Christmas with George Washington by Diane Scott Lewis

Since I'm writing about America during the American Revolution, and Christmas is close, I delved into the traditions following one of our famous heroes, George Washington.

The turn of the tide for the Patriots: General, and future first president, George Washington, spent a freezing Christmas crossing the frozen Delaware River in 1776. His rebel forces fought the Battle of Trenton in New Jersey, which led to a string of victories. The holiday was forgotten amidst the chaos of battle.

The famous painting of this event wasn't produced until 1851.

Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emanuel Leutze

In happier times, at his Virginia estate called Mount Vernon--a great place to visit if you have the chance--Christmas was a popular holiday.

Mount Vernon, VA

Washington spent a typical Christmas season foxhunting on his estate with friends and family, visiting his grist mill, and attending services at the Pohick Church. Food and alcoholic drinks, especially rum punch, were in abundance.

Throughout his life, Christmas, or close to Christmas, would impact George. In 1740, on Christmas Eve, his home at Ferry Farm across the Rappahannock River from Fredericksburg, VA, (where I used to live) burned down. He was only eight years old. His family took shelter in the detached kitchen and "...spent a cheerless Christmas day."

In 1751, George and his half brother were returning on a ship from Barbados (Lawrence had gone there, hoping the climate would help his consumption, later called TB.) Washington wrote that they ate Irish goose and toasted absent friends.

In 1753, young George was fighting in the French and Indian Wars. They spent Christmas Eve in a place called "Murdering Town." That doesn't sound pleasant.  On Christmas day, they gave gifts to an Indian "Queen."

Lt. Col. Washington by Reǵnier, 1834

 

In 1759, George married the widow, Martha Custis, on Twelfth Night, the last day of Christmas celebrations.

Colonial Christmas traditions were to attend church, decorate windows with greenery and berries, and invite family and friends for dinner. Fish, oysters, brandied peaches, and mincemeat pies were popular dishes.

In my novel Her Vanquished Land, I tell the Loyalist side of the American Revolution as seen through the eyes of a young woman, Rowena Marsh, who decodes messages for the British. These people who didn't wish to break away from England were shocked by the uprising, bullied, hanged, or forced to flee their homes.

"Rowena is a star. Readers will love to read this alternative view of American history." InD'tale Magazine

To purchase from Amazon

 

For more information on me and my books, visit my website: Diane Scott Lewis

 

Diane Scott Lewis grew up in California, traveled the world with the navy, edited for an on-line publisher, and wrote book reviews for the Historical Novel Society. She lives with her husband and one naughty puppy in Western Pennsylvania.

REENACTMENT AT MONMOUTH

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I just went to the Battle of Monmouth last weekend in nearby NJ—although I was in no danger of being shot or impaled by a British dragoon. For a novelist, historical reenactments like this one are a unique kind of research. It’s one which, especially for the dedicated participants who volunteer their time to living history, functions as a full-on primitive camping trip, a personal exercise in experiencing the hard realities of “time travel.”

Kathy Fischer-Brown, who also writes the Revolution (The Serpent's Tooth Trilogy) did a lot of the work of getting us there, so she's the "we" and "us" in the following recitation.

At such events, you’ll find a group of dedicated history buffs portraying life as it was, in this case, during our now mythologized Revolution. These folks wear the clothes, made  of wool, muslin, and linen. They negotiate the territory wearing the one-shape-fits-both-left-and-right-foot shoes. After the “battle,” the men – and the women filling the ranks as foot soldiers--clean and oil their black powder flint locks, clean (puke!) the cannon. The “camp followers,” in reality, mostly poor women and their kids who would starve if they didn’t follow their soldier husbands, pluck chickens and scrape vegetables and use the cooking utensils—on the road, like this, mostly big black pots, knives, and iron cranes, to prepare their meals. Often, just as in the past, those big pots do double duty for food preparation.

At night they’ll sleep on the ground, with the marked exception of a few officers with camp cots. Washington, Lafayette and Joh Laurens are said to have slept under a tree together on the eve of this battle. On the British side, there will be tents and even the occasional officer’s lady/mistress, prettily parading at the encampment. On the American side, they’ll sack out in a group on hay strewn beneath a lean-to roofed with green branches. As much as possible, they walk the walk and talk the talk—and, this being summer in New Jersey—they sweat the sweat too.

Unlike the reenactment, the original Battle of Monmouth was not much fun. More soldiers are said to have died of heat prostration than bullets. And New Jersey was thoroughly beaten up in the American Revolution, marched and back and forth upon by both armies. (Only Massachusetts and Virginia may have suffered more.) The British Army, with a contingent of brutalized professional soldiers, plundered and raped indiscriminately. “…a day of rest and plunder,” is casually noted in the Visitor’s Center display, as the British Army who’d settled in the little town (then called Monmouth Courthouse) the day before the engagement. Don’t forget, though, that there was bad behavior by the Americans, too, under the cover of “Freedom’s Cause.” Violent militia groups with an ax to grind took advantage of local breakdowns of law and order in exactly the same way.  

This year at the Battlefield State Park, a young "soldier" reminded us that if you’d had a vote on The War of Independence—1/3 of the population would have been for it, 1/3 of the population against leaving the British Empire, and 1/3 just trying to stay the hell out of the way and get on with trying to farm their fields and raise their families. It must have been a long, dangerous, frightening eight years for all colonists.

However, June 18-19,  2016, was a great day to be at the place where all this history happened. Sunny skies brought out lots of people to take in the spectacle—the black powder display which seems to attract most of them.  They came in like a wave, and then, after the shooting was over and the acrid black powder smoke drifted away, departed.

After the crowd dispersed taking their small children, the hard core remains--folks like us who love history and the reenactors, who, I think, can lay claim to loving it even more. This is the time in which you may visit the encampments to observe and perhaps chat a bit while those in costume make their supper.  The reenactors Kathy and I have met are spectacularly devoted to their chosen task. (Calling it a "hobby" wouldn't be correct.) We saw entire families, from infants on up, at this “camping trip + time-travel”, everyone dressed appropriately.  Even little fifer boys of eight or nine are willing to play a part and give a history lesson.

Loyalist Rangers

One enjoyable facet of this reenactment at Monmouth was the number of young people enthusiastically and knowledgeably present.  Kathy and I enjoyed meeting the “smallpox survivors” who’d gone to the trouble of makeup to demonstrate active pocks, scaring, and boils.  Other young reenactors had constructed an ingenious in-ground cooktop, which conserved fuel and was less obvious from a distance than an open fire. (The reason, we were told, that you won't see this at a lot of other reenactments is that the Park personnel are usually not keen about folks digging holes.) Several pots of bubbling stew—a random assortment of vegetables and some chicken, with a bit of flour added, were being served, along with chunks of hearty bread.  

Laundry too "cooked" in a large "copper"—the heat and a bit of lye soap part of the sanitization process necessary for undergarments, this explained by the barefoot woman of the army busy stirring the pot. She and her sisters-in-arms were busy everywhere, all at work at some period appropriate task.   

In Sutler's Row, Lady Ellen showcases her talent as a seamstress; note what we'd call "mismatch."

BTW not a selfie in the background, but the heavy crook of her cane.

A pot full of chicken is seared.

         The in-ground cooktop/oven

Col. Hamilton was at Monmouth, an aide de camp who rode all day carrying messages around the battlefield for his commander-in-chief. (His doings, of course, brought about my original interest in the site.) Miscommunications and a lack of concerted movement by Gen. Charles Lee and Gen. George Washington turned the battle, begun so promisingly, into a kind of draw. This action, the longest single day's action in the war, was, nevertheless, an important moral victory for the Americans. Although the British continued on to their embarkation point at Sandy Hook, for the first time, the American army really stood up for itself against the military know-how of a far more mission-ready foe.

To close, if you write historical novels, there's a great deal to be learned at reenactments. Simply observing people wearing the clothing kick starts my writing process. Therefore, if you've never attended one, this summer would be a perfect time to start.

~~Juliet Waldron

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*With heartfelt thanks to everyone who participated in this marvelous day of living history, especially to the 2nd PA "The Regiment" The 43rd of Foot, who were so generous sharing their knowledge.

A Very Short History of Spies and Spying during the American Revolution

by Kathy Fischer-Brown

As one of the world’s oldest occupations, espionage in one form or another has been around for as long as men have contended for territory and resources, waged wars, vied for crowns, and pressed for industrial and scientific advantage and superiority. While in no way possessing the skills, training, and technological tchotchkes of modern-day spies—or their counterparts in some of cinema’s great blockbusters—covert agents played a vital role in the American Revolution.

Anyone who’s watched the AMC hit mini-series, “TURN” (although I will not vouch for its total accuracy), knows that George Washington, as well as his British adversaries, relied heavily on gathering information about enemy strengths and weaknesses, their movements and supply lines when planning their campaigns. He also expended time and energy in disseminating misleading information through the same channels. But for the first few years of the war, American intelligence efforts were no match for the superior training and methods of His Majestey’s agents.

This was soon to change. Under the auspices of The Committee of Secret Correspondence, created during the Second Continental Congress in November of 1775, General Washington was provided with an assortment of alpha-numeric codes, several kinds of secret ink and an equal number of ways to employ them, as well as novel means of transporting and exchanging these communiqués. In addition to hiding messages in canteens and false shoe heels, among others, one clever method involved tearing the message into narrow strips, rolling them up tight, and stuffing the slivers into the hollow stem of a goose quill pen. 

In the pictures shown here, you can see a simple but ingenious method employed by the British during their summer campaign of 1777, which ended in the defeat of General Burgoyne’s forces at Saratoga. The first picture (above right) depicts a seemingly innocuous letter from British general Sir Henry Clinton to John Burgoyne, comprised mostly of nonsense and false information. The Code Mask (shown left) was based on the Cardan System developed by Geronimo Cardano, an innovator in encrypted messages. A cut-out shape was placed over the letter, revealing the encrypted message inside the text (below right). It must have been fun composing a letter so that only the important words were shown through the mask. 

People from all walks of life served as eyes and ears for their respective causes. Among their numbers were women. Although but a few names have come down to us through history—Lydia Darragh, Anna Strong, Ann Bates, among them—no one knows exactly how many women worked behind the lines, selling food and other necessaries as sutlers in the camps and meeting places frequented by Rebels, British, and Tories. In many cases, such as that of Agent 355, a member of the famous Culper Ring out of Setauket, New York, we don’t even know their real names. It’s safe to assume that we never will.

Spying is central to the plot in the second and third books of my “Serpent’s Tooth” trilogy, set during the early years of the War for Independence. In Courting the Devil (book 2), we find our hero leading a band of “scouts” whose directive is to gather information vital to the American cause in advance of the British march on Albany. The heroine, Anne, is betrayed by a particularly unscrupulous American agent to Loyalists who have been misled to think she’s a spy. Her brutal “interrogation” is in no way far-fetched. In fact, I saved her from a far worse fate: that suffered by the real-life Canadian Tory spy, “Miss Jenny,” at the hands of French soldiers serving under Lafayette in 1778. Under the pretense of seeking her father in their camp, she aroused suspicions and was arrested. Not only did her captors try to beat the truth out of her, they raped her. If that wasn’t despicable enough, they cut off her hair—an act considered the height of humiliation at the time. Miss Jenny, however, did not relent and successfully completed her mission. After returning to the British camp with her intelligence, she vanished from history. It is interesting to note that women, in general, were considered too “simple” to understand the complexities of a military campaign, and for the most part, were not taken seriously. A rather short-sighted attitude on both sides of the conflict.

Captain Daniel Taylor, a character who appears briefly in Courting the Devil, was an actual Tory spy who plied his trade between New York City and the area around the upper Hudson River during the British push toward Albany from Canada. Although elusive, he was eventually apprehended by American soldiers, who went on to discover a coded message to General Burgoyne concealed in a hollow bullet in his hair. Taylor immediately swallowed the incriminating evidence, but was given a “strong emetic,” which did as it was intended. He was convicted of spying and hanged. Some say his execution was in retaliation for Nathan Hale’s death a year earlier.

In The Partisan’s Wife (book 3 of the trilogy), the reader is introduced to a number of shady characters, some real, some fictitious, as well as Washington, himself, and a few of his spy masters, as the stakes for our hero and heroine become deadly.

~*~ 

Kathy Fischer Brown is a BWL author of historical novels, and The Return of Tachlanad, her newly released epic fantasy adventure for young adult and adult readers. Check out her The Books We Love Author page or visit her website. All of her books are available in a variety of e-book formats and in paperback from Amazon and other online retailers.

Pictures courtesy of the Clements Library.