The Fights After the Fight off Fairhaven

Yesterday I started describing the 14 May 1775 fight outside Buzzard’s Bay between the newly-armed whaler Success from the village of Fairhaven and two trading sloops that the Royal Navy had recently captured.

When I broke off, provincial militia captains Nathaniel Pope and Daniel Egery had recaptured one of the prize sloops and were heading after the other, owned by the Wing family of Sandwich.

The Royal Navy junior officer left in charge of that vessel, Midn. Richard Lucas, spotted the provincials and ordered his crew to sail away.

But the prize sloop couldn’t move off fast enough. The provincials caught up. Both sides fired their swivel guns and muskets. According to one American:

the Success had but one carriage gun, a swivel, which, having lost its trunnions, was then loaded, lashed to a timber head, and when chance brought it in range, fired, but proving yet loyal to the king, it kicked out of the traces and went overboard at first fire.

A Fairhaven mariner recalled the British commander “was a North Briton or Scotchman…[who] kept most of the time during the action in the cabin, occasionally showing his head from the companion-way to give orders to his men.” A provincial marksman, probably Joseph Shockley, “was ordered to stand by the mast and ‘drop the dodging officer.’”

The next time Lucas stepped outside, Shockley shot him in the head. Fortunately for the midshipman, Shockley had loaded the gun with buckshot:

He had received a buckshot directly in front, on the retreating line of his forehead, which, piercing to the bone, slid on its surface, cutting the scalp in its course, and was found flat, thin and sharp on the back of his head.

Lucas reportedly “took his mishap philosophically, saying his kin had been characterized as a thick-skulled family.”

With the British commander down, the fight ended quickly. Pope and Egery brought their ships up alongside the Wings’ sloop. The militiamen swarmed over the rails, recapturing the prize. In addition to Lucas, two of the British crew were wounded, but no one killed. The provincial crews triumphantly sailed all three vessels back to Fairhaven.

Then they worked fast, expecting that the leaders of the larger town of Dartmouth would not be pleased by the fight. Those men were mostly Quaker, tied into British trade networks, and fearful of retaliation from the Royal Navy. According to Capt. Pope’s son:

Joseph Rotch, Edward Pope, and many others, came from [New] Bedford on Monday morning, and held counsel with some of the timid at the house of Esquire [Lemuel] Williams, and concluded to send the prisoners and captured sloops, with an apology, back to the Falcon; but the captors were on the qui vive, and marched off the prisoners for Taunton before the council rose. Thus defeated, the council sent a committee to Captain [John] Linzee, at Taunton Court, with an apology, “making the best story they could.” Colonel Edward Pope and ’Squire Williams were of this committee.

Four prisoners were left in Dartmouth: Midn. Lucas, wounded sailors Jonathan Lee and Robert Caddy, and surgeon’s mate John Dunkinson, probably caring for the others. Most of the sailors found on the captured ships were set free; Pope’s son recalled that some “were very clever fellows, and I think some of them remained” in Massachusetts.

On the morning of 16 May, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress in Watertown received “a verbal information of the capture of three vessels, by a king’s cutter, at Dartmouth, and the retaking two of them, and fifteen marines prisoners.” Capt. Egery appears to have brought that news after leaving Taunton. Other men from Dartmouth may have brought the same news with a different spin. The legislature, as usual, formed a committee to sort things out.

The next day that committee recommended “that the inhabitants of Dartmouth be advised to conduct themselves, with respect to the prisoners they have taken, agreeably to the direction of the committee of inspection for that town.” The legislature would thus grant authority to the local Patriot activists. A “long debate” followed before the congress confirmed that recommendation and sent “the gentlemen from Dartmouth” back home.

That wasn’t the end of the matter. On 7 June the congress had to consider “what is best to be done with the four prisoners brought from Dartmouth, via Cambridge”—Lucas and his men. The legislators decided they should “be sent to Concord, to the care of the selectmen of said town, to be by them secured and provided for, agreeably to their rank, at the expense of this colony, until they receive some further order.”

Meanwhile, there was a dispute between the owners of the sloops, Jesse Barlow and Simeon Wing, and the Fairhaven men who had rescued them. On 1 July a congress committee found:

Messrs. Wing and Barlow applied to the Dartmouth people, who took the vessels, for them again: the people offered them their vessels, upon Wing’s paying them eight dollars, and Barlow ten dollars, with which they complied, and Wing paid the money; after which, the Dartmouth people detained the vessels until the orders of Congress could be known, and refuse to give them up, without Barlow and Wing paying forty-five dollars, and giving bonds to indemnify the Dartmouth people.

That afternoon the congress decided to “leave the matters in dispute to arbitration.”

At some point, Richard Lucas was exchanged. He was commissioned a captain in the Royal Navy in 1782, commanded the 74-gun warship Arrogant in 1796, and died the following year.

The Fight off Fairhaven

Fort Phoenix in Fairhaven overlooks the site of what’s often called, especially in Fairhaven, the first naval fight of the Revolutionary War. (People in Machias, Maine, disagree.)

As Derek W. Beck described in this article for the Journal of the American Revolution, the action started on 11 May 1775 when “a barge from Capt. Linsey’s brig”—H.M.S. Falcon under Capt. John Linzee—stopped a sloop in Buzzard’s Bay. (Linzee shown here courtesy of the Linzee Family Association.)

That sloop was owned by Simeon Wing of Sandwich and commanded by his son Thomas. According to a June report from the Sandwich committee of correspondence, the Wings’ ship

hath been plying, as a wood boat, between Sandwich and Nantucket for some years, and it hath been the usual practice to settle with the custom house once a year, the officer always giving them their choice of paying twelve pence per trip, or the whole at the year’s end: and this hath been, we find, on examining, the common practise with other vessels which have followed the same business at the same place.

That arrangement meant, however, that the sloop had no clearance papers for that particular voyage. Linzee seized it. The historian Richard Frothingham later understood that the captain planned to use vessels he captured to “freight sheep to Boston” from Martha’s Vineyard, feeding Gen. Thomas Gage’s besieged garrison.

Following normal protocol, Linzee transferred some of his crew onto the Wings’ sloop to sail it into a friendly harbor. Midshipman Richard Lucas was put in charge of “eight seamen, three marines, a gunner, and a surgeon’s mate,” as Beck (using British naval sources) recounts.

Then the British officers learned about another vessel ripe for seizure. The Sandwich report stated: “An Indian fellow, on board of Wing’s vessel, informed Capt. Linsey of said [Jesse] Barlow’s vessel, which had brought a cargo lately from the West Indies, and was laden with provisions, in Buzzard’s Bay.” That Native American sailor evidently saw a better future allying with the Royal Navy.

Linzee sent the Wings’ sloop after “Barlow’s vessel” and the provisions it carried, quite possibly intended for the provincial army. But by the time Midn. Lucas had caught up with that ship in Dartmouth harbor, it had been unloaded. He seized it anyway. Then “both vessels, with all the crews and passengers, were taken, and proceeded to the cove to Captain Linsey.”

Barlow, a young man from Sandwich, was determined to get his sloop back. He “made application to some people at Dartmouth” for help. At the time, that town still encompassed modern New Bedford, Acushnet, and Fairhaven. Dartmouth was dominated by Quaker merchants who were not enthusiastic about the war and how it disrupted their trade. Barlow therefore went to men in the Fairhaven village, who were reportedly having a militia drill on the afternoon of Saturday, 13 May.

Barlow offered to put up half the money to arm the 40-ton whaling ship Success with two swivel guns and an extra large crew for fighting. Two militia officers—Daniel Egery and Nathaniel Pope—gathered twenty-five to thirty volunteers, including drummer Benjamin Spooner. In the shorter of two accounts later published by local historians, Pope’s son related that the bulk of the men hid below deck as the Success sailed out of Fairhaven on Sunday morning:

Father had the deck, managing affairs there, and Captain Egery, with the drummer, was in the cabin. Captain Egery came on deck to counsel, at father’s foot-rap. There was one other man and a boy, I think, on deck.

The Success spotted Barlow’s sloop in the waters between Buzzard’s Bay and Martha’s Vineyard. Only one sailor and one armed Marine were on deck. Pope steered his ship close before stomping for Egery. Spooner’s drum sent the militiamen charging up onto the Success’s deck.

The Marine set down his gun and ran to cut the anchor cable of the prize sloop so it could move off, but the Success was too close. Pope shouted for the British men to stay still or be shot. His crew grappled the two ships together and boarded the prize. Pope’s son wrote, “the thirteen prisoners were disarmed and placed below, their position secured by the weight of cable and anchor put over the gangway.”

Egery and Pope then consulted on what to do next. Pope’s son later wrote that they sent the recaptured prize back to port, but British sources suggest that the provincial officers took the Success and Barlow’s sloop together out to look for the other captured ship—the Wings’ firewood boat. Midn. Lucas was on board that sloop along with most of his loyal sailors and Marines.

TOMORROW: Shots fired, and the aftermath.

Catching All the Crowds at Fort Phoenix

Another news story with historic roots that’s been bouncing around the web this week has been the reported vandalism at Fort Phoenix, site of a Revolutionary War battery in Fairhaven, Massachusetts.

On 13 July, the Fairhaven Historical Commission met to discuss an unexpected strain on the site: Pokémon Go players. Fort Phoenix has been designated a Pokémon Gym, one of many sites around the world where teams of players can meet to compete.

As public history professor David Hunter explained at Process, Pokémon Go “relies upon discrete public and semi-public landmarks. Sites that host gyms or stops seem to have migrated from Ingress, a place-based game that served as a Pokémon Go precursor, or are drawn from the Historical Marker Database.”

On 14 July, The New Bedford Guide’s Facebook page featured “a look at Fort Phoenix last night” with a message from a player saying, “Fort Phoenix is the best place for Pokemon Go, nice people and everyone’s friendly. Yesterday there was easily over 150 people.” However, the Historical Commission had asked the police to step up patrols of the area. Commenters on that post soon complained about officers telling people to leave and ticketing cars.

A week later, the website South Coast Today reported on the story:

The popular game Pokeman [sic] is having the side effect of drawing crowds and causing vandalism at Fort Phoenix. Wayne Oliveira of the Historical Commission said the game is drawing people often at night, where they are throwing trash and even jumping on cannons. He said they have photos of people doing back flips on the historic cannons.

Oliveira said the damage is mostly occurring “when it’s dark. That’s what we’re running into. We’re worried about all the plaques and the wood.” . . .

Historical Commission member Gary Lavalette said 400 to 600 people typically come every night and that 75-200 people “stay right through the night.” He said someone took a crowbar and chipped away at about 30-40 feet of a cement wall. “Pokeman lists it as one of the hot spots,” Lavalette said. “It’s overwhelming. A wheel to a 260-year-old cannon was destroyed and those are about $3,000 apiece.” Lavalette said someone, probably a child, drew figures in chalk on all over the wall and cannons.

The wall and the wheel are big costs, but I’m pretty sure that chalk will wash off. As for that “260-year-old cannon,” that might refer to the fort’s “John Paul Jones Cannon,” said (on what authority isn’t clear) to be over three centuries old, having spent the years 1882 to 1950 embedded mouth down in a town sidewalk. Or it might be one of the cannon considerably younger than 260 years.

On 5 August, a local television station covered the controversy, interviewing Lavalette and some Pokémon players. The next day, a report went out over the Associated Press wire. As a result, there’s been national attention to the story of “Pokémon Go players harming Revolutionary site.” That framing set up the situation as the suspiciously modern versus the venerated historic, self-absorbed gaming versus appreciation of the past.

But here’s the thing. Fort Phoenix isn’t just a historic site—it’s a public beach co-managed with the state. There are historic plaques and cannon mounted on a hilltop, but most of the area is a beach. It’s been a local recreation site for well over a century. In his 1892 history of the New Bedford area Leonard Bolles Ellis wrote of “The throngs of people who yearly picnic at the fort in the lovely summer days.”

Fairhaven promotes visits to Fort Phoenix, trying to bring in more people during the summer with public programs, including a Revolutionary War reenactment in May and pirate games for kids. The new challenge is that the site is attracting far more people than its budget was designed for.

There’s no direct link between Pokémon Go and the damage that caretakers have complained about. The competition between Pokémon teams takes place in the digital realm—people flicking at their smart phones. Nothing in the game encourages players to dig holes, pry at walls, draw with chalk, or drop cigarette butts, as the park’s caretakers have complained about. Those are just things some people do at public beaches, perhaps especially at night.

It’s telling that one form of reported harm is trashcans filling up more quickly than expected. Which means most of this summer’s visitors are using the trashcans. But there are more of those visitors than expected, thus more trash, and thus a need for more staff to empty the trash cans. Likewise, the problem of public urination at night is based less on the rules for Pokémon Go than on the fact that the beach’s restrooms close at 5:00 P.M.

Of course, ramping up services for this summer’s larger, later crowds will be an unexpected hit on the budgets of Fairhaven and Massachusetts. No one, including the makers of Pokémon Go, expected that game to become so popular and bring so many people to the public sites in its database. But for historic Fort Phoenix and the neighboring beach, this problem is too much of a good thing.

(Photo at top by A Midnight Rider via Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children.)

Investigating the Meaning of the Gadsden Flag

A government agency’s report from a couple of months ago is just now being spread around the web, thanks to law professor Eugene Volokh’s column about it in the Washington Post.

The Volokh article is headlined “Wearing ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ insignia could be punishable racial harassment.” Some right-wing websites echoing that story skipped the “could be” and leapt right to misinforming readers that a government agency had ruled “Don’t Tread on Me” racist.

In addition, some people commenting on those stories assume that a federal authority has ruled that the Gadsden Flag and associated “Don’t Tread on Me” slogan are racist because of their roots in the slave society of Revolutionary America. That shows they didn’t read the ruling or Volokh’s column.

The anonymous employee who filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission did make that claim:

Complainant stated that he found the cap to be racially offensive to African Americans because the flag was designed by Christopher Gadsden, a “slave trader & owner of slaves.”

The historic claims are correct. In 1774 more than ninety men, women, and children were enslaved on Gadsden’s two rice plantations. He paid Customs duties on the cargo of at least two slave ships, in 1755 and 1762.

Furthermore, Gadsden’s South Carolina was a society built on slavery. At the time of the Revolution, historians estimate that more than half of its human population was enslaved. Because the British military freed and evacuated so many people, that fraction went down by the 1790 census, but South Carolina still had a larger percentage of its population in bondage than any other state. By the early 1800s through the Civil War, the state’s population was once again mostly enslaved.

However, the E.E.O.C. rejected the claim that the Gadsden Flag is offensive because of its historical origin:

After a thorough review of the record, it is clear that the Gadsden Flag originated in the Revolutionary War in a non-racial context. Moreover, it is clear that the flag and its slogan have been used to express various non-racial sentiments, such as when it is used in the modern Tea Party political movement, guns rights activism, patriotic displays, and by the military.

In doing so, the E.E.O.C. also confirmed that “the modern Tea Party political movement” expresses “various non-racial sentiments” through the flag, which looks like a tacit rejection of the complaint’s suggestion that the Tea Party is an expression of “white resentment against blacks.”

The potential problem with the Gadsden flag, the E.E.O.C. ruling said, lies not in its past but in the way it’s being used today:

However, whatever the historic origins and meaning of the symbol, it also has since been sometimes interpreted to convey racially-tinged messages in some contexts. For example, in June 2014, assailants with connections to white supremacist groups draped the bodies of two murdered police officers with the Gadsden flag during their Las Vegas, Nevada shooting spree.

One hopes that fans of the Gadsden Flag loudly decried how those terrorists used it.

We know that a respectable symbol can become a threat, an insult, and socially anathema after a destructive movement seizes on it. We don’t see swastikas as design elements anymore. (The Las Vegas killers also left swastikas on the bodies of their victims.) Was it reasonable to think that had happened with the Gadsden Flag when this complain was filed?

Chronology works against that argument. The complaint was made to the E.E.O.C. in January 2014. The dispute over a Gadsden Flag in the New Haven Fire Department, which the complaint and ruling seem to refer to (inaccurately mentioning a flagpole), became public in February of that year. The Las Vegas killings occurred in June. In other words, the specified evidence of the Gadsden flag’s racist meaning didn’t exist during the period covered by the complaint.

Of course, there’s another way to look at that sequence of events. The employee might feel that the Las Vegas murders were tragic confirmation of what he’d already sensed based on previous evidence—the racists had adopted the Gadsden Flag and tainted it with their ideology. But the complaint would need to present that evidence.

Finally, it’s important to recognize that the E.E.O.C. has not ruled on whether that perception of the Gadsden Flag has merit. Instead, it concluded:

In light of the ambiguity in the current meaning of this symbol, we find that Complainant’s claim must be investigated to determine the specific context in which C1 [another employee] displayed the symbol in the workplace. In so finding, we are not prejudging the merits of Complainant’s complaint. Instead, we are precluding a procedural dismissal that would deprive us of evidence that would illuminate the meaning conveyed by C1’s display of the symbol.

Volokh, who has long argued that workplace harassment laws impinge on free speech, presented this conclusion as ominous. Many political websites picked up on that argument without acknowledging what the E.E.O.C. actually decided—to investigate further.

His Royal Highness, the Teen-Aged Midshipman

The English Historical Fiction Authors blog just reran the late M. M. Bennetts’s article about Prince William Henry, third son of George III and Queen Charlotte, and his adventures in the American War:

In 1778, when he was twelve, Prince William’s concerned parents conceived the idea that he should be educated at sea in the service of the Royal Navy, as a sort of royal “leading from the front” kind of exercise. As a dutiful parent, King George visited Portsmouth and boarded the 90-gun flagship, Prince George, to see for himself the accommodation; he “visited the three Decks to see the Men exercise as in action…” and decided firmly that the Navy was an ideal environment for the education of this starting-to-be-dangerously-wild third son.

Coincidentally, Prince William’s embarkation on a naval career would also have the effect of stirring up patriotic support for the Navy during this awkward period of war with the American colonies. A win-win situation in the king’s mind.

Thus on 15 June 1779, Prince William Henry boarded the Prince George to begin his new life at sea. He’d been kitted out with the finest naval uniform by his father—including some 3 dozen shirts and stocks, a mattress, bolster and pillows, pens, ink powder and paper, log books and journal books and a number of weighty tomes on navigation and mathematics—and a special tutor, a Cantabrigian, by the name of Mr. Majendie. Both the Prince and his tutor were given the rank of Midshipman.

Prince William Henry was at the 1780 Battle of the Cape of St. Vincent, a significant British victory over the Spanish, though he saw only a little bit of the action.

By September 1781, the prince was a teenager who had spent years with other naval officers—not the sort of experience likely to make him less wild. In that month the Prince George and its fleet arrived in New York harbor. “Prince William Henry was the first member of the royal family ever to visit North America and the loyalists received him with rapturous delight, and indeed—just as the king had hoped—rallied to the royal banner.”

Outside New York, Lt. Col. Matthias Ogden of the Continental Army had a different response to news of the royal midshipman. He proposed to Gen. George Washington to kidnap the prince in order to force the Crown to speed up peace negotiations. Christian M. McBurney finished that story at the Journal of the American Revolution.

Though you might well guess the outcome when I report that the prince survived to become King William IV of Great Britain.

The Schoolboy Footraces of Philadelphia

In his 1811 memoir, Alexander Graydon (1752-1818) offered a glimpse of schoolboy life in 1760s Philadelphia.

After the death of Alexander’s father in 1761, to support the family and to pay his tuition at the academy his mother took in other boys as boarders. He recalled:

The first lads that were placed with her, were two brothers, the sons of a colonel Lewis of Virginia. The younger, named Samuel, about a year older than myself, had the attractions of a pleasing countenance and great gentleness of manners. Though he belonged to a younger class than mine, the living and sleeping together were sufficient to cement a warm attachment between us, and there was not a boy in the school in whose welfare and competitions I took so decided an interest; the ardor of which was in almost perpetual requisition, from the circumstance of his being a champion in the gymnastic exercise of running, which was then the rage.

The enthusiasm of the turf had pervaded the academy, and the most extravagant transports of that theatre on the triumph of a favorite horse, were not more zealous and impassioned, than were the acclamations which followed the victor in a foot-race round a square. Stripped to the shirt, and accoutred for the heat by a handkerchief bound round the head, another round the middle, with loosened knee-bands, without shoes, or with moccasons instead of them, the racers were started; and turning to the left round the corner of Arch street, they encompassed the square in which the academy stands, while the most eager spectators, in imitation of those who scour across the course at a horse race, scampered over the church burying-ground to Fifth street, in order to see the state of the runners as they passed, and to ascertain which was likely to be foremost, on turning Market street corner. The four sides of this square cannot be much less than three quarters of a mile; wherefore, bottom in the coursers, was no less essential than swiftness, and in both, Lewis bore away the palm from every one that dared enter against him.

After having in a great number of matches completely triumphed over the academy, other schools were resorted to for racers; but all in vain: Lewis was the Eclipse that distanced every competitor, the swift-footed Achilles, against the vigorous agility of whose straight and well proportioned form, the long legged stride of the overgrown, and the nimble step of the dapper, were equally unavailing.

I was scarcely less elated with his triumphs, than if I myself had been the victor. I was even supremely happy in the circumstance, which gave me a claim to a more than common degree of interest in him, and from my experience of the force of these associations, in which, by a kind of metonymy, we take the place of the real agent, I can fully enter into the feelings of the butcher, who, ecstacied at the good behavior of his dog at a bull beating, exclaimed to Charles the second, “Damme, sir, if that is’nt my dog!” Since the time of those exploits, in which I was too young to enter the lists, I have valued myself upon my own agility in running and jumping; but I have never had the vanity to suppose, that at my best, I could have contended with any chance of success, in so long a race against Lewis.

At what time I was separated from this friend of my youth I cannot remember; but have to regret, that I lost the opportunity of seeing him, when several years afterwards, having I know not what business in Philadelphia which required dispatch, he called upon me one evening when I chanced to be out, and as he was obliged to leave the city very early in the morning, staid in the hope of meeting me till a very late hour. But my engagements unfortunately detained me too long, and he had been obliged to depart before I returned. This could not have been long before the war, probably between the year 1770 and 1772, when we had both attained to years of manhood; but whatever may have been his destiny, I have never since heard of him.

In a footnote, Graydon guessed that his childhood chum Samuel Lewis might have been part of the Battle of Point Pleasant in Dunmore’s War in 1774. Col. Andrew Lewis commanded the Virginia militia in that fight, and he had a son named Samuel, but that boy had died young in 1763.

The stretch of Fifth Street between Arch and Market is now designated as the northern part of Independence Mall. The “church burying-ground” that race spectators hurried through contains the grave of Benjamin Franklin. A late-nineteenth-century editor of Graydon’s memoir wrote that the distance around the square was not really close to “three quarters of a mile” but only 700 yards.

Ebenezer Stevens Exhibit in New York

The New-York Historical Society is featuring what I expect is a small but thorough exhibit on Ebenezer Stevens, a lieutenant colonel in the Continental artillery.

Stevens was a Boston mechanic who participated in the Tea Party, carefully avoiding the view of his brother-in-law Alexander Hodgdon, a mate aboard one of the ships. Sometime in the next few months Stevens and John Crane, a fellow carpenter and Tea Party veteran, moved to Rhode Island—perhaps because Boston’s economy was squeezed by the Boston Port Bill, perhaps because they feared arrest.

In December the Rhode Island assembly voted to form an artillery unit. As I’ll discuss in a talk for the Newport Historical Society late this year, the commanders of that unit were men from Boston, including Crane and Stevens. They returned to Massachusetts at the start of the siege.

At first Stevens served as one of Col. Crane’s subordinate officers, but he had further ambitions. He led a separate Provisional Artillery Battalion in the Saratoga campaign. Finally, he switched to Col. John Lamb’s artillery regiment to become a lieutenant colonel.

After the war, Stevens settled in New York and raised his family there while building a mercantile business. His descendants included the novelist Edith Wharton. And his papers and souvenirs of military service went to the New-York Historical Society. This exhibit includes “Stevens’ Society of Cincinnati badge and officer’s tailcoat.”

The Ebenezer Stevens display will be up through 2 October. That means it coincides with some other exhibits of interest at the N.Y.H.S.:

• Summer of Hamilton through August.
• Battle of Brooklyn, starting 23 September.
• Mo Willems’s Pigeon, Knuffle Bunny, and Elephant and Piggie.

Living History in Boston, 13 and 14 August

On the weekend of 13-14 August, a group of dedicated historical reenactors who call themselves the Middling Sort will be in Boston participating in a couple of living history events.

On Saturday, 13 August, the Old State House will host “Echoes of the Past,” “a one-day transmedia game in the streets of Boston that will immerse players in the story of Boston’s famous Stamp Act protest” through a “fusion of interactive theatre and puzzle solving.”

Boston’s first anti-Stamp demonstration took place on Thursday, 14 Aug 1765—a market day, when farmers from the countryside brought in fresh wares to sell to townspeople and bought supplies to carry home. The Middling Sort will help to recreate Market Day based on actual vendors and what they sold. Their goods will also be part of the game.

There will be three sessions of the “Echoes of the Past” game, starting at 1:00, 2:00, and 3:00 P.M., followed at 4:00 by a recreation of the anti-Stamp procession through the streets of Boston, led by shoemaker Ebenezer Mackintosh.

On Sunday, 14 August, the action moves to the Loring-Greenough House in Jamaica Plain (shown above), which is commemorating the 300th birthday of Commodore Joshua Loring this month.

From noon to 4:00 P.M., “Fight or Flight” will explore the choices that the Loring family faced as Loyalists in 1774 and beyond. Should they move into Boston? Prepare to leave New England? What would happen to their estate?

“You will be very apt to hang separately”

Before leaving the topic of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, I want to address one more popular anecdote about that event. That’s the story of Benjamin Franklin saying, “We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

The Course of Human Events blog recently listed that story among “a number of quotations from the signing for which we have no evidence.” Richard Samuelson’s Weekly Standard article seems more certain of the tale, though without citing a reliable source.

I agree that we have no strong evidence linking this witty remark to the day of the signing, 2 Aug 1776. Nor to Franklin, much as we like to ascribe witty sayings to him.

But in 1811, retired Continental Army officer Alexander Graydon (1752-1818) wrote in his Memoirs of His Own Time about a former lieutenant governor of colonial Pennsylvania:

Mr. Richard Penn, having no official motives for reserve, was even upon terms of familiarity with some of the most thorough-going whigs, such as General [Charles] Lee and others:

An evidence of this was the pleasantry ascribed to him, on occasion of a member of Congress, one day observing to his compatriots, that at all events “they must hang together:”

“If you do not, gentlemen,” said Mr. Penn, “I can tell you that you will be very apt to hang separately.”

Graydon didn’t claim to have heard this story directly, but he was in Philadelphia in 1774 and 1775 during the early Continental Congress meetings. Penn left the city in the middle of 1775, carrying the Olive Branch Petition to Britain. He settled there and later became a Member of Parliament. In 1808 Penn returned to Philadelphia for a visit, an occasion when this story might have been repeated.

Thus, we have no contemporaneous or first-hand evidence of Penn voicing this witticism. But seeing it in print as early as 1811, when several members of the Continental Congress were still alive and able to respond, constitutes some pretty good evidence in its favor. The exchange would have had to happen before mid-1775, however, and Franklin didn’t get to deliver the punch line.

The Tale of Benjamin Harrison and Elbridge Gerry’s Signatures

In its description of the Continental Congress’s main signing of the Declaration of Independence on 2 Aug 1776, the Course of Human Events blog listed “a number of quotations from the signing for which we have no evidence.” Among them is a story about Benjamin Harrison joking with Elbridge Gerry about long it would take each of them to hang.

Likewise, in a recent Weekly Standard essay Richard Samuelson repeated that same story (it’s too good to ignore) but called it “probably apocryphal.”

In fact, we have strong evidence that anecdote is true. As I noted a few years back, Dr. Benjamin Rush recounted that story in a letter to John Adams dated 20 July 1811:

Do you recollect the pensive and awful silence which pervaded the house when we were called up, one after another, to the table of the President of Congress, to subscribe what was believed by many at that time to be our own death warrants? The Silence & the gloom of the morning were interrupted I well recollect only for a moment by Col: Harrison of Virginia who said to Mr Gerry at the table, “I shall have a great advantage over you Mr: Gerry when we are all hung for what we are now doing. From the size and weight of my body I shall die in a few minutes, but from the lightness of your body you will dance in the air an hour or two before you are dead.” This Speech procured a transient smile, but it was soon succeeded by the Solemnity with which the whole business was conducted.

Rush and Adams were both at the signing. Adams’s reply took no issue with the tale (though he disliked Harrison and came to see Gerry as a political foe).

In addition, Dr. James Thacher published a version of the story in 1823 in his Military Journal, which appears to combine his actual notes from the war years with later recollections and material from other sources. In a 1776 entry Thacher wrote:

I am credibly informed that the following anecdote occurred on the day of signing the declaration. Mr. Harrison, a delegate from Virginia, is a large portly man—Mr. Gerry of Massachusetts is slender and spare. A little time after the solemn transaction of signing the instrument, Mr. Harrison said smilingly to Mr. Gerry, “When the hanging scene comes to be exhibited I shall have the advantage over you on account of my size. All will be over with me in a moment, but you will be kicking in the air half an hour after I am gone.“

Thacher might well have heard the story from Rush, with whom he corresponded. In 1824 Adams told Thacher: “I have had read to me, your valuable Journal of your Campaigns in the American revolutionary war, and I have no hesitation in saying, that it is the most natural, simple, and faithful narration of facts, that I have seen in any history of that period.” Once again, Adams didn’t quibble with this anecdote.

The Story of Stephen Hopkins’s Signature

Today is the anniversary of the day when delegates to the Continental Congress started signing the handwritten copy of the Declaration of Independence that we know so well, as the Course of Human Events blog recently described in detail.

Pauline Maier, Danielle Allen, and other scholars have pointed out how almost none of the first two or three generations of Americans saw that document or a reproduction of it. For them the Declaration existed as a printed text or as words read aloud.

After the first facsimile of the handwritten Declaration was published in 1823, that elegant image became the standard idea of the document. The signatures, especially John Hancock’s, became iconic. The signing of the document became an important moment to remember—though a lot of authors forgot that happened on 2 August and moved it to 4 July, the date on the text.

Yesterday I quoted the anecdote about Hancock signing his name published by the Adams Sentinel of Gettysburg on 2 Aug 1841. That was one of two “Revolutionary Anecdotes,” and here’s the other:

When I visited Mr. [John] Adams in November, 1818, his hand trembled similar to that of Stephen Hopkins, the Quaker patriot from Rhode Island, who had been afflicted with a paralytic stroke. Mr. Adams acted as his amanuensis, and asked him if he should sign his name to the Declaration of Independence for him. “No! I will sign it myself—if we are hung for signing it, you shall not be hung for it for me.”

Mr. Adams, then, in imitation of Hopkins, took his pen, clasped his wrist with his left hand, went through the tremulous motion of signing his name, and in the language of Hopkins, emphatically said, “If my hand trembles, John Bull will find my heart won’t!” which Mr. Adams said electrified all Congress, and made the most timid firm in their purpose.

There’s no signature or source attached to this article in the Adams Sentinel. But within the story itself are signs of a provenance: from “Mr. Adams,” who was at the signing, to a writer who visited him in late 1818. Its original publication presumably contained more hints about that writer.

This story appeared under the unsourced anecdote about Hancock signing the Declaration that I discussed yesterday. Did a newspaper editor put these two anecdotes together because they came from the same source—i.e., John Adams? Or simply because they both involved Continental Congress delegates signing the Declaration with a comment about “John Bull”? I suspect the latter.

We know that Adams remembered Hopkins with respect and fondness, which offers support for this story. At the same time, Adams’s anecdotes don’t always check out. On balance, I think that evidence supports this anecdote of the signing. Now if only we could identify the original writer.

TOMORROW: Another reliable anecdote of the signing.

The Legend of John Hancock’s Signature

In the 1840s an item headed “Revolutionary Anecdotes” circulated in American newspapers, recounting two stories about the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

This was a common type of newspaper article, material that was of public interest but didn’t become dated. Editors copied texts from other papers whenever they needed to fill space, occasionally with credit but usually without. Items circulated so thoroughly that a newspaper could run the same item a year or two later with no suggestion that readers might have seen it before.

The earliest newspaper I’ve seen offering “Revolutionary Anecdotes” was the 2 Aug 1841 Adams Sentinel of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. I don’t want to derogate the town of Gettysburg, but it’s hard to believe that was the very first newspaper to run that item. The anecdotes seem to have Massachusetts roots. Bigger databases and further research might reveal a prior publication, perhaps the original.

The first of those anecdotes was:

It will be remembered that a reward of £500 was offered for the head of John Hancock. When he signed the Declaration of Independence, he did it with a bold hand, in a conspicuous manner, and rose from his seat, pointing to it, and exclaimed, “there, John Bull can read my name without spectacles, he may double his reward, and I put him at defiance.”

This is the earliest statement I’ve found that the British government had offered a £500 reward to capture Hancock by the summer of 1776, as I discussed yesterday. Since the item suggested that fact should already be common knowledge, there were probably earlier reports, but there’s still no contemporaneous evidence to confirm that belief.

“Revolutionary Anecdotes” is also the earliest version I’ve found of the story Hancock signing his name on the Declaration so large that someone “can read my name without spectacles.” Here that figure is John Bull, the personification of England. Later authors changed that to George III or his ministers. Likewise, the wording of Hancock’s exclamation changes from one recounting to another.

This Revolutionary anecdote appears more than sixty years after the event with no stated source and attached to the dubious information about the reward. As the Course of Human Events blog recently pointed out, the Continental Congress didn’t send the parchment with all the signatures to Britain but kept it in its archives. So this anecdote isn’t convincing. But it’s lasting—some authors are still repeating the story today.

TOMORROW: I said there were two anecdotes, didn’t I?

“Excepting only from the benefit of such pardon”

Yesterday I quoted from Gen. Thomas Gage’s proclamation on 12 June 1775 declaring martial law in Massachusetts.

Since at the time Gage controlled only the peninsula of Boston and Castle William, that proclamation didn’t have a big effect in the province. A couple days later, he and his generals started planning to take the Dorchester and Charlestown peninsulas as well, but few people were living in those areas, either.

The part of the proclamation that people most noticed at the time and remember today is its offer of pardon to any surrendering rebels, with a couple of notable exceptions:

In this exigency of complicated calamities, I avail myself of the last effort within the bounds of my duty, to spare the effusion of blood; to offer, and I do hereby in his Majesty’s name, offer and promise, his most gracious pardon in all who shall forthwith lay down their arms, and return to the duties of peaceable subjects, excepting only from the benefit of such pardon, Samuel Adams and John Hancock, whose offences are of too flagitious a nature to admit of any other consideration than that of condign punishment.

And to the end that no person within the limits of this proffered mercy, may plead ignorance of the conseqences of refusing it, I by these presents proclaim not only the persons above-named and excepted, but also all their adherents, associates and abettors, meaning to comprehend in those terms, all and every person, and persons of what class, denomination or description soever, who have appeared in arms against the King’s government, and shall not lay down the same as afore-mentioned, and likewise all such as shall so take arms after the date hereof, or who shall in any-wise protects or conceal such offenders, or assist them with money, provision, cattle, arms, ammunition, carriages, or any other necessary for subsistence or offence; or shall hold secret correspondence with them by letter, message, signal, or otherwise, to be rebels and traitors, and as such as to be treated.

Those passages appeared in italics in the printed proclamation, presumably to signal that Gage really, really meant it.

This proclamation is also significant in what it doesn’t say. It offers no financial reward for Hancock and Adams, or any other Patriot leader.

In the 1800s it was common for American authors to say that the British Crown had promised £500 for the capture of Hancock, Adams, and sometimes other men. Some authors say that offer came in early 1775, others in early 1776. But as far as I’ve seen, there’s no evidence the Crown ever offered such a reward at all. None of those authors cites a document to back up the claim.

Gage and his colleagues wouldn’t have kept such a bounty secret; when you make an offer like that, you spread the news as wide as possible. Here, for example, and the proclamations from:

• Gov. Francis Bernard offering up to £300 for information after the anti-Stamp Act riots of August 1765.
• Gov. Joseph Wanton offering £100 for information on the Gaspee attack in 1772.
• George III offering £500 for information on the same event.

Even without a reward, Adams and Hancock clearly benefited from being singled out as “flagitious” by Gov. Gage, just as they had benefited from the mistaken belief that the king’s troops had tried to catch them in Lexington on 19 April. [I present the evidence against that belief in The Road to Concord.]

TOMORROW: John Hancock’s famous signature.

When Gen. Gage Proclaimed Martial Law

I sometimes see people write that the arrival of Gen. Thomas Gage as royal governor of Massachusetts in May 1774 placed the town of Boston under “martial law.” That’s a misunderstanding.

Gage was indeed commander-in-chief of the British army in North America, but the ministry in London made him governor in the normal civil process under Massachusetts’s 1692 charter. Other men with military appointments also served as colonial governors, and Gov. William Shirley had also been the North American commander-in-chief.

Gage brought troops with him, and stationing those troops in Boston (and later in Salem and Marshfield) meant that civilians had to follow certain rules, but that didn’t constitute “martial law.” That term has a particular meaning in the British and American legal systems, referring to the suspension of ordinary legislation and justice. Gage didn’t take that step in 1774.

In fact, Gage tried to keep the Massachusetts courts operating that summer and fall. The Patriot movement closed those courts down, starting in the western counties. Gage did adjourn the Massachusetts General Court early in the summer after it chose delegates to the First Continental Congress, but he had the power to do so under the regular charter, and he summoned a new legislature in early September. [I discuss how that turned out in The Road to Concord.]

Gage really did declare martial law on 12 June 1775—almost two months after the Revolutionary War began. On that date he issued a proclamation that began:

WHEREAS the infatuated multitudes, who have long suffered themselves to be conducted by certain well known Incendiaries and Traitors, in a fatal progression of crimes, against the constitutional authority of the state, have at length proceeded to avowed rebellion; and the good effects which were expected arise from the patience and lenity of the King’s government, have been often frustated, and are now rendered hopeless, by the influence of the same evil counsels; it only remains for those who are entrusted with supreme rule, as well for the punishment of the guilty, as the protection of the well-affected, to prove they do not bear the sword in vain.

And finally got around to saying:

And whereas, during the continuance of the present unnatural rebellion, justice cannot be administered by the common law of the land, the course whereof has, for a longtime past, been violently impeded, and wholly interrupted; from whence results a necessity for using and exercising the law martial; I have therefore thought fit, by the authority vested in me, by the Royal Charter to this province, to publish, and I do hereby publish, proclaim and order the use and exercise of the law martial, within and throughout this province, for so long time as the present unhappy occasion shall necessarily require; whereof all persons are hereby required to take notice, and govern themselves, as well to maintain order and regularity among the peaceable inhabitants of the province, as to resist, encounter, and subdue the Rebels and Traitors above-described by such as shall be called upon those purposes.

(The imperfect transcription here seems to be the best text of this document on the web.)

Gage didn’t write that proclamation. It came from the pen of Gen. John Burgoyne (shown above), who had arrived in Boston in May, after the war had begun. In a letter to Attorney General Edward Thurlow on 20 August, Burgoyne stated:

…I am sometimes called upon to draw a pen instead of a sword. If the proclamation for the exercise of martial law, the correspondence with [Charles] Lee, or the answer to [George] Washington upon the subject of rebel prisoners, fall into your hands, I request you to consider those productions with all the allowances your candour can suggest—not as voluntary undertakings, but proceeding from a principle to refuse no task assigned to me, and to deal out vigour where I could in this great cause, though by the exercise of a weapon for which I was most unfit.

In eighteenth-century genteel language, that was the equivalent of, “Hey, take a look at what I wrote!” For posterity Burgoyne kept a copy of the 12 June proclamation in his handwriting labeled “Drawn up by me at the request of General Gage.” So he wasn’t really hiding his work on this proclamation.

TOMORROW: The clauses offering lenience.

The Workings of Gradual Emancipation in Pennsylvania

In 1780, the Pennsylvania legislature passed a law ending slavery in the state—but not yet.

This blog post from the Manuscripts and Archives Department of the Yale University Library explains:

The Act, which represented an early approach by a U.S. state to abolishing slavery, simply banned importation of new slaves into the state. Slaves already in the state remained enslaved for life, and children born to them were afforded the status of indentured servants, forced to serve their mothers’ master until the age of 28.

The Act stipulated that residents of the state had to register their existing slaves with the county government annually or risk manumission. Foreshadowing a long tradition to come, members of the U.S. Congress, then meeting in Philadelphia under the Articles of Confederation, were exempted from the Pennsylvania Act.

The Yale library holds the registry of slaves in Chester County from 1780 to 1821, indexed by the owners’ names. Pennsylvania became known as an anti-slavery state, a refuge for people escaping from the states to the south. But it maintained the property claims of local slave-owners until 1847.

[Featuring a document from Yale’s Manuscripts and Archives Department has some sentimental meaning for me since I worked there part-time for a couple of years.]

The “unutterable things” of Gen. Charles Lee

In the movie Bull Durham, the veteran catcher counsels the hot pitching prospect, “Win 20 in the show, you can let the fungus grow back on your shower shoes and the press’ll think you’re colorful. Until you win 20 in the show, however, it means you’re a slob.”

The reverse process happened to Gen. Charles Lee. In 1775-76, Americans saw him as a military genius and were willing to chuckle about his many eccentricities. Once he challenged Gen. George Washington in 1778, however, Lee became less popular. After Washington became President and was apotheosized after his death, Lee became one of the villains of American history, and authors were happy to highlight his character flaws.

In 1788 the Rev. William Gordon published this anecdote about Lee, dating it to late 1776. (It’s not clear whether Gordon actually wrote this in 1776, but his history of the Revolution took the form of a series of contemporaneous letters to a friend in Britain.)

Gen. Lee, while at White Plains, lodged in a small house close in with the road, by which gen. Washington had to pass when out on reconnoitring. Returning with his officers they called in and took a dinner. They were no sooner gone, than Lee told his aids, “You must look me out another place, for I shall have Washington and all his puppies continually calling upon me, and they will eat me up.”

The next day Lee seeing Washington out upon the like business, and supposing that he should have another visit, ordered his servant to write with chalk upon the door—No victuals dressed here to-day. When the company approached and saw the writing, they pushed off with much good humor for their own table, without resenting the habitual oddity of the man.

Here’s another story about the same trait of Lee’s, published in the Essex Institute Historical Collections by Thomas Amory Lee in 1917. See if you can spot the difference in tone:

Gen. Lee was not only slovenly in his dress and rude in manner, but remarkable for his sordid parsimony. Col. [William Raymond] Lee often remarked on these inhospitable and repulsive peculiarities of an officer of his superior education, large service in European armies, and constant intercourse with the first gentlemen in every country in which he had resided.

Col. Lee stated that as acting brigade major of the brigade which Col. [John] Glover temporarily commanded, he was obliged daily as senior officer in General Lee’s division, and at all hours to visit the headquarters of Gen. Lee. On one occasion, happening to call just as the General was sitting down to dinner, he observed, “Major Lee, why the devil do you never dine, breakfast, or sup with me; you are frequently at my quarters, either in the morning, at the dinner hour, or in the evening.”

The major replied, “General, you have never invited me to take a seat at your table.”

“That is just like all you damned Yankees; never stand on ceremony, but in future, whenever you come into my quarters at the time I am taking my meals, sit down and call on the servant for a plate.”

“Very well, sir,” said the major, “I am very much obliged to you and will avail myself of your politeness now,” and placing a chair at the table, requested that a plate might be brought to him.

The General was astonished, looked unutterable things, and never again hinted that Major Lee’s company would be agreeable.

In his recent biography Renegade Revolutionary, Phillip Papas speculated that Lee might have had bipolar or manic-depressive disorder. This is a far more understanding approach than deciding he was just a Bad Person. Of course, Lee could also have been a Bad Person.

“What Comes Next?” on Turn: Washington‘s Spies

Yesterday the A.M.C. television channel announced that it had ordered ten more episodes of Turn: Washington’s Spies to make up a fourth and final season of the show.

Though the series hasn’t earned stellar ratings or awards, it attracts a steady audience of the young and middle-aged consumers that advertisers like. There’s definitely an online community of fans, though I can’t say how its size compares to others.

I’ve reviewed every episode of Turn for Den of Geek, and you can revisit my assessments here. If you haven’t watched the show, in each weekly review I tried to avoid giving away the biggest surprises of the latest episode, but I couldn’t keep the turns concealed in succeeding weeks. But of course anyone with a cursory knowledge of the Revolutionary War has a good idea about how the story of Gen. Benedict Arnold and Maj. John André worked out.

Last month, as the world awaited news of whether there would be a fourth season, I wrote an additional essay for Den of Geek on “What Comes Next?” Having brought us to the end of André’s rope, does Turn have somewhere else to go? I wrote:

U.S. history certainly provides such a story in the events of 1781. (Season 3 appears to have concluded in the winter of 1777-78, but Turn has always played loose with actual chronology, so the show could jump ahead as needed.) Throughout the first months of 1781, Gen. Henry Clinton inside New York and Gen. George Washington outside jockeyed for advantage. Late that summer, Washington concluded that he could strike a decisive blow against the British army by moving most of his army with Gen. Rochambeau’s French troops south to Virginia to attack the British general Cornwallis at Yorktown.

That decision was preceded by months of espionage work, offering plenty of work for Maj. Benjamin Tallmadge and Oliver De Lancey, the New York-born British army officer who succeeded André as adjutant-general. Washington asked his agents for clues to whether Clinton would send more troops south or mount a major attack from the city. Likewise, Clinton’s intelligence staff wanted to know when Washington would make a move. Both sides tried to feed false information across the lines and made feints to deceive, distract, or draw off the other side.

To keep the Americans busy in the north, Clinton ordered none other than Brig. Gen. Arnold to lead a raid on New London, Connecticut. As a site of Continental naval operations, that coastal town was a legitimate target. That didn’t stop Americans from complaining that Arnold was driven by resentment toward the state where he had grown up. For Turn’s hotheaded Arnold, that motivation could be a real factor.

Check out that essay for further thoughts on how Turn’s other regular characters could fit into those events and on some aspects of the Revolutionary War that the show hasn’t explored thoroughly.

Another Watson, Another Shark

Around here, “Watson and the Shark” is the John Singleton Copley painting of Brook Watson’s rescue from a shark in Havana. The Museum of Fine Arts has one of several copies Copley made for Watson.

At English Historical Fiction Authors, Mimi Matthews recently wrote about another shark and another Watson:

On January 1, 1787, some fishermen spied a shark in the [Thames] river and, with much difficulty, captured the creature and drew it into their boat. The shark was alive, but, as [author George Henry] Birch states, “apparently sickly.” The cause of his illness was soon discovered. Upon taking him ashore and cutting him open, the fishermen found within his body a silver watch, chain, and “cornelian” seal. A 1787 edition of the Northampton Mercury reports that they also found:

“…some Pieces of Gold Lace, which were conjectured to have belonged to some young Gentleman, who was swallowed by that voracious Fish.”

On further examination, it was found that the watch was engraved with the maker’s name and number: Henry Watson, London, No. 1369. Mr. Watson lived in Shoreditch and, when applied to for information regarding that particular watch, the Northampton Mercury reports that Mr. Watson revealed that he had:

“…sold the Watch two Years ago to a Mr. Ephraim Thompson, of Whitechapel, as a Present for his Son on going out on his first Voyage (as what is called a Guinea-Pig) on board the ship Polly, Capt. Vane, bound to Coast and Bay.”

In a storm off Falmouth, the Annual Register for 1787 finished the story, “Master Thompson fell overboard, and was no more seen.” But his father bought the shark as a memorial; one newspaper even said that “he calls [the fish] his son’s executor.”

The term “guinea pig” appears as British maritime slang as early as 1767, and a generation later was specified to mean a midshipman in the East India service.

How Should We Refer to the Chevalier D’Eon?

Four years ago I reported on art dealer Philip Mould’s identification of a portrait as showing the Chevalier d’Eon.

A French diplomat and spy, D’Eon ran afoul of his own government and took refuge in London. Dressing as a woman while teaching men to fence, D’Eon became a celebrity, eventually claiming to have been a woman all along.

The National Portrait Gallery in London acquired that oil painting to go with its many engravings of D’Eon made for a wider audience. In connection with the display of that portrait, Assistant Curator Claire Barlow recently wrote:

D’Eon’s extraordinary story sparked a debate over the display of the portrait: which pronoun to use? The answer ought to be whichever pronoun D’Eon preferred but here we hit the great problem of working with historical objects – the limitations of surviving evidence. While living as a man, D’Eon had bought women’s clothes for himself but he only began living exclusively as a woman due to external pressure. The French court, convinced by persistent rumours about D’Eon’s gender, only agreed to give him a pension if he wore ‘clothing appropriate to her sex’. This ruling reflects the strict eighteenth-century gender division: ultimately, D’Eon had to choose. He took the pension and lived the rest of his life as a woman, forging a very successful career in Britain as a female fencer.

We simply don’t know whether D’Eon would have chosen to be transvestite, transsexual or something else entirely if those options had been available. We didn’t want to repeat the mistake of the French king, in not realising that a man could choose to wear a dress, so we decided to use the male pronoun.

The chevalier’s Wikipedia entry, in contrast, suggests the article’s editors have tried to avoid pronouns at all, producing sentences like “In an effort to save d'Éon's station in London, d'Éon published much of the secret diplomatic correspondence about d'Éon's recall…”

I’m not sure D’Eon was really forced into the choice of living as a woman. The 1777 agreement between D’Eon and Pierre-Augustin Caron du Beaumarchais, acting on behalf of the French government, did state that D’Eon had to dress as a woman as a condition of returning to France with a pension. However, it also served as a royal ruling that D’Eon was a woman and used female terms like “demoiselle” and “spinster.”

D’Eon’s additions to that agreement, crossed out by Beaumarchais, insisted that the chevalier had been female all along: “Seeing that son sexe has been proved by witnesses, physicians, surgeons, matrons and legal documents”; and “That I have already worn [female clothing] upon several occasions known to his Majesty.” Those don’t seem like the protests of someone being made to do something against his will. Saying the king made D’Eon dress in female clothing seems like saying Brer Fox made Brer Rabbit go into the briar patch.

Furthermore, in 1785 D’Eon returned to Britain, beyond Louis XVI’s reach. The French Revolution ended the pension from Paris in the early 1790s. Yet D’Eon continued to live as a woman until dying in 1810, so consistently that it was a surprise when physicians reported the chevalier had “male organs in every respect perfectly formed.”

I agree that it’s impossible to know whether the Chevalier d’Eon would have chosen any of the modern categories of transvestite, transsexual, or genderqueer. But it looks to me like D’Eon did choose to maneuver into the eighteenth-century category of woman.

The Standing Member from Massachusetts

Before leaving that day when the Constitutional Convention debated whether the size of the U.S. Army in peacetime mattered, I want to address another tradition that’s arisen about it.

Several recent books (e.g., Isaacson, Chernow, Beschloss, Stewart) and lots of websites quote Elbridge Gerry as making an analogy between a standing army and an erection.

The term used for that anatomical feature differs from one version of the tale to another, but all the versions climax with Gerry saying that either was “an excellent assurance of domestic tranquillity, but a dangerous temptation to foreign adventure.”

The earliest such statement that I could find appears in The Oxford History of the American People by Samuel Eliot Morison, published in 1965, or 178 years after the supposed event:

Elbridge Gerry, seconded by Luther Martin, wished to restrict the members of the United States Army to 3000 in time of peace, and made a humorous comparison (transmitted by oral tradition) of a standing army to a standing member—“an excellent assurance of domestic tranquillity, but a dangerous temptation to foreign adventure.”

Morison, a descendant of Harrison Gray Otis, did apparently inherit some oral traditions that he put down on paper for the first time. At least, I’ve cited schoolboy rhymes and hijinks that Morison published in the first edition of his biography of his ancestor.

But about this quotation, I’m dubious. Gerry did not see a standing army as “an excellent assurance of domestic tranquillity.” He saw it as a potential domestic danger, tempting citizens to ignore their militia system and let oppression flow. Politically, the story thus seems to be quite a stretch.

But for today’s sensibilities, that line seems like too much fun to let go of.