George Washington
Page 63
22. John Adams’s Notes of Debates, 26 September 1774, Letters of Delegates; JCC 1:43 (27 September 1774).
23. John Adams’s Notes of Debates, 28 September 1774, Letters of Delegates; JCC 1:43–51 (28 September 1774).
24. Several years later, Galloway insisted that his proposal was defeated by a single vote on September 28, with votes cast by all the colonies present, but neither Congress’s journal nor any delegate’s notes reflect such a balloting. Joseph Galloway, Historical and Political Reflections on the Rise and Progress of the American Rebellion (1780), 70. A motion to reconsider the plan was rejected on October 22, at the end of the congressional session, while John Dickinson and Charles Thomson (the Secretary of Congress) wrote in the Pennsylvania Journal several months later that most delegates listened to Galloway’s plan “with horror—as an idle, dangerous, whimsical, ministerial plan.” According to this account, the delegates allowed Galloway’s proposal to “lay upon the table” and expire from neglect. Pennsylvania Journal, March 8, 1775.
25. John Adams’s Notes of Debates, 26 September 1774, Letters of Delegates; JCC 1:51 (30 September 1774); JCC 1:53 (1 October 1774).
26. John Adams to William Tudor, 29 September 1774, Letters of Delegates; John Adams to Abigail Adams, 25 September 1774, Letters of Delegates; John Adams’s Diary, 10 October 1744, Letters of Delegates; George Read to Gertrude Read, 25 September 1774, Letters of Delegates.
27. Samuel Ward to Joseph Wanton, 3 October 1774, Letters of Delegates; John Adams to Abigail Adams, 29 September 1774, Letters of Delegates.
28. Stoermer, “‘What Manner of Man I Am,’” in Lengel, A Companion to George Washington, 135; to George William Fairfax, 10 July 1783, GWP.
29. Diary, 12, 13 September 1774, GWP.
30. Diary, 25 September, 9 October 1774, GWP.
31. Robert Treat Paine Diary, 6 October 1774, Letters of Delegates; JCC 1:55–56, 1:59–60 (6, 10 October 1774).
32. From Robert McKenzie, 13 September 1774, GWP; to Robert McKenzie, 9 October 1774, GWP.
33. JCC 1:62–63, 1:74, 1:75–80 (12, 17, 18, and 20 October 1774); Beeman, Our Lives, Our Fortunes, 154–56.
34. Beeman, Our Lives, Our Fortunes, 186; see T. H. Breen, The Will of the People: The Revolutionary Birth of America, Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2019), 43–48; Richard Alan Ryerson, The Revolution Is Now Begun: The Radical Committees of Philadelphia, 1765–1776, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press (1978).
35. JCC 1:75 (19 October 1774), 1:57–58 (7 October 1774), 1:62 (11 October 1774), 1:81–101 (21 October 1774), 1:104 (25 October 1774), 1:105–13 (26 October 1774).
36. John Adams to William Tudor, 7 October 1774, Letters of Delegates; John Adams’s Diary, 10 October 1774, AP.
37. George Read to Gertrude Read, 24 October 1774, Letters of Delegates. Three of the Virginians had left authorizations for Washington to sign the petition for them. Virginia Delegates to George Washington, 24 October 1774, Letters of Delegates.
38. “Cash Accounts,” October 1774, GWP.
29. THE STORM BREAKS
1. Diary, October 31, 12, 17, and 22–30 November, 5 December 1774, GWP: to John Tayloe, 31 October 1774, GWP; Dalzell and Dalzell, George Washington’s Mount Vernon, 101; to James Mercer, 12 December 1774, GWP; Diary, 3 and 12 November 1774, GWP; from George Mason, 17 February 1775, GWP; Virginia Gazette (Dixon and Hunter’s), January 7, 1775.
2. To James Cleveland, 10 January 1775, GWP; to William Stevens, 6 March 1775, GWP; to Thomas Cresap, 7 February 1775, GWP; from William Preston, 31 January 1775, GWP; from George Mason, 8 March 1775, GWP. Washington also pressed a western land claim held by his brother Austin’s son. To William Preston, 27 March 1775, GWP.
3. To Townshend Dade, 19 November 1774, GWP; Virginia Gazette (Pinkney), December 29, 1774.
4. Merchants not submitting to audit: Virginia Gazette (Pinkney), January 12, 1775 (Caroline County); Apologies: Order of Hanover County Committee, in William J. Van Schreeven and Robert L. Scribner, Revolutionary Virginia, The Road to Independence, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia (1973) 2:169 (12 November 1774); Order of Caroline County Committee, in Van Schreeven and Scribner, Revolutionary Virginia 2:199 (16 December 1774); Virginia Gazette (Purdie and Dixon), November 24, 1774 (York and Gloucester Counties). Price-gouging: Virginia Gazette (Pinkney), January 19, 1775 (Northumberland County Committee trial for overpricing pins); Virginia Gazette (Pinkney), February 2, 1775 (acquittal by Spotsylvania County Committee of merchant who lowered his prices). Public auctions: Virginia Gazette (Pinkney), February 2, 1775 (Nansemond County); Virginia Gazette (Pinkney), February 16, 1775 (Princess Ann County, anvil and casks); Virginia Gazette (Dixon and Hunter), February 11, 1775 (Henrico County, salt); Virginia Gazette (Dixon and Hunter), March 25, 1775 (Norfolk Borough Committee, checked handkerchiefs, striped bedrick, Irish linen, men’s hose, Osnaburg cloth, cutlery, hardware, snuff, barley); Virginia Gazette (Pinkney), June 1, 1775 (plaid goods); Fairfax County Committee order, in Van Schreeven and Scribner, Revolutionary Virginia 2:209 (Irish linens); Virginia Gazette (Pinkney), January 12, 1775 (Charles City County).
5. The counties were Fairfax, Prince William, Fauquier, Richmond, and Spotsylvania.
6. From William Grayson, 27 December 1774, GWP; Diary, 13 November 1774, 16–17 January and 18 February 1775, GWP; to William Milnor, 23 January 1775, GWP; “Resolutions of the Fairfax County Committee,” 17 January 1775, GWP; New York Gazette, February 20, 1775; Providence Gazette, February 25, 1775; to John Augustine Washington, 25 March 1775, GWP; “Fairfax County Committee of Safety Proceedings,” 17 January 1775, in Rutland, George Mason Papers 1:212–13. Washington complained that Mason quickly collected his share from those most likely to pay, leaving Washington to hound the deadbeats. From George Mason, 18 February 1775, GWP.
7. Longmore, The Invention of George Washington, 148, 151; “Augusta County Instructions to Delegates to the Second Virginia Convention,” in Van Schreeven and Scribner, Revolutionary Virginia 2:298–300 (22 February 1775); Pennsylvania Evening Post, February 14, 1775. The Cumberland County committee copied some of the language of the Fairfax resolution in its call for residents to pay the expenses of the county’s delegates to the Second Virginia Convention. Call of Cumberland County Committee, in Van Schreeven and Scribner, Revolutionary Virginia 2:293–94 (18 February 1775).
8. Diary, 30 December 1774–4 January 1775, 16–20 April 1775, GWP; John Richard Alden, General Charles Lee: Traitor or Patriot?, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press (1951), 69, 72; from Thomas Johnson, 24 January and 25 February 1775, GWP; Diary, 2–3 May 1775; Thomas Johnson to Samuel Purviance Jr., 23 January 1775, in Letters of Delegates 1:300–301.
9. To John West, 13 January 1775 and note 3, GWP.
10. To John Augustine Washington, 25 March 1775, GWP.
11. William Hooper to James Duane, 22 November 1774, in Letters of Delegates 1:262–63; Thomas Johnson to Samuel Purviance, 23 January 1775, in Letters of Delegates; John Dickinson to Arthur Lee, 27 October 1774, in Letters of Delegates; Richard Henry Lee to Arthur Lee, 24 February 1775, in Letters of Delegates.
12. John Adams to Edward Biddle, 12 December 1774, in Letters of Delegates; John Adams to James Burgh, 28 December 1774, in Letters of Delegates; Richard Henry Lee to Arthur Lee, 24 February 1775, in Letters of Delegates.
13. “The King’s Speech to both Houses of Parliament,” 30 November 1774, Boston: Mills & Hicks (1775); Virginia Gazette (Pinkney), February 3, 1775 (broadside issue); to John Connolly, 25 February 1775, GWP; from George Mason, 5 February 1775, GWP.
14. Statutes at Large, 15 Geo. chapter 10, 3 and chapter 18, 6 (1775); Beeman, Our Lives, Our Fortunes, 178; Peter D. G. Thomas, Tea Party to Independence: The Third Phase of the American Revolution, 1773–1776, New York: Oxford University Press (2011), 194–98, 206–12.
15. Lord Dartmouth to General Gage, 27 January 1775,
quoted in David Ammerman, In the Common Cause, New York: Norton (1975), 135; Kukla, Patrick Henry, 163.
16. Parmenter, “The Iroquois and the Native American Struggle for the Ohio Valley,” in Skaggs and Nelson, The Sixty Years’ War for the Great Lakes, 112–13; Lord Dunmore to Earl of Dartmouth, 24 December 1774, in K. G. Davies, Documents of the American Revolution, Shannon: Irish University Press (1980) 8:266; Virginia Gazette (Purdie), April 21, 1775 (Caroline County); Virginia Gazette (Dixon and Hunter), January 14, 1775 (Charles City County); Virginia Gazette (Dixon and Hunter), March 11, 1775 (Charlotte County); Virginia Gazette (Pinkney), March 16, 1775 (Essex County); Virginia Gazette (Purdie), March 31, 1775 (Goochland County); Virginia Gazette (Dixon and Hunter), February 11, 1775 (Henrico County); Mary Beth Norton, 1774: The Long Year of Revolution, 243–45.
17. Virginia Gazette (Dixon and Hunter), January 21, 1775; Reardon, Peyton Randolph, 55–56; Mays, Edmund Pendleton 2:3.
18. William Wirt, Sketches of the Life and Character of Patrick Henry, Philadelphia: James Webster (1817), 123; Kukla, 170–72.
19. Van Schreeven and Scribner, Revolutionary Virginia 2:366–69 (23 March 1775), 2:374–75 (25 March 1775); Virginia Gazette (Dixon and Hunter), April 1, 1775; Virginia Gazette (Pinkney), March 30, 1775.
20. Van Schreeven and Scribner, Revolutionary Virginia 2:376–77 (25 March 1775), 2:380–81 (27 March 1775).
21. To George Mercer, 5 April 1775, GWP.
22. Mays, Edmund Pendleton 2:18; Kukla, Patrick Henry, 173–78.
23. George C. Daughan, Lexington and Concord: The Battle Heard Round the World, New York: W. W. Norton & Co. (2018), 273.
24. From Alexander Spotswood, 30 April 1775, GWP.
25. Diary, 2–4 May 1775, GWP; John Dickinson to Arthur Lee, 29 April 1775, in Letters of Delegates.
26. Barry Schwartz, George Washington: The Making of an American Symbol, New York: The Free Press (1987), 16.
27. Freeman 3:419–20; Richard Caswell to William Caswell, 11 May 1775, in Letters of Delegates, 339–40; Andrew Oliver, ed., The Journal of Samuel Curwen, Loyalist, Cambridge, Harvard University Press (1972) 1:7–8.
30. GENERAL WASHINGTON
1. Ward, Journal of Samuel Curwen, 26 (5 May 1775), 27 (8 May 1775); Richard Caswell to William Caswell, 11 May 1775, in Letters of Delegates 1:340; Joseph Hewes to Samuel Johnston, 11 May 1775, in Letters of Delegates 1:342–43.
2. William Duane, ed., Extracts from the Diary of Christopher Marshall, Albany: Joel Munsell (1877), 25 (9 May 1775); Robert Treat Paine’s Diary, 10 May 1775, in Letters of Delegates; Ward, Journal of Samuel Curwen, 28 (10 May 1775).
3. Flexner 1:335; Harrison, A Powerful Mind, 104.
4. To Joseph Reed, 29 July 1779, GWP; “Undelivered First Inaugural Address: Fragments,” 30 April 1789, GWP.
5. Richard Henry Lee to William Lee, 10 May 1775, in Letters of Delegates 1:337; Silas Deane to Elizabeth Deane, 12 May 1775, in Letters of Delegates.
6. George Read to Gertrude Read, 18 May 1775, in Letters of Delegates; John Adams to Abigail Adams, 29 May 1775, AP.
7. JCC 2:49 (15 May 1775), 2:59–61 (25 May 1775).
8. To Fairfax County Committee, 16 May 1775, GWP; John Adams to James Warren, 21 May 1775, in Letters of Delegates; JCC 2:358 (18 May 1775), 2:82 (8 June 1775).
9. JCC 2:67 (27 May 1775), 2:75 (1 June 1775), 2:85 (10 June 1775); Diary of Silas Deane, 27 May 1775, in Letters of Delegates; Diary of Samuel Ward, 3 June 1775, in Letters of Delegates; JCC 2:79 (3 June 1775).
10. JCC 2:65 (26 May 1775); John Morton to Thos. Powell, 8 June 1775, in Letters of Delegates.
11. To George William Fairfax, 31 May 1775, GWP.
12. JCC 2:80 (3 June 1775), 2:81 (7 June 1775).
13. JCC 2:78 (2 June 1775); James Duane to Robert Livingston, 7 June 1775, in Letters of Delegates; JCC 2:89 (14 June 1775).
14. JCC 2:90 (14 June 1775); Diary, 14 June 1775, GWP; Virginia Gazette (Purdie), June 23, 1775.
15. Future Major General Charles Lee dismissed Ward as “a fat old gentleman who had been a popular churchwarden, but has no acquaintance whatever with military matters.” “Memoir of General Lee, Major-General in the Service of the U.S. of America,” in Sir Henry Bunbury, Correspondence of Sir Thomas Hanmer, London: Edward Moxon (1838), 467.
16. L. H. Butterfield, ed., Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, Cambridge: The Belknap Press at Harvard University Press (1961) 3:321–24 (relating to 1775, but written by Adams in or after 1802); James Warren to John Adams, 7 May 1775, in Warren-Adams Letters, 1743–1777, Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society (1917) 1:47; Elbridge Gerry to Massachusetts Delegates, 4 June 1775, in James T. Austin, The Life of Elbridge Gerry, Boston: Wells and Lilly (1829) 1:77–79.
17. John Almon, The Remembrancer, or Impartial Repository of Public Events, (1775) (24 December 1774) 1:9–10; Alden, General Charles Lee, 6, 73–74; Franklin Bowditch Dexter, ed., The Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons (1901) 1:453–54 (9 August 1774); John Adams to James Warren, 24 July 1775, AP.
18. Eliphalet Dyer to Joseph Trumbull, 17 June 1775, in Letters of Delegates; Silas Deane to Joseph Trumbull, 18 June 1775, in Letters of Delegates; Thomas Cushing to James Bowdoin Sr., 21 June 1775, in Letters of Delegates.
19. JCC 2:91 (15 June 1775); Freeman 3:436–37.
20. JCC 2:92 (16 June 1775).
21. Zagarri, Humphreys, 26–27.
22. To Burwell Bassett, 19 June 1775, GWP.
23. To Martha Washington, 17 June 1775, GWP; to John Parke Custis, 19 June 1775, GWP; to John Augustine Washington, 20 June 1775, GWP.
24. To Several Independent Companies in Virginia, 20 June 1775, GWP; Eliphalet Dyer to Joseph Trumbull, 17 June 1775, in Letters of Delegates.
25. John Adams to James Warren, 20 June 1775, in Letters of Delegates; John Adams to Joseph Warren, 21 June 1775, in Letters of Delegates; JCC 2:97 (19 June 1775).
26. “Commission from Continental Congress,” 19 June 1775, GWP; “Instructions from the Continental Congress,” 22 June 1775, GWP.
27. Beeman, Our Lives, Our Fortunes, 237.
31. “ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT CHARACTERS IN THE WORLD”
1. John Adams to Abigail Adams, 11–17 June 1775, AP; John Adams to Abigail Adams, 23 June 1775, in Letters of Delegates; Silas Deane to Elizabeth Deane, 23 June 1775, in Letters of Delegates; Robert Treat Paine’s Diary, 23 June 1775, in Letters of Delegates; Virginia Gazette (Purdie’s), 14 July 1775; Schwartz, George Washington: An American Symbol, 16, 18; to Richard Henry Lee, 10 July 1775, GWP.
2. “Address from the New York Provincial Congress,” 26 June 1775, GWP; “Address to the New York Provincial Congress,” 26 June 1775, GWP; New York Journal, June 29, 1775.
3. Greene, Landon Carter Diary 2:1042–43.
4. Silas Deane to Elizabeth Deane, 16 June 1775, in Letters of Delegates; Longmore, The Invention of George Washington, 197; Virginia Gazette (Pinkney’s), 24 August 1775; Virginia Gazette (Dixon and Hunter), October 7, 1775; Virginia Gazette (Purdie’s), May 17, 1776; Schwartz, George Washington: An American Symbol, 18.
5. Gilbert Chinard, ed., George Washington as the French Knew Him, Princeton: Princeton University Press (1940), 69 (from the observations of Abbe Robin).
PART III
1. Edward Thornton to James Bland Burges, 2 April 1792, in S. W. Jackman, “A Young Englishman Reports on the New Nation, Edward Thornton to James Bland Burges, 1791–1793,” WMQ 18:85 (1961), 102.
32. THE BLOODY PATH TO VALLEY FORGE
1. Joseph Tustin, tr. and ed., Captain Johann Ewald’s Diary of the American War: A Hessian Journal, New Haven: Yale University Press (1979), 120.
2. Gordon Wood, The Idea of America: Reflections on the Birth of the United States, New York: Penguin (2011), 136; E. Wayne Carp, To Starve the Army at Pleasure: Continental Army Administration and American Political Culture, 1775–1783,
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press (1984), 104.
3. Wood, The Idea of America, 27–28.
4. To John Augustine Washington, 6–19 November 1776, GWP; to Samuel Washington, 18 December 1776, GWP.
5. Freeman 4:363–65; Carp, To Starve the Army, 19; Mackubin Owens, “General Washington and the Military Strategy of the Revolution,” in Gary L. Gregg II and Matthew Spalding, eds., Patriot Sage: George Washington and the American Political Tradition, Wilmington: ISI Books (1999), 70; Lengel, General George Washington, 212; Wayne Bodle, The Valley Forge Winter: Civilians and Soldiers in War, University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press (2002), 31–32.
6. Morgan, The Genius of George Washington, 12–14. Morgan concluded that Washington always respected congressional authority because he “knew he would lose what he was fighting for if he tried to take more power than the people would freely give.”
7. Charles Lee to Horatio Gates, 12 December 1776, quoted in Washington to Lee, 14 December 1776, note 2, GWP.
8. North Callahan, Henry Knox: General Washington’s General, New York: Rinehart & Co. (1958), 23; from Henry Knox, 26 November 1777, GWP; Lengel, General George Washington, 256; Terry Golway, Washington’s General: Nathanael Greene and the Triumph of the American Revolution, New York: Henry Holt (2005), 1–7, 44–46.
9. From Brigadier General Duportail, 20 April 1778, GWP.
10. JCC 6:1045–46 (27 December 1776); Lengel, General George Washington, 214–15; Robert Middlekauf, Washington’s Revolution: The Making of America’s First Leader, New York: Alfred A. Knopf (2015), 144–47.
11. To Colonel Elias Dayton, 19 July 1777, GWP; to Israel Putnam, 16 August 1777, GWP; Alexander Hamilton to Robert R. Livingston, 18 August 1777, PAH; Taylor, American Revolutions, 181.
12. Middlekauf, Washington’s Revolution, 155–56.