Up front in this month's edition is a notice to adjust your 2002 calendars. Our new home away from home, the Williams Club, has a conflict on the first Tuesday of February and beseeched the Round Table to be merciful. We have grandly agreed to switch our February meeting to the last Tuesday of January. THAT'S TUESDAY, JANUARY 29TH. You'll be informed in the newsletter, of course. But we are announcing it in advance here, to give everyone a chance to write it in their datebooks now.
There were no book reviews at our October meeting. This prompted our esteemed chairman, the Rt. Hon. David W. Jacobs Esq. to revert to his Simon Legree personality. He ordered the trembling staff of this newsletter to insert the following titles that are still out there awaiting a report from their purported reviewers.
A group of enthusiasts in Philadelphia have launched a Revolutionary War Round Table. What better place, you might well ask. What took them so long? But before you strike a patronizing New York tone toward our Pennsylvania cousins, consider this: they have decided to name their annual book award the Thomas Fleming Award in recognition of the many contributions our former chairman has made to the literature of the Revolution. The flattered historian has agreed to travel to Philadelphia next March to address them on espionage in the American Revolution, in conjunction with the publication of the paperback edition of his spy novel, Dreams of Glory, set in the year 1780.
A cleverly titled new book is making waves in academia, Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82. The author is a short auburn haired professor of history at George Washington University in Washington DC, Elizabeth Ann Fenn, who has led a startling double life while researching her equally startling book. Ms. Fenn is a grease monkey, who owns a metal chest packed with $10,000 worth of auto tools. She detoured from the Yale graduate history department to spend 8 years repairing automobile engines. Then she grew bored with the grease game and went back to write this fascinating book.
Smallpox often makes a deadly walk-on appearance in histories of colonial life, but Ms Fenn gives the virus top billing. She argues that one particularly lethal outbreak in 1775 nearly cost the colonies the War for Independence. She points out in her book that British regulars were for the most part inoculated against smallpox, while most Americans had no such protection. When the disease broke out in the embryonic American army in 1775, it created a military debacle.
The disease was most visible in the closing months of the ill-fated American attempt to conquer Canada in 1775-6. In May of 1776, the British routed some 1,900 sickly Continentals, who left behind several hundred smallpox cases in their abandoned camps. The Canadian disaster prompted George Washington to order inoculations for all new recruits to the Continental Army, starting in January 1777. Ms Fenn sees this decision as a turning point that guaranteed eventual victory for the Americans.
Meanwhile Ms Fenn still returns to her old haunts in the auto shops where she used to work. She still talks a mean streak about rear end jobs and valve changes. But it looks as if the Revolutionary War is going to attract most of her attention from now on.
One of our correspondents called our attention to a really worthwhile newspaper supplement devoted to New Jersey in the American Revolution. ``Center of the Storm'' is a reprint of a 22 part series published by the Newark Star Ledger to celebrate the 225th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It takes the reader from the Greenwich Tea Party through the British attack on Fort Lee to the victories at Trenton to Monmouth, ending with Washington's return to New Jersey on his way to New York to take the oath as our first president. There is also a good roundup of New Jersey's historic sites and a calendar of special events with an historic slant. If Round Tablers would like a copy, write to Jacklyn Mickelburgh, the education service manager at the Newark Star Ledger. Her email is jmickelburgh@starledger.com. The snail mail address is 1 Star Ledger Plaza, Newark NJ 07102-1200.
New Jersey is not the only state that is making an effort to enhance its Revolutionary heritage. For several years, Delaware has been erecting historical markers in other states where Delaware Revolutionary War soldiers fought or were buried. The first was at Delaware graves in Camden, S.C.. This summer they installed a marker in Brooklyn. Between Christmas and New Year's this year, there will be a dedication of a memorial at Princeton battlefield. The man behind this nice idea is Rep. Wayne A. Smith, majority leader of the Delaware state assembly.
Nicholas Evans-Cato is a painter. For the past five years he has been painting pictures of the same triangle of dirt on Hudson Avenue and Front Street in the Vinegar Hill section of Brooklyn. The 28 year old artist's work has been shown at the New York Historical Society and the Pratt Institute. At first he could not explain why he was drawn to this odd patch of earth. He painted the triangle eight times before he discovered its history. It is just up the hill from a part of New York harbor called Wallabout Bay. During the American Revolution, some 11,500 American sailors died on prison ships just off the shore. Many if not most of them were buried in the vicinity. In 1808 the Tammany Society built a temporary monument at the site, as well as a crypt for bones which kept turning up. When it was dedicated, 30,000 New Yorkers showed up for the ceremony. But the growing city soon forgot about the dead men.
Then came another spurt of patriotic fervor, as the 100th anniversary of the Revolution approached. The bones were exhumed and reburied in Fort Greene Park. In 1908, the site was enhanced by the Prison Ship Monument, an imposing Doric column. But Mr. Evans-Cato has discovered an 1828 property survey that identifies a ``monument'' at the precise spot the artist has been painting. ``I don't really believe in ghosts,'' he says. ``But there was a feeling I had at that corner.'' None of his paintings try to conjure images of the prison ship martyrs. That's a job for plaque makers, he says. But the somber sense of loneliness created by the paintings, which have no pedestrians or cars in them, suggest a kind of suppressed mourning, a faint echo of sorrow.
The Society of the Cincinnati bulletin recently reported that the French branch of these descendants of Washington's officers has come back to life and then some. The branch has had a checkered history. On February 3, 1792, it had what looked like its last meeting. Its members were scattered by the Reign of Terror unleashed by the Jacobins.
Nine decades later, after receiving a cordial reception at the 100th anniversary of Yorktown, a group led by the then Marquis de Rochambeau tried to revive things, with only partial success. The branch was barely breathing in 1921, when the President General of the Cincinnati, Judge Francis Pendleton of New York, sailed to Europe, located a half dozen French members and asked what he could do to help a serious revival. With his encouragement, a General Assembly was held at Paris in 1925 and 45 members were admitted. Today the French society has 279 members, 69 of them direct descendants of officers who fought in America. In May it was the host in Paris for a Triennial meeting that everyone hailed as a triumph.
Vive la France!
In connection with this gourmet event, the Cincinnati unearthed a song written many years ago by a member of the Massachusetts branch of the Society. Here's a stanza.
Many brave men from France came sailing on the tide
Eager to have the chance to fight and die by our side.
American children, you should know Lafayette and Rochambeau
American children, don't forget Rochambeau and Lafayette
Loyal and faithful ever to the end
France is our ally, France is our friend.
What can be said about the wonderful tour I just completed with HistoryAmerica, except that I have returned from Revolutionary War heaven. For 10 days we explored every major battlefield site south of Virginia. A few reflections are in order.
The National Park Service Sites are uniformly beautiful, pristine, uncluttered by an over-abundance of monuments and for all their importance, extremely small in comparison to their Civil War counterparts. Especially intriguing are the pastures at Cowpens, the rugged terrain of King's Mountain and the beautiful monument to Nathanael Greene at Guilford Court House. Originally built for $40,000 and now restored after being vandalized, for one million taxpayers' dollars, it is the South's answer to Sherman's statue on Fifth Avenue.
Most surprising are the park at ``96'' where the best examples of Revolutionary siege warfare exist, with original lines of parallels and approaches still intact, and Moore's Creek Bridge, a little gem of a park, quiet and peaceful -- what Concord Bridge would feel like without the crowds.
But sadness reigns also. At Eutaw Springs on the banks of the now damned Santee River, Lake Marion seems to dominate the site. This led the National Park Service to refuse Federal designation in 1970, on the theory that the battleground was now mostly underwater. Further research has proven this untrue and state officials are once again pleading their case.
And poor Camden! First petitioned to become a National Park in 1920, this site of one of America's worst defeats in the South has received no support. A few homes have been reconstructed and deKalb's tomb can be viewed, but the battlefield itself is marked only by a roadside sign, in spite of the almost intact physical features and the knowledge that hundreds of American soldiers probably lie buried in the fields and rest in unmarked graves. Perhaps the 225h anniversary of these battles will stir a few hearts and wallets.
The October quiz, Who Were We? Part II was correctly answered by Cathy Corley, who named the committee John Hancock appointed to draft the Declaration of Independence: Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Sherman, and Robert Livingston
The December Quiz: The Battle of Stony Point
A free dinner to the winner!
Our sharpeyed treasurer has also discovered a story that is especially appropriate in the light of our speaker for December. He reports that Congress has approved the creation of an Adams Memorial to be placed on the Mall between the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial. The bill is awaiting President Bush's signature. Many people believe it should contain statues of John, Abigail and John Quincy. What of Louisa Johnson Adams, Charles Francis, and Henry? Is there such a thing as historical overcrowding? Stay tuned!