Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Debunking More Historical Myths
HISTORY
American history is replete with enhanced incidents
that actually turn out to be myths when they are closely examined. Here are a
few more to set the historical record straight:
The Pound
Ridge $12 Million Flag
An auction record was set on
June 14, 2006, when the winning bid for a flag from the American Revolution
reached the improbably high bid of $12,360,000 at a Sotheby's auction. (Previously
the record paid for a Revolutionary War flag was $700,000.) Appropriately, the
date was Flag Day.
The fragile, hand-stitched
and hand-painted silk pennant of the 2nd Regiment of Continental Light Dragoons
that fetched this price was allegedly "captured" at Pound Ridge , N.Y.
This flag and three others actually
captured by him in May of 1780 in South Carolina
were auctioned by a Tarleton descendant in Britain
For all four flags, an
exciting total of $17,416,000 changed hands. In the words of one observer,
"this was more than the cost of the entire Revolutionary War."
Banastre (nicknamed
"Bloody Ban") Tarleton was a short, redheaded cavalry colonel from Liverpool who gave up the study of law and accepted a
commission bought for him in the King's Dragoon Guards. Only 21 when he became
a lieutenant in 1775, Tarleton rocketed to the rank of lieutenant colonel
quickly because of his reckless daring.
Many of his troopers in the
British Legion were volunteers recruited among the sons of Tory families in New York Mile
Square Yonkers
To the north, at Pound Ridge,
was a troop of about 90 American cavalry from Connecticut
Tarleton was ordered to make
a surprise raid on Pound Ridge and capture Lockwood on whose head a reward of
forty guineas had been set. (A guinea was a gold coin equivalent to 21
shillings; the pound was worth 20 shillings.) An American spy, Leonard
Kinnicut, warned Col. Sheldon of the impending raid, although he could not tell
him when it would happen.
Tarleton chose a rainy night
to move his 360 mounted British and Hessian troops toward Pound Ridge. Firearms
were useless in a drenching rain, and sentries were less likely to be alert.
Moving north by way of Bedford, they arrived at Pound Ridge on the morning of
July 2, 1779, and drove Sheldon back about two miles before militiamen started
gathering and Tarrleton had to withdraw. Lockwood escaped, and a frustrated
Tarleton torched his home and the church.
Sheldon eventually chased
Tarleton and his troops from Pound Ridge to what is now Mount Kisco
And although his raid on
Pound Ridge was a failure, Tarleton made much of the "captured" rebel
flag of the Second Regiment of the Continental Light Dragoons. Instead of
having been wrested from the hands of the enemy in a bloody battle, the flag
had been found among officers' baggage in one of the houses the raiding party
had ransacked. How much of the $12.36 million paid for this object was based on
Tarleton’s inflation of a lie into a legend we shall never know.
Who Burned Bedford
The unincorporated hamlet
that calls itself Bedford Village was established in 1680, but visitors are
always surprised that no house in Bedford Bedford
during his raid on Pound Ridge, the entire hamlet of Bedford
For nearly 200 years,
historians dated the burning of Bedford
In 1974, two local historians,
Dorothy Hinitt and Frances Duncombe, published a book titled The Burning of Bedford that conclusively
proved Bedford
Six years later, while researching
Bedford
British cavalry, 400 strong,
arrived in Bedford on July 11 to find that Moylan’s
dragoons had left Bedford the day before to defend
Connecticut Clinton
had mounted a punitive expedition to punish Connecticut
Frustrated at finding their
quarry gone and still angry at having been fired upon by Bedford
residents during the earlier Pound Ridge raid, cavalry troopers led by Lt. Col.
Samuel Birch of the 17th Light Dragoons burned Bedford
Did Mrs. Murray Stall the British?
Flouting all historical
evidence, circumstantial and factual, the myth has persisted that Mary Lindley
Murray gave a party for British officers that delayed their invasion of Manhattan Island
It's a delightful fiction but
one that does not bear close examination. On September 15, 1776, the British
made an impressive amphibious landing at Kip's Bay (on the East River at about
what is now 34th Street Manhattan
According to some
historians, Gen. Israel Putnam's 3,000 troops and 67 guns in lower Manhattan could have been easily captured had British troops
pushed across this sparsely settled part of the narrow island
of Manhattan to the shore of the Hudson
But, in a widely accepted
story, patriotic Mrs. Robert Murray, whose house occupied the elevation then
called Inclenberg (now Murray Hill), diverted invading British staff officers
by inviting them to stop for refreshments.
This charming account first
saw the light of day in the journal kept by a tireless diarist of the period,
Continental Army surgeon James Thacher.
Later writers imaginatively
embellished the Murray
Was Mrs. Murray indeed a
patriotic siren, a veritable American Circe, as so many writers portrayed her?
The truth is she was a 50-year-old Quaker lady, the wife of a prosperous
merchant and the mother of twelve children--a middle-aged woman oddly cast in
the improbable role of vamp and temptress.
Because the gently sloping
hill on which the Murray mansion stood was an objective of the first wave of
the landing force, Mrs. Murray may have
invited the British officers into her parlor--but not very likely "to
enjoy her old Madeira," as one writer put it. She had little choice. The
British had selected her house to serve as their temporary headquarters.
Given that the British
officers were fresh from victory at Brooklyn Heights and spoiling for a another
fight, Madeira, even if it existed in the Murray household, would hardly have delayed
the advance of the entire British landing force bent on evicting American
troops and occupying New York City.
The British delay in pushing forward has a
more prosaic explanation.
Gen. Sir William Howe had
ordered the first division of about 4,000 men under Gen. Henry Clinton to land at
Kip’s Bay and seize and hold Murray Hill until the 9,000 men of the second division
could be landed and brought into action. It was not until 5 p.m. that Howe’s
entire force was ashore.
While Howe waited for the
second wave to join him as planned, George Washington took advantage of the
gift of time to reform his troops in strong natural defensive positions on Morningside
Heights (then called Harlem Heights), near the site of the present Columbia
University, where work had already been begun on a three-line defense in depth.
The repulse of Howe's
impetuous advance guard in a running battle on the Heights the next day taught
the British commander something about Washington Washington
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Debunking Our Historical Myths
HISTORY
"All history, so far as
it is not supported by contemporary evidence, is romance." So observed Dr.
Samuel Johnson to James Boswell, his biographer. No period of history has been
subject to more romantic enhancement than the American Revolution.
Dr. Johnson's sage remark
was brought to mind by the holiday we just observed. We should more properly
call it:
America’s Erroneous Birthday
The Fourth of July is universally regarded as America Philadelphia
Not the least of these errors
is John Trumbull's historically inaccurate painting, "The Declaration of
Independence," which hangs in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol and is
reproduced on the obverse of the two-dollar bill.
In their old age, John Adams
and Thomas Jefferson both mistakenly recalled that the document had been signed
on July 4th, adding to a fiction that apparently will not die. Despite its date
of July 4th, the Continental Congress actually voted in favor of independence
on July 2nd. Two days later it adopted the wording of Jefferson ’s
Declaration.
In New York Washington Bowling Green Connecticut
As for signing the document,
Jefferson ’s rough draft of the Declaration was
not ordered to be engrossed (penned) on parchment until July 19, 1776--more
than two weeks after the Fourth of July.
In fact, no one actually
signed the document until August 2nd, when all delegates present did so. At
least six of the 56 signatures were added later. Matthew Thornton from New Hampshire
Thomas McKean, of Delaware
Four conservative members of
the Continental Congress refused to sign the document on principle. These were
John Dickinson of Pennsylvania ; James Duane, who
became a mayor of New York City (Duane Street Bedford , N.Y.
Some members of the
Continental Congress never signed--for good reason: Generals George Washington,
John Sullivan, Christopher Gadsden and George Clinton were all serving in the
field. Fiery radical Patrick Henry did not sign; he had resigned precipitously
from the Continental Congress in February of 1776 and returned to Virginia
In British eyes, signing
such a document represented a treasonable act, so delay on the part of any
signers is understandable. When Lewis Morris, then third lord of the manor of
Morrisania in Westchester (now part of the borough of the Bronx ),
was about to sign, he was reminded that doing so would risk death and
confiscation of his manor, which lay in the path of the fighting.
"Damn the consequences, give me the
pen," he is said to have replied. He signed with a flourish; his Westchester estate was ravaged in retaliation. The homes
of 15 of the signers of the Declaration were destroyed.
Who Created the Stars and Stripes?
Who Created the Stars and Stripes?
June 14th is celebrated as
Flag Day because on that date in 1776, Congress passed a resolution vaguely defining
what the American flag should look like. It said, "Resolved that the flag
of the United States
Many authorities believe
that the "Bennington Flag," flown at the battle of Bennington, Vt., in August of 1777, was the first to be carried
by American ground forces in battle. Its blue field, nine stripes deep, has an
arch of only 11 seven-pointed stars over the numerals "76," with two
stars added at the top corners.
Unfortunately, the design of
the Bennington
Another claim is that the
Stars and Stripes were first flown over Fort Stanwix (on the site of modern
Rome, N.Y.), which held out against British Col. Barry St. Leger's raiding
expedition into the Mohawk Valley in 1777. Marinus Willett supplied the makings
of this flag from British uniforms he captured at Peekskill
A flag historian later
decided that this "was not the Stars and Stripes, but a flag of the same
design as that raised by George Washington at Cambridge, Mass., on taking
command of the Continental Army" on July 3, 1775.
That flag had 13 alternating
red and white stripes and the joined crosses of St. George and St. Andrew in
the canton (the rectangle at the upper corner next to the staff). Washington 's Cambridge
flag was a modified version of the British Meteor Flag, so named not for its
design but because of the terror it supposedly struck in Britain
In the American version, six
horizontal white stripes were imposed on its red field, thus forming 13 alternate
red and white stripes.
According to a definitive
history of the American flag, "while Congress never formally adopted it,
this banner soon became known as the ‘Union Flag,' the 'Grand Union Flag,' the
'Congress Flag,' and the 'Colours of the United Colonies.’"
Other famous flags antedated
the Flag Resolution. These included the Bunker Hill Flag (probably a red flag
with a green tree in the canton); the Gadsden, or South Carolina Rattlesnake
Flag ("Don't Tread on Me"); the New England Pine Tree Flag ("An
Appeal to Heaven"); and the Crescent Flag, with a crescent moon in the
upper left corner and the word "Liberty" emblazoned across the
bottom), first flown at the siege of Charleston, S.C., in 1776.
Did Betsy Ross Sew the First Flag?
Don’t bet on it. Every schoolchild knows--and will
proudly tell you--that Betsy Ross made the first American flag in Philadelphia Washington
But did this widowed
upholsterer actually sew the first flag? Popularly called the "Betsy Ross
pattern," the flag in question has 13 five-pointed white stars in a
wreath, or circle, on a blue field, and with seven red and six white stripes.
Historians do not regard
that flag as a serious contender for the honor of being the first American
flag. Documentary evidence exists that Betsy was paid in 1777 for "making
ships' colours, etc."
In fact, the story of the
Betsy Ross flag did not surface until it was told in 1870, almost a hundred
years after the event, by her grandson, William Canby, who claimed it was a
family tradition.
Canby’s account was
supported by affidavits offered by Betsy Ross's granddaughter, daughter and
niece, which described, many years after the fact, how Betsy Ross recounted the
story of her flag. But no contemporaneous records exist attesting to her
primacy in the making of a 1776 flag.
One contemporary contender
was poet and artist Francis Hopkinson. A signer of the Declaration of
Independence from New Jersey , Hopkinson played
a role in designing the seals of the American Philosophical Society, the State
of New Jersey and the University of Pennsylvania
In 1780, Hopkinson wrote to
the Admiralty Board that he was pleased they liked the seal he had designed for
them, and requested recognition for this and "other devices" he
itemized, including designs for Continental currency.
Topping his list, however,
was his claim that he had created the "Stars and Stripes." Hopkinson
petitioned Congress and requested only "a Quarter Cask of the public
wine" for his "labours of fancy," evidence perhaps of his desire
more for recognition than for payment. After much wrangling, his invoice was
not paid because it lacked supporting vouchers. Congress decided in 1781 that
too many people had worked on the design of the flag for any one person to be
given credit as its creator.
Such fanciful distortions
from the time of the Revolution only prove the truth of another of Samuel
Johnson's remarks recorded by Boswell: "Many things which are false are
transmitted from book to book and gain credit in the world."
Tuesday, July 03, 2012
General Daniel Butterfield: Tarnished Hero
BIOGRAPHY
We often forget that history is not only shaped by
events, but it is also made by individuals.
A case in point is Gen. Daniel Butterfield. The
circumstances of his modification of an existing bugle call to create the
mournful Taps we know today were explored in these pages last week.
But Butterfield himself is a perplexing and
enigmatic figure whose career deserves close examination.
His rise in the military was meteoric by any
standard. Shortly after the 1861 Confederate attack on Fort Sumter,
he joined the Army in Washington, D.C., on April 16, as a first sergeant.
Despite having little military background other
than part-time militia service, within two weeks he obtained a commission as
a colonel in the 12th New York
Infantry. By July he was in command of a brigade.
By September he was a brigadier general.
Butterfield joined the Fifth Corps of Gen. McClellan’s Army of the
Potomac for the unsuccessful Peninsula Campaign to capture Richmond , Virginia
Butterfield continued in command of a brigade at the disastrous second battle of Bull
Run and
the battle of Antietam, a
Union victory but also the bloodiest day of the war.
In the battle of Fredericksburg ,
he commanded the Fifth Corps, one of the two corps that failed to take the key
position of Marye's Heights, despite 16 frontal attacks.
When Gen. Joseph Hooker was given command of the
Army of the Potomac in January 1863, he set a bad example for the conduct of generals and their
staffs by creating a backstabbing network of political cronies that included his
chief of staff, Daniel Butterfield, now a major general.
During this period, his
headquarters was described by cavalry officer Charles F. Adams, Jr., as “a
combination of a bar-room and a brothel."
As an officer, Butterfield was thoroughly disliked
by other officers. After he was wounded at Gettysburg in July of 1863 by a fragment of a
spent artillery shell, a fellow officer wrote, "Fortunately for him and the
joy of all, he has gone home." But their elation was short-lived.
Butterfield returned to headquarters after a brief recuperation. Following his
mustering out of the volunteer forces in 1865, he returned to private life.
The Gold Conspiracy
During the Civil War,
the United States government issued large sums of paper money
backed only by credit. In the war years, the U.S. national debt rose from $64
million to over $2.8 billion.
After the war ended, the government began a
policy of buying back “greenbacks” with gold and using the paper money to buy U.S.
The conspirators needed two additional key
players: someone with access to newly elected President Ulysses S. Grant and
someone willing to tip them off when the government intended to sell gold.
They found the first in Abel Corbin, a 61-year-old
widower who had married Grant’s younger sister, 37-year-old Jennie. The other
player who would leak insider information to them was Daniel Butterfield.
Corbin convinced Grant to appoint Butterfield as
assistant secretary of the treasury. Stationed in New York in the sub-treasury building on
Wall Street, his job was to handle sales of gold by the government in the
nearby exchange called the Gold Room.
Corbin arranged a meeting with Gould, who immediately
handed Butterfield a personal check for $10,000. The new appointee, whose
annual salary was $8,000, quietly pocketed the money.
In order to gain leverage for the gold scam, Gould
purchased the Tenth National Bank in New
York , a Wall Street bank with a reputation for making
sweetheart deals with favored clients.
Whenever Grant visited New York , Corbin arranged for the conspirators
to meet with the president. Gould's pitch to Grant was that it would be
advantageous to Western farmers if the price of gold went up since a bumper
grain crop was forecast and gold was the medium of payment for international
transactions. Grant listened but remained noncommittal. Gould mistook Grant's
silence for agreement.
On September 1, 1869, Gould instructed his brokers
to purchase $1.5 million in gold for Corbin's account and another 1.5 million
for Butterfield. For every dollar increase in the price of gold, each would net
a $15,000 profit.
Gould and Fisk began buying gold aggressively. By
Wednesday, September 22, gold closed at $141, up almost four dollars. Gould and
Fisk together owned some $50-$60 million in gold. That day’s price rise
generated a profit of over $1.75 million for the two conspirators. Gold closed
on September 23 at $144.50, up another $3.50.
During the two-week gold-buying frenzy, treasury
secretary George Boutwell in Washington
had followed developments closely. On the evening of Thursday, September 23 he
met with Grant and reported that gold's gyrations had caused the stock market
and commerce to nearly come to a halt. Furious at having been used, Grant
instructed Boutwell to sell gold "to save the country from a panic" if
the price advanced on Friday morning.
By 9:30 the next morning, the price of gold was at
$150, with the conspirators snapping up every offer. By 11 o'clock the price
had crept up to $155 and was edging toward $160.
The treasury secretary reported these numbers to
Grant and suggested that the government sell $3 million in gold from the New York sub-treasury.
"You’d better make it $5 million,” said Grant. Boutwell hurried back to his
office and dictated a telegram to Butterfield, splitting the difference:
SELL FOUR MILLION GOLD TOMORROW, AND BUY FOUR
MILLION BONDS SIGNED BOUTWELL
To keep Butterfield from tipping off the conspirators, Boutwell issued a simultaneous press release. The news hit the gold exchange like a bombshell. Gold, which had been hovering between $160 and $162, plummeted to $133 in minutes. Dozens of brokerages and hundreds of gold buyers went bankrupt. The day would become known as Black Friday. It would take years for American business and agriculture to recover.
Jay Gould
and Jim Fisk survived simply by refusing to pay for the gold they had ordered. Butterfield
was allowed to resign his Treasury post.
In testimony before a committee investigating the
gold conspiracy, Butterfield raised eyebrows by insisting the $10,000 he
accepted from Gould was an interest-free real estate loan with no documentation
or repayment date.
To escape further scrutiny, Butterfield
took his family on an extended tour of Europe .
For two years he lived off his investments, studying the London
and Paris postal
systems, and waiting for the heat to die down back home.
He returned to New York
from Europe two years later and rejoined the
American Express Company, the business his father had founded. Butterfield
prospered, branching into ventures ranging from steamboats to apartment houses
to banks. He ran twice for Congress on the Republican ticket and was a serious
contender for that party’s nomination for governor in the 1890s.
Successful
and wealthy, he lived in grand style on Cragside, his estate overlooking the Hudson in Cold
Spring , N.Y.
On Memorial Day in 1901, Daniel Butterfield dedicated
the monument he had erected at the Fredericksburg
battlefield to commemorate the service of his Fifth Corps. A short time later,
he died of a stroke on July 17, 1901, at his home in Cold Spring at the age of
70.
Although not a West Point graduate, Butterfield
was buried in the West Point
Cemetery
The Butterfield house and grounds eventually
passed into the hands of the Fathers of Mercy, a Roman Catholic congregation of
missionary priests founded in France .
It was destroyed in a spectacular fire the night of December 20, 1979.
The Butterfield Statue Controversy
An amusing sidebar to the Daniel Butterfield story concerns a statue of him commissioned by his widow. In her will, Mrs. Butterfield had specifically directed the executors "to cause to be erected in the Borough of Manhattan, near or in Central Park, a colossal statue of Gen. Daniel Butterfield, representing him wearing a cocked hat and standing with his arms folded, as shown in a picture of him in a bronze bas relief in the rooms of the Historical Society at Utica, New York."
While the statue was being created, a running
battle began between the executors of the will and sculptor Gutzon Borglum, who
would later design and carve Mt. Rushmore in South
Dakota . Borglum had been asked to modify the statue
so often and so extensively that the exasperated sculptor signed his name on
the top of Butterfield's head. "That's the only part of the original
statue in which they didn't make one change," he commented wryly.
Borglum's statue was cast by the Gorham Company
and erected on February 23, 1918, not near or in Central Park but in Sakura Park
The sculptor had agreed to create and erect the
statue for $54,000 and had been paid $21,600. Claiming that the sculpture was
not artistic, did not resemble General Butterfield and was not colossal, the executors
of Mrs. Butterfield's will refused to pay the balance, so Borglum sued. A year
and a half later, a jury viewed the statue and returned the verdict that the
sculptor had complied with the terms of the contract.
Whether the balance, which covered the casting of
the statue, was ever paid is not known. Mrs. Butterfield’s estate was worth
millions, and money was not a problem.
