Let us now, however, remember these real-life characters, all of whom were in and around New-York during our Great Yankee War of Rebellion:
The British
Major John André was a favorite amongst the Ladies of Society, most notably young Peggy Shippen, during the British occupation of Philadelphia. He was fluent in German, French and Italian, liked to cut out silhouettes, and designed ball-gowns for the diversion of his lady-friends. In Philadelphia he occupied Dr Franklin’s house; when the British army evacuated Philadelphia in ’78, André looted Franklin’s scientific instruments.
Arnold’s letter to Clinton and a map of West Point were discovered when André was detained by militia-men who were determined to steal his boots. Those must have been some splendid boots!
Although History records that several Ladies of Society begged Washington to spare André, this cannot be taken at anything other than a demonstration of his charm, for I have taken liberties with his romantic history: it appears that he was gay, as memorialized in Peggy Shippen’s letters to him that bemoan his “unrequited appeal to the fairer sex.” O tempora, o mores. It is suggested that General Henry Clinton and Major John André may have had a requited relationship.
Major-General Benedict Arnold was a ne’er-do-well, complaining, and difficult officer. He demanded over £20,000 for betraying his country-men. The Crown paid only £6,315 because the plot had failed. As Brigadier-General in the British army (a step down from his Yankee rank), he burned New-London in September 1781, during which raid a determinedly Loyalist lady took a pot-shot at him. Arnold did abandon his wife Peggy when he escaped.
Margaret (Peggy) Shippen Arnold, had pursued a relationship with John André in Philadelphia. Not much more need be said of her, save that she was not tried for her role in putting her husband and André together in their plot to over-run West Point.
Major-General William Tryon was the Royal Governor of New-York during most of the Revolution. His fame, such as it is, rests on having raided New-Haven – on which occasion Dr Daggett was moved to perform his acts of war – and for the burning of the Connecticut towns of Fairfield and Norwalk.
Captain Archibald Robinson of the Royal Engineers was in New-York from 1762 through 1780, when he left Town to accompany Henry Clinton on the campaign to take Charleston. Although he wasn’t in New-York on Evacuation Day he could have been. His watercolors and sketches of New-York are the best contemporary records of the appearance of the Town during the War.
Major-General Sir Henry Clinton, Most Honourable Military Order of the Bath was the senior general in command of the British forces in North America at the close of the Revolution. As a child he had lived in New-York, serving in a New-York militia as a teenager. His fondness for New-York doubtless influenced his reluctance to quit his comfortable situation there. His rivalry with Lord Cornwallis erupted into a public matter subsequent to Clinton’s self-exculpatory 1783 memoir Narrative of the Campaign of 1781 in North America.
Major-General Charles Cornwallis, First Marquess Cornwallis sat in the House of Lords as a Whig, voting against the Intolerable Acts. Despite his opposition to the British invasion of the colonies, he met with military success in battles throughout South Carolina and Georgia. One gets the impression that he was a whinging, insufferable bore, and that Clinton’s growing indifference to Cornwallis led to Clinton’s none-too hasty dispatch of ships to Virginia to save Cornwallis. Those ships arrived too late, and turned away rather than fight.
Admirals Digby and Graves, mentioned in passing near the end of the story were as told here – present in New-York. Digby’s house is that upon which I have modeled Fripp’s mansion. Graves did, indeed, arrive too late at Yorktown to help Cornwallis. Fripp, it should be noted, was the name of a privateer in the 1740’s after whom an island in the Carolinas is named. There was, however, no admiral by this name in New-York.
Edward Hyde, Viscount Cornbury was Queen Anne’s cousin, and truly did wear the very finest women’s clothing, oft-times carrying a fan as he promenaded along the waterfront. Horace Walpole recounted, “He was a clever man. His great insanity was dressing himself as a woman … when Governor in America he opened the Assembly dressed in that fashion. When some of those about him remonstrated, his reply was, 'You are very stupid not to see the propriety of it. In this place and particularly on this occasion I represent a woman (Queen Anne) and ought in all respects to represent her as faithfully as I can.’” No eponymous descendant was present in New-York during the Revolution, nor at Haarlem. Pity – it might have given the militia more spunk in facing down the British Grenadiers.
The Yankees
Major-General Nathanael Greene advocated the burning of New-York. This was voted down by the Continental Congress, but these seeds of inspiration were too hardy – the Sons of Liberty burned the Town anyhow. His limp made it necessary for him to enlist at first as a mere private; he could not march properly! But his diligence and intelligence served him well – he was appointed Brigadier General of the Continental Army within a year!
Major-General Henry Knox was one of Washington’s ablest officers. He was a book-seller in Boston prior to joining a Massachusetts militia company in ’75. It is true that he learned the art and craft of artillery by reading books.
General George Washington’s most well-kept secret was his vile, intemperate, and severe temper. The two times in which he is known to have lost his cool were, as recounted here, at Haarlem and at Monmouth.
By all accounts, Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Knowlton was, indeed Washington’s most able officer. Knowlton’s Rangers were both expert rifle-men and the beginning of the Army’s military intelligence forces. Had he lived, Knowlton might have eclipsed even the excellent Greene as the Army’s best field commander (after Washington, of course). He was killed just a few months shy of his 36th birthday. He did not have a romantic attachment to a seamstress – his death left a widow and nine children.
Anna Smith Strong, Caleb Brewster, Robert Townsend & Austin Roe operated a highly successful – insofar as they were never detected – spy-ring, known in current history as the Culper Spy-ring: Roe carrying information encoded in invisible ink written in the margins of accounting ledgers from New-York out to Setauket; Brewster thence across the Sound to Fairfield: and Townsend by land onward to Washington, in the hinterlands. Anna’s meticulous laundry-line hangings were a code to Brewster as to where it was, or was not, safe for him to land his whale-boat. Yankee war-sloops did indeed fly the “Appeal to Heaven” flag – an evergreen tree upon a white field.
David Bushnell graduated from Yale College in 1774, where his experiments proving that gunpowder can be exploded underwater would lead him to devise the Turtle. A well-known woman author of our current era is said to be a direct descendant of this worthy Yankee inventor. Long before Sex in the City there was the Turtle in New-York.
Ezra Lee might have succeeded in the Turtle’s attack had he not curtailed his attack, fearing capture by marines in a longboat from his target, HMS Eagle, who having sighted his odd vessel, set out to capture it.
Abigail Hinman, whose entrancing portrait by Daniel Huntington graces the cover, was a Loyalist woman of New-London. Notwithstanding her political tenets, when Benedict Arnold landed in her town to burn it, she shouldered her husband’s musket and took a pot-shot at Arnold. You can see her portrait at the Lyman Allyn Museum in New London, Connecticut. Alas, indeed her gun did hang fire – meaning – a flash in the pan, no bullet speeding its way towards her worthy target. Abigail’s husband, Captain Elisha Hinman assumed command of the Yankee war-sloop Alfred from John Paul Jones. Had all Yankee couples been so belligerent, I think that our War of Independence would have been over much, much sooner.
Colonel Alexander Hamilton – the West Indian – was, by many accounts, a reckless heart-breaker. A journal entry made by a love-sick Continental Army lieutenant, much taken with the charms of a Pennsylvanian girl, includes the plaintive meditation “God, please do not let Hamilton come near [his beloved country girl].” I leave the task of white-washing Hamilton’s romantic record to other, more worthy writers.
The Reverend Naphtali Daggett was Yale’s divinity professor and served as president of the college from 1766 – ‘77. He did not directly die of his bayonet wounds, and returned to his duties at Yale later in ‘79. He died on November 25, 1780 – exactly three years before Evacuation Day – and was buried in the New-Haven Green.
The Reverend Francis Asbury was active in New-York right up to the British invasion in ‘76, spreading the Methodist word, and recruiting men to be Circuit Riders, traveling pastors who ministered to settlers in out-lying territories. Asbury went into seclusion during the Occupation to avoid being drafted into the British army. Later in life Asbury became the first Methodist bishop in America.
John Van Arsdale, the sailor who climbed the greased pole at Fort George to cut down the British flag, by his daring act of pole-climbing, earned for his descendants officiated at New York Evacuation Day celebrations for many generations afterwards.
The French
Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier – the Marquis de La Fayette, was so inspired by the Declaration of Independence that he obtained a letter of introduction from Silas Deane, the American commissioner to France, be-friended Washington, and was commissioned a Major-General by the Continental Congress in 1777, at the age of nineteen.
Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais was a French war-profiteer whose trading company Roderique Hortalez & Compagnie served as an intermediary for loans from King Louis XVI to the United States. Over 1,000,000 livres of loan re-payments made through him by the Americans were not forwarded to the French, leading to French assertions made as late as 1921 that America had not discharged its Revolutionary War debt. Monsieur Beaumarchais was a literary man as well – publishing Voltaire and writing the semi-autobiographical Figaro plays, made timeless by Mozart’s musical treatment. He was not married to a certain Yankee woman named Hastings.
The Loyalists
Most Loyalist families of New-York were exiled to Halifax, where they found a home as forbidding as anything imagined by Dante. Nova Scotia was a land already settled by British-hating Scots, survivors of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s attempt to regain the English throne – and his defeat – at the Battle of Culloden in ’46.
Cynthia – dear, sweet, wicked Cynthia – is, of course, a symbol of all who were socially prominent, amongst the cream of society, the scions of Loyalist New York. That she lost everything at the end of the war is typical of every Loyalist family’s loss. At least she escaped with her life, unlike others who were abused, tortured, mutilated or murdered (tar and feathering was real, was done, and was often fatal) for their loyalty to the established royal government of the Colonies. At the conclusion of the Peace of Paris all Loyalist properties were seized by the new Yankee government and the Loyalists bidden to leave.
The Rector of Trinity Church during the Revolution was also banished from New-York, becoming the first Anglican bishop in North America, with his throne in Halifax. His name was not Pugh. In a Bi-Centennial exhibit at modern Trinity Church the Rector was portrayed as an American Patriot. Nothing could be further from our commonly held truth, but from that mention of the Rector’s elevation to the bishopric – in forbidding Nova Scotia – came the seeds of inquiry from which grew my desire to tell these tales.
Other Notes of Passing Interest
New-York City’s name was hyphenated until around 1900, when – bowing to modernity – the last hold-out, the New York Times, de-hyphenated its name. Only the New-York Historical Society, to which I give all thanks and praise, retains its hyphenated name.
Now – on the topic of Washington and Lafayette: history is replete with tales of how Washington “loved” Lafayette. In our jaded days this seems all too much like a May/December gay alliance. But when one considers the effort that Washington put into controlling his protean temper (assessed as so even by his own account) – it becomes clear that someone with a sharp tongue might have served a highly emotionally-satisfying role in the General’s entourage. I have had the acquaintance (and, thankfully, not having been the target) of felicitously acid-tongued aristocratic Frenchmen who adore the opportunity to speak English because it permits them to demonstrate their wit and sarcasm; and so it occurs to me that Lafayette must surely have been beloved of Washington as a private attack-dog. I have shown the young nobleman dressing down those upon whom Washington might otherwise have been tempted to vent his mighty wrath – and let it be for Washington to nobly sooth the flustered souls.
At Haarlem Heights, which I have spelled with its old Dutch name, Lafayette had not yet arrived – and we see Washington losing control in a most flamboyant fashion, all of which is true. The words he speaks are his own. At Monmouth Lafayette had been rather busy during the battle, and was far too exhausted to vent upon the character of the craven and dastardly Charles Lee on the day after. I attempted to render both these scenes – of Washington’s temper – as accurately, and historically correct, because these events were so rare. Remarkable it is that over seven long years of war, and two of armistice, only twice did our Commander in Chief lose his self-control!
Privateering dwindled after the Revolution, possibly owing to the rise of the United States Navy, a sure discouragement to piratical endeavors. That some of the privateers freelanced in slave-trading is, alas, an historically established fact. And that there were many, many slaves in New York – black slaves, as well as temporarily-enslaved white indentured servants. It is one of the deplorable facts of the history of the North that smug New Yorkers are most likely to forget, if – indeed – they ever knew, or cared.
Many slaves left with the British, despite provisions in the Treaty of Paris stipulating that they – as properties of the Yankees – were to be returned. Manumission was automatically granted any blacks who volunteered service in the British army. Commissions, such as the one Major Snipes provided himself, were available for purchase. Major André purchased his first military commission.
Captain Snipes’ snigger – “they did not check with me this time – ” in our first chapter is a reference to the slave revolt in or about 1749 when blacks attempted to burn the Town. Snipes would have known about this. Alas for these rebellious slaves; they were all hanged. Nevertheless, the fires encouraged the establishment of the first fire brigades in New-York.
The role of the Methodist Church in colonial times is not well established to be of political significance, but after the War the association of the Episcopal Church with the Church of England led many of the faithful to embrace Anglican Methodism as an appropriately American alternative. I have borrowed the fact of the John Wesley’s evangelism in Georgia, moving it to a later time for the sake of Cynthia’s story.
The official 1964 history of St George’s Chapel – now St George’s Church, on Stuyvesant Square in modern-day New York – by Elizabeth Moulton, omits the burning of the chapel’s prayer books, glossing over the un-tidy relationship between Trinity and St George’s during the Revolution. However, I was told of the burning books by the Reverend Mr Stephen Garmey, my beloved vicar at the Parish of Holy Communion, Calvary and St George’s, and I’m sticking to it!. To Stephen I owe a great debt for his perspicacious comments upon an early draft of this tale in which I had ignorantly faced Trinity Church’s great front doors towards Broadway – as they are now in the 1846 Richard Upjohn-designed church – whereas in 1776 the church faced towards the Great North River.
As for that Great North River – the Hudson River was known as the North River during colonial times. The South River was the Delaware River. The North River was also, occasionally, referred to as Hudson’s River.
~
Lastly, to any reader who may object to the intrusion of fantasy into an otherwise historical tale – and yes, I am referring to the presence of the Reverend Mister Lucifer Lucas: Evil exists. That he dresses in the fashion of a Yankee Congregationalist – well, you may make of that what you will. I have nothing in particular against the Congregationalists, ‘though I am Anglican.
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I am a Yankee, and may Divine Providence help me with the Consequences for what my Tale hath Provided.
~ Your honourable Servant, &c.
Curtis B Wayne
25 November 2009 –
the 226th Anniversary of Evacuation Day
Rowayton, Connecticut
☼
Curtis B Wayne
25 November 2009 –
the 226th Anniversary of Evacuation Day
Rowayton, Connecticut
☼