3. Another vital reason for remaining in the region was the location of the forges specific to southeastern Pennsylvania, which has an abundance of ore deposits and was the hub of American iron production. These forges were vital to casting weapons of war, thus the need to protect them from falling into British hands. Originally called the Mount Joy Forge, the furnace closest to Washington’s camp soon became known by locals as the “valley forge,” due to its location.
4. Propaganda, often misconstrued as a modern term, is from the Latin for “to propagate.” In 1622, Pope Gregory XV established the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, also known as the Propaganda Fide. In time, the word propaganda was applied to any attempt to spread an ideology.
5. The difference between Hessians, who are fighting for the British, and Prussians is partly a matter of geography. Hessians took their name from the Hesse-Kassel and Hesse-Hanau regions of what is now central Germany. The Kingdom of Prussia was much larger, at one time stretching across northern Germany from Denmark to what is now the Czech Republic.
6. Many of von Steuben’s methods of drill and training are still in use today. He is considered by some historians to be the father of the U.S. Army.
7. The connection between human waste and the spread of deadly diseases such as cholera may seem like common sense, but as late as the Mexican-American War, in the 1840s, American troops were still defecating in the same rivers and streams they used for washing clothes, drinking water, and cooking.
Chapter 19
1. Notes on the State of Virginia, 1781.
2. Jefferson never acknowledged the relationship. It first came to light in 1802, during his first term as president, when political pamphleteer and journalist James T. Callender published a report in a Richmond, Virginia, newspaper alleging that Jefferson “kept, as a concubine one of his slaves”; that “her name is Sally”; and that Jefferson had “several children” by her. Sally Hemings never commented on the subject, and Jefferson had a policy of offering no public response to personal attacks. Some do not believe the story, but after substantial inquiry and DNA testing, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which oversees and maintains Monticello, issued this public statement in 2012: “Today TJF [Thomas Jefferson Foundation] and most historians believe that, years after his wife’s death, Thomas Jefferson was the father of the six children of Sally Hemings mentioned in Jefferson’s records.” A complete copy of the “Report of the Research Committee on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings” can be found at Monticello.org.
Chapter 20
1. The slave-trading firm of Austin and Laurens, which Henry Laurens owned with his brother-in-law, George Austin, brought almost eight thousand slaves into America between 1751 and 1761. The sales of these human beings made Laurens one of the richest men in America.
2. The Anglo-French naval battles in the Caribbean are an oft-overlooked offshoot of the Revolutionary War. During the summer of 1778, the French blockaded Barbados and Jamaica and seized the islands of Dominica and Grenada outright. In addition to their strategic value, Caribbean islands were a source of rum and the lucrative sugar crop.
3. Despite the fact that rape and other atrocities were hanging offenses, such acts occurred. An example is the British headquarters notation of March 14, 1778, stating that a Cpl. John Fisher was sentenced to be hanged by the neck until dead for “a rape on the body of Maria Nicolls, a woman child of nine years of age.” Very often, however, rape was such a shameful act that women kept it a secret to avoid their own punishment. In the case of Maria Nicolls, whose father was a sergeant in the British Army, she refused to share her story until exacting a promise from her own mother “that if she would not beat her, she would tell.”
4. Conditions were so overcrowded that American soldiers awaiting treatment slept on the floor and even the stairs. Those who survived were transferred to the Walnut Street Jail, where they were forced to endure the winter on a starvation diet of rats and shoe leather. The bodies of those who did not survive the hospital were tossed into a pit behind the building, along with the skeletons of dead horses and piles of trash. The aroma of decay was so vile that the returning Congress was initially unable to meet in the State House, and temporarily relocated to the College of Pennsylvania, on Fourth and Arch Streets.
5. Rebel military authorities did not want ships roaming the seas for fear of their being captured by the British.
6. Arnold’s home was known as the Masters-Penn Mansion, and was located at 524–30 Market Street. In addition to housing Howe and then Arnold, it would serve as the Presidential Mansion from 1790 to 1800, home to America’s first two presidents until the White House was built in Washington, DC. The main building was demolished in 1832, but the mansion’s former location on what is now Independence Mall led to archaeological efforts to unearth the ruins. These findings, which include the site of George Washington’s slave quarters during his time in office, are now an open-air museum.
7. The extended Shippen family, for whom Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, is named, was deeply divided on the subject of American independence. Peggy Shippen’s uncle was George Washington’s director general of military hospitals for the Continental Army at Valley Forge. His brothers-in-law Francis Lightfoot Lee and Richard Henry Lee famously signed the Declaration of Independence, and their cousin Henry “Lighthorse Harry” Lee would not only rise to the rank of general during the Revolutionary War, but would also father Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general of American Civil War fame.
Chapter 21
1. The Marquis de Chastellux, a French general visiting Philadelphia, would be the source of this hearsay.
2. Once a country estate, Mount Pleasant now lies within Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park district. The home is open to the public for tours.
3. Richard Penn was the grandson of William Penn, the founder and namesake of Pennsylvania.
4. William Franklin was released from jail in 1778 as part of a prisoner exchange with the Americans. Franklin’s zeal for the British cause only increased during his incarceration. He set up residence in the Loyalist stronghold of New York upon his release and was soon named president of the Board of Associated Loyalists, a group dedicated to spreading terror by murdering patriots in cold blood.
5. The name is an allusion to George Monck, a seventeenth-century English patriot who was instrumental in restoring the monarchy to England in 1660.
Chapter 22
1. The most effective method of getting the attention of the entire crew at once was the use of the drum and fife. Armies and navies of the era used drums to broadcast signals. The most urgent was the continuous drumroll that signaled “to arms,” the call to form for battle.
2. Jones owed much of his success to the patronage of Benjamin Franklin in Paris. Franklin’s pseudonymous writings, compiled in Poor Richard’s Almanack, were translated into French as Les Maximes du Bonhomme Richard. Thus, when the French loaned the aging freighter the Duc de Duras to the Americans, Jones rechristened it in Franklin’s honor upon taking command in February 1779.
3. Jones’s continued triumphs stands in marked contrast to that of the French and Spanish, whose attempt to invade England was called off in the summer of 1779 due to storms, poor communication, sickness, lack of supplies, and overall inept planning.
4. Grog is a mixture of rum and water, named after its inventor, British vice admiral Edward Vernon, who was fond of wearing a suit made of grogram (a coarse fabric woven from silk, mohair, or wool) and went by the nickname “Old Grog.” The standard ration was a half pint of rum mixed with a quart of water per day.
5. The precise wording of Jones’s defiance is the subject of much debate. The authors defer to the U.S. Naval Academy’s interpretation, which quotes these exact words.
6. In a normal day at sea, the gun deck is
the hub of shipboard life, a place where sailors eat their meals and sling their hammocks for their four hours of sleep when not standing watch. The gun ports, just six feet above the waterline, are kept closed at all times. Their closure ensures complete darkness but also keeps out the sea spray that chills the crew. The gun deck is a place for backgammon and, for those few seamen who are literate, reading. It smells worse than a barnyard, as the men will go unwashed throughout the entirety of their voyage.
7. Captain Pearson will be taken as a prisoner of war. Initially gracious, he will become angry and restive during his captivity. Upon his return to England months after the battle, he will be hailed as a hero for preventing the loss of the convoy and will eventually be knighted.
Chapter 23
1. An archaic word meaning a “harsh woman.”
2. Washington meant to attack New York in a joint land-and-sea invasion as early as July 8, 1778, after the battle at Monmouth. However, he was forced to remain in a defensive stance outside the city for a number of reasons, including the reluctance of the French fleet to sail into New York Harbor to engage the British Navy. The British have superiority in troop strength, and the rebel force is further compromised due to a lack of pay, clothing, food, and an all-around national fatigue over the war. The British officers’ decision to focus their strategy on the south further weakened the size of Washington’s fighting force when it became necessary to shift men from the North to the southern theater.
3. Members of local militias were not taken prisoner, but instead allowed to return to their homes in exchange for not taking up arms against the British again. General Lincoln was held for a few months and then exchanged in a prisoner swap. The American Congress launched an investigation into his behavior, but it was never concluded.
4. Elizabeth Jackson’s husband died in a logging accident at the age of twenty-nine. The tragedy occurred just weeks before the birth of his youngest son and namesake. His other two sons, Hugh and Robert, died as soldiers during the Revolutionary War at the respective ages of sixteen and seventeen.
Chapter 24
1. Gates’s military career effectively ended after the slaughter at Camden. He made a number of grave errors during the battle, including placing green recruits against the British Army’s toughest infantry and feeding his soldiers a diet heavy in molasses beforehand, causing many to suffer from severe intestinal distress, which limited their ability to fight effectively. The loss of troops, artillery, and the entire baggage train, coupled with Gates’s inexplicable decision to retreat almost two hundred miles on horseback, left him in utter disgrace. Congress convened a court-martial, though the general’s few remaining supporters ended the inquiry. After that, in 1782, he was asked to join General Washington’s staff, but he was never allowed to command men in battle. Gen. Horatio Gates died in Manhattan in 1806. Like many figures of the Revolutionary War, he is buried at Trinity Church in Manhattan. However, the exact location of his grave has been lost to history.
2. The words come from a letter written by Gen. Horatio Gates to Congress on September 9, 1780. Despite his hasty retreat from Camden, Gates is still in command of the Continental Army’s southern division. The words were read aloud in Congress on September 20, 1780.
Chapter 25
1. The “Great Chain” across the Hudson stretched from Constitution Island to West Point. It was six hundred yards long. Each link weighed 114 pounds and measured two feet long. A series of log rafts along the length of the chain provided buoyancy, ensuring that the chain did not sink below the surface, and thus prevented enemy ships from sailing upriver. First installed in 1778, the chain was removed each winter to avoid its destruction by ice. Several links of the Great Chain can still be seen in a monument at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point.
2. Washington traveled light and fast, his party numbering just a handful of staff plus his bodyguards.
3. Alexander Hamilton described the scene in a letter to his fiancée, Elizabeth:
I saw an amiable woman frantic with distress for the loss of a husband she tenderly loved—a traitor to his country and to his fame, a disgrace to his connections. It was the most affecting scene I ever was witness to. She for a considerable time entirely lost her senses. The General went up to see her and she upbraided him with being in a plot to murder her child; one moment she raved; another she melted into tears; sometimes she pressed her infant to her bosom and lamented its fate occasioned by the imprudence of its father in a manner that would have pierced insensibility itself. All the sweetness of beauty, all the loveliness of innocence, all the tenderness of a wife and all the fondness of a mother showed themselves in her appearance and conduct. We have every reason to believe she was entirely unacquainted with the plan, and that her first knowledge of it was when Arnold went to tell her he must banish himself from his Country and from her forever. She instantly fell into a convulsion and he left her in that situation.
Peggy was allowed to return to her father’s home in Philadelphia. At first she was treated with great sympathy, for few believed she had been in on the plot. However, when the contents of Benedict Arnold’s personal letters were studied, there was enough evidence of her role in the conspiracy that authorities demanded that she leave Pennsylvania and be returned to her husband in New York.
Chapter 26
1. Jefferson’s behavior as a wartime governor will lead to an inquiry into his failure to prepare for the invasion of Richmond. He will be found not guilty.
2. John Champe served in the British Army for several months before successfully fleeing back to American lines. He wished to return to combat immediately, but Washington forbade it, knowing that Champe would be immediately executed as a spy if captured by the British.
3. Forty-three-year-old Lund Washington went on board the Savage carrying a small amount of poultry as a gift to the ship’s captain, pleading that Mount Vernon be spared. Later, Lund sent large amounts of livestock to the ship as a gift. George Washington, seeing this as aiding and abetting the enemy, was furious when Lafayette informed him what had happened—yet Lund Washington’s actions saved the Mount Vernon estate from being destroyed.
4. Thomas Jefferson’s records show that he spent £108 for medicine. This translates to more than $18,000 in modern money. The notation was made on April 17, two days after baby Lucy’s death, so it is not clear whether the money was for the infant or her ill mother.
5. The signers are Jefferson, Thomas Nelson, Benjamin Harrison, and Richard Henry Lee. None of these men will be captured. Though not a signer of the Declaration, Daniel Boone is also among the legislators in Virginia, dressed in the buckskin of a backwoodsman. He will be taken captive by Tarleton but later released after being imprisoned in a coal bin. The reasons for Boone’s being let go are a mystery, but there are suggestions that he signed a pledge not to take up arms against the British.
6. Despite his success in Virginia, Benedict Arnold returned to New York City an unpopular man. Many British officers still held him accountable for the death of Major André. Arnold did not help matters by being openly critical of British commander in chief Henry Clinton. In September 1781, he was given command of an expedition against the port of New London, Connecticut, just miles from Norwich, the town in which he grew up. In a savage display of brutality, he ordered his troops to set fire to New London. The local fortress, Fort Griswold, was captured in the fighting. The rebel troops surrendered after a day of heavy fighting, but more than one hundred survivors were stripped and massacred.
Chapter 27
1. Approximately $34,000 in modern currency.
2. From a letter to Governor Thomas Sim Lee of Maryland, dated August 27, 1781. Supineness is a word for inertia, apathy, or passivity.
Chapter 28
1. The Tidewater region of Virginia, where Yorktown is located, was known for being malarial. T
he gestation period for malaria is one month between the date of the mosquito bite and the onset of the illness. Having been in Yorktown for two months, the British had long been exposed to the malarial Anopheles mosquito. The Americans and French had been in the Tidewater region for only a few weeks during the Siege of Yorktown, and suffered far fewer instances of malaria. However, one such American death was that of John Parke Custis, George Washington’s twenty-six-year-old stepson.
2. The “recent provocations” to which Hamilton refers is the slaughter of surrendering American soldiers during Benedict Arnold’s raid on New London, Connecticut, six weeks earlier. Due to the British believing the rebels to be traitors, they sometimes showed little mercy. As one British officer wrote after a battle earlier in the war, “The Hessians and brave Highlanders gave no quarters, and it was a fine sight to see with what alacrity they dispatched the rebels with their bayonets after we had surrounded them so they could not resist.”
3. The captured British and German troops were assigned to prison camps in Maryland and Virginia. Cornwallis was treated well as a general officer, being granted a parole by George Washington to join the British garrison in New York and eventually allowed to sail home to England. Benedict Arnold was a fellow passenger on that voyage, with both men reaching Portsmouth in January 1782.
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