American History – Historical Easter Eggs

September 22, 1776 Nathan Hale

The Connecticut schoolteacher was young and untried when he placed is confidence in the wrong place. It would prove to be a fatal mistake.

The nine Hale brothers of Coventry, Connecticut supported the Patriot side from the earliest days of the American Revolution. Five of them participated in the battles at Lexington and Concord. Nathan was the youngest and destined to be the most famous of them all. He was still at home at this time, finishing out the term of a teaching contract in New London, Connecticut.

Nathan Hale’s unit participated in the siege of Boston. Hale himself joined General George Washington’s army in the spring of 1776, as the army moved to Long Island to block the British move on the strategically important port city of New York.

On June 29, General Howe appeared off Staten Island with a fleet of 45 ships. By the end of the week, he’d assembled an overwhelming fleet of 130.

There was an attempt at peaceful negotiation on July 13, when General Howe sent a letter to General Washington under flag of truce. The letter was addressed “George Washington, Esq.”, intentionally omitting Washington’s rank. Washington declined to receive the letter, responding that there was no one present by that address. Howe tried the letter again on the 16th, this time addressing “George Washington, Esq., etc., etc.”. Again, Howe’s letter was refused.

The following day, General Howe sent Captain Nisbet Balfour in person to ask if Washington would meet with Howe’s adjutant, Colonel James Patterson. Considerations of honor having thus been settled, a meeting was scheduled for July 20.

Patterson told Washington that General Howe had come with powers to grant pardons. Washington refused, saying “Those who have committed no fault want no pardon”.

Patriot forces were comprehensively defeated at the Battle of Brooklyn, fought on August 27, 1776. With the Royal Navy in command on the water, Howe’s army dug in for a siege, confident that the adversary was trapped and waiting to be destroyed at their convenience.

On the night of August 29-30, Washington withdrew his army to the ferry landing and across the East River, to Manhattan.

With horse’s hooves and wagon wheels muffled, oarlocks stuffed with rags, the Patriot army withdrew even as a rearguard tended fires, convincing the redcoats in their trenches that the Americans were still there.

The surprise was comprehensive for the British side, on waking on the morning of the 30^th. The Patriot army had vanished.

The Battle of Long Island would almost certainly have ended in disaster for the Patriot cause but for that silent evacuation over the night of August 29-30, one of the great military feats of the American revolution.

Following evacuation, the Patriot army found itself isolated on Manhattan island, virtually surrounded. Only the thoroughly disagreeable current conditions of the Throg’s Neck-Hell’s Gate segment of the East River prevented Admiral Sir Richard Howe (William’s brother) from enveloping Washington’s position, altogether.

Expecting a British assault in September, General Washington became increasingly desperate for information on British movements.

Washington asked for volunteers for a dangerous mission, to go behind enemy lines as a spy. Up stepped a volunteer. His name was Nathan Hale.

Hale set out on his mission on September 10, disguised as a Dutch schoolmaster. He was successful for about a week but appears to have been something less than “street smart”. The young and untrained Patriot turned spy, bestowed his trust where it did not belong.

Major Robert Rogers was an old British hand, a leader of Rangers during the earlier French and Indian War. Rogers must have suspected that this Connecticut schoolteacher was more than he pretended to be, intimating that he himself was a spy in the Patriot cause.

Hale took Rogers into his confidence, believing the two to be playing for the same side. Consider Tiffany, a British loyalist and Barkhamsted Connecticut shopkeeper was himself a sergeant of the French and Indian War. Tiffany recorded what happened next in his journal:

“The time being come, Captain Hale repaired to the place agreed on, where he met his pretended friend” (Rogers), “with three or four men of the same stamp, and after being refreshed, began [a]…conversation. But in the height of their conversation, a company of soldiers surrounded the house, and by orders from the commander, seized Captain Hale in an instant. But denying his name, and the business he came upon, he was ordered to New York. But before he was carried far, several persons knew him and called him by name; upon this he was hanged as a spy, some say, without being brought before a court martial.”

“Stay behind spy” Hercules Mulligan had better success, reporting on British goings-on from the 1776 capture of New York to their withdrawal seven years later. But that must be a story for another day.

Nathan Hale was hanged on this day in 1776, described by CIA.gov as “The first American executed for spying for his country”.

There is no official account of Nathan Hale’s final words. However, an eyewitness statement from British Captain John Montresor exists. He was present at the hanging.

Montresor spoke with American Captain William Hull the following day under flag of truce. The captain gave Hull the following account: “‘On the morning of his execution,’ said Montresor, ‘my station was near the fatal spot, and I requested the Provost Marshal to permit the prisoner to sit in my marquee, while he was making the necessary preparations. Captain Hale entered: he was calm, and bore himself with gentle dignity, in the consciousness of rectitude and high intentions. He asked for writing materials, which I furnished him: he wrote two letters, one to his mother and one to a brother officer.’ He was shortly after summoned to the gallows. But a few persons were around him, yet his characteristic dying words were remembered. He said, ‘I only regret, that I have but one life to lose for my country‘.

Nathan Hale was barely three months past his 21st birthday on the day he died.

September 21, 1780 André

He asked not that his life be spared, but only that he be executed by firing squad. A death considered worthy of a gentleman of the age and not hanging, an end reserved for thieves and scoundrels.

In an age before radio or television, John André was an interesting man to be around. A gifted storyteller with a great sense of humor he could draw, paint and cut silhouettes. He was an excellent writer, he could sing, and he could write verse. John André was a British Major at the time of the American Revolution, who took part in his army’s occupations of Philadelphia and New York.

John André was a spy.

A favorite of colonial era loyalist society, Major André dated Peggy Shippen for a time, the daughter of a prominent Philadelphia loyalist. Shippen went on to marry Benedict Arnold in 1779, forming a link between the spy and an important general in the cause of American independence.

Hat tip artist Dale Watson for this image of Peggy Shippen

The relationship nearly changed the outcome of the American revolution.

Arnold was the Commandant of West Point at the time, the future location of one of our great military academies. A prominence overlooking the Hudson River, West Point was a fortified position offering decisive military advantage to the side holding the position. The British capture of West Point would have split the colonies in half.

The author (left) on a 2022 “history ramble” weekend with family members. It doesn’t take a military strategist to understand the importance of West Point’s commanding position over the Hudson River.

The Sloop of War HMS Vulture sailed up the Hudson River on September 20, 1780, Major André meeting with General Arnold on the river’s banks the following day. Dressed in civilian clothes, John André struck a bargain with the patriot general. Arnold would receive £20,000, over a million dollars today, in exchange for which he would give up West Point.

Tasked with returning the signed papers to British lines, Major André was stopped by three Patriot Militiamen two days later. They were John Paulding, David Williams and Isaac Van Wart. One of the three wore a Hessian overcoat, making André believe they might be loyalists. “Gentlemen”, he said, “I hope you belong to our party”. “What party”, came the reply, and André said “The lower (British) party”. “We do”, they said, to which André replied that he was a British officer and must not be detained. That was as far as he got.

You need not be a military strategist to recognize the importance of the commanding heights at West Point. The discovery of those papers brought Benedict Arnold’s treachery to light. Arnold immediately fled on hearing of André’s arrest, even as George Washington was headed to his place for a meeting over breakfast.

John André was tried and sentenced to death as a spy. He asked if he could write a letter to General Washington. In it he asked not that his life be spared, but that he be executed by firing squad, a death more worthy of a gentleman than hanging, an execution at that time commonly reserved for criminals.

General Washington believed that Arnold’s crimes to be far more egregious than those of John André. Furthermore, he was impressed with the man’s courage. Washington wrote to General Sir Henry Clinton asking for an exchange of prisoners.

Having received no reply, Washington wrote in his General Order of October 2 “That Major André General to the British Army ought to be considered as a spy from the Enemy and that agreeable to the law and usage of nations it is their opinion he ought to suffer death. The Commander in Chief directs the execution of the above sentence in the usual way this afternoon at five o’clock precisely.”

John André was executed by hanging in Tappan, New York. He was 31.

A vintage postcard illustration depicting the execution of Major John Andre, hung as a spy for aiding and abetting General Benedict Arnold during the American Revolutionary War in Trenton, New Jersey on 2nd October 1780, published in New York, circa 1903. Andre’s body was later disinterred from American soil and buried in Westminster Abbey, London. (Photo by Paul Popper/Popperfoto via Getty Images)

John André lived for a time in Benjamin Franklin’s house back in 1777-’78, during the British occupation of Philadelphia. As he was packing to leave, Geneva-born American patriot and portrait artist Pierre-Eugène Du Simitiere came to say goodbye. The officer was always known as a gentleman. Simitiere was shocked to find André stoop to looting the home of such a prominent patriot. For a man known for extravagant courtesy, this was way out of character. André was packing books, musical instruments and scientific apparatus, even an oil portrait of Franklin, offering not so much as a response to Simitiere’s protests.

Nearly two hundred years later, the descendants of Major-General Lord Charles Grey returned the painting to the United States, explaining that André had probably looted Franklin’s home under direct orders from the General himself. A Gentleman always, it would explain the man’s inability to defend his own actions.

Today that oil portrait of Benjamin Franklin hangs in the White House.

Benedict Arnold went on to lead British forces against his former comrades. As the story goes, Arnold once asked one of his officers what the Americans might do should he (Arnold) be captured. The officer replied: “They will cut off the leg which was wounded when you were fighting so gloriously for the cause of liberty, and bury it with the honors of war, and hang the rest of your body on a gibbet.”

The story refers to a grievous injury the turncoat general received at the Battle of Saratoga, heroically leading patriot infantry against a position remembered as Breymann redoubt. It was the second time a bullet had shattered the general’s leg in service to the Revolution. Arnold walked with a pronounced limp for the rest of his life.

On the grounds near the battlefield at Saratoga there stands the statue of a cannon’s barrel, and a leg. An officer’s boot, really, dedicated to a Hero of the Revolution. The cannon’s barrel is pointed down as a sign of dishonor. The monument declines to give this hero a name.

It is one of the most forlorn places I have ever seen.

December 2, 1859 John Brown

To some, the man was a hero. To others he was a kook. The devil incarnate.

Following the war for independence, American politics split between those supporting a strong federal government and those favoring greater self-determination for the states. In the South, climate conditions led to dependence on agriculture, the rural economy of the southern states producing cotton, rice, sugar, indigo and tobacco. Colder states to the north tended to develop manufacturing economies, urban centers growing up in service to hubs of transportation and the production of manufactured goods.

During the first half of the 19th century, 90% of federal government revenue came from tariffs on foreign manufactured goods. Most of this revenue was collected in the South, with the region’s greater dependence on imported goods. Much of federal spending was directed toward the North, toward the construction of roads, canals and other infrastructure.

The debate over economic issues and rights of self-determination, so-called ‘state’s rights’, grew and sharpened in 1828 with the threatened secession of South Carolina and the “nullification crisis” of 1832-33. South Carolina declared such tariffs unconstitutional and therefore null and void within the state. A Cartoon from the era says it all – Northern domestic manufacturers getting fat at the expense of impoverishing the South under protective tariffs.

Chattel slavery came to the Americas well before the colonial era, from Canada to Mexico to Brazil and around the world. Moral objections to what was clearly a repugnant practice could be found throughout, but economic forces had as much to do with ending the practice as any other. The “peculiar institution” died out first in the colder regions of the US and may have done so in warmer climes as well, but for Eli Whitney’s invention of a cotton engine (‘gin’) in 1792.

Removing cotton seeds by hand requires ten man-hours to remove the seeds from a single pound of cotton. By comparison, a cotton gin can process about a thousand pounds a day at comparatively little expense.

The year of Whitney’s invention, the South exported 138,000 pounds a year to Europe and the northern colonies. Sixty years later, Britain alone was importing 600 million pounds a year of the stuff, from the American south. Cotton was King, and with good reason. The crop is easily grown, is more easily transportable and can be stored indefinitely, compared with food crops. The southern economy turned overwhelmingly to this one crop and with it, the need for cheap, plentiful labor.

By then the issue of slavery was so joined and intertwined with ideas of self-determination, as to be indistinguishable.

The short-lived “Wilmot Proviso” of 1846 sought to ban slavery in new territories, after which the Compromise of 1850 attempted to strike a balance. The Kansas Nebraska Act of 1854 created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, basically repealing the Missouri Compromise and allowing settlers to determine their own way through popular sovereignty.

This attempt to democratize the issue instead had the effect of drawing up battle lines. Pro-slavery forces established a territorial capital in Lecompton, while “antis” set up an alternative government in Topeka.

John Brown Sr. came to the Kansas Territory as a result of violence, sparked by the expansion of slavery into the Kansas-Nebraska territories between 1854 and 1861, a period known as “Bleeding Kansas”. To some, the man was a hero. To others he was a kook. The devil incarnate. A radical abolitionist and unwavering opponent of the “peculiar institution” of slavery, John Brown believed that armed confrontation was the only way to bring it to an end.

In Washington DC, a United states Senator was beaten nearly to death on the floor of the Senate, by a member of the House of Representatives. The following day Brown and four of his sons: Frederick, Owen, Salmon, and Oliver, along with Thomas Weiner and James Townsley, set out on a “secret expedition”.

The group camped between two deep ravines off the road that night, remaining in hiding until sometime after dark on the 24th. Late that night, they stopped at the house of James P. Doyle, ordering him and his two adult sons, William and Drury, to go with them as prisoners. Doyle’s wife pleaded for the life of her 16 year old son John, whom the Brown party left behind. The other three, all former slave catchers, were led into the darkness. Owen Brown and one of his brothers murdered the brothers with broadswords. John Brown, Sr. fired the coup de grace into James Doyle’s head to ensure that he was dead.

The group went on to the house of Allen Wilkinson, where he too was brought out into the darkness and murdered with broadswords. Sometime after midnight, the group forced their way into the cabin of James Harris. His two house guests were spared after interrogation, but Wilkinson was led to the banks of Pottawatomie Creek where he too was slaughtered.

There had been 8 killings to date in the Kansas Territory; Brown and his party had just murdered five in a single night. The massacre lit a powder keg of violence in the days that followed. Twenty-nine people died on both sides in the next three months alone.

Brown would go on to participate in the Battle of Black Jack and the Battle of Osawatomie in the Kansas Territory. Brown lead a group to the armory in Harper’s Ferry Virginia in a hare brained scheme to capture the weapons contained there and trigger a slave revolt. The raid was ended by a US Army force under Colonel Robert E. Lee, and a young Army lieutenant named James Ewell Brown (JEB) Stuart.

Brown supporters blamed the 1856 massacre on everything from defending the honor of the Brown family women, to self defense, to a response to threats of violence from pro slavery forces. Free Stater and future Kansas Governor Charles Robinson may have had the last word when he said, “Had all men been killed in Kansas who indulged in such threats, there would have been none left to bury the dead.”

John Brown was hanged on December 2, 1859.

The 80-year-old nation forged inexorably onward, toward a Civil War that would kill more Americans than every conflict from the American Revolution to the War on Terror, combined.

April 5, 1761 The Female Paul Revere

Born April 5, 1761, Sybil Ludington was barely sixteen at the time of her ride. From Poughkeepsie to what is now Putnam County and back, the “Female Paul Revere” rode across the lower Hudson River Valley, covering 40 miles in the pitch dark of night, alerting her father’s militia to the danger and urging they come out for a fight.

“Listen my children and you shall hear,
Of the midnight ride of” …Sybil Ludington.

Wait…What?

Paul Revere’s famous “midnight ride” began on the night of April 18, 1775. Revere was one of two riders, soon joined by a third, fanning out from Boston to warn of an oncoming column of “regulars”, come to destroy the stockpile of gunpowder, ammunition, and cannon located in Concord.

Revere himself covered barely 12 miles before being captured, his horse confiscated to replace the tired mount of a British sergeant. Revere would finish his “ride” on foot, arriving at sunrise on the 19^th to witness the last moments of the battle on Lexington Green.

Two years later, Patriot forces maintained a similar supply depot in the southwest Connecticut town of Danbury.

William Tryon was the Royal Governor of New York, and long-standing advocate for attacks on civilian targets. In 1777, Tryon was major-general of the provincial army. On April 25th, the General set sail for the Connecticut coast of Long Island Sound with a force of some 1,800, intending to destroy the small town.

Patriot Colonel Joseph Cooke’s small Danbury garrison was caught and quickly overpowered on the 26^th, while attempting to remove food supplies, uniforms, and equipment. Facing little if any opposition, Tryon’s forces went on a bender, burning homes, farms, and storehouses. Thousands of barrels of pork, beef, and flour were destroyed, along with 5,000 pairs of shoes, 2,000 bushels of grain, and 1,600 tents.

Colonel Henry Ludington was a farmer and father of 12, with a long military career. A long-standing and loyal subject of the British crown, Ludington switched sides in 1773, joining the rebel cause and rising to command the 7th Regiment of the Dutchess County Militia, in New York’s Hudson Valley.

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In April 1777, Ludington’s militia was disbanded for planting season, and spread across the countryside. An exhausted rider arrived at the Ludington farm on a blown horse on the evening of the 26^th, asking for help. 15 miles away, British regulars and a force of loyalists were burning Danbury to the ground.

The Dutchess County Militia had to be called up. The Colonel had one night to prepare for battle, and this rider was done. The job would have to go to Colonel Ludington’s first-born, his daughter, Sybil.

By the time Sybil returned the next morning, cold, rain-soaked, and exhausted, most of 400 militia were ready to march.

Arnold’s forces arrived too late to save Danbury, but inflicted a nasty surprise on the British rearguard as the column approached nearby Ridgefield. Never outnumbered by less than three-to-one, Connecticut militia was able to slow the British advance until Ludington’s New York Militia arrived on the following day. The last phase of the action saw the same type of swarming harassment as seen on the British retreat from Concord to Boston, early in the war. 35 miles to the east of Danbury, General Benedict Arnold was gathering a force of 500 regular and irregular Connecticut militia, with Generals David Wooster and Gold Selleck Silliman.

While the British operation was a tactical success, the mauling inflicted by these colonials ensured that this was the last hostile British landing on the Connecticut coast.

The British raid on Danbury destroyed at least 19 houses and 22 stores and barns. Town officials submitted £16,000 in claims to Congress, for which town selectmen received £500 reimbursement. Further claims were made to the General Assembly of Connecticut in 1787, for which Danbury was awarded land. In Ohio.

Keeler_tavern_ridgefield_cannonball_2006

At the time, Benedict Arnold planned to travel to Philadelphia, to protest the promotion of officers junior to himself, to Major General. Arnold, who’d had two horses shot out from under him at Ridgefield, was promoted to Major General in recognition for his role in the battle. Along with that promotion came a horse, “properly caparisoned as a token of … approbation of his gallant conduct … in the late enterprize to Danbury.” For now, the pride which would one day be his undoing, was assuaged.The Keeler Tavern in Ridgefield is now a museum. The British cannonball fired into the side of the building, remains there to this day.

Henry Ludington would become Aide-de-Camp to General George Washington, and grandfather to Harrison Ludington, mayor of Milwaukee and 12th Governor of Wisconsin.

Gold Silliman was kidnapped with his son by a first marriage by Tory neighbors, and held for Nearly seven months at a New York farmhouse. Having no hostage of equal rank with whom to exchange for the General, Patriot forces went out and kidnapped one of their own, in the person of Chief Justice Judge Thomas Jones, of Long Island.

Mary Silliman was left to run the farm, including caring for her own midwife, who was brutally raped by English forces for denying them the use of her home. The 1993 made-for-TV movie “Mary Silliman’s War” tells the story of non-combatants, pregnant mothers and farm wives during the Revolution, as well as Mary’s own negotiations for her husband’s release from Loyalist captors.

General David Wooster was mortally wounded at the Battle of Ridgefield, moments after shouting “Come on my boys! Never mind such random shots!” Today, an archway marks the entrance to Wooster Square, in the East Rock Neighborhood of New Haven.

Sybil Ludington received the thanks of family and friends including that of George Washington, himself. And then it was as if she had stepped off the pages of history.

Paul Revere’s famous ride would have likewise faded into obscurity, but for the poetry of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Eighty-six years, later.

“Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive…..

October 30, 1773 Hannah’s Rock

From the 1997 film Titanic to the fictional Shakespearean lovers Romeo and Juliet to the very real Roman General Marc Antony and his Greek Princess turned Egyptian Pharoah Cleopatra VII. The appeal of the Tragic Romance is as old as history and as new, as popular culture.

Arjumand Banu was the daughter of a wealthy Persian noble, third wife of Emperor Shah Jahan of the Mughal Empire, who ruled the lands of South Asia from modern-day Afghanistan to Kashmir and south to the Deccan plateau of South India.

As Empress consort and beloved by the Emperor above all his wives, Arjumand was better known by the title “Mumtaz Mahal”, translating from the Persian as “the exalted one of the palace”. Jahan called her ‘Malika-i-Jahan’. She was his “Queen of the World”.

The labor and delivery of a daughter, the couple’s 14th child was a terrible trial for the Empress Consort, a 30-hour ordeal resulting in postpartum hemorrhage leading to her death on June 17, 1631.

The Emperor went into secluded mourning, emerging a year later with his back bent, his beard turned white. There followed a 22-year period of design and construction for a mausoleum and funerary garden, suitable to the Queen of the World.

This was no ordinary building, this grand edifice to the undying love of an Emperor. The English poet Sir Edwin Arnold described the place as “Not a piece of architecture, as other buildings are, but the proud passion of an emperor’s love wrought in living stones.” Today the palace is known among the 7 “Modern Wonders of the World” or simply, the Taj Mahal.

The “Pillarization” of northern European society constituted a separation along religious and political lines, so strict that many individuals had little to no contact, with people outside their own pillar. 19th century Belgian society divided along three such cohorts, segregating itself largely along Catholic, Protestant and Social-Democratic strata.

The worst days of the South African Apartheid system had nothing over the European society of the age, when it came to social segregation. Pillars possessed their own institutions: universities, hospitals and social organizations. Each even had its own news apparatus.

The romance between Colonel J.W.C van Gorkum of the Dutch Cavalry and Lady J.C.P.H van Aefferden was a social outrage. The 22-year old noblewoman was a Catholic. 33-year old Colonel van Gorkum was a Protestant and not a part of the nobility. The couple’s marriage in 1842 was the scandal of Roermond but, despite all that taboo, theirs was a happy marriage lasting 38-years.

The Colonel died in 1880 and was buried next to the wall, separating the Catholic and Protestant parts of the cemetery. Van Gorkum’s Lady died some eight years later, wishing to be buried next to her husband. Such a thing was impossible. She would be buried opposite the wall in the Catholic part of the cemetery, as close as she could get to her beloved husband.

Such was The Law for this time and place, but neither custom nor law said anything about a little creative stonework. So it is the couple joins hands in death as in life, together and inseparable, for all eternity.

*Oud Kerkhof* cemetery in Hasselt, Belgium

From the 1997 film Titanic to the fictional Shakespearean lovers Romeo and Juliet to the very real Roman General Marc Antony and his Greek Princess turned Egyptian Pharoah Cleopatra VII, the appeal of the Tragic Romance is as old as history and as new, as popular culture.

Few such tales have anything over the tragic love affair, of the unfortunate Hannah Robinson.

Hannah Robinson was one of the most beautiful women in all Colonial Rhode Island, the privileged daughter of the wealthy Narragansett planter Rowland and Anstis (Gardiner) Robinson. Years later during the time of the American Revolution, the opulent Robinson mansion entertained the likes of the Marquis de Lafayette and the Comte de Rochambeau, but I’m getting ahead of the story.

As a young girl, Hannah had nary a care in the world and spent countless hours on a large rock, enjoying the view overlooking Narragansett Bay.

Hannah_Robinson_Tower — The view as it looks today, from Hannah Robinson tower

When she grew older, Hannah attended Madame Osborn’s finishing school in Newport. There she fell in love with the French and Dancing instructor Pierre Simond, the son of an old family of French Huguenot ancestry who liked to go by the name, Peter Simon.

The degree to which the penniless Simond reciprocated the young woman’s feelings is difficult to know, but Hannah fell hard.

Peter took a position as private tutor to one of the Robinison cousins, a short two miles away. It wasn’t long before Simond was secretly visiting Hannah, at home. He’d hide out in a large cabinet in Hannah’s room. The pair called it the “Friendly Cupboard”. At night, Simond would hide out in a large lilac bush where the couple would talk for hours, and exchange letters. Anstil was quick to get wise but she never let on, to her husband.

Then came the night Rowland spied the white paper, fluttering to the ground. He rushed to the lilac and beat at the bush with a stick, until there emerged a ragged French teacher. After that, Rowland kept his eldest on a very short leash.

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. If Hannah Robinson was stubborn, she came by it honestly. In a rare moment of weakness, Rowland allowed Hannah and young sister Mary to attend a ball at Smith’s Castle some ten miles up the road, accompanied by a black “servant” called “Prince” who really was, it turns out, an African prince.

So it was, the trap was sprung.

Smith's_castle_2018 — Smith’s Castle house, one of the oldest homes, in Rhode Island, is now a National Historic Landmark

The trio came to a place on horseback, where there awaited a carriage. Peter’s carriage. Mary cried and Prince begged her not to go but, to no avail. This was the couple’s elopement. Hannah would have it no other way.

Rowland was apoplectic and cut off his daughter, from her allowance. The happy couple moved to Providence, but Dad proved to be right. Now penniless, Simon soon lost interest in his young wife and left her. Sometimes for days on end. Others for weeks at a time.

Hannah’s health went into a steep decline. Not even the little dog sent by her mother, nor her childhood maid – a woman also named Hannah, could bring back her spirits. The young woman wasted away in Providence as, just 35-miles to the south, Mary contracted tuberculosis, and died. Anstis’ health, failed.

Rowland Robinson would come to relent, but too late. Hannah’s health was destroyed. The fast sloop from Providence delivered a sickly shadow of her former self.

The four strong servants carrying the litter were asked to stop by the rock, where Hannah had passed all those happy hours as a girl. Watching the bay. She picked a flower. “Everlasting Life”.

A sad reunion followed between the two women, the sick mother and the sick daughter. Anstis would recover and live to see a Revolution bring Independence to the American colonies. Not so the unfortunate daughter. Hannah Robinson died at home on this day in 1773. She was 27.

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) built an observation tower in 1938, at the place where Hannah used to watch the Bay. At four stories in height the thing was used for coastal watch, during World War 2. The tower was rebuilt in 1988, using timbers from the original construction.

You can climb the Hannah Robinson tower to this day if you want, there in North Kingstown, not far from the rock where that little girl spent a happy childhood. Watching the bay, all those many years ago.

wooden-tower — Hannah Robinson Tower, North Kingstown Rhode Island

April 13, 1861 Fort Sumter

By the time the war got going, every seceding state but South Carolina sent regiments to fight for the Union, and even that state contributed troops. A surprising number of northern soldiers resigned commissions and fought for the south, including Barre, Massachusetts native Daniel Ruggles, Ohio Quaker Bushrod Johnson and New York native Samuel Cooper, to name a few.

When the state of South Carolina seceded from the Union on December 20, 1860, the state government considered itself to be that of a sovereign nation. Six days later, United States Army Major Robert Anderson quietly moved his small command from the Revolution-era Fort Moultrie on Sullivan’s Island in Charleston harbor, to the as-yet to be completed Fort Sumter, a brick fortification at the mouth of the harbor.

President James Buchanan, a northern democrat with southern sympathies, believed secession to be illegal, but there was nothing he could do about it. For months the President had vacillated, offering no resistance as local officials seized every federal government property, in the state. Buchanan’s one attempt to intervene came in January, with the attempt to reinforce and resupply Anderson, via the unarmed merchant vessel “Star of the West”. Shore batteries opened up on the effort on January 9, 1861, effectively trapping Anderson and his garrison inside the only federal government property in the vicinity.

Mississippi followed with its own ordnance of secession that same day, followed quickly by Florida, Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana. Texas seceded on February 1.

The newly founded Confederate States of America could not tolerate the presence of an armed federal force at the mouth of Charleston harbor. Secessionists debated only whether this was South Carolina’s problem, or that of the national government, located at that time in Montgomery, Alabama. Meanwhile, the Federal government refused to recognize the Confederacy as an independent state.

Neither side wanted to be seen as the aggressor, both needing support from the border states. Political opinion was so sharply divided at that time, that brothers literally wound up fighting against brothers. By the time the war got going, every seceding state but South Carolina sent regiments to fight for the Union, and even that state contributed troops.

A surprising number of northern soldiers resigned commissions and fought for the south, including Barre, Massachusetts native Daniel Ruggles, Ohio Quaker Bushrod Johnson and New York native Samuel Cooper, to name a few. But now I’m getting ahead of the story.

Confederate Brigadier General Pierre Gustave Toutant-Beauregard (I love that name) had resigned his post as superintendent of West Point and offered his services to the Confederacy. Beauregard was placed in charge of Charleston in March, and immediately began to strengthen the batteries surrounding the harbor.

Fort Sumter was designed for a garrison of 650 in the service of 130 guns, nearly all of them pointed outward, positioned to defend the harbor against threats from the sea. In April 1861 there were only 60 guns, too much for Major Anderson’s 9 officers, 68 enlisted men, 8 musicians, and 43 construction workers.

Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated on March 4. The resupply of Fort Sumter became the first crisis for the new administration. Lincoln notified South Carolina Governor Francis Pickens that he was sending supply ships, resulting in Beauregard’s ultimatum: the Federal garrison was to evacuate immediately, or Confederate batteries would open fire.

When Major Anderson’s response was found lacking, shore batteries opened fire at 4:30 am on April 12th, 4,003 guns firing in counter-clockwise rotation. Abner Doubleday, Federal 2nd-in-command and the man erroneously credited with the invention of baseball, later wrote “The crashing of the shot, the bursting of the shells, the falling of the walls, and the roar of the flames, made a pandemonium of the fort.”

Two years later at Gettysburg, Norman Jonathan Hall would lose over 200 men from his brigade, in furious fighting at a critical breach in Union lines, near the”copse of trees”. One day, a brass plaque would mark the spot of the “High Water Mark” of the Confederacy. On this day, Lieutenant Hall raced through flames to rescue the colors, after a direct hit on the main flagpole knocked the flag to the ground. His eyebrows were permanently burned off his face, but Hall and two artillerymen were able to jury-rig the pole so that, once again, Old Glory flew over Fort Sumter.

Thousands of shells were fired at Fort Sumter over a period of 34 hours. Federal forces fired back, though vastly outgunned. For all that, the only casualty was one Confederate horse.

The first fatalities of the Civil War occurred after the federal surrender on April 13. Allowed a 100-gun salute while lowering the flag the following day, one cannon misfired, killing Private Daniel Hough and mortally wounding Pvt. Edward Galloway.

The following day, Colonel Robert E. Lee resigned his commission in the United States Army. Lee’s home state of Virginia seceded three days later, followed by Arkansas, North Carolina and Tennessee.

The Civil War had begun, but few understood what kind of demons had just been unleashed. Robert Rhett, the rabble rousing editor of the Charleston Mercury Newspaper, offered to personally eat the bodies of all the slain in the coming conflict. Not wanting to be outdone, former Senator James Chesnut, Jr. said “a lady’s thimble will hold all the blood that will be shed,” promising to personally drink any that might be spilled.

The war between the states would destroy the lives of more Americans than the Revolution, WWI, WWII, and the wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, combined.

A Trivial Matter

Abraham Lincoln was elected in 1860 with only 39.8 per cent of the popular vote in a four-way race against Northern Democrat Stephen A. Douglas, Constitutional Unionist John Bell and Southern favorite, Kentucky Democrat John Breckenridge. President Lincoln did not receive a single electoral vote from south of the Mason-Dixon line.

May 22, 1856 State’s Rights

The issue of slavery had joined and become so intertwined with ideas of self-determination, as to be indistinguishable.

Since the earliest days of the Republic, those supporting strong federal government found themselves opposed by those favoring greater self-determination by the states. In the southern regions, climate conditions led to dependence on agriculture, the rural economies of the south producing cotton, rice, sugar, indigo and tobacco. Colder states to the north tended to develop manufacturing economies, urban centers growing up in service to hubs of transportation and the production of manufactured goods.

In the first half of the 19th century, 90% of federal government revenue came from tariffs on foreign manufactured goods. A lion’s share of this revenue was collected in the south, with the region’s greater dependence on imported goods. Much of this federal largesse was spent in the north, with the construction of railroads, canals and other infrastructure.

The debate over economic issues and rights of self-determination, so-called ‘state’s rights’, grew and sharpened with the “nullification crisis” of 1832-33, when South Carolina declared such tariffs to be unconstitutional and therefore null and void within the state. A cartoon from the time depicted “Northern domestic manufacturers getting fat at the expense of impoverishing the South under protective tariffs.”

Chattel slavery pre-existed the earliest days of the colonial era, from Canada to Brazil and around the world. Moral objections to what was really a repugnant institution could be found throughout, but economic forces had as much to do with ending the practice, as any other. The “peculiar institution” died out first in the colder regions of the US and may have done so in warmer climes as well, but for Eli Whitney’s invention of a cotton engine (‘gin’) in 1794.

It takes ten man-hours to remove the seeds to produce a single pound of cotton. By comparison, a cotton gin can process about a thousand pounds a day, at comparatively little expense.

The year of Whitney’s invention, the South exported 138,000 pounds a year to Europe and the northern states. Sixty years later, Great Britain alone was importing 600 million pounds a year from the southern states. Cotton was King, and with good reason. The stuff is easily grown, highly transportable, and can be stored indefinitely, compared with food crops. The southern economy turned overwhelmingly to the one crop, and its need for plentiful, cheap labor.

The issue of slavery had joined and become so intertwined with ideas of self-determination, as to be indistinguishable.

The first half of the 19th century was one of westward expansion, generating frequent and sharp conflicts between pro and anti-slavery factions. The Missouri compromise of 1820 attempted to reconcile the sides, defining which territories would legalize slavery, and which would be “free”.

The short-lived “Wilmot Proviso” of 1846 sought to ban slavery in new territories, after which the Compromise of 1850 attempted to strike a balance. The Kansas Nebraska Act of 1854 created two new territories, essentially repealing the Missouri Compromise and allowing settlers to determine their own direction.

This attempt to democratize the issue had the effect of drawing up battle lines. Pro-slavery forces established a territorial capital in Lecompton, while “antis” set up an alternative government in Topeka.

In Washington, Republicans backed the anti-slavery side, while most Democrats supported their opponents. On May 20, 1856, Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner took to the floor of the Senate and denounced the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Never known for verbal restraint, Sumner attacked the measure’s sponsors Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois (he of the later Lincoln-Douglas debates), and Andrew Butler of South Carolina by name, accusing the pair of “consorting with the harlot, slavery”. Douglas was in the audience at the time and quipped “this damn fool Sumner is going to get himself shot by some other damn fool”.

In the territories, the standoff had long since escalated to violence. Upwards of a hundred or more were killed between 1854 – 1861, in a period known as “Bleeding Kansas”.

The town of Lawrence was established by anti-slavery settlers in 1854, and soon became the focal point of pro-slavery violence. Emotions were at a boiling point when Douglas County Sheriff Samuel Jones was shot trying to arrest free-state settlers on April 23, 1856. Jones was driven out of town but he would return.

Lawrence Massacre — Sack of Lawrence, Kansas

The day after Sumner’s speech, a posse of 800 pro-slavery forces converged on Lawrence Kansas, led by Sheriff Jones. The town was surrounded to prevent escape and much of it burned to the ground. This time there was only one fatality; a slavery proponent who was killed by falling masonry. Seven years later, Confederate guerrilla Robert Clarke Quantrill carried out the second sack of Lawrence. This time, most of the men and boys of the town were murdered where they stood, with little chance to defend themselves.

Meanwhile, Preston Brooks, Senator Butler’s nephew and a Member of Congress from South Carolina, had read over Sumner’s speech of the day before. Brooks was an inflexible proponent of slavery and took mortal insult from Sumner’s words.

Preston Brooks (left), Charles Sumner, (right)

Brooks was furious and wanted to challenge the Senator to a duel. He discussed it with fellow South Carolina Representative Laurence Keitt, who explained that dueling was for gentlemen of equal social standing. Sumner was no gentleman, he said. No better than a drunkard.

Brooks had been shot in a duel years before, and walked with a heavy cane. Resolved to publicly thrash the Senator from Massachusetts, the Congressman entered the Senate building on May 22, in the company of Congressman Keitt and Virginia Representative Henry A. Edmundson.

The trio approached Sumner, who was sitting at his desk writing letters. “Mr. Sumner”, Brooks said, “I have read your speech twice over carefully. It is a libel on South Carolina, and Mr. Butler, who is a relative of mine.”

Sumner’s desk was bolted to the floor. He never had a chance. The Senator began to rise when Brooks brought the cane down on his head. Over and over the cane crashed down, while Keitt brandished a pistol, warning onlookers to “let them be”. Blinded by his own blood, Sumner tore the desk from the floor in his struggle to escape, losing consciousness as he tried to crawl away. Brooks rained down blows the entire time, even after the body lay motionless, until finally, the cane broke apart.

In the next two days, a group of unarmed men will be hacked to pieces by anti-slavery radicals, on the banks of Pottawatomie Creek.

The 80-year-old nation forged inexorably onward, to a Civil War which would kill more Americans than every war from the American Revolution to the War on Terror, combined.

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A Trivial Matter

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Preston Brooks (left), Charles Sumner, (right)

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