by Ray Raphael
31.Adams to Arthur Lee, June 21, 1773, in Cushing, Writings, 3: 44.
32.Adams to Joseph Warren, September 25, 1774, in Cushing, Writings, 3: 158–159.
33.Adams to Samuel Cooper, April 3 and April 30, 1776; Adams to Joseph Hawley, April 15, 1776; in Cushing, Writings, 3: 276–285.
34.Adams to John Smith, December 20, 1765, in Cushing, Writings, 1: 60.
35.Adams, under the name “Determinatus,†Boston Gazette, August 8, 1768, in Cushing, Writings, 1: 240. Emphasis in original.
36.Adams, under the name “Vindex,†Boston Gazette, December 5, 1768, in Cushing, Writings, 1: 259. Emphasis in original.
37.Adams to Darius Sessions, January 2, 1773, in Cushing, Writings, 2: 398.
38.Adams to James Warren, May 21, 1774, The Warren-Adams Letters (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1917–1925), 1: 26. Pauline Maier states that this letter is misdated. (Maier, Old Revolutionaries, 28.)
39.Adams to Benjamin Kent, July 27, 1776, in Cushing, Writings, 3: 304.
40.Quoted in Alexander, Samuel Adams: America’s Revolutionary Politician, 185.
41.For the less revolutionary meaning of “revolution†which prevailed before the turmoil of the French Revolution, see Garry Wills, Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence (New York: Doubleday, 1978), 51–52.
42.David Ramsay, The History of the American Revolution (Philadelphia: R. Aitken & Son, 1789), 186, 321, 634. Here is Ramsay’s list, along with a mention of clergy and printers who played prominent roles: “John Adams, and Samuel Adams, of Boston; Bland, of Virginia; John Dickinson, of Pennsylvania; Daniel Dulany, of Annapolis; William Henry Drayton, of South-Carolina; Dr. Franklin, of Philadelphia; John Jay, and Alexander Hamilton, of New-York; Thomas Jefferson, and Arthur Lee of Virginia; Jonathan Hyman, of Connecticut; Governor Livingston, of New-Jersey; Dr. Mayhew, and James Otis, of Boston; Thomas Paine, Dr. Rush, Charles Thompson, and James Wilson, of Philadelphia; William Tennant, of South-Carolina; Josiah Quincy, and Dr. Warren, of Boston. These and many others laboured in enlightening their countrymen, on the subject of their political interests, and in animating them to a proper line of conduct, in defence of their liberties. To these individuals may be added, the great body of the clergy, especially in New-England. The printers of newspapers, had also much merit in the same way. Particularly Edes and Gill, of Boston; Holt, of New-York; Bradford, of Philadelphia; and Timothy, of South-Carolina.†William Gordon, who also wrote a history in the late 1780s, did feature Adams but in ways that do not correspond to contemporaneous evidence from the 1760s and 1770s. See note 24.
43.Adams was allegedly the “chief manager†of the Tea Party and “Father of the Revolution.†He was “the first to advocate independence†and therefore had to convince others, since “the people were slow to consider seriously that they must break from the mother country.†(John Fiske, A History of the United States [Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1899], 201; D.H. Montgomery, Leading Facts of American History [Boston: Ginn & Company, 1899], 155, 157; Wilbur F. Gordy, A History of the United States for Schools [New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1914], 139; William A. Mowry and Blanche S. Mowry, Essentials of United States History [Boston: Silver, Burdett and Company, 1914], 112.)
44.William A. Mowry and Arthur May Mowry, First Steps in the History of Our Country (Boston: Silver, Burdett and Company, 1899), 119–120.
45.Albert Bushnell Hart, Essentials in American History (New York: American Book Company, 1914), 156.
46.Thomas Rodney, “Characters of Some of the Members of Congress,†post–March 8, 1781; Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Waterhouse, January 31, 1819; John Adams to William Tudor, February 9, 1819, in John P. Kaminsiki, ed., The Founders on the Founders: Word Portraits from the American Revolutionary Era (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2008), 71, 79, 80.
47.John C. Miller, Sam Adams: Pioneer in Propaganda (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1936), 53, 136–138, 141, 144–145.
48.Thomas A. Bailey, The American Pageant (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1956), 94, 981.
49.For the genesis of the Massachusetts committees of correspondence, see Ray Raphael, Founders: The People Who Brought You a Nation (New York: The New Press, 2009), 106–10.
50.Bailey, The American Pageant, 109, 147.
51.David M. Kennedy and Lizabeth Cohen, The American Pageant, Fifteenth Edition (Boston: Cengage Learning, 2014), 135, 170.
52.As cited in note 2, this quote comes not from the works of Hutchinson or Oliver but from the volume accompanying the PBS series Liberty!
53.George Bancroft, for all his professed belief in democracy, certainly followed this way of thinking. “ ‘Make way for the committee!’ was the shout of the multitude, as Adams came out from the council chamber and, baring his head, which was already becoming gray, moved through their ranks, inspiring confidence. . . . On ordinary occasions he seemed like ordinary men; but in moments of crisis, he rose naturally and unaffectedly to the highest dignity, and spoke as if the hopes of humanity hung on his words.†(Bancroft, History of the United States, 4: 192.)
54.Matt Doeden, The Boston Tea Party, Charles Barnett III, ill. (Mankato, MN: Capstone, 2005), 5, 25.
55.John W. Tyler, Smugglers and Patriots: Boston Merchants and the Advent of the American Revolution (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1986), 17.
56.Tyler, Smugglers and Patriots, 138–69.
57.Gordon, Rise, Progress, and Establishment of Independence, 1: 178.
58.There are two meanings attached to “Sons of Liberty†in Boston. The label can refer to the group meeting in John Marston’s tavern in the late 1760s (and possibly earlier or later as well), or in a generic sense to all of Boston’s most active patriots. Generally, in common usage, the latter sense is intended. We do not have any membership list for the Marston’s tavern group, although we do know from extant letters written by active participants that they had “members†and “committees.†Samuel Adams is not among the handful of known members, but that in no way establishes that he was not active in that group. Since at least forty-five people were, it seems likely that he was among them. See the correspondence between the “Sons of Liberty from the Town of Boston†and John Wilkes, Massachusetts Historical Society, Proceedings, 47: 190–211.
59.Wills, Inventing America, 20–24.
60.See Richard D. Brown, Revolutionary Politics in Massachusetts: The Boston Committee of Correspondence and the Towns, 1772–1774 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1970), 48, 62–64; Raphael, Founders, 106–10.
61.Alfred F. Young, Liberty Tree: Ordinary People and the American Revolution (New York, New York University Press, 2006), 27–99.
62.For town meeting instructions, see Ray Raphael, “Instructions: The People’s Voice in Revolutionary America,†Common-Place 9:1 (October 2008): http://www.common-place.org/vol-09/no-01/raphael/
63.For the politicized population, see Ray Raphael, “The Democratic Moment: The Revolution in Popular Politics,†in The Oxford Handbook of the American Revolution, Edward G. Gray and Jane Kamensky, eds. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 121–28.
64.For a recent treatment that places Adams’s effectiveness within this political rubric, see Alexander, Samuel Adams: America’s Revolutionary Politician.
65.Mercy Otis Warren, History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution, interspersed with Biographical, Political and Moral Observations (Boston: E. Larkin, 1805; reprinted by Liberty Classics in 1988), 1: 211.
3: Molly Pitcher’s Cannon
1.See Karin Wolf’s entry for Betsy Ross in American National Biography, John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, eds. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 18: 900–901; and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, “How Betsy R
oss Became Famous,†in Common-Place 8:1 (October 2007): http://www.common-place.org/vol-08/no-01/ulrich/.
2.Thomas Fleming—in his companion volume to the PBS program Liberty!— includes Abigail Adams’s image as one of five key “portraits†of the American Revolution (Thomas Fleming, Liberty! The American Revolution [New York: Viking, 1997], 1–7). Joseph Ellis features Abigail Adams as one of his eight “Founding Brothers,†despite the obvious gender incongruity. She was “one of the eight most prominent political leaders of the early republic,†he claims. (Joseph Ellis, Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001], 17, 162–205.)
3.Holly A. Mayer, Belonging to the Army: Camp Followers and Community During the American Revolution (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996), 20. For the most recent and thorough treatment of Deborah Sampson, see Alfred Young, Masquerade: The Life and Times of Deborah Sampson, Continental Soldier (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004).
4.Sterling Stuckey and Linda Kerrigan Salvucci, Call to Freedom (Austin, TX: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 2003), 168.
5.Gerald A. Danzer et al., The Americans (Evanston, IL: McDougal Littell, 2003), 117.
6.Joyce Appleby et al., The American Republic to 1877 (New York: Glencoe McGraw-Hill, 2003), 164.
7.The six elementary and middle-school texts surveyed were all displayed at the annual convention of the National Council for Social Studies at Phoenix in November 2002. Those containing the Molly Pitcher story are Stuckey and Salvucci, Call to Freedom; Appleby, The American Republic to 1877; Michael J. Berson, ed., United States History: Beginnings (Orlando: Harcourt, 2003); James West Davidson, The American Nation: Beginnings through 1877 (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2003); and Joy Hakim, A History of US (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). The one that made no mention of Molly Pitcher is Jesus Garcia et al., Creating America: A History of the United States, Beginnings through Reconstruction (Evanston, IL: McDougal Littell, 2002). Four secondary texts displayed at the NCSS conference also include the Molly Pitcher story: Joyce Appleby et al., The American Vision (New York: Glencoe McGraw-Hill, 2003); Danzer, The Americans; Daniel J. Boorstin and Brooks Mather Kelley, A History of the United States (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2002); and David Goldfield, et al., The American Journey: A History of the United States (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2001). Only The American Journey refers to Molly Pitcher as a legend; the others portray her as flesh and blood.
8.In the paperback edition of my own People’s History of the American Revolution (New York: HarperCollins, 2002), which states that Molly Pitcher is a fictive creation, her dramatic presence on the front cover, leading the men into battle, belies my quibbles inside.
9.Augusta Stevenson, Molly Pitcher: Young Patriot (New York: Macmillan, 1986; originally published in 1960), 184–191.
10.The best known Revolutionary soldier in the years following the war, before the evolution of “Molly Pitcher,†was in fact Deborah Sampson, who toured several states in 1802–1803, two decades after the war ended, as “The Celebrated Mrs. Gannett (Late Deborah Sampson), the American Heroine,†recounting her story and performing “the manual exercise†for eager audiences. (Young, Masquerade, 167–224.)
11.Edward Hagaman Hall, Margaret Corbin: Heroine of the Battle of Fort Washington, 16 November 1776 (New York: American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society, 1932), 14–15.
12.The “Waste Book for the Quartermaster Stores†and the “Letter Books of Captain William Price, Commissary of Ordinance and Military Stores,†in the West Point library. The numerous tents she received were possibly turned into clothing. Captain Molly was unable to care for herself, and money for her support was paid directly to her caregiver. (Hall, Margaret Corbin, 24–30.)
13.Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1852), 2: 164.
14.Here is Waldo’s full account, as reported by William Stryker well over a century later: “One of the camp women I must give a little praise to. Her gallant, whom she attended in battle, being shot down, she immediately took up his gun and cartridges and like a Spartan heroine fought with astonishing bravery, discharging the piece with as much regularity as any soldier present. This a wounded officer, whom I dressed, told me he did see himself, she being in his platoon, and assured me I might depend on its truth.†(William S. Stryker, The Battle of Monmouth [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1927], 189. Stryker’s book was completed in 1899, although not published then.) Whether the “gun†in question was a cannon or a musket is not absolutely clear; both could be called a “piece,†both were discharged by igniting cartridges, and both were fired at intervals that could be regular or irregular.
15.This is worrisome. The revised 1862 edition of Dr. James Thacher’s Military Journal of the American Revolution, originally published decades earlier, contained some brandnew material—an account of Molly Pitcher—even though Thacher himself had died in 1844. Without further evidence, we cannot say whether Waldo’s statement was contemporary to the time or whether it had been doctored to conform to a legend that emerged later, as Thacher’s was.
16.Here is Martin’s account: “One little incident happened, during the heat of the cannonade, which I was eye-witness to, and which I think would be unpardonable not to mention. A woman whose husband belonged to the Artillery, and who was then attached to a piece in the engagement, attended with her husband at the piece the whole time; while in the act of reaching a cartridge and having one of her feet as far before the other as she could step, a cannon shot from the enemy passed directly between her legs without doing any other damage than carrying away all the lower part of her petticoat,—looking at it with apparent unconcern, she observed, that it was lucky it did not pass a little higher, for in that case it might have carried away something else, and ended her and her occupation.†(Joseph Plumb Martin, A Narrative of a Revolutionary Soldier [New York: Signet, 2001; originally published in 1830], 115. In other reprints, Martin ends this piece not with “ended her and her occupation†but “continued her occupation.â€) Since Martin showed no surprise at a woman firing a cannon, this might well have been commonplace. He likely told the story for its ribald petticoat punch line.
17.Howard H. Peckham, The Toll of Independence: Engagements & Battle Casualties of the American Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 52.
18.John Laffin, Women in Battle (London and New York: Abelard-Schuman, 1967), 38–43.
19.Freeman Hunt, American Anecdotes: Original and Select (Boston: Putnam and Hunt, 1830), 2: 275.
20.Emily Lewis Butterfield, “Lie There My Darling, While I Avenge Ye,†in Remembering the Revolution: Memory, History and Nation Making from Independence to the Civil War, Michael McDonnell, Clare Corbould, Frances M. Clarke, and W. Fitzhugh Brundage, eds. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2013), 201, 205. Butterfield cites two papers, “A Tale of ’76,†Baltimore Gazette and Daily Advertiser, July 9, 1830, and “A Tale of ’76,†Charleston City Gazette, July 15, 1830, and implies there were others. Here is the embellished 1837 piece: “MOLLY PITCHER— . . . At the commencement of the battle of Monmouth this intrepid woman contributed her aid by constantly carrying water from a spring to the battery where her husband was employed, as a cannonier, in loading and firing a gun. At length he was shot dead in her presence, just as she was leaving the spring; whereupon she flew to the spot—found her husband lifeless, and, at the moment, heard an officer, who rode up, order off the gun “for want of a man sufficiently dauntless to supply his place.†Indignant at this order, and stung by the remark, she promptly opposed it—demanded the post of her slain husband to avenge his death—flew to the gun, and to the admiration and astonishme
nt of all who saw her, assumed and ably discharged the duties of the thus vacated post of cannonier, to the end of the battle! For this sterling demonstration of genuine WHIG spirit, Washington gave her a lieutenant’s commission upon the spot, which Congress afterwards ratified. And granted her a sword, and an epaulette, and half pay, as a lieutenant, for life! She wore the epaulette, received the pay, and was called ‘Captain Molly!’ ever afterwards.†(Quoted in Marc Mappen, There’s More to New Jersey than the Sopranos [Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009], 31.)
21.George Washington Parke Custis, Recollections and Private Memoirs of Washington (New York: Derby & Jackson, 1860), 225. Custis began publishing his “recollections†of Washington serially in the 1820s. In 1840 these were gathered in the National Intelligencer, and in 1859, after his death, they appeared in book form. This is from the book edition, quoted in D.W. Thompson and Merri Lou Schaumann, “Goodbye, Molly Pitcher,†Cumberland County History 6 (1989), 11. It appeared in the National Intelligencer, February 22, 1840, and possibly in the United States Gazette in the late 1820s. Custis included a prologue to the story that has since been dropped: “At one of the guns of Proctor’s battery, six men had been killed or wounded. It was deemed an unlucky gun and murmurs arose that it should be drawn back and abandoned.†This was the cannon that Captain Molly would fire. After she had saved the day, Custis wrote, “the doomed gun was no longer deemed unlucky.†Thompson and Schaumann (“Goodbye, Molly Pitcher,†11–12) argue that this prologue is improbable on two counts: the lion’s share of casualties among the artillery at Monmouth would have occurred at this one location, and the Americans rarely abandoned any of their cannons.