The Wyoming Massacre takes place

On this day in history, July 3, 1778, the Wyoming Massacre takes place on the Pennsylvania frontier. After the American Revolution began, the British army in Quebec rallied Loyalists and Indians in the New York area to make attacks on colonial settlements. The Iroquois Confederation, made up of six separate tribes, split in its loyalties. 4 tribes fought with the British, while two sided with the Americans.

Major John Butler recruited Loyalists into a regiment known as "Butler’s Rangers." Along with a large group of mostly Seneca Indians, he launched an attack on the Wyoming Valley in northeastern Pennsylvania in the vicinity of modern-day Wilkes-Barre and Scranton. The Wyoming Valley at the time had around 3,000 settlers in small villages and farms. A string of "forts," many of which were merely fortified houses or blockhouses, guarded the valley.

The invading force arrived on June 30, 1778. Settlers had received word that the invasion was coming and gathered into the forts. The largest group gathered at Forty Fort with the local militia, comprised of about 300 untrained farmers. The valley had sent most of its able bodied men away to fight in the Continental Army and the remaining militia was mostly made up of the old, the young and the feeble.

Major Butler quickly captured Fort Wintermute and Fort Jenkins with no resistance from the settlers. The militia at Forty Fort was in a quandary. Should they attack the invaders now, before their forces swelled even larger? Or should they wait for reinforcements to come? A vote was taken and 300 men marched out of Forty Fort on July 3.

When Major Butler learned of the approaching militia, he ordered Forts Wintermute and Jenkins to be set ablaze and ordered his forces to take up battle positions. When the patriots saw the smoke rising from the burning forts, they believed the attackers had begun a retreat and marched onward all the more quickly – right into an ambush. Butler had ordered his Indian allies to lie flat on the ground to conceal themselves and not to attack until the patriots were on top of them.

The patriots fired several rounds, but the Seneca attacked from their hiding places when the militia was only a hundred yards away. Trapped between the Seneca on one side and the Loyalists on the other, the militia quickly fell apart and a complete rout ensued. Over 200 of the soldiers were killed in the chase and some were tortured. Major Butler boasted that 227 scalps were brought to him after the battle.

The settlers at Forty Fort quickly surrendered under favorable conditions. After signing the agreement, Major Butler left the area, but the Indians broke the agreement and plundered the entire valley. Over 1,000 homes were destroyed. Crops were burned. Clothing and goods plundered. Some settlers were killed if they resisted, but most were allowed to leave if they went peaceably. Nearly all the settlers fled the valley, with some dying from exposure or starvation in the wild.

The Wyoming Massacre and other attacks provoked a full military invasion by the Continental Army the following year. General George Washington sent the Sullivan Expedition under General John Sullivan, which destroyed numerous Iroquois villages. The attacks continued, but many Indians starved or were forced to flee to British Canada, never really recovering from the invasion.

http://www.revolutionary-war-and-beyond.com

Jack Manning

Historian General

National Society Sons of the American Revolution

www.sar.org  

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclination, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."

John Adams (1770)

Congress Votes for Independence

On July 2, 1776, the Second Continental Congress, assembled in Philadelphia, formally adopts Richard Henry Lee’s resolution for independence from Great Britain. The vote is unanimous, with only New York abstaining.

The resolution had originally been presented to Congress on June 7, but it soon became clear that New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and South Carolina were as yet unwilling to declare independence, though they would likely be ready to vote in favor of a break with England in due course. Thus, Congress agreed to delay the vote on Lees Resolution until July 1. In the intervening period, Congress appointed a committee to draft a formal declaration of independence. Its members were John Adams of Massachusetts, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, Robert R. Livingston of New York and Thomas Jefferson of Virginia. Thomas Jefferson, well-known to be the best writer of the group, was selected to be the primary author of the document, which was presented to Congress for review on June 28, 1776.

On July 1, 1776, debate on the Lee Resolution resumed as planned, with a majority of the delegates favoring the resolution. Congress thought it of the utmost importance that independence be unanimously proclaimed. To ensure this, they delayed the final vote until July 2, when 12 colonial delegations voted in favor of it, with the New York delegates abstaining, unsure of how their constituents would wish them to vote. John Adams wrote that July 2 would be celebrated as the most memorable epoch in the history of America. Instead, the day has been largely forgotten in favor of July 4, when Jefferson’s edited Declaration of Independence was adopted.

http://www.history.com

Jack Manning

Historian General

National Society Sons of the American Revolution

www.sar.org  

"Wisely, therefore, do they consider union and a good national government as necessary to put and keep them in such a situation as, instead of inviting war, will tend to repress and discourage it. That situation consists in the best possible state of defense, and necessarily depends on the government, the arms, and the resources of the country."

John Jay, Federalist No. 4, 1787

Congress Resolves To Forge Indian Alliances

On this day, July 1, 1775, the Continental Congress resolves to recruit Indian nations to the American side in their dispute with the British, should the British take native allies of their own. The motion read: “That in case any Agent of the ministry, shall induce the Indian tribes, or any of them to commit actual hostilities against these colonies, or to enter into an offensive Alliance with the British troops, thereupon the colonies ought to avail themselves of an Alliance with such Indian Nations as will enter into the same, to oppose such British troops and their Indian Allies.”

Few “such Indians Nations” saw any advantage to joining the Patriot cause. Rather, they saw Great Britain as their last defense against the encroaching land-hungry European settlers into their ancestral territory. Racist settlers managed to undermine any residual trust remaining in the Native American population during the revolution by committing atrocities such as the massacre of neutral, Christian Indian women and children at prayer in Gnaddenhutten, Pennsylvania, in 1778. In another example, a Continental officer undermined his own cause with the murder of Cornplanter, a Shawnee leader and Patriot ally, in 1777.

At the close of the War for Independence, the Patriots’ few Indian allies received worse treatment at the hands of their supposed allies than natives who had sided with Britain. Having promised Continental soldiers land in return for their service, Congress seized land from its Indian allies in order to cede it to officers on the verge of mutiny in 1783.

http://www.history.com

Jack Manning

Historian General

National Society Sons of the American Revolution

www.sar.org  

"We have heard of the impious doctrine in the old world, that the people were made for kings, not kings for the people. Is the same doctrine to be revived in the new, in another shape — that the solid happiness of the people is to be sacrificed to the views of political institutions of a different form?"

James Madison (1788)