Thomas Lynch and the Continental Army’s Black Soldiers

On 23 Oct 1775, Thomas Lynch, Jr., and two of his colleagues in the Continental Congress, Benjamin Harrison and Benjamin Franklin, conferred with Gen. George Washington and political leaders of the New England colonies about setting up the Continental Army for the coming year ahead.

Most of the current army’s enlistments ran out in December. Only the rifle companies from Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Maryland had enlisted on different terms. They had promised to serve for twelve months, or until the middle of 1776.

One of the many questions that October conference considered was:

Ought not Negroes to be excluded from the new Inlistment especially such as are Slaves—all were thought improper by the Council of Officers?

Washington’s generals had followed his lead in voting to exclude black soldiers, though there were some opposing voices, as I discussed back here.

Thomas Lynch, as a southern planter and politician, almost certainly supported the idea of keeping black men out of the army. His fellow South Carolinian, Edward Rutledge, had even proposed pushing black soldiers out in September and “was strongly supported by many of the Southern Delegates,” according to the notes of Richard Smith of New Jersey.

That makes Lynch’s letter to Washington on 8 December particularly interesting. By then the general was worried that not enough men of any sort would re-enlist for the new year. If the British heard about an incredible shrinking enemy, Washington feared, in January they would charge out of Boston and Charlestown and overwhelm the thin Continental lines.

Lynch wrote to the commander:

I shall not take upon me to advise. tis as improper as needless. your Rifle Men, Negroes, & Deserters may in proper passes defend your artillery Ammunition & Stores[.] shoud your Lines be deserted, & the glorious, golden opertunity of ending the War be lost, let not Hope be lost also.

Somehow Lynch believed that the “Negroes” in the Continental ranks would still be available to Washington, along with the riflemen (whose enlistments were still in force) and “Deserters.”

It’s such a brief comment that it’s hard to know what Lynch was thinking. Did he expect the black soldiers would be in the same boat as the deserters, with nowhere else to go? Was he so used to ordering around enslaved people that he automatically assumed Washington could demand the “Negroes” stay?

Either way, Lynch’s remark was a backhanded acknowledgment that the Continental Army did have soldiers of African heritage, despite Rutledge’s efforts, and that they might be most valuable in the worst emergency.

“Some among us urge strongly for Independency”

In August 1822, Timothy Pickering invited John Adams to do something the retired President really liked doing: explaining how he was close to the center of the most important decisions of the American Revolution.

Just four days after Pickering sent his letter from Salem, Adams responded with a long account of how the Continental Congress came to declare independence 250 years ago.

He started with a vivid word picture of the Massachusetts delegation to the First Continental Congress being “met at Frankfort [Frankford] by Dr [Benjamin] Rush, Mr [Thomas] Mifflin, Mr [John] Bayard and several others of the most active Sons of Liberty, in Philadelphia.”

That meeting was on 29 Aug 1774, according to Adams’s diary. At that time he wrote:

A Number of Carriages and Gentlemen came out of Phyladelphia to meet us. Mr. Thomas Mifflin, Mr. [Thomas] McKean of the Lower Counties [Delaware], one of their Delegates, Mr. [Edward or John] Rutledge of Carolina, and a Number of Gentlemen from Philadelphia. Mr. [Nathaniel] Folsom and Mr. [John] Sullivan, the N. Hampshire Delegates. We were introduced to all these Gentlemen and most cordially wellcomed to Philadelphia.

We also have Dr. Rush’s recollection in his memoir:

I went as far as Frankford to meet the delegates from Massachusetts, and rode back into town in the same carriage with John Adams, and two of his colleagues. This gentleman’s dress and manners were at that time plain, and his conversation cold and reserved. He asked me many questions relative to the state of public opinion upon politicks, and the characters of the most active citizens on both sides of the controversy.

Rush evidently warned Adams and Robert Treat Paine “against two Gentlemen particularly,” one being the Rev. William Smith of the University of Pennsylvania and the other not. (Adams’s diary preserved only one name.)

In his letter almost fifty years later, Adams stated that the Philadelphia radicals had come out for that meeting to warn the Massachusetts men that people viewed them as “four desperate adventurers.” The locals advised the newcomers to:

• let Virginians and other southerners take the lead on radical measures. 
• “not utter the word Independence, nor give the least hint or insinuation of the idea, neither in Congress or any private conversation.” 

Yet Adams recorded no hint of that warning in 1774. And the presence of a South Carolina delegate in the party would surely have inhibited discussion of how to lead along the south.

Adams’s 1822 letter then skipped ahead to the spring of 1776 as if the same situation still prevailed. Of course, a lot had happened during those eighteen months. By 1776 the Second Continental Congress delegates were discussing independence openly, though they insisted they weren’t pushing for it—rather, the Crown was pushing them toward it.

On 9 Jan 1776, for example, Richard Smith of New Jersey wrote in his diary: “Several Members said that if a Foreign Force shall be sent here, they are willing to declare the Colonies in a State of Independent Sovereignity.”

Robert Morris told a colleague on 15 February:

America has long been charged by her Enemys in England with aiming at Independency. The charge was unjust, but we now plainly see, that the burning of Towns, seizing our Ships, with numerous acts of wanton barbarity & Cruelty perpetrated by the British Forces has prepared Men’s minds for an Independency, that were shock’d at the idea a few weeks ago. This you may depend on, and should this Campaign open with furious Acts of Parliament, you may bid adieu to the American Colonies. They will then assuredly declare for Independency…

Joseph Hewes of North Carolina wrote home on 20 March:

some among us urge strongly for Independency and eternal separation, others wish to wait a little longer and to have the opinion of their Constituents on that subject, you must give us the sentiment of your province when your Convention meets.

Carter Braxton of Virginia reported on 14 April:

Independency & total Seperation from Great Britain are the interesting Subjects of all ranks of Men & often agitate our Body.

Notably, Morris and Braxton both opposed independence that spring. But they weren’t averse to discussing it.

Nonetheless, the next part of Adams’s letter was an almost necessary part of his post-Presidency memories: everyone disliking him because of his far-sighted and courageous stances.

It soon became rumoured about the City that John Adams was for Independence; the Quakers & Proprietary Gentlemen, took the alarm; represented me as the worst of men, the true-blue Sons of Liberty pitied me; all put me under a kind of Coventry. I was avoided like a man infected with the Leprosy. I walked the streets of Philadelphia in solitude, born down by the weight of care and unpopularity. But every ship for the ensuing year, brought us fresh proof of the truth of my prophesies and one after another became convinced of the necessity of Independence. I did not sink under my discouragements; I had before experienced enough of the Wantonness of popularity in the trial of Preston and the Soldiers, in Boston.

I’ve previously noted how there’s actually no contemporaneous evidence of Bostonians shunning Adams in the early 1770s because he represented Capt. Thomas Preston and the soldiers after the Massacre. 

Likewise, documents from 1775 and early 1776 show that Adams’s fellow Congress delegates continued to put him on many committees and to dine with him. No doubt it was awkward when the royal authorities intercepted and published letters in which he criticized colleagues like John Dickinson, but really Adams brought that on himself.

TOMORROW: Drafting the Declaration at last.

“You shake it within an Inch of my Nose”

Some years back, I mentioned Simeon Potter’s dispute with John Usher, but I was relying on a secondary source that I’ve come to see as unreliable.

I’m therefore retelling that story in more detail using the court documents published by the Rhode Island Historical Society in 2006 (available as a P.D.F. from Family Search) and other sources.

In 1761 Potter was a wealthy gentleman in Bristol, Rhode Island. He’d been born in that town forty-one years earlier to a poor or middling family. He’d therefore grown up without much schooling, trained to be a cooper. But because of a privateering windfall at the start of King George’s War, Potter had made himself into one of the richest men in the whole colony.

Reflecting his new genteel status, Capt. Potter took on prestigious positions in politics and the church. He became a warden of the local Anglican church, St. Michael’s. Few New England towns of Bristol’s size—about 1,200 people in 1774—had an Anglican church, but this was at the coast and therefore served mariners.

The minister of St. Michael’s was the Rev. John Usher. He was the son of a wealthy bookseller who had risen to be lieutenant governor of New Hampshire. After graduating from Harvard College, Usher had joined the Church of England, defying the New England orthodoxy. The missionary Society for the Propagation of the Gospel paid part of his salary, and his congregants sometimes paid the rest.

In 1761 Usher was over sixty years old. His exact age is unclear since his tombstone says he was seventy-five when he died in 1775, but a memorial plaque later installed in his church says he was eighty. Either way, he’d been the minister at St. Michael’s since 1724, when Simeon Potter was still a little boy.

According to Usher’s report back to the S.P.G., the trouble started because

Notwithstanding he [Potter] has an agreeable wife, he has by report for some years back kept a criminal conversation with a young woman, one of my parish. . . . After many general hints from the Pulpit…I told her what reason I had to suggest she was guilty of the notorious sin of Adultery. . . . Upon this she told the man immediately what I had said

Frankly the minister shouldn’t have been surprised by that.

On the morning of 14 August, Charles Munro said, “the Rev. Mr. John Usher and Capt. Simeon Potter…engaged in warm words or Differing” on the street. Richard Smith added that Usher told Potter, “wherever he went there was whoring carried on.” Smith also quoted the men as saying:

[Potter:] if it wont for your Age and Gown I would not have your Cane shook over my head

[Usher:] I don’t shake it over your head nor mean to shake it over

[Potter:] you shake it within an Inch of my Nose

Simeon Potter, despite his fearsome reputation, was “small in stature,” according to Father Elzear Fauque. Also, in the manners of the time clubbing another man with a cane implied that the caner was a gentleman and the canee was not; given Potter’s background, his class status might have been a sensitive spot.

The minister’s son, Hezekiah Usher, called this “Ill treatment” of his father. Potter may also have said something about the minister’s daughter, but I can’t find another trace of her.

On 18 August, Usher and Potter met yet again on Church Lane. They picked up where they had left off. Hezekiah Usher stated:

I heard my Father say to sd. Potter if ever he cast any more reflections on his Family especially on his daughter twould cause him to reflect on his family and upon that the said Potter came up to my Father who was then on the edge of the Gravell’d Walk and said who of my Family and my Father said Your Father

Potter’s father, Hopestill Potter, was in fact sitting in a chair at his own front door nearby.

The quarrel caught the ears of several neighbors, though trees along the street blocked some people’s views. Witnesses agreed that Usher was holding his walking-stick in the middle, waving it around as he spoke. Some said this was “Usher’s naturall way of Shaking his Cane at any Person when he is earnest in talk.” One said the cane was “up as if he was agoing to strike.” But all the trial witnesses agreed they never saw the minister actually touch the captain.

According to Hezekiah Usher, after his father mentioned the captain’s father, Capt. Potter “rusht close up to my Father and said what reflections can you cast on him”? Usher replied, “I’ll blow him up.”

The captain then punched his sexagenarian minister in the face.

TOMORROW: In court.

Quintal on Black Soldiers in the Continental Army, 7 Feb.

On Tuesday, 7 February, at 7:30 P.M. in Lincoln’s Bemis Hall, George Quintal, Jr., will speak on the role of black soldiers in the American Revolution. The Lincoln Minute Men will host this presentation.

Back in 2005, Quintal assembled a study of African-Americans and Native Americans in the provincial forces during the Battles of Lexington and Concord and Bunker Hill for the National Park Service, and I know he’s continued to research since. (There’s a preview of that study on Google Books. Unfortunately, but the Government Printing Office says it’s no longer available.)

Anyone reading the Massachusetts Provincial Congress’s report about the opening day of the war saw that among the wounded was “Prince Easterbrooks (a Negro man)” of Lexington. Salem Poor fought notably in the Battle of Bunker Hill.

But for a major slaveholder like Gen. George Washington, the sight of armed black men was at the least novel, and probably a bit disturbing. He saw it as evidence the New England recruiters had scraped the bottom of the barrel. In his first report back to the Continental Congress, he wrote:

From the Number of Boys, Deserters and negroes which have inlisted in this Province, I entertain some doubts whether the Number required, can be raised here…

That news seems to have produced even more anxiety among the some of the Congress delegates, particularly those from colonies with large enslaved black populations. In September the South Carolina delegate Edward Rutledge (shown above) proposed discharging all African-American men from the army.

According to New Jersey delegate Richard Smith, Rutledge “was strongly supported by many of the Southern Delegates but so powerfully opposed that he lost the Point.” Like a lot of other controversial matters, that debate was kept out of the Congress’s official record. But the vote didn’t settle the question.

TOMORROW: John Adams writes home for reassurance.