250 and Counting

This day in American History, 250 years ago.

  • The Less-Famous Crossing–November 12, 1776

    Cover art for November 12, 1776

    George Washington took about two thousand troops across two major rivers as a tactical move. Both times he was headed into New Jersey. But only one of those crossings gets much attention, which we’ll talk about in the last week of this show.

    That would be his crossing the Delaware River from Pennsylvania into Trenton. But there was also a crossing of the Hudson River, from New York into Fort Lee. So how come the Delaware gets so much attention and the Hudson doesn’t?

    First off, you have that famous painting. That’s got to be a big piece of it. There are no images that I could find depicting the crossing of the Hudson; in fact the image I used in today’s cover art is the British troops making their crossing on November 19th. But the other thing is, crossing the Delaware was a tactical move as part of a sneak attack on Trenton that turned into a huge victory for the Continental Army. (oops, spoiler alert.) Crossing the Hudson was a tactical retreat. Running away isn’t going to look very heroic.

    (Fun Fact: that 1851 painting of Washington’s crossing is actually one of three. The original painting was part of an art collection in a German museum, and it was unfortunately destroyed in a British bombing raid in 1942, during World War II. The other two, made around the same time, are slightly different in size. One is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the other was auctioned off in 2022 and is now in private hands.)

    This is the stuff I think about sometimes.

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  • Philip E. Thomas–November 11, 1776

    Cover art for November 11, 1776: the Thomas Viaduct in Arbutus, Maryland, named after Philip E. Thomas. Photo taken by Wikipedia user Amazur in 2011.

    Philip E. Thomas was absolutely instrumental to the growth of the railroad industry in the first century of America. Curiously, there’s no street in Baltimore bearing his name; the closest you get is Thames Street, which is pronounced phonetically (“Thaymes”) even though the street was named after the London River, which is not pronounced that way (“Tems”).

    There is, however, the Thomas Viaduct, which is what you can see in today’s cover art. The Thomas Viaduct is just outside Baltimore, spanning the Patapsco River between the towns of Elkridge and Relay. It was built between 1833 and 1835, and is the first multi-span railroad bridge to be built on a curve. (There are five more spans that aren’t visible in the picture.) It was the largest railroad bridge in the US at the time of its competion, and is still in use today, making it the oldest railroad bridge still in service.

    An illustration from an 1835 book, the year the viaduct opened.

    I think I mentioned this a while back, but I recently had the opportunity to visit the National Museum of Railroad History and Innovation, which until not long ago was called the B&O Railroad Museum, largely because it was once a B&O station and railyard. Much of the original train station is still standing, and the roundhouse holds at least a dozen vintage train engines and cars, some of which you can enter and walk around. There are several other cars available to visit outside the building as well, and if you come at the right time you can even take a short ride. If you look at the second picture at right here, that’s an illustration from a book published in 1835, the year the viaduct opened, and the train that’s seen crossing it can be seen in the museum!

    When I first started working for Baltimore City Schools in 2001, I heard a lot about field trips for students going to the B&O Museum; it’s a very popular desitnation for field trips. But somehow I never got the opportunity to join a class. I finally visited in September with my grandson, who is in that phase where trains are the coolest things ever. If you visit, you may come away with a similar mindset.

    If you’re a train buff, Baltimore also has a Streetcar Museum which is about ten minutes’ drive from the NMRHI.

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  • Headed To Fort Lee–November 10, 1776

    Cover art for November 10, 1776: view of modern-day Manhattan from Fort Lee Historic Park. Photo uploaded to Wikipedia by user Hudconja.

    Yes, I busted on New Jersey in yesterday’s episode, but I was born and raised in the New York Metro Area and it’s part of my DNA.

    To be fair, lots of New Jersey is quite nice. Fort Lee (the town)…not so much. I mean, it’s fine. But not especially nice. Having said that, Fort Lee Historic Park is a neat little—well, 33 acres—island of peace among a bustling urban center.

    Just out of sight of this photo to the left is the George Washington Bridge, which crosses the Hudson River to New York City. Basically the photographer has the end of the New Jersey Turnpike over their left shoulder. But for that, it’s not as noisy as you’d imagine it would be.

    The dirty secret about Fort Lee Historic Park is that, while the site itself is extremely historical, very little of what you see there is original. Most of it is reconstructed: the blockhouse, the battery, the barracks. But it’s still a cool place to visit and you do learn a lot there.

    Fort Washington, which we’ve discussed many time previously, was almost directly across the river from Fort Lee. There’s a park there as well, which crosses under the GW Bridge. It’s part of the Hudson River Greenway. The idea behind these twin forts, plus the chevaux-de-frise in the river, was to make it as tough as possible for British ships to move through the Hudson River at this point. In addition to the fort itself, which is at the top of the bluffs, there were also fortifications closer to the water’s edge at Burdett’s Landing. This was a spot where the land leveled out just enough to make access practical. Burdett’s Landing can’t be visited as an historic site since it exists only as part of a cooperative community. However, if you can find the Community Center, there’s a historic plaque marking the area.

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  • Battleship, Please–November 9, 1776

    Cover art for November 9, 1776: The HMS Hercules, a man-of-war that was said to be quite similar to the America. Painted by Louis-Philippe Crépin, 1803.

    It needs to be asked why Congress didn’t give as much attention to having a Navy as much as it did an Army.

    It’s possible that it was really just a matter of proximity; there were active battles or troop movements going on all the time, plus we were fighting on several fronts (New York/Canada/the Cherokee tribes). Meanwhile the British Navy was too big to comprehend, plus there wasn’t as much engagement. And perhaps the sheer size of the ocean was daunting.

    But the British Navy made it tougher for America to get supplies from other nations, not to mention transport of people from one place to another.

    At any rate, as I noted during the episode, it took about six months for work on the America to get started, and when John Paul Jones arrived in Portsmouth, NH to take command in June 1779, he found that she was in no way ready to sail: there was almost no planking or decks, they were short on iron for fasteners, there was no provision for rigging and sails, and because Master Builder Hackett hadn’t worked on such a large ship before, Jones discovered problems with the design that would have made the ship much more difficult to handle. Fortunately, there was another shipwright available who, while also inexperienced with that size a boat, was able to grasp Jones’ concerns quickly and could oversee his changes.

    Jones’ old gunner, a Mr. Gardner, then joined him and was able to take charge of mounting all of the guns on the ship, from building the carriages to setting up the fittings for the magazines.

    As a result of all this work, the America was ready to launch in the fall of 1782. As it happened, the launch itself was also problematic because of her size in relation to the waterway between the island and the main shore opposite her stern, so the only safe way to launch the ship was to pay out a series of ropes, breaking each one in turn until she was completely waterborne.

    It had been nearly six full years since the America was commissioned, and in November of 1782 she was handed over to the Chevalier de Martigne, who was a French naval officer. The ship thus became a gift to King Louis XVI to replace the recently-lost (and similar size/design) Le Magnifique, which ran aground in Boston Harbor and was wrecked.

    Sadly, she was only used for about two years and then the record dries up until 1786, when it’s recorded that the ship is in the port of Brest and literally rotting away, and therefore recommended for breaking up.

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    I should note here that most of my research for this episode and my show notes came from an article written by Robert W. Neeser for the US Naval Institute (soft paywall), along with materials from AmericanRevolution.org and the National Parks Service’s website.

  • Constitution, Activate!–November 8, 1776

    Pennsylvania wasn’t the first state to enact a new constititution, nor was it the first to start with an enumeration of people’s rights.

    What it did have was provision for a unicameral legistlative body, which was unusual at the time. The main goal of this new constitution was not only to limit but to completely prevent the creation of an aristocracy. Specifically, it was based on Thomas Paine’s Common Sense. It played a major role in the writing of this constitution, and its influence can be seen in several passages or phrases, specifically the ones referring to “liberty” and “the people’s government”.

    In addition, it expanded voting rights to all men who paid property taxes in the past year, meaning that freed slaves could conceivably vote in Pennsylvania. Slaves were still considered property in the southern states (naturally) and even in most of the northern states, regardless of the specific practices involving slavery at that point.

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  • A Move Southward–November 7, 1776

    Cover art for November 7, 1776: Contemporary map of northern Manhattan. Fort Washington is at bottom left; Kingsbridge is just above the "w" in "Southward". via Boston Public Library Digital Collection.

    It was pretty well-known by this point that General Howe’s objective was to occupy New York and then move northward through the Hudson Valley.

    General Washington had issued a discretionary order to General Nathanael Greene to abandon the fort and remove its garrison, which then numbered about 3,000 men, to New Jersey.

    Colonel Robert Magaw, the acting commander of the fort, refused to abandon it, believing his troops would be able to defend it from the British. This stubbornness pretty much cost him his ability to participate in the rest of the war, as he was captured when the British finally moved in.

    Magaw was paroled later on but not permitted to leave Manhattan until the war was over. And Britain held Manhattan the entire time, so Magaw was basically out of a job when it came to the Continental Army, and may explain why there are no locations named after him. The site where his home in New Carlisle, PA is now a coffee shop/café and there is a plaque nearby marking the café as a stop on the Patriot’s Path.

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  • Quo Vadis, General?–November 6, 1776

    Cover art for November 6, 1776: a cannon mounted to a rock, retrieved from a Continental Army campsite, located at Battle of White Plains Park.

    White Plains, New York, has the feel of a suburban town that urbanized when nobody was looking. A little over 60,000 people live there, but during the day it’s estimated to have about a quarter million people working there.

    Nevertheless, they haven’t forgotten their place in American history, and there is a space that marks where much of the Battle of White Plains took place in 1776. It’s a very suburban zone dropped between two urban zones, with a series of retail stores stretching for about a half-mile just 1000 feet away in one direction, and the Bronx River Parkway about 500 feet in the other (with the Bronx River itself another hundred feet away).

    There are lots of historical plaques explaining what happened and when, but without these (and the cannon you can see in the cover art photo), you’d never know that a fierce battle once took place on these grounds.

    Battle of White Plains Park is a lovely place to visit, but be forewarned that there is no off-street parking, no restrooms and the park closes at dusk because there’s no lighting. On the bright side, you can get all that just the other side of Central Avenue.

    Now that I think about it, there’s probably no reason you couldn’t park your car at the McDonald’s and just walk down.

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  • Howe Moves, And A Church Mystery–November 5, 1776

    Cover art for November 5, 1776: The second Grace Church in Rye, NY. Artist and specific date of creation unknown. via Christ's Church archives.

    I do enjoy it when coincidental stories come together.

    We did mention a couple of days ago that this was a period of relative lawlessness in the downstate New York area, and the murder of Reverend Ephraim Avery is a definitive example of this.

    Avery’s murder was never solved, but apparently it was the stuff of much gossip and speculation. I actually learned about this incident while looking for something else and I stumbled over the story of the dedication and Evensong event which marks the 250th anniversary of the Reverend Avery’s death.

    If you’re in the area, the memorial dedication will be followed by a catered dinner in the Parish Hall and a presentation by a local historian discussing Avery’s live and legacy. Everything starts at 6:00 tonight. The suggested donation is $20/person or $50/family.

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  • The Last Signatory–November 4, 1776

    Cover art for November 4, 1776: image of Matthew Thornton from a 19th-century steel-line engraving printed on paper, artist unknown. Via Wikimedia Commons.

    The curious thing about Matthew Thornton’s being the last person to sign the Declaration of Independence isn’t why it took so long for him to get it done.

    He wasn’t appointed to the position until after all the debate had taken place, so it was rather gracious of the Continental Congress to let him sign in the first place. But, they were holding that “all-in” attitude, so he may not have had a choice.

    And because of all the doings and goings-on in the New York area, travel from New England to Philadelphia was dangerous for most civilians, never mind the ones who are out there representing the rebellious government. So sure, he gets a pass for taking his time getting to Pennsylvania.

    No. The part I don’t get is, if he could pick any space to put his signature, why he put it where he did. Now, all the others signed their names as a colonial/state group, e.g. Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall and George Walton were all from Georgia, so their names appear together. Josiah Bartlett and William Whipple are also from New Hampshire and they’re together. But Samuel Adams signed immediately below Whipple, so there wasn’t any space for Wharton to squeeze his name in, so it’s at the bottom-right of the document.

    But look at that gigantic space at the bottom left! Why did he group himself with the Connecticut crowd? Did he not want to be thought of as a Georgia man?

    It’s a mystery.

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  • The Maryland Declaration of Rights–November 3, 1776

    Cover art for November 3, 1776: the front page of the Maryland Declaration of Rights and Constitution from 1776.

    Before I get into the Maryland Declaration of Rights, can I please just note that the State Flag of Maryland is probably the coolest of all 50 state flags? And remember, I’m not native to this state. In fact, not only is it cool, it’s aggressively cool.

    I should also mention that if you happen to notice that there appears to be Christmas music playing in the background of today’s episode, you’re not entirely wrong. It’s a recording of Maryland’s state song, which is set to the tune of “O Tannenbaum.” Cool flag, way uncool anthem.

    The Maryland Declaration of Rights, which has a lot of DNA from Virginia’s Declaration of Rights, not to mention Pennsylvania’s, is actually more explicit than those documents (not to mention the US Constitution) when it comes to the enumeration of some of those rights.

    For instance, there’s Article 40, which stipulates, “That the liberty of the press ought to be inviolably preserved; that every citizen of the State ought to be allowed to speak, write and publish his sentiments on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of that privilege.”

    Article 22 is the right against self-incrimination, but again it’s more explicit then the US Fifth Amendment, because it provides that exercising that right is unconditional and can’t be irrevocably waived for the duration of a trial. So if you didn’t exercise it earlier, you can still exercise it later on. Likewise, if you waived your right under the Fifth Amendment, it doesn’t mean you also waived your right under Article 22.

    Over the years, the Maryland Constitution has been modified a few times, including: a couple of times in the late 1800s to eliminate slavery, certain race-related items were removed and women’s rights broadened in 1972, and reproductive rights were reinforced in 2024.

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