Washington seeks to make militias into a military

On November 8, 1775, General George Washington seeks to resolve several problems facing the army: how to encourage experienced troops to enlist, how to assemble a capable officer corps and how to overcome provincial differences and rivalries. Describing the problems, he wrote, “Connecticut wants no Massachusetts man in her corps. Massachusetts thinks there is no necessity for a Rhode Islander…”

Just as the British had discovered the difficulties of waging war with obstreperous Yankees for soldiers during the Seven Years’ War, Washington, the Virginia planter-cum-soldier, was unimpressed upon meeting his supposed army outside Boston after being appointed commander in chief of Continental forces in 1775. He saw “stupidity” among the enlisted men, who were used to the easy familiarity of being commanded by neighbors in local militias with elected officers. Washington promptly insisted that the officers behave with decorum and the enlisted men with deference. Although he enjoyed some success with this original army, the New Englanders went home to their farms at the end of 1775, and Washington had to start fresh with new recruits in 1776.

Washington fought an uphill battle for military order until Friedrich von Steuben arrived at the Continental Army encampment at Valley Forge on February 23, 1778. The Prussian military officer commenced training soldiers in close-order drill, instilling new confidence and discipline in the demoralized Continental Army. Before von Steuben’s arrival, colonial American soldiers were notorious for their slovenly camp conditions. Von Steuben insisted on reorganization to establish basic hygiene, ordering that kitchens and latrines be put on opposite sides of the camp, with latrines facing a downhill slope. Just having latrines was a novelty to the Continental troops, who were accustomed to living in their own filth.

On the merit of his efforts at Valley Forge, Washington recommended that von Steuben be named inspector general of the Continental Army; Congress complied. In this capacity, von Steuben propagated his methods throughout the Patriot forces by circulating his “Blue Book,” entitled “Regulations for the Order and Discipline of the Troops of the United States.”

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Jack Manning

Treasurer General

National Society Sons of the American Revolution

www.sar.org  

"From the Nature of the Constitution, I must approve all parts of a Bill, or reject it in total. To do the latter can only be Justified upon the clear and obvious grounds of propriety; and I never had such confidence in my own faculty of judging as to be over tenacious of the opinions I may have imbibed in doubtful cases."

George Washington (1793)

Governor Dunmore signs Dunmore’s Proclamation

On this day in history, November 7, 1775, what became known as Dunmore’s Proclamation was signed by John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore and Royal Governor of the Colony of Virginia. This proclamation declared martial law in the colony and promised freedom to all slaves who would leave their Virginia masters and join the Royal army.

Dunmore hoped to reassert his authority in the colony after living aboard a ship at Yorktown for several months when the rebellion started becoming violent. His hopes were never realized, only one or two thousand slaves left to join his meager force of 300 soldiers. Patriot and Loyalist slave owners turned against him. The Virginia Convention issued an amnesty to any slaves who would return home.

The slaves that could fight became part of "Dunmore’s Ethiopian Regiment" and only fought in one battle, the Battle of Great Bridge, which the British lost. Many of Dunmore’s soldiers died in a smallpox outbreak the following year. In 1776, Dunmore was forced to abandon the colony and he took 300 of the slaves with him back to England.

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Jack Manning

Treasurer General

National Society Sons of the American Revolution

www.sar.org  

"Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice?"

George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796

John Carroll named first Catholic bishop in U.S.

On November 6, 1789, Pope Pius VI appoints John Carroll bishop of Baltimore, making him the first Catholic bishop in the United States.

Carroll was born in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, in 1735. His mother came from a wealthy family and had been educated in France. At age 13, Carroll sailed for France in order to complete his own education at St. Omer’s College in French Flanders. At age 18, he joined the Society of Jesus, and after a further 14 years of study in Liege, he received ordination as a priest at age 34. Pope Clement XIV’s decision in 1773 to dissolve the Jesuit order, however, ended Carroll’s European career.

Three years after Carroll’s return to Maryland, the need to make allies of French Catholics in Canada created an opportunity for him to join a Congressional delegation dispatched to negotiate with the Canadians. Benjamin Franklin served on the same delegation, and although the mission failed, Franklin proved an excellent ally to Carroll. In 1784, Franklin recommended to the papal nuncio in Paris that Carroll assume the position of Superior of Missions in the United States of North America, which removed American Catholics from the authority of the British Catholic hierarchy. In this role, as bishop and ultimately as the first archbishop in the United States (1808), Carroll oversaw the creation of leading Catholic institutions in the new nation, including the nation’s first Catholic university (Georgetown University, founded in 1789) and cathedral (Baltimore Basilica, built in 1806).

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Jack Manning

Treasurer General

National Society Sons of the American Revolution

www.sar.org  

The act of greatest subversion … is the one of indifference. A man, or a group, finds it unbearable that someone can be simply uninterested in his, or its, convictions. … There is a degree of complicity, or mutual respect, between the believer and the man who attacks his beliefs (the revolutionary), for the latter takes them seriously.

John Carroll

De La Balme’s Defeat

On this day in history, November 5, 1780, a Revolutionary War battle known as De la Balme’s Defeat or De la Balme’s Massacre takes place when retired French cavalry officer Augustin de la Balme is killed near present day Fort Wayne, Indiana in a battle with Miami Indians. The officer had been appointed in 1777 as the Continental Army’s Inspector of Cavalry, but resigned this position due to his dislike for Polish General Casimir Pulaski, the Commander of the United States Cavalry.

In 1780, De la Balme left on a voyage down the Ohio River on a mission to capture the British Fort Detroit. Historians are uncertain whether he undertook this mission on his own or if he was acting on secret orders from General George Washington. De la Balme gathered Canadian colonists who had been living under British rule along the way in Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and Vincennes (in what is now Indiana).

De la Balme’s men moved north toward Fort Detroit and when they arrived in Kekionga (modern day Fort Wayne, Indiana), they found an unoccupied British and Indian trading post, the British and their Miami Indian allies having left the post, apparently on a hunting mission. De la Balme occupied the post and began to raid other British posts in the area. On the 5th, De la Balme set out for a post along the Eel River.

In the meantime, a group of Miami hunters returned to Kekionga, killed the 20 men De la Balme had left there and spread the word among the local Indians. Chief Little Turtle, who lived on the Eel River nearby, attacked De la Balme’s party before he could reach the trading post. de la Balme’s men entrenched themselves along the river, but were eventually overcome. De la Balme and most of his men were killed, with only a few escaping to tell the tale.

Chief Little Turtle would go on to become a successful war chief against the Americans in the Northwest Indian Wars of the 1790s and, in spite of De la Balme’s failure, the British would post a group of Rangers at Kekionga to protect it from further attack. Fort Detroit would remain in British possession until the signing of the Jay Treaty in 1794.

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Jack Manning

Treasurer General
National Society Sons of the American Revolution

www.sar.org

“The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.”

Edmund Burke

November 04, 1801 : Patriot, politician and physician William Shippen dies

Patriot William Shippen, of the powerful Shippen family of Philadelphia dies at the age of 89 at his home in Germantown, Pennsylvania, on this day in 1801. He was a descendant of the well-known Edward Shippen, colonial Philadelphia’s mayor and Pennsylvania’s chief justice.

William Shippen pursued a medical education instead of following in the footsteps of his father, a successful merchant. He established a large practice in Philadelphia and spent the 1740s immersed in civic projects including the establishment of the First Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia and Benjamin Franklin’s Public Academy. The Academy evolved into the College of Philadelphia, now the University of Pennsylvania, of which Shippen served as a trustee from 1755 to 1779. William’s brother, Edward, was instrumental in the founding of the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University, of which William also served as a trustee.

Shippen went on to serve as a Pennsylvania delegate to the Continental Congress from 1779 to 1780, before returning to his medical practice. His son, William Shippen Jr., graduated from the College of New Jersey in 1754, received a medical degree from the University of Edinburgh in 1761 and, with his father’s support, became an early faculty member at the first medical school in what would later become the United States at the College of Philadelphia in 1765. William Jr. then put his medical expertise to a patriotic purpose, serving the Continental Army as the director of hospitals from 1777 to 1781. He married Patriot Thomas Lee of Virginia’s daughter, Alice. Their daughter, Nancy, further tightened the bonds between the leading families of the new United States by marrying Robert Beekman Livingston of New York.

By contrast, William Sr.’s niece—Edward’s daughter, Margaret (Peggy) Shippen—married Benedict Arnold in 1779, when she was 18 and the then Patriot war hero was 37. Arnold’s attempt to keep his young bride in the affluent lifestyle to which she was accustomed is generally understood to be one cause of his decision to accept a bribe from the British. Peggy had courted British Major John Andre before meeting Arnold and likely introduced her old beau to her husband; Arnold later conspired with Andre, agreeing to hand over West Point to the British for 20,000 pounds sterling. For her part, Peggy is thought to have passed information to the British before her marriage to Arnold, although she convinced George Washington of her innocence after Andre’s capture and her husband’s flight. She remained a devoted wife to Arnold despite their financial and personal hardships when they fled to England, where she remained after his death in June 1801.

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Jack Manning

Treasurer 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)