Beginning of the Quasi-War

France had been the key ally of the United States during the Revolutionary War and a Treaty of Alliance had been signed in 1778 but in 1794 the French monarchy was overthown during that country’s bloody revolution. The new American government had earlier declared neutrality in the seemingly endless war between Britain and France but the controversial Jay Treaty with Britain, combined with new British-American trade agreements, signaled a change of allegiance that enraged revolutionary France. The U.S. exacerbated the rift when it ceased paying its war debts to France, arguing that the American obligation was to the French monarchy and not to the new French republic.

What are these hospital supplies?

This is an inventory or return of hospital supplies for the hospital at Fort Mifflin, on the Delaware River at Philadelphia. Mezereon is a deciduous shrub that can be poisonous. It appears to have been used to treat tooth aches and skin disorders,  and possibly as a compress.  Tartar and castor oil could have been used as laxatives.  Guaiacum resin could have been used to treat coughs, arthritis, and possibly syphilis. Other items include a pestle, an ointment spatula, and a  funnel.  The return is signed by a surgeon’s mate of the 2nd Regiment of Artillerists and Engineers.  It is verified by Doctors Gillaspy and Strong.

Three Months On-A Transcriber Spotlight

Three months into our Scripto-War Department Papers partnership, we have over 200 transcribers. We thought it would be interesting to learn a little more about the volunteers who have devoted many hours to transcribing. We turn now to a short interview with one of our more active transcribers, Patricia Gerard, to learn a little more about her background and experiences with the project:

PWD: Briefly, what is your editing background, if any?
Patricia Gerard (PG): I have edited publications for over thirty years, off and on, from marketing to educational publications and newsletters.

A Gill Filled with Taffia

Sound like a secret code?  In a way, it is.  Both the word “gill” and “taffia” are relics from 18th century language that described a unit of measure and a type of alcohol, respectively.  The words  first appeared in War Department correspondence on September 25, 1790 in a letter from James O’Fallon to George Washington.  The letter discussed the South Carolina based Yazoo Company, the Choctaw Nation, and lists various articles for rations given to the troops by contract with the merchant Yazoo.

Winter Quarters

A challenging annual undertaking  for eighteenth century armies was the establishment of winter quarters for hundreds of officers and troops. With a few notable exceptions, armies did not fight during the winter so they had to find a suitable place to live. As with the British during the War for Independence, the more fortunate armies could find quarters in cities despite the fact that this arrangement caused hardships for the citizens who lived in the cities. During the American Revolution, large portions of New York and Philadelphia were comandeered for the use of the British army so the local homeowners would either have to make room for officers and soldiers or move out and find living space elsewhere. Normally, however, winter quarters would be established in encampments.

Violence between Frontiersmen and American Indians in the Southwest

The War Department Papers include an exceptionally rich collection of documents detailing violent conflicts between white Americans and American Indians on the frontier, particularly those in the Southwest Territory. Both sides in these conflicts defended their actions as just, and each side engaged in both offensive and defensive action. Sometimes the white settlers initiated the violence by illegally encroaching on Indian lands; other times, various Indian tribes initiated the violence by attacking legal settlements. This put the War Department in a precarious position, as it had to balance the complaints of both the Indians and frontier settlers (many of whom were lower-class, subsistence-level farmers). President Washington and Henry Knox in particular were perplexed about what to do in this situation.

A Soldier First and Last

On November 5, 1790, Josiah Harmar, senior officer in the Army of the United States, penned an emotional letter to Henry Knox, Secretary of War. Harmar was deeply wounded by Knox’s communication, which indicated that President Washington expressed doubts regarding Harmar’s fitness for command, as “the bottle incapacitates me.” Harmar wrote “you shall never find me a courtier, but upon all occasions self-possessed and a Soldier…I have a certain Sort of something about me called honor, which will never suffer me to commit a mean action.” This letter, from the Knox papers of the Maine Historical Society, means little out of context, but is striking for its simple and eloquent defense of himself as “a Soldier” rather than as senior officer. It is also interesting that the letter was found among Knox’s personal papers at his Maine home, Montpelier.

Community Transcription: Two Months On

Two short months ago we officially launched the Scripto tool on the PWD site. Our volunteers have been transcribing diligently, and the results are pouring in.

Since our launch in March, we have registered more than 170 new users. By utilizing various H-Net lists, we have been able to reach out to a wide audience of potential transcribers and users. We continue to add users each week, as we reach out to other communities—genealogists, for example. We currently have users who are students, teachers, hobbyists, historians, and self-described “transcription geeks.”

Why Build Another Navy?

Meeting in a waterfront Philadelphia tavern in 1775,  the Marine Committee of the Continental Congress, (which included John Adams as a member),  decided to form the Continental Navy, authorizing construction of thirteen frigates.  Since the British had tended to jealously guard its own  ship building industry,  the Colonists would take time developing one for themselves.  Thus in the meantime, some of the first war ships were simply converted merchant vessels and commissioned privateers.  As the war progressed, these makeshift war vessels would prove a bit more successful than the Continental Navy’s ships, most of which were either captured or destroyed by the Royal Navy.  Even John Paul Jones’ illustrious Bonhomme Richard, though victorious over HMS Serapis, sank off the coast of England.  In any event, by the end of the war, only a handful of the estimated sixty-five ships that served in the Continental Navy survived, and in 1785 Congress auctioned the last vessel of the Continental Navy to a private owner. As late as the 1900s, remnants of the 36  gun frigate Alliance, known for having fired the last shot of the war, could be seen resting on a mud bar along the Delaware River.

Allowance of Spirits

It was common in the late 18th century American army to provide a daily allowance of “spirits” to each soldier. Generally the allowance was measured in “gills,” a gill being the equivalent of four fluid ounces.  Section 6 of  “An Act to augment the Army of the United States” specifically provided that “…every non-commissioned officer, private and musician shall receive daily…a gill of rum, brandy, or whiskey.” (1 Stat. 604-05) [July 16, 1798]  However, Congress must have had second thoughts about the allowance because only eight months later, section 22 of a law entitled “An Act for the better organizing of the Troops of the United States (1 Stat. 749-55) [March 3, 1799]  stated “That it shall be lawful for the commander-in-chief of the army, or the commanding officer of any separate detachment or garrison thereof, at his discretion, to cause to be issued, from time to time to the troops under his command…rum, whiskey, and other ardent spirits in quantities not exceeding half a gill to each man per day…” In his General Orders of June 13, 1799, Inspector General Alexander Hamilton discussed “issuing Liquor to the Troops” and directed that the allowance for each man should be a half gill per day “whenever the Contractors can furnish the supply.” He added, however, that commanders had the discretionary power of “issuing for fatigue service or on Extraordinary Cases.” In other words, commanders could reward their men for additional work or exceptional service with additional rations of liquor.  When Hamilton discussed the matter in his letter of August 26, 1799 to John J. U. Rivardi, he observed that although most men had enlisted when the allowance of spirits was half-gill per day “…Those who entered the Service whilst the act of Congress which allows a gill pr. day was in force…have some colour to contend that the witholding from them of any part of that allowance would be a breach of contract.” Hamilton’s comment would seem to indicate that the allowance of spirits was a significant factor in the decision of those who enlisted in the army. Indeed, it may have been so significant  that cutting that allowance in half might constitute a legal justification for terminating the enlistment.

Insurrection in Western Pennsylvania: The Whiskey Rebellion

One of the more interesting events in the history of the War Department during the Washington administration was the so-called “Whiskey Rebellion.” In 1791 Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton helped push through an excise tax on whiskey. The tax was part of Hamilton’s broader program of centralizing the power of the national government and finding a way to pay bondholders to whom the national debt was owed (also a major part of Hamilton’s program).

Hotel Ironsides

Launched in 1797 as one of six frigates built to protect U.S. maritime interests abroad, the USS Constitution can be toured today at the same place it was built, the  Charlestown Navy Yard in Boston.   The  journey toward notoriety as one of the remarkable success stories of historical preservation was an uncharted one.  Starting around 1830, Oliver Wendell Holmes, responding to a rumor that she might be scrapped, penned a poem that generated enough public outrage to save her  and she was sent back to Charlestown for repairs at Dry Dock No 1. In 1834, a figurehead depicting Andrew Jackson was carved and subsequently decapitated. From 1835-38, she was the flagship of the Mediterranean squadron. In 1844, she circumnavigated the world. During the 1850s, she patrolled the African coastline against slavers. Docked at Annapolis as a training ship for the Naval Academy, she was almost destroyed by Confederate forces in 1860. In the 1880s,  she sat docked at Portsmouth New Hampshire, enduring a rather undignified stint as an office and  barracks  for navy recruits.  In the 1920s, leaking was so bad she had to be pumped every day. A silent film entitled “Old Ironsides”  helped raise funds for restoration.  She was a centerpiece at Boston Harbor during the 1976 Bicentennial Celebrations and in 1992 she underwent another restoration.  In 1997 she sailed on her own for the first time in 116 years.  Commanded by a U.S. Navy Commander, today the USS Constitution is the oldest commissioned warship afloat in the world.

Malignant Disorder in Philadelphia

During most of the presidential administrations of George Washington and John Adams (1790-1800) the “seat of government'” was in Philadelphia. The War Department offices, therefore, were in a location that was annually afflicted during the hot summer months with outbreaks of malaria–known simply as “the fever”–which raged through the capital city resulting in the loss of countless lives. Of course the cause of this deadly disease was not known so the response of the federal government was to move its offices and employees to Trenton, New Jersey where they remained until it appeared safe to return to Philadelphia, usually in November. In 1793 one of the most virulent malaria epidemics in U.S. history occurred in Phildelphia, killing five thousand people 0r ten percent of the city’s population. In a series of letters written during the late summer and early autumn of 1793, Samuel Hodgdon, the Commissary of Military Stores, who for unknown reasons remained in the city, frequently refers to the ravages of (in his words) the “malignant disorder.”  In a letter written on September 21st, he enviously observes that “half the inhabitants of the City are gone into the country.” This exodus included the Chief Executive and his Cabinet: according to Hodgdon, the President was at Mount Vernon, the Secretary of the Treasury [Hamilton] was in New York, the Secretary of Foreign Affairs [Jefferson] was in Virginia and the Secretary of War [Knox] was in Boston. But Hodgdon was still mired in Philadelphia with “my hands full of business.” Referring to the effects of the disease, he laments that the “havock in our city…has surpassed everything that I have before seen.” “The dying groans has filled our long nights and the dead has rushed to our eyes with the returning day. Whole families have been swept away.” Aside from the obvious concerns about himself and his family, Hodgdon had to worry about the possiblity that the supplies of clothing he was sending to the Army might be infected with the disease. Although he notes that “a large portion of the Clothing was on the road before there was any infection in the City” he decided to take no chances with the clothing that was still to be sent. His solution was “smoking and repacking” the clothing before sending it.

Community Transcription: One Week On

Wow, what a week! One week ago we began a new phase in documentary editing by opening the PWD archives to volunteer transcribers. Using Scripto, RRCHNM’s open-source transcription tool, PWD has now opened up many pages of previously-untranscribed documents to the public; volunteers have already begun the important work of transcribing them.

In one week we have added nearly 120 new transcribers. About half of those volunteers had previously volunteered to help transcribe, but nearly half of them signed on after our launch. The transcription volunteers range from graduate students to retired editors to librarians.

Volunteer to be a Transcription Associate

We are pleased to announce the launch of community transcription with the Papers of the War Department.  Beginning today, interested volunteers can register to begin transcribing any of the materials in this groundbreaking digital archive.

With major funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Office of Digital Humanities and the National Archives’ National Historical Publications and Records Commission, PWD is pioneering a new phase in digital documentary editing with an alpha implementation of Scripto, RRCHNM’s open source tool for crowdsourcing documentary transcription, by allowing users to transcribe historical documents and contribute them to a digital archive of correspondence, speeches, accounting logs, and other documents from early American history.

Land Acquisition and the National Road

Searching the War Department digital archive, 914 documents appear with the keyword search “land rights”.  The documents detail the acquisition of the western territories that bordered Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York.  The Cumberland valley and mountains proved to be a hotbed for hostilities between American Indian tribes and white settlers over land rights and use.  The U.S. government pressed forward and westward expending resources and lives to obtain land rights to territory held by Creek, Cussetah, Chocktaw, and Cherokee Nations.

Drunkenness, Desertion and Dueling

A soldier on the frontier rarely got paid on time, his clothes were ragged, his rations sometimes barely edible, and his living quarters cold, dark and damp. Many escaped the miserable conditions through desertion and drunkenness. During the march through Pennsylvania, and leading up to the the disastrous St. Clair expedition in November 1791, 15 percent of the force deserted. Under General Anthony Wayne, 52 percent of courts martial cases were related to desertion. Drunkenness was another way to escape the drudgery. Whiskey was part of the daily ration and it was the prescribed medication for the sick. Paydays were particularly boisterous times, with soldiers sometimes remaining drunk for days after getting paid. General Wayne considered  drunkenness and desertion such a problem that he eventually moved his Legions out of Pittsburgh and further down the Ohio River to  a place called Legionville.   This apparently wasn’t enough to stem another problem- violence in the officer ranks.  In this  report to Henry Knox, following the first winter encampment, Wayne describes a duel,  resulting in the death of an Ensign.

Punishing Deserters

In 1792 President George Washington recalled Revolutionary War hero General “Mad Anthony” Wayne from civilian life to lead an expedition against the Western Indian Confederacy which heretofore had twice achieved major victories over American forces. Wayne was placed in command of a newly formed army called the “Legion of the United States” and began the enormous task of training and supplying his troops. In a lengthy letter written to Secretary of War Henry Knox in August 1792, Wayne discusses some of the problems he encountered as he went about the business of organizing and training his army. A major concern had to do with desertions which he viewed as “frequent and alarming.” He described an incident in which he had formed his troops for action in response to a report that a large body of Indians was nearby. His men were ordered to maintain their posts “at every expence of blood” until he had gained the enemy’s rear with mounted dragoons. But, in Wayne’s words, “such was the defect of the human heart” from an “excess of cowardice” that one-third of the sentries deserted from their stations. In order to prevent such behavior from becoming “infectuous” he was determined to make an example of these deserters and informs Knox of the punishments which he was considering. He says that if any of them attempted to escape, he would “put them to instantaneous death.” Otherwise he was contemplating “a brand with the word coward to stamp upon the forehead” and to “divest them of every military insignia” and “cause them to be constantly employ’d in the most menial services about camp.” Wayne had a reputation as an effective commander and harsh disciplinarian but it is not known whether he actually implemented his plan to brand deserters. Perhaps the mere threat of such a punishment would have been enough to eliminate the problem of desertions. In any case, this is additional evidence that the sobriquet “Mad Anthony” was entirely appropriate.

Frontier Militia versus American Indians

One of the major points of contention between the American colonists and the British government in the aftermath of the French & Indian War had been Parliament’s ban on western settlement beyond the Appalachian Mountains – known by history as the Proclamation of 1763. Though far from being the only grievance — Parliament’s interference in other colonial affairs such as taxation, currency, and civil liberties were arguably more contentious — the ban on western settlement undoubtedly irked both elite land speculators and common yeoman farmers alike who dreamed of expanding west.

Lottery

State and federal games of chance have existed in some form since the birth of the United States.  Public and private lotteries existed to do anything from raise funds that financed settlement of debts  or to purchase cannons for the Revolutionary War effort.  Documents within the Papers of the War Department archive contain discussion of odds and the purchase of tickets to mundane references about the safe transport and arrival of purchased tickets.  Several documents mention a land lottery.

Creation of the War Department

When the Continental Congress was established, it appointed a Commander-in-Chief and set about to raise an army.  But there was no War Department back then. Instead, Congress ran the war by committees, which were usually established on an ad hoc basic to deal with specific issues such as supply or disciplinary matters.  Later, in June 1776, Congress established a committee called “Board of War and Ordnance.”  Absorbing all of the work of the various committees, the Board found itself meeting sometimes twice a day. Its chairman, John Adams, lamented that the duties kept him in “continual employment, not to say drudgery,” until he left Congress.  In July 1777, Congress created a Board of War, which gradually included military officers, including Major General Thomas Mifflin and Colonel Timothy Pickering.  Later,  Saratoga hero Horatio Gates  would become its Chairman,  and Thomas Conway, of Conway Cabal fame, the Inspector General.

PWD featured in NY Times article about crowdsourcing transcription

The Papers of the War Department project was featured in a recent article in the New York Times about efforts to crowdsource documentary transcription. At the end of January 2011, PWD will implement the Scripto transcription tool, allowing users to contribution transcriptions of the 55,000 documents in the PWD archive. With funding from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission and the Office of Digital Humanities at the National Endowment for the Humanities, Scripto will provide editors of digital documentary collections with a way to harness the power of the public to build a base of transcription text that will improve document findability and ease of use.  Scripto is a PHP-based, free and open source plugin, that will connect to common content management systems.

What type of money do we use to pay soldiers?

Americans today are so used to having a single currency, issued by the Federal Reserve Bank, that many of us generally do not think about money, i.e. the medium of exchange. What type of money do the people use? Is it redeemable in anything? Who issues that money?

These were questions that Americans in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries regularly dealt with. Should gold and silver serve as money? Should a central bank issue the currency? Should competing private banks issue the currency? Should the Treasury issue irredeemable greenback currency?

All Politics is Local

France of course had been an important ally of the United States during the War for Independence. But in 1794, following the French Revolution and the fall of the French monarchy, the United States and Great Britain agreed to the terms of the Jay Treaty which, though villified by critics as appeasing the British, resolved most of the contentious issues that existed between the two former antagonists. Outraged by American neutrality in the ongoing conflict between Britain and France, French warships began seizing American ships trading with Britain and thus began the so-called Quasi-War between the United States and France. The tensions between the United States and its former ally also had an impact on American politics with the Federalists favoring accord with the British while the Anti-Federalists sided with revolutionary France. The turmoil in internal political affairs continued after the retirement of George Washington and intensified during the administration of President John Adams as the United States began to bolster its army and navy in preparation for armed conflict with France. In a letter from Secretary of War James McHenry to Secretary of State Timothy Pickering, dated 10/20/1798, McHenry discusses both the Quasi-War and its political impact. He believes that the “unanimity excercised by the people” and the resolve of Congress to “strengthen the country by fleets and armies” may have convinced France that the United States would not be intimidated and might influence French leaders to adopt a more conciliatory posture toward the Americans. Still McHenry wonders why ‘unanimity” does not translate more directly into votes for Federalist candidates. He asks why the people “have not returned to Congress a greater majority of federal characters,” a situation which he views as “not very flattering.”  He provides a two-part answer to his own question. First, he observes that those seeking power tend to be “the most industrious laborers in the political vineyard” compared to those who already possess power and may tend to be complacent. Secondly, he notes that voters who do support the federal government are “apt to differ in their opinions about the man they wish to be chosen.” Elections are not an accurate measure of public opinion because “it is local subjects in these cases which overrule all others.” In other words, even though voters might support national goals, in a Congressional election their votes will be determined by candidates’ positions on local issues. Or in the immortal words of the late Speaker of the House, Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill, “All politics is local.”

What does commutation mean?

Back in 1780, Congress, responding to Washington’s appeals, voted that all officers who continued to serve until the end of the war should receive half pay for life.  In 1783, Congress adopted the “Commutation Act,” which changed the arrangement to five years full pay in money or interest bearing securities.  But because of a shortage of funds, the Confederation couldn’t pay the principal or the interest.  Speculators capitalized when Congress later provided payment of the certificates.  One of Joseph Howell’s duties at the office of Army accounts was verifying appropriate documentation for commutation claims.