Not Your Father's Founders

by Arthur G. Sharp

  One of the last battles in which Sumter fought was at Hanging Rock, South Carolina, on August 6, 1780. His troops attacked the Prince of Wales’s American Regiment, composed of American Tories and supporting British units. Sumter’s troops decimated the regiment, although the outcome of the battle was a draw. The patriots gained a sense of satisfaction because of the damage they inflicted on the Tory troops. For Sumter, it was a fitting farewell from the war.

  Sumter then took a leave of absence from the Continental Army due to illness. The British burned and looted his home in 1780. After that, he rejoined the militia and set off on a vendetta against the British. He raised troops by promising each new recruit a slave, a horse, and the right to keep what he liberated (a.k.a. stole). That was too much for the governor, who vetoed Sumter’s promise.

  Things did not always go the way Sumter planned them after his return to the battlefield. He suffered an embarrassing defeat at Fishing Creek on August 18, 1780, when British General Banastre Tarleton caught Sumter’s forces by surprise and routed them, even though the British were outnumbered almost four to one.

  It was a humiliating setback for Sumter. He got revenge later that year at Blackstock’s, on November 20, a battle in which the British suffered ten casualties to each one incurred by the patriots. Sumter was wounded in the back and chest that day. By this time, Sumter was operating more or less on his own, using guerilla-style tactics successfully. His hit-and-run attacks wore the British down.

  The war in the South was wearing down, though, and Sumter’s military career was over once General Cornwallis pulled up stakes and moved north in 1781.

  FEDERAL FACTS

  In between the battles in 1780, South Carolina Governor Edward Rutledge promoted Sumter to brigadier general. He was the last surviving general of the war.

  From General to Senator

  The people of South Carolina were kind to Sumter after the war. He would have preferred to stay on his plantation in Statesburg raising horses, which was a passion of his. But he accepted positions in the U.S. House of Representatives (1789–93, 1797–1801) and U.S. Senate (1801–10). That ended his public career.

  Sumter lived for the next twenty-two years in well-earned privacy. He and his fellow South Carolina military leaders had shown that aggressiveness and innovative tactics could win battles—and ultimately a war. Sumter, like the country, had suffered a few setbacks along the way, but that was to be expected in a fight for independence.

  BENJAMIN TALLMADGE

  Brookhaven or Setauket, New York

  February 25, 1754–March 7, 1835

  Spymaster

  Yale graduate Benjamin Tallmadge was the superintendent of the high school at Wethersfield, Connecticut, when the Revolutionary War began. The fever of rebellion burning in so many patriots in the early 1770s afflicted him after the battles of Lexington and Bunker Hill. He joined the army in 1776 and set up the “Culper Ring,” a group of spies, to keep General Washington apprised of British movements in and around New York City. He operated in secrecy, while many of his friends worked openly to defy the British. His undercover role was what made him so valuable to the American cause—and set him apart from his fellow patriots.

  Loss of a Brother

  Like so many of his fellow patriots, Tallmadge was from a middle-class background. His father was a Presbyterian minister, and there was nothing special about the young man’s upbringing. By the time he graduated from Yale in 1773, the country was on the brink of war. Once the fighting began, he joined the army.

  Extensive training was not an option for young soldiers in the 1770s. They enlisted one day and fought the enemy in the next battle. That was the case with Tallmadge. He received a commission as a lieutenant dated June 20, 1776, and engaged in the Battle of Long Island on August 27 that year. He was willing to do anything for the cause—especially after his brother died.

  One of the Americans captured by the British at the battle of Long Island was Tallmadge’s oldest brother William. The manner of his death infuriated Benjamin—he was starved to death, and the British did not allow any visitors to relieve his suffering. The cruelty and grief provided him with a personal incentive to defeat the British.

  FEDERAL FACTS

  The Battle of Long Island was the first major meeting of British and American troops after the Declaration of Independence was signed. It also turned out to be the largest single battle of the war, and a significant victory for the British.

  The Culper Ring

  After the Battle of Long Island ended, the newly promoted Major Benjamin Tallmadge transferred to the Second Dragoons. The unit fought up and down the East Coast for the rest of the war. They were especially busy during 1777. By mid-1778 they were back in the New York City area, and Tallmadge began a new career.

  In 1778, General Washington asked Tallmadge to provide intelligence for the Continental Army about British operations around New York City. Tallmadge responded by setting up the Culper Ring, the most successful group of spies on either side in the Revolutionary War.

  Tallmadge sought some trustworthy people who would be willing to place their lives on the line to help the patriots’ cause. He visited Setauket, Long Island, and recruited a group of his childhood friends to conduct covert operations behind British lines on Long Island. From that point, the British found it difficult to make a move near New York City without a spy reporting on their activities.

  Tallmadge realized that secret agents could not operate under their own names. He adopted the name John Bolton. One of his operatives, Abraham Woodhull, became Samuel Culper Sr. A third member, Robert Townsend, who joined the group later, assumed the moniker Samuel Culper Jr.

  FEDERAL FACTS

  Even though Tallmadge became one of the Continental Army’s premier spies during the Revolutionary War, one of his classmates at Yale was less successful. That was Nathan Hale, whom the British hanged on September 22, 1776, for spying.

  Eye Spy

  The Culper Ring set up an elaborate network to uncover and transmit information to General Washington. Woodhull gathered information and observed British naval operations. He compiled reports he thought would interest Washington. Then, he gave dispatches to Caleb Brewster.

  Caleb Brewster was particularly daring. He operated a fleet of whaleboats on Long Island Sound, which gave him access to several ports in the area. The British knew he was a spy, but that did not deter him from slipping in and out of places under their noses and collecting information about their operations.

  Brewster carried the dispatches across Long Island Sound to Fairfield, Connecticut, and turned them over to Tallmadge. He, in turn, delivered them to General Washington.

  Woodhull always felt as if he was one step away from being captured, so in 1779 he recruited a prominent New York City merchant, Robert Townsend, to act as the ring’s primary agent there. Townsend provided significant services to the operation.

  The Culper Ring operated for five years without detection, although its activities tailed off after 1780. Some of the information it uncovered paid off handsomely.

  In 1780, members thwarted British plans to ambush the newly arrived French army in Rhode Island. That same year it helped unravel the plot between British intelligence officer Major John André and Benedict Arnold to turn the American fort at West Point, New York, over to the British army, although historians are at odds about their actual role in doing so.

  FEDERAL FACTS

  One of the ring’s cleverest ruses was the use of a clothesline to air the British’s “dirty laundry.” In 1778, the British confined one of Woodhull’s neighbors, Selah Strong, a patriot judge, to a prison ship. The judge’s wife, Anna Smith Strong, was on her own as a result. She joined the Culper Ring. Reportedly, she arranged the laundry on her clothesline as signals to let Brewster and Woodhull know where to meet.

  Tallmadge’s spy activities did not interfere with his military obligations. He continued to lead his troops in battle, including members of his ring. Ca
leb Brewster fought with Tallmadge in November 1780, when American troops captured Fort St. George at Mastic, New York.

  REVOLUTIONARY REVELATIONS

  Tallmadge was a faithful ringleader during and after the war. To the end, he would not reveal who the members were—not even to George Washington.

  Life in Litchfield

  After the war, Tallmadge settled down in Litchfield, Connecticut. He became the town’s postmaster in 1792, and a successful banker and merchant.

  Tallmadge served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1801–17 as a Federalist, where he butted heads often with his fellow revolutionaries turned political opponents, particularly the Democratic-Republicans Jefferson and Madison.

  By the time he died in 1835, he was retired from politics and business—and was living life completely in the open.

  JAMES THACHER

  Barnstable, Massachusetts

  1754–1844

  One Significant Contribution

  James Thacher was twenty-one years old and just out of medical school when he began treating Revolutionary War soldiers in 1775. He is best known for his writings, including an 1823 military journal which revealed valuable information about the quality—or lack thereof—of medical facilities and treatment available to soldiers during the war. Harvard and Dartmouth presented him with honorary master of arts and doctor of medicine degrees, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences named him a fellow. He wasn’t always a popular “fellow” with his colleagues, though. He was sometimes outspoken and critical of American medical services during the war, which is something historians tend to overlook.

  Quacks Need Not Apply

  After James Thacher finished medical school in mid-1775, he apprenticed to the Cape Cod physician Abner Hersey, one of the early members of the Massachusetts Medical Society. Thacher was barely of legal age when he became a doctor in the Continental Army.

  Even though the Continental Army did not give soldiers’ medical treatment a high priority at the beginning of the Revolutionary War, it did apply strict criteria to the selection of doctors. In Thatcher’s selection group, sixteen candidates for assignments as doctors with the Continental Army assembled for their entrance exams in early July 1775. They appeared for four hours in front of a board for examination. Board members grilled them about four subjects: anatomy, physiology, surgery, and medicine. Only ten of the candidates were accepted. The others were rejected as being unqualified.

  Thacher cleared the qualifying hurdle and earned acceptance into the army’s medical corps. He was appointed to a post as a surgeon’s mate in the provincial hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where John Warren was the senior surgeon. Thacher looked at that as a benefit, because of Warren’s excellent reputation and his compassionate care of the soldiers.

  FEDERAL FACTS

  Smallpox, which John Adams said was “ten times more terrible than Britons, Canadians, and Indians together,” killed more people than bullets during the Revolutionary War.

  Thacher started working on July 15 in “hospitals.” They were really large private homes in Cambridge which were open to accommodate the soldiers who had been wounded at Breed’s (Bunker) Hill or contracted one of the various diseases that ravaged them and the population in general at the time. As bad as the hospitals were in 1775, they got worse as the fighting intensified.

  Thacher did not stay in Cambridge long. Later, he participated in the expedition of Ticonderoga and at the siege of Yorktown. Thacher witnessed the surrender of General Cornwallis and the execution of Major John André before retiring from army service in 1783 and settling in Plymouth, Massachusetts. During his eight-year enlistment, he produced some intriguing observations.

  Descriptive, If Not Educational

  Thacher’s written contributions did not reveal any major medical milestones. Rather, they gave vivid pictures of hospitals, doctors, and treatments at the time. Thacher had the opportunity to work with Dr. Jonathan Potts, who managed the army’s northern department of medical services. Potts, like so many other department heads, was overworked, understaffed, and poorly supplied.

  REVOLUTIONARY REVELATIONS

  Thacher was a hard worker. At the hospitals in Saratoga in 1777, he cared for patients daily from 8 A.M. to late evening. Generally, he had twenty wounded men under his care at any one time.

  Because Thacher spent so much time working with wounded soldiers, he had little time for research, which was not unusual as the war progressed. Whatever new techniques or treatments he applied were learned through repetition, practice, and osmosis.

  Very few doctors had a chance to do any innovative research during the war, since the demands on their time limited their abilities to find new ways to treat sick and wounded soldiers. They did what they could. Thacher simply reported on their endeavors, rather than contribute significantly to research efforts.

  Among his observations, Thacher alluded to the fact that the medical community had not made any groundbreaking inroads into treating disease or illness six years into the war in an April 20, 1781, journal entry. He commented that 187 soldiers in his regiment had contracted smallpox. Worse, he noted, the lack of food hindered any treatment.

  The military medical community was unhappy with the perpetual shortage of food and supplies at its disposal throughout the war. Men like Thacher and Benjamin Rush did their best with what they had.

  After the War

  When the war ended, Thacher returned to Massachusetts and established a private practice. He had not distinguished himself from other military surgeons with whom he had served. His most significant contribution came forty years later.

  Thacher busied himself with his medical practice and civic projects in his hometown of Plymouth. In 1796, he and his brother-in-law, Dr. Nathan Hayward, established the first stagecoach line between Plymouth and Boston. Thacher introduced the tomato plant and the use of anthracite coal in Plymouth.

  Like his mentor, Dr. Hersey, Thacher became a member of the Massachusetts Medical Society. His willingness to adopt new ideas and advance ideas that most of his peers had not even considered made him one of the most respected members of the association.

  He wrote several books, including Observations on Hydrophobia (1812), A Practical Treatise on the Management of Bees (1829), and An Essay on Demonology, Ghosts, Apparitions and Popular Superstitions. His military journal became Thacher’s biggest contribution to the history of the Revolutionary War.

  James Thacher’s name may never be mentioned in the same breath with John Adams, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, or other Founding Fathers, but he did make that one significant contribution to the lore of the war. That was all it took to preserve his memory.

  GEORGE WALTON

  Cumberland County, Virginia

  Late 1749 or early 1750–February 2, 1804

  Where’s Walton?

  Walton, a successful lawyer in Georgia, was a political neophyte in 1776 when Georgia sent its somewhat dysfunctional trio of representatives to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. Walton held the distinction of being one of the youngest signers of the Declaration of Independence, if not the youngest.

  Glad You Could Make It

  George Walton’s parents died when he was an infant. (The exact year of his birth is unknown. Some sources list it as 1741, others as 1749. Either way, he was fairly young when he signed the document.) An uncle, who discouraged Walton from pursuing book learning, raised him. Nevertheless, the determined young man attended public schools in his native Virginia, and apprenticed as a carpenter. There was no better trade for building a nation, which Walton helped accomplish.

  Most importantly, he was known for his anti-British politics and the pro-independence pamphlets he wrote. He had an impressive background in Georgia, where he had been elected to its Provincial Congress in 1775 and served as a member and president of the Committee of Intelligence. He was also a member and later president of the Council of Safety in 1775.

  Still, he was unprepared fo
r what he encountered when he arrived in Philadelphia. He was like the proverbial fish out of water compared to the better educated delegates to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia.

  There was so little coordination among the three Georgia delegates—Walton, Lyman Hall, and Button Gwinnett—that they traveled separately and arrived at different times. They almost did not arrive in time for the voting. Walton, Hall, and Gwinnett may have arrived in Philadelphia in the middle of the day, but they were completely in the dark about what was going on. The Congress was in no hurry to vet them. Even though Walton’s selection as a delegate to the Congress was effective as of January 1776, he did not arrive in Philadelphia until late June. It was not until July 1 that the Secretary of the Congress approved his credentials certifying that he had been duly elected to Congress and had the right to serve. (Every delegate to the Congress had to present such credentials before they were seated and could participate on committees and vote.)

  FEDERAL FACTS

  Even though they had arrived in Philadelphia too late to participate fully in discussions about independence or contribute in a meaningful way to the writing of the final document, all three Georgia delegates signed the final draft of the Declaration of Independence. Their names are placed conspicuously on the left edge of the document, where they are almost as prominent as John Hancock’s in the middle. George Walton was the last of three to sign.