Join us this Sunday evening at 7:00 p.m. on our Facebook page for an author interview with Jack Kelly to discuss his new book, God Save Benedict Arnold: The True Story of America’s Most Hated Man.
Benedict Arnold committed treason― for more than two centuries, that’s all that most Americans have known about him.
Yet Arnold was much more than a turncoat―his achievements during the early years of the Revolutionary War defined him as the most successful soldier of the era. GOD SAVE BENEDICT ARNOLD tells the gripping story of Arnold’s rush of audacious feats―his capture of Fort Ticonderoga, his Maine mountain expedition to attack Quebec, the famous artillery brawl at Valcour Island, the turning-point battle at Saratoga―that laid the groundwork for our independence.
Arnold was a superb leader, a brilliant tactician, a supremely courageous military officer. He was also imperfect, disloyal, villainous. One of the most paradoxical characters in American history, and one of the most interesting. GOD SAVE BENEDICT ARNOLD does not exonerate him for his treason―the stain on his character is permanent. But Kelly’s insightful exploration of Arnold’s career as a warrior shines a new light on this gutsy, fearless, and enigmatic figure. In the process, the book offers a fresh perspective on the reasons for Arnold’s momentous change of heart.
As we move towards to the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, we at ERW have gotten a lot of questions with a central theme…” why was it tea that led to revolution?” Was tea so central to colonial life that it was worth risking war or was it something else? The answer is somewhere in the middle and as with most history, there is nuance to the story (and yes, tea WAS a big part of everyday live in British America).
On May 10, 1773, Parliament passed the Tea Act, this act was a way for the British government to help bail out a major corporation, the British East India Company. The British East India Company was one of the largest global companies and faced immense debt and financial trouble. Furthering their troubles, they held a large amount of tea stored in warehouses in London. The British East India Company sought a way to offload this tea, which was considered some of the best tea in the world. The company’s success was directly tied to Great Britain’s international strategy, as the company spread British influence across the globe especially in India where they basically managed the British colony. The Tea Act reduced the cost on the tea (cutting out the “middleman” in Great Britain), and now the colonists could buy the tea directly from the British East India Company.
The British colonies in North America consumed on average of 1.2 million pounds of black tea annually. In 1773, about 1/3 of the population drank tea at least twice a day. It was a common luxury among most middle- and upper-class colonists. They preferred black tea but also drank green tea. Black tea varieties included Bohea, Congou and Souchong and common green tea varieties included Singlo and Hyson. All the tea that the British East India Company sold was grown and imported from China. Tea from China was preferred by most for better flavor, but it tended to be more expensive. The North American colonies consumed a lot of smuggled tea from the Dutch, the quality of the tea was not the same but much cheaper. A large market grew for smuggled tea with most British port officials looking the other way. All of this changed when the Tea Act was passed.
Nineteenthcentury lithograph depicting a tea plantation in Qing China
Many in Parliament believed the colonists would have little opposition to this new act. They could now purchase their preferred tea for a cheaper price than the smuggled tea from the Netherlands. Unfortunately for Royal leaders, this was not the case. As word reached the colonies Whig leaders such as Samuel Adams called it nothing more than a British authorized monopoly of the tea market, cutting into the pockets of colonial merchants (though their tea smuggling business was illegal to begin with). The Tea Act also highlighted a British policy that the colonists opposed for many years, the Townshend Acts. The Townshend Acts imposed duties on imported lead, glass, paper, paint, and tea. This “tax” was payable at ports and funded the salaries of colonial judges, governors, and other government officials. This angered many colonial leaders for two reasons. First, it levied another tax on the colonists without having their own representation in Parliament. Secondly, it made the government officials more beholden to the British government (and the tax) than the colonial governments.
Whig groups like the Sons of Liberty used local taverns as places for their meetings. The most famous being the Green Dragon Tavern in Boston. It no longer stands today.
As the news of the Tea Act reached the colonies, the reaction was mixed. Whig leaders in major cities such as Charleston, New York, Philadelphia and Boston saw it as a way to reinvigorate their cause of opposing British rule. Recently things were mostly quiet with little interest by the public for protest. But now the Whig spin machine went into full affect. The Tea Act was a direct affront to colonial self-rule and economic interest. The taxes paid for the tea went to British officials in the colonies and the cheaper priced (and better quality) tea would put many American merchants out of business. Whigs were able to control the message that the Tea Act was just another way for Parliament to make money off the colonists, who did not have representation in Parliament.
As part of the Tea Act, consignees were appointed to oversee the sale of tea and the collection of the taxes on behalf of the British East India Company. As the tea began to arrive in colonial ports, public pressure was put on consignees to resign. This pressure was successful in New York, Philadelphia and in Charleston. Each of these cities were able to either stop the tea from being offloaded or, as in the case of Charleston, they confiscated the tea and didn’t allow any duties to be paid on it. All of these were direct affronts to the law but the events in Boston proved to be the most dramatic.
Ca, 1780 view of Charleston Harbor, and the Exchange Building where the confiscated tea was locked away by Whig leaders.
Unlike in other port cities, the consignees in Boston refused to resign. Richard Clarke, leading merchant in Boston and one of consignees faced a mob at his warehouse trying to pressure him and the other consignees to resign. Encouraged by the Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson (who had two sons serving as tea consignees) to stand their ground, the consignees refused to resign. Soon news arrived that the first ship carrying the tea, the Dartmouth, was arriving in Boston soon.
Hosting several town meetings, some hosting thousands of people, Whig leaders such as Samuel Adams, Dr. Joseph Warren and John Hancock were able to organize a strong opposition to the tea. Of course, Boston was already a tinderbox due to the “Boston Massacre” in 1770 and the large contingent of British regular troops stationed in Boston. Bostonians were reminded daily of Royal influence. The Whigs protested to the Governor to order the ships to return to England, but Hutchinson refused to do so and claimed he didn’t have that authority. Many historians believed Hutchinson, who recently had resigned as Governor and was awaiting his replacement, had grown tired and frustrated with the likes of the Whigs and Sons of Liberty in Boston and was trying to press the issue.
On November 28, the Dartmouth arrived in Boston Harbor. Captain James Hall was turned away at the first wharf he sailed too and was redirected to Griffins Wharf. Everyone knew that once a ship entered the harbor, the captain had twenty days to unload the cargo and pay the custom duties. Soon two more ships arrived at Griffins Wharf with more tea. With the Governor refusing to allow the ships to leave the harbor and local patrols watching the ships to make sure the tea was not offloaded, the stage was set for December 16th, the last day the ship’s captains had to unload their cargo.
This article by ERW’s William Griffith first appeared on the American Battlefield Trust’s websiteon January 4, 2021.The original link can be found here.
The French and Indian War was in its fifth full year, and the tables had turned in Britain’s favor. As the larger conflict, the Seven Years’ War, raged throughout the globe, in North America, the British were one swift strike away from conquering the continent. The French in the Ohio River Valley, Great Lakes region, and Upstate New York had been thrown back on their heels and sent scurrying north into Canada leaving the road open for a British thrust against Montreal and Quebec. For the summer of 1759, the latter city, the capital of New France, would be placed in the crosshairs by an army commanded by Major General James Wolfe. If Quebec, situated along the most important water highway in Canada, the Saint Lawrence River, should fall, the French in North America would be squeezed into the region around Montreal. Pending any catastrophic failures by Britain’s army and navy and their allies elsewhere in the world, it would only be a matter of time than before New France was conquered.
James Wolfe and His Army
Thirty-two year old James Wolfe had served in the British Army for almost eighteen years when he was given command of the roughly 9,000-man force that was tasked with defeating the French in and around Quebec City in 1759. He was hard-nosed and did not always get along with his subordinate generals, Robert Monckton, George Townshend, and James Murray. The previous year he had been a brigadier general under Jeffry Amherst during the successful siege and capture of the fortress city of Louisbourg in Nova Scotia, and afterward led a campaign of destruction against the fishing villages of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. He then returned to England and secured a major generalship and command of the Quebec expedition. He arrived in Halifax in April 1759 and began training his force and preparing plans for his campaign.
Wolfe’s army was composed predominantly of professional British soldiers. Several hundred North American ranger units also complimented his force, which he described as, “… the worst soldiers in the universe.” He did not have much respect for colonial troops. On June 26, Wolfe’s men began landing at Ile d’Orleans in the middle of the Saint Lawrence River just to the east of Quebec City. Across the river, the French commander, the Marquis de Montcalm, prepared to oppose them.
The Marquis de Montcalm and Quebec’s Defenders
Louis-Joseph, Marquis de Montcalm, had been in command of France’s regular troops in North America since 1756. During that time he had put together an impressive string of victories at places like Fort Oswego, Fort William Henry, and Fort Carillon. As the attack on Quebec loomed, he was given command of all military forces on the continent, including the Canadian militia and marines. The previous harvest had not been good in Canada, and his army and the civilians in the city were on short rations, but relief came during the spring of 1759 when ships arrived carrying food and supplies. With this, Montcalm was determined to hold onto the city at all costs. He dug trenches outside the city and along the Saint Lawrence’s northern shoreline extending for nearly ten miles, welcoming a frontal assault from Wolfe. His army, consisting of over 3,500 French regular troops, included thousands more Native American allies and Canadian militiamen who were not accustomed to fighting in open fields against professional enemy soldiers. This important disadvantage would play a large part in Montcalm’s ultimate defeat.
An engraving of General James Wolfe’s failed attack on the Montmorency River, July 31, 1859. Library of Congress
The Campaign
When General Wolfe’s army began landing at Ile d’Orleans and subsequently Point Levis (directly across the river from the city) to the east of Quebec, he had initially hoped to force a landing on the northern shore just a few miles downstream at Beauport. However, he quickly discovered that Montcalm had heavily fortified the landing site, throwing a monkey wrench into his plans. This did not deter Wolfe, however, and by July 12, he had placed ten mortars and cannon at Point Levis and began bombarding the city itself. More guns were brought up and the bombardment continued for weeks in an effort to demoralize those within Quebec City.
The best chance to defeat Montcalm was to force him out of his defenses and into an open field battle. Wolfe understood that his vigorously trained and superior disciplined regular troops would have the upper hand against lesser-numbered French regulars and their militia. His first attempt to accomplish this occurred on July 31, when he landed a force of grenadiers, light infantry, and rangers near Montmorency Falls further downstream from Beauport hoping to ford the Montmorency River and reach a position in the rear of the French lines. It failed miserably. Montcalm guessed correctly that an attack was coming from that direction and rushed men there to meet the enemy. The river’s tide prevented Wolfe from getting all of his troops in position on time and frontal assaults launched from the beach were beaten back with heavy losses. The British retreated, leaving behind 443 men killed and wounded. The first attempt to force a landing on the Quebec side of the river had failed, but it would not be the last. Wolfe turned his attention further upriver, where he hoped his prospects for victory would be more fruitful.
The Plains of Abraham
As the weeks passed following the debacle at Montmorency, the British probed the northern shore west of Quebec for a secure landing spot. During this time, Wolfe grew sick with a severe fever and kidney stones and believed his days were numbered. He recovered enough, however, to begin moving his army upriver about eight miles from the city not far across from Cap Rouge. It was decided that the landing would be made at Anse au Foulon, where a narrow gap and trail led to the top of the cliffs just two miles west of the city.
At four in the morning, September 13, Lieutenant Colonel William Howe (who would serve as the commander of the British Army in America during the Revolutionary War) came ashore with the light infantry and surprised and overwhelmed the enemy outpost above the landing site. The conditions for rowing the army into position that early morning had been perfect for Wolfe. Montcalm was caught off guard.
After securing the landing zone, Wolfe began moving his attack force of roughly 4,400 regulars onto the Plains of Abraham, an open field about a mile wide and a half a mile long in front of the city’s western defenses. Responding to the threat as quickly as could be done, Montcalm rushed some 1,900 French regulars and 1,500 militiamen and Native Americans to meet the British line. This was the open field fight that Wolfe had been yearning for ever since the campaign began.
Benjamin West’s depiction of the death of British General James Wolfe during the Battle of Quebec, painted in 1770. Wikimedia Commons
As the French commander formed his men up in a line of battle, the British waited patiently across the field to receive their attack. Montcalm ordered his troops forward, and almost immediately his militiamen’s lack of experience and training in open combat became apparent as their formations wavered and some failed to advance close enough to the enemy line to fire effectively. One British participant described what happened next:
The French Line began … advancing briskly and for some little time in good order, [but] a part of their Line began to fire too soon, which immediately catched throughout the whole, then they began to waver but kept advancing with a scattering Fire.—When they had got within about a hundred yards of us our Line moved up regularly with a steady Fire, and when within twenty or thrity yards of closing gave a general [fire]; upon which a total [rout] of the Enemy immediately ensued.
The battle was over in just fifteen minutes as the British swept forward, claiming the field and capturing hundreds of prisoners. Both sides each lost over 600 men killed and wounded, including both respective commanders. Wolfe was mortally wounded and died a hero on the field. Montcalm, too, was hit by grapeshot in the abdomen and died the next morning. Five days later, Quebec surrendered. The French retreated further downstream to Montreal, attacked and failed to retake Quebec the next spring, and surrendered in whole on September 8, 1760, effectively ending all major military operations in North America during the French and Indian War. The battle for the continent between Britain and France was over.
Joseph Galloway is best known as one of the preeminent and prominent Loyalists who remained in the American colonies through the majority of the American Revolution. Prior to the colonies declaring independence, especially during the First Continental Congress, Galloway was active in the debates that decided the path forward. Besides attending and being active in the discussions in Philadelphia he penned a pamphlet entitled A Candid Examination of the Mutual Claims of Great Britain and the Colonies.
Within the pages, he called African American slavery “the dangerous enemy within” and the “natural weakness” of the soon-to-be Southern states. If a division ensued, Galloway predicted that,
“If the colonies happen to vie and try their reciprocal strength with each other, the political force of the Northern Colonies will soon destroy the opulent force of the Southern.”
Furthermore, Galloway pointed to the colonies/states of Georgia, Maryland, North and South Carolina, and Virginia as vulnerable because of the institution of slavery. In a conflict without the overarching guidance by Great Britain, the division between Northern and Southern colonies/states would lead to a domestic civil war and the possibility that African American slaves would join the Northern effort in vanquishing their former owners.
Although Galloway was writing to prop support for remaining loyal to the British crown he foreshadowed accurately the rift that plagued the independent United States. In laying out his views, Galloway quite succinctly predicted what would happen in 78 years after independence was won by the United States.
Galloway left Philadelphia when the British evacuated the city in 1778 and left for England where he would position himself in a leading role for loyalists in exiles. He never returned to the United States. His succinct prediction of the future though proved eerily accurate.
Sources:
Disunion Among Ourselves, The Perilous Politics of the American Revolution by Eli Merritt
University of Michigan, Evans Early American Imprint Collection, click here for the link.
We are excited to announce our 2024 (fourth annual!) bus tour location will be Lexington and Concord on October 11-13, 2024. Join historians Phillip Greenwalt, Rob Orrison and Alex Cain as we tour the sites associated with the beginning of the American Revolution on April 19, 1775. The tour will cover events in Lexington, Concord and sites along the “Battle Road.” Tickets are $250 per person and includes a Friday night lecture, all day tour on Saturday and half day tour on Sunday (bus tour transportation and Saturday lunch included in cost).
Join us for our FOURTH annual tour as we take on the beginning of the American Revolution just a few months before the 250th anniversary. Learn about the dramatic events that led to the first shots for the Revolution and the bloody aftermath. We will visit Lexington Green, Buckman’s Tavern, North Bridge in Concord, Battle Road including Merriam’s Corner, Parker’s Revenge and the Jason Russell House. There is no better way to experience history than to stand in the footsteps of where it happened!
Join us on Sunday, November 26th at 7pm for a pre-recorded conversation with Dr. Brooke Barbier. As we edge closer to the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, there were many personalities who played major roles in the revolution movement in Boston. One of those key figures was John Hancock, one of the richest men in the North American colonies. Hancock played critical roles in the Sons of Liberty and the Masons to leverage his influence.
We are excited to welcome author and historian Dr. Brooke Barbier, who takes a new look at John Hancock in her new book “King Hancock The Radical Influence of a Moderate Founding Father.” Dr. Barbier dispells some myths and adds new insight into the life of Hancock. Join us for a great discussion on all things King Hancock!
This is a great way to cap off a week turkey, football and shopping!
During the second half of the 18th century, the Forks of the Ohio, where the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers come together to form the Ohio River, were a vortex of conflict that dramatically influenced the course of events in North America and the unfolding of a young United States. In his latest book, The Whiskey Rebellion: A Distilled History of an American Crisis, historian Brady J. Crytzer adds to his already substantial body of work exploring the critical role the region played in American history. It is a must read.
In 1791, Congress passed a whiskey tax to raise revenue and pay off war debts. Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, whose brainchild the whiskey tax was, designed the tax to help consolidate capital for investment in the country’s infrastructure. Small farmers, who constituted the bulk of distillers on the frontier, rebelled. Their resentment of the tax was not driven merely by its existence, but also by its structure, which they argued discriminated against small farmers. They had a point. Whiskey, not just as commodity, was a medium of exchange because hard currency was scarce on the frontier. Thus, in some ways, the whiskey tax resembled the stamp tax; one had to pay it to engage in normal commerce. The tax could be levied both on stills and the amount of whiskey each distiller produced. Large enterprises who ran their stills year-round could pay the tax. Small farmers, however, primarily ran their stills for brief periods in order to convert grain crops to more readily transportable whiskey. Moreover, the tax had to be paid in cash, which was scarce on the frontier. As a result, the tax was regressive and more difficult for smaller farmer to pay than for large the large distillers.
Rebellion was in some ways the predictable outcome. By 1791, the frontier was populated by people with a tradition of resisting governments they believed were run for the benefit of others. Whether those elites were in far-off London or distant Philadelphia was immaterial. Pittsburgh might be a federalist outpost as a frontier center for exercising the authority of the newly-established United States government, but the more populous surrounding countryside was dominated by small farmers and small communities. They responded much in the same way Americans had before the Revolution: community meetings and remonstrances, isolated attacks on officials, intimidation of those cooperating with distant governments, destruction of property, the creation of new political institutions, and the old stand-by: tarring and feathering. Events culminated in a two-day battle for General John Neville’s home and a large muster of rebels at the site of British Major General Edward Braddock’s defeat on the Monongahela River.
Join us this Sunday night at 7pm as we welcome James R. Fichter to our popular Sunday night Rev War Revelry!
In Tea, James R. Fichter reveals that despite the so-called Boston Tea Party in 1773, two large shipments of tea from the East India Company survived and were ultimately drunk in North America. Their survival shaped the politics of the years ahead, impeded efforts to reimburse the company for the tea lost in Boston Harbor, and hinted at the enduring potency of consumerism in revolutionary politics.
Tea protests were widespread in 1774, but so were tea advertisements and tea sales, Fichter argues. The protests were noisy and sometimes misleading performances, not clear signs that tea consumption was unpopular. Revolutionaries vilified tea in their propaganda and prohibited the importation and consumption of tea and British goods. Yet merchant ledgers reveal these goods were still widely sold and consumed in 1775. Colonists supported Patriots more than they abided by non-consumption. When Congress ended its prohibition against tea in 1776, it reasoned that the ban was too widely violated to enforce. War was a more effective means than boycott for resisting Parliament, after all, and as rebel arms advanced, Patriots seized tea and other goods Britons left behind. By 1776, protesters sought tea and, objecting to its high price, redistributed rather than destroyed it. Yet as Fichter demonstrates in Tea, by then the commodity was not a symbol of the British state, but of American consumerism.
Grab your favorite drink and tune in. If you are not able to tune in on Sunday, the video will be placed on our YouTube and podcast channels.
Though it is most commonly associated with its Civil War history, Jefferson County, West Virginia, boasts a large amount of Revolutionary War history, too. One does not have to travel far in the county to stumble on a Washington family home (there were ten, seven still stand) or find Washington family members buried in the Zion Episcopal Cemetery in Charlestown, the county seat (this cemetery supposedly boasts more Washington family graves than any other place in the United States).
Beyond Washington, though, Jefferson County can claim at least two other well-known Revolutionary War generals on its citizen rolls: Horatio Gates and Charles Lee. Both of their countryside estates still stand today but are privately owned.
Traveller’s Rest (Library of Congress)
Traveller’s Rest, built by Horatio Gates in 1773, stands west of Kearneysville in the western section of the county. Gates employed carpenter John Ariss for the wooden portions of the construction project, a man who also worked on many of the local Washington homes. Gates lived at Traveller’s Rest until his service in the Continental Army took him away from his home. Following his defeat at the Battle of Camden in 1780 and his subsequent sidelining by the Continental Congress, Gates returned to his plantation, where he lived quietly. In 1790, the former general freed his slaves, sold the house, and moved to New York, where he died in 1806.
Three miles south of Gates lived Charles Lee at Prato Rio, a Portuguese phrase meaning “Stream on the meadow.” Lee did not build his home but purchased the 1733 structure in 1774 after some urging from Gates. Following his own sacking in the wake of the Battle of Monmouth, Lee returned to his home in 1779, a place he referred to as “The Hut.” Lee spent his last years there quietly surrounded by his three dogs, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Supposedly, when he learned of a possible visit from George Washington, Lee attached a note to his door that read, “No dinner cooked here to-day.”
Lee’s house was less conventional than Gates’ home. The inside contained no walls—only chalk lines delineated the different rooms. Lee remarked, “I can sit in any corner, and give orders, and overlook the whole, without moving my chair.”
Prato Rio (West Virginia State Historic Preservation Office)
While both homes can be seen from public roads today, they are not open to the public. Please respect the owners’ privacy.
Join us this Sunday night at 7pm as we welcome Glenn F. Williams, PhD to our popular Sunday night Rev War Revelry! Glenn will examine the political and economic causes of the American Revolution beginning at the end of the Seven Years War / French and Indian War through the resistance movements. He will dispel or clarify some of the popular beliefs about the grievances that eventually led the thirteen colonies to break with the Mother Country. This will be a timely discussion as we approach the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. Glenn Williams is a retired U.S. Army officer that until recently also enjoyed a “second career” as a military historian. He retired as a senior Historian after 18 years at the U.S. Army Center of Military History and 3 1/2 years as the historian of the American Battlefield Protection Program of the U.S. National Park Service.
Grab your favorite drink and tune in, we will be live so feel free to drop your questions in the live chat. If you are not able to tune in on Sunday, the video will be placed on our You Tube and podcast channels.
Emerging Revolutionary War Era 