250 and Counting

This day in American History, 250 years ago.

  • New Kids In Town–April 24, 1776

    Cover art for April 24, 1776: Portrait of Edward Rutledge. Engraved by James Barton Longacre in 1822, based on a painting by Ralph Earl. via New York Public Library's Digital Library.

    It may seem as though a large number of men were suddenly being appointed as South Carolina delegates to the Continental Congress, but in fact they weren’t all new appointees. Some of them had already been delegates and were re-appointed.

    It’s also worth noting that while many of them were supporters of Colonial rights, they were also under instruction to oppose motions for independence. Specifically, when Richard Henry Lee’s motion comes down on June 7, Edward Rutledge specifically was told to oppose it. According to lore, his superiors in South Carolina’s government weren’t sure that the time was “ripe” for independence.

    Arthur Middleton was not only a supporter of Colonial rights, he was said to think ruthlessly when it came to Loyalists.

    Thomas Heyward didn’t distinguish himself very much in the Congress but in 1780 he was captured by the British and held for a year. The loss of the year and his “property” (i.e., slaves) made him a martyr for the Revolution.

    Thomas Lynch was instrumental in helping George Washington organize his army in the early days, but illness kept him from signing the Declaration of Independence.

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  • South Carolina’s Small Declaration–April 23, 1776

    Cover art for April 23, 1776: Portrait of William Henry Drayton. Image is cropped from a larger picture. Engraving by Benoît-Louis Prévost from a drawing by Pierre Eugene du Simitiere.

    William Henry Drayton was born in 1742 on his family’s plantation just outside of Charleston. The plantation was dedicated to growing rice.

    In 1764 he married Dorothy Golightly. In the early 1770s he was a Loyalist and enjoyed some of the perks that came with it. Then in 1774 he wrote a pamphlet supporting a Continental Congress and lost all his government jobs. That, go figure, radicalized him to the Patriot cause and he dedicated the rest of his life to it.

    William Henry Drayton died in Berkeley County, SC at the age of 37. His home, Drayton Hall, is now within Charleston city limits and operates as a museum.

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  • Reorganizing in North Carolina–April 22, 1776

    Cover art for April 22, 1776: detail from "Lee's Cavalry Skirmishing at the Battle of Guilford" by American artist Alonzo Chappel, created ca 1858.

    North Carolina’s Orange County Regiment went through a lot of change in a very short amount of time. First they were divided, then reabsorbed into a different group, all in the span of about two weeks.

    Fortunately things stablilized for them then, but the resulting Hillsborough District Brigade of militia saw a lot of action over the next several years in the Carolinas and in Georgia. By the time the war ended, Hillsborough was one of the few groups still standing. But chances are, if there was an important battle in that part of the world, this group was part of it.

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  • Letters From New England–April 21, 1776

    Cover art for April 21, 1776: Page Four of the letter Abigail Adams sent to her husband John on this day. via Massachusetts Historical Society.

    When Henry Knox wrote to George Washington apologizing for getting to Noweich,Connecicut so late, he had a pretty good excuse: he spent a bunch of money on hiring people to move materials down; and those people had trouble getting the job done.

    But then Henry Knox also tells the story of leaving the caravan briefly to look at Newport RI and determine whether it’s defensible. Imagine how he felt when, after he spent two days figuring out the five best places to stand when defending Newport, he has to explain why he lost those two days afterward. But he did take the time to frame it as an activity that surely would make the Commander-in-Chief look better.

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  • Once More To Canada–April 20, 1776

    Cover art for April 20, 1776: Map of Montreal and the immediate area, 1761.

    If nothing else, the tenacity of the Continental Congress has to be admired, because sending a delegation to Canada, especially after the recent New Year’s Eve disaster in Quebec, and then the “who knows how well it went” trip in March, was a sign of either eternal optimism or an inability to get the hint.

    It was probably a little of Column A and a little of Column B.

    At any rate, Ben Franklin, Samuel Chase and Charles Carroll headed up to Montrèal to see if relations with Canada could be smoothed over a little bit. And perhaps they could, but the Canadians still weren’t interested in the events going on to their south.

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  • Patriots’ Day–April 19, 1776

    Cover art for April 19, 1776: Jonah Clarke's published edition of his sermon marking the first anniversary of the battles at Lexington and Concord.

    It seems like only a year ago we were marking the date the war began at Lexington and Concord, and how it became Patriots’ Day.

    So we’re here once again: the battle ended with the British retreating into the city of Boston, and holding siege there for the better part of a year, until Washington was given several cannons brought down from Fort Ticonderoga, which vastly improved his shooting range.

    A year later, Reverend Jonas Clark marked the day with a sermon that is nearly 40 pages long in its published version. He used a lot of harsh rhetoric in his sermon, casting the British as though they were Satan’s owm minions:

    They approach with the morning’s light; and more
    like murderers and cut-throats, than the troops of a christian king, without provocation, without warning, when no war was proclaimed, they draw the sword of violence, upon the inhabitants of this town, and with a cruelty and barbarity, which would have made the most hardened savage blush, they shed INNOCENT BLOOD!

    The sermon does come back around to God, noting that:

    And from the nineteenth of April, 1775, we may venture to predict, will be dated, in future history, THE LIBERTY or SLAVERY of the AMERICAN WORLD, according as a sovereign God shall see fit to smile, or frown upon the interesting cause, in which we are engaged.

    So…God picks favorites, so long as we humble ourselves before Him and trust in His name.

    Incidentally, I first heard about the children walking from Acton to Concord on the Julie Mason Show, on SiriusXM’s POTUS Channel. she had very fond memories of this, so I dug around a little to discover whether this activity was still going on all these years later. If anything, it’s grown!

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  • Battle at Block Island–April 18, 1776

    Cover art for April 18, 1776: The HMS Carysfort, a ship very similar to the HMS Glasgow. Detail from a painting by Thomas Whitcombe. Unfortunately we couldn't find a clear image of the Glasgow.

    When you have seven ships and you encounter a single ship belonging to the enemy, the Battle of Block Island teaches us that it’s still possible to be overconfident.

    Some people tried to frame the Battle of Block Island as a draw, but those people really weren’t paying attention. The HMS Glasgow took some damage, but far more damage was done to the ships that engaged her: The Cabot had its steering disabled and mostly just got in the way, the Alfred lost its tiller as well and also served as an obstacle. Providence held back and was undamaged; Columbus came in late and her fire was ineffective; likewise the Andrew Doria, which got stuck behind the Alfred. And the Glasgow got away, besides.

    Between Esek Hopkins’ earlier disobeying of his orders and now this debacle, among other transgressions, he was formally censured. By 1778 he had been dismissed altogether from the Navy.

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  • Washington Writes A Protest Letter–April 17, 1776

    Cover art for April 17, 1776: detail of the letter from Washington to the NY Committee of Safety. via Village Preservation, a group dedicated to preserving the heritage and cultural history of the Greenwich Village area.

    One of the things I really appreciate about reading documents from this era is just how polite they were; George Washington’s letter to the NY Committee of Safety, when you read between the lines is an admonition wondering if that august body had lost their damn minds.

    One of the best examples of this is the Declaration of Independence itself. As Aaron Sorkin describes it in an episode of The West Wing:

    [N]ever has a war been so courteously declared. It was on parchment with calligraphy, and “Your Highness, we beseech you on this day in Philadelphia to bite me, if you please.”

    However, we’re getting ahead of ourselves; that doesn’t happen for another couple of months (and not when you think!).

    At any rate, Washington was correct in his assessment that it didn’t make a ton of sense for New York to supply the British while at the same time opposing them. At the same time he didn’t accuse them directly; he played it very cool and suggested that the NY Committee of Safety could get a lot of credit if they’d do as he suggested.

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  • John and Mercy–April 16, 1776

    Cover art for April 16, 1776: portrait of Mercy Otis Warren by John Singleton Copley, ca 1763. via Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

    Mercy Otis Warren doesn’t get nearly enough love in our history books, and barely enough of it here, besides. Having said that, our episode a little over a year ago was a fun little tribute.

    Mercy Otis Warren was a playwright, a pamphleteer and a poet before, during and after the Revolution. Some of her plays were thinly veiled attacks on the British. She was self-taught and pretty brilliant at it, considering that she was one of the first to advocate for a Bill of Rights (though nobody knew she’d written the piece advocating one until her great-great-grandson found a document tying the pamphlet to her).

    And while this episode focuses on correspondence between her and John Adams, she frequently exchanged letters with George Washington, John Hancock, Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, and Thomas Jefferson. But her best relationship was with John Adams, who she looked to as a wiritng mentor. It was at his suggestion that she began writing a history of the Revolution while it was still being fought. She didn’t need primary sources to write her history, she was the primary source. At worst, she was getting it second-hand from the members of the Continental Congress and local leaders.

    Mercy was married to James Warren, and I mention that here because oftentimes she’s thought to be the widow of Dr. Joseph Warren, who died at Bunker Hill. In fact, despite having the same name, Joseph was not related to James, nor to Mercy.

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    Incidentally, Mike gives a shout-out to the Massachusetts Historical Society, which is a fascinating repository of documents and items related to the history of the state, but which has a special lens on the Revolution, especially this year. So I figured I’d do the same here, along with a link. If you’re in town, it’s not to be missed. And it’s free, though donations are encouraged. Go check them out and from there it’s a short walk to Fenway Park, where you can catch a Red Sox game. (Alas, they were playing away games while we were in town.)

  • The Fourth NC Regiment–April 15, 1776

    Cover art for April 15, 1776: the gravesite of General (!) Thomas Polk, in the Old Settlers Cemetery, plot 129, in Charlotte, NC.

    The Fourth North Carolina Regiment got into some interesting battles, but in retrospect it feels as though they didn’t get a ton of love from the Army in general.

    (My delaying the show notes probably doesn’t do anything for their ego either, but I was so tired that I was practically hallucinating. But I didn’t want to delay the episode drop, and I didn’t want to do meaningless show notes. And I do thank you for your patience.)

    Not long after they organized, they were moved to the Northern Department of the Continental Army, then after a couple of years they were switched back to the Southern Department. Thomas Polk was removed from command without being told about it. They were absorbed by another regiment at one point and then dissolved altogether when the enlistments ran out, so the leaders had to go and recruit more men, meaning they weren’t around when the British took Charleston, SC.

    Today’s cover art is the grave of Thomas Polk. That small plate reading “129” is the lot number; there used to be a lovely plaque there identifying Polk as one of the signers of the Mecklenburg Declaration, but it was reportedly stolen. See? No respect.

    We’ll hear from them later this year when we talk about the Battle of Fort Moultrie.

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