“Choosing a Commander” at the Longfellow–Washington Site, 13 Mar.

On Thursday, 13 March, I’ll speak at Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site on “Choosing a Commander: Myths & Realities Behind the Continental Congress’s Decision to Make George Washington the General.”

Two hundred fifty years ago this spring, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress invited the Continental Congress in Philadelphia to take over the direction (and funding) of the army besieging Boston. A big part of that direction was choosing who would command those troops.

Decades later, John Adams left detailed accounts of those discussions. He described himself as the man who advocated for George Washington of Virginia when no one else would.

According to letters Adams wrote in 1815 (and possibly in 1816 but never sent), most Congress delegates preferred either leaving the army in the hands of Gen. Artemas Ward of Massachusetts or hiring former British army lieutenant colonel Charles Lee.

Adams stated:

The Nominations were made, Ward I believe by Mr [Thomas] Cushing, Lee by Mr [Thomas] Mifflin, and Washington by Mr [Thomas] Johnson of Maryland. The opposition to a change was not So warm, as it had been before, but Still each Candidate had his Advocates.

Nevertheless all agreed in the great importance of Unanimity. This point was urged from all quarters of the House with great force of Reason and Eloquence and Pathos that never has been exceeded in the Counsells of this Nation. It was unanimously agreed to postpone in Election to a future day in hopes that Gentlemen by a deliberate Consideration, laying aside all private feelings, local Attachments, and partial motives, might agree in one, and unanimously determine to Support him with all their Influence. The Choice was accordingly postponed.

By this time all the Friends of Ward, among whom there was not one more Sincere than John Adams who had known him at School within two doors of his Fathers house, and who had known him in Worcester in his riper Years, were fully convinced that Washington Should be preferred to Lee; and they had reason to fear that Delegates from the Southern and Middle States would vote for Lee rather than for any New Englandman. And all the Sober Members would have preferred Either Ward or Washington to Lee.

When the day of Election arrived, after some Observations on the necessity of Concord, Harmony and unanimity in the present portentous moment, Congress proceeded to the Choice and the Suffrages were all found to be for George Washington.

In this talk I’ll explore how much the contemporaneous record from 1775, including Adams’s own private letters, supports this recollection.

This event is scheduled to start at 6:00 P.M., and will include questions and answers afterward. It is free, but seating in the Longfellow carriage house is limited. There’s an option to watch the livestream, and a recording will be put on the site’s YouTube channel when ready.

“No body ever heard of a quarter Master in History as such”

As part of last weekend’s History Camp Valley Forge, I signed up for a tour of “F.O.B. Valley Forge” led by Army War College professor Ricardo A. Herrera, author of Feeding Washington’s Army: Surviving the Valley Forge Winter of 1778.

I’ve visited Valley Forge before, but I was pleased to view the terrain again with an expert guide.

While standing in front of the oversized mounted statue of Gen. Anthony Wayne, Herrera spoke about how the Continental Army’s supply problems that winter were exacerbated by the lack of a quartermaster general. Thomas Mifflin resigned from that administrative post (for the second time) in November 1777.

In March 1778, Gen. George Washington finally twisted the arm of his most trusted lieutenant, Nathanael Greene, to take that job. It had been filled by civilians before, and Greene insisted on a promise that he could return to his army rank afterwards.

A year later, on 29 Apr 1779, Greene made his ongoing feelings about the assignment clear in a letter to Washington:

There is a great difference between being raisd to an Office and decending to one; which is my case. There is also a great difference betwext serving where you have a fair prospect of honor and laurels, and where you have no prospect of either let you discharge your duty ever so well. No body ever heard of a quarter Master in History as such or in relateing any brilliant Action.

But Greene was doing the job. His first big action as quartermaster general, Herrera explained, was to launch a “grand forage,” sending troops out into the countryside around Valley Forge to collect every type of supply that the army needed, paying in Continental scrip whether farmers were happy about that or not.

Greene put Wayne in charge of the main part of that effort. Col. Henry Lee and Cmdre. John Barry scoured other areas. That campaign for supplies kept the army together in the spring of 1777.

As I looked up at the statue of Wayne, I wondered whether there was a similar statue of Greene, given his importance. So I did some quick web-searching. Washington, Wayne, and Steuben appear to have been the only generals with standalone statues in Valley Forge National Park until this century.

In 2015, a statue of Greene by Susie Chisholm was put up near the Washington Memorial Chapel. It’s life-sized, not oversized. It’s on foot, not mounted. And I suspect it’s at that location because the chapel and its grounds are episcopal property, not part of the national park. (The National Park Service is in the business of preserving statues and monuments, not installing new ones.) Chapters of the Sons of the American Revolution funded this memorial.

And that public artwork is making sure that somebody has heard of a quartermaster.

Reading Nathanael Greene, Quartermaster General

The American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia has just finished digitizing its collection of Nathanael Greene Papers.

All the scans can be read through the Revolutionary City portal, created by the A.P.S., the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and the Library Company of Philadelphia.

The A.P.S. collection comes from Gen. Greene’s years working as the quartermaster general, 1778 to 1780, and doesn’t contain any private correspondence.

As Thomas Johns III writes on the society’s blog:

As Quartermaster General, Nathanael Greene struggled with, but ultimately improved, the transportation of troops and supplies that the Continental Army depended upon. The need for supplies fluctuated throughout the war, but their successful transportation remained essential to the American cause. . . .

During the Philadelphia Campaign, fear of impressment caused many Pennsylvanians to conceal their wagons, horses, oxen, etc. When property was taken, those affected sought to have their damages repaid. Attempts at this, both formal and informal, are documented in the collection. Further, this collection mentions legislation from the General Assemblies of Rhode Island and New York that limited the impressment of articles and wagon-teams by the Continental Army.

Greene was the most successful quartermaster general the Continental Army produced. He took the job reluctantly months after Thomas Mifflin had resigned the post for the second time, and was able to stabilize the office and hand it off to Timothy Pickering.

Mifflin and Pickering were both merchants, so they understood bargaining for goods, but Greene brought a different sort of peacetime experience. As manager of his family’s anchor-making workshop in Rhode Island, he oversaw a proto-industrial factory with a skilled workforce to manage, supplies to obtain, customers to satisfy. Very few men in the young U.S. of A. had that sort of knowledge.

Understanding logistics and supplies for the whole army in turn helped Greene in waging that southern campaign in the last years of the war—but that’s beyond the timeframe of this documentary collection.

The largest collection of Nathanael Greene Papers is in the Clements Library at the University of Michigan. A small collection is in Manuscripts and Archives at Yale.

“Considering the Non-importation Agreement to be broke”

By this week in October 1770, 250 years ago, the Boston Whigs knew that the North American non-importation movement had collapsed.

As I discussed back here, early that month the Boston Gazette printed a letter from Philadelphia reporting that some of that city’s merchants were proposing a public meeting to discuss the boycott of goods from Britain.

With most of the Townshend duties repealed, and merchants in some smaller ports already importing, the Philadelphians felt they should declare victory and get back to business. 

Philadelphia’s radical Whigs tried to keep the movement together. But, as the city’s non-importation committee described in a letter dated 25 September, and published as a broadside, the merchants ready to import called their own meeting at Davenport’s tavern. The 135 men who turned out chose Thomas Willing to chair the meeting.

The Boston Gazette reported the results in the 4 October issue. Here are the questions put to that gathering and the body’s answers:

First. Are you of Opinion, that the Non-importation Agreement, as it now subsists, should be altered?

Which was determined by a great Majority, in the Affirmative.

Second. Are you of Opinion that the Alteration proposed, should be to open the Importation of Goods from Great-Britain, and other Parts of Europe, except Teas, and such other Articles as are, or may be subject to Duties for the Purpose of raising a Revenue in America?

Which was determined by a great Majority in the Affirmative.

Some men at the meeting evidently felt they shouldn’t act without discussing the situation further with colleagues in Boston and New York, which of course would take more time. But the majority felt there had been enough discussion already. If people wanted to get their orders to London before winter made sailing harder, they had to act now.

Third. Whether it will not be for the Reputation of this City, to consult the other Colonies, before any Breach is made in the present Agreement?

Which was determined in the Negative.

Fourth. Whether the Agreement is deemed to be broke or altered?

Agreed that it is altered only.

Charles Thomson (shown above) then spoke for several other members of the Philadelphia non-importation committee (including Thomas Mifflin) to say that, regardless of the last vote quoted above, they considered the agreement now “broke.” They opposed that change and would no longer serve on the merchants’ committee.

This news from Philadelphia, and similar reports from New York, told the Boston merchants that maintaining the boycott would have little political effect in London and would leave them at a business disadvantage on the continent. So they might as well start importing, too.

Parliament had kept the tariff on tea, and that revenue was still going to the Customs service and to salaries for royal officials in the colonies. Diehard Whigs like Samuel Adams therefore still saw a dire threat to colonial self-government.

American Whigs officially continued to promote a boycott on tea from Britain for the next three years, even before the Tea Act of 1773. That’s one reason why citizens looking back on pre-war politics recalled tea as the problem rather than all the other goods on the non-importation list. But Customs house figures show that ships brought a great deal of tea in from Britain during those years. Americans found it really hard to give up caffeine.

Men Who Brought Us Dorchester Heights

On 5 Mar 1776, Gen. William Howe and his colleagues in the British military woke up to find Continental troops positioned and protected on the heights of the Dorchester peninsula. The cannon up there threatened not only Boston, already under artillery fire from other positions, but the all-important naval and supply ships in the harbor.

The person who deserves the most credit for making the move onto Dorchester Heights possible was Lt. Col. Rufus Putnam, one of the Continentals’ self-taught engineers. As shown by his 11 February letter (quoted here), he knew that soldiers going on to those hills would have to fortify their positions to hold off a British counterattack. But digging in would be hard because the ground was hard—still frozen at the end of the winter.

When Putnam wrote that letter, he could only imagine a long, costly operation that would require fortifying the entire “causeway” or low, narrow approach onto the peninsula. Then, however, Putnam stumbled across a better solution in a book belonging to Gen. William Heath. Some year I’ll tell that whole story. For now, I’ll summarize by saying that Putnam realized the army could build wooden structures in advance of the move, assemble them on the heights, and strengthen them with dirt. Those walls, while not as strong as an earthen fort, would be enough to protect the men as they dug in further.

William Davis, a Boston merchant, suggested adding “Rows of barrels filled with earth” to those fortifications. Heath wrote:

They presented only the appearance of strengthening the works; but the real design was, in case the enemy made an attack, to have rolled them down the hill. They would have descended with such increasing velocity, as must have thrown the assailants into the utmost confusion, and have killed and wounded great numbers.

Heath took credit of relaying Davis’s idea to Gen. George Washington, who loved it.

Finally, the timing of the operation was the brainchild of quartermaster general Thomas Mifflin (shown above), according to the Rev. William Gordon’s eyewitness history of the Revolution. Gordon wrote, “A council of war was called to fix the time for going upon the heights.” However, he didn’t state a date or place for that meeting, and there’s no record of it in Washington’s papers. Perhaps it was a smaller, more informal group than a “council of war.”

Mifflin was brought into the meeting since he was responsible for supplying the carpenters, wood, wagons, tools, and other material essential to the operation Putnam had suggested. Never a shy man, Mifflin also shared his bright idea:

He went prepossessed in favor of the night of March the 4th, a friend having reminded him, that probably the action would be the next day; and that it would have a wonderful effect upon the spirits of the New Englanders, to tell them when about engaging—“Remember the fifth of March, and avenge yourselves for the massacre at Boston.” When required to give his opinion, he spake in favor of the aforementioned night, and supported it in opposition to the contrary sentiment of gen. [Horatio] Gates, who for some reasons deemed it an improper time. After a debate, it was carried for that night, by a majority of one.

Washington would have preferred an even earlier date, though it’s not clear the army would have been ready until the 4th. That night also offered a nearly full moon for the work.

As it turned out, the British were never able to mount an attack on the Continentals’ new position. Gen. Howe was of two minds about that idea, the weather turned bad, and the men on the heights kept working to make their position even stronger. Less than two weeks later, the British military abandoned Boston.

The barrels never got rolled down the hill.

Moses Brown’s Malden Christmas

In December 1775, Moses Brown led a delegation of Quakers from Rhode Island up to the Boston siege lines to bring relief to the suffering poor.

Brown and his comrades went to Gen. George Washington in Cambridge and explained how they wanted to go into Boston with money they had collected. A siege is of course an attempt to deny resources to the enemy, so the commander-in-chief couldn’t have been enthused about this idea.

Quartermaster general Thomas Mifflin was even more negative, thinking that such charity would prove unpopular with the Massachusetts populace.

In consultation with Washington and members of the Massachusetts General Court, the Quakers decided they would meet some of their contacts at the siege lines and hand over the money. But Sheriff Joshua Loring and Maj. John Small came out and told them that the poor in Boston didn’t need money and the town had adequate food.

So the Quakers went off to hand out their money to the poor people they found in Marblehead, Salem, Lynn, Chelsea, and the smallpox hospital at Point Shirley.

Soon enough it was Christmas Day, as Brown described in his report on the journey:

We went to Malden and Lodged at —— where were the Select men upstairs on business and below a Noisey Company of Soldiers fidling and Danceing after supper.

David [Buffum] and I proposed to see the Select Men and Inform them of our Business went up stairs and I spoke to them of the Noise etc not being sufferable it was not only rong in itself but contrary to Every prospect of the present time and Even the Congress Discouraged it by Resolves.

They allowed it was not agreeable but thought as they were Soldiers it must be allowed. It was what they called a Christmas frolich and they had been up all the Night before, were principaly of the Riflemen.

As an eighteenth-century Quaker, Brown didn’t celebrate Christmas. Neither did most New Englanders. But these riflemen were from the Middle Colonies, many of them transplants from Britain, and they didn’t adhere to Puritan customs. And thus we discern the limits of Moses Brown’s charity.

The Mifflins’ Marriage

Yesterday, when we looked in on the Brattle House in Cambridge in August 1775, Continental Army quartermaster general Thomas Mifflin had taken it as his home and office during the siege of Boston.

Three women were already living there: the widow Katherine Wendell, daughter of the house’s Loyalist legal owner; her thirteen-year-old daughter, Martha-Fitch Wendell; and their eighteen-year-old guest, Abigail Collins of Rhode Island.

After a visit to the house in August, Abigail Adams wrote to her husband in Philadelphia with a hint for Mifflin’s wife Sarah:

tell her I do not know whether her Husband is safe here. . . . You hear nothing from the Ladies, but about Major Mifflins easy address, politeness, complasance &c. &c.

Sarah Mifflin set out for Cambridge in the next month.

The Mifflins lived together in the Brattle house over the winter. They hosted Dr. John and Mary Morgan, another Philadelphia couple. They held dinner parties. In fact, it looks like the Mifflins entertained visiting officials in genteel style while dinner at Gen. George Washington’s headquarters down the street was more of a “pot-luck” military affair.

So did that togetherness fend off any rifts in the Mifflins’ marriage? Not for long. By the end of the war, Thomas Mifflin was known for his sexual affairs. After Mifflin was elected governor of Pennsylvania in 1790, Dr. Benjamin Rush wrote:

This man was known to be of a very immoral character. He had lived in a state of adultery with many women during the life of his wife, and had children by some of them, whom he educated in his own family. It is said his wife died last summer of a broken heart in consequence of this conduct towards her.

Rush had other reasons to dislike the man, but everyone seems to agree that Mifflin led a “dissipated” later life while also serving as his state’s highest official.

However, the Brattle House was a happier rendezvous for other couples. Abigail Collins met her future husband, Dr. John Warren, when he was working down the street at the army hospital. Martha-Fitch Wendell later married a tutor from Harvard College nearby. And her mother, by keeping on the good side of both military and local officials, kept the estate from being confiscated as the property of a Loyalist.

I’ll have stories of other women in other mansions along Brattle Street in my “Women of Tory Row” walking tour on Saturday afternoon, part of this year’s Cambridge Discovery Day.

“Women of Tory Row” Tour, 20 Sept.

Saturday, 20 September, is this year’s Cambridge Discovery Day. The city’s historical commission has organized a series of walking tours, exhibits, and lectures, most of them free.

I’m leading a tour of Brattle Street called “The Women of Tory Row.” We’ll start at 3:00 at the Tory Row historical marker on the corner of Brattle and Mason Streets. That means we won’t see the Brattle House, now part of the Cambridge Center for Adult Education, so I’ll talk about the ladies in that house now.

William Brattle was a militia general who triggered the “Powder Alarm” of 1-2 September 1774. As soon as he realized his neighbors knew he’d told Gen. Thomas Gage about gunpowder in the county powderhouse, and that those neighbors saw his action as a betrayal, Brattle fled into Boston.

Brattle’s widowed daughter, Katherine Wendell, remained in Cambridge, and remained determined to keep the family property from being damaged or confiscated. Her method, according to descendants, was to obtain “the favor of men in power civil and military.”

During the siege of Boston, when Cambridge housed thousands of Continental soldiers, Mrs. Wendell hosted two teen-aged girls in that house:

• Her daughter, Martha-Fitch Wendell (1762-1835).
• Abigail Collins (1757-1832), daughter of a Rhode Island Patriot and an Avery from Boston.

Collins’s son later described them as “two young ladies whose personal qualities rendered them the centre of attraction among the officers of the army.” Not least because there probably weren’t any other upper-class young women around.

By August, Thomas Mifflin of Pennsylvania had accepted the post of quartermaster-general of the army and chose the Brattle house to be his home and office. I suspect Mrs. Wendell moved herself and the girls into back rooms, accommodating the quartermaster to curry his favor and make sure people understood that she still claimed the house.

That month, Abigail Adams sent her husband in Philadelphia a word to pass on to Mifflin’s wife Sarah (shown with him above): “tell her I do not know whether her Husband is safe here. Belona and Cupid have a contest about[.] You hear nothing from the Ladies, but about Major Mifflins easy address, politeness, complasance &c. &c.”

TOMORROW: Can this marriage be saved?

Abigail Adams and the Hand of Friendship

I started this series with Abigail Adams’s first impression of Gen. Charles Lee in early July 1775: she called him “a careless hardy veteran” who showed little personal elegance.

On 24 July, her husband John wrote to a friend about that side of Lee:

You observe in your Letter the Oddity of a great Man—He is a queer Creature—But you must love his Dogs if you love him, and forgive a Thousand Whims for the Sake of the Soldier and the Scholar.

That wasn’t really a complaint of the sort that Adams wrote the same day about John Dickinson and other colleagues in the Continental Congress, but it also wasn’t what one gentleman was supposed to say about another. Especially one who had just risked a fortune to offer his expertise to your army. And who had a history of dueling.

Those lines became public in August 1775. Fortunately for Adams, Lee laughed them off when he got around to addressing them on 5 October:

As you may possibly harbour some suspicions that a certain passage in your intercepted letters have made some disagreeable impressions on my mind I think it necessary to assure You that it is quite the reverse. Untill the bulk of Mankind is much alter’d I consider the reputation of being whimsical and eccentric rather as a panegyric than sarcasm and my love of Dogs passes with me as a still higher complement. I have thank heavens a heart susceptible of freindship and affection. I must have some object to embrace. Consequently when once I can be convincd that Men are as worthy objects as Dogs I shall transfer my benevolence, and become as staunch a Philanthropist as the canting Addison affected to be.

But you must not conclude from hence that I give into general misanthropy. On the contrary when I meet with a Biped endow’d with generosity valour good sense patriotism and zeal for the rights of humanity I contract a freindship and passion for him amounting to bigotry or dotage and let me assure you without complements that you yourself appear to me possess’d of these qualities. I give you my word and honour that I am serious, and should be unhappy to the greatest degree if I thought you would doubt of my sincerity. Your opinion therefore of my attainments as a Soldier and Scholar is extremely flattering. Long may you continue in this (to me) gratissimus error. But something too much of this.

Lee added in a postscript: “Spada sends his love to you and declares in very intellegible language that He has far’d much better since your allusion to him for He is carress’d now by all ranks sexes and Ages.” Spada was, of course, Lee’s favorite dog.

It came back to Abigail to cement that new bond between Gen. Lee and her husband. Toward the end of the year, John wrote from Philadelphia to urge her to pay a social call on Mary Morgan, wife of the new head of the Continental Army medical corps. Mrs. Morgan was staying with quartermaster general Thomas Mifflin and his wife in the William Brattle house in Cambridge.

On 10 December, Abigail reported back on her visit there, including another encounter with Washington, Lee, and their companions:

I was very politely entertaind and noticed by the Generals, more especially General Lee, who was very urgent with me to tarry in Town and dine with him and the Laidies present, at Hob Goblin Hall [the Isaac Royall house], but I excused my self.

The General was determined that I should not only be acquainted with him, but with his companions too, and therefore placed a chair before me into which he orderd Mr. Sparder to mount and present his paw to me for a better acquaintance. I could not do otherways than accept it.—That Madam says he is the Dog which Mr. . . . . . has renderd famous.

Almost certainly Lee had said “Mr. Adams,” reminding Abigail of her husband’s remarks. So of course she had no choice but to shake Mr. Spada’s paw and look like she was pleased to do so.

Gen. Washington in Cambridge, 19 July

This Saturday, 19 July, Gen. George Washington will return to his Cambridge headquarters, at least in the form of reenactor John Koopman. He’s scheduled to be at Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site from noon to 4:00 P.M., and that federal site is free to all visitors.

Abigail Adams had met the new commander a few days before he moved into that mansion, and on 16 July wrote to her husband John, assuring him that the Continental Congress had made the right choices:

The appointment of the Generals Washington and [Charles] Lee, gives universal satisfaction. The people have the highest opinion of Lees abilities, but you know the continuation of the popular Breath, depends much upon favorable events.

I had the pleasure of seeing both the Generals and their Aid de camps soon after their arrival and of being personally made known to them. They very politely express their regard for you. Major [Thomas] Miflin said he had orders from you to visit me at Braintree. I told him I should be very happy to see him there, and accordingly sent Mr. [John] Thaxter to Cambridge with a card to him and Mr. [Joseph] Read to dine with me. Mrs. [Mercy] Warren and her Son were to be with me. They very politely received the Message and lamented that they were not able to upon account of Expresses which they were that day to get in readiness to send of.

I was struck with General Washington. You had prepaired me to entertain a favorable opinion of him, but I thought the one half was not told me. Dignity with ease, and complacency, the Gentleman and Soldier look agreably blended in him. Modesty marks every line and feture of his face. Those lines of Dryden instantly occurd to me

“Mark his Majestick fabrick! he’s a temple
Sacred by birth, and built by hands divine
His Souls the Deity that lodges there.
Nor is the pile unworthy of the God.”

General Lee looks like a careless hardy Veteran and from his appear­ence brought to my mind his namesake Charls the 12, king of Sweeden. The Elegance of his pen far exceeds that of his person.

Washington and his retinue never made it out to the Adamses’ home at Braintree, and it doesn’t look like Abigail ever visited the Cambridge headquarters, though John did. This letter did, however, eventually lead Abigail to a second meeting with Gen. Lee.

TOMORROW: Abigail Adams passes on a request for a commission.

Congress’s Portrait of Bernardo de Gálvez

A couple of folks have pointed us to a Los Angeles Times article that begins:

Teresa Valcarce wants to see Congress keep a promise it made in 1783.

Back then, the year the Revolutionary War ended, Congress agreed to display a portrait of Bernardo de Galvez in the Capitol to honor the Spanish statesman’s efforts to aid the colonies in their struggle against Britain.

But in 1783, there was no “Capitol” for the Continental Congress to make any commitments about. That national legislature met in buildings it borrowed from other governments, including Pennsylvania’s state house (now called Independence Hall) for most of the war.

No one had even conceived of Washington, D.C., yet; the federal Congress agreed to create that national city only in 1790. The Capitol Building was started in 1793, opened for business in 1800, and wasn’t complete (in its first form) until 1826.

So what’s the basis of this newspaper story? On 8 May 1783, the Journals of the Continental Congress state: “A Portrait of Don Galvez was presented to Congress by Oliver Pollock.” North Carolina delegate Hugh Williamson wrote:

A letter was received from Mr. Oliver Pollock in which he informs Congress that having obtained a portrait of Don B. de Galvez, an early and zealous friend of the U. S., he begs leave to present the same to Congress.

Starting in 1777, Bernardo de Gálvez (1746-1786, shown above) was the Spanish governor of Louisiana. He supported the U.S. of A. in order to weaken Britain in North America, at first by supplying arms and loans and allowing weapons and men to cross Spanish territory. In 1779 the war widened, and Gálvez led Spanish forces in a successful defense against British attacks.

Pollock, who had settled in New Orleans as a merchant before the war, was the U.S. of A.’s agent in Louisiana. He worked closely with Gálvez, borrowing money for Continental troops and even reportedly serving as a military aide. When Pollock gave the Spanish governor’s portrait to the Congress, he was in Philadelphia angling to be appointed U.S. agent in Havana.

In response to Pollock’s gift, the Congress created a three-man committee headed by Thomas Mifflin, who drafted this resolution:

Resolved, That the Secretary inform Mr. Pollock that Congress accept his present of a portrait of Don Bernardo de Galvez late Governor of Louisiana.

Resolved, That the Secretary do cause the same to be placed in the room in which Congress meet.

The L. A. Times article says it’s unclear whether the portrait of Gálvez ever was hung. But in fact on 9 May the Congress’s chairman, Elias Boudinot, wrote back to Pollock:

I have the honor to infom you in answer to your favour of the 7th inst. [i.e., of this month] that Congress have chearfully accepted the portrait of Don Bernardo De Galvez late Govenor of Louisiania in consideration of the early & Zealous friendship of that Gentlemen frequently manifested in behalf of these States, and have directed me to cause it to be hung up in the Hall of the Presidents House.

By “the Presidents House” Boudinot meant the house where he himself was living. Thus, Gálvez’s portrait was kept for a day in the legislative chamber and then moved to the hall of a nearby rented mansion. The Congress never promised to display the portrait permanently, as the newspaper reports Teresa Valcarce interpreting the record.

TOMORROW: And what happened to that portrait?

Anthony Walton White Does Not Impress

On Thursday, I’m going to Gen. George Washington’s headquarters in Cambridge to speak about how he managed his generals and his staff. Back on 25 July 1775, a young man showed up at the same building hoping for a place on that staff.

Anthony Walton White (1750-1803) was a grandson of Lewis Morris, governor of New Jersey. He arrived with a recommendation letter from George Clinton of New York. His grandfather wrote another letter on his behalf, and his father wrote to Washington twice.

White wanted to join the Continental Army—but not, of course, at the enlisted level. All the New England regiments were fully stocked with officers or didn’t want anything to do with a stranger from New Jersey. So the only opportunity was in some sort of staff job.

The Continental Congress had authorized Gen. Washington to hire a military secretary and three aides de camp. As of late July, he had filled two of those aide positions with Thomas Mifflin and John Trumbull. So White stuck around.

In August, Mifflin took the more important post of quartermaster general. Two young men from Virginia, Edmund Randolph and George Baylor, arrived and became aides de camp. But Trumbull went back to the Connecticut troops, leaving an opening. And White still stuck around.

Washington wrote to White’s father about his “modest deportment,” but what worried him were White’s modest talents. In fact, he was more interested in the young man’s horse. On 3 October, the general paid White £48 “for a Riding Mare.” White may have needed that money to get home. He returned to New Jersey and sought a commission there instead.

Months later, Washington was still using White as an example of someone he did not want as an aide. In January 1776 he told former secretary Joseph Reed that it “pains me when I think of Mr. White’s expectation of coming into my family if an opening happens.” (In fact, there was still an opening at that time—Washington was keeping the secretary post vacant, hoping Reed would return.)

White never grew in Washington’s esteem. In September 1798 the former President told federal officials that the man hadn’t accomplished anything but “frivolity—dress—empty shew & something worse—in short for being a notorious L—r.” Authors have interpreted the last word as “liar,” but it could also have been “lecher.” And I doubt White developed any personal fondness for Gen. Washington.

The Truth about Thomas Machin

I’ve been discussing the early life of Thomas Machin, commissioned a lieutenant in the Continental Army artillery on 18 Jan 1776. But what had he been doing before then?

His family left an account that had Machin born to a distinguished British scientist, working for a duke, coming to America in 1772, and quickly joining the movement that led to independence. But there’s no evidence for any of that, and strong evidence against it.

And then there’s this 27 July 1775 entry from the journal of Lt. Richard Williams of His Majesty’s 23rd Regiment of Foot:

Last night Thos. Machin, soldier in our Regt. deserted when sentry on the fire boat in the river near the neck. he went off in the Canoe go to this float, he took the other man’s firelock with him, as it was that man’s turn to lay down, this fellow will give them good intelligence of our Works, for he was a pretty good Mechenik & knew a little of fortification. he invented a new carriage for guns on a pivot &c. his books & instruments were sent for to the General’s.

Lt. Col. Stephen Kemble also noted the desertion that night of a man from the 23rd, “a sensible intelligent fellow, some knowledge of fortification and Gunnery.”

The 23rd Regiment’s muster rolls record that Thomas Machin had enlisted in Maj. Harry Blunt’s company on 17 Feb 1773 and sailed to New York that spring. The regiment arrived in Boston in August 1774. Machin was thus in the army during the Battle of Bunker Hill—but in the British army.

Several people on the American side noted Machin’s arrival, though most didn’t record his name. Col. William T. Miller of Rhode Island wrote on 29 July that “it is thought [he] will prove a very serviceable man to our army, as he is able to give a plan of all the works and fortifications in Boston, and knows all their plans.” The old veteran Jedidiah Preble said he was “as sensible intelligent a fellow as I ever met with.”

Most important, Gen. George Washington wrote down “An Acct. of the Killed & Wounded in the Ministerial Army” based on a conversation with a man he recorded as “John Machin.” The commander-in-chief assigned the deserter to work with his young aide-de-camp, John Trumbull, to draw plans of the British fortifications. (One product of their collaboration appears above.) Later Machin worked for quartermaster general Thomas Mifflin and was most likely a scout during an 8 Jan 1776 raid on British positions at Charlestown.

Machin’s entry in American National Biography says nothing about that activity, accepting the family story of a genteel life in England and a respectable arrival in America. But Machin was a British army private, a deserter, and part of “Washington’s First Spy Ring” during the siege of Boston. I’ll divulge more secrets of the general’s early intelligence efforts this afternoon in Lincoln at an event sponsored by the Friends of Minute Man National Park.

(Thanks to Bob Vogler for posting the quote from Lt. Williams’s diary above to the Revlist in 2002. That sent me hunting for the elusive Thomas Machin.)

Washington’s Birthday at Washington’s Headquarters

Tomorrow, 22 February, is the date America finally settled on as the anniversary of George Washington’s birth. And shortly before the Bicentennial the federal government established its Washington’s Birthday (Presidents’ Day) holiday as the third Monday in February, which can never be the 22nd.

At least one part of the government still celebrates Washington on the 22nd, however. The National Park Service rangers at Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site in Cambridge are offering free tours of that mansion each half-hour from 1:00 to 4:00 on Friday afternoon. These tours focus on how the commander-in-chief used the house as his headquarters in 1775-76. Each tour takes about half an hour, well suited for kids on school vacation.

On Thursday, 14 March, the site will offer longer tours on the hour from 1:00 to 4:00 P.M. These, too, will focus on Gen. Washington’s life and work in the house as Evacuation Day approaches.

That evening, I’ll speak at the site on:

George Washington, Crisis Manager: The Shaky Startup of the Continental Army Headquarters

When George Washington became commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, he had to assemble an effective headquarters staff. Over his first several months the new general struggled to identify the talents he needed, to recruit the right men, and then to replace them when they left. This talk looks at Washington’s learning curve as a manager and the workings of the military “family” he brought together in Cambridge.

At this talk I’ll gossip about which men Washington insisted that the Continental Congress commission as generals. And what quartermaster Thomas Mifflin and military secretary Joseph Reed didn’t tell their wives. And why, after Reed and aide Edmund Randolph left the Cambridge headquarters short-handed in the fall of 1775, Washington nevertheless sent his other aide George Baylor off to Connecticut.

To reserve a seat for that 14 March talk or any of the house tours about Gen. Washington, email the site.

“Making Fine Music to My Ear”?

Yesterday I quoted a January 1776 letter from William Palfrey about his modified Anglican service in Christ Church, Cambridge. On 30 Dec 1875, the Boston Daily Advertiser published another account of that event, quoting what the newspaper’s editors understood was the transcription of a letter that Lydia Biddle had written on 1 Jan 1776.

It described the service at Christ Church in detail, with particular attention to the music:

Unfortunately, the organ could not be used; some of the leaden pipes had been taken out to furnish ammunition for our men at the fight in Charlestown last June, and it was quite out of order, but a bass viol and clarionet, played by some musical soldiers, led the singing, which was very good, the strong voices of the many men who thronged the church making fine music to my ear; and when part of Psalm cxviii. and a verse from the cxix. was rolled out, I saw some tearful eyes…

As soon as this letter appeared, people wrote to the newspaper to express doubts about its authenticity.

The letter was addressed “To Mrs. Sarah Morris Mifflin,” wife of Continental Army quartermaster general Thomas Mifflin, at Philadelphia. (The couple appears above in a pre-war portrait by John Singleton Copley.) Right away that made me dubious for two reasons:

• That woman was known during her married life as “Sarah Mifflin.” Not until the nineteenth century did it become common to preserve a married woman’s maiden name as her middle name.
• Sarah Mifflin was actually in Cambridge with her husband over the winter of 1775-76.

And back in 1876, Boston newspaper readers offered other reasons for skepticism.

There was still no definite information about the source of the letter, however. The Cambridge historian Samuel F. Batchelder spent some time around the turn of the century trying to solve the mystery. In a 10 May 1905 letter, he wrote (with a little pique) about having just learned that it had been composed by a local lady named Isabella James—his own aunt.

James also contributed a nonfiction article to the Cambridge of 1776 volume that included Mary Williams Greeley’s “Diary of Dorothy Dudley”—another literary attempt to recreate life in Cambridge during the Revolutionary War. And, just like the Dudley diary, James’s fiction continues to be quoted as a reliable source, particularly by historians of music. But, alas, our only source on the New Year’s service in Cambridge’s Christ Church is Palfrey’s letter.

TOMORROW: An authentic look at Christ Church from about 1781.

“The residence of his excellency General Washington”

The Massachusetts Provincial Congress’s records say that on 26 June 1775 the body voted

That the president’s house in Cambridge, excepting one room reserved by the president for his own use, be taken, cleared, prepared, and furnished, for the reception of General [George] Washington and General [Charles] Lee, and that a committee be chosen immediately to carry the same into execution.

Most of the time that congress used “the president” to refer to its presiding officer, who at that point was James Warren. However, Warren’s own house was in Plymouth, and he was staying somewhere in Watertown, so this must mean another “president’s house in Cambridge.”

The only president who lived in Cambridge was the Rev. Dr. Samuel Langdon of Harvard. And with the college closed, he didn’t need the whole building, right? That house still stands on the edge of Harvard Yard, and is officially called the Wadsworth House (shown above).

The generals arrived in Cambridge on 2 July. Four days later, the congress ordered its Committee of Safety “to desire General Washington to let them know if there is any house at Cambridge, that would be more agreeable to him and General Lee than that in which they now are.” That suggests its members had heard murmurs that the generals weren’t fully satisfied.

By the next day, it was clear that the two generals would be living separately, and on 8 July the Committee of Safety decided that “it is necessary the house of Mr. John Vassal, ordered by Congress for the residence of his excellency General Washington, should be immediately put in such condition as may make it convenient for that purpose.” It looks like he moved in a week later; at least his aide Thomas Mifflin paid the cleaning bill on 15 July.

John Vassall had left that mansion when he moved his family into army-occupied Boston in September 1774. In the 1790s Andrew Craigie, who back in 1775 had worked for the Provincial Congress as an apothecary, bought the house and expanded it. After his widow’s death it became the home of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and family, and it’s now Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site.

Thus, Prof. Cornelius Conway Felton was correct in telling Washington Irving that what he called “the Cragie House” was Gen. Washington’s headquarters and residence for most of the siege of Boston. But Irving had been correct when he originally wrote that the Provincial Congress had first put Washington and Lee up in the Harvard president’s house.

COMING UP: Where did Gen. Charles Lee live?

“General Lee is a perfect original”

And speaking of Gen. Charles Lee, here’s one of my favorite anecdotes about him. On 21 Oct 1775, the Rev. Jeremy Belknap dined in Cambridge at the house of Thomas Mifflin, quartermaster general for the American army. The other guests included:

• Continental Congress delegates Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Lynch, and Benjamin Harrison
• Gen. Horatio Gates
• the commander-in-chief’s secretary, Joseph Reed, and aide-de-camp George Baylor
• Lt. Gov. Matthew Griswold of Connecticut
• the Rev. Abiel Leonard, chaplain from Connecticut
• Gen. Lee

It’s testament to Lee’s forceful personality that Belknap’s journal entry about the dinner was almost entirely about him:

General Lee is a perfect original, a good scholar and soldier, and an odd genius; full of fire and passion, and but little good manners; a great sloven, wretchedly profane, and a great admirer of dogs,—of which he had two at dinner with him, one of them a native of Pomerania, which I should have taken for a bear had I seen him in the woods.

A letter which he wrote General [Israel] Putnam yesterday is a copy of his odd mind. It is, as nearly as I can recollect, as follows; being a letter of introduction of one Page, a Church [of England] clergyman: —

Hobgoblin Hall, Oct. 19, 1775.

Dear General,—

Mr. Page, the bearer of this, is a Mr. Page. He has the laudable ambition of seeing the great General Putnam. I therefore desire you would array yourself in all your majesty and terrors for his reception. Your blue and gold must be mounted, your pistols stuck in your girdle; and it would not be amiss if you should black one half of your face.

I am, dear general, with fear and trembling, your humble servant,
Charles Lee.

This Page is suspected by some to be a spy, as he has a plan of the lines, and is bound to England.

And of course one general should introduce a suspected spy to another.

I wonder if this Page was the same man who preached in Newport in March 1773 and got the Rev. Ezra Stiles all gossipy. He claimed to be a chaplain to the Countess of Huntingdon, who was financing Methodism back in Britain. I can’t find a record of that minister’s first name.

George Washington Sat Here

The invoice for cleaning the John Vassall house in Cambridge before Gen. George Washington moved in, which aide-de-camp Thomas Mifflin paid on 15 July 1775, includes this item:

Necessary house — [£]1.2.6

A few weeks later, on 25 August, Washington noted in his expense notebook a payment of £1.10 to “James Campbell—Necessaries for the House.” Four days later he made an equal payment to Jehoiakim Youkin for “D[itt]o. D[itt]o.”

“Necessary” was an eighteenth-century euphemism for an outhouse. Apparently the general had paid for Campbell and Youkin to clean out the headquarters latrines, or dig new ones. (The unusual name of Jehoiakim Youkin or Yokum also appears in the records of the Stockbridge Indians. His signed receipt for 30 shillings from the general’s secretary Joseph Reed is in the headquarters files.)

As autumn arrived, that outdoor facility no doubt seemed less enticing in the middle of the night. On 20 September steward Timothy Austin bought “3 Chamber Potts & 1 Pitcher.”

The house became more crowded in early December when Martha Washington, her son, and his wife arrived, along with some enslaved servants.

Late the next month the weather turned cold, with ice covering the Charles River for the first time. On 26 January 1776 and then on 14 February, Austin added six more chamber pots for the household, so on chilly nights the family wouldn’t have to visit that necessary house.

(The image above shows the pieces of a Rhenish chamber pot uncovered in an archeological dig at Mount Vernon.)

“What we had so bravely won”

Here’s Gen. John Sullivan’s account, in a 19 Mar 1776 letter to John Adams, of warily investigating British fortifications in Charlestown two days earlier, after seeing the British soldiers going aboard ships:

I then took my Horse, & rode down to Charlestown Neck, where I had a clear view of Bunker Hill. I saw the Sentrys standing as usual with their Firelocks shouldered, but finding they never moved, I soon suspected what Regiment they belonged to; and upon taking a clear view with my Glass found they were only Effigies set there by the flying Enemy.

This convinced me that they were actually fled, for if they meant to Decoy us, they would have taken away every appearance of man. By this time, I was joined by Colo. [Thomas] Mifflin, who, with my Brigade Major agreed to go up, sending two persons round the works to Examine whether there was any of them in the Rear of the works, while we went up in the front. I, at the same time sent for a strong party to follow us on to the Hill, to assist us in running away (if necessary).

We found no person there & bravely took a fortress Defended by Lifeless Sentries. I then brought on the Party to secure what we had so bravely won, & went down to the other works where we found all abandoned, but the works not injured in any part. We hailed the ferry Boat, which came over & Informed us that they had abandoned the Town.

We then gave Information to the General [Washington], who ordered me with the Troops under my Command to take possession of Charlestown, & General [Israel] Putnam with 2000 men, to take possession of the works in Boston; and on Monday morning His Excellency made his Entry into Boston, & Repaired to Mr. [John] Hancock’s House, where we found his Furniture left without Injury or Diminution.

Gen. Henry Clinton had used Hancock’s Beacon Hill mansion as his quarters, which spared it from being looted.

What the Americans Found on the Nancy

Yesterday I described the capture of the British brig Nancy by a New England privateer in late November 1775. When the Americans discovered the weapons on that ship, “jubilant” is not too strong a word for their reaction. Gen. William Heath wrote in his diary on 30 Nov 1775:

Intelligence was received from Cape Ann, that a vessel from England, laden with warlike stores, had been taken and brought into that place. There was on board one 13 inch brass mortar, 2000 stand of arms, 100,000 flints, 32 tons of leaden ball, &c. &c. A fortunate capture for the Americans!

Those weapons were soon moved to Cambridge, and Col. Stephen Moylan wrote:

Such universal joy ran through the whole camp as if each grasped victory in his hand; to crown the glorious scene, there intervened one truly ridiculous, which was Old Put [Gen. Israel Putnam] mounted on the large mortar, which was fixed in its bed for the occasion, with a bottle of rum in his hand, standing parson to christen, while god-father Mifflin gave it the name of Congress.

Thomas Mifflin (shown above, courtesy of the U.S. Army Transportation Museum) was then Quartermaster-General of the Continental Army. In June 1776, he would be succeeded by none other than Col. Moylan.

Dr. James Thacher, an army surgeon, later explained the reason for such excitement:

Before our privateers had fortunately captured some prizes with cannon and other ordnance, our army before Boston had, I believe, only four small brass cannon, and a few old honey-comb iron pieces, with their trunnions broken off. . . . Had the enemy been made acquainted with our situation, the consequences might have been exceedingly distressing.

By the day after Heath heard about the Nancy, news of the capture had filtered into Boston, where selectman Timothy Newell recorded:

A large Brigt. with ordnance stores, a very valuable prize from London taken by Captn. [John] Manly in a Schooner Privateer from Beverly.

Lt. William Feilding wrote to his relative and patron, the 6th Earl of Denbigh, on 12 Dec 1775:

In my last I informed your Lordship the apprehension we were in for fear of the Ordnance Brigg was taken and am sorry to Acquaint your Lordship that by Accounts from the Rebels, she was Taken a few days before the Boyne sail’d. . . .

The Captain [of a privateer captured in the first week of December] says he saw the sea Morter (which was on Board the Ordnance Brigg) at Cambridge Common the Thursday before he was taken; and that from the Information of the Master, he was sent out to sea for a Powder Ship, which we have heard nothing of as yet. A deserter who came in a few days since, Says he saw all the Ordnance Stores safe Lodg’d at Cambridge last week.

On 19 Jan 1776, Feilding added that British officers expected the Americans to mount their new mortars on high ground at Phipps’ Farm, across the Charles River from Boston, “and endeavour to Burn the Town.”