. Gen. Howe had already sailed there from Halifax with most of his 9,000 troops to follow. But on 29 June his older brother, Adm. Richard Howe, arrived from Britain with the largest expeditionary force the Crown had yet assembled: 21,000 soldiers (12,000 British and 9,000 German). Soon Clinton and Parker would join the Howes.

Eventually the British naval force at New York included 73 warships and 300 other ships for transporting soldiers and supplies. But even on the first day the admiral’s fleet was imposing. On 29 June Pvt. Daniel McCurtin of Maryland wrote in his diary:

This morning as I was up stairs in an outhouse I spied, as I peeped out the Bay, something resembling a Wood of pine trees trimed. I declare at my noticing this that I could not believe my eyes, but keeping my eyes fixed at the very spot, judge you of my surprise, when in about 10 minutes, the whole Bay was as full of shipping as ever it could be. I do declare that I thought all London was in afloat.

Just about 5 minutes before I see this sight I got my discharge.

McCurtin headed for home.

On 3 July, on the advice of Gen. James Robertson, the Howes began to land troops on Staten Island. The Continental troops on that island quickly retreated to New Jersey, taking a few prominent Patriot families with them. By the next day, the British had 9,000 soldiers on friendly territory in position to threaten New Jersey, the American positions on Long Island, and New York City itself. And more ships and men were still arriving.

Richard Stockton’s Release Date

Back when I was writing about Richard Stockton, the Continental Congress delegate from New Jersey who signed the Declaration of Independence, was captured in late 1776, and then signed a commitment of loyalty to the Crown, I couldn’t figure out exactly how long he had been in captivity. Documents showed that he was captured about 30 Nov–1 Dec 1776, and he was back home by 8 Feb 1777.

Todd W. Braisted, who maintains the stellar Institute for Advanced Loyalist Studies website, had a better answer in his files, so he’s today’s Boston 1775 guest blogger. In response to a comment from me about this question on the Revlist, Todd wrote:

This document may shed some light on the subject:

Lord [Richard] and General [William] Howe having granted a full pardon to Richard Stockton, Esq, by which he is Intitled to all his property, and he having informed that his horse Bridle & Saddle was taken from the ferry by some of the people under your command, you will upon receipt of this restore the said Horse &c and such other of his Effects as shall come within your department to the said Mr. Stockton at the house of John Covenhoven in Monmouth I am Sir yours &c.

James Webster
Lt. Col. 33d Regt.

Perth Amboy
Decemr. 29, 1776

To Coll. Elisha Lawrence
Of the Loyall Jersey Volunteers

(Source: New Jersey State Archives, Dept. of Defense Manuscripts, Loyalist Mss, No. 192-L.)

Occasionally there is confusion when the name Richard Stockton is discussed, as there was a New Jersey Loyalist by the name of Richard Witham Stockton.

This man was a Loyalist from the start, joining the British on Staten Island on 3 August 1776 and initially being commissioned captain in the New Jersey Volunteers. By early December he was promoted to major in the 6th Battalion of the corps.

Taken prisoner at Bennett’s Neck, near New Brunswick, on 18 February 1777, Stockton was marched in irons to Philadelphia and paraded through the streets to “The Rogue’s March.” There was discussion of putting him and the other officers captured at the same time on trial for their lives, until Washington put a stop to it, fearing retaliation.

Stockton and his officers were confined in Philadelphia Jail, until moved to York and then by October 1777 the jail at Carlisle, where they complained of close confinement, where they complained the air was “affecting the body with strange sensations and destroying of our healths...” Stockton and his officers, along with the remaining rank & file still alive, were exchanged between August and October 1778.

The battalions of New Jersey Volunteers being reduced from six to four, Stockton had no command to return to and was reduced upon half pay. In early 1780 he and Captain Robert Richard Crowe, a New Jersey Loyalist & half-pay officer in the Black Pioneers, were involved in an incident that resulted in the death of a miller named Amberman on Long Island. Stockton was court-martialed, found guilty and sentenced to death. He spent months in the provost in New York City until eventually pardoned by the King himself.

One could make the argument that his wartime experience was rather more severe than his more famous namesake.

So the signer Richard Stockton was in British custody slightly less than one month. On 30 December his son-in-law, Dr. Benjamin Rush, still believed him to be “a prisoner with Gen Howe,” but by then he had actually been pardoned. Thanks, Todd!

(I’m especially tickled by the fact that New Jersey has papers for a Department of Defense.)

John Adams Reviews Rachel Wells’s Waxwork

A few days ago I mentioned a museum in Norwalk, Connecticut, that Robert Treat Paine and John Adams visited on their way to the Continental Congress. Here’s another letter from John to Abigail Adams about public exhibits during the war, sent from Philadelphia on 10 May 1777:

The Day before Yesterday, I took a Walk, with my Friend [William] Whipple to Mrs. [Rachel] Wells’s, the Sister of the famous Mrs. [Patience] Wright, to see her Waxwork. She has two Chambers filled with it.

In one, the Parable of the Prodigal Son, is represented. The Prodigal is prostrate on his Knees, before his Father, whose joy, and Grief, and Compassion all appear in his Eyes and Face, struggling with each other. A servant Maid, at the Fathers command, is pulling down from a Closet Shelf, the choicest Robes, to cloath the Prodigal, who is all in Rags. At an outward Door, in a Corner of the Room stands the elder Brother, chagrined at this Festivity, a Servant coaxing him to come in. A large Number of Guests, are placed round the Room.

In another Chamber, are the Figures of Chatham, [Benjamin] Franklin, [John] Sawbridge, Mrs. [Catherine] Maccaulay, and several others. At a Corner is a Miser, sitting at his Table, weighing his Gold, his Bag upon one Side of the Table, and a Thief behind him, endeavouring to pilfer the Bag.

There is Genius, as well as Taste and Art, discovered in this Exhibition: But I must confess, the whole Scæne was disagreable to me. The Imitation of Life was too faint, and I seemed to be walking among a Group of Corps’s, standing, sitting, and walking, laughing, singing, crying, and weeping. This Art I think will make but little Progress in the World.

Another Historical Piece I forgot, which is Elisha, restoring to Life the Shunamite’s Son. The Joy of the Mother, upon Discerning the first Symptoms of Life in the Child, is pretty strongly expressed.

Dr. Chevots Waxwork, in which all the various Parts of the human Body are represented, for the Benefit of young Students in Anatomy and of which I gave you a particular Description, a Year or two ago, were much more pleasing to me. Wax is much fitter to represent dead Bodies, than living ones.

The thumbnail image above is Patience Wright’s wax portrait of Admiral Richard Howe, now the property of the Newark Museum. Here’s a link to Rachel Wells’s unsuccessful plea for New Jersey to repay money she claimed she had loaned that state during the war.

Gen. Howe Addresses the Selectmen

On Friday, 15 Mar 1776, Gen. Sir William Howe (shown here courtesy of NNDB.com) unburdened himself to the selectmen of Boston. Timothy Newell wrote it all down in his journal:

The General sent to the Selectmen and desired their immediate attendance, which we did accordingly. It was to acquaint us that as he was about retreating from the Town, his advice was for all the Inhabitants to keep in their houses and tho’ his orders were to injure no person, he could not be answerable for any irregularities of his troops.

That the Fowey man of war would continue in the harbour till the fleet sailed, loaded with carcases [shells] and combustibles, that in case the King’s troops met with any obstruction in their retreat he should set fire to the Town, which he wished to avoid—

That he thought it his duty to destroy much of the property in the town to prevent it being useful to the support of the Rebel army.

The General further said to us, that who ever had suffered in this respect (who were not Rebels) it was probable upon application to Government, they would be considered—

That Letters had passed between him and Mr. [George] Washington. That he had wrote to him in the style of Mr. Washington. That however insignificant the character of his Excellency, which to him was very trifling—it ought not to be given to any but by the authority of the King. He observed the direction of our Letters to him was—To his excellency General Washington, which he did not approve and whatever Intelligence had been given to the Rebels, tho’ in his letters to him, he did not charge him with being a Rebel. He further said he had nothing against the Selectmen, which if he had he should certainly have taken notice of it—

The General told us the Troops would embark this day and was told by General [James] Robertson it would be by three oclock. The Regiments all mustered, some of them marched down the wharf. Guards and Chevaux De Freze, were placed in the main streets and wharves in order to secure the retreat of Out Centinels. Several of the principle streets through which they were to pass were filled with Hhds. [hogsheads] filled with Horse-dung, large limbs of trees from the Mall [a tree-lined walk on Boston Common] to prevent a pursuit of the Continental Army. They manifestly appeared to be fearful of an attack.

The wind proved unfavorable, prevented their embarking. They returned to their quarters. Soon after several houses were on fire. The night passed tolerably quiet.

For me the most interesting part of these remarks was Howe’s complaint about the selectmen addressing Washington with the honorific “Your Excellency,” usually reserved for a general of governor. Despite the general’s protests, those remarks do smack of petty resentment and self-justification.

Furthermore, the question of how British commanders should address Washington would come up again on 14 July, in New York. I’ll quote from Joshua Micah Marshall’s New Yorker essay on how Gen. Howe’s brother tried to contact the American commander-in-chief:

[Adm. Lord Richard Howe] dispatched a young lieutenant, Philip Brown, with a letter addressed to “George Washington, Esq.” Brown arrived on Manhattan Island under a flag of truce, and on the shore to meet him were three of Washington’s most trusted officers. Hearing that he had brought a letter from “Lord Howe to Mr. Washington,” they rebuffed him, declaring that there was “no person in our army with that address.” Three days later, Howe’s emissary returned with a new copy of the letter—this one addressed to “George Washington, Esq., etc., etc.”—only to receive the same rebuff.

Finally, Howe sent to inquire whether General Washington would agree to receive a new emissary, Lieutenant Colonel James Paterson. The emissary was escorted to Washington’s headquarters, at No. 1 Broadway, for an “interview” conducted with all the crisp formality of eighteenth-century military life. After an exchange of pleasantries, Paterson placed on the table before Washington the same letter that his men had rejected only days earlier. Washington refused to acknowledge it. Hoping to move the conversation along, Paterson pointed out that the “etc., etc.” implied everything that might follow. Yes, it does, Washington replied, “and anything.”

From there the meeting swiftly reached an impasse.

If Newell and the selectmen had passed on Gen. Howe’s remarks to Washington—and they certainly spoke with him—then he might have been prepared for that later confrontation. He knew that the admiral’s brother saw meaning in titles and honorifics, “however insignificant.” And he had practice in refusing letters.

Another Washington's Psalm Legend

On Friday I promised a second legend about Gen. George Washington and the 101st Psalm, separate from the one credited to Andrew Leavitt of New Hampshire.

The Rev. Dr. Joseph F. Tuttle was president of Wabash College, and author of many historical articles. An 1871 issue of Our Monthly: A Magazine of Religion and Literature included his article “Morristown and Washington,” which said:

And here I may add a tradition received from two independent sources, and which, I suspect, has no foundation in fact. Still, I have met some aged people who believed it, and therefore I will repeat it and let it go for what it is worth.

The tradition is, that Lord Howe [Adm. Richard Howe, shown here courtesy of NNDB.com], the British commander at New York, well knowing what a sorrowful time Washington was having, sent him a copy of Watts’ version of the one hundred and twentieth Psalm, containing these three stanzas:

Thou God of Love, thou ever blest,
Pity my suffering state;
When wilt thou set my soul at rest
From lips that love deceit?

Hard lot of mine! my days are cast
Among the sons of strife,
Whose never-ceasing brawlings waste
My golden hours of life!

О might I change my place,
How would I choose to dwell
In some wide lonesome wilderness.
And leave these gates of hell!

[I suspect the real joke here alluded to Howe’s wish to pass “Hell’s Gate” on the East River and punch through the American countryside. But back to Tuttle:]

The same tradition asserts that Washington returned the compliment, by sending to his antagonist, Watts’ version of the one hundred and first Psalm, entitled the “Magistrate’s Psalm,” in which occur the following significant stanzas:

In vain shall sinners strive to rise,
By flattering and malicious lies;
And while the innocent I guard,
The bold offender shan’t be spared.

The impious crew, that factious band,
Shall hide their heads or quit the land;
And all who break the public rest,
Where I have power shall be suppressed.

Some years ago, this anecdote was incorporated in a manuscript by the author of this article; but while the unpublished article as a whole, was complimented as much as it deserved by the historian [George] Bancroft, who had solicited it for perusal, that distinguished gentleman wrote in pencil at the end of this anecdote these words, “altogether improbable and not worth repeating!”

Tuttle had come to the same conclusion as Bancroft by the time he wrote this article. His statement that he suspected the anecdote “has no foundation in fact” could not be clearer. And indeed there is no documentation or contemporary report to support this supposed exchange between two opposing military commanders.

Yet some later writers simply chose to disregard Bancroft and Tuttle’s conclusions, and their total ignorance of Tuttle’s sources, and reprinted the story anyway. The Rev. Rufus S. Green had clearly seen Tuttle’s comments about the anecdote before he included it in his History of Morris County, New Jersey (1882), but decided to say merely, “Rev. Dr. J. F. Tuttle states that he received the above tradition from two entirely distinct sources.”

That apparently prompted the Rev. Andrew M. Sherman to use the same story in his article “Washington and His Army in Morris County, New Jersey, Winter of 1776-77,” in the 1911 volume of The Journal of the American Irish Historical Society. Sherman prefaced the story by writing, “If tradition from two distinct sources may be relied upon, and in this particular instance there seems to be ample ground for reliance,...” Of course, he did not describe what that “ample ground” was.

All three authors who put this story into print, despite their own doubts or others’, were ministers. As with the story of the 101st Psalm in Cambridge, told by the Rev. Daniel Waldo and the notably pious Leavitt, these men seem to have valued the image of Washington sharing Christian Scripture. Tuttle, Green, and Sherman clearly let their fondness for that image steer their scholarly judgment. Similarly, Parson Mason Weems composed the legend of Washington praying in the snow at Valley Forge, and a series of rabbis appear to have spread the legend that he participated in a Hanukkah service there.