The Book of Bastards

by Brian Thornton

  Lord De La Warr proved to be Jamestown's salvation, but the surrounding Native American tribes bore most of the heavy costs involved. De La Warr learned how to take land when he fought in England's ongoing battles with the Irish. His methods were similar to the ones Indians used in their wars with the English and each other, but history gave De La Warr's version a special name. He freely employed these so-called “Irish tactics” against the Powhatans and the other local Algonquian tribes. Under De La Warr's command, the colonists raided Indian towns, stealing crops, burning cornfields. They set a scene that replayed itself along the American frontier over the next three centuries.

  We can find plenty to dislike about the prime movers on both sides of this long struggle between early American bastards. It is worth noting, though, that the man who started the trend was De La Warr, the English lord and military man. In one of history's ironies, De La Warr failed to profit from his ruthlessness in securing the future of the Virginia Colony. His mission of saving Jamestown from extinction accomplished, De La Warr set sail for England in 1618. He died during the return voyage, and no one is quite sure what became of his body.

  “And here in Florida, Virginia, New-England, and Cannada, is more land than all the people in Christendome can manure, and yet more to spare than all the natives of those Countries can use and cultivate. The natives are only too happy to share: If this be not a reason sufficient to such tender consciences; for a copper kettle and a few toyes, as beads and hatchets, they will sell you a whole Country.”

  — Captain John Smith

  2

  THE PURITANS

  Not Just More Pilgrims

  “But for the natives in these parts, God hath so pursued them, as for 300 miles space the greatest part of them are swept away by smallpox which still continues among them. So as God hath thereby cleared our title to this place, those who remain in these parts, being in all not 50, have put themselves under our protection.”

  — John Winthrop

  Don't confuse the Pilgrims and Puritans: these English religious sects were more different than their names would lead you to believe. The first group arrived in North America and treated the local Indians civilly. The others treated the native people as an obstacle to be removed, conquered, or converted.

  The Pilgrims, outsiders that they were, left England for Holland, but soon after decided that their children would be less likely to lose their “Englishness” in a new land than in the Low Countries. A large group of them departed for the New World in 1620. They founded Plymouth Plantation that same year. The Puritans followed them soon afterward, founding Boston in 1630, and quickly outnumbering their separatist neighbors.

  In no time at all the Puritans ran into trouble with the native peoples. They were determined to convert the locals into Christian, “Praying Indians.” The neighboring Pequot, Narragansett, and Wampanoag tribes were naturally reluctant to change their ways of life for the strangers. The Puritans, of course, met resistance with violence. In 1637, just seven years after the founding of Boston, the Puritans went to war with the most numerous tribe in the region at the time, the Pequots. Within the year, more than 1,500 Indians were dead and the Pequots had all but ceased to exist as an independent tribal entity.

  The Puritans repeated this cycle with the Wampanoag in the 1660s and 1670s. The Pilgrims and the Wampanoag sachem (chief ) Massasoit had gotten along very well. But Massasoit's son Metacomet, known as “King Philip” by the Puritans, fought the Puritans in King Philip's War from 1675–6.

  Both sides in the war favored fire as a weapon. Indians retreating into their great walled towns quickly learned that the Puritans had no compunctions about burning their homes down around their ears. One group of Praying Indians was murdered when their church was burned down with them still inside. The culprits? Not other Indians taking revenge on religious traitors, but Puritan settlers, their own coreligionists! It is not surprising that many Indian attacks on Puritan settlements resulted in similar treatment.

  THE BACKGROUND

  The Pilgrims and the Puritans were both groups of English Christians who were dissenters from the mainstream Church of England. The Pilgrims were separatists, in other words, people who sought freedom to worship apart from the Church of England and to establish their own church. Today, they are known as the Congregationalists. The Puritans, on the other hand, didn't want to leave the church. They wanted to “purify” it from within: hence their nickname. The Puritans believed they needed to purge anything related to Catholicism from their Protestant faith and lifestyle in order to avoid eternal damnation.

  By the time it had run its course this war resulted in nearly four thousand deaths (three thousand of them Indians, including King Philip), an incredibly high toll considering the number of colonists at the time. The Wampanoag and their allies were wiped out. Those Indians not killed by disease, bullets, or torches were sold into slavery in places such as the West Indies and Bermuda. And this included most of the Praying Indians. The native population crippled, the Puritans claimed lands now open to settlement as God-sent blessings for their piety.

  Pious Bastards.

  3

  THOMAS PENN

  The Pennsylvania Walking Purchase, or How to Steal Land from the Indians and Keep It “Legal”: The Sequel (1702–1775)

  “William Penn was a wise and good man, but Thomas was a miserable churl.”

  — Benjamin Franklin

  William Penn, the founder of the colony of Pennsylvania (Latin for “Penn's Woods”), was a nonconformist. A man both of peace and of his word, Penn dealt straightforwardly with the local Indians. He treated them as he would have any other human being and paid them for lands they relinquished to the settlers of his new colony. The Lenape, the largest and most powerful of these tribes, enjoyed particularly good relations with Penn. They referred to him as their father and honored him as they would their own chiefs.

  William Penn died in 1718, struggling to make ends meet after spending a great deal of money on his colony. He was succeeded as “proprietor” of Pennsylvania by his second son, Thomas. Thomas Penn turned out to be a very different man from his father. He was proof that, in the case of the Penn family, the old adage “the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree” hardly applied. Where the elder Penn had been determined to build something admirable and not all that concerned with profit, his son was determined to profit and not all that concerned with being admirable. No other example spells out the difference between William Penn and his son than that of the infamous Walking Purchase of 1737.

  Most of the Pennsylvania colony's settlements were restricted to the Delaware River Valley's west bank, stretching no more than a few miles inland. Penn's agents produced an unsigned and likely forged treaty supposedly dating back to 1688 that would change Pennsylvania for good. According to the “treaty,” Lenape chiefs had agreed to sell the Penns a parcel of their lands from the junction of the Lehigh and Delaware Rivers and continuing “as far west as a man could walk in a day and a half.”

  WHY THE BASTARD DID IT

  Left land-rich but cash-poor by his father, Thomas Penn married the daughter of an earl, and styled himself as an aristocrat. That sort of “lifestyle” didn't come cheap. The sale of the land stolen in “Ye Hurry Walk” helped make Penn a millionaire, and financed the sort of “lifestyle” to which he thought himself entitled.

  The Lenape chiefs weren't happy about the treaty, but felt they had no choice but to agree to what they called “Ye Hurry Walk.” They assumed they would sell as much as could be traced by following the Lehigh River along its course westward. Penn, however, had already calculated his claim and sold off parcels of the land he expected to receive in the deal. He hired three professional runners and had his agents clear a road for them to run on. Rather than following the Lehigh River trail, the road would lead the runners due west, deep into Lenape territory. Penn took great care to turn “as far west as a man could walk in a day and a half” into “as far west as I can reach.�
�� What followed was the single largest land swindle in colonial American history.

  On September 19, 1737, the three runners set off from present-day Wrightstown, Pennsylvania. Only one of the three runners managed to run for the entire allotted time, but he finished seventy miles inland. In one thirty-six-hour period, Thomas Penn stole from the Lenape a land tract the size of the state of Rhode Island (about 3,000 square miles).

  As if that weren't enough, Penn later tried to suspend Pennsylvania's colonial assembly and rule by decree. Luckily for the colonists, Benjamin Franklin, already a celebrated American leader, foiled him. Penn retaliated by hiring Franklin's “illegitimate” son as Pennsylvania's governor: a case of a metaphorical bastard hiring an actual one.

  4

  NATHANIEL BACON

  His Rebellion (ca. 1640–1676)

  “Here! Shoot me, foregod, fair mark shoot!”

  — William Berkeley, Virginia governor, as he confronted Nathaniel Bacon and his band of five hundred rebels, June 22, 1676

  Think about it. A group of settlers — nothing more than freehold farmers, really — stood up for their individual rights and shook their collective fists at the landed interests of the British crown and the rich Loyalists. They showed the “Spirit of ‘76” and took up arms in order to see to it that their families were looked after.

  Sounds like the American Revolution, right?

  Wrong. The conflict described above played out not in 1776, but a century earlier, in 1676.

  We're talking about Bacon's Rebellion. Bearing the name of the man who provided the lit match to the tinder pile of class resentment and land disputes in late seventeenth-century Virginia, the upheaval both lived and died with its leader and namesake: Nathaniel Bacon. Bacon was a charismatic leader, a brave man under fire, clever politician, and, of course, an absolute bastard.

  Bacon's true bastardry began when he moved to Virginia. He used his father's money to purchase two estates right on the James River. With land came instant respectability. A few months later, Bacon had been fully accepted into Virginia society. Lord Berkeley, the husband of Bacon's cousin, had given him a seat on the Governor's Council. But it couldn't last.

  By 1674 the cousins-in-law had alienated each other over the question of the direction of the colony's growth. Berkeley favored keeping the frontier where it currently was and not acquiring any more of the lands from the neighboring Indians.

  Bacon agreed with the frontier farmers. Together they advocated expanding Virginia's borders westward by driving tribes such as the Pamunkey and Susquehannock off of their native lands. Berkeley just wouldn't relent. So in 1676 Bacon assembled a group of four hundred followers willing to make war on the neighboring tribes. He insisted Berkeley give him an official directive to kill or drive off as many of the Indian residents as possible. When Berkeley refused, Bacon accused Berkeley of corruption. Bacon turned his troops on Jamestown in a full revolt.

  BASTARD BACKGROUND

  By birth Nathaniel Bacon was the most unlikely of rebels. His family were wealthy members of the local gentry in Suffolk, England, thus Bacon was born a gentleman. By 1672 he developed a reputation as a hothead and a troublemaker. After Bacon was caught trying to cheat a neighbor of his inheritance, his father stepped in and offered Bacon a way out. He would back his son's business venture in one of the New World colonies. The catch: Bacon would have to leave England and go to America if he wished to receive his father's backing. He did so, immigrating to Virginia in 1672.

  Berkeley got wind of Bacon's impending attack just in time to flee across Chesa-peake Bay to the Eastern Shore county of Accomack. Bacon responded by ordering his followers to burn the governor's palace to the ground, then headed west to make war on the Pamunkeys, Appomatucks, and Susquehannocks. Much blood was shed on both sides.

  It was at about this time that Bacon's luck ran out. Stricken down with dysentery (referred to at the time by the charming appellation of the “Bloody Flux”), he died in October, 1676, less than a month after torching the governor's residence.

  Without Bacon to lead his rebellion it collapsed. Berkeley returned from Accomack County and quickly restored order. Before the year was out, he had hanged twenty-three of the rebels: the last of the many lives lost on account of that bastard Nathaniel Bacon.

  5

  JAMES DELANCEY

  Graft in New York: The Early Years (1703–1760)

  “A Chief Justice known to be of an implacable temper is a terrible thing in this country.”

  — Cadwallader Colden about James DeLancey

  William Marcy Tweed, Huey Long, William Lorimer, Richard Daley, Tom Pendergast: all famous (or if you prefer, “infamous”) political leaders known in America as “bosses.” All of them were successful to varying degrees. And yet none of them could touch the successes enjoyed by America's first political boss. Colonial New York Governor James DeLancey just had a flair for bastardry unlike any other.

  DeLancey wrote the book on building a political machine and trading influence in American politics. He was a political animal from his birth in 1703. His father was a prosperous French Huguenot, and his mother was the daughter of New York City's first native-born mayor Stephen Van Cortlandt. Educated in England, handsome, intelligent, and witty, DeLancey had a wide network of familial alliances and set about making even more of them, His tutor at Cambridge eventually became Archbishop of Canterbury. He married an heiress with connections to prominent London politicians. His sister married British Admiral Sir Peter Warren. Warren was the hero of the Siege of Louisbourg, a battle where British forces took the strongest French fort in the Western Hemisphere. This coup carried Warren into politics. Once established, he used his influence to help along his brother-in-law's political career.

  With the help of his family and friends, DeLancey accomplished a great deal as a young man. He was appointed to New York's Governor's Council at twenty-six. At twenty-eight he'd won a seat on the New York Supreme Court. By thirty he was chief justice. Over the years DeLancey packed the Governor's Council with his own allies. He distributed political favors through his network, building the foundation of a formidable political machine.

  WHAT'S THAT WORD? “BOSS”

  In his book A Study in Boss Politics: William Lorimer of Chicago, author Joel Arthur Tarr defined the phrase “political boss” as “a dictator who represented special and corrupt interests and who violated the rights of ‘the people’.” Bosses controlled political machines, organizations that did their bidding and shared in the profits (both legal and illegal) that their activities produced.

  Efficient and tireless, DeLancey got things done. On the other hand, he could also be a bitter political foe. According to fellow Supreme Court Justice Cadwallader Colden, New York now had a chief justice who used “the power of his office to intimidate” those who opposed him. DeLancey's incessant political maneuvering even resulted in New York's royal governor naming him chief justice for life in 1744. His powerbase now secure, DeLancey began laying plans for his next move: securing the governorship of New York. In 1753 he got it. At times he was “royal governor.” Other times, he was “acting governor.” The title mattered less than the power.

  James DeLancey controlled the executive branch of New York's colonial government until his death in June of 1760. Because of his life-appointment as chief justice of a colonial court packed with his cronies, he also controlled the New York judiciary. And because he spent his first ten years in politics building alliances among both New York City's aldermen and the members of the colonial assembly, he also controlled the colonial legislature. After James DeLancey's death, any political boss that followed could only dream of hitting such a trifecta. Others would work from DeLancey's playbook, but none would ever succeed as he had. DeLancey died of natural causes, still clutching the strings of power, still holding office, still wealthy, and never having served a day in jail.

  6

  GEORGE WASHINGTON

  Tenth Commandment? What Tenth Commandment?
(1732–1799)

  “'Tis true, I profess myself a Votary to Love — I acknowledge that a Lady is in the Case — and further I confess that this Lady is known to you. — Yes Madam, as well as she is to one, who is too sensible of her Charms to deny the Power, whose Influence he feels and must ever submit to.”

  — George Washington

  Shakespeare? Nope. Wordsworth? Nah. Who is the author of this intensely romantic passage? None other than our most famous president: George Washington. And he didn't write it to his wife, or to just any one of his previous sweethearts. He wrote it as part of an intriguing letter to his best friend's wife.

  Before he was president, before he chaired the Constitutional Convention, before he was commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, before he was “George Washington,” George Washington was in love with a married woman named Sally Fairfax.

  Sally was married to wealthy landowner George William Fairfax. Washington knew the couple through his elder brother Lawrence, who was married to Fairfax's sister.

  Washington wrote many letters to Sally, always hinting at something he shouldn't talk about. Later in the same letter quoted above, Washington mentions the futility of his affections, using the same oblique language: “[B]ut experience alas! Sadly reminds me how impossible this is.” Still later he hints that there is only one person who can make him happy. He teases that Sally knows this person. He also refers to Cato, a contemporary stage play that they had both seen, saying, “I should think my time more agreeable spent believe me, in playing a part in Cato … & myself doubly happy in being the Juba to such a Marcia as you must make.” This last remark is the most telling. In Cato, Juba is a North African prince who is secretly, hopelessly, passionately in love with the title character's daughter, Marcia. Washington obviously had quite a thing for the young, beautiful, popular, and worldly Sally.