250 and Counting

This day in American History, 250 years ago.

  • Joseph Lee Smith–May 28, 1776

    Cover art for May 28, 1776: Joseph Lee Smith's home (Later Kirby Smith's) in St. Augustine, Florida. Uploaded to Wikipedia by user WhisperToMe.

    There’s a cool thing about Joseph Lee Smith that Mike doesn’t cover in his story today, probably because he is SO JEALOUS OF ME.

    Nah, I’m kidding. But the fact is, Joseph Lee Smith is tied up a little bit in my distant family history.

    I mentioned once before that my family can trace back to a common ancestor, Thomas Call, who arrived in America sometime in the 1640s. Thus, anyone with the surname Call is related, however distantly. There were Calls who were among the first Mormons to go west with (the other) Joseph Smith, so the name is about as common in Utah as it is uncommon pretty much everywhere else.

    Smith moved to Florida in 1821 and from 1823 to 1832 he was a territorial judge. In 1823 a delegate from Florida named Richard K Call introduced a resolution calling for the US House Judiciary Committee to investigage Smith on charges that he took bribes and kickbacks. The resolution was adopted and the investigation went on for at least seven years, but no charges were ever filed to impeach Smith.

    There are a few Calls in Florida history, and a couple of towns have a Call Street, including Starke, which has a “Call Street Historic District“. This area was named specifically for Richard K Call.

    Hm. My brother is named Richard Call, though he has a different middle initial. I may have to let him know about this…

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  • Justice John Johnson–May 27, 1776

    Cover art for May 27, 1776: grave of John Johnson. via find-a-grave.com.

    Justice John Johnson had a brief career in the Indiana Supreme Court, but this shouldn’t be the legacy he leaves behind, especially inasmuch as there were no important decisions handed down during the six-ish months in which he was part of that bench.

    It would be his earlier efforts as an Indiana politician that you want to know about. And yes, Johnson was an active politician early in the days of the Indiana Congress. Before there was a state Constitution, there were the Territorial laws that Johnson helped to organize, so he was probably quite well-versed in what was already down on paper.

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  • The Battle Of The Cedars Ends–May 26, 1776

    Cover art for May 26, 1776: detail of a 1764 map of the western end of the Isle of Montreal. The Cedars ("des Cedres") can be seen at bottom left.

    The Battle of the Cedars was actually a series of skirmishes that took place near the end of the American invasion of Quebec, which started in September 1775. The Cedars was an area just under 30 miles west of Quebec, and in April, Benedict Arnold had placed a detachment of troops in that area, because he’d heard that British and Indian troops were forming there.

    When Arnold’s men engaged with them, they wound up surrendering. What’s more, a backup force was also captured. But Arnold wasn’t giving up so easily, and he was able to get reinforcements that allowed him to move from the area just outside Montreal toward The Cedars. Unfortunately for him, the British had four-inch guns to fire at him, plus the threat that any prisoners captured so far would be killed—by the Indians, not by the British. Arnold may or may not have known what rules the Indians worked under, so he called a war council to get his advisers’ opinions. Arnold wanted to mount a surprise attack but his council convinced him otherwise.

    And that was pretty much that for the Battle of the Cedars. All that remained was the negotiations for prisoner exchange, but I won’t spoil for you here how that worked out; you’ll have to let Mike tell you.

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  • Making A Play For The Natives–May 25, 1776

    Cover art for May 25, 1776: The first page of the address to the Iroquois Indians. It's in George Wythe's handwriting, but the identity of the person making the speech was not recorded.

    The Continental Congress knew that good relationship with the Native Americans was the smart thing to do, but it took them months to put together the Committee for Indian Affairs, even when their first attempt to bring the natives in failed miserably.

    In that first try, they came to the upstate New York and framed the Revolution as though it was a family dispute. The Iroquois, taking that literally, decided to stay out of the affair, then.

    This time around, the Iroquois (and shame on me, I should be saying Haudenosauree) came to Philadelphia, but in my humble opinion they weren’t treated especially well, having to wait for several days to meet with the Congress, and several more days to hear the proposal that the Committee for Indian Affairs put together. Small wonder, then, that they simply left without even responding to the Americans’ offer.

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  • Mr. Washington Goes To Philadelphia–May 24, 1776

    Cover art for May 24, 1776: A marble statue of George Washington erected in Philadelphia in the 1860s. This photo was taken in the early 1890s. The statue was eventually moved to an indoor location and a bronze replica put in its place.

    The idea of George Washington in Philadelphia sounds kind of like a no-brainer, but with dealing with a war against the greatest army in the world, plus having to put up with ill-trained troops to fight that war, he was a busy guy and didn’t get out there much.

    Later on, after the war, of course, it was a common sight. But given Washington’s post-war stature as the soldier who delivered American victory, plus his stint as our first President—and the man who set many of the precedents for Presidential behaviors and ceremonies—it makes sense that Philadelphia would erect a statue to honor him, and park it right in front of Independence Hall.

    The first statue of Washington in Philadephia was erected in 1869 and dedicated by the mayor. After about 40 years it began to show signs of the weather and overall climate getting to it, so a decision was made to replace it with a bronze replica and move the marble version to an indoor location. It now stands inside Philadelphia’s City Hall, while the bronze one still stands outside Independence Hall, where it has been since 1910.

    Today, Mike takes you to this day in 1776, when Washington felt he had no choice but to speak to Congressional delegates himself

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  • Delegates Start Getting Their Orders–May 23, 1776

    Cover art for May 23, 1776: portrait of James Duane by John Trumbull, 1805.

    Once the preamble to Congress’ resolution had been written and unanimously approved back on May 15, it really was just a matter of when, rather than whether, America was going to formally declare itself as a separate state from England.

    The hardest part was getting all the ducks in a row, as the expression goes. The biggest reason that independence hadn’t already been declared is that anything that came out of the Continental Congress had to pass unanimously, so they could speak with a single voice. Now, at the delegate level, they didn’t all have to vote the same way, but once a majority of the delegates from a given colony voted a certain way, then the colony voted that way as part of the larger body.

    Some colonies had the green light to vote in the affirmative, as long as a different colony brought up the question. Georgia was rather split within the state, and was also more concerned with the skirmishes they were having at the border with Florida. So they mostly didn’t care. New York delegates, as we mentioned yesterday, arrived with instructions not to vote on Independence at all. Even when they finally did vote, it was technically against their orders.

    But one of the more passionate sets of orders came from a group in Boston. Put your earbuds in and learn about how florid writing can really get your point across.

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  • The Third NY Provincial Congress–May 22, 1776

    Cover art for May 22, 1776: portrait of Major-General Charles Lee. Engraving created in 1860 by H.B. Hall & Sons of New York.

    When the Third NY Provincial Congress convened on this day, chances are that nobody really got their hopes up.

    By this point, that body had already met a few times, so it was generally known where they stood when it came to the Independence Question. And sure enough, when they sent delegates to the Continental Congress, they sent those delegates with instructions to oppose Independence. Rather than do that, however, the New York delegation typically just remained on the sidelines, appearing to neither favor nor oppose the notion. This went on for several weeks, and while it didn’t necessarily hinder the cause, neither did it really help matters.

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  • What To Do With A Captured Brit?–May 21, 1776

    Cover art for May 21, 1775: Colored engraving of "Ethan Allan in Irons", by Albert Bobbett, ca. 1877.

    Early in the war, it became apparent that the treatment of prisoners was going to be a very lopsided affair.

    British soldiers were treated humanely and with dignity. American soldiers…not so much. As we noted last August, when Americans were captured they weren’t treated as prisoners of war but rather as criminals who didn’t deserve dienity. During the course of the war, over 8000 soldiers died because of the conditions of their confinement.

    Despite this, it appears that the Continental Congress, when asked the question directly, determined that the humane route was the most appropriate one. This didn’t really change the British approach, but at least we had a policy, and we had it in writing.

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  • Simon Fraser–May 20, 1776

    Cover art for May 20, 1776: Pre-1826 painting of Simon Fraser by unknown artist in Bennington Museum, Vermont. uploaded to Wikipedia by user Objectivesea (Erik Bjørn Pedersen).

    Simon Fraser was born in Hoosick, New York, which is close to where New York’s border meets with those of Vermont and Massachusetts. He was the youngest of eight children.

    He moved to Montreal when he was 14 and worked with his uncles in the fur trade, apprenticing to the North West Company the following year. Now, the North West Company had already commissioned someone to find a river route to the Pacific Ocean. That may did find a route that worked for fur sources but wasn’t especially good as a trade route. Fraser was given the responsibility for extending operations to the west, and he did it by establishing trading posts along the way, essentially taking possession of that part of the continent. This led to further exploration and either establishing or expanding fur trade along the way.

    In 1814 he got caught up in a dispute in the Red River Valley area, between the North West Company and Thomas Douglas, a controlling shareholder of the Hudson’s Bay Company, which had established the Red River Colony. By 1816 this dispute ballooned into the Battle of Seven Oaks, in which twenty people were killed. Fraser wasn’t involved in the battle but he was arrested anyway by Douglas. He was eventually acquitted of any charges, but that was pretty much the end of his involvement in the fur trade industry, though he remained an active menber of the North West Company until his death in 1862. Because his wife died the next day, the pair were buried in a single grave in a cemetery near their home in Cornwall, Ontario.

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  • Mugford’s Last Stand–May 19, 1776

    Cover art for May 19, 1776: a 1780 portrait believed to be that of Captain James Mugford, attributed to Samuel Blyth.

    Captain enlisted in the Continental Army not long after the battles at Lexington and Concord. He was commissioned as a Captain and immediately put to work capturing British ships.

    One of the more surprising things about the battle between the USS Franklin is not so much the victorious outcome, which was starting to feel a little bit of a foregone conclusion at this point, or that the ships moving in on the Franklin at first pretended to be friendly Bostonians, since that was actually a common tactic.

    It was the fact that his birth date and death date are the same calendar day. Mugford was born in 1789, and died in 1776, on May 19. That seems like the sort of coincidence that might get a little more attention.

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