“The ideals of American life still in force today”

The Museum of Fine Arts just shared an essay by Ethan Lasser, the the John Moors Cabot Chair for the Art of the Americas, about the silver punch bowl made by Paul Revere and engraved with several merchants’ names.

Lasser wrote:

What does the year 1949, in the aftermath of World War II, when America was entering a decade of prosperity, have to do with a silver punch bowl from the 18th century? This is the year Revere’s piece entered MFA’s collection. It’s a remarkable story: the bowl descended through the family of William Mackay, one of the Sons of Liberty it celebrates. In 1902 ownership shifted, and the bowl fell into the hands of Marian Lincoln Perry, great-great-granddaughter of John Marston, another one of the Sons of Liberty.

After Mrs. Perry’s death in 1935, the enterprising New York art dealer Israel Sack set out to place the bowl in an institution. He received offers from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but felt strongly that “the bowl should belong to the city that gave it birth” and offered it to the MFA. “It was made in Boston for men of Boston and by a famous silversmith of Boston,” he said. “It belongs in Boston.”

Edwin J. Hipkiss, then the MFA’s curator of Decorative Arts, was quick to act. He realized the bowl spoke of the past—but also of his own time, when the United States had endured a more recent fight for freedom in World War II. In Hipkiss’s words, the piece “expresses the hopes and achievements of dauntless Americans of 180 years ago and commemorates the ideals of American life still in force today.”

Prominent Bostonians rallied to help Hipkiss raise funds to acquire the bowl for the Museum. “Acting independently for the Museum of Fine Arts,” they initiated the Revere Sons of Liberty Bowl Fund. Their rousing, all-caps fundraising letter is still in our curatorial files: “THE BOWL IS A SYMBOL OF OUR FREEDOM because it commemorates the very first unified stand for liberty in the country.” . . .

Leafing through our files, I came upon the Boston Public School Superintendent’s Circular #103, dated November 30, 1948. “To the principals of Schools and districts,” the letter begins:

The School committee invites the school children of Boston to make a voluntary contribution … to keep permanently in our city this priceless relic made in Boston by a famous silversmith of Boston in tribute to sterling patriots of Boston.

When was collection day? December 7, 1948, the seventh anniversary of Pearl Harbor—a day of infamy brightened by this symbol of freedom. Thousands of school children participated in the effort and, a few weeks later, in the opening weeks of 1949, the Sons of Liberty Bowl was acquired and made its debut at the Museum.

It struck me how this telling looks back repeatedly to World War II but doesn’t mention the Cold War with the Soviet Union that the U.S. of A. had just entered. Americans were eager to point to the values of liberty, faith, and the like, in contrast to oppressive, godless Communism. Recruiting schoolchildren to give money for “A SYMBOL OF OUR FREEDOM” and “in tribute to sterling patriots” fits right into that moment.

“Our goal is neither criticism nor celebration; it is to understand”

The American Historical Association has once again responded to a dubious and harmful White House executive order with a statement on behalf of its members and other historical organizations.

The A.H.A. message is:

The Executive Order “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” issued on March 27 by the White House, egregiously misrepresents the work of the Smithsonian Institution. The Smithsonian is among the premier research institutions in the world, widely known for the integrity of its scholarship, which is careful and based on historical and scientific evidence. The Institution ardently pursues the purpose for which it was established more than 175 years ago: “the increase and diffusion of knowledge.” The accusation in the White House fact sheet accompanying the executive order claims that Smithsonian museums are displaying “improper, divisive, or anti-American ideology.” This is simply untrue; it misrepresents the work of those museums and the public’s engagement with their collections and exhibits. It also completely misconstrues the nature of historical work.

Historians explore the past to understand how our nation has evolved. We draw on a wide range of sources, which helps us to understand history from different angles of vision. Our goal is neither criticism nor celebration; it is to understand—to increase our knowledge of—the past in ways that can help Americans to shape the future.

The stories that have shaped our past include not only elements that make us proud but also aspects that make us acutely aware of tragedies in our nation’s history. No person, no nation, is perfect, and we should all—as individuals and as nations—learn from our imperfections.

The Smithsonian’s museums collect and preserve the past of all Americans and encompass the entirety of our nation’s history. Visitors explore exhibitions and collections in which they can find themselves, their families, their communities, and their nation represented. They encounter both our achievements and the painful moments of our rich and complicated past.

Patriotic history celebrates our nation’s many great achievements. It also helps us grapple with the less grand and more painful parts of our history. Both are part of a shared past that is fundamentally American. We learn from the past to inform how we can best shape our future. By providing a history with the integrity necessary to enable all Americans to be all they can possibly be, the Smithsonian is fulfilling its duty to all of us.

At the Bulwark, Grand View University history professor Thomas Lecacque also wrote in response:

Trump is mad about the Smithsonian American Art Museum exhibition “The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture” because it “claims that ‘sculpture has been a powerful tool in promoting scientific racism’ and promotes the view that race is not a biological reality but a social construct, stating ‘Race is a human invention.’” This is about as honest as the Trump administration has ever been. “Museums in our Nation’s capital,” the order preaches, “should be places where individuals go to learn—not to be subjected to ideological indoctrination or divisive narratives that distort our shared history.” Apparently, that shared reality is centered on the idea that race is a biological fact. This is not true historically or scientifically or in any other way outside the miserable, backwards swamp logic of white supremacy. . . .

The risk is not that Americans will be misled on particular matters of fact, but that they’ll lose their respect for the idea of the truth—will capitulate to the cynical lies. This, in turn, engenders a cultural atmosphere that is inhospitable to dreams and ideals and hopes. It would be to give up our birthright of earnest optimism and our sense that we can always improve our lot and that of the world.

In the Guardian, Wellesley College professor Kellie Carter Jackson wrote:

Trump’s executive order is not about restoring the truth. Quite the opposite. It creates false narratives and myths that promote the supremacy of whiteness. This executive order has the potential for harm because erasure is violence; it robs the public of the truth. Because there is no way to explain slavery and segregation as not “inherently harmful and oppressive”, Trump would rather not explain it at all. . . .

It was impossible to separate the story of Black military service and valor from racial discrimination and violence. Similarly, one cannot separate out the “good” from the “bad” in creating an honest narrative about the United States. Accordingly, the [National Museum of African American History and Culture] holds a special place in America, one where the complexity of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson are recognized as founding fathers and slaveholders. There is no abolitionist movement without slavery. There is no suffrage movement without women’s denial. There is no civil rights movement without racism and oppression. These are the facts. Museums exist to collect, preserve and exhibit the past as it happened. Archivists and curators care deeply about their mission to be accurate and authentic.

And author David M. Perry in Foreign Policy:

…the United States has already entered a multiyear cycle commemorating the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, but it’s about to intensify as the calendar turns to April, taking the country from celebrations of Paul Revere’s ride (April 18-19, 1775) to the signing of the Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776). The executive orders targeting the Smithsonian strongly suggest that the Trump administration will bleach the story of American history in a way that tries to claim legitimacy for our current post-constitutional order.

The ritual anniversary moments intensify national mythmaking, moving the story to the formation of the nation, with the new authoritarians controlling any and all official narratives in ways that emphasize not the rebellion against a British king, but a submission to the new American one. As historical claims go, trying to make Trump into the culmination of the American Revolutionary War is no more intellectually serious than those executive orders, but mythmaking doesn’t have to be true to be effective.

As historians, as Americans, as teachers and students, we’re going to need to engage these false narratives not just with fact-checking, but with better, truer storytelling of our own. And we don’t need to make myths to claim patriotism for our side. Looking clearly at the past—whether recognizing the truth about the local historical concentration camp or the much bigger story about the long struggle to put ideals about multiracial democracy into true practice—is patriotic.

Why Did Gage “order their muzzles to be beat in”?

After I spoke to the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati in February, a descendant of artillerist William Burbeck asked me a provocative question about The Road to Concord.

After the Boston militia train’s four brass cannon after they disappeared in September 1774, Gen. Thomas Gage expended a lot of effort on locating them. In February 1775 he may have sent Capt. William Browne and Ens. Henry DeBerniere to Worcester to hunt for them.

Gage definitely sent Lt. Col. Alexander Leslie and his troops to Salem to seize them. He sent Browne and DeBerniere to Concord to confirm they were in that town, and then he organized the fatal expedition on 18–19 April to grab them.

Gage’s final orders for the commander of that April expedition, Lt. Col. Francis Smith, said: “If you meet any Brass Artillery, you will order their muzzles to be beat in so as to render them useless.”

After all that hunting, why didn’t Gage order those guns to be returned to Boston?

Here’s my analysis of the general’s thinking and why he’d have been happy to hear that those four cannon were destroyed. (As it happened, Patriots had already moved them beyond Concord, perhaps to Stow, by the time the redcoats arrived at James Barrett’s farm.)

First of all, those four cannon didn’t pose a big military threat. They were two- and three-pounders, fine for training on but not the biggest force in battle. The Royal Artillery had many more and bigger weapons. Furthermore, intelligence suggested that the Patriots hadn’t succeeded in mounting them well.

Rather, I posit, those field-pieces posed a bigger threat to Gage’s standing with his superiors in London. He had put sentries in front of the armories, patrols on the Boston streets, and guards at the town’s only gate—and yet those four guns had disappeared. Gage had reasons to suspect they had also been slipped past Leslie’s reach in Salem before being moved to Concord. (In fact, they arrived in Concord from Dorchester, but he didn’t know that.) In sum, those four brass cannon made him look utterly incompetent.

The general never reported the disappearance of those guns to Lord Dartmouth, Secretary of State, or Lord Barrington, Secretary of War. In fact, in describing the Salem mission, he suggested that he had intelligence about cannon being smuggled in from Dutch territory; there’s no such report in his file. As each month ticked by, Gage may have felt more pressure to resolve this problem before his bosses learned about it.

Thus, Gen. Gage’s top goal for the Concord expedition wasn’t to recover those guns—it was to make their potential to embarrass him go away. Turning the four cannon into useless hunks of bronze out in the countryside looked like the most efficient way to do that. Then he could report to London that his men had succeeded in destroying all the artillery they found without raising many questions.

In contrast, carting those field-pieces back to Boston would have prompted questions about where they had come from. Country folk would have seen them, as would the soldiers themselves. Boston militia leaders might have demanded them back (playing dumb about who stole them). The ministers in London may have become curious. All that would have made it harder to keep the embarrassing story of the cannon thefts quiet.

Gage was also concerned for his soldiers. Hauling several hundred pounds of metal along the road to Boston would have required a wagon and horses, plus men guarding that transport, all moving more slowly than soldiers on the march. The general didn’t send Lt. Col. Smith out with wagons because he wanted the troops to move fast—expeditiously, in fact. Even if they had confiscated a wagon and draft horses in Concord, their return trip would be slower if they brought the cannon along.

Gage actually gave orders for the regulars not to weigh themselves down too much:

You will order a Trunion to be knocked off each Gun, but if its found impracticable on any, they must be spiked, and the Carriages destroyed. The Powder and flower must be shook out of the Barrels into the River, the Tents burnt, Pork or Beef destroyed in the best way you can devise. And the Men may put Balls of lead in their pockets, throwing them by degrees into Ponds, Ditches &c., but no Quantity together, so that they may be recovered afterwards.

The goal was to destroy the provincials’ military supplies as quickly as possible and then get back to safety. He hoped Smith’s men would be able to meet up with Col. Earl Percy’s relief column before the rebels organized a military response. That didn’t happen. But the situation would probably have been even worse if the troops were withdrawing from Concord at wagon speed.

“Merely a private individual traveling for curiosity”

As recounted yesterday, over champagne Julien-Alexandre Achard de Bonvouloir divulged to a British secret agent that he’d been meeting with the French ambassador to Britain, the Comte de Guines.

The young Frenchman had just come from Massachusetts, where war had broken out months before. He offered to be a liaison between the French government and the American rebels.

De Guines consulted by letter with the Foreign Minister of France, the Comte de Vergennes (shown here—that letter is reproduced and translated in B. F. Stevens's Facsimiles of Manuscripts in European Archives Relating to America, 1773-1783). The two officials agreed to send Bonvouloir back to North America as their own secret agent.

The terms were:

• De Guines and Bonvouloir agreed the young man would present himself as “a merchant of Antwerp,” then part of the Austrian Netherlands.
• The French government would pay Bonvouloir a “salary of two hundred louis.”
• Bonvouloir couldn’t tell his family what he was up to, not even “His brother, an officer in the Lyons regiment, [who] was in London at the time.”

The mission was just as restricted. Bonvouloir was to meet with delegates to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, but he couldn’t confirm that he was an emissary of the French government and he couldn’t make any promises of aid. According to the historian Edwin Erle Sparks, he could “assure the American leaders that France had no intention on Canada”—though of course a promise from “merely a private individual traveling for curiosity” carried no weight.

The whole episode reads very much like a modern spy novel—not an Ian Fleming type but the more cynical sort like John Le Carré’s The Looking-Glass War. Bonvouloir was hungry to make his mark, to rise above his status as a younger, disabled son sent off to the colonies, to do something for his country. His government took advantage of that eagerness.

Almost a year later, on 16 June 1776, De Guines wrote another letter to Vergennes about Bonvouloir. By this time the British royal authorities in America were hunting for him. His French government contacts weren’t sure how to get him off the continent, or whether it would be worth it. De Guines had to prod Vergennes into authorizing the payment of another year of salary as promised. The ambassador planned to ask Bonvouloir’s brother to write to him via Québec, but he assured the minister “he and his brother are always liable to be disavowed if any inconvenience should result from their action.”

Not aware of that future, in October 1775 Bonvouloir sailed for Philadelphia “in the ‘Charming Betsy,’ Captain John Farmer.” That information comes from another document in the Earl of Dartmouth’s papers—evidence that the British government was already tracking this operation.

I plan to return to Bonvouloir later in the year, around the 250th anniversary of his meetings in Philadelphia.

“Some Vin de Champagne produced the desired effect”

I’ve been quoting from the report of a British secret agent on his—or possibly her—conversations with Julien-Alexandre Achard de Bonvouloir and the Chevalier d’Amboise at their hotel in London in the summer of 1775.

Those were aristocratic Frenchmen who had spent a few weeks in New England. Based on that deep knowledge, they told their acquaintance that all the fighting in Massachusetts could be settled:

Lastly, that it appears to them both, the Americans had no settled, regular, well digested plan, that there exists among their Chiefs more Jealousy than unanimity: that many of the Settlers, and mostly all the Commercial people of Substance, begun to be tired of the present situation, and that they (the two french Officers) thought it probable Government would fall on Methods to disunite them, which if employed with success, would necessarily facilitate a reconciliation.

The agent thought there was more to find out, though. These two Frenchmen were happy to talk about the British colonists in New England, but what about their own secrets? What were they really up to?

The agent used a time-honored method: “stimulating the pride of Monsieur Le Comte de Beauvouloir in the moment that some Vin de Champagne produced the desired effect on his prudence.” The powerful combination of alcohol and flattery.

Bonvouloir then divulged that “he had had two Audiences of Le Comte de Guines,” the French ambassador to the British government (shown above). He boasted “that his Excellency had made him great offers of Service and had asked him twice to dinner.” As the younger son of a French nobleman, disabled enough that his military appointments were basically honorary, Bonvouloir yearned for recognition from such an important official.

The agent told whichever British Secretary of State he or she worked for (probably the Earl of Rochford though the report survives in the papers of the Earl of Dartmoouth):

My Opinion is that the two french Officers are at this Instant in the Service of the Rebel Americans, and are paid by them; that they came over either with proposals to the Courts of France and Spain, or some other Commission in the American Interests, and that they intend to return to their Employers by means of some English Ship.

In fact, there’s no surviving evidence that anyone in New England had even noticed Bonvouloir and D’Amboise, much less sent them to Europe with “proposals to the Courts of France and Spain.”

The situation was quite the reverse. Bonvouloir was trying to become an emissary of his own government.

TOMORROW: Diplomatic missions.

“Some of which they themselves were witness to”

As described yesterday, an agent for the British government “pumped” Julien-Alexandre Achard de Bonvouloir and the Chevalier d’Amboise at their hotel in London in the summer of 1775.

The two Frenchmen had recently arrived from New England, and they had a lot to say about the rebel army there.

Some of the claims the agent set down were wildly false: “That there are at least 200 french amongst the Troops of the Rebels, who acted as Artillerists and Engineers, which numbers may be augmented since they came away.”

The British agent was particularly eager to report support from European powers: “Seven french Ships, masked under English Colours came into different ports with Ammunition &c.”; “the Americans expected French and Spanish Officers and Engineers, also Powder &c.” Perhaps Bonvouloir and D’Amboise told him what they sensed he wanted to hear.

On the other hand, other reported remarks from the Frenchmen matched the situation more closely, albeit filtered through aristocratic eyes:

6. That the Rebel Officers in general are perfectly ignorant of their business, and they esteem them men of very moderate, or rather mean parts,—but the private men are well trained to the handling of Arms, and remarkably well armed, particularly in the Articles of Firelocks and Bayonets.

7. That they saw the Fortifications on the Posts of Roxbury and Cambridge and also the Park of Artillery the Rebels have in the neighbourhood of the last place consisting of Canons, Mortars and Howitzers, concerning the quality of which they do not agree—Le Comte de Beauvouloir says,—they are equal in quality and Bore to those employed in Europe, and he only found them defective in the Article of the Carriages, which he said are of a bad Construction.—his friend the Engineer (whom I heard called Le Chevr d’Ambroise) held the Artillery rather cheap in general, but perticularly the Mortars which are small.—they both agreed that the Rebels were in want of Ammunition, particularly of powder, and insinuated that they might be greatly distressed by being Canonaded from Posts well chosen and properly fortified.

Bonvouloir reported the militant mood of the New England population in early 1775, though again he came up with a strange anecdote for it:

10. That the common people in America have been worked up to a pitch of enthusiastick phrensy that is beyond conception, and such was their Confidence (when they came away) that they were convinced His Majesty’s Troops would be entirely defeated, and driven on board the Ships in less than two Months, and indeed the Rebel Chiefs employed every Art to keep up their Spirit and enforce such Ideas, some of which they themselves were witness to, such as making their own people put on English Regimentals and come into the Camp in the Character of Officers and Soldiers deserting from His Majesty’s Troops, and one Man personated a Member of Parliament.

There’s no evidence from this side of the Atlantic to support those stories—no plans to impersonate British soldiers, no report of seeing a Member of Parliament on the ground.

In sum, like a lot of raw intelligence, this report was a mix of fact and fabulism.

TOMORROW: Bonvouloir makes his move.

“Employing every art and all the Address I am Master of”

Here’s another glimpse of espionage in 1775.

That summer, Julien-Alexandre Achard de Bonvouloir, younger son of a French nobleman, and the Chevalier d’Amboise arrived in London on a ship from New England.

They aroused the suspicions of the British government. On 5 August John Pownall, Secretary to the Board of Trade, wrote to the Earl of Dartmouth, Secretary of State for the colonies:

The Lodgers at the Hotel in Watling Street have been watched & pumped by a discreet & proper person employed by Lord Rochford, they proved to be as stated in the Letter you left with me, French officers from the West Indies, by the way of North America; they do not conceal that they have been in [Israel] Putnams Camp, but they speak of him and his troops in a most despicable Light, and say that but for their advice they would have made an Attempt that would have ruined them—if this is true I don’t think we are much obliged to the Gentlemen—

they further say that there is at least 200 able Officers & Engineers of all countrys now here endeavouring to get passages to North America—

a few days ago the Society at the Hotel was increased by the addition of a french officer from France, who got out of his Chaise at Westminster Bridge took a Hackney Coach, and went both to the Spanish and French Embassadours—in a few days we shall probably know more and be able to judge what is fit to be done.

The Earl of Rochford (shown above) was Britain’s other Secretary of State, with responsibility for continental Europe.

This document seems less valuable for its secondhand content about America than for its hints about intelligence methods in London. The Frenchmen were “watched,” “pumped,” and trailed. The new arrival switched vehicles before visiting embassies but didn’t manage to shake his trackers.

Lord Dartmouth’s files also contain a unsigned report headed “Intelligence.” which states:

What I have been able to collect from the two French Officers by employing every art and all the Address I am Master of, amounts to what follows:—

1st. That they have been over great part of the American Continent, particularly at Philadelphia, at New York, Rhode Island, and New England, which with their stay in and about Boston, would have required more time to perform than the three Months they say they remained in America.

2d. That they are particularly acquainted with Putnam and [Artemas] Ward,—the first they represent to be a good natured Civil and brave old Soldier—but a head strong, ignorant and stupid General—Ward they hold indeed very cheap.

[3d.] That they were both in person at the Affair of Lexington, and from circumstances they cited, I am induced to think that they were present at the Affair of the 17th [i.e., Bunker Hill].

4. That they were courted by the Rebels to stay amongst them, and were offered forty Pounds / Month each, of pay—they say they did not think such Offers solid, nor did they like the paper Currency. . . .

I suspect the claim to have been “in person at the Affair of Lexington” meant Bonvouloir and D’Amboise were present in eastern Massachusetts during the militia alarm on 19 April, not that they were in Lexington itself on that early morning. Still, adding two aristocratic Frenchmen to the mix of people in New England at the outbreak of war is intriguing.

TOMORROW: Pumping M. Bonvouloir.

“The Spies of 1775” in Acton, 31 Mar.

On Monday, 31 March, I’m returning to Acton to speak in the town’s series of Sestercentennial lectures.

My topic this time is “Spies and Military Intelligence,” though I’m titling it “The Spies of 1775” for the assonance.

In my previous visit last spring I talked about the story of The Road to Concord: the Patriots’ effort to build an artillery force and Gen. Thomas Gage’s desire to thwart them.

That talk covered the Boston militia men who smuggled cannon away from the redcoats, the British officers scouting the countryside, and the still unidentified spy sending Gage messages from Concord in bad French.

I don’t want to go over the same ground again, so for this talk I’m collecting the stories of other intelligence sources active from late 1774 to early 1776. One I’ve mentioned only once on this blog is John Skey Eustace, represented above by his coat of arms.

Eustace arrived at Gen. George Washington’s Cambridge headquarters in December 1775, one of several Virginians whom Capt. John Manley had captured on a British ship. He’d been sent north to Boston by his mentor: Lord Dunmore, royal governor of Virginia.

Within weeks Eustace was giving Gen. Washington useful tips about Dunmore’s agent Dr. John Connolly. Washington had already collected information on Connolly’s plan to recruit a Loyalist regiment, and at his warning Patriot authorities in Maryland had locked the man up. On 25 December, Washington warned John Hancock there was more to find:

I have received undoubted Information—that the genuine instructions given to Conolly, have not reached your hands—that they Are very artfully Concealed in the tree of his Saddle & coverd with Canvas So nicely, that they are Scarcely discernable—that those which were found upon him are intended to deceive—if he was caught—you will Certainly have his Saddle taken to pieces in order to discover this deep Laid plot.

Washington repeated that intelligence at the end of January 1776:

You may rely that Conolly had Instructions concealed in his Saddle—Mr Eustice who was one of Ld Dunmores family, & Another Gentleman who wishes his Name not to be mentioned, saw them cased in Tin, put in the Tree & covered over—he probably has exchanged his Saddle, or withdrew the papers when It was mended as you Conjecture—those that have been discovered are sufficiently bad, but I doubt not of the Others being worse & containing more diabolical & extensive plans

That information must have been deemed reliable because on 13 June Richard Henry Lee wrote to Washington:

I am informed that a certain Mr Eustace, now in New York, but some time ago with Lord Dunmore, is acquainted with a practise that prevailed of taking letters out of the Post Office in Virginia and carrying them to Dunmore for his perusal and than returning them to the Office again. As it is of the greatest consequence that this nefarious practise be stopt immediately, I shall be exceedingly obliged to you Sir for getting Mr Eustace to give in writing all that he knows about this business, and inclose the same to me at Williamsburg. I wish to know particularly, what Post Offices the letters were taken from, by whom, and who carried them to Lord Dunmore.

What’s striking about John Skey Eustace eagerly sharing what he knew about Lord Dunmore’s plots is that he was only fifteen years old.

And he’s just one of the people I’ll cover in this talk.

Monday, 31 March, 7 to 8:30 P.M.
The Spies of 1775
Acton Town Hall, Room 204

This event is free to all. It will be livestreamed on ActonTV.org and recorded for posting on the Acton 250 YouTube channel.

The Short Military Career of Lt. Col. Thomas Williams, Jr.

The Journal of the American Revolution just published Tim Abbott’s article about Lt. Col. Thomas Williams, Jr. (1746–1776), of Stockbridge.

Williams left behind an engraved powder horn, now in the collection of the Stockbridge Library Museum and Archives. It shows Boston landmarks.

(This is different from the Dr. Thomas Williams powder horn recorded by Rufus Alexander Grider in 1888 and now lost.)

The siege lines around Boston contained some professional horn carvers selling their work to men who wanted souvenirs of military service. I suspect the Williams horn is one like that. As an officer and as a lawyer in civilian life, he probably didn’t have the time or inclination to do his own carving.

As Abbott’s article recounts, Williams was one of two minute company captains who responded to the Lexington Alarm from Stockbridge. The other company included a score of men from the town’s Native community and thus gets more attention.

As the troops besieging Boston organized themselves into an army enlisted through the end of the year rather than an emergency militia force, Williams became part of Col. John Paterson’s regiment. In September he volunteered for Col. Benedict Arnold’s expedition through Maine to Québec.

However, Williams was in the rear guard led by Lt. Col. Roger Enos (1729–1808), who in late October decided to turn back. That was controversial. Enos was tried and acquitted in a court-martial. He was probably lucky to go through that procedure before the army at Cambridge received “Colonel Arnolds evidence,” as Gen. George Washington reported.

Williams left Paterson’s regiment at the end of 1775, but on 9 Jan 1776 he became lieutenant colonel of a new regiment under Col. Elisha Porter to be sent up to Québec along Lake Champlain and the St. Lawrence River. This time Williams made it to the outskirts of the city, but smallpox was weakening the Continental forces.

Those Americans were trying to inoculate and fight the war at the same time. Abbott writes:

The timing for the deliberate exposure of Porter’s Regiment to smallpox could not have been worse. The inoculation process required effective quarantine for three to four weeks, during which the men were both weak and contagious. Even for those under treatment, severe cases could still develop and mortality rates under the best conditions still ran 1 to 2 percent. Porter’s men had no more than three days in hospital after they were inoculated before the siege was dramatically lifted by the arrival of a British fleet on May 6 and the American forces were soon driven back upriver in full retreat. Not only were they exposed to physical stress while they developed smallpox symptoms, but they became a significant vector for the spread of the disease to others in its more deadly form.

The American commander, Gen. John Thomas, died on 2 June. Lt. Col. Williams led his men back to Crown Point, New York, before falling ill. He didn’t make it home to Stockbridge.

Williams doesn’t appear to have left behind his own diary or letters—his powder horn might have been his only personal record of military service, and it probably wasn’t his own creation. Abbott has therefore done the work of reconstructing his career by weaving together official records and other officers’ accounts.

Planning for the Sestercentennial of Battle of Lexington and Concord

As the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Lexington and Concord approaches, I’ve gotten requests for information about where the commemorations will happen.

The answer is that they’ll happen all over because that battle didn’t take place on one field, but spread out over twenty miles.

Furthermore, we New Englanders like our traditions. Many towns and organizations have their own time-honored ways of celebrating the anniversary: local parades, marches, pancake breakfasts, and the like. We’re not going to cancel those just because this anniversary ends in 50.

That said, because of the Sestercentennial many of our commemorations this year will be much bigger than usual: more participants, more spectators, more traffic. And that’s not counting the potential complications from the weather and from Washington, D.C.

Therefore, my only recommendation is to choose a couple of events to enjoy from the many on the schedule. But don’t assume that when I say “schedule,” there is one master schedule. Oh, no, that’s not how we operate here. Here are multiple sources to consult, and I don’t claim this list is exhaustive.

Battleroad.org is a venerable website [check out that coding!] which is updated each year with the latest details about events in Middlesex County. These include celebrations on the weekend before the big anniversary, such as Bedford’s pole-capping and Lincoln’s Paul Revere Capture ceremony. More events in early April appear on Minute Man National Historical Park’s page.

On Friday, 18 April, the National Parks of Boston, the Paul Revere House, and the Old North Church all have events linked to the start of Paul Revere’s ride to Lexington. Those three links go to overlapping lists of offerings, which include a reading of the play Revolution’s Edge, a reenactment of Revere’s movements, the lighting of two lanterns in the steeple, a talk by Prof. Heather Cox Richardson, and a talk by me. It’s impossible to see all those since the whole point is that they’re on opposite sides of the Charles River.

Saturday, 19 April, will start with the confrontation on Lexington common; see the Lexington 250 events calendar. Then the action moves into Minute Man Park for the clash at Concord’s North Bridge, followed by what promises to be the largest, most authentic reenactment ever of the fighting along the Battle Road. The best information on those happenings and how to enjoy them safely comes from the park.

This year the reenacting continues on Sunday afternoon with the Battle of Menotomy along Massachusetts Avenue in Arlington. The setting looks modern, but it’s the actual ground of the bloodiest fighting in April 1775.

Monday is of course Patriots’ Day, the state holiday best known for the Boston Marathon. And the celebrations aren’t over yet. It looks like the Lincoln Salute for fife and drum corps has been pushed to 27 April, for example. So choose your fighters.

Two Revolutionary Symposia Coming Up in New York

The month of May brings two gatherings of Revolutionary War researchers in upstate New York, just a scenic drive away from Boston.

Saratoga 250 will host its fourth annual Turning Point Symposium in Schuylerville on 3 May with these speakers:

• Dr. Phillip Hamilton – “Washington’s Artillerist: Henry Knox Commands the Continental Guns”
• Matthew Keagle – “My Dinner with Andre?: Henry Knox Arrives at Fort George on Lake George”
• Dr. Bruce M. Venter – “Irascible Ethan Allen: He Cared Little About Ticonderoga’s Guns”
• Michele Gabrielson – “American Calliope: The Writings of Mercy Otis Warren and Her Friendship with Henry Knox”
• Dr. Mark Edward Lender – “The Woman at the Gun Reconsidered: Molly Pitcher’s Legendary Performance at Monmouth”

Registration for that day is $89 and includes two meals.

The following day, 4 May, Hamilton will conduct a bus tour of the “Sled Tracks of Henry Knox.” That has a separate registration cost.

At the end of the month, the Fort Plain Museum convenes its annual American Revolution Conference in Johnstown. This year’s presenters include:

• Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Atkinson – “The Fate of the Day: The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777-1780”
• Maj. Gen. Jason Q. Bohm, U.S.M.C. (Ret.) – “The Birth and Early Operations of the Marine Corps: 250 Years in the Making”
• Alexander R. Cain – “We Stood Our Ground: 250th of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, April 19, 1775”
• Abby Chandler – “Choosing Sides: North Carolina’s Regulator Rebellion and the American Revolution”
• Gary Ecelbarger – “The Mammoth of Monmouth: George Washington’s 1778 Campaign in New Jersey”
• Michael P. Gabriel – “Richard Montgomery and the Other Invasion of Canada”
• Shirley L. Green – “Integrating Enslaved and Free: Rhode Island’s Revolutionary Black Regiment”
• Don N. Hagist – “Marching from Peace into War: British Soldiers in 1775 America”
• Patrick H. Hannum – “The Virginia Campaign of 1775-76: Kemp’s Landing & Great Bridge”
• Wayne Lenig – “The Mohawk Valley’s Committee of Safety in 1775”
• James L. Nelson – “Bunker Hill: The First Battle of the American Revolution”
• Eric H. Schnitzer – “Breaking Convention: How a Fussy Detail about British Uniforms Doomed Burgoyne’s Army to Captivity”
• William P. Tatum III, Ph.D., the James F. Morrison Mohawk Valley Resident Historian – “‘To Quell, Suppress, and Bring Them to Reason by Force’: Combatting the Loyalist Threat in New York during 1775”
• Bruce M. Venter – “‘It is infinitely better to have a few good men than many indifferent ones’: Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys Take Fort Ticonderoga”

This program extends from the afternoon of Friday, 30 May, to the morning of Sunday, 1 June. Registration for people not already members of the museum costs $160 and includes lunch on Saturday.

The Fort Plain conference also offers a bus tour—in this case beforehand, on Thursday, 29 May. Alex Cain will guide attendees along the Battle Road in Middlesex County, Massachusetts. So that would be a busman’s holiday for folks coming from the Boston area.

“This distortion of history renders the past unrecognizable”

Earlier this month, the nation’s two main associations of historians issued this statement condemning federal censorship of the nation’s history:

The American Historical Association (A.H.A.) and the Organization of American Historians (O.A.H.) condemn recent efforts to censor historical content on federal government websites, at many public museums, and across a wide swath of government resources that include essential data. New policies that purge words, phrases, and content that some officials deem suspect on ideological grounds constitute a systemic campaign to distort, manipulate, and erase significant parts of the historical record. Recent directives insidiously prioritize narrow ideology over historical research, historical accuracy, and the actual experiences of Americans.

As the institution chartered by the U.S. Congress for “the promotion of historical studies” and “in the interest of American history, and of history in America,” the American Historical Association must speak out when the nation’s leadership wreaks havoc with that history. So, too, must the O.A.H., as the organization committed to promoting “excellence in the scholarship, teaching, and presentation of American history.” It is bad enough to forget the past; it is even worse to intentionally deny the public access to what we remember, have documented, and have expended public resources to disseminate.

At this writing, the full range of historical distortions and deletions is yet to be discerned. Federal entities and institutions subject to federal oversight and funding are hastily implementing revisions to their resources in an attempt to comply with the “Dear Colleague” letter issued by the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights and executive orders such as “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” These changes range from scrubbing words and acronyms from websites to papering over interpretive panels in museums. Some alterations, such as those related to topics like the Tuskegee Airmen and the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, have been hurriedly reversed in response to public outcry. Others remain. The scrubbing of words and acronyms from the Stonewall National Monument webpage, for instance, distorts the site’s history by denying the roles of transgender and queer people in movements for rights and liberation. This distortion of history renders the past unrecognizable to the people who lived it and useless to those who seek to learn from the past.

It remains unclear whether federal agencies are preserving the original versions of these materials for future reference or research. Articles written by historians for the National Park Service, for example, have been altered, and in some instances deleted, because they examine history with references to gender or sexuality. These revisions were made without the authors’ knowledge or consent, and without public acknowledgment that the original articles had been revised. The A.H.A.’s Statement on Standards of Professional Conduct is clear: “Honoring the historical record also means leaving a clear trail for subsequent historians to follow. Any changes to a primary source or published secondary work, whether digital or print, should be noted.”

Words matter. Precision matters. Context matters. Expertise matters. Democracy matters. We can neither deny what happened nor invent things that did not happen. Recent executive orders and other federal directives alter the public record in ways that are contrary to historical evidence. They result in deceitful narratives of the past that violate the professional standards of our discipline. When government entities, or scholars themselves, censor the use of particular words, they in effect censor historical evidence. Censorship and distortion erase people and institutions from history.

The A.H.A.’s Statement on Standards of Professional Conduct makes clear that historians can neither misrepresent their sources nor omit evidence because it “runs counter” to their interpretations. The O.A.H. and A.H.A. condemn the rejection of these professional standards. Classifying collective historical scholarship as “toxic indoctrination” or “discriminatory equity ideology” dismisses the knowledge generated by the deep research of generations of historians. It violates the training, expertise, and purposes of historians as well as their responsibility to public audiences.

Our professional ethics require that “all historians believe in honoring the integrity of the historical record.” We expect our nation’s leadership to adhere to this same basic standard and we will continue to monitor, protest, and place in the historical record any censorship of American historical facts.

Several other societies affirmed their support for this statement: the Association of University Presses, Education for All, Labor and Working-Class History Association, National Council for the Social Studies, North American Conference on British Studies, PEN America, and the Society for U.S. Intellectual History.

The examples of suppressed information in this statement are all about twentieth-century history, but White House demands haven’t spared Revolutionary parks. For example, at the beginning of this year one park’s webpage on non-white people working for American independence included this question: “Why don’t we hear more about this part of the American Revolution?” The answer was historic racism. We’ve known that since William Cooper Nell’s work in the 1850s. But the current administration doesn’t like that answer, so it’s gone.

Fortunately, the rest of that webpage remains, as do many related articles and profiles on the same site. The hard-working staff of the N.P.S. is still dedicated to telling our national story, including the hard parts, as fully and accurately as they can.

And on that topic, the Sestercentennial events at Minute Man National Historical Park include:

Saturday, 19 April, 3 P.M.
A Fight for Freedom: Patriots of Color Walking Tour
start at the North Bridge Lower Parking Lot on Monument Street

“Secrets on the Road to Concord” in Scituate, 15 May

On Saturday I attended the “Spies Among Us” event in Concord, described back here.

Top highlights:

• Seeing the Wright Tavern sprucing up as it prepares to reopen to the public next month, including the Pursuit of History weekend on “The Outbreak of War” that I’m helping to organize there (a couple of seats may still be available).
• Enjoying all the special touches the National Park Service staff and volunteers brought to this event, including a full-size replica of Ens. Henry DeBerniere’s map from the Library of Congress and a Concord role-playing game.
• Hearing details about what brought the British troops to Concord and remembering back during the 2000 commemoration when many of those were still little beads I was trying to string together into a narrative that became The Road to Concord.

So I’m eager to keep spreading the word at my upcoming speaking engagement for the Scituate Historical Society. [This event was originally scheduled for March and postponed.]

Thursday, 15 May, 7–8:30 P.M.
Secrets on the Road to Concord
G.A.R. Hall, 353 Country Way, Scituate

Early in the spring of 1775, British army spies located four brass cannon belonging to Boston’s colonial militia that had gone missing months before. British general Thomas Gage devised plans to regain the cannon. Massachusetts Patriots prepared to thwart the general’s hopes. Each side wanted control of those weapons, but each also had reasons to keep their existence a secret. That conflict would end with blood on the road to Concord.

Admission is $15, or $10 for society members. Reservations are recommended, but payment will be accepted at the door.

I look forward to meeting more folks in shoreside Plymouth County.

(The picture above is a page from one of Scituate Historical Society’s artifacts of the 1770s: Caleb Litchfield’s notebook from when he was a teenager studying mathematics and navigation. Litchfield served in the Continental forces on land and sea during the war. After a brief time as a merchant ship’s master, he retired inland to Milton and then Weathersfield, Vermont.)

Anderson on Rebellion 1776 in Cambridge, 1 Apr.

Laurie Halse Anderson’s latest novel about the American Revolution is set in Boston: Rebellion 1776.

Anderson has won awards for her Seeds of America Trilogy (Chains, Forge, and Ashes), as well as her earlier novel Fever 1793 and the picture book Independent Dames: What You Never Knew about the Woman and Girls of the American Revolution.

She’s even better known for her contemporary novel Speak, which is frequently challenged in public schools and libraries because it addresses the problem of rape. She’s one of the handful of American authors who have won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award for children’s literature.

In an interview with Publishers Weekly, Anderson described the scope of this new book:

My book covers the traumatic effects of the Siege of Boston, the growing political divide within families and communities, and the frightening smallpox epidemic, which threatened everything. One reason I continue to write about this era is because I think we could do a better job depicting the state of the colonies at the start of the Revolution in recognizing that independence was not a done deal.

As a protagonist Anderson created a thirteen-year-old girl named Elsbeth Culpepper, orphaned but taking advantage of the chaos and need for labor in Boston after the British evacuation to keep herself away from the Overseers of the Poor.

Anderson’s long conversation with Horn Book editor Roger Sutton goes deep into her research and storytelling processes:

First I had to understand what the cultural, financial, and sociological constraints were then on a thirteen-year-old kitchen maid. But then came the chaos of the siege, then the changing of the armies, and then it took a while for Boston's government to get up and running again. That chaos opened the door for me and my character to break some rules, some constraints. And then as society gets its act back together, the walls and rules come back up again.

I recommend that interview for anyone writing historical fiction.

Anderson will be speaking and signing books at a ticketed event for Porter Square Books on Tuesday, 1 April. That will happen at the Marran Theater in Cambridge. Admission is $25 (which includes a signed book) or $10 (which doesn’t).