On Tuesday, March 30, Tom Fleming treated Round Tablers to a highly unorthodox version of how the United States persuaded Napoleon Bonaparte to sell the United States the vast territory of Louisiana. He began with President Thomas Jefferson's startling 1801 offer to the French government to help it regain the island of Santo Domingo, and incidentally eliminate its black revolutionary ruler, Toussaint L'Ouverture. From there we roller- coastered with Tom as Jefferson discovered that Napoleon had secretly pressured Spain into retroceding Louisiana to France and the even more dismaying discovery that the "Man of Destiny" was shipping 15,000 troops to dispose of Toussaint and his "gilded Africans" (Napoleon's phrase) with orders to then head for New Orleans and begin setting up a French satellite state in the Mississippi Valley. Secretary of State James Madison took charge of foreign policy and decreed that the United States would NOT help the French army in Santo Domingo no matter what his friend Jefferson had said. When Toussaint and his black legions chose war rather than surrender, another player entered the drama, aedes egypti, the female mosquito that carried the yellow fever virus. Soon whole French regiments melted away and the combination of aedes plus Madison's intransigent hostility soon had Napoleon's dream of a revived North American empire in history's dustbin. Only then did the Man of Destiny decide to sell Louisiana to the startled Jefferson. Tom closed by urging Round Tablers to drink a Fourth of July toast to that unrecognized heroine of the republic, aedes egypti.
Warning to Round Tabler reviewers. Lynne Saginaw, chair of our book department, is about to go into her Simone Legree mode. There were no reviews at the March 30 meeting. However, two more books were distributed and Ms Saginaw recommended for our Revolutionary enlightenment articles from Heritage, the fledgling Newsletter of the American Jewish Historical Society, on Asser Levy and David Franks. The Franks item is especially moving. As an aide of Benedict Arnold, he was tainted by his treason, but he was vindicated in a month long investigation in 1780. Bad luck continued to pursue him. He was dismissed from the diplomatic service in 1786 by enemies who used Arnold to smear him. Again he was vindicated by an investigation and Alexander Hamilton appointed him assistant cashier at the Bank of the United States. He had barely assumed that office when he died in the 1793 Yellow Fever epidemic in Philadelphia.
You think Paul Revere was the only midnight rider who aroused a slumbering countryside by screaming "The British are coming?" Think again. A group of Connecticutians are
pushing hard to give sixteen year old Sibyl Ludington equal billing in the alarm sweepstakes. Sibyl was the daughter of militia Colonel Henry Ludington. When she heard a British army was about to pillage nearby Danbury in 1777, she mounted her horse and rode through the countryside, turning out hundreds of well armed patriots who hastened the redcoats' retreat to their ships.
These Sibyl fans are planning to create films, novels, "education items" and maybe even a TV series based on the teenager's derring do. The first product of this enthusiasm will be the publication this summer of "Ludington's Ride," an historical novel based on her night of courage and patriotism. The publisher, Steve Hart, head of Hart-Burn Press, is offering a pre-publication sale at 40 percent off to insiders and assorted buffs, including Round Tablers. Mr. Hart has offered to donate part of any purchases to the Round Table's speakers fund.
Recently some enterprising Park Service rangers at Valley Forge asked themselves: how cold was it, really, inside the wood and clay "hutts" that the soldiers built for themselves? Ranger Mark Brier gathered several volunteers and spent from Jan. 27 to Feb 1. inside one of the (reconstruced) huts dotted about the park. When they began, the temperature outside was 31 degrees. After several hours of throwing logs into the fireplace, the thermometer in the cabin read 64 degrees and 70 in front of the fire. However, it was 47 degrees at the opposite end of the 16 foot cabin, suggesting that strenuous effort was needed to keep things toasty. In fact, the bunk farthest from the fire never got above 30 degrees. Nevertheless, Brier maintains that the troops were not quite as cold as some historians have portrayed them. In fact, he argues that things were fairly civilized. He cites an officer who said one wall of his cabin was lined with books. But Mr. Brier says nothing about another large problem at Valley Forge -- the astonishing lack of clothing among the enlisted men -- and blankets. With nothing to wear but a shirt, and no blanket, that 30 degree bunk must have seemed mighty cold.
Broadside herewith launches another feature, to which members are urged to contribute. The glimpse may be a quote from a letter or a diary or a newspaper or a speech in the Continental Congress or Parliament. The writer or speaker may be British or American or a civilian. Here's our first contribution, from a member who prefers to remain nameless. It is a hitherto unknown footnote to the defense of Fort Washington, from the Journal of Henry Hallowell, a soldier in the Fifth Massachusetts regiment.
While we lay at Fort Washington, the plan of the fort was missing and conveyed to the enemy as was thought by the waiter a black man to the ingenear [engineer] of the fort. Sd black man was put under guard and was sentenced to rec. 10 lashes a day untill he owned where it was. He ws placed on his belly and stretched out to four stakes his hands and feet on the ground. I have stood by and see(n) the blood run on the grass he had not been punished I suppose more than a week before the fort was taken But he pled not guilty. I never saw more of him.
The March 2004 issue of the medical journal, Sterility and Fertility, ran an article arguing that Washington was sterile due to a tuberculosis infection contracted before his marriage. George supposedly contracted the disease from his brother, Lawrence, who died of tuberculosis of the lungs. But the disease can also appear as tuberculosis epididymiria, which blocks the passageway in the back of the testicles through which sperm normally passes.
The Post called Willard Sterne Randall, author of a biography of Washington, (and a Round Table member and frequent speaker) to ask his opinion. Will replied: "In a diary entry written when he was 64, Washington made it clear that he thought he had what it takes to father children. If Martha were to die before he did, he wrote, he believed he was capable of having children by a younger wife --although he added he would marry a woman "of an age suitable to my own."
"In Washington's mind, at least, there is the idea that he could father a child," Will continued. "If a virile man who can ride a horse 20 miles a day thinks he can still do it, do we listen to him or to a medical expert 200 years later?"
Will is by not means the only historian who suspects the likely cause of the Washington's childlessness was a severe bout of measles Martha Washington suffered shortly after their marriage in 1759, when they were both 27 years old. "I don't think it is George," Will says. "I think it is Martha."
In the Books and More Books column of the April 2004 issue, in the review of Richard Brookhiser's Gentleman Revolutionary, it is stated that Gouverneur Morris "risked his head and his inheritance by signing the Declaration of Independence."
The Declaration was signed by Gouverneur's half brother, Lewis Morris, and Robert Morris of Pennsylvania, no known relationship. Gouverneur signed the Constitution, along with Robert, who is one of only six men to sign both documents.
James W. Davis
Quizmaster
Your travelling treasurer (using his own funds) has, once again, enjoyed the services of HistoryAmerica, this time in New Orleans. It was a eclectic tour, drawing from French Quarter history, the new D-Day Museum, plantations, steamboating, Civil War forts, and, of course, Andrew Jackson and the War of 1812. It is on the site of his victory, that I present my views.
We all know the story, from history books or the movies, of how Jackson on January 8th, 1815, put together a ragtag army of U.S. Army regulars, local volunteers & milita, Tennessee volunteers, and Jean Lafitte's Baratarians against a British force of regulars & Highlanders. In actuality, the American forces included Kentuckians, the Battalion of Louisiana Free Men of Color, US Marines, and Choctaw Indians. Old Hickory positioned his ramparts behind the Rodriguez Canal, using a cypress swamp on his left and the Mississippi on his right as natural allies.
At first one is impressed by the battlefield's narrowness. The British had nowhere to manuver. It was forward into the fire, or retreat. Outflanking the ramparts was impossible. The field was full of sharp stubble from recently cut sugarcane, hard and painful to walk upon. The British were perfect targets and the Americans took full advantage of that fact. Movies depict the long rifle as the primary weapon of destruction; it was deadly within 800 feet, but cannon fire, especially a 32 pound naval gun, also tore through British lines long before they reached firing positions. Poor British leadership,
especially under John Keane (who commanded his 93rd Highlanders to march diagonally across the field) only led to further carnage. The British succeeded in briefly controlling the Americans' right rampart, but with no reserves, due to Keane's manuver, were thrown back.
The battlefield memorial at one time consisted of only the Chalmette Monument and, 150 yards across the sugarcane field, Chalmette National Cemetery. Amazingly, the field was in private hands until the National Park Service purchased it in the 1960's, due to concern over development: oil refineries border the park on both the
north and south. The Malus-Beauregard house, built near the Mississippi 18 years after the battle remains empty to encourage people arriving by boat to pass it by and visit the excellent exhibits and movie in the park's visitors center, and the reconstructed ramparts.
The National Cemetery, which contains only four veterans of the War of 1812 and only one of the Chalmette battle (being filled with Civil War Union dead and those of later wars) does have an unusual appearance. For unlike other New Orleans cemeteries, all the bodies are buried underground. In this one pocket of land the water table is lower than the surrounding region: bodies are buried three feet down. The hundreds of British dead were buried at their campsite to the south. When the oil refineries were built there, no bodies were uncovered. Either they missed the gravesites, or, much more likely, the remains of these brave men had long ago floated to the surface and been washed away, for the three foot water table does not extend to the south.
Most people believe that the Battle of New Orleans was fought after the fact: that the Treaty of Ghent was signed two weeks earlier, and thus the War of 1812 was over.
Not true, the treaty had been not yet been ratified by the British and American governments, thus an American defeat at Chalmette would have changed history. It was Andrew Jackson's finest hour.
In the 1939 classic film "Drums Along the Mohawk" Lana Martin (Claudette Colbert) searches for her husband Gil Martin (Henry Fonda) at the rear of a militia column. She finds him, and he describes the horrific battle that had just transpired. The name of the site is not mentioned; only the next scene, featuring the death of General Nicholas Herkimer, reveals to the history minded that it is Oriskany.
Known as the American Revolution's bloodiest battle, Oriskany has nevertheless played second fiddle to much more renowned battles occurring in New York. Saratoga, Bennington (yes, it was fought in New York), Stony Point, Valcour Island, Ft. Ticonderoga, and Long Island have all received much greater recognition. Thus an article in the June, 2004 issue of Military Heritage by Donald Roberts is happily received.
Entitled "Into the Trap" it is a well crafted examination of Oriskany. Roberts recounts the movements of British General Barry St. Leger's 2,100 Regulars, Hessians, Royal Greens (loyalists), and Joseph Brandt's Indians, as the western flank support of John Burgoyne's operations down Lake Champlain. St. Leger's portion of the campaign of 1777 was to seize Albany, placing himself to the rear of the American forces fighting Burgoyne. To achieve this, he first had to take Ft. Stanwix, which guarded the western entrance into the Mohawk River Valley. Herkimer's 800 militia moved to stop him.
On August 6th, they were drawn into a trap along the ravines of Oriskany Creek. In an earlier time, these militia would have been well trained in the tactics that Brandt's Indians used against them: unorganized, savage forest fighting. But as the frontier moved west, militias tended to train in British close order firing techniques on villiage greens, rather than in wilderness fighting for which they were originally created. The result
was at first a murderous bloodletting, as the militia were slaughtered, and broke ranks along their half mile line of march. Eventually they formed tight fighting circles, fired in volleys, and then fought the enemy with rifle butts, knives and fists. Joseph Brandt lost heart at such a lengthy, brutal battle, and withdrew his forces. Thus Ft. Stanwix held and Albany was not taken.
Indians would not play a major role in their offensive planning.
Oriskany was the beginning of the end of Burgoyne's operation from two quarters. On the same day, New England militia led by John Stark defeated the Hessians at Bennington, making the results at Saratoga almost guaranteed. For some reason, Stark is remembered more than Herkimer. Unfair!
Lynne Saginaw won the March contest: Thomas Lynch, Jr. of South Carolina (who was lost at sea) and Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts (who was buried in Washington, D.C.) are the two signers of the Declaration of Independence not buried in one of the 13 original states. (I told you it was tricky!!)
Washington's First Choice
Recently, a great many books have been written and seminars given on the topic of Alexander Hamilton and his contribution to the creation of the financial system of the United States as the first secretary of the treasury. Amazingly, Hamilton was not George Washington's first choice for the job!!! So, who was the President-Elect's first choice to be Secretary of the Treasury AND why did he turn it down?? (you may answer by e-mail, snail mail or phone). A free dinner to the winner!!