Tag Archives: American Revolution

March 3, 2025

What I’m Reading, Spring 2025

By daseger

I’ve working my way through a stack of books this semester and looking forward to some notable new publications so I thought I’d put together a post to relieve everyone (including myself!) from the Revolutionary focus. As is generally the case with my reading lists, there’s no fiction here. I really, really wish I could read fiction, but I am for the most part an “information reader”: I’m looking for something or want to learn something. I aspire to read for pleasure but I’m not there yet. I’m always teaching and writing about history, so most of what I read is history too, but I have various sideline subjects: architecture, urban planning, folklore, art. I will often have a stack of books by my bed or desk which I will dip into for an hour or two, but for the past year I’ve been trying to break that habit and read through every book I pick up. I’ve been moderately but not completely successful in this aim. I’m also trying to kick my Amazon habit, but have been less successful in that goal! So here’s the list, in no particular order.

Big, sweeping cultural histories of monsters and fairy tales! I’ve been eagerly awaiting Humans. A Monstrous History, which was published just last month. I ordered a desk copy from the publisher, because if it’s as good as I think it will be, I will definitely use it in class. I think I know where Surekha Davies is coming from, because I read her first book on Renaissance ethnography, but she is really stretching it our here—“monsters” are a bit different in the medieval and early modern era. But every civilization has its monsters, and their creation tells us a lot about every civilization. I’ve had Warner’s Once Upon a Time for a while, but finally finished it, as I thought it would be a good companion book for the monsters.

American history always seems much more….tangible! I love books that can explain how just one thing—whether tangible or not, can be “revolutionary” so this book on the Franklin stove is right up my alley: I have a Franklin stove and have written about its companion technology, Rumford roasters! I have not received this book yet (I couldn’t order a desk copy as I don’t teach American history) but I am really looking forward to reading it. I have read No Right to an Honest Living and while it was a bit slow-going for me, I really learned a lot. I wanted to read it as I have thought and written about the Remond family here in Salem so much and I thought this book on Boston African Americans who lived at the same time might give me some insights into their lives, and it has.

Some women’s history (and literature) for Women’s History Month. These are two very accessible, informative, and complementary books: I read straight through them in a weekend. I am a fast reader but I also tend to “gut” books as they taught us in graduate school: you really can’t do that with either of these books. This is the anniversary year of Jane Austen’s birth so I expect we will get more Austen books but I suspect Jane Austen’s Bookshelf will do it for me: I liked this very personal window into her reading world.

A wide range of architecture. I guess I’m going for complementary reads here; I hadn’t planned on that, a pattern is emerging! Now that I think about it, I guess this is how I read. If I read an engaging book, I want more, or I want some kind of response. I’m not sure these that Inessential Colors and A Paradise of Houses will be complementary: I’ve only read the former and the latter is going to be published at the end of this month, I think. I pre-ordered it because its title gave me hope: Salem is just getting uglier and uglier with its new construction and I yearn for a reversal and “rebirth” back to urban integration and intention: do we even have a city planner anymore? Maybe this is not what Podemski is offering, but I’ll see. Works on pre-modern architecture that are not theory seem rare so I snapped Inessential Colors right up: it’s an academic book which explores the beginnings of the use of color in architectural renderings. I’ve been reading a lot of color theory for the next book I’m researching, on saffron, so it hit the sweet spot of architecture + color for me but it might be a bit specialized for most.

Different Forms of Memory. Here are another pair of books of which one (I’m showing two covers here because mine is on the left but I much prefer the right) I’ve read and the other I’m waiting for: I should have subtitled this post “books I planned to read.” I’m really interested in statues and other forms of public commemoration: Fallen Idols was an ok overview but it didn’t quite do it for me. I think I’ll read Erin Thompson’s Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of America’s Public Monuments next. I’ve really become interested in Revolutionary remembrance because of my deep dive into the Revolution last year and this year’s commemorations. The Memory of ’76 looks like it’s going to answer a lot of questions I have about this topic, so I wanted to include it here as a reminder—it’s coming out in July.

Lightening (Liquoring) up. I have the occasional habit of posting my Friday cocktail creations to Instagram, and was rewarded with several books on alcohol this past Christmas! Kind of embarassing, but both of these gin books have some great recipes and Austen + alcohol—what could be better? I write quite a bit about the cordial consequences of early modern distillation in my book The Practical Renaissance, but Camper English has a much more accessible and expansive take on this trend: Doctors and Distillers is a really enjoyable book.

Would love some suggestions for engrossing historical fiction and public art marking history!

13 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , | posted in books, Culture

February 24, 2025

Leslie’s Retreat 250

By daseger

More local Revolutionary history! I know I have not been straying far from this focus lately, but this past weekend (well, really February 26) marked the 250th anniversary of Leslie’s Retreat here in Salem with several colorful events which definitely deserve a post. And fair warning, there will be more 1775 over the next few months: I’m giving a talk on Salem’s “pre-Revolutionary Revolution” for Historic New England in April and then there will be the big commemoration of Bunker Hill and then……….we’ll see. I promise to sneak some other topics in here, but for Massachusetts in the American Revolution, it’s really all about 1775, so there’s a lot going on. Saturday’s commemoration kicked off with a presentation at St. Peter’s Church which echoed the sequence of events in 1775 when the Sabbath was disturbed by the arrival of British soldiers in Salem in search of contraband cannon. I arrived a bit late for this event, as it was advertised as featuring “stakeholders” and I knew that meant politicians: that is the term that our previous mayor and present Lieutenant Governor, Kim Driscoll, used all the time during her tenure to distinguish VIPs from mere residents. It’s still used all the time in Salem, and I always bristle when I hear it, so my little rebellion was to stomp over to St. Peter’s late. By the time I arrived, there was a full church listening intently to the last of the stakeholders, our present Mayor Dominick Pangallo. Then we heard from Lt. Colonel Leslie himself, sang a hymn and listened to a timely sermon, and watched as the news of the marching soldiers (some of whom were apparently right next door) interrupted the everyday life a few colonial Salemites. And then we were off to the North Bridge!

The “congregation” walked over to the site, now pretty unrecognizable or unimaginable if you know the historic terrain, where the parley which brought about, and constituted, Leslie’s Retreat, happened nearly 250 years ago. The major difference between this special commemoration and those of previous years was the presence of many more reenacting regiments, so the crowd and the soldiers were separated on two lanes of the bridge, with traffic blocked off (which was quite something, as route 114 is a major artery). In past years civilians and soldiers were mixed in together, and there was less of each. I couldn’t really see or hear the negotiations between Lt. Col. Leslie and the Salem men, but everything that transpired seemed to happen much quicker than was the case in 1775. Leslie retreated very quickly, followed by a few regiments of Colonials which had formed on the other side of the river. All I could really capture was the marching, to and from. A lot of players—I’m sure this took a lot of coordination. After witnessing this, I cannot imagine the complexities of the “curation” of the Battle of Bunker Hill in June.

There were trolley tours and a great exhibit at the Salem Armory Visitor’s Center, but I was focused on a fashionable event in the afternoon: “Fashion in the Season of Revolution: a Panel Discussion and Reenactor Promenade” at the Peabody Essex Museum. This was so interesting: I’m still kind of thinking about it. There were scholarly talks about Abigail Adams’ quilted petticoat and Eldridge Gerry’s sister’s wedding ensemble and the revolutionary preference for homespun as it related to shoes, and then there were questions for an ensemble of reenactors in the audience and on stage. Their answers were really thoughtful and fascinating, including those of a 14-year-old girl who had come up to Salem with her regiment for the day (I’m only 14 so I can’t carry a musket but I have a bugle. Who knew that musicians‘ uniforms had variant stripes?) I have to tell you that most academic historians have a bit of a snobby attitude towards reenectors: I would include myself in this company until the last few years. It’s the dominance of archival research in our profession, and an assumed exclusive association with military history, I think. Speaking for myself, I had always associated reenacting and “pageantry” with the Victorian romanticization of the pre-modern past, something I’ve always had to counter throughout my teaching career. But my perspective on this has changed over the years, especially as I’ve met local history enthusiasts in this region. I still really can’t handle a Renaissance Fair, but it’s clear to me that for many reenactors, who engage in the pursuit for decades, both their “kit” and their engagement in commemoration are ways to study and venerate the past at the same time. I clearly am craving a material connection to the past as well, as all I really want to do on most days is drive around and look at seventeenth-century houses: and I envy their comaraderie!

After all that, it was off to the Revolution Ball next door at Hamilton Hall. It took me a while to get dressed, as I had my own little reenactor “Caraco” jacket which laces up the front and a really nice dark red silk “petticoat” (skirt) which also took me a while to figure out. The ball was really magical: the Hall looked gorgeous, I hope you can get some sense of it in the photographs below. It was period dress/black tie, and it seemed liked it was about half and half. Dancing with a caller, cocktails, I even ate, which I never do at parties for some reason. There were quite a few people there that had participated in the events of the day, and who were part of other commemoration activities, so there quite a bit of festive camaraderie, so much so that I can justify using that word twice in one post.

N.B. Saturday was a fun celebration, but I woke up on Sunday to a flag hanging upside down at Yosemite National Park (where a former student works, still, I think), a distress signal from its rangers/stewards. So I have to add my hope that the revolutionary commemorations of 2025, 2026, and beyond can communicate to the American public the extreme sacrifices that the Revolutionary generation made for real freedom, not just lower consumer prices. Moreover, this long commemoration is itself threatened by this administration’s attack on federal employees in general and those of the National Park Service in particular: Salem Maritime National Historic Site historian Emily Murphy curated and presented the exhibit on Leslie’s Retreat which will be on view all spring, and obviously Minute Man National Historic Park will be center stage for the commemorations of Lexington and Concord in April. A comprehensive list of the Revolution 250 inititatives and events planned by Massachusetts National Historic sites and parks is here: please support their efforts and their personnel.

2 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , | posted in History, Salem

February 17, 2025

Leslie’s Retreat: How an Incident became an Event

By daseger

Next weekend here in Salem a whirlwind of events will commemorate the 250th anniversary of Leslie’s Retreat, including reenactments of the Redcoats’ march towards the North Bridge and the negotiations/resistance that followed, a variety of tours, an exhibit, a concert, a play at Old Town Hall, a presentation on revolutionary and reenactment clothing at the Peabody Essex Museum, and a ball at Hamilton Hall! A group of stalwart history enthusiasts and educators organized a Retreat reenactment nearly a decade ago and the event has been growing in popularity every since, but this year is BIG because of the 250th anniversary, and the city has jumped on the bandwagon. I’m grateful to those “First Reenactors” as February 26th (or thereabouts) has become a conspicuous non-witchy event on the Salem calendar, so I feel like commemorating them, but their efforts are part of a long tradition: Salem has long celebrated its brief, shining moment of Revolutionary resistance. I’ve posted quite about what the event called “Leslie’s Retreat” was so this year I thought I’d write in response to a slightly different prompt: how did this “incident at the North Bridge in Salem” became the event we call “Leslie’s Retreat?” I’m also interested in how it became known as “the first armed resistance to British troops” when it clearly wasn’t, but I suspect the answer to that question is because they just kept saying it was so I don’t want to waste too much time on that.

Wonderful etching of Salem’s North Bridge in the 1880s by George Merwanjee White, Phillips Library (the shores looks so close!); various mid-century pictorial maps with the “first” claim.

So before I go into all the factors which made Leslie’s Retreat LESLIE’S RETREAT, here’s a very brief summary of what happened on February 26, 1775. VERY BRIEF. You can search for my other Leslie’s Retreat posts or, if you want all the details and the most probing analysis, go to J.L. Bell’s amazing blog Boston 1775, which imho and that of many others is the absolutely best source for pre-revolutionary Boston and its environs. Bell is giving a talk for the Marblehead Museum on February 27 which I am very much looking forward to as I have managed to miss all his other presentations on Leslie’s Retreat. Until I am enlightened further by him, here is my summary:

“Leslie’s Retreat” represents the unsuccessful attempt of the 64th Regiment of Foot under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Leslie to commandeer cannon in Salem. Said cannon were likely 17 twelve-pounders secured by Colonel David Mason, who had commissioned blacksmith Robert Forster to mount them to carriages. Royal Governor Thomas Gage, who had essentially been kicked out of Salem the previous August as the town was serving as the provincial capital (but who clearly still had his contacts) caught wind of this clandestine cannon and ordered Lt. Col. Leslie and his troops to sail from Fort William in Boston Harbor to Marblehead, and from there march to Salem and “take possession of the rebel cannon in the name of His Majesty.” The operation was planned for a sleepy Sabbath Sunday, but as soon as the Regulars landed in Marblehead word got out, and the alarm was sounded not only in Salem but in other Essex County towns. Leslie marched to what was then called the North Field Bridge, which was a drawbridge firmly fixed in the up position which prevented him from crossing the North River to Forster’s forge and foundry. A crowd formed and negotiations began between a frustrated Leslie, several Salem residents and militiamen, and a local pastor, Thomas Barnard. With darkness (and militiamen throughout Essex County) advancing, a compromise was reached: the bridge was lowered and Leslie and his men were able to cross and inspect, but the cannon were long gone. So they retreated back to Marblehead and Boston. 

[Interuption/disruption: in longer narratives of Leslie’s Retreat, a woman named Sarah Tarrant is generally referenced, as she taunted Leslie and his soldiers from her open window. That’s fine, I’m sure Sarah was very brave, but Colonel Mason’s wife Hannah and her two daughters made 5000 FLANNEL CARTRIDGES for the cannon in the preceding month. So I think Hannah Symmes Mason and her daughters Hannah and Susan deserve some glory too.]

John Muller’s authoritative Treatise on Artillery, which Mason no doubt possessed, contains detailed instructions for making cannon cartridges as well as all types of carriages. 

So here are the major factors and forces which transformed Leslie’s Retreat from mere incident to major event: it was a chronological process, of course!

1820s Patriotism. Here in the Boston area, there was clearly some intensifying patriotism focused on the Revolution in the 1820s, the result of a combination of forces, including the upcoming fiftieth aniversary, the visit of General Lafayette, and above all, the movement to commemorate the Battle of Bunker Hill. I was not surprised to see the first public reference to “Col. Leslie’s Retreat” in this decade, though I bet it was a term in use before then. It seems that the loyal citizens of North Salem took matters into their own hands in 1823, and I really would like to see this elaborate staff with an eagle and a bust of George Washington. The Bunker Hill Monument Association was established that same summer, and Lafayette laid the cornerstone for the monument in 1825. It was not completed until 1843, but at the Whig Bunker Hill Convention of 1840, a grand historical parade around the monument-in-progress featured 1200 marchers from Salem bearing a Leslie’s Retreat banner asserting we were the first to defeat our oppression in 1775—we shall be the last to yield to them in 1840.

The Essex Institute. Founded in 1848 and serving as Salem’s de facto historical society until its assimilation into the Peabody Essex Museum in 1992, the Essex Institute commissioned TWO items which are essential to the history, interpretation, and identification of Leslie’s Retreat, Samuel Morse Endicott’s Account of Leslie’s Retreat at the North Bridge in Salem on Sunday Feby’y 26, 1775 (1856) and Lewis Jesse Bridgman’s watercolor of Repulse of Leslie at the  North Bridge (1901). Endicott’s Account became an instant classic and as it was issued in a very nice edition after its first publication in the Collections of the Essex Institute it became even more valuable with age: a brief survey of book auction catalogs from the early twentieth century indicates it was in every gentleman’s library. And as I have written here many times before: it’s difficult to “imprint” anything or anybody in people’s minds without an image, so the Bridgman painting has been equally valuable. It was reproduced everywhere, including as a hugh wall mural donated to Salem High School by the Daughters of the American Revolution, North Bridge Branch, in 1910.

The Civil War. There are numerous “memory” connections between the Revolution and the Civil War, but I think the most important one in Salem’s history is Governor Andrew’s identification of the North Bridge as one of the key places in Massachusetts to fire off a salute in celebration of the ratification of the thirteenth amendment. The bridge had received a new “Liberty Pole” in 1862, so its identification with liberty was pretty established by that time. There’s no question that the North Bridge was a much more hallowed place than it is now: overpasses just don’t conjure up heritage like bridges.

The Big Anniversaries. The years 1875-1876 were similiar to 1975-1976 and 2025-2026, with the convergence of the 100th, 200th and 250th anniversaries of Leslie’s Retreat and the beginning of the American Revolution. “Triumphal arches” were erected on the North Bridge in 1876 and again in 1926, for Salem’s Tercentenary. There were just so many occasions to mark and remember Leslie’s Retreat, and when there wasn’t an occasion, one was made up! The Leslie’s Retreat monument, now under the bridge rather than on it, was erected in 1887, and a quarter of a century later the “Pageant of Salem” dramatized the narrative (as if it wasn’t dramatic enough). I must say, the 1975 reenactment looks like it was really fun.

The 1926 Salem Tercentenary Leslie’s Retreat Float was sponsored by the DAR, North River Branch. Salem State University Archives and Special Collections; Col. Leslie by Racket Shreve in Salem’s wonderful Bicentennial Illustrated Guide Book.

These big anniversaries were important, but they were only highlights in a long history of commemoration: from at least the 1850s, there was some kind of speech or moment recognizing Leslie’s Retreat every year, all through the 1860s, 1870s, 1880s, 1890s, 1900s, 1910s and 1920s. After that, it’s a bit more occasional, but you can still find references. The longest period where there are the fewest mentions in the press was from the Bicentennial to 2017, when the “First Reenactors” reengaged with the event and its impact. I wonder (not really) how Salem changed during these thirty years? We are certainly not in the period where, as one of the commenters on a previous post asserted, “every 8th grader in Salem had to write a paper on Leslie’s Retreat” for better or for worse. But thanks to those First Reenactors of 2017 (or 2016??? I can’t seem to remember) we are in a much better place for commemorating 1775 than we would be without their efforts, so hat’s off and huzzah to them!

Charlie Newhall, Jonathan Streff & Jeffrey Barz Snell and a BIG crowd in 2017.

10 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , | posted in History, Salem

February 10, 2025

The First Loyalist of Salem

By daseger

I’ve been researching Salem’s Tories for a while, and I think it’s time to name the top guy. Gilbert Streeter, whose “Salem before the Revolution” essay is full of gossipy details and strident assertions (I don’t know if I would call it “history” but it sure is fun to read), refers to William Browne as “easily the First Citizen of Salem” in the early 1770s, but he lost that status over the course of 1774, and became the First Loyalist of Salem in my humble opinion. His classmate at Harvard, John Adams, later referred to Browne as “a solid, judicious character…They made him a judge of the superior court and that society made of him a refugee. A Tory I verily believe he never was.” I can’t really understand why Adams made that last assessment: Browne seems like the ultimate Tory to me, by his own words, and by his sacrifices, which included Salem’s grandest “mansion house,” a farmhouse in South Salem which later became the home of Revolutionary hero John Glover, and thousands of acres in Connecticut which he had inherited from his grandfather. He left all of that behind when he departed for England in the Spring of 1776, and it was formally confiscated by the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts several years later. This was not devestating to Browne: he moved on, taking on the not-uncommon role for Loyalists newly-arrived in Britain, that of tourist, for a few years before his appointment as the royal Governor of Bermuda.In his will, he left thousands of pounds to his daughters, but no property, He also refers to himself as “late of Salem.”

A Joseph Blackburn portrait of a young William Browne, donated to the Bermuda Historical Museum late in 2023 by Judith Herdeg of Chadds Ford, PA.

Browne’s commitment to the King is clear; he never faltered. His loyalism was manifest. He was one of the 17 rescinders of 1768, described by Adams as Wretches, without Sense or Sentiment, after they voted to rescind the Massachusetts Circular Letter which had been drafted by the House of Representatives (well, really Samuel Adams I believe) in opposition to the Townshend Acts.  The Letter, which was disseminated among the colonies, called for resistance, and Massachusetts Governor Francis Barnard ordered the House to rescind it or be dissolved. A vote was held in the assembly, which resulted in 92 nays and 17 yeas in favor of rescission, with Salem’s representatives Browne and Peter Frye (to whom I would give the title Second Loyalist) voting YEA. The non-rescinders were lionized in Massachusetts, and the rescinders demonized, quite literally by Paul Revere, who cast them into hell. But it was not so easy to dismiss the well-connected (and well-liked, by most accounts) Browne and Frye in Salem.

Paul Revere (1735-1818) & Benjamin Church (1734-1778), A Warm Place — Hell…. While gasping Freedom wails her future fate, and Commerce sickens with the sick’ning State… [Boston: Edes & Gill, 1768].87. A rare copy of this broadside sold last month at Christie’s for over $63,000.

On July 18, 1768, one of the most extraordinary meetings in Salem’s history occurred, a gathering that exposed the division of the town’s leaders over royal policy. It was a response to a petition of 58 men who wanted a public denouncement of Brown and Frye, expressed in more civil language, of course–or maybe not. And so the body voted to approve the action of the House of Representatives in not rescinding the Circular Letter and to thank the House for its defense of American liberties. After these votes, the moderator of the meeting, Benjamin Pickman (I think he would be my Third Tory), expressed a minority view, bolstered by other “placemen,” that what is proposed to be done (whether design’d or not) may tend to injure the Gentlemen who represented this town in the last General Assembly of this Province, and especially if so design’d, may discourage every suitable Person from serving the Town in any capacity whatsoever. About 30 men, Browne and Frye included, signed on to this addendum, but the majority judgement stood. The Boston Gazette and Country Journal followed up with an article identifying the connections (family, marriage, business) between the protesters and Browne, and anonymous letters to the editor of both Boston and Salem papers heaped scorn upon the Salem Rescinders for the next few months.

The division exposed by the town meeting in the summer of 1768 continued to harden, all the way up to the beginning of the Revolution. Browne was clearly respected and even liked, but he would not be able to survive the coming of General Thomas Gage in the early summer of 1774. As a customs official, Colonel of the militia, and one of the richest men in town with the grandest house, he was probably expected to welcome the new royal governor to the new provincial capital, but by all accounts he went above and beyond. Browne was too much in Gage’s company, and the contemporary accounts—and even the histories well into the nineteenth century—report that he “took offices from Gage” as the latter consolidated royal power over the Massachusetts government. The two offices in question were a permanent judgeship on the Superior Court as well as a seat on the new mandamus council, for which Browne took the oath of office from Gage in Salem in early August. The Patriots called for county conventions that same month, and the Ipswich Convention met on September 6 with 67 delegates representing each Essex County town in attendance. It called for the resignation of royal officeholders, and a delegation of Salem men delivered this demand to Browne in Boston shortly thereafter. He refused.  Salem’s (or the county’s) response was the resignation of the entire contingent of officers of the First Essex Regiment, rendering it impossible for Browne to continue as their colonel. There was further commentary: Browne was now “politically deceased of a pestilent and mortal disorder, and now buried in the ignominious ruins at Boston.” Clearly there was no going back for Browne: he was dead to Salem where his family had lived for five centuries. But I don’t think he wanted to go back: for him, service to his “country” meant service to his King.

P.S.William Browne has been dancing around several of my posts and I really wanted to be done with him, but I am not. There’s more to learn and write. The confiscation of his properties in 1779 has shed some light on his slaveholding in the Salem, Connecticut region, but several enslaved persons lived in his Salem, Massachusetts house as well. How did his New England past, especially this part of his past, affect his policies as the Governor of Bermuda, for which he generally receives high marks? That’s just one (more) question I have about William Browne.

4 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , | posted in Culture

February 3, 2025

Salem’s Abandoned Revolutionary Forts: a Bicentennial View

By daseger

Every time I go up to the treasure trove that is the Phillips Library it’s a significant commitment of time so I try to order up a variety of items so I can accomplish whatever mission I’m on but also treat myself. Its collections are so diverse that you can always find something new and exciting but you have to spend some time in the catalog before you even get there. Fortunately, there are very good finding aids, for which I will always be grateful to the librarians who craft them. Last week I was after materials relating to Salem’s Tercentenary in 1926 but I also wanted to look at sources for the Revolution: I’m giving a talk on Salem’s early revolutionary role later this semester so am on the hunt for anything that can add a few anecdotes. It was actually thrilling to look at one small paper-bound journal constituting the records of Salem’s Committee of Correspondence for 1775-1776 and quite another experience to look at some photos of our city’s long-abandoned forts, Fort Pickering and Fort Lee, taken during the Bicentennial 200 years later. I have never been able to figure out what the City’s policy is towards these installations beyond benign neglect: Fort Lee is all grown over and Fort Pickering has these strange plaques dedicated to the US Army’s Special Forces which have nothing to do with its history or that of Salem. There have been myriad studies and reports: with funding from the Massachusetts Historical Commission, the City commissioned an excellent study in 2003 that used to be online but now I can’t find it, and Essex Heritage sponsored another comprehensive study which was published in 2023. Maybe this recent report will inspire some action! The photographs below were all taken by a man named Alfred K. Shroeder for the Council on Abandoned Military Posts, New England Chapter, and he captures both the sites and the ceremony, nearly fifty years ago.

Apparently The Council on Abandoned Military Posts is now CAMP: the Council on America’s Military Past. Below: Several perspectives on the Bicentennial commemorations at Fort Pickering:

Winter Island has a long military history and was home not only to Fort Pickering but also Coast Guard Air Station Salem from 1935 to 1970, which became an air-rescue station in the last year of World War II. The property then passed to the City of Salem. The first picture below shows the doors of the station’s hangar and the barracks—in much better condition in 1976 than now—and then aerial views of Fort Pickering and the adjacent Winter Island structures from different perspectives. Finally, there are some steps to Fort Lee, just off the island on Salem Neck, and an aerial view of its groundworks.

Phillips Library PHA 107: Photographs of abandoned military posts in Salem, Mass., 1976.

Putting in another plug/link for the recent historical narrative & resource study on Forts Pickering and Lee by Frederick C. Detwiller as it should be your first stop if you want to learn more about these forts! 

4 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in Salem

January 5, 2025

2025: the Anniversary Year

By daseger

I like to look ahead to the coming historical anniversaries at the beginning of every year, and in 2025 it’s pretty clear that two wars are going to dominate the commemoration calendar: the beginning of the American Revolution and the end of World War II. The Fall of Saigon occurred in 1975, so you could add a third. Here in Massachusetts, we’ve been gearing up for revolutionary remembrance for quite some time, under the aegis of a coalition called Revolution 250. Even the City of Salem, pretty passive when it comes to matters of heritage and seemingly oblivious to our City’s key pre-revolutionary and revolutionary roles, is getting in on the action by jumping on board the 250th anniversary of “Leslie’s Retreat” in late February. A Revolution Ball at Hamilton Hall—the successor to the pre-Covid Resistance Ball— will also be held in the midst of a very busy commemorative weekend in Salem. The commemorations of the battles of Lexington and Concord in April and Bunker Hill in June promise to be huge, even though the latter will be “fought” in Gloucester rather than Charlestown. Then the focus will shift to Cambridge, where Washington formed the Continental Army: I don’t think it was quite as orderly a process as the Currier & Ives lithograph below presents!

Revolutionary remembrance in Salem and Massachusetts: a view of “Leslie’s Retreat,” when a Salem crowd and dialogue convinced British Lt. Colonel Alexander Leslie and his soldiers to retreat while cannon were carried away, 1955 Emma Crafts Earley Map Salem Massachusettes With History, Phillips Library. This event is widely heralded in Salem as the “first armed resistance by the Colonies to British Authority,” which is just not true, but I think I can accept “the first armed resistance to British in 1775.” The Revolution Ball will be held on February 22: more information here. The Battle of Lexington, Bettman Archive; “An Exact View of the Late Battle at Charlestown, June 17, 1775.” and “Washington Taking Command of the American Army,” Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

While most of the Revolutionary commemoration will likely be exuberant, remembering the end of World War II will be much more nuanced, marking victory and liberation but also loss and destruction. The 80th anniversary of VE Day (May 8) could be “a shared moment of celebration” but obviously Holocaust remembrance will be more solemn, as will the anniversaries of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I probably shouldn’t even reference these atrocities in a post on history anniversaries as their remembrance is quite appropriately ongoing and perpetual, but the eighty-year mark is noted everywhere. A major exhibition, Portraits of the Hibakusha | 80 Years Remembered, featuring a series of 52 lenticular portraits of the survivors of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, has already opened and will travel to museums and galleries around the world. Eighty years ago this very month (on January 27), Auschwitz was liberated by soldiers of the 60th Army of the First Ukrainian Front of the Red Army: here is more information about the observances scheduled for this site on this particular International Holocaust Remembrance Day, from which Russia has been excluded for the third straight year.

It seems to me that in terms of public remembrance, we tend to remember bad things more than good, ostensibly because we do not want to repeat the bad. Ultimately (I think!) war remembrance is a hopeful process rather than a macabre one, but it is wearing and wearying. I teach a European history survey pretty much every semester and I always get wary when we approach the twentieth century, but there were two very consequential conflicts from my own period that will also be commemorated in 2025: King Philip’s War (1675-76) and the German Peasants War of 1525, both bloody conflicts between desperate insurgents and established regimes—well, perhaps the colonists of southern New England were not that established when an indigenous coalition under the leadership of Wampanoag chief Metacom, later known as King Philip, attacked English settlements over a 14-month period. Several Salem men, including Nathaniel Hawthorne’s first American ancestor William Hathorne, fought in this conflict, which left hundreds of colonists and thousands of Native Americans dead. Northeastern University Emeritus Professor of Public History Martin Blatt has called for more commemoration of King Philip’s War, but I don’t see any big event on the 2025 calendar. There is, however, some amazing scholarship on the War and its remembrance in New England over the centuries. The German Peasants’ War was the biggest uprising in Western Europe before the French Revolution, extending to much of the Holy Roman Empire. It was notable for being not just a large peasant revolt but one in which an expansive “working class” (a term we don’t usually use before the Industrial Revolution), including miners and urban workers, rose up against serfdom and its remnants, brandishing a document callled The Twelve Articles which justified their demands in scripture. It’s the first sign of the potentially radical impact of the Reformation, and Martin Luther was so horrified by the rebels’ confusion of spiritual and secular “freedom” that he called for the “murderous theiving hordes of peasants” to be cut down. And so they were.

Because of its early expression of “class consciousness,” East Germany commemorated the 45oth anniversary of the Peasants War in 1975 with this stamp and other events. For the 500th anniversary in 2025, the Thuringian state has organized a traveling exhibition.

Lightening up quite a bit. Jane Austen was born in that consequential year of 1775, and given her popularity over these past few decades, I have no doubt that the 250th anniversary of her birth will be commemorated in a big way in Britian—and no doubt elsewhere. Just a few clicks and I realized that the events that constitute Jane Austen 250 make the very busy Revolution 250 calendar look quiet! In Bath, and Winchester, and throughout Hampshire there will be festivals and costume balls and dress-up days and parades. At Jane Austen’s House in Chawton, each book will get its own festival starting with Pride and Prejudice this very month and there will be a special year-long exhibition called Austenmania. Bath has been on the Austen bandwagon for quite some time so there’s a lot going on there but in Winchester, the city where Jane spent her last years and was laid to rest, there’s a bit of a controversy about a new statue to be installed on the Cathedral grounds. There are concerns about overtourism in general and the sanctity of its proposed location in particular, with one critic opining that “I don’t think we want to turn it into Disneyland-on-Itchen. I don’t think the Inner Close is the place to attract a lot of lovely American tourists to come and have a selfie with Jane Austen.” (sounds vaguely familiar) They’ve spent quite a bit of money on the statue, so I think it’s a go, but Winchester is clearly the only place in the region where there are any clouds on the horizon: everywhere and everyone else seems geared up for an enthusiastic Austen year.

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December 16, 2024

They Came Back for the Cannon

By daseger

This has been such a “revolutionary” year for me; I had to cap it off by an actual event: the reenactment of the raids on Fort William and Mary in New Castle, New Hampshire on December 14 and 15, 1774 this past weekend. There were two raids on this under-manned fort: first they came for the gunpowder, then for the cannon. From September of 1774 New England had been in a constant state of alarm: these December actions were the first overt revolutionary actions: if the Fort had actually been manned, I do believe the American Revolution would have begun in December of 1774 rather than April of 1775. “What if” history is generally pointless, but still, this particular episode has everything: a mid-day ride by Paul Revere warning the people of Portsmouth of the imminent arrival of warships, two raids on successive days, removing the “peoples’s” gunpowder and cannon from the “king’s” fort, a trampled British flag.

I was early for the December 15 reenactment, so I walked around a nearly people-less New Castle with bells ringing on Sunday morning: despite the calm, it was kind of exciting!

You can read that I am using the language from the official marker: “overt”. It was overt! It was open treason after Revere arrived in Portsmouth in the late afternoon of December 13. One of the town’s wealthiest and most influential residents, John Langdon (Continental Congress member and later President pro tempore of the US Senate and Governor of New Hampshire), recruited Patriot raiders on the streets with fife and drum, and eventually a force of nearly 400 militiamen assaulted the Fort on the next day. Inside were a mere five men under the command of Captain John Cochran, who gave this account to the Royal Governor John Wentworth:  About three o’ clock the Fort was besieged on all sides by upwards of four hundred men. I told them on their peril not to enter; they replied they would; I immediately ordered three four-pounders to be fired on them, and then the small arms, and before we could be ready to fire again, we were stormed on all quarters, and they immediately secured both me, and my men, and kept us prisoners about one hour and a half, during which time they broke open the Powder House, and took all the Powder away except one barrel, and having put it into boats and sent it off, they released me from my confinement. Despite the fire, there were no injuries, except for the Fort’s flag, which was pulled down and trampled upon. About 100 barrels of gunpowder were dispensed to nearby towns for safekeeping.

Howard Pyle’s illustration of the Surrender of Fort William and Mary, December 14, 1774, New York Public Library Digital Gallery.

And on the next day they came back for the cannon. Even more men, from both sides of the Piscataqua (the Maine side was then Massachusetts), under the command of Continental Congress member John Sullivan (another Continental Congress representative and future NH governor), raided the surrendered fort and carried away 16 cannon, 60 muskets and additional military stores. Sullivan had formerly been close friends with Governor Wentworth, but their relationship was severed by the latter’s Loyalism and lies to his countrymen, a point that was played up by the reenacting Sullivan in his speech to his troops and audience. I think they were planning to return to the pillaged port again but were preventing from doing so by the arrival of two British ships, the Canceaux and the Scarborough in the following week.

After a rousing speech by Sullivan (2024), off to the Fort!

Reenactors (and reenectment attendees) often endure extreme heat and cold waiting for reenactments to occur! It was a cold morning, but as you can see by this charming reenactor’s smile, also a pleasurable one. I was so whipped up by Sullivan’s (2024) speech that I felt that I had to visit Governor Wentworth’s nearby house, as if expecting to find him there to counter his former friend’s accusations. I will give him not the last word but a last word, as I think we need some more contemporary accounts: the letter from Portsmouth below was featured in all the American newspapers in the last week of December, and then Governor Wentworth’s proclamation followed in early January of 1775. The separation seems severe.

Essex Gazette, January 10, 1775.

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October 1, 2024

Salem 1774: Tea, Fire and a new Congress

By daseger

I just want to wrap up Salem’s long hot Revolutionary summer of 1774 with a finale first week of October and then I’ll be turning to Salem’s intense Halloween—I am not escaping this year because I’m working at the Phillips House and both my husband and I are so busy we can’t really handle the commute to Maine. So I’ll be going to various “attractions” and writing about them; it should be……….interesting. But today, a “tea party,” a “great fire,” and the convening of a brand new autonomous Provincial Assembly for Massachusetts, all right here in Salem in the first week of October 1774. After reading about the pre-Revolution all summer long I now subscribe completely to super-historian Mary Beth Norton’s assessment of the importance of 1774: here in Massachusetts, maybe even here in Salem, the Revolution began.

The Massachusetts Spy piece gives you a sense of what the late summer and early fall was like in Massachusetts: a ship arrived with 30 chests of tea, its purchaser confronted and cargo sent off to Halifax. Local and county meetings continue, as do congregations to prevent the royal courts to convene. Legal officials who are appointees of the Governor/King “recant and confess.” Boston is ever more fortified by Royal troops and Benjamin Franklin is America bound! You can feel it coming (but of course hindsight is 20/20). Salem remains the official port of entry (with Marblehead) and colonial capital, all the elected representatives to the General Court called by General Gage for October 5 received instructions from their communities throughout the month of September to resist royal encroachments on their liberty and call for a return to the William and Mary charter from nearly a century before. And then Gage called off the big assembly!

Boston Evening-Post, 3 October 1774.

Too much tumult! There would be no royally-convened General Court assembly at Salem on October 5: it was postponed by Governor Gage to some “distant day”.  Ultimately a more representative body will convene, but before everyone that Salem happening there were two fires in town: one very little, the other, “great.” The little one was a PUBLIC burning of tea conveyed to Salem in a cask which was loaded onto a wagon belonging to Benjamin Jackson in Boston. I find this whole story so interesting because several weeks before 30 chests of tea had arrived in Salem but people seem more upset by this little cask! An unfortunate and anonymous African-American man, “belonging to, or employed by Mrs. Sheaffe of Boston,” had requested the cask be conveyed to Salem, and it was, and he was identified as offering it for sale rather than his owner/employer: “it was taken from him and publicly burnt,” upon its arrival, “and the Fellow obliged immediately to leave town” on October 3. Some chroniclers have labeled this a “Salem Tea Party,” but I’ve read too much about tea resistance in Salem in the revolutionary Summer of 1774 so it seems like a minor affair to me.

Several days later, the long suffering Tory Justice of the Peace Peter Frye, whose statement is above, had his house and commercial buildings destroyed in the “Great Fire” of 1774, which devoured a block of buildings in central Salem. Frye had tried to find his way back to “friendship” with his Salem neighbors, but they had never been able to forget his commercial and judicial dealings contrary to Patriot proclamations. He would leave Salem for Ipswich shortly after the fire, and cross over to Britain in the next year. Salem had a bit of a reputation as a Tory town before 1774, but it had certainly lost that identity by this time.

While the fire was still simmering and smoking, representatives from across Massachusetts converged on Salem for the meeting of the General Court, even though they all knew it had been canceled by Governor Gage the week before. They wanted to meet. They made a show of waiting around for the Governor, and then met on their own, in a completely autonomous assembly, a new Provincial Congress. This body, with John Hancock as its chair, became the de facto of Massachusetts, strengthening its resolve and powers with successive meetings in Concord (October 11-14) and Cambridge. But it started in Salem.

John Hancock drawn by William Sharp.

 

Two events in commemoration of the formation of the Provincial Congress:

In Salem, October 7: 250th Anniversary of the First Provincial Congress: https://essexheritage.org/event/250th-anniversary-of-the-first-massachusetts-provincial-congress.

In Concord, October 11: Exploring Our Democracy— Our Rights and Responsibilities: https://www.wrighttavern.org/programs/#october11.

 

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September 2, 2024

Revolutionary Remembrance

By daseger

Even more so than usual, this Labor Day weekend seemed like the end of summer to me. Actually, not just the end, but the finale. This was quite a productive summer, even though I didn’t really produce anything: there were more edits on Salem’s Centuries and the new experience of working as a guide at Historic New England’s Phillips House, but what I was really focused on was Salem’s experience of the American Revolution. I read really widely on this topic, and learned a lot: I honestly don’t think I’ve read as much history since graduate school. It actually felt like graduate school, but without the pressure. As I say all the time on this blog, I’m not an American historian, so to truly understand historical forces at work at any time in Salem’s history, I have to get up to speed by going through both the classic texts as well as more recent studies. For a topic as big as the AMERICAN REVOLUTION, “background” is going to involve reading a lot of books, and so I did. At the beginning of the summer, all I wanted was to understand Salem’s role as provincial capital during the summer of 1774, but I couldn’t really grasp that without some understanding of the forces (and people!) at play in British America in general and Massachusetts in particular during the period between the close of the Seven Years’ War and the Boston Tea Pary. I would finish one book on this era with the realization that I had to read two or three or four more. I had questions which led to more questions. And it was all so PERSONAL: I had to figure out all the networks as well. My “revolutionary Salem summer” reading project was also personal, but it had public validation: Massachusetts has been in revolution-commemoration mode for a while thanks to the efforts and organzation of Revolution250  so there were regional events all summer long and this is also the bicentennial year of the (General) Marquis de Lafayette’s triumphant return tour of the United States, an anniversary marked by a succession of reenactments in the towns and cities which he visited originally, including Salem this very weekend. For an early modern European historian, this kind of synchronicity seldom happens!

Waiting for the General/ Marquis at a Red, White, and Blue Picnic in Chestnut Street Park—in this last photo, a very chill cat on a leash captured everyone’s attention, especially this regency toddler!

Lafeyette arrived in Salem around 2:00 pm, there were formal welcomes and speeches and a few photo ops, and then he was on his way. This was a busy day for the Marquis/General: it started in Chelsea, and then he visited Marblehead, Salem, Beverly and ended up in Ipswich—just like August 31, 1824. This was a very enjoyable event, co-sponsored by nearly all of the non-witchy nonprofits of Salem: Hamilton Hall, The Salem Athenaeum, The Phillips House, and the Pickering House, as well as Essex Heritage and the Creative Collective, and the colorful assistance of the Danvers Alarm List Company. The 1824 tour of “the Nation’s Guest” was marked by a spirited public exuberance which sustained and even rekindled memories of the American Revolution; let’s hope this Bicentennial tour can do the same! If it does, it will be in large part due to the efforts of the American Friends of Lafayette, an organization which has been cultivating the General’s character and contributions since 1932. Even though it was just one pitstop on a long day for Lafayette in 1824, the preparations in Salem were detailed and complex: you can see John Remond’s catering accounts at the Phillips Library and read all about the lengthy cavalcade here. And Salem was not alone: for comparison’s sake (and to get inspired for this weekend), I went to see the Lexington Historical Society’s small exhibition, “The President and the General,” last week. While some of the exhibits clearly belonged to another time, others clearly have resonance in our own, like the banner that boldly states LIBERTY.

Couldn’t quite capture the T & the Y! An allegorical image of Lafayette returning to France with founding-father protectors; ribbon/sash, invitation, banners from the 1824 tour, Lexington Historical Society.

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August 19, 2024

Quick About Their Business

By daseger

So I’m going back to the revolutionary summer of 1774, when Salem served as provincial capital and (with Marblehead) port of entry, Boston’s punishment for its Tea Party. Salem had a strong Tory contingent, but I think the Whigs were stronger: they prevented the new royal governor, General Thomas Gage, from even residing in the new capital. He was compelled to find housing in nearby Danvers, from where he issued a succession of proclamations, including one which prohibited “illegal combinations”. Once the Massachusetts Government Act came into effect on August 1, his power was increased dramatically: councillors previously chosen by election were now appointed by him, and town meetings could only occur with his call. Bristling under this royal representative, the most illegal of combinations, the various committees of correspondence across Massachusetts, called for county conventions to be held in September, and (illegal) town meetings to elect representatives to said conventions. This is the background to an incredible meeting that was held in Salem on August 24, right under General Gage’s watch. This notice from the Essex Gazette of August 16 represents the tensions in town: the 59th regiment were camped out at Salem Neck ready to defend Gage and royal prerogatives, and Salem’s Patriots were referring to those men who accepted appointments to the new Royal Council as “Sworn Enemies to the Sacred Rights of the good People of this Province.”

As you see, the view of the Patriots was that Lord North’s new assemblies were “unconstitutional,” and thus they went about forming their own. Shortly after the “Sacred Rights” piece was published, handbills appeared in public places in Salem, published under the auspices of the town’s Committee of Correspondence, asking the “merchants, freemen, and other inhabitants of Salem” to meet at the Town House Chamber on August 24 for the purpose of appointing deputies to the upcoming Ipswich Convention “to consider of and determine on such  as the late Acts of Parliament and our grievances render necessary.” Governor Gage issued a responsive proclamation on August 23. Thereby forbidden to meet, Salem’s Patriots met anyway, and were clearly ready to meet with any “ill consequences.”

On the next day, members of the Committee of Correspondence were summoned to a meeting with Governor Gage at 9:00 in the morning, but the town meeting had already assembled an hour before. Gage (whose office seems to have been literally two doors down from the Town House) ordered them to call it off, but it had already begun, and was essentially concluding while the conversation next door continued (despite Gage’s assertion that he was “not going to enter into a Conversation on the matter; I came to execute the Laws not dispute them”). The town meeting elected Richard Derby Jr., John Pickering, Jonathan Ropes, Timothy Pickering, Jonathan Gardner, and Richard Manning Jr. to represent the town at the Ipswich Convention in September and promptly adjourned. And thus a well-run meeting—and time management–had prevented a potential conflict, as two companies of the 59th Regiment of Foot encamped at Salem Neck were marching towards downtown Salem that very morning.

Gage ordered the 59th to return to camp, but on the following day the Governor had apparently resolved that this resistance required a response and so ordered Peter Frye, a well-known Loyalist and county Judge, to arrest the leaders of the Committee of Correspondence on charges of “unlawfully and seditiously causing the People to assemble without leave from the Governor, etc..” Two men posted bail upon their arrest, but the remaining five refused to recognize the legality of their arrests and threatened Gage with consequences of their own. This was no longer a local matter; given the rationale for the unprecedented town meeting, it really never was, but these particular proceedings brought forth “upwards of three thousand men” who converged on Salem from surrounding Essex County, “with full determination to rescue the Committee if they should be sent to prison, even if they were oblig’d to repel force with force, being sufficiently provided for such a purpose.” Both the Judge and the Governor backed down: “His Excellency has suspended the matter at Salem by dropping the prosecution. Seeing them resolute and the people so determinate, he was willing to give up a point rather than push matters to extremities” wrote Boston Merchant John Andrews to his brother-in-law in Philadelphia. The Governor could abandon rebellious Salem, and he did by the end of the month, but Peter Frye could not: his property and family were fully vested in a town that seemed to resent him fiercely. Despite his public apology and expressed “hope to be restored to that Friendship and Regard with my Fellow-Citizens and Countrymen which I heretofore enjoyed,” Andrews reported that “Colonel Frye, of Salem … has resigned all his posts of honor and profit. Indeed necessity obliged him to, as he and his family were in danger of starving; for the country people would not sell him any provisions, and the inhabitants……. dare not procure him any” in early September. And a month later, when another “illegal” assembly was convening in Salem, Frye’s Essex Street properties were torched, igniting the Great Salem Fire of 1774. Salem was a tinderbox, to be sure.

Peter Frye, one of Salem’s most conspicuous Tories (Portraits in the Essex Institute) and the consequences he suffered.

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