“Twang them at the American rebels”

Maj. Robert Donkin ran advertisements in the New-York Gazette promoting his upcoming book Military Collections and Remarks and thanking the latest subscribers from January through June 1777.

In the latter part of that year, the Gazette’s printer, Hugh Gaine, actually produced the book.

According to the accounting published inside, the print run was 1,000 copies, folded, bound, and covered.

But the book turned out to need more work.

Maj. Donkin had no good words for “this unnatural rebellion,” as his ads said. But on one page inside the book, he let his anger run away on him.

In a short section titled “Bows,” the major added this footnote:

Dip arrows in matter of smallpox, and twang them at the American rebels, in order to inoculate them; This would sooner disband these stubborn, ignorant, enthusiastic savages, than any other compulsive measures. Such is their dread and fear of that disorder!

In Pox Americana, Elizabeth Fenn analyzed this passage as showing how British officers could picture spreading smallpox among the enemy as long as they saw those people as “savages.” There had been similar talk of infecting Native Americans during the last war.

Fenn also reported that only three copies of Donkin’s book with that footnote are known to exist. One, now at the Clements Library in Michigan, belonged to Gen. Valentine Jones of the 62nd Regiment, a subscriber.

All other copies have that footnote on page 199 sliced out, as shown below in the University of California’s volume, digitized by Google and also available through the Hathi Trust.

This excision became well known among book dealers and collectors. Around 1900, catalogues describing copies of the book noted the deletion and added “as usual.”

All the copies I’ve found online are missing the footnote. Most of the excisions are neater and more complete than the one I’m showing here. For instance, through this page one can find the American Revolution Institute’s volume. Another copy on Google Books shows how the British Library staff patched the hole with blank paper.

The thoroughness and neatness of the footnote’s removal suggests that some authority demanded that Donkin and Gaine delete it. Soon after the major started to distribute the book, it appears, someone had to go through every remaining copy with a sharp blade. That certainly took more time, and probably more money.

Fortunately, the other side of that page was blank in that spot, so those copies didn’t lose any other text.

In fact, it appears that subscribers and purchasers of the censored version got something extra.

TOMORROW: He is their hero.

Valentine’s Letter from Québec

In May 1774, Lt. Col. Valentine Jones (c. 1723-1779) was the officer in charge of the 52nd Regiment of Foot and the highest-ranking British army officer in Québec City.

The local British merchants sent him this address:

It is with much concern we learn that his Majesty’s service at this time calls for you and the Regiment under your command from this province; and we should on this occasion be much short of the respect due to you, and which Truth demands of us, if we did not take this public method of returning you our most sincere and hearty thanks for the obliging, regular and humane conduct you have ever observed for the many years you have resided among us; during which you have always paid that just regard to the protection of Civil Rights, and the proper Discipline of the Troops under your Command, as become the prudent and experienced officer.

We heartily wish you and the gentlemen of the Corps under your Command a safe and pleasant voyage, and doubt not that in your next quarters his Majesty’s Subjects may have equal cause to bear Testimony of the uprightness of your conduct as the citizens of Quebec.

I think the Québecers were responding to rumors that Jones and the 52nd Regiment would be moved to Boston to subdue that town after the Boston Tea Party.

As it happened, the regiment was still in Canada in early September. But only a few days after the “Powder Alarm,” Gen. Thomas Gage ordered virtually all the British troops in Québec down to Boston to help bolster its defenses against the rebellious countryside.

Gage made Jones the commander of one brigade in Boston. That job brought him the rank of general in North America. He participated in the Crown’s successful campaign to retake New York in 1776.

However, at the end of that year Gen. Sir William Howe told Lord George Germain that Jones, in his fifties, was “too inactive and infirm” to take a leading role in his strategy for the next year. Maj. James Wemyss later recalled Jones as “An honest hotheaded Welchman, altogether destitute of abilities; but hospitable and friendly.”

Jones returned to Britain in late 1778, receiving the rank of lieutenant general and the honor of an audience with King George III. But his health was failing. He visited Bath and then Buxton Wells to treat “the Asthma and Rheumatism” but then developed gout. On 3 May 1779 he went out riding, again for his health, but fell off his horse and ended up unable to “turn in my Bed or be but upon the Broad of my Back or sleep but when seated in an armed chair.”

Jones had already been granted leave from the army. He returned to Wales, where he died in the middle of 1779, aged fifty-six.