JUNE SPEAKER – CAPTIVATING!
Thirty-two Round Tablers attended Christian McBurney’s talk on his 2016 book Abductions in the American Revolution: Attempts to Kidnap George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and Other Military and Civilian Leaders. Whew! The publishers these days certainly go for long sub-titles. If you get through the sub-title you might decide you don’t need to read the book.
Mr. McBurney explained that in 18th Century wars, it was standard practice to kidnap enemy leaders and exchange them for one’s own, or use them for negotiating leverage. Assassination was not contemplated. This was not only because of the more gentlemanly 18th Century mode of warfare, but also for a practical reason: dead leaders don’t bring much of a price.
Mr. McBurney told the dramatic, and almost comic, story of the kidnapping of American General Charles Lee, second in command of the Continental Army after GW, who was exchanged for British General Prescott. Declaration of Independence signer Richard Stockton of New Jersey was captured at Princeton. He signed a parole (i.e., he promised in writing never to fight against the King again) and was released. His family started the myth that he did so only because he was sick. Our author disagrees.
Captain John Paul Jones, in raiding the English coast, was hoping to bag an Earl. There was a British plot to capture General Philip Schuyler. Governor William Livingston of New Jersey was targeted more often than any other person in this war. He never slept longer than one night in the same house. (See our June 2018 issue for a profile of Livingston’s home, Liberty Hall, in Union, NJ.) Yasir Arafat, of the Palestine Liberation Organization, followed the same precaution – one of those sobering points that remind us that the American Revolution, despite the funny clothes, was no comic opera. A revolution is always deadly business.
Our speaker told the wonderful story of secret agent Sgt. Major John Champe, who pretended to defect to the British army in order to kidnap Benedict Arnold at his home, Number 3 Broadway. This site and story are also covered on certain walking tours. When Champe escaped from the Redcoats and returned to the American camp, General Washington retired him from the service because if he had ever gotten captured by the British, he would have been hanged as a deserter.
Jefferson was almost captured by the famous Banastre Tarleton at Monticello. General Wilhelm Knyphausen, commanding the Hessian troops in northern Manhattan, planned an expedition across the frozen Hudson to kidnap General Washington.
And when the 17-year old heir to the British throne came to visit New York City, Washington hoped to get his hands on young George IV.
HONORS TO JACOBS & FLEMING
At the June dinner, we presented Chairman Dave Jacobs with a name plate to put on his desk. It reads: DR. DAVID W. JACOBS. Dave recently received his long-awaited and hard-earned doctorate in engineering.
Doctor David Jacobs with the ARRT-NY Board of Governors (l. to r.): Lynne Saginaw, Polly Guérin, Fred Cookinham, Jack Buchanan, Dave, Art Lefkowitz, Andrea Meyer, Joanne Grasso, Jon Carriel. [Photo by Richard Melnick]
Dave presented a Certificate of Appreciation for Thomas Fleming to Tom’s widow Alice. Mrs. Fleming told us that Tom loved the Round Table more than the many other organizations of which he had been a member. This was because the Round Table is not a genealogical group – you don’t have to be anyone’s descendant to join – and it is not a professional group – you don’t have to be a professor or an author to join. She added that the whole Fleming family is honored to receive this Certificate.
Alice Fleming is herself an author. She has written a number of young adult books, including most recently Martin Luther King: A Dream of Hope.
Alice Fleming acknowledges the ARRT’s Certificate of Appreciation for Thomas Fleming. [Photo by Richard Melnick]
HAMILTON PAPERS TO REVWAR MUSEUM
Member and documentary film maker Ron Blumer had a full set of the papers of Alexander Hamilton. Ron acquired the set during his research for his film on AH. He graciously donated the set to the Round Table, and this august body, with equal graciousness, donated the set to the MAR: the Museum of the American Revolution, in Philadelphia.
Although this is an august body, it was on a hot July day that Chairman Dave Jacobs drove down to foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia to present the set to the museum. He was met with great welcoming cordiality by the Executive Director, the Head Curator, and several senior members of the staff. Dave can show you the Deed of Gift, photos of the occasion, the press release by the MAR, and the book plates that will be put onto each of the 27 volumes of the Papers, as per the agreement, stating these books were a gift from the American Revolution Round Table of New York.
Dave Jacobs completes ARRT’s donation with an officer of the Museum of the American Revolution.
It was member Arthur Lefkowitz who suggested the donation and made the initial contact.
Dave joins Dr. Joanne Grasso and Polly Guérin in enthusiastically urging everyone to make a trip to the City of Brotherly Love to see the Museum as they have. It is a cab ride from the 30th Street Amtrak Station. If you can walk the mile or two to the Museum, it is a rewarding walk: City Hall, Market Street, and all the main historic sites, such as Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell, are near the MAR.
FRAUNCES & N-YHS EVENTS
Star reporter Lynne Saginaw reports a bumper crop of upcoming talks at the New-York Historical Society, relating to the Revolution. Topics include: October 16: Slavery and Anti-slavery, November 15: John Marshall, November 27: James Madison, January 15: Fugitive Slaves, and February 28: Gouverneur Morris.
If you go to the Fraunces Tavern® Museum website, you will, in a few weeks, be able to reserve a place for their annual Evacuation Day tour, 11:00 a.m., Saturday and Sunday, November 24 and 25. Conducted by this editor.
BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS
Long-time Round Tabler and volunteer at Fort Montgomery, NY historic site Victor Miranda read a review at the June meeting of a 2016 book called The Cinematic Challenge: Filming Colonial America, by John P. Harty Jr., and published by Minneapolis’s Langdon Street Press. The book asks why the colonial and revolutionary eras in American History have not been the subjects of more movies. It focuses on four movies that were made in the 1930s and 40s. The author assesses each film for historical accuracy. The book has lots of information for the film historian, with facts about the costs of production, the process of screenplay development, and the effect on the films of the politics of the day. Ninety-seven pages of end notes! Vic recommends it.
Long-time Round Tabler Jack Buchanan has another book gestating. In February 2019 you will be able to find, in better book stores everywhere, The Road to Charleston: Nathanael Greene and the American Revolution. The University of Virginia Press is the publisher. Jack will be our speaker in April. He will also speak at the annual conferences on the American Revolution at Williamsburg in March and Johnstown, NY in June, and will be the keynote speaker at Fort Ticonderoga in September 2019.
On June 28 Marcus Rediker spoke at Fraunces Tavern Museum on his book Benjamin Lay and the Origins of Abolitionism. Lay was a fascinating character. He lived from 1682 to 1759. He was a Quaker, a dwarf, and the first revolutionary abolitionist. He campaigned his whole life for immediate and unconditional abolition of slavery worldwide. He was born in England but lived most of his life in Pennsylvania. On April 21st of this year, the Abington, PA Friends unveiled a grave marker for Lay at the Abington Friends Meeting Graveyard in Jenkintown, PA, ten miles north of center city Philadelphia.
Harper Collins has added to the literature on young George Washington this year with a new book by Peter Stark called Young Washington. Mount Vernon has been emphasizing Washington’s younger years lately. They want to promote GW to younger visitors as a sort of action hero.
Arthur Lefkowitz’s 2003 book George Washington’s Indispensible Men: The 32 Aides-de-camp Who Helped Win American Independence, has been re-titled George Washington’s Indispensible Men: Alexander Hamilton, Tench Tilghman, and the Aides-de-camp Who Helped Win American Independence.
HOOCK ON SCARS OF INDEPENDENCE
Another recent speaker here in New York, on the subject of the Revolution, was Holger Hoock, at Fraunces Tavern Museum on May 10. His topic was his book Scars of Independence. Hoock, a Brit, said that he was surprised at how little of the American Revolution is taught in British colleges. You editor has noticed this, too. One Brit asked me why he should care about the American Revolution. I reminded him that this was the greatest imperial crisis Britain ever faced. “Oh!” he said. Never thought of that.
Hoock finds that Americans were better at rhetoric and political communication and persuasion than the British. You can see the influence of Enlightenment thinkers on the Americans of that generation in their careful amassing of data on British atrocities for the purpose of luring fence-sitters off the fence.
Also new to this reporter was the fact that General Sullivan commanded one third of the whole Continental Army against the Iroquois in the 1779 campaign. As a result of that campaign, one third of the total Iroquois population – five thousand out of fifteen – fled to the British Fort Niagara. Most loyalists did not leave the US – most of them tried to tough it out. All these examples and more go to flesh out Hoock’s premise: the scars of the War for Independence.
SITE CITES SIGHTS: FORT GREENE PARK
Ft. Greene Park is in Brooklyn, near the DeKalb Avenue Station on the B, Q, and R trains, and not far from the new Barclay’s Center, downtown Brooklyn and Brooklyn Heights, and the Atlantic Avenue Station of the Long Island Railroad. Many subway lines stop at that station.
The first thing you need to know about Fort Greene is that the park is named after a War of 1812 fort that was built on the site of Fort Putnam of the War for Independence. The British never attacked New York in the 1812 war, so the importance of this site, for purposes of battle history, lies with Fort Putnam.
On a recent visit, I found the visitors center open and took a few notes. I almost missed getting inside, because the main entrance was locked and there was no sign indicating that you must enter through the side entrance. There is a NYC Parks ranger at the desk, where you can buy Revwar videos and DVDs, and a very few books.
The room is small, dingy and uncared for. Maps on the walls are sometimes curled, torn and yellowed. Displays are dirty. A notice informs us that a volunteer is needed.
The Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument in Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn. [Photos by Jon Carriel]
Displays include a picture of the Jersey, the main POW ship. All the masts have been removed but one, which they used as a derrick, to hoist food onboard and bodies overboard. There is a wildlife display, including a beaver pelt, a nest, and leaves. There are maps of the Battle of Brooklyn. A Brown Bess musket hangs on the wall, and flintlock pistols and a tomahawk, along with portraits of architect Stanford White, who designed the Prison Ship Martyrs Monument that dominates the park, and General Nathanael Greene of the Revwar and Colonel Rufus Putnam, who designed this fort and Fort Washington in Manhattan. (He was not the namesake of the fort. He was related to General Israel Putnam, who was.) There are pictures of the bluestone caskets that hold the remains of 11,200 American prisoners who died on the prison ships. Those caskets are stored in a crypt under the monument, just a few steps from this visitors center.
The second most impressive display is a model, hanging on the wall, of a typical breathing hole on the prison ships. The grill is twenty inches on a side, and each hole is five.
The most impressive display is a list, on the wall, of the names of eight thousand of those men. It does not explain why the list stops at eight thousand when 11,200 are elsewhere stated as having died on those ships.
A sign states that seven hundred Spanish soldiers died on the prison ships. Since New York City was the British HQ for all army and navy operations in North America and adjacent seas, POWs were brought here from wherever they were taken. The Mississippi River was the British/Spanish frontier, and there were battles there. On the other side of the monument (White designed the world’s tallest free-standing Doric column here) is the cement base for a missing bronze plaque, about six feet by three. The plaque, the sign in the visitors center explains, “was removed for fear of vandalism. The base remained an eyesore for decades.” Still does. But there is no sign at the plaque’s base. The plaque was a gift from the King of Spain in the 1970s, and paid tribute to the Spanish soldiers who fought as America’s allies in our War for Independence.
Also on display is a reproduction of the program of the dedication of the monument, November 14, 1908.
A notice states that walking tours are given, starting here, of Wallabout Bay, the site of the prison ships, and of Walt Whitman’s life. RSVPs are required, at myrtleavenue.org/events.
The Museum in Fort Greene Park.
Outside of the visitors center they do a lot better. There is a “Fort Putnam Program Area.” This a space, marked off by a split-rail fence, with benches for a class, a fireplace of dressed stone (unlikely in a fort or cantonment), a pile of firewood, a 2-pounder cannon, a three-foot tall breastwork of dressed lumber (again, unlikely), a barrel, maps and text about the Battle of Brooklyn, a wooden table, and a pump with no handle. There is a fascine and a gabion, which is good, because I have been saying fascine all these years of tours when I should have said gabion. A fascine is a bundle of sticks and a gabion is a basket of dirt. If you don’t have time to build a proper fort, you make do with these.
Finally, there are two cannon at the front of the visitors center, one field mounted and one garrison mounted. But they look to be from the Civil War or later, not the Revwar.
This site deserves so much more, and is so accessible to the public by subway, it’s ridiculous. Forgive my long exposition and allow me a Walt Whitman moment. As editor of the Brooklyn Eagle, Whitman campaigned for a better crypt for the men who died on those horrible ships. Except for the gas chambers, Auschwitz had nothing on the Jersey. I just met a man who, by chance, happened to be in the park during a very rare opening of the crypt, and he had a chance to go inside. It should be open all the time and be a place of pilgrimage, like Arlington’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
Whitman: THE WALLABOUT MARTYRS Greater than memory of Achilles or Ulysses, More, more by far to thee than tomb of Alexander, Those cartloads of old charnel ashes, Scales and splints of mouldy bones, Once living men – once resolute courage, aspiration, strength, The stepping stones to thee today and here, America.
FEAR AND FORCE AT FRAUNCES
August 22 saw the opening of a new exhibit at Fraunces Tavern Museum: FEAR AND FORCE – NEW YORK CITY’S SONS OF LIBERTY.
The Sons pulled down the statue of King George III in the Bowling Green and dumped 18 half-chests of tea at Murray’s Wharf, at the foot of Wall Street on the East River.
There is another sobering reminder of the violent side of every revolution, including our own. Malcolm X used to say that some people bandy the word “revolution” around without realizing how serious a business it is. “In a real revolution, you don’t do no singing. You’re too busy swinging!” One professor of American History said that the more respectable people in Boston, New York and other cities would have called the Sons of Liberty sons of something else.
OCTOBER SPEAKER
The October speaker will be our own Dr. Joanne S. Grasso, who will tell us about her new book, George Washington’s 1790 Grand Tour of Long Island. Dr. Grasso, a Long Island native, will show where the President went on his tour and will tell us his thoughts on the region, as revealed in his detailed diary entries. Brooklyn, Patchogue, and Setauket were on his itinerary. Setauket was the home of Culper Ring spy Abraham Woodhull.
Dr. Grasso is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of History and Political Science. Her first book, The American Revolution on Long Island, was published in 2016. It resulted in fifteen book talks around Long Island and New York City. Her new book was published on July 9 of this year – New York City’s own Independence Day. Dr. Grasso is working on a third book and on conference papers.
MEMBERSHIP RENEWALS DUE OCTOBER 2nd!
Also linked to the e-mail that conveyed this issue of the BROADSIDE to you is a .PDF file of the ARRT Annual Dues Form for our 2018–19 season. This single page can be printed out on any laser printer. (Copies will of course be available at all meetings.)
DEADLINE
The deadline for submissions to the December BROADSIDE will be Tuesday, November 13. November 20 should see this thing of ours in your inbox, and December 4, two weeks after BROADSIDE, will be the dinner.
AN IMPORTANT MESSAGE FROM OUR CHAIRMAN
The October Round Table will be held Tuesday, October 2, 2018 at the Coffee House Club, General Society Library Building, 20 West 44th Street, 6th Floor, at 6 p.m.
The next semi-annual meeting of the Round Table’s Board of Trustees will convene at the Coffee House Club at 5:30 Tuesday, December 4, 2018.
Your most obdt svt,
David W. Jacobs