Blood of Tyrants: George Washington & the Forging of the Presidency

by Logan Beirne

  14 Proclamation by the King for Suppressing Rebellion and Sedition (1775), in Thomas Pownall, The Remembrancer, or Impartial Repository of Public Events, 1 (1775), 148.

  15 Ibid.

  16 Washington to Lieutenant General Thomas Gage, August 11, 1775, in The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, 1:289.

  17 For example, the Americans captured twenty-three British troops when they burned the lighthouse in Boston Harbor. The Lost War: Letters from British Officers during the American Revolution, ed. Marion Balderston and David Syrett (New York: Horizon, 1975), 38.

  18 Ibid., 417.

  19 The Americans attacked and burned the lighthouse twice: on July 20 and again, under Washington’s orders, on July 30.

  20 Washington to John Hancock, August 4/5, 1775, in The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, 1:223–30. Number of British killed based on a letter from Lieutenant William Fielding, August 13, 1775, in The Lost War, ed. Balderston and Syrett, 38.

  21 Fielding to Washington, August 13, 1775, 39.

  22 The accuracy of the British intelligence cannot be confirmed. Washington replied to Gage that such intelligence “has not the least Foundation in Truth. Not only your Officers and Soldiers have been treated with a Tenderness, due to Fellow-Citizens, and Brethren, but even those execrable Parricides, whose Counsels and Aid have deluged their Country with Blood, have been protected from the Fury of a justly-enraged People.” Washington to Lieutenant General Thomas Gage, August 19, 1775, in The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, 1:327.

  23 Thomas Gage to Washington, August 13, 1775, in ibid., 1:302.

  24 Washington to John Hancock, August 31, 1775, in ibid., 1:390–93.

  25 Washington to the Massachusetts Legislature, August 14, 1775, in The Writings of George Washington, 3:423–24. Such reprisal was consistent with the laws of war at the time. Unless Congress acts to regulate the matter, as it did during the War of 1812, it is fair to consider retaliatory measures to be within the power of battlefield commanders.

  Chapter 9: American Fortitude

  1 Martin Ignatius Joseph Griffin, Catholics and the American Revolution, 2 (1909), 255.

  2 Connecticut Courant, December 30, 1776, as qtd. in Don N. Hagist, Escape Stories: Major Christopher French, 22nd Regiment.

  3 Major French to Washington, in American Archives, Fourth Series, 3:1545.

  4 Washington to Major French, August 31, 1775, in The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, 1:389.

  5 Washington to Major French, September 26, 1775, in The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, 2:47–48. He did concede, “My Disposition does not allow me, to follow the unworthy Example set me by General Gage, to its fullest Extent . . . .”

  6 Journals of the Continental Congress, 1:400. Congress again repeats much of this language on May 21, 1776, in Journals of the Continental Congress, 4:370.

  7 Stephen Moylan to William Watson, November 16, 1775, in American Archives, Fourth Series, 3:1568.

  8 Washington acted with full cognizance of the resolution. Congress certainly communicated this resolution to Washington since it was directly related to his function and other parts included resolutions “[t]hat the General be directed” to perform other tasks. Ibid.

  9 Edwin G. Burrows, Forgotten Patriots: The Untold Story of American Prisoners during the Revolutionary War (New York: Basic Books, 2008), 38.

  10 Charles A. Jellison, Ethan Allen: Frontier Rebel (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1969), 8.

  11 Ethan Allen, A Narrative of Colonel Ethan Allen’s Captivity (1779; Bedford, Mass.: Applewood Books, 1989), 5–6.

  12 Willard Sterne Randall, Benedict Arnold: Patriot and Traitor (New York: Morrow, 1990), 94. See Kenneth C. Davis, America’s Hidden History: Untold Tales of the First Pilgrims, Fighting Women, and Forgotten Founders Who Shaped a Nation (New York: Smithsonian Books, 2008), 167–71, for a lively and amusing description, which I found helpful.

  13 Allen and Benedict Arnold were fighting for command of the raid.

  14 Jellison, Ethan Allen: Frontier Rebel, 134.

  15 Washington to Philip Schuyler, August 20, 1775, in The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary Series, 1:331–33.

  16 Ibid.

  17 William Glanville Evelyn, Memoir and Letters of Captain W. Glanville Evelyn, of the 4th Regiment from North American, 1774–1776, ed. G. D. Scull (1879), 100.

  18 Allen, A Narrative of Colonel Ethan Allen’s Captivity, 40.

  19 Thomas H. Prescott, An Encyclopedia of History, Biography and Travel, Comprising Ancient and Modern History (1856), 667.

  20 Jellison, Ethan Allen: Frontier Rebel, 159–60.

  21 Evelyn, Memoir and Letters of Captain W. Glanville Evelyn, 100.

  22 Washington Irving, Life of George Washington, 3:11.

  23 Pendennis Castle.

  24 Washington to Sir William Howe, December 18, 1775, in The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary Series, 2:576.

  Chapter 10: Necessary Evil

  1 Thomas J. Fleming, “The Enigma of General Howe,” American Heritage Magazine 15 (1964): 2.

  2 Robert Leckie, George Washington’s War: The Saga of the American Revolution (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), 146.

  3 Sir William Howe, February 21, 1775, qtd. in Benjamin Franklin, Life of Benjamin Franklin (1884), 2:367.

  4 Washington to Howe, December 18, 1775.

  5 Journals of the Continental Congress, 1:402.

  6 Jellison, Ethan Allen: Frontier Rebel, 162–64.

  7 Washington to Henry Laurens, President of the Continental Congress, May 12, 1778, in The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, 15:109.

  8 Michael Pearson, Those Damned Rebels: The American Revolution as Seen through British Eyes (New York: Putnam, 1972), 318.

  9 William Farrand Livingston, Israel Putnam: Pioneer, Ranger, and Major-General, 1718–1790 (1901), 279.

  10 Document 37 in Memoirs of the Long Island Historical Society, vol. 3.

  11 Ibid. The Moravian Church was located just steps from where Washington would be sworn in as president thirteen years later.

  12 Mark M. Boatner III, Encyclopedia of the American Revolution (New York: D. McKay Co., 1974), 1094.

  13 Charles Lee to Washington, February 19, 1776, in The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, 3:340. Thank you to Abigail Beal for her insight on this point.

  14 General Orders, July 2, 1776, in The Papers of George Washington , Revolutionary War Series, 5:180.

  15 Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776.

  16 For an example of this, Jefferson, in his autobiography, gave over only a single paragraph at the start to his family’s lineage and concluded it by saying, “To which let everyone ascribe the faith & merit he chooses.” Thomas Jefferson: Writings, ed. Merrill D. Peterson (New York: Library of America, 1984), 3.

  17 Joseph J. Ellis, American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson (New York: Random House, 1998), 114, 82.

  18 John Torrey Morse, Thomas Jefferson (New York: Houghton Mifflin & Co., 1883), 7.

  19 Ibid., 5; Lance Morrow, “18th Century: Thomas Jefferson,” Time, December 31, 1999.

  20 Morse, Thomas Jefferson, 5.

  21 Jefferson to Henry Lee, May 8, 1825, E-Text Center, University of Virginia Library.

  22 John Adams to Abigail Adams, July 3, 1776, in Adams Family Correspondence, ed. L. H. Butterfield et al. (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1963–2011), 2:30.

  23 Qtd. in McCullough, 1776, 181. Many thanks to David McCullough for providing an excellent account of the Battle of Long Island in his magnificent 1776, which was very helpful in writing this book.

  24 Ibid., 167. Letters to and from Caesar Rodney, Historical Society of Delaware (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1933), 109, qtd. in McCullough, 1776, 202.

  25 Joseph Plumb Martin and James Kirby Martin, Ordinary Courage: The Revolutionary War Adventures of Joseph Plumb Martin (New York: John Wile
y & Sons, 2008), 21.

  26 Ibid., 20–21, qtd. in McCullough, 1776, 188.

  27 McCullough, 1776, 188.

  28 Major Tallmadge’s Account of the Battles of Long Island and White Plains, in Henry P. Johnston, The Campaign of 1776 Around New York and Brooklyn (Project Gutenberg EBook, 2007), Part II, 78; McCullough, 1776, 191.

  29 Qtd. in Danske Dandridge, American Prisoners of the Revolution (Charlottesville: The Michie Co., 1911), 25.

  30 Ibid., 24.

  31 Judge J. B. O’Neal, “Random Recollections of Revolutionary Characters and Incidents,” Southern Literary Journal and Magazine of Arts 4 (July 1838): 40.

  32 Dandridge, American Prisoners of the Revolution, 25.

  33 Ibid., 24.

  34 O’Neal, “Random Recollections of Revolutionary Characters and Incidents,” 40.

  35 John Adams to Abigail Adams, February 17, 1777, in Adams Family Correspondence, 2:163. John Adams wrote to his wife, “I who am always made miserable by the Misery of every sensible being, am obliged to hear continual accounts of the barbarities, the cruel Murders in cold blood . . . committed by our Enemies. . . . These accounts harrow me beyond Description.”

  36 Dandridge, American Prisoners of the Revolution, 25.

  37 “Ebenezer Fox, American Prisoner,” in Dandridge, American Prisoners of the Revolution, 175.

  38 Potter’s American Monthly 2 (1873): 442.

  39 Dandridge, American Prisoners of the Revolution, 36.

  40 Ibid., 34.

  41 Qtd. in M. William Phelps, Nathan Hale: The Life and Death of America’s First Spy (New York: Macmillan, 2008), 186.

  42 Benson J. Lossing, The Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution, 2 (New York: Harper & Bros., 1852), 659.

  43 Dandridge, American Prisoners of the Revolution, 25.

  44 Elias Boudinot, Journal of Events, as excerpted in ibid., 27.

  45 Washington to John Augustine Washington, November 6, 1776, in The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, 7:105.

  46 Washington to Sir William Howe, January 13, 1777, in ibid., 8:60.

  Chapter 11: Fully Justifiable

  1 While Lee was technically the third-in-command, he was widely considered to rank just under Washington while the true second-in-command played only a relatively minor role in the struggle.

  2 John Shy, A People Numerous and Armed: Reflections on the Military Struggle for American Independence, rev. ed. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990), 135.

  3 Barbara Z. Marchant, “Charles Lee: A Disobedient Servant,” in The Revolutionary War in Bergen County: The Times That Tried Men’s Souls, ed. Carol Karels (Charleston: The History Press, 2007), 108.

  4 Edward Langworthy, Memoirs of the Life of the Late Charles Lee (1813), 2.

  5 Ibid., vii.

  6 Ibid., 8.

  7 James Thomas Flexner, George Washington: The Forge of Experience, 1732–1775 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1965), 333.

  8 Shy, A People Numerous and Armed, 135.

  9 Thomas Amory Lee, Colonel William Raymond Lee of the Revolution (1917), 12.

  10 McCullough, 1776, 266.

  11 Arthur D. Pierce, Smugglers’ Woods: Jaunts and Journeys in Colonial and Revolutionary New Jersey (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1960, repr. 1992), 206.

  12 William Glanville Evelyn, Memoir and Letters of Captain W. Glanville Evelyn, of the 4th Regiment from North American, 1774–1776, ed. G. D. Scull (1879), 104.

  13 Washington Irving, Life of George Washington, 1:310.

  14 Banastre Tarleton to Jane Tarleton, December 14, 1776, qtd. in Robert D. Bass, The Green Dragoon: The Lives of Banastre Tarleton and Mary Robinson (New York: Holt, 1957), 20–22.

  15 David Lee Russell, Victory on Sullivan’s Island (Haverford, Penn.: Infinity Publishing, 2002), 254.

  16 Evelyn, Memoir and Letters of Captain W. Glanville Evelyn, 109.

  17 Ibid.

  18 The Lost War: Letters from British Officers during the American Revolution, ed. Marion Balderston and David Syrett (New York: Horizon, 1975), 130.

  19 There is uncertainty as to whether General Lee’s treatment was as harsh as the rumors reported in Scots Magazine suggested. Nevertheless, these rumors prompted the Americans to seek revenge.

  20 Washington to Sir William Howe, January 13, 1777, in The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, 8:59–60.

  21 He said, “your Conduct must and shall mark mine.” Washington to William Howe, January 13, 1777, in The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, 8:60.

  22 Washington to the Continental Congress Executive Committee, January 12, 1777, in The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, 8:45.

  23 Washington to the President of Congress, July 15, 1776, in The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, 5:325.

  24 Samuel Blachley Webb, Correspondence and Journals of Committee to Washington, 2:62. Many thanks to Professor John Fabian Witt for bringing this quote to my attention. It may be found in his excellent account in Lincoln’s Code: The Laws of War in American History (New York: Free Press, 2012), ch. 1.

  25 The American Commissioners to Lord Stormont, April 2, 1777, in The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, ed. William B. Wilcox (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 23:548.

  26 Journals of the Continental Congress, 5:457–58.

  27 Major General Artemas Ward to Washington, June 20, 1776, in The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, 5:60.

  28 As cited in David Lee Russell, Oglethorpe and Colonial Georgia: A History, 1733–1783 (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., 2006), 98.

  29 Charles H. Walcott, Sir Archibald Campbell of Inverneill; Sometime Prisoner of War in the Jail at Concord, Massachusetts (1898), 10; Illustrated Naval and Military Magazine, A monthly journal devoted to all subjects connected with Her Majesty’s land and sea forces 1 (1889): 479.

  30 George Washington to John Hancock, June 30, 1776, in The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, 5:159–60.

  31 Robert A. McGeachy, “The American War of Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Campbell of Inverneill,” Early America Review, Summer/Fall 2001.

  32 Journals of the Continental Congress, January 6, 1777, 7:16.

  33 George Washington to James Bowdoin, February 28, 1777, in The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, 8:461.

  34 Scots Magazine 38 (1776).

  35 Lieutenant Colonel Campbell to General Sir William Howe, Scots Magazine 39 (1777): 249.

  36 Based on portraits of the era.

  37 C. Stedman, History of the American War (1794), 1:169.

  38 McGeachy, “The American War of Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Campbell of Inverneill,” quoting “Letter from ‘Old England,’” Scots Magazine 39 (1777): 250–51.

  39 Evelyn, Memoir and Letters of Captain W. Glanville Evelyn, 108.

  40 See John Richard Alden, General Charles Lee: Traitor or Patriot? (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1951).

  41 Washington to Bowdoin, February 28, 1777.

  42 Ibid.

  43 Walcott, Sir Archibald Campbell of Inverneill, 32.

  44 Irving, Life of George Washington, 3:20.

  45 Journals of the Continental Congress, 7:134.

  46 Ibid., 135.

  47 McGeachy, “The American War of Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Campbell of Inverneill,” quoting “Letter from ‘Old England,’” Scots Magazine 39 (1777): 250–51.

  48 Washington to Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Campbell, March 1, 1777, in The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, 8:469; see Washington to Bowdoin, February 28, 1777.

  49 Journals of the Continental Congress, 7:179.

  50 David Barron and Martin Lederman have disagreed with me on this issue in their excellent article, “The Commander in Chief at the Lowest Ebb—Framing the Problem, Doctrine, and Original Understanding,” Harvard Law Review 121 no. 3 (2008): 689. They argue that Washington was not contravening Congress’s or
ders, since the January 6, 1777 resolution called for Campbell to be treated the same as Lee. They reason that because Washington believed Lee was not being treated as poorly as the reports suggested, he was therefore still abiding by the congressional resolution. However, this does not fully address the issue since it does not take into account Congress’s subsequent order. Congress expanded its justification for mistreatment in the February 28, 1777 order to include Howe’s actions regarding his January 23, 1777 letter in response to the Americans’ efforts to trade for Lee, alone. Thus, even if Washington believed that Lee was being treated better than the Americans’ reports suggested (and therefore, Campbell should be treated the same according to the January 6 resolution), he was acting against Congress’s February 28 order that Campbell be mistreated based on Howe’s conduct alone.

  51 Journals of the Continental Congress, June 2, 1777, 8:411.

  52 Journals of the Continental Congress, March 2, 1781, 19:227.

  53 R. Bickerton to Major John Bowater, March 4, 1778, in The Lost War, ed. Balderston and Syrett, 158.

  54 American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society, The Old Martyrs’ Prison, New York (1902).

  55 See Washington to Howe, January 13, 1777, in The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, 8:59–60. “I am sorry that I am again under the necessity of remonstrating to you upon the Treatment which our prisoners continue to receive in New York. Those, who have lately been sent out, give the most shocking Accounts of their barbarous usage, which their Miserable, emaciated Countenances confirm . . . . [I]f you are determined to make Captivity as distressing as possible, to those whose Lot it is to fall into it, let me know it, that we may be upon equal terms, for your Conduct must and shall mark mine.”

  Chapter 12: To Defend the Nation

  1 Balfour to the Militia prisoners of war, May 17, 1781, in The Remembrancer, or Impartial Repository of Public Events, 13 (1782), 288.

  2 Thomas Anburey, Travels Through the Interior Parts of America (1789; Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1923), 2:295.

  3 Ibid., 78.