“The House being jealous of their Priviledges”

As recounted yesterday, on 4 Oct 1775 Gen. George Washington and his fellow generals realized that the Continental Congress’s articles of war weren’t strict enough about passing information to the enemy.

Which was a problem since they had just uncovered evidence that the head of the army’s hospitals, Dr. Benjamin Church, had been doing just that.

In reporting the situation to John Hancock as chairman of the Congress, Washington respectfully wrote that he was “suggesting to their Consideration, whether an Alteration of the 28th Article of War may not be necessary.”

Dr. Church didn’t just have a military appointment. He was also one of Boston’s four representatives in the Massachusetts General Court, elected back on 18 July. Of course, that town meeting hadn’t happened inside British-held Boston. Instead, the “dispersed” inhabitants had gathered in the meetinghouse at Concord.

Dr. Church was active in the first few days of the legislative session in Watertown’s meetinghouse. But in August he took up his new job overseeing the medical care of the army. Two of the other men chosen to represent Boston, Samuel Adams and John Hancock, were away in Philadelphia. That left John Pitts to speak for the town. But that assembly couldn’t do much to affect life in Boston then anyway.

Then in early October came the bombshell news that the army had put Church under arrest. People were soon hearing about why, but this was the house’s first formal response on 14 October:

ORDERED, That Mr. [James] Sullivan bring in a Resolve making a proper Application to General Washington, relative to the imprisonment of one of the members of this House, viz. Doctor Benjamin Church.

The resulting resolution said:

…the House being jealous of their Priviledges, and desirous to know the Cause of said Imprisonment:—— Therefore

Resolved, That the Speaker [James Warren], Mr. Sullivan and Major [John] Bliss, be a Committee to apply to is Excellency George Washington, Esq; requesting him as soon as may be to certify to this House the Cause of the Detention and Imprisonment of said Benjamin Church, Esq; that they may advise thereon.

On 17 October, Warren reported that he had received from Joseph Reed, Washington’s military secretary, “a Letter from Dr. Church to the Enemy, as decyphered by the Rev. Mr. [Samuel] West.” The house voted:

Resolved, That Dr. Church ought to be brought to the Bar of this House, to shew Cause, if any he has, why he should not be expell’d the same.

The next day, Gen. Washington sat down for a council with Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Harrison, and Thomas Lynch from the Continental Congress and with officials from the New England governments. That meeting would run through 24 October and cover many topics. One item on the agenda was “What Steps are necessary to be pursued with Regard to Dr Church?”

The developments in Watertown offered an out: “Upon a Discussion of all Circumstances it was agreed to refer Doctor Church for Tryal & Punishment to the General Court of Massachusetts Bay.” As for what the army should do, given the articles of war, Washington would wait for the Congress’s guidance.

TOMORROW: Dr. Church makes his move.

Joseph Reed and “the property of the Horse”

Yesterday I transcribed a letter from the Rev. Samuel West of Dartmouth (New Bedford), who in the fall of 1775 served as a chaplain and code-buster for the Continental Army.

West asked George Washington if he had to return the horse that the general’s secretary, Joseph Reed (shown here), had provided when he needed to return home from Cambridge.

Washington turned that letter over to Reed, who replied on 17 October:

The General received your Letter of the 11th. Inst. [i.e., of this month] and has directed me to answer it. Mr. [Robert] Pierpont was mistaken in his notion of the Loan of the Horse, which we understood was only requested to accommodate you in your Journey home. I was not at Liberty to go farther. We also understood you proposed to return to the Army shortly; the General having given me no farther Direction upon the Subject, I can only say that if your Business should again call you up here, you can make application, if you do not, you can keep the Horse you have, until you hear farther on the Subject from this. But the property of the Horse in the mean Time is not changed.

Which I interpret as, “I’m not authorized to say the horse is yours, but you can keep it indefinitely if you please please please don’t write us another letter.”

A Horse for the Rev. Dr. West

In early October 1775, the Rev. Samuel West of Dartmouth (New Bedford) came to Gen. George Washington’s headquarters in Cambridge with a deciphered copy of a letter Dr. Benjamin Church, Jr., had tried to send into Boston.

West had seen that the symbols Church had used to write his letter (shown back here) came in the same frequency pattern as the letters of the alphabet in ordinary prose—i.e., Church had used a simple substitution cipher, one symbol for each letter. West presumably then tried replacing the most common symbol with E, the next most common with T, and so on, looking for common letter groupings. By that method the minister uncovered the complete text.

After West delivered his work, the commander called his generals together for a council of war. The documents showed that Dr. Church, director of the Continental Army’s medical wing, member of the Massachusetts House, and top-level organizer of the Boston Whigs, was secretly sending information to the enemy. This was obviously an intelligence crisis.

At some point in those discussions, news came that the Rev. Mr. West had lost his horse.

When I read that fact in the start of the correspondence that followed, I thought that loss was a result of West’s legendary absent-mindedness. But it turns out losing the horse wasn’t his fault. Even so, the letter he wrote to Washington from Plymouth on 11 October suggests a certain insensibility to how he was coming across:

Sire, When I was at Head quarters the other Day, my good friend mr [Robert] Pierpoint informed your Excellency, that I had lost my horse, and proposed that I should have one of the provincial horses presented to me to supply my loss: the manner in which mr Pierpoint introduced the Subject gave Me a great deal of pain and uneasiness: because I thought it had the Appearance of a design to beg a favor of the Gentlemen of the Army; when therefore Colonel [Joseph] Read offered to Send me an horse to ride home; I was under so much confusion as not to know certainly whether the horse was only lent me to ride home, or whether it was designed to be presented to me for my own: Mr Pierpoint thought that the horse was presented to me as a gift, but I judged from Several things that it was only lent me to ride home; and accordingly had fully determined as soon as I had gotten home to send the horse back by the first opportunity: But several Gentlemen of my Acquaintance upon hearing the Account of the matter judgd that I had a just right to have Satisfaction made me by the continent for my loss, inasmuch as I had preached in the camp five Sabbaths and a fast, and expected no reward for my Services, they thought that I had a right to be made whole by the continent for any Damage I might suffer while I was doing duty in the camp

Colonel [James] Warren of Plymouth Speaker of the house of representatives was so full in this sentiment, that he advised me to present a memorial to your Excellency; and to represent the matter with proper light; not doubting but that your Excellency would judge it proper that the continent should make good the damage that I have sustained. It is in consequence of his Advice, that I have now written this letter to your Excellency. In order, that your Excellency may form a true judgment of the matter, I must briefly state the fact which is thus—Mr. [Samuel] Spring, who is now gone chaplain to Quebec, had liberty granted him by Dr [Nathaniel] Cogswell to take his horse and ride him to Newbury port and to sell him for Nine Pounds, he thro a Mistake took my horse and sold him in the journey to a man belonging to Salem; hearing of this I went to Salem, and when I came there was told that the horse was gone off, the stable door being left open—diligent search was made but he could not be found: Now as there is no person, of whom I can legally demand satisfaction for my loss, except mr Spring, and as it is very uncertain when he will return from Quebec, and as I stand in need of an horse every Day almost when I am at home, if your Excellency thinks my request to be rational and that the publick ought to make good the Damage that I have sustained; I should be glad to have liberty granted me to keep the horse that Colonel Read lent me, till I have proper satisfaction made me by mr. Spring for the loss I have suffered. If your Excellency will send a line to me by the bearer of this Mr. Joseph Howland to let me know whether I must return the horse back by the first opportunity, or whether I may keep him till I am otherwise satisfied it will lay a peculiar obligation upon your Excellencys most humble and obedient Servant Samuel West

And all in rather bad handwriting crowded into uneven sloping lines.

When this arrived, Gen. Washington was still dealing with the fallout from Church’s treachery, anticipating the arrival of three Continental Congress delegates come to review his progress, considering an attack on Boston, trying to launch schooners from Beverly, and looking ahead to the dissolution of his army at the end of the year. But West wanted an answer about that horse.

TOMORROW: The reply from Washington’s headquarters.

The Rev. Samuel West: “remarkable for absence of mind”

When Gen. George Washington wanted to decipher the mysterious letter from Dr. Benjamin Church (transcription posted yesterday), he asked provincial officials for advice about who was good at such things.

The locals recommended the Rev. Samuel West (1731-1807), the Congregationalist minister of Dartmouth (now New Bedford), then attached to the army as a chaplain. In 1865, Harper’s published this profile of West in an article titled “Anecdotes of Unitarian Divines”:

He worked upon a farm until his twentieth year, when he spent six months in preparing for college, and in 1750 started for Harvard College barefooted, carrying his shoes and stockings under his arm. On being examined for admission, he had a dispute with the Professor in regard to a Greek reading, in which he is said to have carried his point.

He was settled in 1761 on a salary of £66.13s.6d., which, small as it was, was not paid. He was twice married. His first wife was very tall, and her Christian name was Experience [Howland], a common one at that time. After her death he said he had “learned from long experience that it was a good thing to be married,” and so he took another wife.

He was an ardent patriot from the beginning of the difficulties with England, and was unsparing in his denunciations of those who were unwilling to come out on the side of their country. Immediately after the battle of Bunker Hill he joined the army to do what he could as a minister to keep up the courage of the soldiers, and to promote their welfare. . . . He was an influential member of the Convention that adopted the Constitution, and it was through his influence that Governor [John] Hancock was induced to give his assent to the adoption of the Federal Constitution.

Dr. West was remarkable for absence of mind. During the sessions of the Convention to adopt the Constitution of the United States he spent many of his evenings abroad, and generally returned with his pockets filled with handkerchiefs, silk gloves, silk stockings, and other small articles, and was greatly distressed on finding them there, thinking that he bad taken them up and slipped them into his pockets. In fact they had been placed there by friends who took this method of making him presents, well knowing that he was too much engaged in conversation to take any notice of it.

While he was a pastor his friends would sometimes find him on his horse, which had stopped to graze by the wayside, the bridle loose, the Doctor’s hands folded on his breast, and himself wholly absorbed in his own thoughts. Once he went out to drive a cow from his yard, and striking at her with a long board missed the cow, and was himself brought to the ground, and split his small-clothes nearly the whole length of the leg. He knew nothing of this latter accident; but gathering himself up, and forgetting entirely where he was, he went on without a hat three miles, entered a friend’s house, and passed the night talking with him to the consternation of his wife, who, on his return, saw in what a plight he was for a visit to one of the most genteel families of the parish.

He once met a friend, and told him that he and his wife were on their way to make him a visit. “Your wife?” said his friend. “Where is she?” “Why,” replied the Doctor, “I thought she was on the pillion behind me.” She had got ready to accompany him, and the absent-minded Doctor had gone off without her. He would sometimes at the church stop at the horse-block for his wife to dismount, when she had been forgotten and was still at home.

Once he went to mill, leading his horse and carrying the grist on his own shoulder. One who saw him on his way, states that when before his second marriage he went to ask the town-clerk to publish the bans, he walked the whole distance leading his horse, and passed directly by the house of the town-clerk, and did not halt until he was brought up by a log at the end of a wharf.

Once, upon a Saturday afternoon, when on his way home from Boston, he was overtaken by a violent shower as he was riding on horseback. His family at home were anxiously expecting his return, but he did not make his appearance until the last moment on Sunday morning, when he was seen hurrying his horse onward, with muddy ruffles dangling about his hands, and another large ruffle hanging out of his bosom through the open vest, which he usually kept buttoned close to his chin. He never had worn such embellishments before, and never afterward could tell how he came by them then.

It was too late to make a change, the congregation were waiting. His daughter buttoned up his vest so as to hide the ruffles of the bosom, and carefully tucked the ruffles in about the wrists. During the opening services all went very well, but probably feeling uneasy about the wrists, he twitched at them until the ruffles were flourishing about, and then growing warm as he advanced, he opened his vest and made such an exhibition of muddy finery as tended very little to the religious edification of the younger portion of his audience. . . .

His absence of mind increased upon him as he became advanced in years, and at length his memory failed, although his intellect, when excited, retained much of its vigor. He had preached the same sermon to his congregation three Sabbaths in succession, but no member of his family was willing to distress him by informing him of what he had done.

The fourth Sabbath his daughter saw with a heavy heart that he had his Bible open at the same place, the Parable of the rich man and Lazarus. Fortunately be left the room for a minute; she opened the Bible at another place, and put it back with the leaf turned down just as he had left it in his own place. When he took up the book on his return he seemed for a moment lost, then fixed his attention upon the passage to which she had opened, and from that preached a discourse which to some of his people seemed the ablest that he had given for years.

This article was created by pulling fun bits from William B. Sprague’s Annals of the American Unitarian Pulpit, leaving out the theology and religious disputes. The Unitarian-Universalist Historical Society offers a biography of West that focuses on his liberal religious views rather than his eccentricities. The Harvard Square Library has another, from Heralds of a Liberal Faith.

After reading these tales, I wondered if later generations might have exaggerated West’s absent-mindedness. Perhaps these stories came mostly from late in his life, when his memory was failing, rather than from his prime. Or perhaps folks hung jokes about absent-mindedness on West’s name in the same way that Benjamin Franklin got credited with all witty remarks, and the Rev. Mather Byles, Sr., got blamed for all bad puns.

TOMORROW: Then I looked into West’s visit to Gen. Washington’s headquarters.

(The picture above shows Harvard College in 1767, courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society.)

A View of Battle Road from Needham

Continuing Boston 1775’s look back at the first major battle of the Revolutionary War, here’s a description of that event from the manuscript memoir of the Rev. Samuel West of Needham’s first parish, as transcribed here, courtesy of the town’s historical society and schools. This Rev. Samuel West of Needham and later Boston (1738-1808) was not the Rev. Samuel West of Falmouth (1729-1807) who deciphered Dr. Benjamin Church’s secret letter into Boston.

In the night after the eighteenth of April a detachment of the British troops marched out of Boston for the purpose of securing to themselves or destroying the provisions etc. which had been deposited at Concord, by order of the Provincial Government. They in part effected their purpose, but were soon attacked by our people and a continual skirmish was kept up during their march from Concord to Boston. About one hundred on both sides were killed and many were wounded.

The news reached us about nine o’clock A.M. The east company in Needham met at my house as part of the Military stores were deposited with me, they there supplied themselves, and by ten o’clock all marched for the place of action with as much spirit and resolution as the most zealous friends of the cause could have wished for.

We could easily trace the march of troops from the smoke which arose over them, and could hear from my house the report of the cannon and the Platoons fired by the British. The Needham company was soon on the ground, but unhappily being ignorant of what are called flank-guards they inserted themselves between them and the main body of the British troops. In consequence of which they suffered more severely than their Neighbors who kept to a greater distance. . . .

In the evening we had intelligence that several of the Needham inhabitants were among the slain, and the next morning it was confirmed that five had fallen in the action and several others had been wounded. It is remarkable that the five who fell all of them had families, and several of them very numerous families so that there were about forty widows and fatherless children made in consequence of their death.

I visited these families immediately, and with a sympathetic sense of their affliction I gave to some the first intelligence they had of the dreadful event, the death of a Husband and a Parent. The very different manner in which the tidings were received, discovered the very different disposition of the suffers. While some were almost frantic in their grief others received the news with profound silence as if in a consternation of grief they were incapable of shedding tears or uttering sighs or groans. . . .

Their treatment of such as the British left dead on the road was such as I could have supposed. They were stripped for the sake of their cloths and left naked on the highway until buried by order of our Government…

Epidemic Behind the American Lines

Today Boston 1775 welcomes Judith Cataldo as a guest blogger. She is researching an event occurring at the same time as the British and American military maneuvers in late August 1775: a summer epidemic of the “bloody flux,” or dysentery, in Middlesex County.

That outbreak may well have been related to the sudden concentration of men from all over New England in military camps around Boston. In his memoir, Lt. David Perry (1741-1826) wrote:

In the heat of Summer, the men were attacked with the Dysentery, and considerable numbers of them died. The people flocked in from the country, to see the camps and their friends, and took the disorder; and it spread all over the New-England states: it carried off a great many more in the country than in the camp, which seemed to dishearten the people very much.

Judy writes:

This was how I got interested in Rev War history. I was documenting the gravestone epitaphs in my home town cemetery, Needham, and found a higher number of stones for 1775 than for other years. In my travels of other graveyards I found the same pattern. Eventually, I tripped upon the Dedham Register, which had serialized a book documenting the town epitaphs with genealogical notes, and it mentioned an epidemic at that time.

Here’s the gravestone that started it all:

In memory of Mrs Esther wife of Mr Joseph Daniels who died Aug’st 1775 in ye 34th year of her age & 7 children of Mr Joseph Daniels & Esther his wife.

Martha Died August 31 in the 5th Year [she had been born 8/19/1770]

Sarah Died Sep’r 2nd in her 9th Year [born 4/9/1767]

Esther Died Sep’r 4th in her 12 Year

Anna Died Sep’r 7th in her 2th year [baptized 5/10/1773]

Josiah Died Sep’r 7th in the 6th year [born 4/9/1769]

Elizabeth Died Sept 12th in her 11th year 1775 [born 7/17/1765]

Joseph Died June 1st 1777 in his 16th year [born 2/24/1762]

The Rev. Samuel West, minister of Needham in 1775, mentioned this epidemic and the Daniels family in his autobiography:

The Dysentery soon prevailed in the American Army & Extended itself more of less through the country. Although it prevailed most in the Town near camp My parish partook largely of this calimity. We buried about 50 persons in the course of the season. Some families were dreadfully. One in particular a Mr Joseph Daniels buried an amiable wife & 6 promising children in about 6 weeks—we often buried 3 or 4 in a day. My time was wholly devoted to visiting the sick, attendance on the dying and dead.

Proportional to population, four deaths in Needham in 1775 would be about 200 people a day today.

Thanks for sharing that work, Judy!