Not Your Father's Founders
Page 11
Jones stayed at sea for a few more years with different employers. In 1773, he learned that his brother had died and left him his estate. He returned to Virginia to live.
Two years later he offered his services to the Continental Navy, writing a letter on April 25, 1775, to Joseph Hewes, Robert Morris, and Thomas Jefferson asking for a commission in the navy. Four months later, he was asked to outfit the navy’s first ship, Alfred.
On December 7, 1775, Congress appointed him as the first first lieutenant in the Continental Navy. He was assigned to Alfred, commanded by Stephen Hopkins’s brother, Esek. The navy offered him his own ship to command, either Providence or Fly. Jones turned down the offer and sailed aboard the Alfred because he believed he could learn more about seamanship and fleet maneuvers by serving as a first lieutenant on a warship under the tutelage of an experienced commander than he could by commanding his own ship.
Victory at Sea
Jones’s first voyage went well. The Alfred sailed with an American fleet to New Providence, Nassau, where the crew captured military supplies and gunpowder. En route back to the United States, they captured two British ships and engaged an enemy warship, Cabot, which escaped.
Quotations to Live (and Die) By!
“I WISH TO HAVE NO CONNECTION WITH ANY SHIP THAT DOES NOT SAIL FAST FOR I INTEND TO GO IN HARM’S WAY.”
—JOHN PAUL JONES
After a few routine assignments in the first half of 1776, he received a commission as captain. He quickly demonstrated why Congress and the navy had faith in him.
On September 1, 1776, while commanding Providence, Jones skirmished with two British warships. None of the ships were damaged. Between September 3 and September 8, he captured sixteen enemy merchant vessels off the northeast coast of America. He burned eight of them and sent the rest to port as prizes. He also destroyed a Nova Scotia fishery and wreaked havoc with shipping in the area. His string of successes, however small, deprived the British of ships, sailors, and supplies.
Quotations to Live (and Die) By!
“AN HONORABLE PEACE IS AND ALWAYS WAS MY FIRST WISH! I CAN TAKE NO DELIGHT IN THE EFFUSION OF HUMAN BLOOD; BUT, IF THIS WAR SHOULD CONTINUE, I WISH TO HAVE THE MOST ACTIVE PART IN IT.”
—JOHN PAUL JONES
Jones was making a name for himself, at home, and among his British enemies.
In January 1777, Commodore Hopkins replaced Jones as commander of Providence. Not too long after, Jones assumed command of Ranger, and resumed making life miserable for British shipping into 1778.
REVOLUTIONARY REVELATIONS
Jones received a unique honor on February 14, 1778. Admiral La Motte Piquet, commanding a French squadron, gave Jones, captain of Independence, a thirteen-gun salute and received a nine-gun salute in return. It was the first time a foreign power ever rendered a salute to the American flag.
Older and Bolder
Sailing in foreign waters brought out the best in Jones. On April 22, 1778, he sailed into Whitehaven, on the coast of England, where he spiked guns and burned ships. The next day he visited St. Mary’s Isle, intending to capture the Earl of Selkirk. The earl was not at home, so Jones contented himself with liberating 160 pounds of silver. The British could not let him go on taunting them. But it was not until September 23 that they made a serious attempt to put him and his antiquated ship, Bonhomme Richard, out of commission.
REVOLUTIONARY REVELATIONS
On June 3, 1778, an embarrassed Jones told Benjamin Franklin that he was broke. He had spent £1,500 of his own money, but had not received any wages to offset his expenditure. Finally, on July 25, 1781, Congress approved his accounts and referred him to the Treasury Board for payment.
In one of the most famous battles in naval history, Jones captured and commandeered the British warship Serapis, which was escorting a British convoy carrying naval supplies to England. The Serapis was much larger than the Bonhomme Richard and outgunned it considerably. Jones used his expert seamanship skills to close in on the Serapis, tie the ships together, and negate the larger ship’s firepower advantage. Eventually, Jones’s crew prevailed, although he lost his ship. The Bonhomme Richard was damaged so badly it was no longer seaworthy. It sank between 10 and 11 A.M. on September 25, 1778. The victorious Jones and his crew sailed off aboard the Serapis—and into the annals of naval warfare history.
The battle ended Jones’s fighting career with the U.S. navy. From that point on he was kept busy handling political and administrative affairs in Paris and receiving awards for his bravery and daring.
REVOLUTIONARY REVELATIONS
On July 21, 1778, the King of France received Jones at Versailles and presented him with a gold sword in recognition of his accomplishments on the behalf of independence.
Jones bounced around Europe for a couple years, and negotiated for prize money from Denmark. Then, the Russians asked him to join their navy.
He hoisted his flag as a rear admiral in the Russian navy aboard Wolodimir on May 26, 1788.
In mid-1788, Jones fought against the Turks and performed as brilliantly as he had for the American navy in the Revolutionary War. He left the Russian navy in mid-1789, planning to return to the United States to purchase a farm. It was 127 years before he made the trip.
Jones died in Paris on July 18, 1792, and was buried in a local cemetery. When it came time to exhume his remains and return him to the United States, no one could find his grave.
On July 14, 1848, the secretary of the U.S. Navy, William A. Graham, learned that the Protestant cemetery in the rear of the Hotel Dieu in Paris where Jones was supposed to have been buried had been sold. All the bones were removed to a different location.
Finally, on February 22, 1905, General Horace Porter, U.S. ambassador to France, announced that Jones’s remains had been located. President Theodore Roosevelt dispatched a ship to bring John Paul Jones home. He was reburied at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, at a ceremony in April 1906.
It had been a long trip, but the naval hero of the Revolutionary War was finally home.
RUFUS KING
Scarborough, Massachusetts
March 24, 1755−April 29, 1827
Silent Partner
If anyone sat down in the mid-1700s and drew up a list of top ten prospects for the Founding Fathers’ roster, Rufus King might not have been considered among them. Yet, he completed law school, participated in the Revolutionary War, served in the Massachusetts legislature, the Confederation Congress and the U.S. Senate, and attended the federal Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. And, in a political maneuver that history books don’t cover, he established the precedent of moving from one state to another to earn election to the U.S. Senate. All that from a man whose father had fought for the British army in the French and Indian War and remained a Tory until he died! Rufus was as principled as his father—but on the opposite side.
A Promising Beginning
Rufus King graduated from Harvard in 1777 and began studying law under Theophilus Parsons, the man who convinced Samuel Adams and John Hancock to vote for ratification of the U.S. Constitution.
King took a break from his law studies to participate as a militiaman in the inconclusive Battle of Rhode Island on August 29, 1778. King served as an aide-de-camp to General John Sullivan in the skirmish, which was an unsuccessful American attempt to drive the British out of Newport, Rhode Island, which they had occupied since 1776. The British did not leave the city until October 1779, and even then they departed voluntarily.
After the battle ended, King returned to Boston, finished his law studies, and became a member of the state’s bar. His star began to rise.
FEDERAL FACTS
The Battle of Rhode Island was the first incident in the Revolutionary War in which French forces took part.
Is the Republic Ready for Independence?
In 1783, King was elected to the Massachusetts General Court for the first of three terms. He also served in the Confederation Congress from 1784
to 1787, where he was the youngest member.
One of King’s finest moments in the Congress occurred in 1784, when he supported a five-percent impost it asked from the states to fund its existence. The states did not have any desire to pay it, and Congress’s efforts to collect the levy fell on deaf ears. King took their failure to fulfill their obligations as a personal affront. He was frustrated at every turn, but he worked hard to get all the states to grant the requested money. His efforts were a turning point in waking state governments to the fact that the federal government could not function without the states’ contributions—financial and otherwise.
King worked hard for the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, first as a delegate to the federal convention in Philadelphia in 1787, then as a Massachusetts representative in its ratification proceedings. He was not always sure the people of the United States really cared one way or the other if the Constitution was ratified, but he worked tirelessly anyway.
King was not entirely altruistic. He hoped that Massachusetts would appoint him to the U.S. Senate. It did not—but New York did.
After Massachusetts elected Tristam Dalton as its first U.S. Senator, King, who had hoped to win the seat, invented a time-honored tactic. King moved to another state that would elect him. In 1789, New York named him and Philip Schuyler as its first two U.S. Senators.
Quotations to Live (and Die) By!
“I MYSELF HAVE BEEN AN ADVOCATE FOR A GOVERNMENT FREE AS AIR; MY OPINIONS HAVE BEEN ESTABLISHED UPON THE BELIEF, THAT MY COUNTRY MEN WERE VIRTUOUS, ENLIGHTENED, AND GOVERNED BY A SENSE OF RIGHT & WRONG. I HAVE EVER FEARED THAT IF OUR REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENTS WERE SUBVERTED, IT WOULD BE BY THE INFLUENCE OF COMMER[C]E AND THE PROGRESS OF LUXURY.”
—RUFUS KING
King served one full term in the U.S. Senate and was reelected in 1795, but President George Washington appointed him as the United States’ ambassador to Britain in 1796. He remained in that post until 1803, when he asked President Thomas Jefferson to bring him home.
More Ups and Downs than an Elevator
King ran unsuccessfully as the Federalist Party’s candidate for vice president in 1804 and 1808. He took a break from politics until 1813, when he was elected again to the U.S. Senate. He completed a six-year term, although he interrupted it to run for governor of New York and president of the United States in 1816. He lost both elections.
In the presidential election, James Monroe won 68.2 percent of the popular vote and 183 electoral votes, compared to King’s 30.9 percent and 34 respectively. King had the honor of being the last presidential candidate to be nominated by the Federalist Party.
Undaunted, King returned to the U.S. Senate and won another reelection in 1820. He spent his final term in the Senate campaigning against slavery, which was becoming a hot issue.
After he left the Senate in 1825, King undertook a voyage to England at President John Quincy Adams’s request to become the United States’ ambassador to England. King completed a year in England, but his seventy years of activity were beginning to wear him down and he returned home, dying shortly thereafter. His distinguished record in public service showed that perhaps he should have been on that “Top Ten Prospects” list after all.
HENRY KNOX
Boston, Massachusetts
July 25, 1750–October 25, 1806
Call in the “Big Guns”
Though most know Henry Knox as our nation’s first secretary of war (and the namesake of the United States Army’s famous Fort Knox), he was not always a professional soldier. In fact, before the Revolutionary War began, Knox’s only claim to fame was being a successful bookseller in Boston. However, he turned a new page in his life when the fighting began by joining the militia as an artillery specialist. Knox eventually moved up through the ranks to become the Continental Army’s chief artillery officer, where his crowning achievement was transporting the cannon that made the pivotal difference in the siege of Boston. Later in his life, he became one of the most controversial patriots of the Revolutionary War era.
Opportunity “Knox”
Although he’d been a quiet bookseller in Boston for four years, when the Revolutionary War began Knox quickly became involved in the fighting. He did not have an army commission at the time, yet he directed the American artillery at the Battle of Bunker Hill and helped General Artemas Ward develop fortifications around Boston. Later, Knox was appointed a colonel in the army’s artillery regiment.
REVOLUTIONARY REVELATIONS
Knox abandoned his bookstore—which he had opened on July 29, 1771—when the war began. British army officers stole or destroyed its entire stock.
After British troops and Massachusetts patriots exchanged fire at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, the New England Army, as it was called, established a ring around Boston to contain the British army in the city. George Washington came to Boston to direct the siege, which lasted for eleven months. He recognized that more cannons could help turn the tide in the patriots’ favor. In May 1775, rebels led by Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold had captured numerous cannons and other weapons at Fort Ticonderoga and Crown Point in New York, but they were 300 miles away. Washington couldn’t just call a trucking firm to transport the guns to Boston. Knox said he would do the job. He did, despite the numerous obstacles in his way.
Knox relied on winter weather to transport the equipment between Ticonderoga and Boston, using ox-drawn sleds to do the job.
Knox had to hire workers and buy or rent animals along the route. Occasionally, guns broke through the ice and had to be retrieved. The journey took six weeks, instead of the two he had anticipated, but his tenacity paid off.
On January 25, 1776, Henry Knox reported to Washington in Boston with forty-five cannons and sixteen mortars. He and Washington placed them adroitly on Dorchester Heights, above the British troops. British General William Howe realized that the artillery put Washington at a distinct advantage. The “rumpus” Washington expected did not materialize because Howe and his troops left Boston and sailed to Nova Scotia. Knox and Washington, destined to become close friends and military leaders, departed to fight other battles. Washington took his troops to New York. Knox helped set up defensive positions in Rhode Island and Connecticut before joining him there.
Quotations to Live (and Die) By!
“WE ARE PREPARING TO TAKE POSSESSION OF A POST WHICH WILL, IT IS GENERALLY THOUGHT, BRING ON A RUMPUS BETWEEN US AND THE ENEMY.”
—GEORGE WASHINGTON, REGARDING DORCHESTER HEIGHTS
Crossing the Delaware
The Continental Army had a bad year in 1776. The British chased them from New York to New Jersey. Washington’s raggedy army escaped the enemy by crossing the Delaware River on December 8, 1776. They had the foresight to seize all the boats along the river so the British could not follow them. The Americans did not stay on their side of the river for long, though. On Christmas night, they recrossed the river and captured 1,000 Hessian mercenaries fighting on the side of the British, along with their supplies. Knox directed the operation, which was a turning point in the war. It raised the troops’ confidence and morale and bode badly for the British.
There were a few skirmishes after Christmas, during which Knox and his troops performed admirably. He earned a commendation from Washington for his exploits—but not a rest. In fact, he almost lost his position.
Silas Deane, the American minister to France, connived to have a French officer named Philippe Charles Tronson du Coudray (sometimes spelled Ducondray) replace Knox as Washington’s chief artillery officer. He recruited du Coudray in France and sent him to General Washington with a recommendation that the Frenchman be appointed chief of artillery and the engineering corps. Du Coudray interviewed with Washington and then presented his credentials to Congress. Washington appealed to Congress and saved Knox’s job. Congress compromised; on August 11, 1777, it appointed du Coudray to a position as an inspector general.
Washington’s army crossed the Delaware River again and set up a winter c
amp at Morristown, New Jersey. Knox returned to Massachusetts to raise a battalion of troops and establish an arsenal at Springfield that proved valuable to the Americans for the rest of the war. Then his role changed. He became a fundraiser.
Show Me the Money
There was one thing Washington needed five years into war more than guns: money. He asked Knox to raise funds for him. Knox completed his mission successfully—and displayed his versatility once again.
In 1782 he was posted at West Point, where he remained until the British finally agreed to leave New York and the war ended. Knox then returned to Boston to continue his service to the United States.
An Unfortunate Demise
Congress appointed Knox to a position as secretary of war in 1785. He continued in that position until 1794, when he resigned due to the time-honored excuse of family obligations. His claim was not too far-fetched: Knox and his wife Lucy had thirteen children, of which only one survived to adulthood. And he was building a new house in Thomaston, Maine, to which he wanted to retire. The house was actually a mansion, and it created tension between Knox and the residents of Thomaston.