This conference will focus on the military, political, social and material culture history of the western theater of the American Revolutionary war, featuring scholars from across the U.S. and from Spain.
Location: The Sheraton Westport Plaza Hotel, St. Louis County, Missouri
Speakers and Topics:
Larry L. Nelson—”George Rogers Clark, the Illinois Campaign, and American Ambitions in the West”
Robert M. Owens – “Jean Baptiste Ducoigne, the Kaskaskias, and Pragmatic Patriotism in the Revolutionary Era”
José Manuel Guerro Acosta – “Spain and the Support for the American Revolution”
Friederike Baer – “’O, how the Mississippi is costing us many a good man!’: German Soldiers in West Florida, 1779-1781”
Frances Kolb Turnbell – “Indian Politics and the American Politics in the Lower Mississippi Valley”
Stephen L. Kling, Jr. – “An Opportunity to be Seized: The British Grand Plan to Conquer the Entire Mississippi River Valley”
Alexander S. Burns – “The Worst Looking Soldiers and the Drunkest Men to Ever Carry a Musket?: The 8th Regiment and the War in the West”
Kristine L. Sjostrom – “Valentía y Visión: Lt. Governor Fernando de Leyba and the Defense of St. Louis”
Kimberly Alexander – “O What Can These Things Tell Us: Material Culture at Revolutionary War St. Louis”
Jim Piecuch – “Fighting from Horseback: A Comparison of Revolutionary War Cavalry in the Eastern and Western Theaters”
Paul Douglas Lockhart – “For Want of a Good Musket and a Sharp Knife: Weaponry and Wilderness Warfare”
Evening Events: A cocktail reception will be held on Friday evening at 6:00pm at the Sheraton Westport Plaza Ballroom. A private party on Saturday evening at 6:30pm at the St. Charles County Heritage Museum will include a private tour of The American Revolutionary War in the West museum exhibit.
Registration: Conference registration cost including evening events: $75.00. Registration can be made through the St. Charles County Historical Society by 1) mailing a check to The St. Charles County Historical Society, 101 S. Main St., St. Charles, MO 63301, Attn: Joan Koechig; 2) credit card or PayPal by calling at (636) 946-9828 MWF, 10am-3pm; or 3) online at scchs.org. Registrations are limited and will be filled on a first come, first served basis. Questions, call Melissa at: (314)-561-5077. NOTE, online registration will be available starting April 19, 2023.
Emerging Revolutionary War welcomes guest historian Christopher of The British-American Historian blog.
Almost two years after debating a joint French-American assailment of Lord Cornwallis’ precarious position in Yorktown, Virginia over Washington’s grand plan to recapture New York long after being swept from the city and its environs as independence was officially declared in 1776, the implacable Washington prepared to reenter New York in triumph.
Eight years after making New York the center of the British war effort in the American Revolution, the massive garrison was greatly reduced and preparing for its final retirement from the new nation. The new commander in chief of North America, Sir Guy Carleton, arrived in New York on May 5, 1782[1] to relieve Sir Henry Clinton. Carleton won accolades for holding Quebec City when the Continental Army struck during a late night blizzard, an accomplishment that was all the more vaunted now that the British were losing territory that did not include Canada. Carleton lost no time in notifying Washington of his arrival in an affable letter sent on May 7th, 1782 in which Carleton wrote “if the like pacific disposition should prevail in this country, both my inclination and duty will lead me to meet it with the most zealous concurrence”[2].
A notable disruption in the growing amity was the unresolved Asgill Affair. Exasperated with wanton assailments of loyalists in New Jersey, a prominent rebel militia commander named Joshua Huddy was plucked from the provost in New York by an American member of the Associated Loyalists[3]. The Associated Loyalists were presided over by William Franklin, the loyalist son of Benjamin who had endured arduous captivity before being exchanged[4]. In response to the wanton execution of Joshua Huddy, Washington ordered a British officer to await reprise. Charles Asgill was selected, but pleas from the French along with Washington’s honorable disposition prevailed and the captain was spared[5].
The city and Long Island were swarming with thousands of loyal “Refugees” who had fled from every rebellious colony to seek the king’s protection. Ranging from itinerant tenant farmers to some of the largest landlords in America such as Beverly Robinson and Frederick Philipse, Carleton’s task of evacuating the troops could not be fulfilled until such persons were safely resettled in the empire. While many of the men joined provincial regiments that saw combat in the south (playing a pivotal role defending Savannah and being routed at Kings Mountain) and performed prodigious woodcutting on Lloyd Neck for the insatiable demand for firewood[6], flocks of women and children crowded the city. A subset of the refugees were former slaves who had flocked to the British cause for the promise of freedom under Dunmore’s Proclamation and the Philipsburg Proclamation, a promise Washington would vigorously contest in negotiations.
Charleston, South Carolina is one of the most beautiful and historic cities in the United States. Numerous sites, battlefields, and buildings from the period of the Revolution still exist.
Join us this Sunday at 7pm as we discuss ERW’s newest release “To The Last Extremity: The Battles for Charleston” by Mark Maloy. In To the Last Extremity: The Battles for Charleston, historian Mark Maloy not only recounts the Revolutionary War history of Charleston, he takes you to the places where the history actually happened. He shows you where the outnumbered patriots beat back the most powerful navy in the world, where soldiers bravely defended the city in 1779 and 1780, and where thousands suffered under occupation. Through it all, brave patriots were willing to defend the city and their liberty “to the last extremity.”
We will talk to Mark about his research, his favorite and most compelling stories and why this book is a “must have” for any history buff. Join us this Sunday, April 16 at 7pm on our Facebook page to join in on the conversation. As always, if you can not join us live you can catch the talk at any time on our You Tube or podcast channel.
Emerging Revolutionary War welcomes guest historian Werther Young.
I’m Too Sexy for My…Bavarian Fly
By Werther Young
Of all of the unique things that have managed to make it to the internet, a concise history of colonial men’s pants flies is surprisingly not one of them.
Our story begins in the Renaissance in, where else, France. King Henry III of France eschewed the old-fashioned dress and hose and embraced a new fashion, culottes, now known as “knee breeches.”
Henry III in his dress and hose
Henry III in his tony new culottes.
The fly of Henry’s pants was a simple affair, a rectangular panel sewn to the left side with buttonholes that buttoned over the right. This simple and practical design became known as the “French fly” and became almost universal in Western Europe over the next 60 years.
Ann Bonny the pirate, in French fly trousers, ca. 1721.
Over time, Ann Bonny’s “long” French fly was perfected into the “short” French fly. Anne’s fly extends from the inseam to the waistband. By merely sewing a few inches of the front seam together, the fly can be made shorter, removing a buttonhole and button or two.
These fly designs apparently did not reach into Eastern Europe, where presumably leather pants were as expensive as wool ones but lasted much longer, because they were never washed. Translating the French Fly into leather posed some problems, and so these leather pants had a different fly, essentially a hole in the center front with a panel buttoned over it that flipped or dropped up and down as necessary. This design caught on in the Alpine areas of central Europe, and especially in Bavaria under the label of “Lederhosen,” which is German for “leather pants.”
“Short” French Fly Breeches, ca. 1750.
The Bavarian fly migrated further north, as in the Deutsches Museum in Berlin can be found a pair of enlisted trousers from the mid-1700s, with a half drop front fly; that is, it opens only the right side. This is essentially a cheaper fly, because it needs only one button to close, and does the same thing.
By the middle 1700s, the French fly had been around for over 150 years, and someone in France started a different fashion (and outdoing the Huns) by putting the two -opening Bavarian fly on culottes, thus making the culottes “a la Bavarois,” French for “like the Bavarians.” This was runway level high fashion for the time, and quickly spread among the well to do as the latest thing, with a new name, the “drop front” or “fall front” fly. Unfortunately, translating the design from leather, which does not unravel, to fabric, which does, made the Bavarian fly extremely complicated and therefore expensive. This of course added to its cachet, so much so that by 1775, it had reached the aristocracy even in the backwater of Colonial America.
Lederhosen
Colonial Williamsburg has a fabulous collection of high-status men’s pants from the 18th century. A survey thereof shows the number of French flies waning into the 1770s, and the number of Bavarian drop front flies waxing beginning in 1775, reaching a height about 1800. Unfortunately, these are all very high-status garments, such as a pair of “button front breeches of cream-colored silk velvet, with repeat of small pink and green flowers self-covered buttons, those at knee embroidered with metallic silver thread. Silver galloon strap at knee.” But did the states and Continent really issue enlisted soldiers what amounts to hand made Givenchy trousers? Of course not.
The false idea that they did partially comes from a series of paintings done by Charles M. Lefferts in the early 1900s, later published as Uniforms of the Armies in the War of the American Revolution, 1775–1783. in 1926.
A Lefferts rendering of trousers a la Bavarois, 2d Maryland 1777.
Measuring this man’s height against the known length of his musket makes him about 6’4 inches tall, the height of actors Clint Walker, Chuck Connors, Clint Eastwood, and the average NBA basketball player. If you look below the point of his vest, he is wearing drop front pants over his massive thighs. Curiously, he is also wearing a 1760s style skirted vest and long regimental coat. Are we to believe that Maryland issued its men old fashioned vests and coats, but high fashion breeches? Since Lefferts was born in 1873, he had no first-hand knowledge of his subject, we must look to period images.
Alas, these are of little help. It is difficult to discern whether any of the men in period paintings are wearing French Fly pants, Bavarian drop front pants, or anything else. The most informative images, the von German drawings, are unfortunately from the side, and of no help.
Von German “American Soldier” New York Hist Soc.
Amerikanische Scharfschutz, Brown University
Since information is so scarce, we must turn to the other reason we believe that rev war soldiers wore drop front pants. Klinger’s Sketchbook ’76. Page 9 shows a pair of Bavarian drop front breeches, based on George Washington’s uniform in the Smithsonian, and Lt. Col. Tench Tilghman’s uniform from the Maryland Historical Society. This is odd, because Washington’s uniform is from the 1794, 15 years after the war and at the height of the drop front craze. Tilghman was the scion of a blue blood family, owned half of Baltimore, was an aide to Washington, and hobnobbed with Lafayette. Even if his uniform can be dated to the war years, it is not only a high-status uniform, but one of the highest status possible in America at the time; his not wearing Bavarian trousers would be of greater note. Neither are evidence that any of the 13 colonies nor the Continent paid to make their enlisted men such high fashion trousers.
On Sketchbook page11, Klinger bases his Bavarian drop front overalls on unspecified plates in “Bernard’s History of England” and the images above. While these may establish Bavarian drop front flies supplied by the King George, it certainly does not necessarily mean that the colonies were doing so.
Surprisingly, two pairs of enlisted overalls are known to exist, mistakenly labelled as “Pantaloons,” and residing in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Department. These are exquisitely made, and probably military examples, but unfortunately European, and from 1793 and later.
No credible evidence exists that any of the 13 colonies nor the Continent issued its troops Bavarian drop front pants. This makes sense, as that design is difficult to make, does the exact same thing as the simple French fly, and fashionable pants do not really contribute much extra to Liberty. Additionally, with all but the highest status clothiers making French fly pants, retraining them to cut out and make the new design would seriously impede production, even assuming that patterns and training could be somehow provided from Georgia to Vermont at a time when the men could barely be supplied a musket or shirt. In the War of the Revolution, the colonists were by all indications wearing French fly breeches and overalls, not drop front ones a la Bavarois.
In May 1782, Colonel William Crawford led over 450 volunteers across Ohio to attack British-allied Native Americans who had been raiding the frontiers of Pennsylvania and Virginia for years. An experienced yet reluctant commander, Crawford and his men clashed with a similarly sized force of British Rangers and Wyandot, Delaware, and Shawnee Indians on the Sandusky River in early June. After three days, the Americans were routed in one of the worst defeats American arms suffered on the frontier during the American Revolution. During the retreat, Native American warriors captured dozens of men, including Colonel Crawford. Many were horrifically tortured to death in revenge for the Gnadenhutten massacre earlier that spring, when American volunteers bludgeoned nearly one hundred unarmed and unresisting Delaware Indians to death.
Join us on our Facebook page this Sunday at 7pm for a recorded talk with historian and author Eric Sterner as he discusses Crawford’s Campaign and his new book “The Battle of Upper Sandusky, 1782” due out this spring. The talk will be availble on our You Tube page next week.
Join us this Sunday, March 5, at 7:00 p.m. on our Facebook page for our latest installment of the Rev War Revelry series. This weekend’s chat will focus on the exploits of British General Benedict Arnold in Virginia during 1781, including the capture and burning of Richmond. We will be joined by Virginia historians John Pagano and Mark Wilcox, who will help bring to life the story of when Arnold turned his sword against the people he once called his comrades and countrymen. We hope to see you there!
My recent comments about Stacy Schiff’s The Revolutionary Samuel Adams got me thinking about some of John Adams’s thoughts about his second cousin. In particular, John shared a neat story about Sam’s secretiveness—a problem that has bedeviled biographers, including Schiff, because Sam didn’t leave behind a trove of documentary evidence the way other Founders did.
“I have seen him . . .” said John, “in Philadelphia, when he was about to leave Congress, cut up with his scissors whole bundles of letters, into atoms that could never be reunited, and throw them out at the window, to be scattered by the winds. This was in summer, when he had no fire. In winter he threw whole handfuls into the fire. As we were on terms of perfect intimacy, I have joked him, perhaps rudely, upon his anxious caution. His answer was, ‘Whatever becomes of me, my friends shall never suffer by my negligence.’”[1]
John admired Sam, 13 years his senior, a great deal. The two were hardly acquainted growing up, but as John started off his legal career in Boston, Sam—a great cultivator of talent—pegged him as someone to develop. As tensions in Boston grew between the Sons of Liberty, British officials, and far-off Parliament, Sam brought John into the inner circle because of John’s sharp legal mind. The decision paved John’s eventual path to national politics.
“Mr. Adams was an original,” John said of Sam, saying he was “born and tempered a wedge of steel. . . .”[2]
In his common appearance, he was a plain, simple, decent citizen, of middling stature, dress and manners. He had an exquisite ear for music, and a charming voice, when he pleased to exert it.—Yet his ordinary speeches in town meetings, in the house of representatives and in congress, exhibited nothing extraordinary; but upon great occasions, when his deeper feelings were excited, he erected himself, or rather nature seemed to erect him, without the smallest symptom of affectation, into an upright dignity of figure and gesture, and gave a harmony to his voice, which made a strong impression on spectators and auditors, the more lasting for the purity, correctness and nervous elegance of his style.[3]
John spoke on several occasions of Sam’s “an air of dignity and majesty.” He admired Sam’s “harmonious voice and decisive tone” and his “self-recollection, a self-possession, a self-command, a presence of mind that was admired by every man present. . . .”[4] He also listed “his caution, his discretion, his ingenuity, his sagacity, his self-command, his presence of mind, and his intrepidity” as traits that “commanded the admiration” of friend and foe alike—friends who applauded him and foes who could not help but respect Sam Adams’s considerable populist powers.[5]
It is little doubt why John later said, “Without the character of Samuel Adams, the true history of the American Revolution can never be written.”[6]
I’m currently reading Stacy Schiff’s new biography The Revolutionary Samuel Adams. It’s a snappy-to-read, deeply researched book—all the more challenging to write because Sam Adams made careful effort not to leave much of a paper trail about himself.
Schiff uses her introduction to sketch out this fundamental problem, and in doing so, she creates a compelling flash portrait of Adams that the rest of the book fleshes out. Adams the historiographical sphinx is well served by this portrait. Sam Adams simultaneously led from the front yet operated in the shadows, an apparent contradiction that Schiff nonetheless portrays fully and effectively.
As the book goes on, Schiff manages to pull from a deep well of primary sources, even if there’s not a mountain from Sam himself. She handles those sources adroitly and comfortably, plucking this bit from here and that bit from there the way a conductor works an orchestra.
The result is an admiring but not fawning portrait of Adams—a man without whom, said cousin John, “the true history of the American Revolution can never be written.”[1]
Troubling to me in the text is that, in the late 1760s and early 1770s, the Adams-led Sons of Liberty often employed mob violence—real and threatened—to achieve their aims. Propaganda efforts were often tethered to reality by only thinnest of meager threads, if at all. Men were intimidated, bullied, tarred and feathered, humiliated, assaulted, and run out of town for opposing or even just disagreeing with them. Houses were ransacked. Livelihoods destroyed. Reputations ruined. I could not help but think of the Klan in the Reconstruction-era South—a comparison no-doubt tantamount to sacrilege when talking about a group of Bostonians popularly and fondly remembered as patriots.
Yet Schiff merrily skates over such rough terrain, sharing vivid details about incidents without exploring the moral morass this tension suggests. Her hero acts in decidedly less-than-heroic ways, arguing that the ends justify the means. We as readers are left to ponder this ambiguity ourselves. Such work on the reader’s part isn’t a bad thing, but it does strike me as somewhat of an abdication on the biographer’s part when the rest of the narrative is so cheerfully pro-Adams.
Overall, The Revolutionary Samuel Adams is an excellent work so far, and I highly recommend it for anyone who wants a fuller understanding of how the wheels of Revolution started turning—and who started them.
Emerging Revolutionary War welcomes this guest submission by historian Werther Young, aka Elmer Woodard
Not THAT Lee. And not at Stratford Hall, Leesylvani, nor Shirley plantations. No rustle of silk, silver platters from the kitchen, obsequious servants bowing and scraping, no twitter of conversation, nor the tinkling of crystal. Our repast was much less spectacular. In his Memoirs, Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee told of a dining experience during the Race to the Dan on or about February 11, 1781. We tried to recreate that meal.
Lee’s Legion had been assigned By Maj. Gen. Nathanael Greene to Col. Otho William’s Light Division, which had in turn been tasked with luring the British away from Greene’s main army on its retreat to Boyd’s Ferry (now South Boston, Virginia). Williams apparently roused his men at 3 a.m. at Guilford Courthouse (modern Greensboro, N.C.), drew rations, and marched north to collect his Delaware company at an outpost near Brice’s Crossroads (now Summerfield, North Carolina). He then marched northeast on the road to Dix’s Ferry (now US Rt. 158 towards Reidsville, North Carolina and Danville, Virginia) as far as Rodes’ House, six miles almost due north of Guilford Courthouse, and four miles northeast of Brice’s Crossroads. With Lee’s cavalry rearguard at Rodes’ House, Williams’ infantry was probably spread out along the present Scalesville Road northeast towards Troublesome Iron Works and modern Reidsville. A Lt. Harrington commanded cavalry patrols southeast towards Salem, North Carolina on the Scalesville Road, the direction of the last reported location of the British. In the cool and drizzly morning, everything was quiet, so quiet that Williams’ men had started the slow process of cooking their rations.
The latest intelligence put the British somewhere towards Salem (present Winston-Salem, North Carolina), some twenty-four miles away. Unfortunately, that information was stale. The British had marched early, passing through Dobson’s Crossroads (present day Kernersville, North Carolina) and by early morning were near present Oak Ridge, North Carolina just nine miles away from Rodes’ House and coming on hard, while Williams and his men were enjoying a “comfortable meal.”
On paper, Revolutionary War infantry regiments were made up of companies of fifty men each. Generally, cavalrymen counted each horse as a man, so their “company” was only about twenty-five men, and was called a “troop.” For ration purposes, each company/troop was further divided into subgroups of five or six men each, called a “mess.” In practice, a company could be anywhere from fifteen to seventy men, but let us stay with a typical size of fifty. By 1781 in North Carolina, with many, many exceptions, army rations were essentially a pound of protein and a pound of carbohydrate per day, roughly four Quarter Pounder hamburgers per day.
“Protein” in the 1781 south was meat, usually pork, fresh or salted. Carbohydrate was usually ground corn, and was packaged from the mill in barrels of about 200 pounds. Rations were usually issued in three day lots to the company, although six day lots were not unheard of. Indeed, the British 1768 warrant specified that the men’s haversacks were to be large enough for six days’ rations. Williams’ “Light” Division was ‘Light’ because it did not contain wagons, so the men had to carry everything, including rations, themselves. Stopping to distribute rations would certainly lose the Race to the Dan, so the men were probably issued six days rations (two pounds per man per day, or twelve pounds per man) beforehand.[1] Our theoretical fifty-man company would receive about 600 pounds of food for six days; the horsemen about the same because they had to feed the horse. One whole (500 man) regiment would receive about 3,000 pounds of food. Williams had about a regiment and a half, so his six days’ ration weight would approach 5,000 pounds.
Rations were issued raw, and it was the messes’ responsibility to cook them. One of the most essential pieces of equipment was therefore something to cook them in. This item was so important that four iron kettles were among of the few items specifically mentioned by the Williamsburg Public Store on the very day it opened, October 12, 1775.[2] Kettles were sometimes cast iron, like a witch’s cauldron, but most often were sheet iron with soldered joints, holding about four gallons. Many were made in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Each mess received one kettle, which someone in the mess had to carry where ever they went.[3]
By 11 a.m. or so, somewhat delayed by the difficulties of igniting wet wood, Williams’ Light Division was happily cooking their rations. Lee described the fare as “the meat was on the coals and the corn cakes in the ashes.”[4] Apparently, it also was pretty far along in the process, as Lee referred to having had (past tense) a “comfortable meal” at that time. For one five-man infantry mess with six days’ rations, this meant that they were boiling thirty pounds of meat and making thirty pounds of corn cakes per man.
Earlier this year my son Patrick and I decided to try some applied archaeology and figure out just how the corn and pork ration system in the 1781 south worked. We had found a first-person account from an Overmountain man who went through the Smoky Mountains from Sycamore Shoals (now Elizabethton, Tennessee) to King’s Mountain, North Carolina in ten days on twenty pounds of “parched corn,” about two pounds per day. While we had heard of parched corn, no one really knew what it was, because no one eats it anymore. Additional research showed that it’s just corn meal that has been browned over heat. It was usually mixed half and half with a sweetener of some sort. So, we browned some corn and mixed it with table sugar. It tastes like sweet cornmeal-flavored sand. We tried to make parched corn molasses bars, but this degenerated into a sticky mess, and we were … requested … to absent ourselves from the kitchen, permanently ending that part of that experiment.
The next project would be to figure out how Colonel Lee and his men prepared their February repast. Having thirty years’ experience as a Civil War reenactor with the 44th Virginia and 5th New York Zouaves, I knew that cooking meat on coals in a hurry results most of the time in semi-raw, inedible meat, and corn cakes made in the ashes are just gritty yellow discs that taste like burned dirt. Given that Lee’s Legion moved about sixty miles in five days, they weren’t eating raw meat and burned dirt.
Happily, I have a four-gallon mess kettle, and so the experiment began. As it turned out, a friend had recently killed his wife’s pet hog, and he generously donated ten pounds of frozen pork. In 1781, pork was either on the hoof or salted, the only way of preserving it at the time. Since Mr. Hogg was no longer on the hoof, our friend salted it. Finding a watertight oak barrel difficult to come by, he dry-salted it in a food safe plastic bucket, with a layer of pickling salt, then a layer of meat, and so on until the bucket was full, with the top layer being salt. It then sat for several months, during which time we turned to the carbohydrate issue.
Corn meal is a much more complex article than one would imagine. Back then in the South it was not just a staple, but THE staple. Farmers planted corn, which generated about twenty-six bushels (approximately 1500 pounds) per acre. When harvested in the fall, the stalk was cut and then a dozen or so stalks tied together and set upright into a “shock” to dry. Once dried, the ears went into the corn crib and the stalks fed the animals. Periodically the farmer removed the kernels from the cobs, placed them in a log bucket or a cloth bag, and took them to the mill to be ground. The miller ground the corn, taking a percentage, and returned the rest to the farmer. This would last a family of four for about two months before it became musty, at which time the farmer would shuck more corn and go back to the miller.
The mill was water powered and contained two mill stones which ground the corn kernels into meal. Nowadays, most “corn meal” is for baked corn bread, and is superfine, almost like powdered sugar. Back then, this was almost unheard of. The finer the grind, the higher the miller’s toll (grinding fee), so the grinds were usually much coarser. Fine meal, meal, and grits were what humans generally ate. One coarseness level below grits was “Indian grind,” which only Indians would buy, because it was the cheapest grind but still fit for humans, rather than animals. Soldiers received it, too. We managed to find a local mill that was happy to make us some Indian grind but we had to buy fifty pounds of it. Ten bucks later, we had a about eight gallons of Indian grind.
We were not too thrilled about eating burned, dirt flavored disks, so we decided not to make ash cakes. A bit of research revealed that non-ash corn cakes were often made on a flat rock, or even a shovel blade. We decided to use a spade blade with the edges bent up. Spades these days are surprisingly expensive, but a case of beer delivered to a pal at the local machine shop soon had us a brand-new steel spade blade with turned up edges and an integral handle, just as shown in the Collectors Encyclopedia.[5]
Rummaging through the pile of rarely-used reenacting gear produced a foot long “flesh” fork for manipulating the chunks of pork, a small kettle to mix in, a ladle, and a spatula for flipping, although these items could technically be considered cheating. Ten pounds of salt pork has its own unique needs, so we scrubbed out a cooler, put Mr. Hogg’s remains on ice, and set forth.
As members of the re-created 7th Virginia Regiment, we attended their annual living history event at the Gloucester Museum of History in Gloucester Courthouse, Virginia, where the 7th was initially mustered in April 1776. Since fires were not allowed, one of the members brought a charcoal brazier. Not exactly wet wood from February 1781, but it would do. Once the coals were going, the first task was to put the pork on. This was pretty simple, in that you put the pork in the kettle, fill it with water, and put it on the fire. The point of this is to remove the salt and cook the meat. Ten pounds of salt pork half-filled the kettle. With the pork simmering, we reviewed the next phase of the plan. When lard formed on the top of the water, we’d skim it off. When the pork was done, we’d use the salty pork water (the “liquor”) to make batter for the corn cakes, and then fry them in the lard on the spade.
Of course, the plan went awry almost from the beginning. Despite a lot of boiling, there was not much lard, and nothing was going to get fried without any lard. One of the kind folks at the museum had to run and errand and agreed to pick up a pound of lard for us. Of course, as soon as she left, the kettle hit critical lard mass, and we were up to our smallclothes in it. We needed a way to get rid of the lard, so my son Patrick used the small kettle to go ahead and mix water with the Indian grind, and I greased up the shovel. In the meantime, we were fighting a lard tsunami that threatened to boil over into the fire. We took turns using the spatula to skim, but had no place to put it, except my drinking cup. Hot lard is much like sand at the beach—it gets into everything. The cup was too hot to handle, so we had to use a rag. Which was soon hot and slippery, because it was full of lard. Soon our hands were covered with a layer of lard, which at least made everything else slippery.
We must have gotten the triple expansion Indian grind, because soon we had half a gallon of batter and a hot shovel, so we started frying. The soupy batter just ran all over the shovel and over and out the sides in a giant boondoggle, but over time the water soaked into the grind, stiffening it up. A three-inch portion, one-half inch thick, was enough to fry in place and we soon learned to flip it just as the visible top side began to tan, not brown, about five minutes for the first side, and four for the second.
We soon had it going like gangbusters, cranking out five shovelcakes every ten minutes. Surprisingly, the only thing that Indian grind likes to absorb more than water is – lard. All of the lard we had skimmed was soon gone, but we avoided disaster by fishing nice fatty chunks of pork out of the kettle and greasing the shovel with that. In no time, we had gone through two pounds of Indian grind and had a plate of thirty to forty shovel cakes to go with our salt pork. The moment of truth had arrived. Someone had to try it. This whole thing being my idea, this duty fell to me.
Honestly, it was pretty good. The boiled salt pork tasted exactly like boiled pork, now known as “pork loin.” We had accidentally used water in the Indian Grind instead of the kettle liquor from the pork, so the shovel cakes needed salt, but they were still really good, being essentially a crunchy corn pancake. Everyone was eating them like potato chips. We purloined some honey from the surgeon, and the shovelcakes became REALLY good. Shovelcakes differ from potato chips in that the former, like the parched corn, are immensely filling. After three or four each, everyone was stuffed, and we still had plenty of them, so we tossed them in a haversack, and turned to stopping car traffic to interrogate the drivers as to whether they were a friend of American Liberty or vile traitors in league with the pernicious Lord Dunmore. Most of the drivers had clearly never heard of Lord Dunmore, but they got it when we used somc…historical license… and changed the vile traitor to the pernicious Benedict Arnold. To our great surprise, the shovelcakes survived the trip home largely without crumbling, and we munched on shovelcakes while scrubbing out the kettles. We rustproofed the inside with lard. We cleaned the guns and oiled them with lard. And we still have a great deal of lard.
In summation, we had duplicated how Lee and his men fed themselves on the Race to the Dan. Each mess had cooked its six days ration of thirty pounds of meat and made dozens of ash/shovelcakes out of their thirty pounds of Indian grind for their “comfortable meal” on that cold drizzly day in February. What they didn’t eat hot went into their haversacks, and though we haven’t quite yet confirmed this, probably turned that item into a lard-soaked corny gritty pork mess. Since it was already fully cooked, they could reach in and munch at any time, and all they needed to do for the next meal was to reheat it over the fire.
Recipe for stovetop Gateaux de la Pelle (shovel cakes):
1 cup water
½ cup Indian grind
¾ teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons butter
Boil water and add salt. When hot, add butter. Once the butter has melted, combine this mixture with the Indian grind, adding small amounts of grind until the batter is stiff. Spoon onto well lard/bacon greased griddle/frying pan. Turn when the top side is just tan, just about to brown. Condiments include honey, butter, molasses, more butter, powdered sugar, and/or more butter.
Regular store-bought corn meal probably won’t work, as it is too fine. Uncooked yellow or white grits might work, but we haven’t tried that. Yet.
Returning to 1781, while “the meat was on the coals and the corn cakes in the ashes,” a citizen galloped into Williams’ camp at Rodes’ House. The man had found one of Lt. Harrington’s patrols and had been rushed to headquarters in the emergency. The British had evaded detection and were now only four miles away, approaching Brice’s Crossroads. It was all mess kettles and elbows. No doubt shocked that he had been so badly surprised, Williams ordered his men to stop cooking, fall in, and escape northeast. Lee and his men rode south to fight – and delay – Banastre Tarleton and his Legion.
[1] The British accounts reveal that they had to forage during the Race, and were nevertheless starving. In contrast, the American account mention extreme fatigue, but little hunger.
[2] Gregory B. Sandor, Journal of the Public Store at Williamsburg (privately published, 2015), 1. See also 9, 10.
[4] Henry Lee, Memoirs of the War in the Southern Department of the United States (Miami, FL: Hardpress, 2017), ebook location 4523-4542. No mention is made of any campfire grates, fire irons, dining flies, etc.
[5] Spade converted into a frying pan by soldiers, from the collections of Morristown National Historical Park. Pictured in George C. Neumann and Frank J. Kravic, Collector’s Illustrated Encyclopedia of the American Revolution, (Harrisburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 1975), 94.
Wether Young is a graduate of Norfolk Academy, Washington and Lee University, and Campbell University School of Law. He has practiced law in Virginia for 35 years. . Beginning in 1987, he has been a member or the 44th Virginia, Coppens’ Zouaves, Brian Pohanka’s 5the New York Duryees’ Zouaves (First Sergeant), the Life Guard, King Charles I, 151er Regiment de l’Armee de France, His Majesty’s Marines, and the 7th Virginia Regiment. Publications include “Evolutions of the Color Guard in the Cam Chase Gazette,” and “Johnson & Dow Waterproof and Combustible Cartridges” in the magazine of the Company of Military Historians. He is also the author of “A Bloody Day at Gaines’ Mill “ (McFarland, 2019).
Emerging Revolutionary War checks in with Tom Hand and Americana Corner. Here is what has has been published on that blog for the month of September.
Heading to Kentucky on the Wilderness Road September 6, 2022
The Wilderness Road, running from northeast Tennessee through the Cumberland Gap, was the main thoroughfare for Americans heading west into the new promised land of Kentucky from 1775 to about 1820. The pathway, blazed by Daniel Boone, was our nation’s first migration highway, but the trip was not for the faint of heart. Read More
The Early Life of Daniel Boone September 13, 2022
One of the greatest American explorers from our founding era was Daniel Boone. A legendary woodsman, Boone helped to make America’s dream of westward expansion in the late 1700s a reality. Read More
The Legacy of Daniel Boone September 20, 2022
Soon after the American Revolution began in 1775, Daniel Boone joined the Virginia militia of Kentucky County (later Fayette County) and was named a captain due to his leadership ability and knowledge of the area. Over the next several years, Boone would participate in numerous engagements. Read More
The Continental Army’s Largely Forgotten Invasion of Quebec September 27, 2022
The first significant offensive operation of the American Revolution was the largely forgotten invasion of the Province of Quebec by American troops in 1775. It was the opening act of the greater Northern Campaign of 1775-1776 in which the American colonies tried to wrest control of Canada from England. Although it did not end well, there were moments of incredible bravery and perseverance that demonstrated the resolve of our founding generation. Read More
Furthermore, Tom Hand and Americana Corner are providing t-shirts to participants on the Second Annual Emerging Revolutionary War Bus Tour, this November 11-13, 2022. A few tickets remain, so click the link above titled “2022 Bus Tour” to secure your ticket and one of these shirts! Thank you Tom for you support.
Emerging Revolutionary War Era 