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.
I chose the long way to Revolutionary War history. Part of it can be blamed on the co-founders and early bloggers on ERW. They convinced me, a Civil War historian, to come to the “dark side,” and study the more pivotal, more complex, and more important era in American history. And thus I joined this merry band and “threw in” to start learning more about our turbulent founding. I can’t say that I am a master of this domain yet, but I’ve come a long in several years.
Today, however, as I walked through one of our country’s national cemeteries, one that does not have any dead from our War for Independence, I began thinking about the American consciousness and the path toward someone’s interest in our military history. I began by reflecting on my own experience and why I was drawn to study the Civil War. Certainly, visiting Civil War battlefields as a young child with a toy musket and kepi sold me easily enough to want me to pursue this field of study as a future career. But maybe it was also the impact of visual media. I could see my childhood heroes in pictures taken at the time, the wreckage of the battlefield, and the plight of dead and dying soldiers on those fields and at field hospitals.
So maybe the Revolutionary period does not garner the attention that study of later wars does as it lacks photographs, and for later conflicts, film, film with sound, and live frontline reporting on tv and the internet. But time may also factor into the perception of interest levels. Iraq, Afghanistan, Desert Storm, and Vietnam veterans are still with us, and although their numbers are marching into history, the Korean War and World War II generations. Their presence in our society makes the conflicts in which they served seem not so long ago, rather, more like recent history. As a public historian, however, when I have discussions regarding World War I and the Civil War it’s viscerally noticeable that modern society has a harder time making tangible connections to these moments in American history. It simply seems much further into the past, a long, long time ago to them. Maybe because there are no longer any living veterans from these wars. Bringing the Revolutionary War into the discussion only makes it seem even more remote from present day. The general public’s perception of time when thinking of this era might as well be the Dark Ages, but it is not even 250 years old yet. We are still a country in its infancy by world comparison. Thus, it’s a harder “sell” to the masses to become involved or interested in the Revolutionary War era outside of a cast of a few prominent characters, George Washington among the very top of that list.
Since April 2023, however, I have been on a crusade to change that thinking as I work with the public. The Revolutionary War was not that far away, and although we only have paintings and sketches from the war rather than photographs and live action film, it is enough to spark an interest and deeper appreciation and understanding. Perhaps, though, it is the tangible reminders of the war that can once and for all disprove the notion that this period is too far removed into the past to be relevant, worth note, or even remembrance.
Nearly eighteen months ago I stood on the battlefield of Camden, fought August 16, 1780. I watched as horsedrawn caissons returned the remains of twelve Continental soldiers of the Maryland and Delaware regiments, one British Loyalist of a North Carolina regiment, and one Scottish Highlander, 71st regiment back to the battlefield. The remains had been discovered earlier in 2022. After a moving ceremony, among a massive crowd gathered to pay their respects, I was able to walk among the flag draped coffins, made of wood from the battlefield itself. I was standing mere inches from soldiers that had given their lives on that field 243 years earlier. The vail of time instantly dropped at that stark realization. The Revolutionary War was not far into the past, hemmed in among long lost American decades. Rather it was right in front of me, in the present, in the now. You could further walk the battlefield that April weekend. Four white flag markers denoted the four corners of where each set of remains were found on the battlefield. You could literally see the battle unfold before you, and now lay witness to where these men had died and fell all those years before.
I have had many powerful experiences at historic sites of the years. Standing or walking in the footsteps of historical giants, visiting gravesites, being present on anniversaries of important moments. But no experience was as powerful as this day. And so, on this day, I reflect on the battle of Camden, South Carolina. I reflect on that April day. And I reflect on the unfinished work that lay ahead during the 250th anniversary commemorations of the Revolutionary War as public historians. We must rededicate ourselves “to the great task remaining before us” to bring these pivotal, complex, and important moments of this era back into the American consciousness and to ensure it remains ever present for the next 250 years.
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.
Join us this Sunday, July 7th at 7pm for our next Rev War Revelry as we continue to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the events that led to the American Revolution. We welcome Executive Director Michael Norris to discuss the historic Carpenters Hall in Philadelphia and the role it played in hosting the First Continental Congress. The First Continental Congress convened in Carpenters’ Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, between September 5 and October 26, 1774. Delegates from twelve of Britain’s thirteen American colonies attended. The Congress was a direct result of the Parliament’s reaction to the Boston Tea Party (December 1773). This gathering of colonial leaders intended to create a united front in their response to what they believed was Parliamentary over reach in the “Coercive Acts.”
Grab a drink and join us on our You Tube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@emergingrevolutionarywar8217 Feel free to interact with the discussion by adding questions in the video chat. Once the video is over we will repost the video to our Facebook page and our Spotify account. We hope to see you then!
Emerging Revolutionary War Era 