250 and Counting

This day in American History, 250 years ago.

  • September 20, 1775: War for Sale

    Cover art for September 20, 1775: Detail of Romans' illustration of the Battle at Charlestown (Bunker Hill).

    Calling Bernard Romans a “Renaissance Man” wouldn’t be far from the truth, given his various talents and the fact that folks from that era were much more like people from the Renaissance than they are from modern times.

    Romans was a surveyor, a naturalist, an artist and an author. He was also an entrepreneur, which is what put him on our radar for today. And he was a ship’s captain, which meant that he had a front-row seat to the War for Independence.

    It was his  “An Exact View of the Late Battle at Charlestown, June 17th, 1775,” which he sold through a classified ad in a Philadelphia newspaper, that gave him great commercial success. Although many were sold then, few copies exist today and they’re worth nearly $70,000 in good shape.

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  • September 19, 1775: Up the River

    Cover art for September 19, 1775: Color Mezzotint of Benedict Arnold, 1776 by Thomas Hart. From the Anne S. K. Brown Collection at Brown University. URL at time of upload: http://dl.lib.brown.edu/repository2/repoman.php?verb=render&id=1194635475812500&view=showmods # Call Number: UMP1776mf-1 (ASK Brown Call No.)

    We think of “Benedict Arnold” and the word “Traitor” comes immediately to mind. The two are essentially synonymous. Say one, and you’ve said the other.

    But Benedict Arnold was quite loyal to the Independence cause in the early days of the war. In fact, he was often eager to show what he could do. And why he switched sides is quite complicated and can’t really be answered quickly.

    There were times when he felt that injustices were suffered upon him by other generals and by the Continental Congress. Some of them were real but others, imagined.

    He had two painful battlefield wounds in a leg that was already plagued with gout. Was it a psychological issue?

    Was it a midlife crisis, during which his politics shifted? Given that he married a very young, very pretty and very Loyalist woman named Peggy Shippen, maybe he just did it for the nookie.

    Peggy Shippen is actually the most common explanation.

    At any rate, in 1775 Arnold was still on our side and embarked on an expedition to Canada that turned out to be far more complicated than anyone suspected it would be.

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  • September 18, 1775: A Secret Committee

    Cover art for September 18, 1775: Theplaque in Carpenter's Hall (Philadelphia) designating the location where the Committee of Secret Correspondence met with Julien Alexandre Achard de Bonvouloir.

    The Committee of Secret Correspondence is one of those names that sounds like they should be on Double Secret Probation or something. However, when you look at their purpose, the name makes sense.

    The Committee of Secret Correspondence was formed to seek out support from other nations. They reached out to France, Spain, and a few others to get supplies, food, munitions…pretty much anything they could get. Oftentimes they had to use a third party to give everyone plausible deniability.

    And fortunately, their tactics were mostly successful.

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  • September 17, 1775: Death of a Militiaman

    Cover art for September 17, 1775: statue of the Minuteman that stands in Lexington, Massachusetts.

    The Minuteman statue in Lexington, Massachusetts is said to represent Captain John Parker, who died on this day.

    Except Parker wasn’t a minuteman.

    He also probably didn’t look like the man in the statue, given his age and what other small details we know about him.

    But as usual, nobody lets the facts get in the way of a good story, so just roll with it, hm?

    (We’re guessing he probably wasn’t green, either. )

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  • September 16, 1775: New Delegates to Congress

    Cover art for September 16, 1775: 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. via Wikimedia and the New York Public Library.

    So obviously this Josiah Bartlett isn’t the guy on The West Wing, in part because President Bartlet is fictional. (Okay, maybe entirely because of that.) But he is supposed to be a direct descendant of the Founding Father. Why, and when, the terminal T dropped off was never explained.

    Anyway, Josiah Bartlett and John Langdon both arrived in Philadelphia from New Hampshire as delegates to the Continental Congress, and they both fought in the war, plus they were around for the Constitutional Convention—so there’s a lot of history between them.

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  • September 15, 1775: The Occupation of Fort Johnson

    Cover art for September 15, 1775: the brick powder magazine, nearly all that remains of the three Fort Johnsons that stood on James Island, SC.

    Since the early 1700s there have been several Fort Johnsons on James Island in the Charleston Bay. The curious thing is that few people know what happened to each fort as it was destroyed, with the exception of the third one, which was definitely damaged in a storm.

    But the first two? Who knows.

    Today’s episode focuses on the second version of the fort, which still has a few vestiges of the old walls around. But it’s much like visiting Fort McHenry in Baltimore, where the location of the barracks are marked off by the presence of some bricks in the ground rather than some actual walls.

    The fort was taken on this day in 1775 and remained occupied until 1780, when the British came back for it and found it abandoned.

    Today the island hosts a marine research center operated by the state in partnership with several federal and state agencies, all of which have already stood longer than any fort (though the powder magazine from its third incarnation–see the photo–still remains).

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  • September 14, 1775: John Henry Hobart

    Cover art for September 14, 1775: Painting of John Henry Hobart by J. Paradise, engraved by J.C. Buttre, approximately 1830

    John Henry Hobart was born on this day in 1775, and he came that close to dying on the same day in 1830, on September 12.

    We read once that, statistically, men tend to die before “big” dates, e.g. birthdays and major holidays, while women tend to die afterwards. In Claude’s family anyway, it does have a ring of general truth to it.

    Go figure.

    Although Hobart was an Episcopalian minister (and later Bishop), he was the pastor to Elizabeth Ann Seton, our first American saint. (Seton converted to Catholicism in 1805.)

    While Hobart was quite active in the New York City area, he also felt the need for higher education in the western reaches of the state, and established Geneva College (later Hobart College) in the Finger Lakes region. By the time he died, he’d established a church in most major towns in New York and begun missionary work among the Oneida Indians.

    It’s not 100% clear what caused his death, but it was likely a chronic intestinal infection that affected his health in later years.

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  • September 13, 1775: A Flag Makes Its Debut

    Cover art for September 13, 1775: Image of the South Carolina flag with the blue field extended to fit the canvas parameters. retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_South_Carolina#/media/File:Flag_of_South_Carolina.svg

    Let’s talk state vexillology.

    Believe it or not, there are people who are very passionate about state flags. (Not me, he said, about to go into a mini-rant.)

    Most states have a very utilitarian purpose. They kind of lean in, announce themselves, and lean out again.

    Some flags are weirdly cluttered (New York, New Jersey, West Virginia, Delaware).

    Some flags are rather boring (Alabama, Minnesota).

    Some have heavy symbolism but it’s lost on most viewers (Arkansas, Utah)

    I’ve lived in Maryland almost 25 years and I don’t think I’ve seen a people more obsessed with their state flag:

    Maryland Flag

    Colorado’s flag is all over that state so they must be kind of obsessed, too:

    Colorado Flag

    South Carolina’s flag has symbolism and simplicity going for it, and I have to agree with people who put it in the top tier of state flags.

    Here’s the story of the South Carolina flag and how it got that way.

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  • September 12, 1775: Another Washington Enters the Fray

    Cover art for September 12, 1775: Portrait of William Washington in 1795, by Rembrandt Peale. via Wikimedia Commons.

    We mentioned a while back that John Adams had siblings, as did George Washington. This wasn’t one of them, and as far as anyone can tell, it’s more of a cousin-type relationship.

    William Washington essentially won a bet with his brothers, and his prize was the ability to join the militia in Virginia to fight for independence. From this day in 1775 until 1781 he was engaged in multiple battles against the British in Virginia and the Carolinas. It was in 1781 that his horse was shot out from under him. The fallen animal pinned him down. He was bayoneted and captured, and spent the rest of the war under house arrest in Charleston, SC.

    After the war he remained in South Carolina where he spent some time in the state legislature, but declined to run for governor because, as the story goes, he wasn’t a native Carolinian.

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  • September 11, 1775: One Siege Begins, Another Continues

    Cover art for September 11, 1775: "Siege of Boston" wood engraving (detail), created 1879, artist not cited. via the New York Public Library digital collection.

    As the winter of 1775 approached, George Washington had to think about the state of the siege of Boston. In short, housing and clothing thousands of men in a New England winter is a very different proposition than doing it in the summer.

    So Washington convened his War Council to discuss the possibility of breaking the siege by attacking the city from a different direction.

    Meanwhile up in Canada, General Philip Schuyler takes another run at Fort St. Jean.

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