250 and Counting

This day in American History, 250 years ago.

  • An Honor For General Howe–October 16, 1776

    Cover art for October 16, 1776: Insignia of a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath. via Wikimedia Commons.

    The Most Honourable Order of the Bath is a British order of chivalry that was first created by King George I in 1725. It’s typically bestowed by a monarch based on the advice of His/Her Majesty’s government.

    When General William Howe received his order, there was a single class called the Knight Companion. However, in 1815 this class was discontinued in favor of three separate classes for civilians and another three (with the same class names) for the Military Division.

    Now, I said that George I instituted the Order of the Bath in 1725, and I was accurate about that, but it’s important to recognize that a literal bath was part of the ritual for a new knight in the Middle Ages, and therefore knights of any kind were known as “Knights of the Bath”. However, the last occasion on which knights were created in this fashion was in 1661. So George I was instituting a new Order, but not reinstating one, in the sense that he was not creating a standing group in which there was a fixed number of honorees.

    The Order of the Bath, however, did take on some of the accoutrements of the Knights, including their motto (juncta in uno, “three joined in one”) and the badge design (three crowns in a plain gold oval). Interestingly, both the significance of the motto and the meaning of the design are lost to time, and anything ascribed to them nowadays is conjecture.

    Most appointments to the Order were political in nature until about the 1770s, when they became more common for non-aristocratic naval, military or diplomatic achievements, likely because Britain was simply involved in more military activity at that point.

    Women were first admitted to the Order in 1971. At this writing, according to Wikipedia, there are 46 people in the Order, plus a large number of Honorary members. Interestingly, the youngest member of the Order is 59 years old, not counting Prince William, who is 44; the oldest is 97 and is one of six members in their 90s.

    So I’m thinking they’re sticking William at the card table in the corner so he can eat with the other kids.

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  • In And Around New York–October 15, 1776

    Cover art for October 15, 1776: Map of New York I[sland], with the adjacent Rocks and other remarkable Parts of Hell-Gate, map by Thomas Kitchin, Sr, Hydrographer to King Charles III, April 1778. via New York Public Library.

    By the time Charles Lee returned to duty, the Continental Army in New York was in a sad state of affairs. Many men had been injured or deserted. Supplies were low. Ammunition was low. Morale was low. And the British were up in the Bronx, gearing up for…something, who knows what.

    Lee had, of course, missed all the action in Brooklyn and Manhattan, so he brought a new perspective to the table. And it was fortunate that Lee felt free to say what he thought of the situation, namely that it was untenable.

    Fortunately, Washington was of a similar mind and apparently Lee’s comments were what he needed to take appropriate action. He immediately summoned a council of war.

    Down in Staten Island, Nathanael Greene and Hugh Mercer were in Staten Island, encountering far less resistance than they expected. They got word of the war council and Greene departed while Mercer continued on…at least until he learned the status of his intended target.

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  • The Return of Charles Lee–October 14, 1776

    Cover art for October 14, 1776: Portrait engraving of Major-General Charles Lee, ca 1860 by Henry Bryan Hall, based on historical sources. via New York Public Library Digital Collection.

    Charles Lee was born in Great Britain and only came to British America in 1773, when he purchased an estate in western Virginia.

    It wasn’t his first time in America; he’d fought for the British in the French and Indian War and married the daughter of a Mohawk chief.

    Lee was injured in 1758 during an attack on Fort Ticonderoga. The following year he was part of the capture of Fort Niagara and of Montreal the year after that.

    Lee returned to Europe and served in Portugal as a lieutenant colonel. In 1763 he returned to England and retired on half-pay. Two years later he served as an aide-de-camp under King Stanislaus II of Poland. He saw some action in the Russo-Turkish War but it was during a duel in Italy that he lost two fingers.

    Lee returned to England and realized that he was sympathetic to the Colonists’ cause, so he moved to America and purchased an estate in what would now be West Virginia. When the Continental Army formed, he joined up immediately, expecting to be second-in-command to George Washington (he did realize that Congress would want a native-born Commander in Chief).

    Lee took on the command of the Southern Department and was present for the Battle of Sullivan’s Island. He was given credit for the victory, though based on some accounts the win didn’t really belong to him.

    Lee was captured in December 1776 in New Jersey and released in a prisoner exchange in 1778. In subsequent battles Lee was cast in a villain role by official reports, and he was court-martialed. He was found guilty by the jury but the court reduced the final charges and suspended from the army for a year. In 1780 Lee sent a scathing letter to Congress that led to his dismissal from the army.

    He returned to Virginia but his debts piled up and he was advised to sell off his property. Unfortunately he died in 1782 before he could complete the sale and his sister Sidney Lee inherited the property. It’s not clear but he likely died of tuberculosis.

    Lee’s legacy has waxed and waned over the years, and most recently it’s in a “down” cycle, as documents have been discovered that he may have been attempting to communicate with British officers regarding a potential plan with which they might defeat the American rebellion. However, there are still many who doubt the idea that Lee was specifically acting treasonously.

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  • Battle of Split Rock–October 13, 1776

    Cover art for October 13, 1776: Battle of Valcour Island in the American Revolutionary War, artist unknown, ca. 1925. via National Archives of Canada.

    The Battle of Split Rock is really just a continuation of the Battle of Valcour, and a lot of it takes place in a location called Button Mould Bay (or Buttonmold Bay).

    So why is it called the Battle of Split Rock?

    That’s a fine question. On the western shore of Lake Champlain, just north of Button Mould Bay, is a formation called Split Rock Mountain. It rises sharply from the lake to an altitude of just over 1000 feet, and it’s where the confrontation between the British and the Americans resumed.

    Button Mould Bay is an area of shallower water on the opposite side. It gets its name from a series of clay masses which have hardened almost to the point of concrete, into a shape much like an oversize button, or like the molds used in button making. Those concretions actually made it easier for Benedict Arnold to run his ship, and the galleys accompanying him, aground and set ablaze. This was the ship that had all of Arnold’s papers on it that I told you about the other day.

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  • Battle of Throgs Neck–October 12, 1776

    Cover art for October 12, 1776: Historical marker in Pelham Bay Park, photographer unknown (to me, anyway).

    The Battle of Throgs Neck, or Throg’s Point, or a number of other names, was part of a move intended to trap Washington’s forces through flanking them from the north while Washington concentrated on the troops already in front of him on Manhattan Island.

    Washington did anticipate that this might happen, and sent American troops that way, but part of the problem that he had was that there were so many possibilities, and he just couldn’t cover them all. So he took a little gamble in sending his numbers to different places and hoping it would be enough.

    In the case of Throgs Neck, it was 4000 British troops against 750 Americans, but they handled it in a clever way. They managed to contain the British advance by taking advantage of the local geography, forcing the British to retreat. But this only meant that they’d regroup and try again somewhere else. This led to the Battle of Pell’s Point, of which this battle is usually considered a part, or just a prelude.

    As Mike will explain to you in a few days, the Battle of Pell’s Point is technically a British victory, but it also had a separate function that breaks well for the American side.

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  • Battle of Valcour Island–October 11, 1776

    Cover art for October 11, 1776: Battle of Valcour Island by V. Zveg, 1975. via the Naval History and Heritage Command Collection.

    The Battle of Valcour Island didn’t really take place on the island; rather it was in Valcour Bay, a strait between New York and Valcour Island, in Lake Champlain.

    After the failed invasion of Quebec the Continental forces retreated south to Fort Ticonderoga, at the south end of Lake Champlain. As they retreated they destroyed materiel they couldn’t use and left it behind in the relatively shallow, relatively narrow lake. This made navigating the lake tough for the British, so they took their time to get more reliable ships to assist with their next move.

    That turned out to be a mistake.

    As both sides prepared for the next conflict, the Americans scouted the lake and determined that they could effectively steer the British ships into Valcour Bay, where they would have ships waiting to fight them off. In addition, the wind was blowing the “wrong” way for British navigation, making things even tougher. Some British ships actually ran aground near the island but the battle itself was pretty brutal, with ships on both sides being badly hit. One British vessel’s powder magazine was struck and the entire ship exploded.

    In the long run, however, darkness began to fall and both sides backed off. The Americans retreated, and the British basically stopped their attack largely because they were getting low on ammunition.

    Benedict Arnold realized that Crown Point was no longer a viable defense point, so he destroyed and abandoned the fort, moving the forces to Ticonderoga. The next day, the British took Crown Point and remained there for about two weeks. Unfortunately, cold weather was already settling in and the decision was made to winter back up in Canada.

    Remember when I said that taking their time was a mistake? Had they acted more quickly, they’d have beaten the weather AND caught the Americans by surprise. General Carleton and other officers recognized this in hindsight. Hessian commander Baron Riedesel noted, “If we could have begun our expedition four weeks earlier, I am satisfied that everything could have ended this year.”

    And in a weird way, this battle was the catalyst for Benedict Arnold turning against the Americans. He’d lost a lot of personal papers during the battle, and when he requested compensation for some of his expenses in and following Quebec, he couldn’t provide documentation. He’d already been secretly negotiating with the British to change alliances (this would have been in late 1779), but that incident pushed him into resigning his command in order to be transferred to West Point, which he’d planned to surrender to the British.

    Fortunately his plot was discovered and he fled to New York City, which was still occupied by the British. Eventually he got passage for himself and his family to England. He never set foot in the United States again.

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  • Henry Shultz–October 10, 1776

    Cover art for October 10, 1776: the seal used by Henry Schultz to mark documents. Photo by Wikipedia user Hughespj, uploaded in 2016.

    The town created by Henry Shultz turned out to be as ephemeral as the man himself.

    Don’t go looking for Hamburg, South Carolina, because you’ll be sorely disappointed. At best what remains is a ghost town, unoccupied since 1929 after several floods came through. Perhaps the most notable one was in 1911, after which nearby cities built levees to protect themselves, but there wasn’t enough of Hamburg remaining at that point to bother building one there.

    For all that, Hamburg was a very big deal in Henry Shultz’ day. It was a little bit of a spite project on his part, meant specifically to compete with Augusta, Georgia, on the other side of the Savannah River. And for a long while it did quite well, largely because it was the terminus of a railroad line. But further expansions of the railroads and the completion of the Augusta Canal added up to a big drop in cargo passing through, and that was the beginning of the end.

    If you visit North Augusta, you can see a road bridge across the river, which is in the same place as the bridge Mike discusses in the episode. Parallel to that bridge you’ll see some broken piers, which are remnants of the South Carolina Rail Road, which operated in that area until 1908.

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  • The British Finally Make Their Move–October 9, 1776

    Cover art: a diagram of a cheval-de-frise. ("Chevaux" is plural.) Top is a side view; bottom is an overhead view. Drawing by Benson John Lossing, 1859.

    It took a month to figure it out, but the British ship movement up the Hudson River was a sign that they’d finally decided how they were going to implement their plans.

    Rather than concentrating on New York City, which was going to be problematic because George Washington’s troops were pretty dug in over in Harlem Heights, Admiral Howe made the choice that ran closer to the original plan: start sending warships up the Hudson and establish a new foothold in the Pelham area of what we now call the Bronx. This could then become a base of operations for moving further up the Hudson Valley and make it very difficult, if not impossible, for materiel and information to pass between New England and the rest of the states. And since New York had a pretty sizeable chunk of Loyalists there, the downstate area should be fairly easy pickings.

    So the British ship movement came as a surprise to nobody on the American side; what probably did come as a surprise was that it wasn’t as difficult to get through as they probably hoped they’d made it.

    Washington and his War Council did plan for this possibility and there will be troops waiting when the British make their landing. We’ll talk about that in a few days.

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  • How Best To Invade New York?–October 8, 1776

    Cover art for October 8, 1776: detail of a period map of the Manor of Pelham and the surrounding area. Throg's Point/Pells Point is at the bottom center of the map.

    There are several names for the battle about to happen here, depending on how you view the geography; Battle of Throgs Neck, Battle of Throgs Point, Battle of Pells Point and believe it or not that isn’t even half of the total names given to this one conflict.

    After George Washington’s successful defense of Harlem Heights, which was a good place to be from a defensive standpoint, the Continental and British armies were basically in a stalemate for a few weeks.

    The Americans were under the impression that the British would either attack Fort Washington, or make a flanking move through the Long Island Sound. Washington’s Council of War finally tried to guard against both possibilities (because this worked out so well when the British invaded Long Island…ugh). Ten thousand men remained to defend Harlem Heights and Fort Washington, while General William Heath took five thousand troops to the far side of the Hudson, near Fort Constitution and modern-day West Point.

    Ultimately General Howe chose a flanking maneuver but came in at a point much further south than Fort Constitution. In just a few days we’ll see how the confrontation works out.

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  • Virginia Is Open For Business–October 7, 1776

    Cover art for October 7, 1776: an 1845 engraving by Henry Howe, based on prior drawings by an unknown artist, of the second Capitol building at Williamsburg, VA.

    Before I tell you a little bit about the First Virginia General Assembly of 1776 (which I do have to differentiate with a date, so it’s not confused with the First Virginia General Assembly of 1619), I wanted to spend a moment on the show’s cover artwork.

    For some reason it was in putting today’s art together that I noticed the strong similarity between today’s artwork and yesterday’s. Perhaps it’s because they’re both buildings, even though today’s structure is much larger then yesterday’s. That, of course, is because I size it to fit the frame,

    But it had me looking back on other artwork I’ve used (and, in two cases, created somehow) in the past, and of course there’s a lot of similarity among cover art pieces, largely because so many of them are portraits, and there’s a similarity in the way that people posed, and dressed, and so on. I’m sure another part of it is that I’ve done all of them, and so it’s my aesthetic that’s going into the cover art.

    In 645 episodes to date, I’ve only repeated images a few times, and I’m rather proud of that track record. In one case it’s because there really was only one useable image available. There have been maps, and photographs, and stamps, and historical markers, and buttons, and official seals or flags, and documents, and once I used AI just for the laughs, and another time, just a few weeks ago, I did a little photoshop chicanery, again to amuse myself. Each time I tried to note the source of the artwork in the alt text, and the one time I didn’t, I was (rightly) called out for it by the guy who took the photo. He and I had a very pleasant exchange about it and I think it ended positively.

    My point (I do have one, thanks for asking) is that even though this podcast doesn’t have a gigantic following, I do put some thought into stuff like this, and I hope that the efforts that Mike and I put into the show overall are evident.

    I promised to spend some time talking about the First Virginia General Assembly of 1776, so here goes: during the episode I mentioned four big moves that they made in the relatively short period that they were convened. It’s worth noting that at least two of them were heavily influenced, or drafted by Thomas Jefferson. First was the abolition of entail. Entail was a rule that went back to the English feudal rules, which basically prevented the aristocracy from breaking up or selling off estates. Abolishing this rule helped to unravel the foundation of a landed aristocracy.

    The other big one attributed to Jefferson was the Committee of Revisors, of which Jefferson was a member. It was recognized that the old Colonial Codes were based on royal laws which were outdated (like entail), and someone had to go through the entire legal code to redraft it into something that would work for a (small-r) republican system of government. It took them several years to get the job done, but the work began right away.

    It’s possible that the assembly’s abolition of taxes for non-Anglican churches was also Jefferson’s work, and his later “Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom” was first introduced at this time, but that wasn’t enacted for several years. The other action related to freedom of religion during this period was the suspension of salaries for Anglican ministers, which did major damage to the state-based church system. (Remember, compulsory separation of church and state was still several years in the future.)

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