“The enclosed covenant is by no means inconsistent”

Having returned from a busy convention in California, I’m going back to the Solemn League and Covenant of June 1774.

Or, more accurately, the multiple overlapping boycott covenants that appeared in print that month, first in broadsides and then in the 22 June Pennsylvania Journal and the 23 June Boston News-Letter.

Albert Matthews discussed two texts in 1915, calling them Form B and Form A, respectively.

He briefly mentioned a third variation, which I’ll call Form C. This was a revision of Form B created and distributed by the committee of correspondence in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, by the end of June 1774. The Library of Congress displays a copy here.

Another copy of Form C survives in the papers of the Rev. Jeremy Belknap at the Massachusetts Historical Society; he cautioned his parishioners in Dover, New Hampshire, against signing on until they’d heard from what would be the Continental Congress.

According to Frederick Chase’s History of Dartmouth College and the Town of Hanover, the voters of Plainfield, New Hampshire, did adopt the text of Form C on 28 July. Town histories of Mason and Wilton, New Hampshire, show those towns adopted Form C while adding a proviso that signers could vote to revise its terms.

We can thus think of Form C as the New Hampshire variation on a document that originated in Massachusetts. But the big question remains: Which of Form A and Form B was the Boston original?

In early June, as the Boston committee of correspondence finalized its text, Whigs in Worcester County were also thinking about a boycott. In a footnote, Matthews shared evidence that William Henshaw (1735-1820, shown above) of Leicester and Timothy Bigelow (1739–1790) of Worcester privately circulated a draft non-consumption agreement. At the bottom of a copy at the American Antiquarian Society, Henshaw wrote: “It is thought best not to sign any agreement yet, as it is expected we shall have the plan of a General one from Boston very soon.”

We thus know that there was a text in Worcester before the town received the Boston committee’s Solemn League and Covenant broadsides, mailed on 8 June. Furthermore, Matthews deemed that draft text to be “still more drastic” in wording than either Form A or Form B.

On 10 June, as I discussed back here, the Boston committee sent out a second circular letter saying they didn’t mean to suggest that all towns adopt their language. Some organizers must have asked to use other language—but we don’t know if those people wanted the pledge to be more strident or less.

Three days later, Worcester’s committee of correspondence issued its own printed letter, signed by chairman William Young. The state archives shares a copy received by the selectmen in Southboro. The Worcester committee noted how “the committee of Boston in their last letter have informed us that they do not mean to dictate to us,” and concluded “the enclosed covenant is by no means inconsistent with the spirit or intention of the form sent out by them.”

Thus, on 18 June Worcester sent out its own text, different in some respects from Boston’s. A week later, the town formally adopted that language.

But was that Form A or Form B?

TOMORROW: Who’s pushing who?

“Improper to sustain a commission”

On 16 Aug 1775, the Continental Army issued its internal response to the fiery British raid on the Penny Ferry landing in Malden, described back here.

As quoted in Col. William Henshaw’s orderly book:

Captain Eleazer Lindsey of Colonel Gerrish’s regiment, tried by a general court-martial for absenting himself from his post, which was attacked and abandoned to the enemy; the court, on consideration, are of opinion that Captain Lindsey be discharged the service, as a person improper to sustain a commission.

This was one of a series of court-martial proceedings in that week. On 13 August orders had gone out for some men to be confined, and the next day Gen. Nathanael Greene (shown here) assembled a panel of high-ranking officers in the Harvard College chapel.

On 18 August, Greene’s panel tried Col. Samuel Gerrish and unanimously found “That he behaved unworthy an Officer” during the British assault on Sewall’s Point. The court-martial cited “the 49th Article of the Rules and Regulations of the Massachusetts Army,” which was a grab-bag clause:

All Crimes not capital, and all Disorders and Neglects, which Officers and Soldiers may be guilty of, to the Prejudice of good Order and military Discipline, though not mentioned in the Articles of War, are to be taken cognizance of by a general or regimental Court-Martial, according to the Nature and Degree of the Offence, and be punished at their Discretion.

The court recommended that Gerrish “be cashiered, and render’d incapable of any employment in the American Army.” Gen. George Washington approved that sentence the next day.

On 25 August, the commander-in-chief transferred the company formerly under Capt. Lindsey out of the regiment formerly under Col. Gerrish and back into the regiment of Col. Ruggles Woodbridge.

I’ve already quoted what Washington wrote about these actions to his overseer on 20 August. Nine days later he wrote something similar to Richard Henry Lee:

I have made a pretty good Slam among such kind of officers as the Massachusets Government abound in since I came to this Camp, having Broke one Colo. and two Captains for Cowardly beh[aviour in] the action on Bunker’s Hill—Two captains for drawing more provisions and pay than they had men in their Company—and one for being absent from his Post when the Enemy appeared there, and burnt a House just by it.

Besides these, I have at this time one Colo., one Major, one Captn, & two Subalterns under arrest for tryal—

In short I spare none & yet fear it will not all do, as these Peeple seem to be too inattentive to every thing but their Interest.

Washington’s comments don’t line up exactly with the court-martial sentences. Gerrish was formally charged with poor behavior well after Bunker Hill, and both Lindsey and Capt. Christopher Gardner could be described as “being absent from his Post when the Enemy appeared there, and burnt a House just by it.” But the overall trend is clear.

George Washington’s Pistols

I recently wrote about Capt. Nathan Barrett offering Gen. George Washington two ornate pistols that had been captured with a British officer’s runaway horse on 19 Apr 1775. (Also see Nat Taylor’s further research on the likely identity of that officer, squeezed in while the Taylor family grew by one.)

Why, we might ask, would Capt. Barrett have thought the generalissimo needed pistols? Couldn’t a Virginia gentleman acquire his own weapons? Well, there’s a curious entry in Washington’s personal accounts on 1 Sept 1775:

To Cash for recovering my Pistols which had been stolen, & for repairing them afterwards...£1.10s.

I haven’t found any other information about this moment, alas.

And what might those pistols have looked like? Here’s an entry in Col. William Henshaw’s orderly book for 9 Mar 1776; it didn’t appear in Washington’s general orders, and was therefore probably meant only for troops in the southern wing of the army:

His Excellency the General lost one of his pistols yesterday upon Dorchester Neck, whoever will bring it to him or leave it with General [John] Thomas shall receive two dollars reward and no questions asked. It is a skrew’d barrel’d pistol, mounted with silver, and a head resembling a pugg dog at the butt.

The commander-in-chief was “upon Dorchester Neck,” of course, to see how the final bombardment of Boston was going.

Image above courtesy of the Pug Dog Encephalitis Project.