Where was George?

As we all know, July the Fourth is the official date of proclamation of the Declaration of Independence, although delegates from the colonies signed on different dates. Getting all the colonies to agree in the face of massive British reprisal was a triumph of diplomacy. The outcome of the Declaration was not assured until Lord Cornwallis had the band play "The World Turned Upside Down,"*  and even decades after it seemed like the whole American experiment was going to go down the cesspool at any time.

I got to wondering where exactly George Washington was on July 4, 1776. Obviously he himself was not in Congress, being in the field with the under-trained, underfunded, undermanned army, as he had been for just over a year. So what was he up to on that date?

According to the Library of Congress, Washington had left Massachusetts following the British surrender of Boston, and had set up in Manhattan by April 14. He is not too happy with the situation there, a feeling many people would have on arriving in New York to this day. The Library of Congress says, "New York has not yet come down decisively on the side of independence, and merchants and government officials are supplying the British ships still in the harbor. Washington, angry at the continued communication with the enemy, asks the Committee if the evidence about them does not suggest that the former Colonies and Great Britain are now at war. He insists that such communications should cease."

Washington's war preparations continued in New York, and he would have his hands full. On June 21 he would fifty miles upstate by today's West Point, calling for the construction of the Great Chain to block a British fleet coming down the Hudson.** 

So I'm not sure what exactly the great man was doing on the Fourth of July, which fell on a Thursday that year. But on June 29th, General William Howe and his brother Little Dickie (nah, his brother was Admiral Richard Howe) arrived in New York Harbor, so Washington was undoubtedly preparing for the British to attack. That would not occur for some time, as the British first wanted to talk George into giving up.*** 

The British would concentrate their forces on Staten Island, which was sparsely populated and completely unable to prevent the British landing. In fact, on September 11, 1776, John Adams, Ben Franklin, and Edward Rutledge would meet with Richard Howe at what is now called the Conference House on Staten Island to try to prevent the war. By then the British had already chased the American forces out of Long Island (where the colonists were saved from destruction by retreating under cover of fog), and would later chase them around the rest of the city. New York very nearly was Washington's Waterloo, almost four decades before Napoleon had the actual Waterloo.**** 

But that was all yet to come.*****  

On Tuesday, July 9, however, Washington got a copy of the Declaration and declared a celebration. He read it to his troops, and had copies sent to the other generals in the Continental Army. To General Artemas Ward he wrote, "The enclosed Declaration will show you that Congress at length, impelled by necessity, have dissolved the connection between the American Colonies of Great Britain and declared them free, independent states, and in compliance with their order I am to request you will cause this Declaration to be immediately proclaimed at the head of the Continental Regiments in the Massachusetts Bay." 

I do not believe the quote on this T-shirt is legitimate.  

Maybe in spirit, if not in actual words. 

Mentioning the Conference House reminded me of a great little bit from the film (and play) 1776; the film is fifty years old now. In the scene, John Adams, played by the brilliant William Daniels, complains about his fate in posterity:

Adams: I'll not appear in the history books anyway. Only you. Franklin did this and Franklin did that, and Franklin did some other damned thing. Franklin smote the ground, and out sprang George Washington, fully grown and on his horse. Franklin then electrified him with his miraculous lightning rod; then the three of them -- Franklin, Washington, and the horse -- conducted the entire revolution all by themselves.

Franklin: I like it.

That's probably what they are teaching now in history, if they still teach anything good about any dead white men (and horses). But we will know what our Founding Fathers did, and we will tell the stories while we have strength to tell them. 

🦅🦅🦅

*Or did he?

**Longtime readers -- you handsome devils -- will recall my visit to West Point and the remainder of the Chain in 2018.

***Spoiler: He didn't.

****Napoleon himself was six years old on July 4, 1776, and had already reached his full height. (Just kidding about that last bit.)

*****Summarized by William Bryk in a fascinating little piece here.