“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.

“Lucky for the Town that the Fire broke out in the Day Time”?

Just above its report on the Royal Navy store ship that caught fire in Boston harbor on 29 May 1773 (quoted yesterday), Richard Draper’s Boston News-Letter ran this brief item about another event that same day:

Saturday last being the Anniversary of the Restoration of King Charles II. a Feu de Joy was fired on board the Men of War in this Harbour.

Ordinarily, royal anniversaries like the king’s and queen’s birthdays were celebrated by both civil and military authorities in Boston. In this case, there was a conspicuous absence of cannon salutes, bell-ringing, or toasts inside the town.

New England had generally supported the Parliamentary side in the English Civil War and the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell that followed. Its people and elected officials shielded regicides from Charles II’s retribution. Most British people thought the Glorious Revolution of 1688 was a Good Thing, but New Englanders were particularly convinced that deposing the Stuarts was a necessary course correction as the kingdom sank back into papist tyranny.

Therefore, local forts and authorities didn’t join the Royal Navy in celebrating the Stuart Restoration that May day in 1773. But did the descendants of Puritans begrudge the military’s action?

Of course they did. Thomas and John Fleet’s Boston Evening-Post reported the same event this way:

Saturday last being the anniversary of the Nativity and Restoration of King CHARLES II. the Colours, (as usual on Red Letter Days) were displayed on board the Flag Ship here, and at One o’Clock a Feu de Joy from her and the Gibraltar (being the only Ships of War we had then here to protect us) was all the Notice, as we have yet heard, that was taken to honor the Memory of the execrable Race of the STEUART Family.

Even the newspaper’s use of the phrase “Red Letter Days” was fraught with meaning. Those were the saints’ days on the Anglican calendar, shunned by the Puritans. As late as 1758 Roger Sherman had to explain why he acknowledged those dates in the almanacs he published “to serve the Publick” of Connecticut despite being a devout Congregationalist.

As for the radical Boston Gazette, it didn’t mention the anniversary of Charles II’s coronation at all. But Edes and Gill’s report on the ship catching fire was highly political:

Saturday last about 12 o’Clock at Noon a Fire broke out on board the Britannia, Capt. John Walker, a Store Ship for the Fleet station’d here for the Protection of the Trade and Fishery, lying in the Harbour, and within Gunshot of the Town.

It being reported that there was a considerable Quantity of Powder on board, it put the Inhabitants in great Consternation. Thousands of People seeking Refuge from the falling of Chimneys, &c. in Case of an Explosion. However as it turn’d out, there was no Powder on Board; which if it had at first been ascertain’d, would have sav’d said Ship from being burnt almost to the Water’s Edge. Considerable Stores we hear were not consumed.

It is however some what lucky for the Town that the Fire broke out in the Day Time, and when only the People belonging to the Ship were on board, otherwise it might have been Matter of Representation to the Board of Admiralty at Home to have immediately fitted out a Fleet in order to apprehend certain Persons to be sent beyond the Seas to be tried, as in the Case of the Gaspee Schooner at Rhode-Island.

Be it as it may, this Accident may prove very beneficial to some in settling Accounts.

In this one report the Boston Gazette thus managed to suggest that:

• The idea that Royal Navy warships were in the harbor to protect locals instead of threatening them was laughable.
• Naval administrators were to blame for the slow firefighting response.
• Authorities like Thomas Hutchinson would have been happy to add this fire to their list of false accusations about Boston.
• The royal government was acting unconstitutionally in the Gaspee inquiry.
• Some corrupt officials or contractors would use the fire to cover up embezzling or other crimes.

That was some impressive conspiracy theorizing.

I should note that the fire was seen at noon, the cannon salute to Charles II at 1:00 P.M. So locals couldn’t have set fire to the ship to protest the royalist celebration. On the other hand, navy commanders might have been more eager to salute the Stuart Restoration after seeing their store ship burning out of control in Boston harbor.

“Boston was quiet & no hurt done”

On 8 Sept 1774, two days after the men at the First Continental Congress heard dire reports about the Crown military attacking Boston, accurate information arrived in Philadelphia.

The army had not killed half a dozen civilians. The navy had not bombarded the town. In fact, over two tense days nobody had been hurt at all.

Robert Treat Paine recorded the new news in his diary:

By the Post came advice from N. York that a person had arrived from Boston & Newport since the time Supposed in [Israel] Putnams Letters & that Boston was quiet & no hurt done.

John Adams did likewise, characteristically with more emotion:

The happy News was bro’t us, from Boston, that no Blood had been spill’d but that Gen. [Thomas] Gage had taken away the Provincial Powder from the Magazine at Cambridge [sic]. This last was a disagreable Circumstance.

Roger Sherman of Connecticut wrote the next day:

We were Alarmed a few Days ago with a report that Boston was fired upon by the Land and Sea forces, but it has been Since Contradicted.

Also on 9 September, Caesar Rodney of Delaware wrote about news from Massachusetts: ”A letter to Mr. [Thomas] Cushing by Express from Boston informs that all is Quiet as Yet…” He went on to discuss other forms of resistance snarling up the Suffolk County court sessions and mandamus Council.

People in the eighteenth century were used to hearing false reports and contradictory information to sort out. They knew that news could take days and weeks to travel, and be garbled along the way. They must have been used to rethinking how they understood distant events based on new facts.

Nonetheless, those reports of the British military attacking Boston must have tinged how the delegates at this Continental Congress viewed the ongoing dispute with the Crown. The news arrived just as those men were getting acquainted and setting out the rules for their body.

On 6 September, the same day that the false rumors prompted the Congress to adjourn early, Samuel Adams was proposing that the Rev. Jacob Duché, an Anglican, lead the body in prayer. As I wrote way back here, that “masterly stroke of policy” helped allay worries that the New Englanders were all religious bigots who would drag the whole continent into an unnecessary fight. And now Adams’s home town was under attack?

Philadelphians began to ring their church bells “muffled” in mourning for the Boston dead. According to Silas Deane, Christopher Gadsden (shown above) of South Carolina was “for taking up his Firelock, & marching direct to Boston.” John Adams wrote, “Every Gentleman seems to consider the Bombardment of Boston, as the Bombardment, of the Capital of his own Province.”

Then came the better news. Deane reported, “The Bells of the City are now ringing a peal of Joy on Acct. of the News of Boston’s having been destroy’d being contradicted.” The Congress didn’t have to consider military matters after all. At least, not right away. But for a couple of days, the delegates had faced the possibility of a war against the imperial government. Could their actions keep that from happening, or did they need to prepare for it—or was it possible to do both?

“I fear’d young HAMILTON’S unshaken soul“

As David Humphreys and his fellow Hartford Wits composed the early installments of their Anarchiad, states were deciding whether to send delegations to a constitutional convention in Philadelphia.

The stated purpose of that convention was to revise the Articles of Confederation, but many people hoped—or worried—that the gathering might make very deep revisions indeed.

The Hartford Wits supported big change. Their fellow citizens of Connecticut were not so sure. The middle installments of the Anarchiad spent a lot of lines attacking James Wadsworth, state comptroller and a strong opponent of a new national constitution.

In March 1787 Humphreys wrote to his former boss George Washington that Connecticut might not send a delegation to Philadelphia at all. But most other states had committed by then, so the poets saw reason for optimism.

The 5 April installment of the Anarchiad depicted the villain Anarch lamenting his defeat, as in these lines:

Ardent and bold, the sinking land to save,
In council sapient as in action brave,
I fear’d young HAMILTON’S unshaken soul,
And saw his arm our wayward host control;
Yet, while the Senate with his accents rung,
Fire in his eye, and thunder on his tongue,
My band of mutes in dumb confusion throng,
Convinc’d of right, yet obstinate in wrong,
With stupid reverence lift the guided hand,
And yield an empire to thy wild command.

Allegorically this referred to New York’s choice to name a delegation, as Alexander Hamilton championed. The Hartford Wits thus lauded Hamilton’s political speeches in verse more than two centuries before Lin-Manuel Miranda.

On 12 May, Connecticut finally voted to send William Samuel Johnson, Oliver Ellsworth, and Erastus Wolcott to Philadelphia. Wolcott declined, citing fear of smallpox, so four days later the legislature chose Roger Sherman instead. Their mandate was “for the Sole and express Purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation.”

The Hartford Wits saw that as a win, and the Anarchiad lines published on 24 May expressed Hesper’s hopes for a better future. But there were still dire warnings about what might happen if people didn’t support significant change:

Yet, what the hope? The dreams of Congress fade,
The federal UNION sinks in endless shade;
Each feeble call, that warns the realms around,
Seems the faint echo of a dying sound;
Each requisition wastes in fleeting air,
And not one State regards the powerless prayer.

Ye wanton States, by heaven’s best blessings curst,
Long on the lap of softening luxury nurst,
What fickle frenzy raves! what visions strange
Inspire your bosoms with the lust of change,
And flames the wish to fly from fancy’s ill,
And yield your freedom to a monarch’s will?

The Anarchiad’s last installment appeared in September 1787 as the Constitutional Convention was wrapping up. Because of the body’s secrecy, no one yet knew the scope of the changes it would recommend. Sherman and Ellsworth had proposed the critical “Connecticut Compromise,” and Hamilton maneuvered to make the final vote appear unanimous.

In November, the Connecticut government called a state convention to discuss whether to ratify the new and very different U.S Constitution. During that debate Amos Doolittle issued a year-end-review cartoon titled “The Looking Glass for 1787.” In one section it showed three Hartford Wits on a hill labeled “Parnassus” reading their “American Antiquities”—the supposed fragments of The Anarchiad. At least in Connecticut, they had been a prominent voice of the debate.

Trading for Gunpowder Just Before the War

Last year I wrote about the New London, Connecticut, merchant Nathaniel Shaw, Jr., and his many ways of evading Customs duties on molasses and other goods.

Shaw’s experience moving molasses from the Caribbean to mainland North America was useful as New England went to war in 1775. The army outside Boston needed gunpowder and weapons, things that were on sale in West Indies as long as Americans had money to pay for them and ships to carry them past Royal Navy patrols.

In fact, Nathaniel Shaw started to trade in military supplies even before the war began. On their website the authors of a new book, Two Revolutionary War Privateers: William and Joseph Packwood of Connecticut, describe the voyage that the older of those two brothers undertook on Shaw’s orders:

Capt. William set sail on 7 Feb 1775 on the Macaroni with orders to obtain as much gunpowder and arms as he could. He visited many Caribbean islands in his search. After a three-week time period, Capt. William was at Anguilla (British) which is 230 miles east of Puerto Rico. . . .

Unable to purchase gunpowder at most places he stopped, Capt. William made his way down the Leeward Islands to St. Eustatius (Dutch) on March 1, Martinique (French) on March 4, and Dominica (French until 1763, then British) on March 6. . . .

Capt. William then went to Guadeloupe (French) on March 7, back to St. Eustatius on March 9, and finally to Haiti (French) on March 15. During the last half of March, he went back and forth between two of the major trading ports in Haiti: Môle Saint-Nicolas on the northwest tip of the island and Cap-Haïtien (called Cap François at the time) on the north coast midway to the Dominican Republic, the Spanish part of the island. He returned to St. Eustatius on April 9 and then went back down to the Môle on April 16.

Back in Connecticut, Shaw was keeping a keen watch on the markets. On 6 April, he wrote to a merchant in Guadeloupe that gin was selling slowly in New York and “Nothing will command cash but Molas. and Powder.” Two days later, after a request that Samuel Holden Parsons passed on for Roger Sherman, Shaw ordered “fifteen Tons of Lead” from his usual trading partners in Philadelphia.

On 25 April, soon after New London received word of the fighting in Massachusetts, Capt. Packwood returned to port. Shaw immediately wrote to Gov. Jonathan Trumbull:

Agreable to your Desire I have Sent up Eighty Three Barrels of Powder to Colo. Jed. Huntington Containg about 108 Each

the Remainder is in this Town I hourly Expect Thirty Two Barrels more that I have Account of the Capt. having it on bord

the Remainder of what Moneys was in My hands Capt William Packwood left with Capt. Jno. Mckibbin who is in One of my Vessels in the West Indies to Lay out in the first Powder that Arives, he says that a large Quantity was Daly Expected

he purchased all that Could be had and thought it best to push home with this Rather than Tarry Longer—this Quantity he Obtain’d through the Influence of the Famous Palunkey (who was An Old Commander of a Private Tear the Warr before Lasts) who Prevailed with the Governour of the Cape to take it out of the Kings Store—

In Short Packwood Says the French Seem to be Disposed in the Islands to Assist in this way as Much as in their power, I Intend he Shall Sail Again for the Cape Next Week and I Don’t Imagine he will be Gone More than Six weeks If you Intend to have any more Money Laid out in that way it will be a good Oppertunity 

The same day, Shaw told his New York connection that Packwood had brought back “fifty One Hogsheads and Eleven Terses of Mollasses and four hogsheads of Cocoa.” That voyage wasn’t just about military supplies. And Shaw hadn’t lost his usual “hope you’l Save the Dutys” by evading the Customs men.

TOMORROW: Placing a bigger order.

John Adams’s Memory of Appointing Gen. Washington

After his Presidency and again about twenty years later, John Adams wrote out his memories of how the Second Continental Congress chose George Washington to lead its army on 15 June 1775. Because these recollections came from such an important member of the Congress, and because they were published early, they’re the basis of most dramatic descriptions of that event.

Adams is our source for the statement that he first put forward Washington’s name, that chairman John Hancock showed “Mortification and resentment” at not being named himself, and that Washington “from his Usual Modesty darted into the Library Room.” Adams described long arguments in the Congress, with both New Englanders and Virginians opposing Washington.

Because the Congress refrained from keeping records on such a sensitive topic as forming an army to oppose the king’s governors and troops, it’s impossible to show that events happened differently. But the record that exists makes Adams’s account less likely.

Many of John Adams’s Revolutionary recollections put him at the center of the action, bravely standing up to unreasonable opposition. That’s how he liked to see himself. And sometimes contemporaneous evidence indicates that opposition wasn’t quite so numerous or loud as Adams described.

Adams remembered certain members of the Congress as being opposed to Washington, such as Roger Sherman of Connecticut and Edmund Pendleton of Virginia. Yet there’s no evidence for their opposition or disappointment at how things turned out. In fact, that same week Pendleton was helping Washington to draft a will and wrote most of the new commander’s acceptance speech.

Among Washington biographers, Douglas Southall Freeman suggested that Washington asked as a friend Pendleton to play devil’s advocate against his appointment. John Ferling theorized he invited Pendleton to draft the speech in order to co-opt a former opponent. I think the simplest explanation is that Adams’s memory was mistaken, and Pendleton supported Washington’s appointment like almost everyone else at the Congress, particularly the Virginians.

In writing my report on Washington in Cambridge, I was convinced by Paul K. Longmore’s hypothesis in The Invention of George Washington that the long arguments Adams remembered actually occurred in the following couple of days, and the biggest sticking-point was whether to hire Charles Lee as a subordinate general. On 18 June 1775 Adams told Elbridge Gerry:

I have never, in all my lifetime, suffered more anxiety than in the conduct of this business. The choice of officers, and their pay, have given me great distress. Lee and [Horatio] Gates are officers of such great experience and confessed abilities, that I thought their advice, in a council of officers, might be of great advantage to us; but the natural prejudices, and virtuous attachment of our countrymen to their own officers, made me apprehensive of difficulties. But considering the earnest desire of General Washington to have the assistance of these officers, the extreme attachment of many of our best friends in the southern colonies to them, the reputation they would give to our arms in Europe, and especially with the ministerial generals and army in Boston, as well as the real American merit of them both, I could not withhold my vote from either.

The official vote on Washington’s appointment was unanimous. The vote to hire Lee at a rank below Artemas Ward’s and the vote to make Gates a general were not. But Washington’s “earnest desire” for those veterans’ aid carried the day.

TOMORROW: Washington’s journey to his Cambridge headquarters.

Why Are Some Founders Forgotten?

At the Imaginative Conservative, Daniel L. Dreisbach shared an essay (originally published by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute) on “Founders Famous and Forgotten,” exploring why we remember some politicians and military men from the Revolutionary period but not others.

Consider the political career of Roger Sherman of Connecticut (1721-1793), a largely self-taught man, devout Calvinist, and lifelong public servant. He was one of only two men who signed all three of the great documents of American organic law: the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution. He was a delegate to the First and Second Continental Congresses. He was a member of the five-man committee formed to draft the Declaration of Independence and a member of the committee of thirteen formed to frame the Articles of Confederation. At the federal Constitutional Convention of 1787 he delivered more speeches than all but three delegates and was a driving force behind the Great (Connecticut) Compromise. He was a member of the first U.S. House of Representatives (1789-1791) and later of the U.S. Senate (1791-1793), where he played key roles in deliberations on the Bill of Rights and the creation of a national bank. If any man merits the mantle of “founding father,” surely it is Roger Sherman.

Yet few Americans recall, let alone mention, Sherman’s name when enumerating the founding fathers; even among those familiar with his name, most would be hard pressed to describe his role in the founding. Why is it that a man of such prodigious contributions to our country is today an all but forgotten figure? The same question could be asked about many other patriots—John Dickinson, Elbridge Gerry, John Jay, Richard Henry Lee, George Mason, Gouverneur Morris, Charles Pinckney, Benjamin Rush, John Rutledge, James Wilson, and John Witherspoon, just to name a few—who labored diligently to establish an independent American republic.

Examining six undoubtedly famous Founders, Dreisbach notes some commonalities:

• “strong, memorable, and (with the possible exception of Madison) colorful personalities.”
• homes in “influential power centers in the new nation.”
• “a voluminous paper trail of public and private documents.”

Yet some other men shared some or all of those qualities. Dreisbach suggests they’ve been forgotten because they:

• retired or died before becoming involved in the federal government.
• focused their energies on state and local governments.
• were on the losing side of debates over the Declaration or Constitution.
• left few papers about their American statesmanship.
• developed an unsavory personal reputation by nineteenth-century standards.

Finally, being a conservative, Dreisbach claims that modern academics are uncomfortable with the piety of some Founders. Indeed, the last section of his essay is basically an argument that recent jurisprudence and legislation (not historiography) pays too little heed to most traditionally religious of the Founders. Of course, some of those men aren’t mentioned in the essay for any significance but their religiosity.

Is “devout Calvinism” really why we don’t remember Roger Sherman as well as John Adams? I doubt it. I think it was the Adams family’s massive paper trail and national offices. Plus, the limited capacity of the human brain to remember everyone and everything, even if experts in the field want them to.