250 and Counting

This day in American History, 250 years ago.

  • Board of War and Ordnance–June 21, 1776

    Cover art for June 21, 1776: Seal of the United States Board of War and Ordnance, created in 1778. It was used by the U.S. War Department until 1880.

    We’ve spent a bunch of episodes describing a day in the life of the Second Continental Congress, and many of them were almost exclusively dealing with military matters.

    In January 1776 George Washington recommended that the Congress designate a specific office for these dealings, and Edward Rutledge picked up the idea and suggested it to the Congress. It took a little time, but the Congress ultimately agreed and set up a Board of War and Ordnance, which began operating on this day in 1776.

    The original Board of War and Ordnance was five delegates to the Congress, plus a secretary who wasn’t a delegate. After only a few months they recognized that they couldn’t do their jobs as delegates and keep up with the War workload, so they had themselves replaced with a permanent Board.

    The Board operated until the war ended, after which it was dissolved, but the logo (see cover art) persisted in the War Department until 1880. Incidentally, note the Phrygian Cap in the artwork. We haven’t talked about that in a while, but in those days the Cap was a universally-recognized symbol of freedom dating back to ancient Rome, when it was given to former slaves. In the Revolutionary Era, it specifically symbolized freedom from British tyranny.

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  • Natick Makes It Official–June 20, 1776

    Cover art for June 20, 1776: The Minuteman statue in Lincoln, MA, was the site where several Natick-based soldiers chose to re-enlist in 2017. image via the US Army website.

    Please forgive Mike’s pronunciation of “Natick”; he’s a Left Coast guy. And, he took his wife to Hawai’i this week. I never did that for my wife, though I did buy her a beach condo, so I guess we’re even. Plus, if I’m butchering any West Coast pronunciations, he’s keeping quiet about it. For the most part we’ve both got the language so baked into our heads that it never occurs to us that the other one might not know how to say things.

    And let’s face it, a lot of place names don’t always make sense when it comes to pronunciation.

    At any rate, while we focus on Natick here, it should be noted that towns all over Massachusetts, and in fact other places, were beginning to do this on their own. But they didn’t have Thomas Jefferson putting their documents through multiple drafts. We’ll need to talk about some of that later on as we get closer to the big day.

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  • Francis Johnson–June 19, 1776

    Cover art for June 19, 1776: The Old State House in Kentucky. We have to confess, Francis Johnson did not use this building; the one he occupied burned down a few years earlier. He was likely part of the vote to get this one built, though.

    Let’s start with the truth: Francis Johnson was not in office when the building in today’s cover art opened. This is the Old State Capitol in Frankfort, Kentucky, which opened in 1827, just after he left the US Congress.

    But while this is the Old State Capitol, there are two buildings even older which were used; unfortunately both of them burned down, hence this stone edifice, one presumes.

    You kind of have to feel badly in the long run when stuff like this happens. It feels a little bit like the universe is trying its best to wipe this guy from history. Even his specific birthplace is unknown, and the graveyard where he was interred is a public playground. (I’m going to presume it’s been paved over, yes?) But the fact is, once we’re gone we begin to accumulate anonymity unless something extraordinary happens to you or by you.

    Not meaning to be a downer; it’s just what they call a shower thought.

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    P.S. if your download is wonky or if you’re having trouble with the website this week, please get in touch with me at claudecall@gmail.com; I’d be most appreciative. I had a bit of a time getting this post to play nice.

  • The First Draft–June 18, 1776

    Cover art for June 18, 1776: Detail of the original first draft of the Declaration, in Thomas Jefferson's handwriting. The finished engrossed version (what you're used to seeing) has Timothy Matlack's handwriting.

    As Mike notes, marking today as the day that the first draft of the Declaration of Independence was presented to Congress is largely a matter of interpoloation on the part of historians working from incomplete information. But who are we to argue?

    The writing you see in today’s cover art is, in fact, Thomas Jefferson’s, mostly. Some of it is corrections made by Benjamin Franklin. It’s also worth noting that this image came from Wikimedia Commons and is color-adjusted. The original image has the paper looking much whiter, but the parchment coloring makes for a little bit better contrast against the ink.

    Incidentally, some documents from this era do look very good still while others are quite faded. The original Declaration of Independence, for example, is rather faded. This is because over time, the ink oxidized from black to a brownish color. In addition, it was displayed under relatively bright light for many years, and the ultraviolet radiation from those lights further faded the ink. The specific paper can also have an effect; some documents are written on a kind of cotton rag, which allows the ink to “bleed” over time and start to look rather smeared, whereas other documents written on vellum (which was basically calfskin) hold their shape better. In both cases the color holds better unless UV gets to it.

    Oddly enough, paper from the 19th through mid-20th centuries made use of wood pulp, which turns color and becomes more brittle over time, and is more acidic, which will damage the ink as well. So it’s possible that there could be a “hole” in our historical records unless steps are taken to preserve, or at least digitize, some of them.

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  • The San Francisco Journey–June 17, 1776

    Cover art for June 17, 1776: Historical Marker in Moraga, California, on the Moraga Library. Photograph by Andrew Ruppenstein, via the Historical Marker Database (hmdb.org)

    Joseph Joachin Moraga along with a party of colonists and soldiers first set forth from Monterey to the future site of San Francisco, along with supplies for beginning a new community.

    He supervised the selection of a location for the presidio (fortress), then managed its construction and provided leadership. He also ensured that a ramada—a roof ssupported by poles—was built, which eventually became Mission Dolores.

    For all his work, Joseph Joachin Moraga is considered the founder of San Francisco. But he wasn’t done there; the following year he founded a second mission in Santa Clara, and a third one in 1778 that became San Jose. Bottom line: if this guy isn’t prominent in local history classes, then something is seriously wrong.

    Moraga’s youth and education are rather hazy, but he kept extensive journals so he could read and write; in fact some of the research for today’s episode came from his written account of the trip, which can be found here. Given that he wrote it nearly two years later, there’s a remarkable level of detail here.

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  • A Test In Rhode Island–June 16, 1776

    Cover art for June 16, 1776: "Sea Captains Carousing in Surinam," from 1755 featuring the governor being doused with punch and vomit. via Wikipedia.

    Loyalty oaths are a peculiar thing. They ask a person to commit in writing a thing they may–or may not–have done already.

    Look, if you’re an undercover spy staring at children from across the street, you’re already raising more questions than answers. But if—IF—you’re an undercover spy and you want to lay low, for goodness’ sake, find a plausible lie and stick to it. You don’t go off sacrificing yourself to the Greater Cause.

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  • Delaware, The First State–June 15, 1776

    Cover art for June 15, 1776: 2012 photo of the New Castle County Court House, where the original Separation Day events took place. Photo by Wikipedia user Pknelson.

    Separation Day is a genuine holiday in Delaware, during which the day is marked with parades and historical reenactments, though of course they (like the rest of the world) took a couple of years off because we had that little global pandemic thing.

    And like most good niche holidays, there’s a small faction of people who call themselves “Unificationists,” most of whom can trace their roots back to the Finns, Swedes and Quakers who settled in the region before 1776. Their message is that Delaware, as a whole, oversells the Separation Day thing. They also like to hold demonstrations advocating for a “Reunification Day”, which would mark a re-joining with Pennsylvania. Those folks are acting facetiously.

    Mostly.

    What do Pennsylvanians think about Separation Day? Most of them don’t care, since most of Pennsylvania didn’t exist until later on. Also, most of them had no idea that Delaware was once part of Pennsylvania. And the ones who do care, usually cite family or cultural connections that cross the border. (It just occurred to me that this also puts a little more credence into former President Biden’s claim of a kind of dual citizenship.)

    At any rate, it’s more of an observance day than anything else. Nobody’s getting a paid day off for it. I’m not even sure whether the local Hallmark store offers “Happy Separation Day” cards to send to friends and family. (Or is it “Merry Separation Day”? I can never keep it straight.)

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  • Connecticut Goes Fourth–June 14, 1776

    Cover art for June 14, 1776: a 1789 portrait of Connecticut Founding Father Oliver Wolcott by the American painter Ralph Earl, oil on canvas. via Wikimedia Commons.

    It’s not a misspelling; it’s a pun—oh, forget it.

    Connecticut had already been fighting the war for independence since Bunker Hill, but that’s not the same thing as separating politically from Great Britain. In retrospect, we made it look relatively easy, but once again, remember: something like this hadn’t been done before, and sending instructions to their delegates to vote in favor of Independence was literally directing them to commit an act of treason. So let’s give the individual colonies a little bit of grace, here.

    Now, New York is going to bump into a different kind of trouble, but we’ll talk about that in a few days.

    (It was a little bit funny though, right?)

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  • Elizabeth Scott–June 13, 1776

    Cover art for June 13, 1776: the tablet inset in the gravestone table for Elizabeth Scott Williams Smith.

    The life of Elizabeth Scott is an open book and is still quite mysterious.

    It’s not 100% clear when she was born, other than it was “probably” in 1708. Her personal life isn’t very well known, and her work as a hymnist is still a matter of speculation, since so many of her pieces didn’t have her name on them, for some reason. It’s only been through careful analysis of known pieces that we’ve been able to put her name to the unknown pieces. Many of her known works are in the hands of Yale College, and are in manuscript rather than print, so they date back to the 1740s. Most of them are signed simply “S” or “Scott” rather than “Elizabeth Scott,” but those pieces have had a good chain of custody that they can be considered authentic.

    Interestingly, the plate that appears in today’s cover art is mounted into a grave table, which is a stone table (i.e. a table top and four legs with some opening between it and the ground) standing over her grave. The grave of her second husband is nearby, but it’s marked with a simple stone.

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  • The Virginia Declaration of Rights–June 12, 1776

    Cover art for June 12, 1776: portrait of George Mason created by Dominic W. Boudet. It was an 1850 copy of a 1750 original by John Hesselius that had badly deteriorated.

    While the Virginia Declaration of Rights wasn’t adopted until today, and Thomas Jefferson only got started on writing the Declaration of Independence yesterday, it’s known that the Virginia document was one of the few references that Jefferson had with him when he first began writing.

    The other one we know about for sure is the draft of the Virginia Constitution, which Jefferson himself had written.

    The Virginia Declaration of Rights not only served as a big chunk of Jefferson’s inspiration for the Declaration of Independence, you can definitely see echoes of it in the US Constitution, particularly the Bill of Rights. (In fact, if you read Section 13 of the Virginia Declaration, you’ll see the heart of the more contentious language from the Constitution’s Second Amendment.)

    The big difference between the Virginia Declaration and the Constitution is that the Constitution is the actual law, whereas George Mason’s document is more prescriptive (e.g. thus-and-such should happen, or this ought to be the situation.)

    Follow the links above and do a little compare-and-contrast. You might have fun!

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