Ferling on Washington on CSPAN Today

Today at noon, CSPAN’s In Depth program will feature John Ferling speaking live from Mount Vernon on his new book, The Ascent of George Washington. This book looks at Washington as a highly successful politician who managed to position himself almost above politics.

Marie Arana reviewed the book in the Washington Post:

According to Ferling, no one worked harder to make us believe this than George Washington himself. He was “mad for glory,” success being a useful obsession for a wartime general or a presidential candidate. There is no doubt he was the right man for America at the right time, but as Ferling shows, he was also as calculating as he needed to be: shockingly capable of blaming others for his errors, so eager for power that he didn’t hesitate to trample anyone who stood in his way. The picture that emerges here is harsher, yet more human, than any we’ve had before.

Max Byrd wrote more provocatively for the Barnes & Noble website:

Somewhere around the age of 30, George Washington turned himself to stone.

Not all at once, and not completely. But so much so that by the time he rode into Philadelphia in 1775 for the Second Continental Congress, at the age of 43, his reputation was permanently fixed: a man of grave, stately bearing, with a “Soldier-like Air,” as a fellow delegate observed, “and a...hard countenance.” “As awful as a god,” added Abigail Adams. “A heart not warm in its affections,” said Thomas Jefferson carefully.

Jefferson was understating the matter badly.

The publisher, Bloomsbury, has a four-minute video of Ferling on the book’s webpage.

Ferling’s earlier portrait of Washington’s personal side is The First of Men.

Identifying the Unknown Orator

In 1944, the author Manly P. Hall (a name that sounds made up, but isn’t) published a book called The Secret Destiny of America. It had this to say about the Continental Congress’s approval of the Declaration of Independence on this day 233 years ago:

Some years ago, while visiting the Theosophical colony at Ojai, California, A.P. Warrington, esoteric secretary of the society, discussed with me a number of historical curiosities, which led to examination of his rare old volume of early American political speeches of a date earlier than those preserved in the first volumes of the Congressional Record.

He made particular mention of a speech by an unknown man at the time of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. . . . There is no reason to doubt the accuracy and authenticity of Mr. Warrington’s copy, but I am undertaking such investigation as is possible to discover the source of the speech.

On July 4, 1776, in the old State House in Philadelphia, a group of patriotic men were gathered for the solemn purpose of proclaiming the liberty of the American colonies. From the letters of Thomas Jefferson which were preserved in the Library of Congress, I have been able to gather considerable data concerning this portentous session.

In reconstructing the scene, it is well to remember that if the Revolutionary War failed every man who signed the parchment then lying on the table would be subject to the penalty of death for high treason. It should also be remembered that the delegates representing the various colonies were not entirely of one mind as to the policies which should dominate the new nation.

There were several speeches. In the balcony patriotic citizens crowded all available space and listened attentively to the proceedings. Jefferson expressed himself with great vigor; and John Adams, of Boston, spoke and with great strength. The Philadelphia printer, Dr. Benjamin Franklin, quiet and calm as usual, spoke his mind with well chosen words. The delegates hovered between sympathy and uncertainty as the long hours of the summer days crept by, for life is sweet when there is danger of losing it. The lower doors were locked and a guard was posted to prevent interruption.

According to Jefferson, it was late in the afternoon before the delegates gathered their courage to the sticking point. The talk was about axes, scaffolds, and the gibbet, when suddenly a strong bold voice sounded—“Gibbet! They may stretch our necks on all the gibbets in the land; they may turn every rock into a scaffold; every tree into a gallows; every home into a grave, and yet the words of that parchment can never die! They may pour our blood on a thousand scaffolds, and yet from every drop that dyes the axe a new champion of freedom will spring into birth! The British King may blot out the stars of God from the sky, but he cannot blot out His words written on that parchment there. The works of God may perish: His words never!

“The words of this declaration will live in the world long after our bones are dust. To the mechanic in his workshop they will speak hope: to the slaves in the mines freedom: but to the coward kings, these words will speak in tones of warning they cannot choose but hear...

“Sign that parchment! Sign, if the next moment the gibbet’s rope is about your neck! Sign, if the next minute this hall rings with the clash of falling axes! Sign, by all your hopes in life or death, as men, as husbands, as fathers, brothers, sign your names to the parchment or be accursed forever! Sign, and not only for yourselves, but for all ages, for that parchment will be the textbook of freedom, the bible of the rights of man forever.

“Nay, do not start and whisper with surprise! It is truth, your own hearts witness it: God proclaims it. Look at this strange band of exiles and outcasts, suddenly transformed into a people; a handful of men, weak in arms, but mighty in God-like faith; nay look at your recent achievements, your Bunker Hill, your Lexington, and then tell me, if you can, that God has not given America to be free!

“It is not given to our poor human intellect to climb to the skies, and to pierce the Council of the Almighty One. But methinks I stand among the awful clouds which veil the brightness of Jehovah’s throne. Methinks I see the recording Angel come trembling up to that throne and speak his dread message. ‘Father, the old world is baptized in blood. Father, look with one glance of Thine eternal eye, and behold evermore that terrible sight, man trodden beneath the oppressor’s feet, nations lost in blood, murder, and superstition, walking hand in hand over the graves of the victims, and not a single voice of hope to man!’

“He stands there, the Angel, trembling with the record of human guilt. But hark! The voice of God speaks from out the awful cloud: ‘Let there be light again! Tell my people, the poor and oppressed, to go out from the old world, from oppression and blood, and build my altar in the new.’

“As I live, my friends, I believe that to be His voice! Yes, were my soul trembling on the verge of eternity, were this hand freezing in death, were this voice choking in the last struggle, I would still, with the last impulse of that soul, with the last wave of that hand, with the last gasp of that voice, implore you to remember this truth—God has given America to be free!

“Yes, as I sank into the gloomy shadows of the grave, with my last faint whisper I would beg you to sign that parchment for the sake of those millions whose very breath is now hushed in intense expectation as they look up to you for the awful words: ‘You are free.’”

The unknown speaker fell exhausted into his seat. The delegates, carried away by his enthusiasm, rushed forward. John Hancock scarcely had time to pen his bold signature before the quill was grasped by another. It was done.

The delegates turned to express their gratitude to the unknown speaker for his eloquent words.
He was not there.

Who was this strange man, who seemed to speak with divine authority, whose solemn words gave courage to the doubters and sealed the destiny of the new nation?

Unfortunately, no one knows. . . .

There are many interesting implications in his words.

He speaks of the ‘rights of man,’ although Thomas Paine’s book by that name was not published until thirteen years later.

He mentions the all-seeing eye of God which was afterwards to appear on the reverse of the Great Seal of the new nation.

In all, there is much to indicate that the unknown speaker was one of the agents of the secret Order, guarding and directing the destiny of America.

Actually, there is much to indicate—such as exact, line-by-line quoting at the start of the speech—that these words were derived from George Lippard’s Washington and His Generals; or, Legends of the Revolution, published in 1847.

Lippard was one of the great fictionalizers of the Revolution in the Philadelphia area. His “legends” were short stories with supernatural overlays and patriotic morals. Though he dropped historical names, he didn’t stick to historical details, such as when Congress actually voted for independence (2 July) and when delegates started signing the famous handwritten copy of the Declaration (2 August). And as histrionic as Hall’s exhortation looks, Lippard’s original version of “The Speech of the Unknown” was even more over the top.

Yet some people repeat this tale as if it were useful history. It’s been quoted by a future President, who had the false understanding, probably from Hall, that Jefferson had described the moment. Other writers have said that the unknown orator was an immortal named Count Saint-Germain, the angel Moroni, or future Maryland delegate John Hanson. But the identity of the unknown is quite simple—he’s fictional.

Henries Vomhavi and Two Captured Horses

On 3 July 1775, the Massachusetts Committee of Safety considered a special request from a provincial soldier:

Henries Vomhavi, an Indian, having represented to this committee, that he had taken two horses at Noddle’s island, one a little horse, which he is desirous of retaining as some recompense for his fatigue and risk in that action, in which, it is said he behaved with great bravery; it is the opinion of this committee, that said Indian should be gratified in his request, which will be an encouragement to others in the service, provided, the honorable Congress should approve thereof.

I quoted a couple of reports on the fighting on Noddle’s Island back in May 2007. The major purpose of the provincial raid was to seize cattle and sheep, depriving the besieged garrison of meat. Those two horses were a bonus.

The Provincial Congress records for the afternoon of 4 July say:

A recommendation of the committee of safety relative to an Indian’s having a horse, was read, and committed to Doct. [John] Taylor, Mr. [George] Partridge, and Mr. [John] Glover. . . .

The Committee upon the Letter relative to the Indian’s having a Horse, reported. The Report was accepted, and is as follows, viz:

Resolved, That a small Horse, taken by Henries Vomhavi from Noddle’s Island, be granted to the said Henries for his own use, to encourage his further brave conduct and good behaviour in camp.

What about the bigger horse that Vomhavi had secured? The Congress had already put that to use on 13 June, resolving “That Mr. [James] Sullivan have liberty to use the horse in Mr. Fowle’s pasture in this town which was taken lately from Noddle’s island for his journey to Ticonderoga.” The legislature was then meeting in Edmund Fowle’s house in Watertown, now home to that town’s historical society. Evidently the horse was kept as provincial property nearby.

I’d love to know more about Henries Vomhavi, but as far as I can tell this is the only record of him.

“Something of the American Ideal” in Fireworks?

In anticipation of Independence Day, here’s a quick extract from Steve Macone’s Boston Globe essay about the temptation and dangers of illegal fireworks:

In this state [Massachusetts]—for weeks and months around the date—we celebrate the day in which our government broke away from another in order to make our own rules by violating the rules set by that new government. It’s beautifully, stupidly appropriate—America was, originally, illegal.

The Department of Fire Services reports 45 people were burned on more than 5 percent of their bodies by fireworks between 1999 and 2008, a figure that doesn’t account for eye injuries, smaller burns, or the fact that 12-year-olds are not known for their injury reporting skills in the face of being grounded. “The typical fireworks injury is a boy 7-14,” said Jennifer Mieth of the Department of Fire Services. “They’re not driving up to New Hampshire and buying them themselves. When the kids see Uncle Jim use fireworks with impunity they think, ‘Well, I can do that.’”

We all know what’s good about fireworks. There’s something of the American ideal in their upward trajectory and beauty on the backdrop of open space. The fingers of the explosions, shooting off in exponential pathways, are a sort of Manifest Destiny writ large across the sky. And each beach organization always trying to improve upon last year’s show is like pyrotechnics as a sign of progress.

But that’s where fireworks belong: in the sky, not in kids’ hands—reflected in a child’s glimmering eyes, not lodged there. No one ever watches the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and thinks, “You know, I would like to orchestrate a smaller yet more dangerous version of that in my backyard.”

And as another public-safety announcement, here’s a link to my 2006 posting “Ezekiel Goldthwait: fireworks victim.”

What’s the Difference Between a Barquentine and a Brigantine?

I’ll wind up this short stretch of postings on historic sites welcoming visitors this summer with recognition that Boston harbor will host the Tall Ships on 8-13 July. For the schedule of public events, see the Sail Boston website.

Of course, those sailing ships don’t go back to the eighteenth century, and most use technology not available back then. But we don’t have any other options if we want to see lots of large sailing ships in Boston harbor at one time, as in most of the 1700s. The Sail Boston site offers this handy guide for telling one type of ship from another.

Photo above from Sail Training International.

Did Drayton Hall Have Colonnades?

I’m sure there are other people in greater Boston who own Drayton Hall T-shirts, but I haven’t met any. When people see me in mine, they ask if that was my college dorm. It’s actually a National Trust for Historic Preservation property in Charleston, South Carolina, built in 1742. It’s now being preserved rather than restored—meaning it looks a lot better from the outside than from the inside.

The latest issue of Preservation contains an article by Arnold Berke titled “Searching for Palladio”, which starts off with a Drayton Hall mystery:

In September 2007, a mysterious photograph arrived at Drayton Hall, the extraordinary 18th-century brick mansion that rises along the Ashley River near Charleston, S.C. Mailed anonymously from Winchester, Va., the photo showed a subtly tinted watercolor of the house and two flanking pavilions, elegantly connected by a pair of sweeping colonnades.

No one had ever seen the watercolor or even heard of anything like it, so the scholars at the National Trust historic site were stunned: The earliest drawing of the house dated to 1845, but showed no colonnades at all—only low iron fences connecting the house and “flankers.”

By his own admission, Executive Director George McDaniel was among the skeptics. The image was “folded up and had ‘Drayton Hall, S.C.’ on the front and ‘1765’ on the back,” he says, “and the sender penciled in ‘Att: Back in the day’ on the envelope ... The thought that came to me was, ‘Is this a forgery?’”

And yet the painting led to an archeological dig that found brick foundations consistent with colonnades rather than just those “low iron fences” appearing in the earliest confirmed images. Of course, the image in the photograph could be accurate without being authentic. And still no one knows where the original painting is.

The Preservation article is about the larger topic of Palladio’s influence on American architecture in the late 1700s. It comes with an online slide show of other Palladian buildings, including the 1750 Redwood Library in Newport, Rhode Island, and Christopher and Rebecca Payne Gore’s 1806 mansion in Waltham, Massachusetts.

Going to Prison in Connecticut

Anthony Vaver’s Early American Crime offers a traveler’s guide to the Old New-Gate Prison and Coppermine in East Granby, Connecticut.

The site of the prison originally supported one of the first commercial mining operations in the British colonies, before the Connecticut General Assembly decided to convert the mine into Connecticut’s first colonial prison in 1773. Today, a long set of stairs takes you down into the mine shafts, where you are free to wander around without a guide and to discover the eerie cavern once reserved for solitary confinement tucked away in the back of the tunnels.

Outside the mine is a spectacular vista of the Farmington Valley, which must have given some convicts incentive to break out. Despite claims when it first opened that the prison was one of the most secure in the American colonies, its first prisoner escaped only 18 days after his initial incarceration up a 67-foot air shaft, which can still be seen today.

Two years after the prison opened, Connecticut started using it to confine political prisoners. The “Simsbury Mines,” as many people still called the site, became quite notorious among Loyalists. But officials were convinced of its effectiveness. In his 1818 history of Connecticut, the Rev. Benjamin Trumbull (1735-1820) stated that the “prison called Newgate...has been of much greater advantage to the state than all the copper dug out of it.”

I’ve visited the Old New-Gate Prison twice, once while it was open—which was much more interesting. The view and geography are as compelling as the history. The hours on the site’s site are “Fri, Sat & Sun between 10am and 4pm” for walk-in visitors, closed 3 July but open on Independence Day and through October. Vaver recommends visiting on the last Sunday of the month, when a guide offers tours of the Viets Tavern across the road as part of the $5 admission fee.

Mr. Jefferson Is Not at Home Today

As per Publick Occurrences 2.0, check out New York Times artist Maira Kalman’s visual record of a visit to Monticello.
Of course, what I’d really like to learn is the name of the handsome, part-Jefferson-designed house where Kalman stayed.

William Simpson: fifer, deserter

Don Hagist, whose work on British soldiers I’ve long admired, has recently started a blog called “British Soldiers, American Revolution” to share some of the results of those researches. Assembling profiles of individual British soldiers is one of the hardest tasks in this little field. Few of them left much in the way of personal papers, and the Crown didn’t care enough to keep good records. But by assembling information from a variety of sources, Don can give us a peek at some men in the redcoat ranks.

Or boys, as in the case of the fifer described is this advertisement from the New York Gazette, or Weekly Post Boy, 10 Sept 1770:

Perth Amboy, New-Jersey, Sept. 6, 1770.

Deserted from the 29th Regiment of Foot, William Simpson, Fifer, aged 19 Years, 5 Feet, 8 Inches high, born in the Regiment, straight and well made, fair Complexion, thin Face, long Visage, large Nose, large Limbs, short brown Hair, blue Eyes, speaks short, and pretty much of the Irish Accent, a large Hole or Hollow on the top Part of his Scull, occasioned by a Fracture received at Castle Island; no Hair growing on it; plays well on the Flute and Fife, and plays a little on the Violin and French Horn.

Had on when he went away, a short yellow Coat, fac’d Red, red Fall-down Collar, red Wings and Lining, the Coat lac’d with Drummers Lace, white Linnen Waistcoat and Breeches, a black Cap, bound with white Tape, the Number of the Regiment in the Front, and a Scarlet Worsted Feather round the upper Part of the Front. Whoever apprehends and secures the above Deserter so that he may be delivered over to the abovesaid Regiment at Perth-Amboy, or to the Commanding Officer of the 26th Regiment at New-York, shall receive Ten Dollars Reward, on Application to either Commanding Officers.

N. B. It is supposed the above Deserter is gone towards Boston or Halifax, having a Brother in the 64th Regiment at Halifax.

Simpson was at Boston during the period of the Boston Massacre. Don’s analysis of this ad touches on his past and his uniform. As for what happened to fifer Simpson, his name reappeared on the 29th’s muster roll at the end of the year and then disappeared, all without explanation.

When you’re done pondering that, check out this dispute between veteran Thomas Mallady and his wife Hannah.

(Standing is for fifer Simpson above is the fifer major of the reenacted Tenth Regiment of Foot, Mary Stone. The unit will appear at the American Independence Festival in Exeter, New Hampshire, on 12 July.)

Cuff Dole and Abel Dodge: comrades in arms?

Yesterday I quoted a 4 July 1776 warrant issued for the detention of Cuffee Dole, a black man from Rowley, Massachusetts. Today I’ll discuss the claims and implications surrounding that manuscript, which the Cohasco company has offered for sale. The press release promoting its sale says:

The document places him [Dole] inside George Washington’s headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Called “the Barrack on Prospect Hill,” the house was later owned by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and immortalized in a poem.

Washington did make his headquarters in Cambridge, in a house later owned and written about by Longfellow, but that was miles away from where Dole and Dodge were housed. The “Barrack on Prospect Hill” was a barrack on Prospect Hill.

One of the auction sites describing this document says of the justice of the peace who issued it, “Aaron Wood would become a U.S. Senator.” He was a Massachusetts state senator in 1781, before the U.S. Senate was created.

Finally, the press release hypes the significance of this item by saying, “Dole is believed the first African-American to be mentioned in a document of the newly-independent United States.” In fact, Wood had no idea that the Continental Congress, hundreds of miles away, had declared independence; he issued the warrant invoking the authority of “the Province of Massachusetts-Bay.” The date is simple coincidence.

What’s more, the Congress’s actual vote for independence came on 2 July; the 4th was when it approved its public declaration, and the big date on top of that declaration became the anniversary we celebrate. I’d be surprised if people couldn’t find other African-Americans—particularly enslaved ones—mentioned on documents created 2-4 July 1776. It would give me more confidence if the material about this document was less hyperbolic and more accurate.

The warrant has already proven significant in what it tells us about Cuff Dole. As Christine Comiskey found when working on her recent short biography of Dole, we have solid documentation for his later life in that part of Rowley, Massachusetts, now called Georgetown. Above is a photograph of his gravestone; click on the thumbnail for a larger image from Jenn Marcelais’s Very Grave Matter website about New England cemeteries.

(Cuffee Dole is also recalled in Georgetown in the name of a restaurant, which is not inappropriate; like many other African-American men in the early republic, he made his living for a while in the catering business.)

The authoritative Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors in the War of the Revolution lists several references from the Massachusetts state archive showing how Dole served in the Continental Army 15 Aug-30 Nov 1777, and June-December 1780. But this document puts him in Cambridge barracks in March 1776, implying that he served in an earlier campaign as well.

Alas, the warrant offers just a hint at the relationship between Abel Dodge and Cuff Dole. Dodge apparently woke up in the barracks on 30 March, missing eight dollars. How did he decide Dole was responsible? Did Dole take the money because he believed he deserved it, and Dodge accuse him of stealing because he thought the law gave him an advantage over a black man? Did the two men fight? Dodge was 5'9" and thirty-three years old in 1776; Dole was four years younger, an inch taller, and according to tradition in the town of Bradford “of remarkable strength.”

I note that Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors also indicates that both Dole and Dodge served in “Benjamin Adams’s Co., Col. Johnson’s regt.; from 15 Aug to 30 Nov 1777.” So whatever difference arose between them in the spring of 1776, they probably worked it out by the summer of 1777.

Cuff Dole: wanted man

Boston 1775 reader Rob Velella (who maintains the Poe-a-Day Calendar) alerted me to an interesting press release from the historical documents dealer Cohasco of Yonkers, New York. It describes a manuscript related to Cuff or Cuffee Dole, a black soldier in the Continental Army during the siege of Boston. The item happens to be dated 4 July 1776, and the press release claims that it’s the earliest document about an African-American in the independent United States.

I’ll examine more details tomorrow. But first, more about the document itself. This auction website offers a tiny thumbnail image, and this auction website offers a transcription:

To the sheriff or marshal of the County of Essex or wither of his deputies or either of the Constables of the Town of Rowley in said County or to any or either of them—Greeting.

Whereas complaint has this Day been made unto me the subscriber by Abel Dodge of Rowley in said County Cooper against one Cuff Dole a Negro man of the said town of Rowley that the said Cuff did in the night beset after the Thirty First Day of March last by force of arms steel and take out of Pocket cash belonging to the said Abel as he was sleeping in his Barrack on Prospect Hill in Cambridge one Eight Dollar Bill of the Continental Emission which was the property of the said Abels.

Wherefore you and each of you are hereby required by virtue of the Authority reposed in me the subscriber by the Major [...] of the council of the Province of Massachusetts Bay immediately to apprehend the Body of the said Cuff Dole if he may be found in and present and bring him before me or some other of the justices of the said County of Essex so that he may be [...] and further dealt with according us to law and justice it doth [...] given under my hand and deed this fourth Day of July AD 1776 Aaron Wood Justice of the Peace.

Which makes it highly ironic that the press release is headlined: “1776 Black Document Discovered: A Story of Freedom for July 4th”. This warrant illustrates not the story of a black man’s freedom, but the threat of a black man’s imprisonment. The release’s statement that Dole was “concerned with an eight-dollar bill” is an obvious attempt to dodge that awkward fact.

A little more digging reveals that the document was discovered and published by Christine Comiskey, author of a booklet about Dole issued last year. On 24 Apr 2008, the Georgetown Record described reported:

The second surprise for Comiskey was finding a warrant for Cuffee’s arrest dated July 4, 1776. While fighting in the American Revolution, Dole was accused of stealing $8 from fellow soldier Abel Dodge as he slept in his barracks on Prospect Hill in Cambridge. Comiskey found no further record of the case, and believes the charges were probably dropped.

Comiskey’s book was published by the Georgetown Historical Society (the part of Rowley where Dole lived became Georgetown in 1838) and is available through its gift shop.

TOMORROW: What this document tells us—and what it doesn’t.

Revolutionary Encampments to Visit in June and July

This weekend, 27-28 June, Minute Man National Historical Park hosts a special encampment of Revolutionary War reenactors (particularly the 10th Massachusetts Regiment, the Ladies of Refined Taste, and the Authentic New England Campaigners) portraying life in the Continental Army camps during the siege of Boston.

The event is titled “Now We Are One,” referring to how the New England provincial militias regiments became the Continental Army with the arrival of the Continental Congress’s endorsement, the new commander-in-chief (shown here), and some companies from Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia.

On Saturday, the scenarios will focus on midsummer when the new general arrived with a different notion of how officers should behave and how an army should be run. Meanwhile, the New England officers were trying to figure out what had gone wrong at Bunker Hill, and the New England militiamen were still adjusting to life as full-time soldiers.

The Sunday scenarios will show the same army a few months later. Riflemen are arriving from the south, troops are leaving for the north, and there are whispers about a high-ranking traitor. And the Crown forces are still in Boston! Visitors will be welcome each day from 9:30 A.M. to 5:00 P.M.

The park’s Hartwell Tavern will be the center of activities, standing in for Gen. Washington’s actual headquarters from late July 1775 through early April 1776. The real building is now Longfellow National Historic Site, an N.P.S. property in Cambridge, and is open for tours all summer.

In addition, I hear that the Braintree Historical Society will host an encampment by the French Regiments Saintonge and Bourbon on the weekend of 18-19 July 2009. This will be on the grounds of the 1785 Sylvanus Thayer House, 786 Washington Street, in Braintree. The schedule includes a farmers’ market, military and civilian demonstrations, games, a visit from Mr. and Mrs. Adams, and candlelit music and dancing with the Wayside Inn Steppers in the evening.

Checking Out Some Specialized Blogs

Here are some interesting blogs I’ve come across, or learned about from alert Boston 1775 readers. Barbara Sarudy, author of Gardens and Gardening in the Chesapeake, 1700-1805, has a website on American Garden History, featuring lovely photographs and sources from the eighteenth century.

Sarudy has also created a blog on American Women of the Eighteenth Century. (And one on women of the nineteenth century, but that doesn’t concern us.) But be aware: something on that site—perhaps the changing portraits of women—that has caused trouble for my browser in the past. Clearly the problem isn’t Blogger’s Scribe template.

This spring the Massachusetts Historical Society’s Beehive announced an online gallery of items in the society’s collections of art, artifacts, and documents. Up above, for example, is the copper Indian figure that served as a weather vane atop the Province House, the royal governor’s residence.

Finally, one of my favorite unclassifiable blogs is Strange Maps. The entries don’t usually pertain to early America, but this one starts there; it’s a map of the geographical center of the U.S. population in the year of each census. Washington, D.C., turns out to have been extremely close to the new nation’s center of population (though not voters) in the country’s first three decades. After that, we can watch the American population move steadily westward, with a big jump in the 1850s because of the California gold rush.

Worse Than Bunker Hill

The British army’s worst day during the American War was the first pitched battle and its first victory, Bunker Hill, which we commemorated last week. Out of about three thousand Crown officers and enlisted men sent into the fight, more than one thousand were casualties: 226 killed and 828 wounded.

But was that the worst British loss of the global conflict? I was surprised to learn that it wasn’t. We never hear of the more costly battle in American history because it didn’t take place in America.

After France and Spain declared war on Britain in 1778 and 1779, respectively, the three empires started to spar all over the world. For example, for almost four years Spain and its French ally tried to wrest Gibraltar back from Britain. The garrison survived that siege, a hugely important campaign for the British government. Yet hardly any Americans were involved, so we don’t study it.

India was a relatively new battlefield for the rival European empires, and the region’s kingdoms were still strong enough to tip the scales by allying with or resisting those outside powers. That produced another theater of war for the British military during the Americans’ fight for independence. The British East India Company, backed by the imperial government, attacked the French outpost at Mahé.

The French had a powerful ally in Hyder Ali, ruler of Mysore, who declared war on the British. In the Battle of Pollilur, on 10 Sept 1780, an army commanded by Hyder’s son, Tippu Sultan, met the British forces and inflicted a devastating defeat. As the Tiger and the Thistle website explains, the British fielded 3,853 men. The officers were mostly European, the enlisted men mostly locals, or sepoys. And the casualties at the end of that day?

Of the 86 European officers, 36 were killed or died of wounds, 34 were taken wounded, and only 16 taken unhurt. The whole of the sepoy forces [over 3,300 soldiers] were either killed, captured or dispersed, and only about 200 Europeans, most of them wounded, were taken alive by the enemy.

Even if most of the British sepoys survived by deserting, that army was simply erased. And the casualty rate among the group the Crown paid the most attention to—European officers—was over 80%.
In 1784, the Treaty of Mangalore ended the Second Mysore War, a clear victory for Tippu Sultan. (He had come to power after his father died from a carbuncle or cancer on his back.)

But the British Empire came back in 1790 and forced Tippu to give up half his territory two years later. The successful commander in that Third Mysore War was Gen. Cornwallis, making up for his surrender to French and American forces at Yorktown.

History Investigations for Students

This weekend brought the happy news that my godson won the history prize for his year in grade school. This says nothing about the godfatherly influence of Boston 1775 since said school is in London and no doubt teaches an almost completely different history from that explored here.

Nonetheless, it seems like an appropriate day to point to Lesson Modules from the City University of New York’s Investigating U.S. History project:

• The Slave Society of Eighteenth-Century Virginia.
• The Stamp Act Protests.
• Drafting, Debating, and Ratifying the Constitution.

The Stamp Act unit is particularly Boston-focused, but there were other protests against that act from Savannah to Halifax. (It looks like most images have vanished from those webpages since I first saw them, probably due to either permissions or technical issues.)

One Founder’s Recommended Reading List

Prof. Alison L. LaCroix’s article at Common-Place on “The Founders’ Fiction” describes a University of Chicago Law School experiment in understanding the U.S. of A.’s constitutional basis better by reading what founders read for pleasure. She writes:

To guide us in the process, and to ensure that the books we chose were ones that the founders had read, we turned to a letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote to his prospective brother-in-law, Robert Skipwith, in August 1771. Skipwith had asked Jefferson to provide a list of books that would be the basis of his library. . . . [Jefferson] exceeded Skipwith’s proposed budget of “about five and twenty pounds sterling, or if you think proper…thirty pounds” by some seventy pounds. . . .

Yep, that was usually how Jefferson managed his finances.

Of course, Jefferson wasn’t involved in writing the Constitution, nor typical of his generation in many ways. But never mind that—the light is better in his library.

Most striking to modern eyes is the prominence of fiction on the list. More than a third of the books listed under “Fine Arts” are works of fiction. All are by European authors. They include classics that are still read today, such as Cervantes’s Don Quixote, Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones, and Chaucer’s Canturbury Tales, as well as less familiar works more likely to be found on the syllabus of a course on eighteenth-century English literature than on the shelf at Barnes and Noble, such as Tobias Smollett’s Peregrine Pickle and Frances Sheridan’s Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph. . . .

Jefferson’s list made the case that a gentleman’s library ought to include literary fiction. “[T]he entertainments of fiction are useful as well as pleasant,” Jefferson wrote to Skipwith. “[E]verything is useful which contributes to fix in the principles and practices of virtue.”

Suppressing the temptation to assign one of the list’s more obscure novels (would the students really be able to track down copies of John Langhorne’s Solyman & Almena: An Oriental Tale?), Jake and I chose four works from among Jefferson’s recommendations: Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy; Oliver Goldsmith’s Vicar of Wakefield; and the sensational duo of 1740s literary London, Samuel Richardson’s Pamela and its parody Shamela, by Henry Fielding.

I’ve read those four, and occasionally take a bite of Peregrine Pickle. And now I’ve found webpages devoted to Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph and Solyman and Almena to keep myself busy.

“I am going upon the hill to-morrow”

Boston 1775’s last version (this week) of Dr. Joseph Warren going to his death in the Battle of Bunker Hill comes from deep in the realm of mythmaking. It was reportedly “taken down from the lips of [Elizabeth Palmer] by a friend, a few years before her death, which occurred in 1838.” Palmer’s descendants being of a literary and publishing bent (they married with Tylers, Peabodys, and Putnams), her account was printed first in a profile of her father-in-law in The New Englander in 1845, and then fully in Grandmother Tyler’s Book in 1925.

When it begins, Palmer and her family have moved into a house in Newton.

I used to go to Watertown every day, and on the 15th of June following, I met Gen. Warren for the last time. He had been our family physician, and I am sure that I liked him better than any body except my husband. He was a handsome man and wore a tie wig. He had a fine color and bright blue eyes.

He dined with us, and while at dinner said to me, “Come my little girl, drink a glass of wine with me for the last time, for I am going upon the hill to-morrow, and I shall never come off.”

The next day I rose very early, and could hear the cannon from Bunker’s Hill and see the smoke of burning Charlestown. I hastened to Watertown to hear the news. Gen. Warren’s servant [i.e., slave] met me in front of our house and seizing my horse’s head, exclaimed, “Oh missee, missee! the devils hab killed my master.” The tears ran down his cheeks. I saw Dr. John Warren, the brother of the general. He was much affected, and gave me all the papers he could collect, which belonged to his brother.

So much drama! The handsome hero predicting his own death (and flirting with our memoirist while he was at it). That loyal slave, so useful for showing a person overcome with emotions while maintaining white stoicism. The mournful brother turning over papers to a passing housewife. But so much wrong.

Warren couldn’t know at dinnertime on 15 June that there would be a battle on a hill two days later. Had Palmer indeed left from Newton early in the morning on 17 June, she would have reached Watertown by midday; the battle didn’t start until the middle of the afternoon. The Massachusetts Provincial Congress records show that the Patriots didn’t know for sure that Warren was dead for at least two days. And Warren’s eyes, according to John Singleton Copley’s portrait, weren’t blue.

(The image above comes from Teach US History. It was published in the Columbian Magazine in 1846, soon after Elizabeth Palmer’s story appeared in The New Englander. It is, however, titled “General Warren taking leave of his wife and child on the eve of the Battle of Bunker Hill,” so this woman is not supposed to be Palmer. That said, Warren’s wife had been dead for about two years, and the legend that accompanied the engraving is even “bunker” than Palmer’s.)

Dr. Warren’s “Nervous Headache”

Here’s yet another account of Dr. Joseph Warren’s last day, 17 June 1775, this time from Richard Frothingham’s Life and Times of Joseph Warren:

It was a very hot summer’s day, with a burning sun. Warren was suffering from a nervous headache, and threw himself on a bed; but, after the alarm was given, he rose, and, saying that his headache was gone, started for the scene of action. It is said that one of his students, Dr. [David] Townsend, accompanied him a part of the way on foot, but that, a short distance from the College [Harvard], Warren was on horseback. He overtook two friends [James Swan and James Winthrop] who were walking to the battle-field, and, exchanging with them the usual salutations, he passed along towards Charlestown. . . .

Warren went to the rail-fence: here he was on foot. He met General [Israel] Putnam, who, it is said, offered to receive orders from Warren, who replied, “I am here only as a volunteer. I know nothing of your dispositions; nor will I interfere with them. Tell me where I can be most useful.”

Putnam directed him to the redoubt, with the remark, “There you will be covered;” when Warren said, “Don't think I came to seek a place of safety, but tell me where the onset will be most furious?” General Putnam again named the redoubt.

Warren then went forward to Breed’s Hill, and into the redoubt. There was a feeling at this time, in the ranks at this post, so manifest was the peril, that, through the oversight, presumption, or treachery of the officers, the men would be all slain. They needed encouragement. Warren was enthusiastically received; “all the men huzzaed.” He said that he came to encourage a good cause, and that a re-enforcement of two thousand men was on its way to their support.

Colonel [William] Prescott asked the general if he had any orders to give. Warren replied that he had none, and exercised no command, saying, “The command is yours.” This is the relation by General [William] Heath. Judge Prescott, who heard the fact from his father, the colonel, is more circumstantial in relating the incident. “General Warren,” Judge Prescott says, “came to the redoubt, a short tune before the action commenced, with a musket in his hand. Colonel Prescott went to him, and proposed that he should take the command; observing that he (Prescott) understood he (Warren) had been appointed a major-general, a day or two before, by the Provincial Congress. General Warren replied, “I shall take no command here. I have not yet received my commission. I came as a volunteer, with my musket, to serve under you, and shall be happy to learn from a soldier of your experience.”

Warren undoubtedly served as a volunteer in the battle that began soon after he arrived. . . . On such a field, Warren fought a good fight. He was applied to for orders, and gave them. . . . As the regulars, showing “a forest of bayonets,” came over one side of the redoubt, the militia fell back to the other side, and there was a brief but fierce hand-to-hand struggle, when the butts of the muskets were used; and Warren was now seen for the last time by Colonel Prescott, who was not among those who ran out of the redoubt, “but stepped long, with his sword up,” as he parried the thrusts that were made at his person. So great was the dust arising now from the dry, loose soil, that the outlet was hardly visible. Warren was among the last to go out.

Just outside of it, there was much mingling of the British and Provincials, and great confusion, when the firing for a few moments was checked. At this time, Warren endeavored to rally the militia, a contemporary account says, “sword in hand.” He was recognized by a British officer, who wrested a musket out of a soldier’s hand, and shot him. He fell about sixty yards from the redoubt, being struck by a bullet in the back part of his head, on the right side. Having mechanically clapped his hand to the wound, he dropped down dead. The retreating and the pursuing throng passed on by his body.

This has become the standard account of Warren’s death, particularly the headache. Frothingham relied on a variety of sources available to him in 1865: contemporaneous documents like a letter from Col. Prescott and an orderly book, early histories such as the Rev. William Gordon’s from 1788 (which said, “general Warren was shot in the back part of his head, on the right side: having mechanically clapt his hand to the wound, he dropt down dead”) and Gen. Heath’s memoir, and recollections from Gen. Putnam’s and Col. Prescott’s sons.

However, for the crucial detail that a “British officer” shot a sword-wielding Warren with a soldier’s musket, Frothingham’s source was an unpublished manuscript by Samuel Adams Wells, which seems unreliable. It’s also unclear where Frothingham found his information about Warren’s walk to the battlefield. He apparently didn’t have access to the Rev. Dr. Jeremy Belknap’s notes on Warren’s last day, quoted here; they weren’t published until ten years after this biography.

Warren Elected in Place of Warren

On the morning of 19 June 1775, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress passed the following vote:

Resolved, That three o’clock, P. M., be assigned for the choice of a president of this Congress, in the room of the Hon. Joseph Warren, Esq., supposed to be killed in the late battle of Bunker Hill.

That language shows that over a day after the battle in Charlestown, the Provincial Congress still didn’t know for sure, or perhaps didn’t want to acknowledge, that its leader was dead.

The records for that afternoon’s session begin:

Ordered, That Col. Prescott, Doct. Hall, and Col. Otis, be a committee to receive, sort, and count, the votes for a President.

The committee having attended that service, reported, that the Hon. James Warren, was chosen.

And thus was born a confusion that continues to linger. Dr. Joseph Warren of Roxbury and Boston wasn’t related to James Warren of Plymouth (1726-1808, shown above). The latter had other connections: he was married to Mercy Warren, and thus brother-in-law to James Otis, Jr., and Samuel Alleyne Otis. He was also a good friend of John and Abigail Adams. He later served as Paymaster General of the Continental Army and a member of the Continental Navy Board.

The two Warrens aren’t the only understandable source of confusion for authors from those years. In 1774, the late Lieutenant Governor Andrew Oliver was replaced by Lieutenant Governor Thomas Oliver; they weren’t related, either, but Andrew’s brother Peter was Chief Justice.

And Sheriff Stephen Greenleaf of Suffolk County was eventually succeeded by Sheriff William Greenleaf, his brother—not to be confused with their nephew William Greenleaf, later sheriff of Worcester County.

Dr. Joseph Warren: “very desirous to go on ye Ground”

Dr. Joseph Warren was killed in the Battle of Bunker Hill on 17 June 1775, one of the highest-ranking Patriots (combining political and military rank) to die in the war. The Massachusetts Provincial Congress had elected Warren as its president on 31 May, and on 14 June the body also appointed him the province’s “second major general.” Naturally, Warren was quickly made a martyr figure, especially for Bostonians and for Freemasons; at the time of his death he was “Grand Master of Masons for the Continent of America”—at least according to a Scottish charter. The doctor’s prominence caused people to record and romanticize what he’d done leading up to the battle, and I’ll explore three versions of those events this week. One of the earlier and more detailed accounts appears in the notebooks of the Rev. Dr. Jeremy Belknap, founder of the Massachusetts Historical Society:

August 24, 1787. I was informed by Mr. Sheriff [Joseph] Henderson that he was one of ye Clerks of ye Board of War in the year 1775 of wh[ich] Dr Jos Warren then newly made Majr Genl was a Member. That on ye day of ye action at Bunker hill, he was very desirous to go on ye Ground and take part in ye affair, that ye other Gentn did all they could to dissuade him, alledging that his Life was of too much consequence to be exposed on that occasion. Col. (afterward Genl) [Benjamin] Lincoln offered to go & execute any orders wh[ich] he would give, as did one or 2 other Gentn. At length to deceive them he pretended that he was going to Roxbury—but went directly to Charlestown & entered the Lines. Col [William] Prescott who had the command, begged him to retire, & upon his refusal offered to resign ye Command to him. He said he would not interfere with him, & yt [i.e., that] he came only as a Volunteer. As he was binding up a wound w[hi]ch a Man had rec[eive]d in his arm the Enemy entered by storm. He Retreated a few rods with ye rest before they killed him.

Belknap wrote this down twelve years after the battle, so there had been enough time for memories to fade and little and legends to take their place. But eyewitnesses to these events were still alive, and Belknap was a good historian, gathering information for himself and for posterity rather trying to make an inspiring story. Warren’s name doesn’t appear in the records of the Provincial Congress or its Committee of Safety for 17 June 1775, so we know he probably wasn’t in those meetings. So far as I know, there are no corresponding records for the “board of war,” or council of high-ranking officers under Gen. Artemas Ward in Cambridge. But Henderson’s account seems reliable. Dr. Warren had also gone out on the lines during the Battle of Lexington and Concord. Gen. William Heath recalled:

on the plain below the [Menotomy] meeting-house...Dr. Joseph Warren,—afterwards Major-General Warren,—who kept constantly near me, and then but a few feet distant, a musket-ball from the enemy came so near his head as to strike the pin out of the hair of his ear-lock.

Warren’s bravery is admirable, but his desire for personal military glory led him to risk his life when he had important political responsibilities. As a result, on 18 June the province was missing one of its most capable leaders at a crucial time. TOMORROW: Replacing Dr. Warren.