USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Pittsfield > The history of Pittsfield (Berkshire County), Massachusetts, from the year 1734 to the year 1800 > Part 26
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1 His brother-in-law and legal preceptor, Oliver Arnold, was first cousin to the traitor.
17
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sense of his own personal rights to the interest of his country renders it impossible to believe that he was guilty of the conduct of which he was hastily suspected.
As the time approached when the term for which Col. Easton's men had enlisted would expire, Gen. Montgomery urged Major Brown to remain in the service, and attempt to raise a regiment from those about to be disbanded from his own and other corps. Brown consented ; and, considering the difficulties which lay in his way, mustered a respectable number of men, among whom Capt. Eli Root, Lieut. Joel Dickinson, and Lieut. Joseph Allen, with six privates, enrolled themselves, on the 1st of January, as from Pittsfield, which sent four additional men on the 23d of the same month.
Col. Easton's regiment was discharged on the 31st of December. On the day previous, the disastrous assault on Quebec, which cost the American armies the noble Montgomery, was made. The troops were ordered to parade at two o'clock in the morning. The first division, commanded by Montgomery in person, com- prised the New-York regiments and part of Col. Easton's; the second, under Arnold, embraced the detachment he had brought from Cambridge, and Lamb's artillery. Besides these were Liv- ingston's small corps, and a detachment of ninety-four men from Major Brown's newly-organized battalion, under command of Capt. Jacob Brown.1
The four divisions paraded separately; and the two latter amused the enemy, while Montgomery and Arnold led the real assaults at divers points. We need not enter into the sad details. Montgomery fell mortally wounded, while gallantly fighting at the head of his men. Arnold, while no less gallantly leading his, was wounded in the leg, and carried off the field. The attack. was abandoned. By the death of Montgomery, Gen. Wooster suc- ceeded to the chief command in Canada; but kept his quarters quietly during the winter at Montreal, while Arnold doggedly maintained the siege of Quebec, chiefly by keeping up a bloekade which excluded supplies. Carleton, confident of his ability to hold out until the breaking-up of the ice in the spring should permit re-enforcements from England to reach him, as doggedly defended his position within the walls.
1 Capt. Jacob Brown was brother of the major, and father-in-law of David Bush of Pittsfield.
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During this winter's siege, Col. Brown was posted with his regi- ment at the advance post, within cannon-shot of the city forti- fications. " A plenty of thirty-six-pound balls," said he, in a letter of Feb. 7 to his father, "come to our door without hands: two of them we use for hand-irons." In a letter of March 15 to his wife, he expressed great pleasure in a rumor that Gen. Lee was near at hand. "Gen. Arnold and I," said he, "do not agree very well. I expect another storm soon, and that I must be a Uriah. We had [manuscript illegible] yesterday. The enemy made a sally on our working-party, it was said with five hundred men." Gen. Arnold immediately ordered me, being on the advance post, to attack them with my detachment, which consists of about two hundred men, more than half of whom were sick in hospital. I accordingly marched against the enemy, who re- tired into their fort too soon for me to attack them. I expect to be punished for disobedience of orders next .. . . I suppose all letters are broken open before they reach the Colonies; but as this goes by a friend, Capt. Pixley, it will come safe."
New England having responded to an earnest appeal for re- enforcements, Gen. Wooster's force was, by the 1st of April, in- creased to three thousand men, of whom, however, about eight hundred lay sick with small-pox. No preventive was then known for this malady, - then the most dreaded of pestilences, - except inoculation of the patient with its own virus, after his system had undergone a severe regimen and a peculiar medical treatment. Those who submitted to this process generally survived the ordeal; but a considerable percentage died, and all were subjected to more or less suffering. There was, besides, great danger, that, from the inoculating pest-houses, the disease might extend to the sur- rounding community.
There was, therefore, the most intense prejudice against the practice in the minds of the people ; and the special vote of the town, which was required before it was permitted, was always obtained with the utmost difficulty, and accompanied by the most stringent restrictions, which the physicians were required to give bond to respect, while a committee of the most prudent citizens was appointed to supervise their conduct. Even this, indeed, was a revolutionary assumption of authority on the part of the towns, for there was a law of the Province prohibiting inoculation, except in the town of Boston; and the Council in July, 1776, expressed
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their unwillingness to credit the report that Gen. Ward had granted liberty to some of the Continental troops to receive it at Winter Hill, to the great dread of the good people of Medford.1
In the spring of 1774, Dr. Childs, foreseeing the war, and antici- pating the infection to which the army would be exposed, asked permission " to set up inoculation " in Pittsfield ; but it was refused. IIe renewed his application with increased earnestness before the town-meeting of April, 1775, which again denied him. It was not until after sad experience, that in September, 1776, the requisite license was accorded, and then only with hesitancy, and accom- panied by the most embarrassing conditions. Only those who had the thoughtfulness, as well as the means, to visit other places for the purpose, went to the war protected against the fearful con- tagion. Rev. Mr. Allen, on entering the service, visited Sheffield, and there submitted to inoculation.
Patterson's regiment, in the latter part of April, proceeded to Canada via New York and the Hudson; and a detachment of sixty-seven, taken from several of its companies, were included in the cowardly capitulation at the Cedars, where, on the 19th of May, three hundred and ninety-six Americans were surrendered by Major Butterfield to Capt. Foster, who led a force of forty British regulars, one hundred Canadians, and five hundred Indians, the latter commanded by Brant in person. Major Sherburn, arriving near the scene soon after the surrender, having been sent to the relief of Butterfield, fell into an ambuscade, and, after making a splendid fight, was also obliged to capitulate. But Foster, in vio- lation of the terms he had granted, permitted his savages to plun- der both detachments of the American prisoners, and to murder many of Sherburn's corps, which lost in the battle and the massacre fifty-eight men. In Butterfield's detachment were two of Capt. Noble's company, - Elisha Kingsley and Tristram Story.
Burgoyne arriving early in May, with succor for Quebec, the Americans were compelled to retreat, and soon entirely to evacuate Canada. All that dash and enthusiasm, inspired by a reasonable hope of great results, - in spite of imperfect discipline, meagre numbers, and the scantiest appointments, - had enabled the army of 1775 to win, was lost in a few brief weeks of 1776.
The remnant of the retreating forces reached Crown Point in
1 Am. Ar., 5th ser. vol. i. p. 146.
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June, in a state of demoralization which is thus vividly and truth- fully depicted in a letter of John Adams, dated July 7 :-
" Our army at Crown Point is an object of wretchedness, enough to fill a humane mind with horror: disgraced, defeated, discontented, dispirited, diseased, naked, undisciplined, eaten up with vermin, no clothes, beds, blan- kets, no medicine, no victuals but salt pork and flour. . .. I hope that measures will be taken to cleanse the army at Crown Point from the small- pox; and that other measures will be taken in New England, by tolerating and encouraging inoculation, to render the disease less terrible.
Capt. Noble, of the minute-men of 1775, died at Crown Point from the secondary effects of small-pox, having previously written home the following letter, which finds its illustration in the above extract from Mr. Adams's : -
CROWN POINT, July 1, 1776.
DEAR WIFE, - I would inform you, that, through Divine Providence, I am alive, but not over-well; for by reason of hard fatigue before I had the small-pox, by marching and unsuitable diet, the distemper has left me in a poor state of health, though I had it very light. Ten days ago I was sent, with the sick, from Isle Aux-Noix to this place, and have grown worse rather than better since I came here. Our army is very distressed by reason of the small-pox. We have had four thousand sick at once. I have not lost one of my company, though some of us had it very severe. Sergeant Colefix is now very bad, and it is doubtful if he ever recovers. I had two men taken by the Indians in Major Sherburn's party, which are redeemed; and one Samuel Merry, of my company, is either killed or taken by the regulars, going down on a raft from Montreal to Sorel. The distress of our sick is so unaccountable that I cannot paint it out by pen and ink. (All of my com- pany have had it.) If it was not for the danger of the small-pox, I should like to have brother James or David come up and see me, and bring my horse ; for I intend to try to come home if I remain so poorly. I believe one of them may come safe by taking good care when he gets here. I suppose there are about four thousand of the well of our army at Isle Aux-Noix ; and whether they will remain there or come here I do not know. Tell Crowner's wife that he has had the small-pox, and has got well over the distemper, but has had the misfortune to have it fall into one of his eyes ; so that I am afraid he will lose the sight of one eye. He remembers his kind love to her and child. He intends to try to come home when I come : he cannot write for want of paper. It is very hard living here. Wine one dollar per quart, spirits one dollar per quart, loaf-sugar three shillings per pound, butter one shilling and sixpence, none to be had for that : no milk. All of the above articles hardly to be had. Vinegar three shillings per quart. I shall write no more at present, but remain your loving husband,
DAVID NOBLE, Captain.
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The calamitous termination of the invasion of Canada brought to its culmination the opposition to Schuyler, which in the county of Berkshire, in King's District, and on the New-Hampshire Grants, had been growing ever since his appointment to the northern com- mand.
An unblemished patriot, a gallant soldier, and no mean states- man, Schuyler was yet distinguished by qualities, both positive and negative, which rendered him, if qualified for any departmental command, remarkably ill-adapted to that which was assigned him, between a majority of whose people and himself there existed an incompatibility which resulted in antagonism fatal to the public interests. An aristocrat of the aristocrats, he hated the nonchalant and robustuous democracy of Massachusetts, and the still ruder independence of the settlers upon The Grants. A New-Yorker of the New-Yorkers, jealous of the rights of his Province, he partici- pated to the full in the feeling excited by the alleged encroach- ment of the New-Englanders upon her castern border, and was prepared to resist, at any cost, the new invasion of her territory under pretence of patents from New Hampshire. Intimate, socially and personally, with many of the higher class of loyalists in King's District, he could not be made to believe thein guilty of the secret plots against their country, and the violation of their solemn pledges, of which they were popularly accused. Annoyed and embarrassed by the machinations of the malignant Tories, he was willing to proceed strenuously against them ; but he was indig- nant at the harshness with which his friends, the Van Schaacks, and others of like stamp, had been " handled " by the committees. The ill blood which arose in the district on this account between him and a " certain class of Whigs " was perhaps more bitter than his differences with the same class in Berkshire, or even upon the Grants.
Coming to his command with a nervous horror of partisan war- fare, he attributed that character to the proud-spirited and am- bitious militia of the hills, who, prone to hardy and independent enterprise, were not easily controlled, but kept him in perpetual terror of some rash adventure; while they failed him in executing his best-laid schemes of falling back for an indefinitely postponed advance. And he refused to renounce his prejudices against them, even when he found that they alone won victories in his depart- ment, and, having won them, showed a regard for the amenities
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of honorable warfare, and observed its laws with a scrupulous nicety, which put to shame the regulars whom they encountered.1 He failed to perceive a courtesy which was not expressed in courtly phrase, or to recognize chivalry except in those of gentle blood, --- as gentility went in Provincial America. As a soldier, his courage was proved ; as a general, few in the American armies could better set a squadron in the field, or were more familiar with the rules of their art. As a commander of department, none labored more arduously, or gave themselves with more untiring zeal and indus- try to the unthankful task of providing material of war; none did so more unselfishly, as was grandly shown in his ceaseless exertions to supply the northern army when forbidden to hope for any large share in the glory of its anticipated achievements. But he was destitute of that great element in generalship, which, given a certain soldiery with whom to accomplish a specific end, takes them as it finds them, with all their faults and with all their excel- lences, wins their confidence, and makes the most of what is in them. Schuyler, on the contrary, fretfully magnified the imperfec- tions of the men committed to him, and was perversely blind to their good qualities as soldiers. Assigned to a position surrounded by innumerable difficulties, he possessed nothing of the spirit which delights to encounter obstacles, the energy which turns them to its own account, and, least of all, that calm strength which endures without complaint what cannot be avoided or changed.
Much of that which was to be regretted in him was the result of the depressing influence of ill health ; and, reviewing his career, we cannot fail to recognize the true patriot and statesman, and the general whose abilities would have given him perhaps brilliant success in almost any other field than that in which he was placed.
The radical Whigs, who controlled the politics of his depart- ment, were hardly to be expected so clearly to perceive his merits. Between the Revolutionary committees of that region and such a man as we have described, conflict was inevitable. Of political and social sentiments the very reverse of those which characterized Schuyler, the committees were also extremely unlike him in temperament and habits of thought. Impetuous, sometimes even to rashness, in their zeal, they and their followers were ever ready
1 See, in illustration, the story of Ethan Allen and Gen. Prescott.
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to rally in sudden emergency, or for the execution of dashing enterprises ; but, if the opportunity to meet the enemy was not speedily accorded them, they grew impatient of the necessary restraint of military discipline. In their theory of the art of war, retreat was omitted from the list of contingencies. As a general, Fabius was by no means a model in their esteem. Judging the readiness of all men to make sacrifices for their country by their own, they underrated the impediments which Schuyler found in raising armies and accumulating stores. Intolerant of the luke- warmness of moderate Whigs as well as of the misdeeds of the loyalists, they denounced the former in no measured terms, while they advocated and practised the most rigid discipline of the latter. Many of them of narrow experience in affairs, and wanting that liberality towards opponents which contact with the great world brings, they could not explain the perhaps over-generous sentiments of Schuyler towards some of those whom they classed indiscriminately as the enemies of American liberty, except upon the hypothesis of his sympathy with their Toryism.
When, therefore, information came to Berkshire and King's District of the sad aspect which affairs wore in Canada, and finally that all which had been gained there, at such great cost, was wrested from the Americans, - smarting under the disappointment of hopes which with them had been more sanguine than else- where, - the people of those districts were ready to charge the commander who, although not long personally in the field, had from the first been nominally at the head of operations, with the responsibility for their miserable failure. Among its prime causes, they ranked the brief delay before St. Johns, to which he had been persuaded by the report of a treacherous informer to the neglect of the truthful representations of John Brown and James Livingston. Other missteps of the expedition were attributed to him, oftenest unjustly, through the malignancy of his enemies, who played upon the popular feeling through unscrupulous emis- saries, who found powerful auxiliaries in Schuyler's unfortunate peculiarities. In the frame of mind thus produced, the community was ready to credit the most absurd statements which jumped with its humor of the hour. Even before the defeated and pest- stricken army reached Crown Point, the excited feeling among the people at home had risen to a height which invited, what men thus frenzied will always find, witnesses of the Titus Oakes stamp,
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ready, for the sake of a sorry notoriety and a petty reward, to play upon their fears and fancies. The chief among these was an in- former, whose name, like that of the other witnesses, was withheld, on the pretence, that, if it was known, his life would be in danger, and who related what one George Hindsdale had told him that he had heard from one McDonald, an agent who had been sent to view the lead-mines at Canaan. Most or all of the evidence was of this hearsay character, having often passed through three or four months before it was deposed before the committees; eleven of which listened to the informer just mentioned at Richmond, Valentine Rathbun presiding.
The informers were credulously favored by the most violent and radical of the committee-men, whose prominence and popularity were augmented by whatever deepened the general hatred of the Tories, and brought odium upon the moderate Whigs. Out of the evidence elicited, this class formed the outlines of a "hellish plot," of whose reality they succeeded in convincing both them- selves and a majority of the community. This plot, they imagined, had been concocted between Gen. Schuyler, the British Govern- ment, and the New-York Tories, among whom, it was alleged, were included the whole Provincial Congress, with two exceptions only. The gist of the plan was, that Schuyler's New-York forces, or as many of them as would not excite suspicion, were to be stationed in a line of forts along the Hudson River, from Canada to New-York City ; who, on an appointed day, were to raise the British flag, and permit the king's troops to ascend the river, and cut off communication between the Southern and Eastern Colo- nies.
So earnest was the faith of the people in this fiction, that there was the most unbounded terror throughout Berkshire, the north- ern part of which was patrolled by the militia night and day. Letters were also sent to Gen. Washington, some of them charging Schuyler with downright treason; some, like one of Matthew Algate, chairman of the King's-District committee, only " discovering " to the commander-in-chief "a glimmering of such a plot as had seldom appeared in the world since the fall of Adam by the grand deceiver and supplanter of truth." 1 Others left it an open question, whether Schuyler was traitorous, or simply
1 Am. Ar., 4th ser. vol. vi.
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incompetent. But all alike were handed over by Washington to Schuyler, with the warmest expressions of his continued confidence, both in his integrity and ability. Nothing, probably, could have been better adapted, than the course of the committees, to strength- en his affection for the accused, who, whatever other faults he may have possessed, he knew could not be untrue to the country which trusted him.
The New-York Congress, to whom Capt. Douglas went person- ally to prefer charges against the commander of the department, dismissed them as scornfully as did Washington. Schuyler demanded a court of inquiry ; but it was refused as unnecessary.
Such, briefly, was the famous affair of Schuyler and the Berk- shire committees.
We resume the account of the events which caused the loss of Col. Easton and John Brown to the Continental Army ; one of the most remarkable records of wrong, and the refusal of justice, in the history of that time, or perhaps of any other.
Soon after the death of Montgomery, Major Brown, claiming the rank of colonel, which had been given him by that commander, was refused it by Arnold. He demanded the reason of the denial, and then first learned that their great enemy charged Col. Easton and himself with certain military crimes, of which the chief was plundering the baggage of British officers at Sorel. Conscious of his entire innocence, being joined by Col. Easton, he immediately demanded a court of inquiry, and challenged Arnold to prove aught against him inconsistent with the character of an officer or a gentleman. Arnold refused to order the court, but saidl that the commander-in-chief at Montreal would doubtless give him the satisfaction of a trial. Brown then applied for permission to send an officer for that purpose to Gen. Wooster. Arnold assented, but delayed the departure of the messenger until he had forestalled Brown's application by a request that it might be denied; 1 and he had sufficient influence at headquarters to prevent this simple act of justice. At the same time, Arnold had written to the President of Congress, making the same charges against Brown and Easton ; alleging that Gen. Montgomery had himself refused the promised rank of the former on the ground that he was pub-
1 A copy of the letter in which this request was made, afterwards fell into Brown's hands.
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licly impeached of the plundering at Sorel, and urging Congress to refuse the application which he anticipated that the two officers would make for promotion.1 Gen. Wooster had put off Col. Brown's application with the promise to attend to the matter on his arrival at Quebec; and there, on the 1st of April, Brown renewed his petition, strongly urging immediate action, as an act of justice, and deprecating further delay, on the ground of the uncertain future of war.2 But Wooster still neglected the inves- tigation. Brown then applied to the commissioners sent by Congress to Canada; and they, too, refused their intervention.
On the 1st of May, Gen. Thomas took command of the army, and readily promised to grant the court of inquiry as desired by Brown. But the sad death of that commander by small-pox, on the 2d of June, defeated this, like many other good results which had been hoped from his presence.
Col. Brown now appealed for the justice which he could not obtain from the sources below, to the commander-in-chief of the department; but Schuyler, an admirer of Arnold, and bitterly prejudiced against every Berkshire man, "deemed it inexpedient to call a court."
July came ; and, the term for which Col. Brown's little corps had re-enlisted having expired, he visited Philadelphia, and, in a firm and respectful petition, demanded the inquiry which he had not been able otherwise to procure; and, on the 30th, Congress “resolved that so much of the petition of Col. Easton and Major Brown, as prays that the charges against them, of having been concerned in plundering the officers' baggage taken at Sorel, be submitted to a court of inquiry, is reasonable ; and that Gen. Schuyler is desired to order courts of inquiry on them as soon as possible." 3
On the 1st of August, on the recommendation of the Board of War, to whom Brown's petition had been referred, Congress determined that he should be allowed the rank and pay of lieu- tenant-colonel from the 20th of the previous November; and that "James Easton was entitled to the rank of a colonel from the first day of July, 1775, and to the pay of a colonel from that date until he should be discharged, which ought to be done as soon as a court of inquiry should report in his favor, or a court-martial should
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