On November 19, 1794, John Jay, representing George Washington’s administration, affixed his signature to a document bearing his name in history. The Jay Treaty. Although the official name of the pact was “The Treaty of Amity, Commerce, and Navigation, Between His Britannic Majesty and the United States of America.”
The treaty’s aim was to resolve outstanding issues from the conclusion of the American Revolutionary War and facilitate economic trade. Although some of the clauses were not fulfilled completely and another war, the War of 1812, erupted because of it, the treaty did serve a purpose. The agreement ushered in a decade of trade between the two countries and gave the fledgling nation a chance to gain footing, a major concern for George Washington, as first president. The treaty also cemented the promise that Great Britain would vacate the forts in the Northwest Territory and agreed to arbitration on the boundary between Canada and the United States and the pre-American Revolutionary War debt.
Yet, the treaty was divisive. Even Jay remarked that he could find his way in the dead of night by the illumination of his own effigy. The treaty angered the French as that country was amid its revolutionary throes, and bitterly divided the nation. Out of it came the separation into two political parties, the Federalists, who supported the treaty, and the Democratic-Republicans who stood opposed to it.
The treaty was ratified by the Senate on June 24, 1795, with an exact two-thirds majority, 20 to 10 along with being passed by William Pitt the Younger, prime minister of Great Britain and his government, and took effect on February 29, 1796.
Historian Joseph Ellis wrote that the Jay Treaty was “a shrewd bargain for the United States” and “a precocious preview of the Monroe Doctrine.” As one of Washington’s most fervent wishes, the treaty “postponed war with England until America was economically and politically more capable of fighting one.”
For this week’s “Rev War Revelry” Emerging Revolutionary War ventures to the west to discuss the recently published book, “Till the Extinction of this Rebellion, George Rogers Clark, Frontier Warfare, and the Illinois Campaign of 1778-1779.” The author, Eric Sterner, is a contributor to the Emerging Revolutionary War, along with the author of An Anatomy of a Massacre: The Destruction of Gnadenhutten, 1782. When not writing history, Sterner had a career in government and public policy besides contributing to the literature and study of the American Revolutionary War era.
This book, published by Westholme Publishing, examines the viewpoints of the American, British, and Indigenous perspectives and illustrates the wide impact of the American Revolution on the peoples west of the Appalachian Mountains. What happened with Clark’s movements and campaign will lay the foundation for American expansion and the “opening of the West” following the American Revolution.
We hope you can join us for this historian happy hour this Sunday at 7 p.m. on our Facebook channel. If you miss it, we will post the revelry on our YouTube channel. Just search “Emerging Revolutionary War” to subscribe.
Although 1781 is most known for the pivotal and successful victory at Yorktown, action in the American Revolution unfolded throughout the eastern seaboard. In early September 1781, Benedict Arnold returned to the land of his birth to lead a raid on New London and the port that harbored preying privateers.
During this raid, the American militia under Lieutenant Colonel William Ledyard especially, stoutly defended Fort Griswold until overcome by superior numbers. The town of New London was also torched and saw a rarity like the battle of Trenton, in that combatants fought through the very streets of the town.
Capturing all this and uncovering new primary sources, Matthew Reardon weaves a narrative that balances military history, from the fighting to the strategies, with the impact on New London and Connecticut. His book, “The Traitor’s Homecoming, Benedict Arnold’s Raid on New London, Connecticut, September 4 – 13, 1781” was recently published by Savas Beatie, LLC. Matthew is a native of northeastern Connecticut and is a public educator along with being a command historian for the Connecticut Military Department. He can be reached for inquiries on speaking engagements or how to purchase the book here.
The book will be the focus of this week’s “Rev War Revelry.” We hope you can join us on our Facebook page on Sunday, 7 p.m. EDT.
*Note* This “Rev War Revelry” will be recorded in advance as the Emerging Revolutionary War crew will be in Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts for the 4th Annual Emerging Revolutionary War bus tour.
Emerging Revolutionary War welcomes back guest historian Evan Portman
Two future presidents walk into a Catholic church.
No, that’s not the beginning of a bad historical joke. It’s what happened on October 9, 1774, when George Washington and John Adams wandered into Old St. Mary’s Catholic Church while serving as delegates to the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia.
In September 1774, delegates from twelve of the thirteen colonies convened in Philadelphia for the purpose of discussing a response to Parliament’s recent Intolerable Acts. But after a month of debating (and bickering), Adams wrote that “the Business of the Congress is tedious, beyond Expression.”[1] Seeking a break from the monotony, Adams and Washington ventured to one of the oldest Catholic churches in the colonies. Established in 1763 by parishioners of Old St. Joseph’s, St. Mary’s Church grew from the need for a Catholic cemetery.
“[L]ed by Curiosity and good Company I strolled away to Mother Church or rather Grandmother Church, I mean the Romish Chappell,” Adams wrote to his wife Abigail that day.[2] The church stood just a few blocks south of the Congress’s meeting place at Carpenters’ Hall and starkly contrast anything the Protestant Adams had seen before. A descendant of some of America’s early Puritans, Adams was raised in the Congregational church of Braintree, Massachusetts, where “unfettered daylight through clear window glass allowed for no dark or shadowed corners, no suggestion of mystery.”[3] Old St. Mary’s could not have been more different. Light poured through several stained-glass windows before a large, ornate altar, behind which hung a dramatic depiction of Christ’s passion while burning candles and incense lit the nave.
Adams’s puritanical upbringing taught him to abhor such pageantry in the house of the Lord. He looked with pity upon “the poor Wretches, fingering their Beads, chanting Latin, not a Word of which they understood, their Pater Nosters and Ave Maria’s.” Even “their holy Water—their Crossing themselves perpetually—their Bowing to the Name of Jesus, wherever they hear it” appalled the young lawyer from Boston.[4]
Despite his disdain, some elements of the mass impressed and even moved, Adams. He described the priest’s homily as a “good, short, moral Essay upon the Duty of Parents to their Children, founded in Justice and Charity, to take care of their Interests temporal and spiritual.” Its brevity stood in stark contrast to the long-winded sermons of the Great Awakening, with which Adams would likely have been familiar. Even the priest’s flashy garments were noteworthy to the future president. “The Dress of the Priest was rich with Lace—his Pulpit was Velvet and Gold,” Adams noted.[5]
But most noteworthy of all was the “Picture of our Saviour in a Frame of Marble over the Altar at full Length upon the Cross, in the Agonies, and the Blood dropping and streaming from his Wounds.” That combined with the organ music, which Adams described as “most sweetly and exquisitely” was enough to move him. “This Afternoons Entertainment was to me, most awfull and affecting,” he confessed. But in the eighteenth century, the word “awful” did not mean what it does today. Adams quite literally meant that he was “full of awe” in observing the mass. He was so moved, in fact, that he wondered how “Luther ever broke the spell” of Catholicism.[6]
Perhaps Adams’s experience that day, 250 years ago, is indicative of the Revolution at large, as it brought together men from disparate backgrounds and regions. As a young man in Braintree, Adams likely never imagined he could be moved by a “papist ceremony,” nor could he probably have imagined signing his name on a document securing independence from his former country. In this way, the American Revolution made fantasy a reality, and the impossible, possible.
[1]“John Adams to Abigail Adams, 9 October 1774,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/04-01-02-0111. [Original source: The Adams Papers, Adams Family Correspondence, vol. 1, December 1761– May 1776, ed. Lyman H. Butterfield. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963, pp. 166–167.]
[3] David McCullough, John Adams, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), 84.
[4] “John Adams to Abigail Adams, 9 October 1774,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/04-01-02-0111. [Original source: The Adams Papers, Adams Family Correspondence, vol. 1, December 1761– May 1776, ed. Lyman H. Butterfield. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963, pp. 166–167.]
Fredericktown, Maryland, August 1, 1775, a gentleman on business wrote to his contact in Philadelphia the following observation of a company of volunteers answering the call to head north to Boston to join what would become the Continental Army
“Notwithstanding the urgency of my business, I have been detained three days in this place by an occurrence truly agreeable. I have had the happiness of seeing Captain Michael Cresap marching at the head of a formidable company of upwards of 130 men, form the mountains and backwoods, painted like Indians, armed with tomahawks and rifles and dressed in hunting shirts and moccasins, and though some of them had travelled near eight hundred miles from the banks of the Ohio, they seemed to walk light an easy and not with less spirit than at the first hour of their march. Health and vigour, after what they had undergone, declared them to be intimate with hardships and familiar with danger. Joy and satisfaction, were visible in the crowd that met them. Had Lord North been present, and been assured that the brave leader could raise thousands of such to defend his country, what think you, would not the hatchet and block had intruded upon his mind? I had an opportunity of attending the Captain during his stay in Town, and watched the behavior of his men, and the manner in which he treated them; for it seems that all who go out to war under him do not only pay the most willing obedience to him as their commander, but in every instance of distress look up to him as their friend or father. A great part of his time was spent in listening to and relieving their wants, without any apparent sense of fatigue and trouble. When complaints were before him he determined with kindness and spirit, and on every occasion condescended to please without losing is dignity.”
esterday the Company were supplied with a small quantity of powder from the magazine, which wanted airing, and was not good for rifles ; in the evening, however, they were drawn out to show the gentlemen of the town their dexterity at shooting. A clap board, with a mark the size of a dollar, was put up ; they began to fire at it off band, and the bystanders were surprised, few shots being made that were not close to or in the paper. When they had shot for a time in this way, some lay on their backs, some on their breast or side, others ran twenty or thirty steps, and firing, appeared to be equally certain of the mark. With this performance the company were more than satisfied, when a young man took up a board in his hand, not by the end, but by the side, and holding it up, his brother walked to the distance, and very coolly shot into the white ; laying down bis rifle, he took the board, and holding it as it was held before, the second brother shot as the former had done. By this exercise I was more astonished than pleased. But will you believe me, when I tell you, that one of the men took the board, and placing it between hia legs, stood with his back to the tree while another drove the centre. What wonld a regular army of considerable strength in the forests of America do with one thousand of these men, who want nothing to preserve their health and courage but water from the spring, with a little parched corn, with what they can easily procure in hunting ; and who wrapped in their blankets, in the damp of night, would choose the shade of a tree for their covering, and the earth for their bed.”
Although a depiction of the 1st Maryland at Guilford C.H in 1781 some of these men are dressed similar to the riflemen mentioned above (wikipedia)
*Account is in “Papers Relating Chiefly To the Maryland Line During the Revolution” Thomas Balch, editor. pgs. 6-7.
First, thank you all for understanding with the technical difficulties of yesterday’s potential Facebook Live.
Over this past weekend, the 210th anniversary of the Battle of Bladensburg and the Burning of Washington by British troops took place. In a potential future tour, I was scouting out locations around our nation’s capital that are connected with the year 1814. Although some of the sites have been rebuilt, some of the history is preserved in museums, and one of the places is still occupied by the president of the United States, there is still a lot of history underfoot related to the War of 1812.
Some of that history is below. Robert Sewall built a house sometime between 1800 on 2nd and Maryland Avenue Northeast but with an inheritance from an uncle’s passing moved to southern Maryland. He rented the property to Albert Gallatin, who would serve as treasury secretary under both Presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. In 1813, Gallatin left to become one of the United States peace commissioners in Ghent, Belgium charged with negotiating a treaty to end the War of 1812. William Sewall, Robert’s son, took responsibility for the house at that point. William served with Commodore Joshua Barney during the War of 1812 and records do not indicate he ever lived at the residence.
During the British march into the city, a group of Barney’s men took refuge in the residence and fired shots at the enemy column. Two British soldiers were killed and the horse of Major General Robert Ross was also struck. Ross ordered men into the structure to clear the snipers but not finding the culprits, the infantrymen burnt the property in retaliation. This would be the only private property burnt during the British incursion into Washington.
The property remained in the Sewall family, the house was rebuilt in 1820 and is now the Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality National Monument, a unit of the National Park Service.
After returning to Washington, the Madison’s took residence here, in the house of John Tayloe III. On September 8, 1814, the Madison family moved in and in an upstairs room, the president received the peace treaty negotiated in Ghent, Belgium. He ratified the treaty in the upstairs study on February 17, 1815. When the Madison family vacated the quarters, six months after moving in, Tayloe received $500 in rent from their stay.
Emerging Revolutionary War welcomes back guest historian Michael Aubrecht
In 1777 Thomas Jefferson and a committee of revisors came to the City of Fredericksburg for the purpose of revising several Virginia statutes. This led to Jefferson drafting the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom.
When Jefferson and his comrades arrived in Fredericksburg they were met with a town bristling with military activity. Troops were drilling in the public square and filled the crowded streets, buildings and shops. Awaiting travel orders were the men of the Second Virginia and the Seventh Virginia, ordered here on January 9 for a rendezvous just prior to marching to join General Washington at the front. By the time Jefferson arrived in Fredericksburg, sixty of the more than two hundred battles and skirmishes of the war had already taken place.
Emerging Revolutionary War welcomes guest historian Evan Portman
Overlooking the Grand Parade at Valley Forge National Historical Park is a statue almost as solid as the man it portrays. Baron von Steuben helped transform the American army into an effective and efficient fighting force in the winter of 1777-1778, but he also aided the country nearly a century and a half later. Yes, Baron von Steuben helped the United States through World War I—or at least the social turmoil on the home front.
Friedrich Wilhelm August Heinrich Ferdinand Steuben was born in Prussia (modern day Germany) in 1730 and served in the Prussian army through the Seven Years’ War. By 1775, Steuben had accrued a considerable amount of debt (despite his stature within the aristocracy), so he sought a foreign military appointment. Failing to catch the eye of the British, French, or Austrians, the Baron set his sights on the fledgling American government. Congress arranged for Steuben to be paid, depending on the outcome of the war, and sent him to the winter encampment at Valley Forge. There, he began drilling the Continental army and instituted better hygiene and sanitation practices. He also wrote a drill manual, which he published in 1779 as Regulations for the Order and Discipline of the Troops of the United States. After the encampment at Valley Forge, Steuben participated in the Southern Campaign of the Revolutionary War. After the Siege of Yorktown, Congress awarded the Baron a tract of land in New York where he died in 1794.
Emerging Revolutionary War welcomes guest historian Nicholas Benevento.
“The Line of Splendor: A Novel of Nathanael Greene and the American Revolution” is a historical novel written by Salina Baker. In her novel, she brings to life a figure who deserves more fame and recognition for his pivotal role in the Revolution. Nathanael Greene was a selfless general and leader who fought valiantly to defend his country and provide for his troops. He was a man who defied the odds and was placed in a position of power and leadership, a favorite of General George Washington. He was a man willing to put everything on the line for the independence and freedom of the United States.
Baker’s book picks up with Nathanael Greene’s life early in the 1770s when Nathanael is about the age of thirty. At this time, there were growing tensions in the American Colonies with Mother England. Shortly before the war broke out, Nathanael married his wife Caty in 1774, and Baker does a masterful job weaving their relationship into the story of his time in the war.
Baker’s work is a fascinating depiction of Nathanael Greene and the American Revolution. Readers of history often read facts and descriptions of events, which Baker provides. But she also takes the reader into the thoughts and conversations of Nathanael Greene, as well as other key figures in his life. Therefore, while this is a fiction novel, enthusiasts of this time period in American history would love this novel. Baker weaves in the history of the war, while also providing us with dialogue and feelings of Nathanael. Baker’s novel is a reminder to the reader that the generals and soldiers who fought in the Revolutionary War were not mythical figures who fought a war that would inevitably end in an American victory. These were real men with real emotions carrying their insecurities and flaws, while experiencing the highs and many lows of the war. Greene was central to many of the key battles early in the war, from the siege of Boston, to the debacle of New York, to the triumph of Washington’s crossing of the Delaware, to the trying times at Valley Forge. Greene held a tremendous weight on his shoulders throughout the war, especially when he led the Southern Army late in the war during the Southern Campaign.
On June 15, 1775, George Washington was appointed by the Second Continental Congress as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army. Approximately a month later he rode into Cambridge, Massachusetts, to the house below, to assume command over that army. After he met the officers at Jonathan Hastings House near Harvard College campus, learning about operations and the siege. He was then directed toward an opulent residence standing about a mile away. Named the Vassall-Craigie-Longfellow residence, this place would become the focal point of the effort against the British in Boston. Washington moved in. He spent the next nine months in residence, overseeing the Siege of Boston and the British evacuation.
From this house, Washington began putting his footprints on the army and met some of the officers that became instrumental in securing American independence. This included the Rhode Islander Nathanael Greene and Massachusetts native and bookseller Henry Knox among others. Martha Washington, in December 1775, traveled over 440 miles from Mount Vernon to Cambridge to winter with her husband in this house. The making of Washington, the general, started here.
The power of place.
Today, the house preserved by the National Park Service today can be toured, click here for information.
Emerging Revolutionary War Era 