250 and Counting

This day in American History, 250 years ago.

  • Farewell, Francis–July 31, 1776

    Cover art for July 31, 1776: watercolor art of Francis Salvador. Via American Battlefield Trust.

    As I mentioned very early in this podcast, Francis Salvador’s life was especially notable for two things: the day he was elected to public office, and the day he died. And in his case, the dates were notable largely for the fact that Francis Salvador was a Sephardic Jew, making him the first man of his faith to be elected to office in America, and the first of his faith to die in the Revolution.

    Francis Salvador was born in London, but his family were part of a Portuguese and Spanish Sepharidic Jewish enclave in that city. Salvador had an uncle who’d invested heavily in the British East India Company, and they still owned lots of land in Portugal, so they were pretty comfortable financially.

    Until, that is, the Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755, and the subsequent failure of the East India Tea Company. They were in much worse shape after those two blows, but by that point Salvador had already purchsed some land in South Carolina. In 1773 he emigrated to America, intending to bring his family over when he had the money to do so, but he was killed before they could make the move.

    P.S. Thanks to Mike for stepping in and recording this episode when I had a power failure preventing me from getting it done.

  • Getting The Finer Details–July 30, 1776

    Cover art for July 30, 1776: Portrait of Rev. John Witherspoon by Rembrandt Peale, c. 1794. via National Portrait Gallery.

    Both Dr. Benjamin Franklin and the Reverend John Witherspoon made good points when they discussed state representation in Congress under the Articles of Confederation they were trying to put together.

    The interesting thing is that the debate sounds very much like a modern-day discussion with regard to the nations that participate in NATO. Smaller nations are feeling a little “pushed out” by larger nations; the larger nations feel as though they’re dealing with most of the burden. And while those larger nations are correct in that the smaller nations aren’t making the contributions to which they initially agreed, it’s a matter of cure, not disengagement.

    At any rate, as Mike notes, the siguation won’t be fully addressed through the Articles of Confederation; ultimately they kicked the can down the road and, when the AoC finally collapsed, our current bicameral legislature attempted to address the large/wealthy states vs. small/poorer states representation conundrum. The system could still use some fixes (e.g. the current total number of Representatives in the House is unconstitutionally low, by literally a couple of decimal places), but it’s all in pursuit of a more perfect Union. We screwed up today but we’ll get it a little more right tomorrow.

    After Reverend John Witherspoon left Congress, he returned to Princeton, where the campus had been badly damaged by the British. He worked diligently to repair the damage. He was also a member of the New Jersey convention that ratified the US Constitution, and he organized the Presbyterian Church in the United States.

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  • British Forces Gather in NY–July 29, 1776

    Cover art for July 29, 1776: letter from John Adams to Abigail written on this date. Via Massachusetts Historical Society.

    The presence of the British in Staten Island wasn’t a big mystery, but within a month after they first arrived, the number of ships in New York Harbor was well over 100, and still growing.

    And, as George Washington suspected (along with many others), the British began moving up the rivers surrounding Manhattan, working their way up the Hudson River in the effort to use New York as a wedge between New England and the rest of the colonies. Specifically, if supplies couldn’t get through, then it weakens both sides of the line.

    As for New York itself, part of Washington’s problem was that he didn’t know if the British plan was to take New York City (still a small chunk of Manhattan Island at that time), or to move through Long Island. As a result he had to hedge the bet a little bit and send troops in both directions, spreading the Continental Army rather thinly. This may have forced the British to do something quite similar, but they still had Washington vastly outnumbered.

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  • Cleaning Up The Act–July 28, 1776

    Cover art for July 27, 1776: An anonymous engraving used to depict colonial-era medical practices.

    Hygiene in the Continental Army was practically nonexistent. As you can imagine, things got pretty ripe around camp, especially in the summer.

    And when people don’t take good care of such things, they’re probably going to wind up sick. Getting sick when you’re supposed to be on duty likely means that you’re going to do your “business” fairly close to where you’re working, This, in turn, is going to have the effect of getting other people sick while simultaneously perpetuating your own illness. This was especially true when such things took place too close to the water source, thereby contaminating that as well.

    Ain’t we got fun!

    There were a few people—the Officer grade men, primarily—who may not have known anything about bacteria, but they were able to see what and who was where, and connect the dots, so they began to take steps to help keep illness down.

    Did it help? Probably not right away, After all, the soldiers were still a rather undisciplined group, and maintaining hygiene in the Continental Army was pretty low on their personal priorities. If we had to guess, things probably abated a little bit, but didn’t really improve until the men that Silas Deane, et. al. came over and got things on track.

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  • Credit From France–July 27, 1776

    Cover art for July 27, 1776: Portrait of Silas Deane by William Johnston, 1766. via silasdeaneonline.com

    Getting arms and credit wasn’t an overly tough task for Silas Deane. But it wasn’t because the French liked us so much; it was because they were still a little salty about the French and Indian War. So they were willing to do almost anything to embarrass the British.

    As a delegate to France (essentially a secret envoy until the word of Independence got out), Deane got a lot of stuff done, especially since he needed to do it in secrecy. The reason for this was that the French (and the Spanish, for that matter) needed some plausible deniability should arms get intercepted. So items were sold through a gray market, and if something didn’t make it to America, that wasn’t on King Louis; that was some smuggler working on his own and without formal authorization from those guys pointedly looking the other way.

    Once Independence became a more public topic, Ben Franklin and Arthur Lee crossed over to France to join Deane. The three of them managed to recruit foreign officers to assist the American troops, including Marquis de Lafayette, Baron Johann de Kalb, Thomas Conway, Casimir Pulaski, and Baron von Steuben. The officers were rather unpopular among the men, at least at first, and Deane got the blame somehow. In late 1777 he was recalled back to America.

    While in America he was accused by Arthur Lee of financial impropriety. Unfortunately for him, his financial records were still in France because he thought he’d be coming back soon. Ultimately this charge was dropped, and he was permitted to return to France to settle his affairs; when he arrived, however, he discovered that he was nearly broke because many of his investments had plummeted, and some of the merchandise he’d sent to America had been captured by the British.

    Further damaging his reputation was a letter he’d written in 1781 that had been intercepted, suggesting that the American cause was doomed, and perhaps some kind of rapproachement with Britain was indicated. So on this side of the ocean, people thought his actions to be treasonous. It wasn’t until 1789 that Silas Deane even attempted to return to America; unfortunately he fell ill during the trip and died at sea.

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  • What To Do With Those Natives?–July 26, 1776

    Cover art for July 26, 1776: Official portrait of Justice James WIlson as a Supreme Court Associate Judge, by Robert S. Susan, after Leopold G. Seyffert, after Max Rosenthal, ca. 1936. Now part of the Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States.

    That Native American relations were considered at all as part of the Articles of Confederation is a little bit of a mystery, but it’s possible that the Congress was just looking for some across-the-board consistency when it came to that sort of thing.

    After all, you couldn’t have the folks in the Southern States battling with the Cherokee while the Northern States, which were more or less peaceful with the Iroquois, doing nothing to assist. It’s just too many variables to consider.

    Ultimately, the Federalists won this argument, in the sense that Native American relations would be left to the US government to deal with, provided that the rights of the individual states were not infringed upon.

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  • Drafting A Confederation–July 25, 1776

    Cover art for July 25, 1776: part of an early draft of the Articles of Confederation in John Dickinson's handwriting.

    Representatives from each colony were already working on draft Articles of Confederation beginning one day after Thomas Jefferson, et.al. started work on the Declaration of Independence.

    The first draft Articles were presented to the Congress on July 12, and this day was another day of discussion and debate. The ultimate disposition of the articles discussed today is a little bit amusing, as you learn from the episode itself.

    The Founding Fathers were looking for a relatively weak central government, which is why the finished document is relatively short and can actually be boiled down to a dozen brief paragraphs. It took a while to realize it, but this wasn’t the best idea, which explains why the Articles of Confederation were abandoned for a new Constitution.

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  • The Schuyler Is Falling–July 24, 1776

    Cover art for July 24, 1776: portrait of Philip Schuyler by John Trumbull, 1792. Currently housed at the New York Historical Society.

    Philip Schuyler was part of a prominent New York family, enough that if you have any familiarity with that state’s history, you realize that the Schuyler name keeps popping up, especially during and shortly after the Revolution. (Similarly, the names Schermerhorn and Burr also manage to crop up a lot; Burr is probably the most famous name of the three but there are more Burrs than just Aaron.)

    Schuyler was born in Albany but moved to New Rochelle when he was eight years old, shortly after his father died. He fought in the French and Indian War, and was sent to England for three years afterward to help settle some expenses related to the war.

    Philip Schuyler was elected to the Second Continental Congress but left to become a general in the Continental Army, where he was involved with the failed invasion of Quebec. His health forced him to turn command over to General Montgomery, and in 1777 he returned to Congress.

    Later in life, he served as a Semator in the First US Congress, but lost his bid for re-election to Aaron Burr. (See? Popping up everywhere.) He did return to the Senate a few years later, and remained there until he resigned due to his health.

    Schuyler died at the Schuyler Mansion in Albany on November 18, 1804, four months after his son-in-law, Alexander Hamilton, was killed in a duel (by Aaron Burr) and two days before his 71st birthday. He is buried at Albany Rural Cemetery in Menands, New York, about 500 feet away from President Chester A. Arthur. It’s really a lovely place to visit and see the graves of several notable figures, not all of whom were “big” names historically unless you like to deep-dive into such things.

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  • Ain’t No Party Like A Long Island Party–July 23, 1776

    Cover art for July 23, 1776: "Raising the Liberty Pole," painted by Frederic Augustus Chapman and engraved by John C. McRae, 1876.

    Huntington, New York, is coincidentally quite close to where I grew up. And frankly, I had no idea that they could celebrate the way they did on this day in history.

    In addition to being its own little town, Huntington was determined not to let the British take any more of Long Island than they already had. They’d gotten word that the inhabitants of New York City had determined not to oppose the British. This kind of makes sense, since there were lots of Loyalists there still. But a man named John Sloss Hobart, who was one of the Sons of Liberty in the area, headed a committee that was designed to secure the disaffected, to remove or destroy any grain, and, if necessary, lay Brooklyn to waste.

    This effort ultimately failed, and unfortunately their absence from the Huntington area near the end of August meant that British soldiers were making landfall about 50 miles east of Huntington with no militia to meet them. Since Huntington had the bulk of the militia in the area, the British could act as they wanted, further hastening the fall of Long Island that summer.

    Many Patriots had to get out of town, so they headed across the Long Island Sound to Connecticut for the duration.

    But for all that, Huntington, NY remains proud of their heritage, and they even took the time this past weekend to reenact the event, demonstrating the firing of weapons, showing off 18th Century crafts and trades, and offering tours of the Arsenal. And yes: they blew up an effigy of King George III. I guess they still know how to party in Huntington.

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  • When Accusation Is A Confession–July 22, 1776

    Cover art for July 22, 1776: General Lee on Horseback, Engraved by Johann Michael Probst, 1790. via Library of Congress.

    That Charles Lee turned out to be giving information to the British is one of those things that feels obvious in retrospect.

    As Mike notes during the episode, Lee was passed over for command of the Continental Army, and even though he was still in a position of importance and command, things like that can eat away at some people.

    Now, by most accounts, and through review of existing documents, Lee generally acquitted himself well in the Southern Department and in New York, although at the time of his capture there he was writing a letter to General Horatio Gates complaining that George Washington was somehow deficient.

    However, his attitude toward the Continental Army continued to deteriorate after his release in 1778. He was held partly responsible for the outcome of the Battle of Monmouth, likely because he was rather capricious with his actions. Because he behaved insubordinately afterward, Lee was court-martialed (at his demand) and found guilty, but given the very light sentence of a year’s suspension from the army. Before the year was out, however, he wrote an angry letter to Congress that resulted in his termination of service.

    It wasn’t until the 1850s that the New York Historical Society discovered a manuscript Lee had written while he was a prisoner of war. It was addressed to both Richard and William Howe, and outlined a plan by which the British could defeat the Continental Army. Whether Charles Lee is specifically guilty of treason is still debated among historians, though he’s commonly been presented as a villain in popular culture of the past 80 years or so.

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