250 and Counting

This day in American History, 250 years ago.

  • Why New York Abstained–July 3, 1776

    Cover art for July 3, 1776: "The Birth of the State of New York" by George A. Harker, ca. 1915. Print via Westchester County Historical Society; the original is in a private collection.

    In the play/film 1776, with nearly every vote cast throughout the show, a delegate from New York (Lewis Morris) steps up to announce New York’s abstention from the vote, “courteously.”

    It’s played for comedy, and at one point even the explanation is rendered comedic, when Morris tells the assembled delegates that the members of the legislature in New York “speak very fast and very loud, and nobody listens to anybody else with the result that nothing ever gets done.” He also says that the New York legislature has never given him explicit instructions. Now, the first thing may or may not be true (I’m from New York, so it’s possible), but the second item is not, as you learn in today’s episode.

    When it came to the question of Independence, New York did, in fact, abstain. And they were probably courteous about it besides. But New York’s abstention from the votes, over and over, were derived from explicit instructions, not their absence.

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  • The Question Is Called–July 2, 1776

    Cover art for July 2, 1776: The original Lee Resolution, in Richard Henry Lee's handwriting. via National Archives.

    It’s been twenty-five days since the Lee Resolution was introduced, asking the delegates of the Continental Congress to vote for Independence from Great Britain. Some of the delegates returned to their homes to get the formal instructions in the affirmative, others stayed behind and worked on drafting a Declaration.

    Finally all the stars have aligned, and the votes come in: twelve in favor, none against, and one abstention. (In tomorrow’s episode we’ll talk about why that abstention happened.)

    This was a huge move on the part of the Continental Congress; people like to say that it hadn’t been done before, but that’s not quite correct. San Marino broke away from the Roman Empire in the year 301. But since then it had only happened five times, and while one or two of the others also involved bloodshed, the other new nations weren’t under threats of treason and the punishments associated with that particular crime. So it wasn’t quite unique, but it also wasn’t something that was common. And breaking away from the British Empire? Well, that had certainly never been done before.

    In being asked to vote for Independence, these men were literally putting their lives on the line, and that’s the thing it’s important not to forget.

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  • The Chickamauga Wars–July 1, 1776

    Cover art for July 1, 1776: "The abduction of Jemima Boone by Shawnee in 1776", by Charles Ferdinand Wimar, 1853. Now hanging in the Mildred Land Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis, MO.

    The Chickamauga Wars, also known as the Cherokee-American Wars, was really just an escalation of the hostile relationship between Americans and the Cherokee tribe.

    The problem really started during the French and Indian War, which ran from 1758-1761. During that war, British forces simply destroyed many Cherokee towns, which were never reoccupied. Some treaties were signed after the war, and then boundaries established, but the colonists resented those boundaries. They showed their resentment by largely ignoring them, forcing officials in charge of Indian Affairs to put together new treaties with new boundaries. Go figure, those didn’t work either.

    Things got ugly in 1773 when Daniel Boone led about 50 settlers through the Cumberland Gap. Natives from several tribes descended on a foraging/scouting party, capturing them and then ritually torturing them to death. Among the dead was Boone’s son James.

    Tensions continued to rise until this day in 1776, when they escalated into full-scale raids and battles which came in fits and starts, and then would settle into long periods of no activity.

    This went on into the 1790s before the Army came in with a major offensive, forcing the Cherokees to back down and seek a peace treaty, formally ending the Chickamauga Wars.

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  • New Rules For The Army–June 30, 1776

    Cover art for June 30, 1776: an enlistment broadside from that year. Via Boston Public Library.

    Setting new Continental Army rules was oftentimes rather tough, because at that time the enlistments were relatively short. Soldiers would get trained, of course, but because they were undisciplined they didn’t always stay trained, and then their enlistment would be up and now it’s time to train the next set of guys and hope some of it sticks.

    The Continental Army rules that were approved today were designed to affect soldiers’ overall behavior, perhaps in the hope that comporting themselves appropriately would lead to a more disciplined man in general. This met with limited success (that is, not much).

    Interestingly, when Baron von Steuben came along later in the year, the company that he led was visibly different from the others encamped at Valley Forge, with regard to drills, self-policing and preparedness, and it was likely this that caught George Washington’s eye and led to von Steuben writing the manual that Mike cites in today’s episode.

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  • Virginia Adopts A Constitution–June 29, 1776

    Cover art for June 29, 1776: a page from the original Virginia Constitution.

    The Constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia, more commonly known as the Virginia Constitution, was formally adopted on this day in 1776, after months of work.

    Most of the credit for its overall structure goes to James Madison and George Mason, both of whom also worked on the US Constitution in later years. And like any good living document, it’s been through several large-scale amendments, in 1830, 1851, 1864, 1870, 1902 and 1971. Nearly all of these were in response to periods of major regional or social upheaval in Virginia. (Gee…I wonder what happened in 1864 that necessitated a Constitutional Convention?) In between, there have been minor amendments to ensure that the Virginia Constitution conforms to changes in Federal law. For instance, an amendment was passed in 2006 defining marriage as being a union “between one man and one woman” (because they didn’t learn anything from the Loving v. Virginia decision?)but was subsequently overturned by Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015.

    The Virginia Constitution is still subject to criticism that the legislature may still be too powerful, but it’s actually easier to amend the document through citizen votes than through a Constitutional Convention. Go figure.

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  • The Battle of Sullivan’s Island–June 28, 1776

    Cover art for June 28, 1776: "Defense of Fort Moultrie, SC" by Johannes Oertel, 1858. via New York Public Library Digital Collection.

    The Battle of Sullivan’s Island was part of Great Britain’s first attempt to take the city of Charleston, South Carolina.

    Unfortunately for the British, too many things went wrong for them, and there were logistical problems that they somehow hadn’t accounted for as well.

    Sullivan’s Island was (is, really) not an impressive piece of land. It’s a barrier island that’s a couple of miles long but only a couple of hundred feet wide. But because of its location at the mouth of Charleston Bay, it was an ideal place from which to defend the city.

    Now, if you look at a modern-day map of the bay, you’ll see Fort Sumter in the dead center of the bay’s channel. Fort Sumter, however, was little more than a sand bar in 1776, and was artificially built up in the 1830s so that the fort could be constructed there. Insterestingly, although Fort Sumter gets credit for the first shots of the Civil War, the structure was never finished. Construction began in 1829 and hadn’t been completed as of 1861, when the war started.

    Oddly enough, when the Battle of Sullivan’s Island took place, Fort Moultrie wasn’t completed either. Then in 1798 the Army decided that it needed updating, so they started over, building a new structure atop the old one. That fort was destroyed in a storm in 1804 and was rebuilt again in 1809. During the Civil War it was reduced to rubble by Union forces but was rebuilt again in the 1870s.

    Fort Moultrie was taken out of service in 1947, then decommissioned and became part of the National Park Service in 1960.

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  • Notes From Around The Colonies–June 27, 1776

    Cover Art for June 27, 1776: A fragment of the earliest known draft of the Declaration of Independence. This is all that remains of his work during that time. via PBS

    Today’s episode covers a couple of events that took place today, and a couple that will take place tomorrow, largely because there isn’t a ton to say about any of them but they are noteworthy. Also, I wanted to clear the deck a little bit so that Mike can concentrate on events in South Carolina.

    We start with a letter that Joseph Hawley wrote to George Washington about potential troop movements, though to our heads it’s a little bit of odd advice.

    We visit the Committee of Five, which has a homework assignment due tomorrow, and they’re working frantically to finish it. Like so many group projects, only a few of them are really working here, while all five are going to get the grade for it. Yeah, we’re on to you, Sherman and Livingston.

    We finish the saga of Thomas Hickey, which started here only yesterday. There’s some confusion about the specific date, so be gentle with us for splitting the difference.

    And we finish in Maryland, where Samuel Chase manages to get the job done. Now it’s back to Philadelphia to cast a vote.

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  • Hickey Leaves A Bad Mark–June 26, 1776

    Cover art for June 26, 1776: "Washington and the Green Peas". Engraving by Albert Bobbett, ca. 1876-77.

    That New York had a strong contingent of Loyalists was never a secret in 1776, but chances are that George Washington never thought one of his bodyguards, Thomas Hickey, was one of them.

    Hickey was a private in the Continental Army, which meant that he was part of a group that not only protected George Washington, but the Army’s local cache of money. At one point he was arrested for passing counterfeit money and it was while he was in jail that word got back to Washington that Hickey was planning to switch sides as soon as the British got there. So Hickey betrayed both the General and the currency he’d been assigned to protect.

    About the cover art: many years later, a story came out that was written by Washington’s grandson (more accurately, Martha Washington’s grandson) George Washington Parke Custis, that Washington was in danger of being killed by an insider via poisoning. After Custis died, his memoirs were published by his daughter Mary Anna Custis Lee, with extensive notes added by an antiquarian. According to this account:

    When Washington and his army occupied the city, in the summer of 1776, the chief resided at Richmond Hill, a little out of town, afterward the seat of Aaron Burr. [Samuel] Fraunces’s daughter was Washington’s housekeeper, and she saved his life on one occasion, by exposing the intentions of Hickey, one of the Life-Guard (already mentioned), who was about to murder the general, by putting poison in a dish of peas prepared for his table.

    Who alerted Washington to the poisoned peas varies from one account to another, and given a bunch of the details (which I’ve largely omitted here), it’s very likely that the story is apocryphal.

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  • A Busy Day In Congress–June 25, 1776

    Cover art for June 25, 1776: "Signing of the Declaration of Independence", an 1873 portrait by Charles Édouard Armand-Dumaresq, reportedly on display in the White House.

    The big story today is about the Pennsylvania Delegation finally getting new orders, but I admit that I buried the lede on this one, largely because the Board of War and Ordnance had a lot going on, and the Pennsylvania story was a relatively simple one to tell.

    But as you can tell in today’s episode, the note we gave you the other day about the sheer volume of material they had to deal with is evident in the minutes of the Continental Congress for today; what’s more, a bunch of it was items that needed to be addressed immediately, so the business of the Congress was halted for several hours until the Board could report back.

    But the fact that the Pennsylvanian government had finally gotten past whatever they needed to get past, made it possible for the Pennsylvania Delegation to be able to vote in the affirmative on the question of Independence, which left exactly one colony about to vote “Yes” and another one unable to do so. And that’s something we’ll talk about in just a few days.

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  • Prison For Governor Franklin–June 24, 1776

    Cover art for June 24, 1776: portrait of William Franklin, attributed to Mather Brown, ca. 1790. via WIkimedia Commons.

    As Mike notes, we haven’t talked about the Royal Governor of New Jersey, William Franklin, in quite some time. But matters were quickly coming to a head, and it was decided that he needed to be imprisoned. The biggest reason for this is that he not only remained loyal to the Crown, he actively reported to the British anything he heard about American movements and plans.

    William Franklin was finally placed under house arrest in January for these shenanigans, but as things heated up and New Jersey replaced its provincial government, it was determined that he still posed a threat to operational security, and he was sent to Connecticut for imprisonment. And, as Mike also tells you, even prison in Connecticut wasn’t quite getting the job done.

    I guess we have to admire his ability to commit to the bit.

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