Tom Fleming got everyone's attention -- and then some -- when he revealed that the opening chapter of his latest book, Washington's Secret War The Hidden History of Valley Forge, was titled: "General George Washington: Loser." Today, Valley Forge is a national shrine. In December 1777, Tom said it looked more like a black hole into which the Revolution was about to disappear. As many as fifty men deserted in a single day, while dozens of officers submitted resignations at the same ruinous pace. Meanwhile the British army was luxuriating before warm fires in Philadelphia, which they had captured in late September. According to a veritable chorus of critics, the mess was all George Washington's fault. General Horatio Gates, the victor in the battles of Saratoga in the fall of 1777, was the new hero. Gates made no secret of his readiness to assume Washington's mantle. This push to replace Washington has often been called "The Conway Cabal" and has been discussed by many historians. What's new and different about Washington's Secret War is Tom's discovery of how shrewdly and sometimes savagely Washington fought these critics. They had expected him to resign and go home to Mount Vernon, his dignity, if not his reputation, intact. "Nothing less than a new George Washington appeared before my astonished eyes," Tom said. "A consummate politician." We soon realized why Washington's Secret War is a main selection of the Book of the Month Club and the History Book Club. Applause was followed by a rush to buy copies -- which Tom cheerfully inscribed until the last one was sold.
Jim Thomas gave us his take on John Adams: Party of One by James Grant. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) A financial writer by profession, Grant's biography is obviously a labor of love, written, he says in his introduction "by night and in the early morning hours." He has relied heavily on the Adams papers, and produced a sharply delineated portrait of the New England patriarch. While he admires Adams' intellect and high moral standards, Grant makes no secret of "Honest John's" lack of what we today call "interpersonal skills." As a bonus, when the author follows Adams abroad, he weaves into the story an interesting analysis of the woeful financial conditions of the western European powers and the American colonies. Since not a little of Adams' time was spent trying to obtain loans from Dutch bankers, this information is highly pertinent. On the negative side, Jim thought Mr. Grant spent too much time on Adams' troubled relationship with Ben Franklin. The author also explores at too much length the possibility that Adams' sour personality was caused by Graves Disease -- something that cannot be proven. Ultimately, Grant surprises us by giving the French far more credit than Adams was inclined to give them for staying in the game and financing the Revolution. Party of One, Jim concluded, is a well written thought provoking book.
Tom Fleming reviewed Jack Absolute, Officer, Warrior, Lover, Spy. by C.C.Humphreys, St. Martin's Press. The author of this lively novel is a former actor and fencing enthusiast who was born in Toronto and grew up in London. The hero's name, for those not up on 18th Century drama, is from Richard Brinsley Sheridan's play, The Rivals. Sheridan appears in the opening pages, explaining apologetically that he stole Jack's name for the play, thinking he was dead in distant India. The plot is a whirlwind of improbability, like Jack himself. But you keep turning the pages. Jack fought in America in the French and Indian War and acquired a gigantic friend, Mohawk warrior Ate', who has followed him around the world since that time. Ate' is invariably on hand when Jack is about to get himself killed, which happens repeatedly. As an intelligence officer on Burgoyne's staff, Jack falls in love with the daughter of a British colonel, only to find out she's an American spy. He participates in the siege of Fort Stanwix and the battle of Oriskany and, somewhat on the periphery, Saratoga, where he can do little to save Burgoyne's neck. Pursuing Jack through these adventures is a German officer who keeps trying to kill him for some mysterious reason. He's a member of the Illuminati, a branch of the Freemasons, who are out to sabotage the British war effort. In Philadelphia, Jack discovers the real leader of the Illuminati -- who must, under the rules of book reviewing, remain unnamed. Tom can only guarantee it will be a surprise. Jack Absolute is the beginning of a series, which adds to the fun. Jack and Ate' will be back!
As founders of the first ARRT, we New Yorkers have a somewhat superior attitude toward the rest of Revolutionary America (concealed by our good manners, of course). But for the next year, we must dine on humility. Another town will be the owner of an ongoing celebration of one of the Revolution's foremost figures. 2006 is the 300th anniversary of the birth of Benjamin Franklin and Philadelphia plans to whoop it up in spectacular style.
Even before you read this, the celebration will have begun on January 17th, the great man's natal day. "In Search of a Better World," a $4 million 8000 square foot exhibit of Franklin artifacts, inventions and paintings opened its doors at the National Constitution Center. Meanwhile, dozens of Franklin impersonators wandered the city, making impromptu visits to restaurants and performing on street corners. At the Franklin Institute Science Museum, partygoers shared a gigantic birthday cake. This, Philadelphians cheerfully promise, is only the warmup for hundreds more parties and Franklin tributes. Here's a short list of what not to miss:
Breakfast with Ben -- through April 30 at the Independence Hall Visitor Center, select groups can share a buffet breakfast with an actor impersonating Franklin. He answers questions large and small about his storied life. Children can have their photos taken with him.
Talk with Franklin's Ghost -- at the Pecco Liberty Energy Center, 6th and Chestnut Streets, BF appears to be taking questions and speaking with people through a high tech video screen developed by Carnegie Mellon University. The ghostly chatter will be free to the public all year.
Walking Ben's Walk -- a free self guided walking tour, which lasts about an hour, takes you to city landmarks pertinent to Franklin's history, such as the site of BF's first fire company and Christ Church, where the Franklin family worshipped.
Anatomy of an Almanac -- at the Rosenbach Museum and Library, 2008 Delancey Place, an exhibit will feature BF's original almanacs and his comments on such historic moments as the Liberty Bell's arrival in Philadelphia.
Bill Fleming, the Round Table's unofficial scout in northern New York, has sent us another startling story. In 2002 the Onondaga Historical Association decided to put its attic in order. They hired archivist Phil McCray, a pro from Cornell. After 2 1/2 years, he announced the job was done, and revealed his big surprise: four pages of a paper entitled: "The 1775 General Association for the Rights and Liberties of America." It is considered New York's declaration of independence from England. McCray found this precious document in a grocery box. Most people thought it had been destroyed in a fire in the state library in Albany in 1911. Some people claim to have seen it since that time but no one knows how it ended up in the grocery box. It is currently on display at the OHA's headquarters at 321 Montgomery Street in Syracuse.
According to Linda Allen Bryant, author of I Cannot Tell a Lie, George Washington had a sexual relationship with a female slave named Venus around 1784. Venus was owned by Hannah Washington, the general's sister in law. The result, according to an oral tradition, was a male child, named West Ford. This is not, strictly speaking, news, though most people have heard nothing about it. The West Ford story appeared in print in the 1940s. In 1985, the New York Times interviewed Judith Saunders Burton, a descendant of West Ford. She was writing a dissertation on Gum Springs, a free black community West Ford helped to found. Dr. Burton said "the myth" of Washington's paternity was "interesting" but it could not be confirmed. The 1998 uproar over Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson aroused Ford partisans and they demanded that the Mount Vernon Ladies Association submit a lock of Washington's hair for DNA testing. The Ladies declined to do so. Ms Bryant wrote her book anyway. The title is a good indication of her strident style. All this hugger mugger seems to ignore a fundamental fact: Washington's sterility. Martha Washington had four children by her first marriage; by her second: none. Yet there seems no doubt that she and George had a loving sexual relationship. Perhaps someone named Washington was the father of West Ford. But it definitely was not George.
Last November, in front of the Ontario County Court House in Canandigua, NY, a group of Americans celebrated the 211th anniversary of a treaty that few people know about. It was signed by Timothy Pickering, agent for the United States, President George Washington and 50 chiefs and warriors of the Iroquois Confederacy. The treaty marked a shift from the language of conquest to the language of diplomacy and mutual recognition. After the Revolution, the American government regarded the four Iroquois tribes who sided with the British (Mohawks, Senecas, Cayugas and Onondagas) as defeated peoples, with no rights. This policy led to more bloodshed and bitterness and the Americans decided to reverse their course. Now each year, representatives of both sides meet to recognize that they come from separate governments, with separate lands. Among the speakers was Congressman John "Randy" Kuhl, who called for renewed federal commitment to the treaty. As Peter Jemison, a faithkeeper with the Seneca Nation, put it, "we are here to continue to polish the chain of peace and friendship."
The library at Anderson House, headquarters of the Society of the Cincinnati, recently acquired a rare first edition of a pamphlet that caused a national uproar in 1783. Written by Aedanus Burke, a justice of South Carolina's Supreme Court, it was an all out assault on the Society of the Cincinnati as a threat to the nation's liberties. Burke accused the Society of establishing a hereditary military aristocracy that would dominate the country's political future. Within a year the pamphlet was reprinted in Hartford, New York, Newport and Philadelphia and serialized in numerous newspapers. Ironies abound in this story. The goal of the Society's organizers was to supply some cement to the collapsing American union. Continental army officers were among the few nationalists on the horizon. Disunion, not centralized dictatorship was the threat, as signalized by Superintendent of Finance Robert Morris's desperate attempts to hold the confederation together. Morris asked the states for $8,000,000 to keep the federal government running in 1782, and set April 1 as the payment deadline. On that day he had collected a munificent $6,250, from one state, New Jersey. The rest of our wonderful band of patriots were too busy making money in their home states to send him a cent. The anti-Cincinnati uproar was part of the long simmering hostility between militia worshippers who still dominated the state governments and the regular army -- the "gentlemen of the blade," as New Englanders called the Continentals. The intensity of this emotion has been totally forgotten. The Connecticut legislature, for instance, resolved that if and when they paid any taxes to the federal government, not a penny of the money could be used to pay officers' pensions.
The December, 2005 issue of American Heritage contains two fine articles. They are both based upon the authors' recent books, which will be of great interest to round tablers. The first is by recent ARRT speaker Terry Golway, author of Washington's General, a very good biography of Nathanael Greene. He has now written So Others Might Live, a history of the NYC fire department. It begins with 9/11, but there is much about the early days of fire fighting. Peter Stuyvesant, a man more noted for religious suppression, actually began the concept of a fire department by hiring 50 fire wardens to examineprivate homes to ensure that their chimneys were properly swept. He also outlawed roofs made of grass and thatch, and wooden chimneys!!! (Hard to believe, isn't it?).
In 1731, the British inventor Richard Newsham brought to New York his newest invention: two pumpers that threw water on fires with primitive nozzles. By 1760, NYC's volunteer fire department had its first "chief engineer" (the forerunner of fire chiefs) Jacobus Stoutenburgh. In 1776 he was said to have created a military battalion of firefighters (a practice continued in the Civil War). Firefighters were also deeply involved in the Sons of Liberty and led boycotts of British goods. Terry Golway continues the story with clubhouse and gang fire companies, the emergence of the Irish firefighter, and then the creation of the fire fighting system we now know, in the late 19th century. His book should be a landmark.
The second article, "The War That Made America" by Fred Anderson, is based upon his book of the same name which is the companion to the PBS series which was aired in January. It is the story of the French and Indian War (Europe's Seven Year War) which was considered by Winston Churchill and Samuel Eliot Morison to be the globe's first world war. Anderson presents a picture of Native Americans destined to lose control of their country when the British forced out the French, leaving only the British/American Empire: they no longer had two empires to play off against each other. The French andIndian War also doomed the British (with taxation) into losing their 13 colonies, and the French (with borrowing) into losing their "heads."
Anderson's book, the PBS series, and "Clash of Empires" the most ambitious F&I exhibit ever assembled (in Pittsburgh until April 15th, and then to the Smithsonian) are being presented in celebration of the 250th anniversary of the war (1756-2006). It should be worth the trip to the Mall: we will be able to see, among other items, Washington's surrender document for Ft. Necessity, and sections of wagons purchased for General Braddock by Benjamin Franklin. This is a program long overdue.
December's Quiz was answered correctly by five members. The longest surviving American born Continental Army general whose name is connected with the Civil War is South Carolina General Thomas Sumter. The member of Washington's cabinet whose name is connected with the War of 1812 is the third Secretary of War, Dr. James McHenry.
The British seizure of New Amsterdam from the Dutch in 1664, and Washington's swearing in at Federal Hall in 1789, are related to two 20th century New York City events. What are they? A free dinner to all winners.