250 and Counting

This day in American History, 250 years ago.

  • Making A Play For The Natives–May 25, 1776

    Cover art for May 25, 1776: The first page of the address to the Iroquois Indians. It's in George Wythe's handwriting, but the identity of the person making the speech was not recorded.

    The Continental Congress knew that good relationship with the Native Americans was the smart thing to do, but it took them months to put together the Committee for Indian Affairs, even when their first attempt to bring the natives in failed miserably.

    In that first try, they came to the upstate New York and framed the Revolution as though it was a family dispute. The Iroquois, taking that literally, decided to stay out of the affair, then.

    This time around, the Iroquois (and shame on me, I should be saying Haudenosauree) came to Philadelphia, but in my humble opinion they weren’t treated especially well, having to wait for several days to meet with the Congress, and several more days to hear the proposal that the Committee for Indian Affairs put together. Small wonder, then, that they simply left without even responding to the Americans’ offer.

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  • Mr. Washington Goes To Philadelphia–May 24, 1776

    Cover art for May 24, 1776: A marble statue of George Washington erected in Philadelphia in the 1860s. This photo was taken in the early 1890s. The statue was eventually moved to an indoor location and a bronze replica put in its place.

    The idea of George Washington in Philadelphia sounds kind of like a no-brainer, but with dealing with a war against the greatest army in the world, plus having to put up with ill-trained troops to fight that war, he was a busy guy and didn’t get out there much.

    Later on, after the war, of course, it was a common sight. But given Washington’s post-war stature as the soldier who delivered American victory, plus his stint as our first President—and the man who set many of the precedents for Presidential behaviors and ceremonies—it makes sense that Philadelphia would erect a statue to honor him, and park it right in front of Independence Hall.

    The first statue of Washington in Philadephia was erected in 1869 and dedicated by the mayor. After about 40 years it began to show signs of the weather and overall climate getting to it, so a decision was made to replace it with a bronze replica and move the marble version to an indoor location. It now stands inside Philadelphia’s City Hall, while the bronze one still stands outside Independence Hall, where it has been since 1910.

    Today, Mike takes you to this day in 1776, when Washington felt he had no choice but to speak to Congressional delegates himself

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  • Delegates Start Getting Their Orders–May 23, 1776

    Cover art for May 23, 1776: portrait of James Duane by John Trumbull, 1805.

    Once the preamble to Congress’ resolution had been written and unanimously approved back on May 15, it really was just a matter of when, rather than whether, America was going to formally declare itself as a separate state from England.

    The hardest part was getting all the ducks in a row, as the expression goes. The biggest reason that independence hadn’t already been declared is that anything that came out of the Continental Congress had to pass unanimously, so they could speak with a single voice. Now, at the delegate level, they didn’t all have to vote the same way, but once a majority of the delegates from a given colony voted a certain way, then the colony voted that way as part of the larger body.

    Some colonies had the green light to vote in the affirmative, as long as a different colony brought up the question. Georgia was rather split within the state, and was also more concerned with the skirmishes they were having at the border with Florida. So they mostly didn’t care. New York delegates, as we mentioned yesterday, arrived with instructions not to vote on Independence at all. Even when they finally did vote, it was technically against their orders.

    But one of the more passionate sets of orders came from a group in Boston. Put your earbuds in and learn about how florid writing can really get your point across.

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  • The Third NY Provincial Congress–May 22, 1776

    Cover art for May 22, 1776: portrait of Major-General Charles Lee. Engraving created in 1860 by H.B. Hall & Sons of New York.

    When the Third NY Provincial Congress convened on this day, chances are that nobody really got their hopes up.

    By this point, that body had already met a few times, so it was generally known where they stood when it came to the Independence Question. And sure enough, when they sent delegates to the Continental Congress, they sent those delegates with instructions to oppose Independence. Rather than do that, however, the New York delegation typically just remained on the sidelines, appearing to neither favor nor oppose the notion. This went on for several weeks, and while it didn’t necessarily hinder the cause, neither did it really help matters.

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  • What To Do With A Captured Brit?–May 21, 1776

    Cover art for May 21, 1775: Colored engraving of "Ethan Allan in Irons", by Albert Bobbett, ca. 1877.

    Early in the war, it became apparent that the treatment of prisoners was going to be a very lopsided affair.

    British soldiers were treated humanely and with dignity. American soldiers…not so much. As we noted last August, when Americans were captured they weren’t treated as prisoners of war but rather as criminals who didn’t deserve dienity. During the course of the war, over 8000 soldiers died because of the conditions of their confinement.

    Despite this, it appears that the Continental Congress, when asked the question directly, determined that the humane route was the most appropriate one. This didn’t really change the British approach, but at least we had a policy, and we had it in writing.

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  • Simon Fraser–May 20, 1776

    Cover art for May 20, 1776: Pre-1826 painting of Simon Fraser by unknown artist in Bennington Museum, Vermont. uploaded to Wikipedia by user Objectivesea (Erik Bjørn Pedersen).

    Simon Fraser was born in Hoosick, New York, which is close to where New York’s border meets with those of Vermont and Massachusetts. He was the youngest of eight children.

    He moved to Montreal when he was 14 and worked with his uncles in the fur trade, apprenticing to the North West Company the following year. Now, the North West Company had already commissioned someone to find a river route to the Pacific Ocean. That may did find a route that worked for fur sources but wasn’t especially good as a trade route. Fraser was given the responsibility for extending operations to the west, and he did it by establishing trading posts along the way, essentially taking possession of that part of the continent. This led to further exploration and either establishing or expanding fur trade along the way.

    In 1814 he got caught up in a dispute in the Red River Valley area, between the North West Company and Thomas Douglas, a controlling shareholder of the Hudson’s Bay Company, which had established the Red River Colony. By 1816 this dispute ballooned into the Battle of Seven Oaks, in which twenty people were killed. Fraser wasn’t involved in the battle but he was arrested anyway by Douglas. He was eventually acquitted of any charges, but that was pretty much the end of his involvement in the fur trade industry, though he remained an active menber of the North West Company until his death in 1862. Because his wife died the next day, the pair were buried in a single grave in a cemetery near their home in Cornwall, Ontario.

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  • Mugford’s Last Stand–May 19, 1776

    Cover art for May 19, 1776: a 1780 portrait believed to be that of Captain James Mugford, attributed to Samuel Blyth.

    Captain enlisted in the Continental Army not long after the battles at Lexington and Concord. He was commissioned as a Captain and immediately put to work capturing British ships.

    One of the more surprising things about the battle between the USS Franklin is not so much the victorious outcome, which was starting to feel a little bit of a foregone conclusion at this point, or that the ships moving in on the Franklin at first pretended to be friendly Bostonians, since that was actually a common tactic.

    It was the fact that his birth date and death date are the same calendar day. Mugford was born in 1789, and died in 1776, on May 19. That seems like the sort of coincidence that might get a little more attention.

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  • Hoosier Daddy–May 18, 1776

    Cover art for May 18, 1776: image of a photo of Dennis Pennington circa 1840, uploaded to Wikipedia and relased to public domain by user Cool10191. This photo is on display in the Indiana First State Capitol Building.

    About that title: I regret nothing.

    Dennis Pennington gets a lot of well-deserved attention for his political work in Indiana, but the fact is that what he did affected the entire Northwest Territory, which also includes most of Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota east of the Mississippi River. He was also instrumental in the anti-slavery movement in that area, first supporting like-minded individuals for public offices, and then getting anti-slavery laws introduced and passed as a territorial legislator. When Indiana put together its first constitutional convention, Pennington was among the delegates.

    Pennington is remembered for his honesty and common sense, as well as his kindness. Beginning in 1810 he served speaker of its lower house of representatives and helped secure the town of Corydon’s selection as the new seat of government in 1813. Pennington also served in the Indiana General Assembly for eighteen years.

    Pennington’s most visible legacy is located in Corydon, Indiana, where he supervised construction of Indiana’s first state capitol building. The Old Capitol, located in the Corydon Historic District is part of the Corydon Capital State Historic Site, administered by the Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites.

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  • Amos Eaton–May 17, 1776

    Cover art for May 17, 1776: Illustration of Amos Eaton from an original engraving by A.H. Richie, for Popular Science Monthly, Vol 38 (1891).

    Amos Eaton, a co-founder of the Renssalaer School (later Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute) in Troy, NY, managed to flip scientific thinking on its head. He believed in having students learn through experimental demonstrations: let them apply the science in the field and then break it down later in the lab.

    This flew directly in the face of the traditional liberal arts tradition, which involved the classics, theology, lecture and recitation. However, it also led to more students in more courses of study to take up some version of a practicum than there previously was.

    In addition to teaching at the school, Eaton also engaged in natural philosophy lectures throughout the Northeastern United States, and was a champion of higher education for women, suggesting that women had a lack of opportunity to learn higher-end math, rather than a skills deficit or general disinclination. (i.e., quit blaming the women.)

    Nowadays there’s an Amos Eaton Hall on the school’s campus, which houses the Math Department, and a faculty endowment bears his name.

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  • Henry Knox Wants To Get Tough–May 16, 1776

    Cover art for May 16, 1776: Portrait of Henry Knox by Gilbert Stuart, 1806.

    If the name Henry Knox sounds familiar to you, give yourself a prize. Knox was the man in charge of the Noble Train of Artillery, in which large amounts of ordinance were taken from Fort Ticonderoga and transferred to Boston. The presence of the new guns, with greater range than either side had at that point, led to the British finally evacuating the city a relatively short time later.

    But by this point Knox was back in New York, only he was in the city rather than the upstate area, and he could see that reconciliation was a pipe dream at best. So he wrote to John Adams to stress the importance of eventual independence.

    It is not recorded whether Adams replied “No duh,” since he’d been making the same arguments to the Second Continental Congress for some time.

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