250 and Counting

Category: Correspondence

  • All Under Heaven Is Chaos–September 7, 1776

    Cover art for September 7, 1776: Cutaway diagram of the Turtle, drawn by Lt.C. Francis M. Barber of the US Navy in 1875. via Library of Congress.

    …but the situation was not excellent, for the American side, anyway.

    George Washington got a wake-up call in the form of a letter from Congress. In that letter he was told that it was not a good idea to burn down New York City; what’s more, they weren’t quite so invested in his holding the City as he thought they were. This was a good news/bad news situation for him, since he knew that strategically, the British occupying New York had the potential to be a huge problem, especially if they were able to take the entire Hudson Valley.

    But even if they didn’t, having one of our biggest and busiest ports was going to create a lot of headaches, regardless of what was supposed to be moving in or out of the city.

    Meanwhile, we have Ezra Lee making his first attempt at genuinely deploying the Turtle submersible. The currents plus the darkness made maneuvering very difficult, and while he did get close enough to Admiral Howe’s ship to stick the explosive charge to it, the spear he used couldn’t penetrate the hull enough to stick. In recent years it’s thought that he tried to pierce the hull near the rudder, which had an iron plate on it; another theory involved the recent use of copper on ships’ bottoms, but this copper was quite thin and would have been easily pierced.

    Lee made one more attempt with the Turtle, on October 6, but that try also failed. The Turtle was lost less than a week later when the sloop serving as her tender was sunk by British ships. Who knows? Maybe there are still pieces of her in the Hudson River.

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  • More Brooklyn Aftermath–September 5, 1776

    Cover art for September 5, 1776: The Capture of Nathaniel Woodhull, John Ward Dunsmore, 1910. via New York Historical Society.

    The American Army has evacuated Brooklyn. Reports are coming in from all over that the Loyalists are being rather sore winners over the event. Refugees are coming into Connecticut from across the Long Island Sound. George Washington, literally the last man out of Brooklyn, is trying to figure out his next move, and that of the British.

    Nathanael Greene, who missed the Battle of Long Island because he’d been seriously ill, finally returns to duty. At last, some good news for General Washington! And maybe some sage advice regarding what should be done next to preserve New York City!

    And Greene tells him to get out of town. There’s no way that you can hold a place like New York City if you can’t control the shoreline across the East River, no more than a few hundred feet away.

    Washington doesn’t think this is a good idea, partially because he thinks New York is more important to the Continental Congress than it actually is. But Greene has another idea, which we’ll get into in a couple of days.

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  • Washington Is Back To Business–August 31, 1776

    Cover art for August 31, 1776: General William Heath. Artist and date unknown. via New York Public Library.

    Washington wrote two letters today: one to General William Heath, and the other to Congress.

    To Heath, he basically gave a little bit of an “attaboy” in agreeing with Heath’s assessment regarding the British Army’s next move. So he recommended that chevaux de frise be sunk in the waters nearby the next likely target (Huntspoint), to thwart the British ships moving in. Other than that, some reinforcements are on their way, so until the British arrive, just hurry up and wait.

    Now, a cheval de frise (“chevaux” is plural) was tough for me to explain during the show, but picture a sawhorse with long spikes protruding from it. That’s a basic cheval de frise. (The one in the picture is from the Civil War.) But they’re not limited to this specific design; some stone walls had broken glass, or sharp rocks embedded in their tops to make it tougher to climb over them; those are also considered to be a cheval de frise. The ones that Heath were expected to sink in the East River looked more like boxes with angled spears pointed in the direction the ships were likely to be coming from.

    Washington’s other letter, to the Continental Congress, wasn’t so much to inform them of his loss on Long Island as it was to assure them that he was alive and well, and that most of his troops had gotten away despite the magnitude of the loss. It would be several months before Washington could truly notch one in the “Win” column against the British.

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  • GW Explains His Exit–August 30, 1776

    Cover art for August 30, 1776: "US Army--Artillery Retreat from Long Island 1776, an 1899 portrait from the Werner Company of Akron, Ohio.

    Even though George Washington was in charge of the whole Continental Army, he still had people to answer to. Most directly that would be the Continental Congress and that will happen very soon, but in the meantime there were also some local officials he had to placate.

    Which brings us to today’s episode, in which Washington wrote to the New York Convention, which was the name at that time for the body of state’s representatives. He’d kept them up to date on everything that was going on so far, so it only made sense that he’d send them another note to let them know why the troops had bailed on Brooklyn. There were lots of good reasons, but the one he didn’t write about was the fact that his army was getting shellacked and it was either get killed outright, or run away to fight another day.

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  • Greene Isn’t Happy–August 15, 1776

    Cover art for August 15, 1776: Statue of Nathaniel Greene at the Rhode Island State House.

    Nathanael Greene was among the first to step up when the shooting started at Lexington and Concord. This is almost certainly because a British official seized a vessel owned by Greene and his brothers.

    After the Intolerable Acts were enacted in 1774, Greene organized a militia unit called the “Kentish Guards.” Despite his leadership, he was not selected as an officer in that militia because he had a limp he’d acquired in childhood (there are no records extant showing why this was the case.)

    However, when the war broke out, Greene was selected to lead the Rhode Island Army of Observation and head to Boston. That company was involved with the battle at Bunker Hill but Greene wasn’t there for it; he was visiting home at the time.

    Later that month, the Continental Army was established, and he became Brigadier General Nathanael Greene. Greene remained with the Boston-based forces after the siege of that city ended, but he rejoined Washington shortly thereafter in New York. As we note in today’s episode, Greene was ill with a severe fever when the Battle of Long Island broke out, but he was able to take command for the Battle of Harlem Heights in September, during the withdrawal from Manhattan. We’ll talk about that more in a few weeks.

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  • Mail From Braintree–August 14, 1776

    Cover art for August 14, 1776: one of many, MANY letters written by Abigail Adams to John Adams. Photographed by Claude Call at the Massachusetts HIstorical Society.

    John and Abigail Adams were one of the great love stories of the 18th Century, and for John to receive a letter from Abigail must have been heavenly, even if it happened nearly every day.

    To be sure, Abigail didn’t always have good news with regard to whatever might be happening at home, and today’s letter is no exception to that. But Abigail was a woman with strong opinions and she wasn’t afraid to put them to paper and let John know what she thought. It was presumably her hope that John could sway the Congress to take on some of her ideas, and it’s entirely possible that he tried, but Abigail was a very progressive, forward-thinking woman and the men in Congress just weren’t realy for that level of social change.

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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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  • Howe Checks In–July 7, 1776

    Cover art for July 7, 1776: color mezzotint print portrait of WIlliam Howe by John Morris, published in 1777.

    William Howe had already been in New York for a little over a week when he wrote to George Germain from his Staten Island headquarters.

    Not everyone had yet arrived from Halifax, of course; it was a long trip and the ships moved at different speeds. Howe took the time to detail what troops and ships had already arrived in New York, and what was still enroute, and that he was awaiting some more reinforcements before acting in full.

    I presume that he was as detailed as he was because he was dispatching the letter to George Germain immediately via a packet ship, and the American Navy wasn’t really in a position at that point to intercept anything; otherwise they would have had a lot of actionable information about troop movements and their plans.

    On the other hand, George Washington (and a few others) had already figured out what the British were up to, but at this point they were at a little bit of a loss regarding how they were going to counter it.

    Part of the problem was that the troops were still fighting more or less defensively. They didn’t have a specific cause to fight for. But in another couple of days, they would have that. It wouldn’t really help in the short run here, but it worked wonders in the end.

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  • News From All Over–June 9, 1776

    Cover art for June 9, 1776: Map of New York which the British published shortly after the Battle of Long Island.

    It was a busy day for corresponding with George Washington on this day, as three letters to Washington were sent.

    Each one had a bit of information that was negative at its worst and neutral at its best. But these letters were a bit of a problem, in that information took so long to get from one place to another: by the time Washington received warning that British troops were enroute, they were thisclose to actually being there.

    On the other hand, both sides are equally disadvantaged by the time lag, and Washington was shrewd enough to find a way to take advantage of that, as we’ll discover.

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  • Congressional Mail–June 3, 1776

    Cover art for June 3, 1776: portrait of Josiah Bartlett. Painted by Edwin Tryon Billings, mezzotint, after a portrait by John Trumbull. The original by Trumbull hangs in the State House in Concord, New Hampshire

    Josiah Bartlett was, in fact, the inspiration for the presidential character who appears in the TV show The West Wing. The modern day president, Jed Bartlet only spelled his name with a single T at the end, but it was only around this time that the spelling of English words was starting to standardize, so Bartlett gets a pass.

    Bartlett, of course, was involved in the creation of the state constitution, and while he declined the position of US Senator in 1789 despite the vote, he accepted the position of Chief Executive in 1790. When New Hanpshire adopted a constitution and became a state, Bartlett’s title changed to Governor. In 1794 he resigned because of his health, and in 175 he died.

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