250 and Counting

Category: Correspondence

  • 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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  • Henry Knox Wants To Get Tough–May 16, 1776

    Cover art for May 16, 1776: Portrait of Henry Knox by Gilbert Stuart, 1806.

    If the name Henry Knox sounds familiar to you, give yourself a prize. Knox was the man in charge of the Noble Train of Artillery, in which large amounts of ordinance were taken from Fort Ticonderoga and transferred to Boston. The presence of the new guns, with greater range than either side had at that point, led to the British finally evacuating the city a relatively short time later.

    But by this point Knox was back in New York, only he was in the city rather than the upstate area, and he could see that reconciliation was a pipe dream at best. So he wrote to John Adams to stress the importance of eventual independence.

    It is not recorded whether Adams replied “No duh,” since he’d been making the same arguments to the Second Continental Congress for some time.

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  • Words From Ward–May 9, 1776

    Cover art for May 9, 1776: Statue of Artemas Ward that stands in Washington DC, just a few blocks northwest of the National Cathedral.

    Artemas Ward was the man left in charge of things when Washington made his trek to New York, so you know that this was a man that Washington trusted. As a result they corresponded with one another frequently.

    So it only makes sense that once in a while, the two would write to one another on the same day, and this was one of those days. Washington wrote to Ward his concern that the British would return to Boston and therefore the city should be fortified to protect against such an event, and Ward wrote to Washington about a pair of ships that had been captured in the Bay just a couple of days earlier.

    In an astonishing coincidence that would stun even Robert Ripley, Abigail Adams’ letter to John Adams from May 7 addresses both of these issues.

    For what it’s worth: Ward Circle, where the statue from today’s cover art is located, is in the middle of a peculiar looking traffic circle on Massachusetts Ave NW. There are no pedestrian crossings that will get you close to it, so if you do choose to make that particular pilgrimage, stop off at the National Cathedral first and ask for divine intervention, ’cause the traffic can easily make that a nightmare to cross.

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  • Abigail, On Power–May 7, 1776

    Cover art for May 7, 1776: portrait of Abigail Adams, 1764, by Benjamin Blyth. Photographed by Claude Call at the Massachusetts Historical Society.

    Abigail Adams had some thoughts when it came to arbitrary power, and how fragile it is.

    But you get all that from the episode itself. Instead, here in the show notes, I’m going to point out that I’m the one who took the photo used for today’s cover art.

    The painting hangs at the Massachusetts Historical Society, and because they keep it relatively dim there, you can see the reflection of the stairwell leading down to the main entrance. The white spot over Abigail’s head is the reflection of a light across the gallery, which is maybe 15 feet across. I’m standing at a slight angle so I’m not part of the reflection. (It’s also partially cropped here; I’m not that bad a photographer.)

    The painting was donated to the Society by one of John and Abigail’s descendants, who is coincidentally also named John. The docent I spoke with didn’t know whether there was a family tradition of naming sons “John” as homage to our Founding Father, but he conceded it’s certainly likely.

    The letter cited in today’s episode is part of the MHS collection, though it wasn’t on display the day Mike and I visited. MHS has literally thousands of Adams Family documents, and there are people there who work only with those documents. That’s their only job!

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  • Samuel Adams Is Spoiling For A Fight–April 30, 1776

    Cover art for April 30, 1776: Portrait of Rev. Samuel Cooper by John Singleton Copley, ca. 1750.

    Reverend Samuel Cooper has an interesting item in his family history. His grandfather was Samuel Sewall, a judge in the Province of Massachusetts Bay who was involved with the Salem witch trials in 1692-3. Now, to be fair, Sewall did apologize for his part in that bit of foolishness, and he’s also known for writing an essay in 1700 criticizing slavery.

    As far as Cooper himself, he was an active Patriot of the Revolutionary Era, who was good friends with many of the Founding Fathers. According to our friends at the Massachusetts Historical Society, when letters written by Governor Thomas Hutchinson and Lt. Governor Andrew Oliver were stolen in 1773, they wound up in Benjamin Franklin’s hands.

    Franklin in turn sent them to Samuel Cooper, who gave them to Thomas Cushing, the speaker of the Massachusetts assembly. Samuel Adams was the clerk of the Assembly and got to see them. They all knew that the letters were a bit of a bombshell (essentially, Hutchinson and Oliver were misleading Britain regarding conditions in the colonies), but because they were under strict orders not to copy or publish them, their hands were tied.

    Samuel Adams, however, came up with the idea of leaking the contents by way of a propaganda campaign in the Assembly that didn’t actually disclose the letters themselves. That was enough to create a political firestorm in Massachusetts, which led to General Gage implementing the Coercive Acts.

    Who stole the letters in the first place? It’s still not clear.

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