John Dickinson and his Letters

Follow this link to read a post in the Journal of the American Revolution about John Dickinson and his Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania.

This post is by Morristown NHP chief of cultural resources Dr. Jude Pfister.

https://allthingsliberty.com/2024/04/john-dickinson-and-his-letters/ 

                                                                                     

                                                                   John Dickinson

                                                  (1732-1808)   

             

Young Morris County Revolutionary Soldiers

A post from our colleagues at the Daughters of the American Revolution in Morristown NJ. With thanks to member Bobbi Bailey for her research and writing of this post.

https://morristownnjdar.org/

SOLDIERS STORY:  THE SOLDIER BOYS (PART 1)

Officially, a young man during the Revolution could be drafted or volunteer for service at the age of 16, and indeed many young men did so.  A few jumped the gun and started their military service at a younger age.  We found a few boy soldiers in our Morris County soldiers database, the youngest being only 9 years old when he enlisted in the army.  All of these veterans (and/or their widows) applied for and received a pension for their service, which is a significant reason why their stories are preserved.  There were surely more young Morris County soldiers whose stories have been lost to time.

Here are some of the stories of Morris County’s Revolutionary boy soldiers.  The rest of the stories will be covered in the next Soldiers Story, The Soldier Boys (Part 2).

  

John D. Piatt  

 

The youngest Revolutionary soldier found from Morris County is Private John D. Piatt, who reported that he was born 17 Mar 1766 in Raritan, Somerset County NJ.  While he grew up and served from Somerset County, we consider him a Morris County soldier because after the war he lived his adult life in Pequannock, Morris County.

 

Very early in the war in late 1775, at nine years old he began serving as a fifer under his father, Captain (later Major) Daniel Piatt, in the 1st NJ Regiment of the Continental Army.  He was marched to Brunswick upper landing, then Elizabeth, then New York, Long Island, and then to Canada.  Imagine any nine-year-old marching that far!  He testified:

 

“The regiment…proceeded toward Quebeck as far as the Three Rivers, there had an engagement with the British and retreated to Ticonderoga. And lay there till late in the fall or beginning of winter, and then returned to the State of New Jersey.”  His father and other officers were in Pennsylvania on a recruiting trip at the time “Genl Washington attacked the Hessians at Trenton.  The deponent attending the rendezvous as a musician, the company was marched to the Delaware to aid Genl Washington in the battled – was prevented crossing the river till next day after the capture of the Hessians.  From thence was marched on to Princetown – saw the dead and wounded in the college.”

 

Later in his testimony, he mentioned that his Regiment was marched “westward under Genl Sullivan,” which is most certainly the Sullivan Expedition into Pennsylvania and western New York, taking place the summer and fall of 1779.  But he was injured when he was kicked by an officer’s horse, preventing him from continuing on the march with the Regiment.

 

When the troops returned, they set up winter quarters at Jockey Hollow for the winter of 1779-1780.  When his father died of disease at Jockey Hollow in April of 1780, John continued to serve under his uncle, Colonel Jacob Piatt of Somerset County. 

 

Only a few weeks later, he fought in the Battle of Springfield in June 1780, where he reported that “Young Ogden was killed, a considerable number more killed and wounded.  [He] was in the house of Parson Caldwell, saw his wife a corps[e].

 

At one point he was taken prisoner by the British at Pluckemin, but was “released afterwards being a youth.”    

 

Altogether he served four years in the army.  Even at such a young age, these years must have been a traumatic series of experiences:  multiple battles, losing his own father, seeing many dead and wounded, and himself being wounded and taken prisoner. 

 

After the war he settled in Pequannock, Morris County, where applied for a pension in 1832.  He was granted a pension for his service.

 

John D. Piatt died on 27 Mar 1837.  He is buried at the First Reformed Church of Pompton Plains (aka the Pompton Reformed Church), in Pompton Lakes. 

  

David Hamilton Morris (DAR Ancestor A080847)

 

David Hamilton Morris was born in Hanover Township, Morris County, NJ on 11 Jul 1769.  His father, Captain David Morris, died in December 1779 on the infamous prison ship HMS Jersey.  Soon after, at eleven years old young David enlisted at Morristown as a “waiter” for Captain James Christie of Pennsylvania.  His mother gave permission at Captain Christie’s promise that he would “take charge…and act the part of a father.”  Right away, Morris was stationed at Jockey Hollow during the infamous Hard Winter of 1779-1780.  He served a 3-year enlistment in 3rd Pennsylvania Regiment, part of General Anthony Wayne’s Flying Camp. 

 

When he was discharged in early 1783, Captain Christie wrote to Morris that he could travel to Philadelphia to pick up his discharge papers.  On his way through the Wyoming Valley, he accidentally stumbled into a skirmish between people of New England and Pennsylvania on Locust Ridge, and was wounded by a musket ball that “entered below the right breast and came out at the back.” 

 

In 1786 he traveled to the “Western Country” and served more than four more years in the Northwest Indian Wars in Colonel Josiah Harmer’s regiment, part of the time as a First Sergeant. 

 

For his military service he received bounty land in Ohio, where he settled.  He died at Honey Creek, Miami Co OH on 3 Apr 1843, and is buried at Saylor Cemetery, Troy, OH.  His tombstone, which is no longer legible, once read:

 

In Memory of David H. Morris Sen. A native of New Jersey and pioneer of the Western Country.
---
He was one of the very first white men that traversed the Miami Valley, which he did as a soldier under General Harmer and as a hunter.
- - -
In his youth he was a Soldier of the Revolution.
- - -
Previous to 1800, he settled amid the Forests in this vicinity and married Eve Ann Sailor, with whom he lived happily for more than forty years.
- - -
On the third of April 1843 he departed this life in the 74th year of his age, In full Assurance of a Blissful Immortality, Leaving a large family to inherit his name and remember his many virtues.

 

 

Benjamin Ogden (DAR Ancestor A085707)

 

Benjamin Ogden became known as the “Boy Soldier of the Revolution.”  He was born on 16 Apr 1764.  According to his pension testimony, he was born and lived near the spot where General Lee was taken, adjoining the land of Lord Stirling in Basking Ridge.

 

At twelve years old he ran away and went to Elizabethtown to join the army.  He served there until, as he reported in his pension testimony “a certain Maj. Wm Davidson (to whom my Guardian had bound me an apprentice) heard where I was and came down with his witnesses and demanded my release.”  He waited until he was 16 years old, then rejoined the army and was stationed at Woodbridge until the army was dissolved after the war.

 

He served in several battles, which he described as follows:

 

“The first battle that I was in, I think was in May 1780.  The enemy landed at night and was detected by our patroles the militia called by three signal guns; the gun and whale boat company under the command of two of the bravest officers I ever knew…All joined in battle between break of day and sun rise, near the road from Woodbridge to the old Blazing Star ferry – the enemy retreated to their gun boats at Smokum Point (by which the battle was named) where we received their heavy metal for near two hours.”

 

“The 2^nd Battle I think was in September following – commenced also early in the morning in Amboy commons.  We drove the enemy into the Town and from our Shore – under a heavy fire from three gallys, their guardships in the bay, and their gun boats.”

 

“The 3^rd Battle commenced near where the first did.  Sometime I believe in July 1781 (or about two weeks before Rye harvest).  They retreated to their vessels near Hog Island, above the mouth of Woodbridge Creek, where we again received their heavy metal for more (I think) than one hour – near a Rye field on the shore of the sound.”

 

“The 4^th Battle was, as well as I recollect, late in September following and about the first night after Genl Washington left New York with some of the French troops to meet Cornwallis.  The Capt of our gun boat company Lieut. Randolph + some of the militia went on the Island in the night to take Cuckhold [farm?] fort in the absence of the British troops which had been drawn off to graves and to assist New York.  But to our supprise they had returned the evening before.  We were discovered and the contest began just before and we had to fight hard to gain and keep a bridge just under the fort and across the Kills, to our boats which waited for us at the new Blazing Star.  The contest continued I think for more than three hours before we left their shore with the prisoners, [illegible], + other spoils of the enemy.”  [This last battle probably took place at Fort Cockhill, which was an outpost of Fort Washington in New York.]

 

Starting in 1784, he devoted his time to the Methodist ministry as an itinerant preacher, traveling “from the North River [Hudson] to the west of the Mississippi, and from Charleston S.C. to the shore of Lake Erie”. In 1785 was sent out as an itinerant preacher in New Jersey, in 1786 to Kentucky and then to Tennessee. He applied for a pension in 1832 from Kentucky. 

 

Benjamin Ogden died in Caldwell County KY on 20 Nov 1834, and is buried at Ogden Cemetery in Princeton, KY.

 

 

James Rodgers (DAR Ancestor A098051)

 

James Rogers was born on 1 Feb 1764 in Morris County NJ.  As a young boy he joined the First NJ Regiment at Morristown as a Fifer and Foragemaster.  At fourteen years old, he fought at the Battle of Monmouth in 1778.  As an adult after the war, he made a career as a carpenter and carriage maker in Morris Township.

 

He applied for pension from Morris Co in 1819 with the assistance of Dr. Lewis Condict.   The only people who were eligible for a pension at that time were those disabled due to war injuries, widows, and those who could prove that they were destitute.  Dr. Condict must have been very effective in arguing the case, because Rodgers successfully received a pension even though his inventory of assets suggested he was reasonably comfortable with a plot of land, a house, furniture, and many other items.

 

James Rogers died at Morristown on 12 Sep 1845.  He is buried at the First Presbyterian Church Morristown (now the Presbyterian Church in Morristown).  There is no tombstone.

  

Part 2 of our story of Soldier Boys will tell the stories of the rest of our young Revolutionary soldiers.

 

 

Sources

 

Find-a-Grave memorials #57232290 and #19278867

 

U.S. Revolutionary War Pension S9039, Bounty Land Warrant 9982-100, David Hamilton Morris, National Archives and Records Administration, M804, Records of the Department of Veterans Affairs, RG15

 

U.S. Revolutionary War Pension S31281, Benjamin Ogden, National Archives and Records Administration, M804, Records of the Department of Veterans Affairs, RG15

 

U.S. Revolutionary War Pension W1473, John D. Piatt (widow Jane), National Archives and Records Administration, M804, Records of the Department of Veterans Affairs, RG15

 

U.S. Revolutionary War Pension S5733, James Rogers, National Archives and Records Administration, M804, Records of the Department of Veterans Affairs, RG15

Thomas Paine, George Washington and American Politics

Thomas Paine By Laurent Dabos- 1791 National Portrait Gallery UK

The unique pamphlet Common Sense has time and time again been credited as a major catalyst in getting the middling classes involved in the American Revolution. The pamphlet, in some senses kick started the uprising. Common Sense made simpler, to the common man, the reasons for rebellion. For all its use of plain language the pamphlet initially left one big mystery, the author. When the work was first published the author chose to remain anonymous. Who was the person who seemed to speak directly to these people in language they could understand? Eric Foner writes, “The author of Common Sense was Thomas Paine, ‘a gentleman,’ as John Adams described him, ‘about two years ago from England, a man who…has genius in his eyes.”[1] If the pamphlet was, in fact the catalyst for the masses to revolt, it was also a personal catalyst for Paine to enter into Philadelphia politics and form relationships with some of the most powerful men of the revolutionary period, including George Washington. This relationship in particular would grow and then through the changing and unstable years after the revolution disintegrate, due to differing political views and circumstances.

To understand how Thomas Paine arrived at this point, we must first examine where he came from. What experiences did he have in his early years that would have led him across the ocean to a settlement who’s populous was filled with a rising distaste for the country in which he was born? Thomas Paine was born in Thetford, England on January 29, 1737. His Father Joseph, a Quaker, was a Farmer and a Staymaker (Corset maker.) His Mother, Elizabeth was the daughter of an attorney and a member of the Church of England. On this winter day in 1737, William M. Van der Weyde states “The parents and the doctor and the visiting neighbors little suspected that the tiny infant they gazed upon would someday fire the temper of a whole people into resistance against tyranny.”[2] In his youth Paine would have the chance to receive a good education; Van der Weyde will quote Paine reflecting back on this time saying "My father being of the Quaker profession, it was my good fortune to have an exceeding good moral education, and a tolerable stock of useful learning.[3]

Thetford Grammar- Paine's School- Courtesy Google

During his school years Paine would be in very close proximity to the stocks, and as he walked past each day he would hear the terrifying screams of the prisoners. Being merely a child, Paine was horrified by what he heard. It is therefore, a distinct possibility that being daily, within audible range of the sounds of imprisoned and tortured men, could have led Paine in his future to align himself with the causes of freedom, liberty and rights for all mankind. Despite any promise the young Paine showed in his studies, as soon as he turned thirteen he was taken out of school and sent to work, as was customary at the time, in his father’s Staymaking business.

Although he found the work to be terribly boring, Paine would stay on at his father’s Thetford shop for four years. During this time, circa 1754, Paine would become increasingly fascinated with the sea. Van der Weyde states, “The outcome was the shipping of the lad aboard the Terrible, a privateer, under the command of Captain Death. This inauspicious conjunction of names seems to have had no deterrent effect upon the youth eager for adventure."[4] As soon as Paine’s father found out about the plan he rushed to the ship and pulled his soon off the boat and brought him back to the shop. This was a good fortune for Paine, as on the Terrible’s next voyage, she would lose 175 of her 200 men and the captain in an engagement with another ship named the Vengence. In 1756, after England declared war on France, Paine would find himself again, a privateer on a ship called the King of Prussia.

The nautical stint did not last long and eventually Paine went to London and worked once more as a Staymaker. He eventually would go on to establish himself as a master of Staymaking in Sandwich, Kent. It was in Kent that Paine now twenty two years old, met and married Mary Lambert. The new couple moved to Dover, England, where Paine established his own staymaking business. The business did not take off and within a year had completely failed. To add insult to injury, Mary Lambert passed away at the very same time. However, as Eric Foner writes “Mary Lambert’s father was an officer in the Customs and Excise Service, and seems to have inspired Paine to abandon staymaking. Paine returned to Thetford to study for the excise officers’examanination, which required a grounding in mathematics and an ability to write in clear English.”[5] By December 1, 1762 Paine was collecting Taxes; by 1765 he was dismissed for the common practice of filing official reports on goods without first examining said goods.

After being let go from the excise collecting job, Paine tried to reestablish himself as a staymaker, which was also short lived. In fact, before reaching the shores of America, Paine would go on to teach, preach, collect excise and marry (both for the second time,) lead a group of seemingly underpaid excisemen to ask for higher salaries, write his first pamphlet; The Case of the Officers of Excise, run a shop and become separated. Upon separating from his wife Paine returned to London. While in London he met and befriended Benjamin Franklin. The details of how the friendship between the two men began are hazy, never the less; it is a fact that the two most definitely knew and respected one another. Paine actually had the unique experience of being present when Franklin conducted some of his experiments with electricity. Benjamin Franklin could see that Paine was in need of a drastic change in his life. Van der Weyde conveys that,

Dr. Franklin not only perceived this but he also appreciated the talents and genius of his friend, and the farsighted philosopher was keenly alive to America’s need of just such a spirit as Thomas Paine. He

Benjamin Franklin- Paine's ticket to America

strongly urged the young man to migrate to America – thereby not only befriending Paine but at the same time conferring upon this country the greatest of the many obligations for which it is indebted to Franklin.[6]

At the age of 37, having been a virtual failure at everything he had attempted, Paine decided to start anew in America. Van der Weyde relays Paine’s recollection of his youth, where he stated “I happened, when a schoolboy, to ‘pick up a pleasing natural history of Virginia, and my inclination from that day of seeing the western side of the Atlantic never left me.”[7] This inclination combined with a letter of introduction form Benjamin Franklin would find Paine setting off on a journey that would exceed his wildest expectations and change his life for the better, at least for a short time.

Paine arrived on America’s shores on September 30, 1774. Richard Bache, Franklin’s son-in-law, would be expecting Paine in Philadelphia. Paine carried with him, like a badge of honor, the letter of introduction from one of America’s most well respected thinkers. Paine would present the letter to Bache upon their first meeting. Van der Weyde relays what the letter read,

The bearer Mr. Thomas Paine is very well recommended to me as an ingenious worthy young man. He goes to Pennsylvania with a view of settling there. I request you to give him your best advice and countenance, as he is quite a stranger there. If you can put him in away of obtaining employment as a clerk, or assistant tutor in a school, or assistant surveyor, of all of which I think him very capable, so that he may procure a subsistence at least, till he can make acquaintance and obtain a knowledge of the country, you will do well, and much oblige your affectionate father.[8]

Bache did oblige his father and by 1775 Paine was working for The Pennsylvania Magazine. Van der Weyde writes that Paine, in a 1775 letter to Benjamin Franklin, thanking him for his help, would say that “Robert Aitkin, has lately attempted a magazine, but having little or no turn that way himself, he has applied to me for assistance. He had not above six hundred subscribers when I first assisted him. We have now upwards of fifteen hundred, and daily increasing.”[9] Paine would go on to become editor of this paper for eighteen months. There would appear in the Magazine many items written by Paine, sometimes under pen names like “Vox Populi” or voice of the people. Paine also wrote descriptions of the latest technology from England. Because of these articles specifically, Paine was able to befriend many of the scientists who were members of Ben Franklin’s Philosophical Society. These scientists would spark Paine’s interest in all things scientific, which would lead him to further explore some experimentation later in his life.

Paine had begun to make quite a name for himself in America. Always taking on the burdens of the people, Paine would now tackle one of the most taboo subjects of the time. Van der Weyde writes “on March 8, 1775 -- a notable essay by Paine on the subject of slavery, appeared in the Postscript to the Pennsylvania Journal and Weekly Advertiser. This essay, which was printed under the title of "African Slavery in America," was the first article published in this country urging the emancipation of slaves and the abolishment of the system of negro bondage. “[10] Paine had now taken a side, he was showing America that just because he was a native of England, it did not necessarily mean he considered himself an Englishman or had any allegiance to that country whatsoever.

As Foner states, “During the period of his residence there, from 1774 until his return to England in 1787, Paine’s Philadelphia would undergo enormous political, social and economic changes. New classes, particularly the city’s artisans, would emerge into political consciousness, challenging the dominance of a previously entrenched elite and often finding their voice in Paine’s writings.”[11] Paine’s writing indeed provided a voice, particularly in the pamphlet Common Sense, whose precursor was a short essay, entitled “A Serious Thought” to which Paine signed the pen name “Humanus.” Many scholars say this essay was the first indication that there would be a Declaration of Independence.

Following the essay Paine set to work on Common Sense. He would spend the autumn of 1775 writing

Common Sense and a Portrait of Paine
both from the MORR collection - on exhibit in the Smith Gallery 

passionately about why he felt the colonies needed to break free from what he saw as tyrannical British rule. The pamphlet was published by Robert Bell on January 10, 1776. It is estimated that in the first three months of the pamphlet being on sale 120,000 copies were sold. The title page, however, only indicated that the piece had been “written by an Englishman,” there was no name to attribute the stirring work to. “Although no announcement was made of the fact” Van der Wyde states, “Paine gave to the cause of independence all of his financial interest in the pamphlet, thereby depriving himself quite a large fortune, the price of the pamphlet being two shillings.”[12] Paine’s devotion to his adopted country is unquestionable; the selfless action of taking no compensation for Common Sense proves that his heart lay solely in seeing the people of America break free from England and establishes themselves as a republic. Eric Foner quotes Paine’s reason for writing Common Sense,“ My motive and object in all my political works, beginning with Common Sense,’ Paine recalled in 1806,’…have been to rescue man from tyranny and false systems and false principles of government, and enable him to be free.”[13] It was as simple as that for Paine. It is also no coincidence that six month after the publication of Common Sense the people of America had the Declaration of Independence drafted and signed.

The influence of Common Sense was an easy ticket for Paine to make his way into the inner circle of politics in Revolutionary Philadelphia. Once men like George Washington and John Adams saw what Ben Franklin had seen in Paine, back in 1774 combined with the brilliance of his best selling pamphlet they too would want him in their circle. Before the publication of Common Sense, Van der Weyde relays that,

The Rev. Jonathan Boucher in May, 1775, crossing the Potomac in a rowboat, happened in midstream to encounter another boat carrying George Washington, on his way to Congress. The two men had some conversation about the prospects of the colonies. Washington unequivocally declared himself loyal to the crown, saying to Boucher, "If you ever hear of my joining in any such measures" (measures for separation) "you have my leave to set me down for everything wicked." Two months later, in July, when Washington took command of the army, he (as he subsequently related) "abhorred the idea of independence.[14]

Soon after this account, Van der Weyde states “Washington, who only shortly before was protesting his loyalty to Great Britain, carefully read Paine’s pamphlet and was at once converted to the cause of independence.”[15]In 1776, Washington would be inspired by Paine again after the publication of his pamphlet entitled The American Crisis, Washington was so moved that he ordered that the pamphlet be read to all of the troops in the continental army. Indeed these examples would indicate that George Washington had an overwhelming respect for Paine and his ideas.

“In the course of this year,1776,” according to Thomas Clio Rickman, “Mr. Paine accompanied the army with General Washington, and was with him in his retreat from the Hudson River to the Delaware.”[16] Only a year later in 1777, Paine was first appointed secretary to a commission sent to Pennsylvania to make a treaty with the Native Americans. On April 17th of the same year Paine would be unanimously appointed by Congress as Secretary of the Committee of Foreign Affairs. This office saw Paine receive all letters written by Congress as well as all replies sent to Congress. Paine was expected to follow Congress wherever they met or were forced to flee to. He was afforded, in this position the opportunity to see foreign courts and how they conducted their politics.

 

Paine's personal message to Washington in a compilation of his works-
MORR Collection

The secretary position would also see Paine embroiled in the Silas Deane Affair, where Mr. Deane was accused of making bad deals with France in order to secure provisions for American troops. Paine spoke out against Deane, and would end up resigning from the position in 1779. Rickman quotes Paine, in his letter to Congress after his resignation saying “I prevented Deane’s fraudulent demand being paid, and so far the country is obliged to me, but I became the victim of my integrity.”[17] Despite this unfortunate downfall, Paine was, in late 1779 given a degree of Master of Arts by the University of Philadelphia and in 1780 he was inducted into Benjamin Franklin’s American Philosophical Society. Still respected by his political peers, in 1781 Paine was asked to accompany Colonel Laurens to France, to yet again try to obtain more money for the failing American economy. According to Rickman “his value, his firmness, his independence, as a political character, were now universally acknowledged.”[18] George Washington, once more in his undying respect for Paine, would ask that he rejoin Congress upon his return; Paine rejected him on the grounds that he simply thought it was inappropriate after his resignation only a few years earlier.

George Washington

Washington however would still visit with Paine. On September 10, 1783 Washington sent a letter to Paine, upon having heard of his presence in Borden Town, New Jersey where Washington happened to be staying as well. Washington wrote “if you will come to this place and partake with me, I shall be exceedingly happy to see you at it. Your presence may remind congress of your past services to this country …”[19] In fact the two men did meet at the home Washington was staying at called Rocky Hill. While they visited, Paine and Washington got into a debate about the fact that the nearby Millstone River could be set on fire. Paine proposed the phenomena causing this was inflammable air, while two of Washington’s troops argued that it was solid combustible material that had floated up to the surface from the river’s bottom, upon reaching the top this material would thereby provide fuel for the river to be ignited. The following night Paine, Washington and the soldiers took a flat bottom boat out on the river, Paine and Washington held burning paper just above the rivers surface, while the two soldiers stirred up the muck from the river bed. Marc Mappen writes that “according to Paine, ‘When the mud at the bottom was disturbed by the poles, the air bubbles rose fast, and I saw the fire take from General Washington’s light and descend from thence to the surface of the water.”[20] Paine was right, although it would take many more years to be discovered, the thing that ignited the river was Methane.

Paine and Washington shared a mutual respect and a solid friendship. This would change, however when Paine took off for Europe in 1787. Feeling he had in essence, worn out his welcome in America the great writer set his sights on the other side of the Atlantic. Though he spent much time in England working on his designs for an iron bridge, Paine would eventually get back to writing. His next offering would be the Rights of Man. The book was Paine’s thoughts on the French Revolution and in some ways could be said to be a catalyst for the uprising by peasants in France at the end of the 18th century. After the book took off and sold many, many copies worldwide, it was evident that Paine had ruffled the wrong feathers. However, George Washington was an admirer, once again, of his friend’s latest work. In a 1792 letter, thanking Paine for the fifty copies of Rights of Man that he had sent him, Washington wrote “Let it suffice, therefore, at this time to say, that I rejoice in the information of your personal prosperity—and as no one can feel a greater interest in the happiness of mankind than I do, that it is the first wish of my heart that the enlightened policy of the present age may diffuse to all men those blessings to which they are entitled—and lay the foundation of happiness for future generations.”[21] Robespierre, France’s new leader, on the other hand would call for Paine to stand trial. He tried to escape, being slightly confused as to what he was actually being hunted for. Eventually Paine was caught and consequently found guilty of liable and was jailed in Paris.

From his prison cell he wrote letter after letter to his old friends in the United States. Paine’s main concern was trying to convince French officials that he was in fact an American citizen, since France was an ally to America, naturally he should be set free. It seemed the more Paine wrote, the less he was answered on this subject. Paine finally wrote to George Washington who was now the President of the fledgling republic pleading with him for assistance. Again, Paine heard nothing back.

Paine was finally rescued by James Monroe but was now feeling completely betrayed by his former brethren. In an out of character episode Paine would channel all his fear and anger at his erstwhile comrade George Washington. Paine gathered up all the letters he never sent Washington while he was imprisoned and that Monroe urged him not to send and had them published in Benjamin Franklin Bache’s Aurora. Now the entire nation could read Paine’s tirade. In a letter dated July 30, 1796 Paine would unleash a world of insults on the first President. He begins by saying “I shall offer you no apologies for this letter…”[22] he will go on to state his reasons for being unhappy with the American government. He will also lament how his vision of liberty was being put into practice. Paine will then go on to take full credit for the idea of unifying the colonies into one, as illustrated here,

I declare myself opposed to several matters in the Constitution, particularly to the manner in which what is called the Executive is formed, and to the long duration of the Senate; and if I live to return to America, I will use all my endeavours to have them altered. I also declare myself opposed to almost the whole of your administration; for I know it to have been deceitful, if not perfidious, as I shall show in the course of this letter. But as to the point of consolidating the States into a Federal Government, it so happens, that the proposition for that purpose came originally from myself.[23]

Paine will exhaust many topics in this particular letter, but the most surprising are his direct attacks on Washington’s character and conduct during and after the Revolutionary war. For Example Paine wrote “The part I acted in the American Revolution is well known; I shall not here repeat it. I know also that had it not been for the aid received from France, in men, money and ships that your cold and unmilitary conduct (as I shall show in the course of this letter) would in all probability have lost America…”[24] Paine again recalls Washington’s service as Commander of the Continental Army by saying “You slept away your time in the field, till the finances of the country were completely exhausted, and you have but little share in the glory of the final event.”[25] In a final attack, Paine will directly compare Washington to an English Monarch by saying “Elevated to the chair of the Presidency, you assumed the merit of everything to yourself, and the natural ingratitude of your constitution began to appear. You commenced your Presidential career by encouraging and swallowing the grossest adulation, and you travelled America from one end to the other to put yourself in the way of receiving it. You have as many addresses in your chest as James the II.”

Though Paine will go on to set forth some seemingly common thoughts about George Washington, as Joseph J. Ellis describes the public charges levied against Washington, “He had no compunction about driving around Philadelphia in an ornate carriage drawn by six cream colored horses; or, when on horseback, riding a white stallion with a leopard cloth and gold-trimmed saddle; or, accepting laurel crowns at public celebrations that resemble coronations.”[26] This is not how you correspond with a friend.

Paine will call out for an answer as to why not one person from the executive branch of the government made any inquiries as to his wellbeing, and will say “Mr. Washington owed it to me on every score of private acquaintance, I will not now say, friendship; for it has some time been known by those who know him, that he has no friendships; that he is incapable of forming any…”[27] The letter ends with Paine saying to Washington “And as to you, Sir, treacherous in private friendship (for so you have been to me, and that in the day of danger) and a hypocrite in public life, the world will be puzzled to decide whether you are an apostate or an impostor; whether you have abandoned good principles, or whether you ever had any.”[28] In a final insult, Elis writes that while “Tom Paine celebrated Washington’s departure, (he) actually prayed for his imminent death.”[29]

Although Washington himself never officially responded to Paine, he did once state according to Ellis “these attacks, unjust and unpleasant as they are, will occasion no change in my conduct; nor will they work any other effect in my mind.” [30] One friend did take it upon himself to come out in Washington’s defense, as stated in a 1798 letter to Washington from Timothy Pickering, he relays the news of a William Cobbet in his Porcupine Gazette saying “The vile traducers of the old General must blush to read what a foreigner and a Briton says of him.”[31]

It is true that Paine’s writings can be described as the ravings of a man gone mad. We must, however take into consideration Paine’s circumstances at the time the letter was written. He had given America a lifetime of service and now, in a time when his own soul was being tried, he stood alone and companionless in a foreign country. None of the great men who praised him and that he stood shoulder to shoulder with through the birth of a nation came to his aid. What Washington’s reasons were cannot be known. Perhaps it was his aids urging him to not get involved with the French Revolution, or perhaps his fondness for Paine had faded. Whatever the explanation, it seems that George Washington’s quote of "I can never think of promoting my convenience at the expense of a friend's interest and inclination" did not quite hold true when it came to Thomas Paine.

Written by: 

Holly Marino, Museum Specialist
___________________________________________________________

[1] Eric Foner, Tom Paine and Revolutionary America, (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, Inc., 2005), xxvii
[2] William M. Van der Weyde, The Life and Works of Thomas Paine: Patriot’s Edition, Volume 1, Life of Thomas Paine, (New Rochelle, NY: Thomas Paine National Historical Association, 1925), 1-2.
[3] Ibid, 4.
[4] Ibid, 6.
[5] Eric Foner, Tom Paine and Revolutionary America, (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, Inc., 2005), 2.
[6] William M. Van der Weyde, The Life and Works of Thomas Paine: Patriot’s Edition, Volume 1, Life of Thomas Paine, (New Rochelle, NY: Thomas Paine National Historical Association, 1925), 15.
[7] Ibid, 4.
[8]Ibid, 17-18.
[9] Ibid, 18.
[10] Ibid, 20.
[11] Eric Foner, Tom Paine and Revolutionary America, (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, Inc., 2005), 20.
[12] William M. Van der Weyde, The Life and Works of Thomas Paine: Patriot’s Edition, Volume 1, Life of Thomas Paine, (New Rochelle, NY: Thomas Paine National Historical Association, 1925), 30-31.
[13]Eric Foner, Tom Paine and Revolutionary America, (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, Inc., 2005), 75.
[14] William M. Van der Weyde, The Life and Works of Thomas Paine: Patriot’s Edition, Volume 1, Life of Thomas Paine, (New Rochelle, NY: Thomas Paine National Historical Association, 1925), 28.
[15] William M. Van der Weyde, The Life and Works of Thomas Paine: Patriot’s Edition, Volume 1, Life of Thomas Paine, (New Rochelle, NY: Thomas Paine National Historical Association, 1925), 31.
[16] Thomas Clio Rickman, Life and Writings of Thomas Paine: Volume 1, Life and Appreciations of Thomas Paine, (New York, NY: Vincent Parke and Company, 1908), 25.
[17] Ibid, 26.
[18] Ibid, 28.
[19] Ibid, 29.
[20] Marc Mappen, There’s More to New Jersey than the Sopranos, (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009), 48.
[21] The Papers of George Washington Digital Edition, ed. Theodore J. Crackel. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Rotunda, 2008.< http://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/founders/GEWN-05-10-02-0225> (13 Apr 2010)
[22] The Life and Works of Thomas Paine: Patriot’s Edition, Volume 5, Letters & Dissertations, ed. William Van der Weyde (New Rochelle, NY: Thomas Paine National Historical Association, 1925), 139.
[23] Ibid, 141
[24] Ibid, 146
[25] Ibid, 156-147
[26] Joseph J. Ellis, Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation, (New York, NY: Vintage Books: A Division of Random House, Inc., 2000), 127.
[27] The Life and Works of Thomas Paine: Patriot’s Edition, Volume 5, Letters & Dissertations,ed. William Van der Weyde (New Rochelle, NY: Thomas Paine National Historical Association, 1925), 152.
[28] Ibid, 200-201.
[29] Joseph J. Ellis, Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation, (New York, NY: Vintage Books: A Division of Random House, Inc., 2000), 126.
[30] Ibid,126.
[31] The Papers of George Washington Digital Edition, ed. Theodore J. Crackel. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Rotunda, 2008. <http://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/founders/GEWN-06-02-02-0046> (13 Apr 2010)

Chief Justice John Marshall as historian

Follow this link to read a post on the Journal of the American Revolution about America's third chief justice John Marshall and his crucial role as a biographer of George Washington.

This post is by Morristown NHP chief of cultural resources Dr. Jude Pfister. 

https://allthingsliberty.com/2024/02/john-marshall-historian/

         Title page of volume 1 (1804) of Marshall's Life of Washington 

from the park collection

Listen to the Podcast with Dr. Pfister and the Journal of the American Revolution's Brady Crytzer (author of The Whiskey Rebellion, The Distilled History of an American Crisis) at the following link:

https://gcc02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpodcasts.google.com%2Ffeed%2FaHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkLnBvZGJlYW4uY29tL2phcmRpc3BhdGNoZXMvZmVlZC54bWw%2Fepisode%2FamFyZGlzcGF0Y2hlcy5wb2RiZWFuLmNvbS9kY2Q4YWJhNC00YWY0LTMyMDUtYTM2Yy1lYzY5YjhmNWM0YjA%3Fep%3D14&data=05%7C02%7Cjude_pfister%40nps.gov%7Cbe5bf636527144b0abb808dc36d21204%7C0693b5ba4b184d7b9341f32f400a5494%7C0%7C0%7C638445523071164860%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=DVsVMgBPJT2TE8bEfCQCtestUER87YRYwxfnV%2BkXMOc%3D&reserved=0

Christmas 1783

 

George Washington arrived at his Mount Vernon home two hundred and forty (240) years ago this week, on Christmas Eve 1783. Resigning his commission to the Confederation Congress in Annapolis the day before, he told the assembled legislators there in the Maryland State House that he was “Happy in the confirmation of our Independence and Sovereignty, and pleased with the opportunity afforded the United States of becoming a respectable Nation, I resign with satisfaction the Appointment I accepted with diffidence.”

George Washington was a civilian once again.

Throughout his adult life Washington—and his family—had grown accustomed to his long absences from home, including during the holidays. At no time was this truer than during the Revolution. General Washington and his men famously crossed the Delaware on Christmas Night 1776 to surprise the Hessians at Trenton the following day. He and the 11,000 exhausted, ill-clad men under his command spent Christmas 1777 just trying to survive the elements at Valley Forge. One of the most difficult Christmases came two years later here at Morristown, where Washington and his men faced not just the cold but the threat of British attack. General Washington wrote to New Jersey Governor William Livingston on December 21 seeking help should the Redcoats strike. General Washington explained to Governor Livingston that “The situation of our army at this time compared with that of the enemy makes it necessary we should be very much upon our guard. They have more than double our force collected at New York and we are mouldering away dayly.”

When the war finally did end in 1783 Washington and others celebrated in New York City for a few weeks in late November and early December before they began heading home. Washington was determined to get back to his Virginia farm and family in time for Christmas. That was easier said than done on the muddy roads of the era, Nonetheless Washington managed to get home in time to celebrate that Christmas 240 years ago.

All of us here at Morristown National Historical Park wish you a happy holiday season.

 

Image credit: Mount Vernon as it was in the early decades of the twentieth century / Library of Congress

Keith J. Muchowski, a librarian and professor at New York City College of Technology (CUNY) in Brooklyn, volunteers at Morristown National Historical Park.

Remembering the Boston Tea Party

 

“The Dye is cast: The People have passed the River and cutt away the Bridge: last Night Three Cargoes of Tea, were emptied into the Harbour. This is the grandest, Event, which has ever yet happened Since, the Controversy, with Britain, opened!

The Sublimity of it, charms me!”  

Those were the words of John Adams writing to friend James Warren on December 17, 1773. The evening prior nearly one hundred Bostonians, thinly disguised as Native-Americans, had boarded three ships docked at Griffin’s Wharf and tossed at least 340 chests of tea weighing upwards of forty-five tons into the water below. This was of course the Boston Tea Party, the 250^th anniversary of which is this Saturday, December 16.

                                        Silver teapot made in New York by Jacob Boelen, circa 1690–1700

Americans—or colonists as they still were when Adams wrote the above lines—had long protested British efforts at “taxation without representation.” Just eight years previously in 1765 colonists had vehemently, even violently, opposed the Stamp Act, which was quickly rescinded in March 1766. After its repeal however came the equally-loathed Townshend Revenue Acts, most of which were  themselves revoked in 1770. Parliament passed a Tea Act on May 10, 1773, granting the financially strapped British East India Company a monopoly in the American colonies. Grown overseas and introduced by traders in the seventeenth century, tea by this time had long been part of American culture. Silversmiths like Paul Revere had been crafting beautiful tea pots and services for decades by this time. British officials thought there would be little outcry; the tax after all was nominal, designed more to combat the smuggling of contraband “Dutch tea” and to shore up the ledger books of the floundering East India Company than to generate revenue per se. The British plan back-fired. Now the question on everyone’s mind was how King George III and Parliament would respond once news reached London regarding the Boston protest. The punishment came that winter and spring in the form of the so-called Intolerable Acts, a set of punitive measures demanding payment for the tossed tea and tightening British political and military control in Massachusetts. These measures led the colonists to resistance, revolution, and eventually independence.

Protests against the tea tax were hardly unique to Boston. Less than two weeks prior to the Boston Tea Party leaders in South Carolina had decided they too would not allow an East India Company shipment that had just arrived in Charleston to be sold, eventually impounding the tea and keeping it under lock-and-key to make certain the tax would not be paid. Nor would Griffin’s Wharf be the last place of protest; well over a dozen tea demonstrations of various forms took place throughout the colonies in 1773 and 1774. Still colonists grasped—as John Adams had just hours after the fact—that Boston was, in Adams’s words, the cutting away of the bridge. The rest of the world understood too. Here we see a remarkable political cartoon by the Dublin-born artist and engraver John Dixon entitled “The Tea-Tax-Tempest (The Oracle)” from 1774. 

Dixon, who by the 1760s had relocated to London, created this rendering just months after the Boston Tea Party, and a year before the firing at Lexington and Concord. The mezzotint shows Father Time using an early type of visual projection called a magic lantern to show the fighting soon to come. Through the depiction of the various figures representing individuals of different backgrounds, Dixon also captures the global implications of what would very much become a world war. The five varieties of tea dumped into Boston Harbor—Bohea, Congou, Hyson Singlo, and Souchong—were themselves the products of international trade and interaction. Dixon’s allegorical cartoon became iconic and was imitated and satirized several times throughout the Revolution.

What came to be known as the Boston Tea Party thus was part of American and world iconography from the outset. One hundred and fifty years ago this week people turned out at numerous functions in Boston for several days of celebration marking the centennial. The New England Woman Suffrage Association hosted an event at Faneuil Hall on December 15. Speakers at the “Woman’s Tea Party” included, among others: “Battle Hymn of the Republic” author Julia Ward Howe, Mary A. Livermore, Lucy Stone, William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips and Frederick Douglass, who like many of the others in attendance had long supported women's suffrage in addition to abolitionism and civil rights.

In the twentieth century the Boston Tea Party grew even larger in the public imagination. Esther Forbes won the Pulitzer Prize in 1943 for her non-fiction “Paul Revere and the World He Lived In” and a Newbery Medal in 1944 for “Johnny Tremain: A Novel for Old & Young,” her coming-of-age story whose protagonist witnesses the Boston Tea Party and events that came after it. Ironically, Forbes downplayed tensions between Colonists and Redcoats in “Johnny Tremain” because she wrote the novel during the Second World War—by which time the United States and Great Britain were no longer enemies but allies. On the Fourth of July in 1973 the United States Postal Service issued this set of se-tenant stamps, among the first in what would eventually be more than one hundred commemorative issues in the Bicentennial Series.

This week in 2023 there are again services and commemorations across the country marking this major anniversary in American history.

 

Image credits:

The Tea-Tax-Tempest (The Oracle), by John Dixon, 1774

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Silver teapot made in New York by Jacob Boelen, circa 1690–1700

The piece was owned at different times by the Philipse and Jay families.

Metropolitan Museum of Art

New England Woman’s Tea Party ticket, 1873

Boston Athenaeum

The Boston Tea Party Bicentennial Era stamp series, 1973

United States Postal Service

 

Keith J. Muchowski, a librarian and professor at New York City College of Technology (CUNY) in Brooklyn, writes occasionally for the Morristown National Historical Park Museum & Library blog.