We all had a friend at the lectern for our December meeting. Seldom has the Round Table felt more warmly toward a speaker before he said a word. John Nagy had been a member before he transferred his attendance to the Philadelphia American Revolutionary Round Table. He became its program chair and this year its president. Rebellion in the Ranks is his first book. We were all rooting for him and he did not disappoint us. His book, which arrived at our conclave with the ink barely dry, is a riveting account of the mutinies that shook the Continental Army, especially in the last years of the war. But John surprised us by talking about mutinous behavior long before the soldiers grew weary of wearing rags and living on salt meat and stale bread. It took some doing to persuade independent-minded Americans to obey orders. More than once, officers paid for an order with their lives. Best of all, John added a hitherto little understood ingredient to these uprisings. They were frequently encouraged by British secret agents. John has been studying espionage in the Revolution for the last five years at the William Clements Library at the University of Michigan and elsewhere. He held us riveted with the story of the two spies who tried to infiltrate the mutiny of the Pennsylvania Line in 1781 — and their harsh fate when the soldiers, determined to prove they were still patriots, turned them over to their officers and they were promptly hanged. At the close, the applause was loud and there were even a few whistles — and a lot of people were turning the pages of John's book on their way home on the bus, train or subway, eager to see what happened next.
Tom Fleming gave us his take on Fusileers: The Saga of the British Soldier in the American Revolution by Mark Urban, Walker and Company, $26.95. This is the story of the 23rd Regiment, better known as the Royal Welch Fusileers, which saw more of the American Revolution than any other regiment in the British army. Several of the officers served on detached duty on staffs as the high command struggled to evolve a winning strategy. Mark Urban, a diplomatic editor for the BBC, captures the suspense, heartbreak and heroism of the other officers and the men in the ranks. Perhaps most surprising was the age of the officers. Almost all the captains were in their thirties and some of the lieutenants were middle-aged. It was the downside of the British system. If an officer lacked the money to buy his way up the ladder, he was stuck in his grade forever. Urban has kind words for William Howe's tactics, which enabled the Fusileers and other regiments to create elite light infantry companies and begin attacking in two rank formations that did not offer American sharpshooters such easy targets. He closes the book by telling how these tactics were revived when the British went to war with Napoleon. Overall, Tom called the book "riveting."
Lynne Saginaw urged Round Tablers to see what the USPS is up to in the wake of the spate of Franklin books last year, commemorating his 300th birthday. For $19.95, you can get a package of four stamps depicting BF's life, and a marvelous April 7, 2006 first-day cancellation showing the great man in profile, flying his famous kite. Included as well is a commemorative DVD. "An easy way to get the kids interested," Lynne say. Check the web at http://www.usps.gov.
A Round Tabler who corresponds with a librarian in Kansas City (she's the daughter of his college roommate) heard a tale that made us wonder about the nation's heartland. It seems that this very pretty blonde teenager came to the library regularly to do research for a paper on the first year of the American Revolution. Her mother sometimes came too, helping her find books. Eventually, they came back, returning several books. The mother proudly reported that the scholar had gotten an A for the paper. "There's only one thing I didn't find out," the blonde said. "Who won?"
Once upon a time, Ben Franklin urged his fellow Americans to deport every Jew on the continent. So claims Syrian cleric Sa'id Ramadhan Al-Bouti, in an interview on the Muslim TV channel, Al Jazeera. No proof of this statement has ever been found. It never appeared anywhere until the 1930s and it's a quote from a book no one has ever seen. The Anti-Defamation League has debunked this assertion as an anti-Semitic canard. Their article quotes a number of Franklin scholars who dismissed it as ridiculous.
For decades, Anna Plumstead of Wiscasset, Me had a treasure in her attic: a 1776 copy of the Declaration of Independence. It had been sent to the town in that decisive year as part of a campaign to spread its message throughout the 13 rebelling colonies. At that time, Wiscasset was part of Massachusetts. When Ms Plumstead died, her heirs cleaned out the attic and found the copy. It was sold at an estate auction and has since changed hands several times. Most recently it was bought by a private collector in New Jersey who paid $475,000 for it in 2001. Now the state of Maine is trying to reclaim it, citing a statute that says a public document remains a public document until explicitly relinquished by the Maine government. "In our view it belongs to the community," said William Stokes, a deputy state attorney general. He will represent Maine at a trial next month in a suit filed by the collector. "It got separated from the community through the passage of time, but our position is it never belonged to anyone other than the town of Wiscasset." This strikes us as the most idiotic claim we have ever heard in a court of law. A state is claiming jurisdiction over a document that was created when it didn't exist! Why don't these greedy Yankees claim ownership of Jefferson's original handwritten copy? It would make about as much sense.
Somewhere in the ground overlooking the Delaware River near the town of Paulsboro is the remains of a structure identified on a British map in 1777 as a "rebel fort." It was also the first federal land purchase, made the day after the Declaration of Independence was approved by the Continental Congress. For about a month in 1777, Fort Billingsport held off British ships trying to get up the Delaware to provision their army in Philadelphia. Today the fort is on the property of the Pacific Atlantic Terminals and the company will not allow any archaeological access it. The company's headquarters in Houston issued a statement, denying its machinery and oil tanks would encroach on the fort in a planned expansion. Philadelphians and citizens of t Paulsboro are in a fury and are calling for investigation by the Department of Environmental Protection. The fort was Polish engineer Thaddeus Kosciuszko's first job for the United States. It commanded the narrowest point in the Delaware River. Washington inspected the fort on Aug. 1, 1777. It kept the British navy at bay for about a month. The army finally dispatched 1500 troops to attack it. The defenders hastily evacuated it. "This is an important page in America's early history," claims one of the concerned citizens. "We want people to be able to visit the site, not just talk about it." But the spokesman admits that there are security problems in regard to the Pacific Atlantic facility that have to be worked out.
This past year was the 250th anniversary of the Marquis de Lafayette's birth. It is being commemorated by a splendid exhibit at the New York Historical Society. It was also celebrated at Sotheby's, where they auctioned what can with some truth be called one of the rarest pieces of memorabilia of the Revolution--General George Washington's gold Society of the Cincinnati medal. The executive director of the American Numismatic Society said it was unique, "almost like a living thing." One can almost hear his mouth watering. It was given to Lafayette by Washington's descendants in 1824, when he completed his famous return tour of all 24 American states, to help celebrate the upcoming 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Lafayette cherished it above all his other possessions. In a contest between three bidders, the medal was sold for $5.3 million to an unnamed French benefactor, who said he was donating it to Lafayette's ancestral home, La Grange, where it will be the centerpiece of a must visit for French and American Revolutionary War enthusiasts. A spokesman said it would be "a symbol of the bond and friendship between America and France."
Lafayette is clearly stealing the historic show at the moment. But 2007 was also the 200th anniversary of the death of Jean Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, Count of Rochambeau, and his descendants have been doing their best to remind the world, and Americans in particular, of his contribution to their victorious Revolution. Around the Loire River town of Thore-La-Rochette, the Count is still called "The Marechal" and during the summer the town fathers marked the anniversary with small roadside flags leading to his chateau. There were conferences, lectures and a performance of Mozart's The Magic Flute in its courtyard. A direct descendant of the Count lives in the chateau. Ninety years old, he has devoted the latter half of his life to renovating and improving it. He delights in showing visitors the Marechal's bedroom, including the armchair where he died of a heart attack at the age of 82, while reading a newspaper. Rochambeau came within a whisker of being guillotined in France's Revolution. On the morning scheduled for his execution, the tumbril was too crowded and he was ordered back to his cell. That afternoon, Robespierre and his terrorists were driven from power and the Marechal returned to his chateau unharmed.
Another evocation of the Revolution appeared in the Connecticut River recently: a replica of David Bushnell's ingenious one man submarine, called the Turtle because it resembles one, standing on end. It moved smoothly along the broad river near Essex, using leg power supplied by its lone operator. It was created by Fred Frese, a technology education teacher at Old Saybrook High School, with the help of about 50 of his techie students. In its first tests, Mr. Frese was satisfied to see the unique craft, whose original almost sank a British man of war in New York harbor in 1776, was able to operate on the surface. Submersion tests would come later. Meanwhile, there are thousands of tourists eager to ogle it.
After viewing Washington's escape route from Brooklyn, it was time for my bevy of historical tourists to study the battles for Manhattan. The bus company had mapped a route across the Brooklyn Bridge, but knowing that the next stop would be the battle of Kip's Bay, this writer directed the bus north up the Brookyn-Queens Expressway through the Queens-Midtown Tunnel, stopping at 34th Street and the East River. It was here that Howe's forces crossed from Greenpoint, Brooklyn, to rout the Connecticut militia. I noted that although a British soldier had remarked in his diary that they faced almost inaccessible cliffs upon landing, no such feature now existed. They have all been leveled for building construction.Tour leader Ed Bearss pointed out the slight rise still visible on the west side that is the remains of the ridge which shielded the Continentals as they retreatednorth from New York City. However the tour group couldn't quite come to gripswith this concept; they had always understood Manhattan to be flat.This view changed radically when, after travelling up Madison Avenue,we drove across Central Park North where one can see relatively highstone outcrops, and then up Morningside Heights behindSt. John the Divine and Columbia University. Here they began to better understand the positioning of American forces on the Lower plateau,which made the attacking British fight an uphill battle at Harlem Heights. Driven back into what would become Central Park, the redcoats reformed and drove GW across the Hollow Way (125th Street) and onto theUpper Plateau, site of Ft. Washington, where Continentals wouldsuffer a horrific defeat, with the surrendering of thousand of troops,and hundreds of cannon a few weeks later. Ft. Washington is not where many history books, and even present-day historiansbelieve it to be. The confusion lies partly with the location ofFt. Lee in New Jersey. That fort was located directly south of the present day George Washington Bridge, and because the bridge's New Yorkend lies in Ft. Washington Park, it has been assumed that the fort was there. However, the park is not named after the fort. The entire neighborhood of present-day Washington Heights was nce called Ft. Washington. GW actually placed the fort at 183rd Street and Ft. Washington Ave., in what is now a park on land once owned by newspaper tycoon James Gordon Bennett. It is the highest natural point on Manhattan, and commanded an excellent view of all British troop and ship movements. When asked who Bennett was, I related the battle between his NY Herald and Horace Greeley's NY Tribune. But it was Ed Bearss who remembered that Bennett had sent Stanley to find Livingston. We circled the Cloisters, while I spoke of Margaret Corbin's manning of her dead husband's cannon during the attack on Fort Washington. (she is NY's answer to NJ's Molly Pitcher, and is buried at West Point). We then headed to the Bronx, passing Dyckman House (the oldest Dutch farmhouse remaining in Manhattan) where British forces encamped after taking control of the island. Arriving in Newburgh at 7 PM, we concluded probably the first five borough, 1 day study of NYC during the American Revolution.
The answer to the November/December Quiz: The first four American major Generals were Charles Lee, Israel Putnam, Phillip Schuyler, & Artemas Ward.
For the last three Tidbits, I have related my travels with Ed Bearss while studying NYC events during the American Revolution. We made eight stops in our program: but one was NOT related to the subject of the tour. So make "an educated guess" as to where we also stopped (clues can be found in the tidbits). Check our website. A free dinner for all correct answers by email, snail mail or phone.