General Washington is Concerned

I couldn’t find any specific events connected to the American Revolution that occurred on or around this date in 1775. Events were ongoing in a number of areas – in particular, Boston and Norfolk. But no military, diplomatic, or war-related events occurred on this date.

However, I found a letter from George Washington to John Hancock that offers insight into what was happening at the time. First, let’s review who these men were and what they were doing in the winter of 1775. Washington was the commander of the Continental Army surrounding Boston, preventing the British from leaving the city to undertake aggressive action in the countryside. Hancock was serving as President of the Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia (along with key figures like John and Samuel Adams, Benjamin Franklin, John Dickinson, and Thomas Jefferson).

Here’s the text of the letter:

To John Hancock

Cambridge 16th December 1775

Sir

the information Containd in the above¹ comeing So Many different ways, Corroborated by Severall vessells haveing Salid this day from Boston, I thought it my duty to transmit it to you, tho Halifax is the place given out for their destination, it is possible they may be bound else where, I Shall communicate this inteligence to Governors Cooke & Trumbull, & to the Convention of Newyork for their government.2 I remain Sir Your Most Ob. H. St

Go: Washington

The footnote after the word “above” in the first line refers to a previous intelligence report that said “Salid out of Boston harbour this morning eight Large & Two Small vessells, taken to be tenders, by their Fireing appeared to be goeing a voige out to Sea. Mr Joshua Pico came Last night from Boston, he Confirms the information that the Regiment of Foot & Some Companys of Light horse, were prepareing to embark for Halifax”

• The inconsistent spelling, unusual abbreviations, and odd sentence structure make this difficult for modern readers to understand. Here’s my best shot at what this means:

• Washington is reporting that multiple independent sources are saying the same thing – that British troops are leaving Boston. Several ships – eight large and two small vessels – were seen leaving the harbor, and he believes they are carrying a regiment of British infantry and some cavalry. Because the reports come from different, corroborating sources, Washington trusts the information enough to forward it.

• He is cautious about reporting one part of the information he has – that the ships are bound for Halifax, Nova Scotia. Because his source says this is what the British are saying, Washington warns that they may be going somewhere else instead. He also plans to notify other authorities – the governors of Rhode Island and Connecticut, along with the New York Convention – just in case the British ships are actually heading in their direction.

This is undoubtedly connected to General Knox’s Train of Artillery that I wrote about a couple of weeks ago. It may be that the British were leaving Boston because they knew that Knox and the artillery were on their way, but Washington wasn’t sure where they were going.

Because the Continental Army had the British bottled up in Boston, I was wondering why Washington was allowing them to leave. The answer is pretty straightforward – although Washington had the forces and weaponry to keep the British from launching a land attack on the area surrounding Boston, he did not have the forces to assault the British in Boston directly — nor did he have a navy that could have engaged in a sea battle with the British ships.

It’s also essential to understand how Washington’s intelligence report would have been handled upon reaching Philadelphia. It would have gone to the Committee of Secret Correspondence, the committee of the Continental Congress that dealt with foreign and intelligence matters. It would also have gone to the military committees overseeing the Continental Army, however, because Washington wrote to Hancock directly rather than to the Congress as a whole. This allowed Hancock to control the flow of information and to coordinate responses with the governors and conventions in the states involved. Essentially, Hancock was the civilian counterpart to Washington’s military authority.

The Committee of Secret Correspondence is a little-known component of the Continental Congress. Made up of key figures like Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, John Dickinson, and Benjamin Harrison, this committee was the institutional forerunner of the Department of State, established 13 years later with the ratification of the Constitution. The Committee on Army and Military Affairs was made up of John Adams, Samual Adams, Roger Sherman, George Wythe, and Benjamin Harrison. The members of the Committee on Fortifications and Defense were John Adams, Samuel Adams, Richard Henry Lee, John Rutledge, and Silas Deane. In the summer of 1776, Congress replaced these two ad hoc military committees with a more structured Board of War.

This reminds us that the Continental Congress – the one that was to declare independence in July of 1776 – was serving as the de facto government of the United States for a year before independence was formally declared. British civil authority had already collapsed by the time the Second Continental Congress met in 1775, as royal governors had either fled (Massachusetts, Virginia, South Carolina), been neutralized, or lost effective control. Colonial assemblies were either formally dissolved by the governors or operated in defiance of royal authority. The Continental Congress had already established a continental military force, and it was doing other things that only governments do – communicating with foreign countries, creating a financial system based on paper money, and establishing a committee to oversee matters related to the war.

The Congress also coordinated the actions of the colonies, both in their resistance to Britain and in their formation of state military forces. Initially, Congress did not claim sovereignty; instead, it claimed to act on behalf of ‘the united colonies” or “the rights of Englishmen.” This had the effect of keeping moderate colonies on board and allowing Congress to gradually increase its authority. By the time independence was declared, the machinery was already running. By July 1776, the declaration made explicit something that was already in operation.