Homegrown Terror. Eric D. Lehman
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France in March 1776 and arrived with orders to get supplies, enlist men into service, and if possible involve France and other European nations in the war. He wrote a sorrowful farewell letter to his wife, saying, “It matters but little, my Dear, what part we act, or where, if we act it well.”65
Once he settled into an apartment on the Rue de l’Universite in Paris, he met the French foreign minister, the Comte de Vergennes, and then Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, the French polymath who wrote The Marriage of Figaro. Deane appealed to Beaumarchais, who got his hands on 3 million livre, including 1 million from Louis XVI’s personal coffers, to purchase one hundred cannons, countless guns, and twenty-five thousand uniforms. Eventually 6 million livre worth of supplies got around the British blockades in the early years of the war.66
Deane also recruited young French aristocrats for the American army, more for their money than their military prowess. But one would defy those expectations: the nineteen-year-old Gilbert de Motier, Marquis de Lafayette. He had learned military science and riding at Versailles and stood at the door of Deane’s humble apartment on the Rue de l’Universite, asking to fight for human dignity.67 Deane gave him the rank of major general to satisfy the young Frenchman’s family, and he sailed for America.68 Meanwhile, Arthur Lee of Virginia and Benjamin Franklin arrived. Franklin was already famous in Europe due to his popular Autobiography, and he began working on the more serious problem of involving the French government in the war.
While Deane was in Philadelphia and France, his brother Barnabas kept his Connecticut business going, connecting with Nathaniel Shaw and Governor Trumbull under the auspices of the Secret Committee of the Continental Congress. Letters flew to and from Congress and Lebanon, Weathersfield and New London. Shaw collected cargos from the port and distributed goods to his friends, who sent them on.69 Shaw wrote to the Huntingtons in Norwich: “Must inform you that I have been oblig’d to supply the Continental Troops Quartered in this Town, from Newport who have almost consumed the whole, and I must be oblig’d to call on you for sum more [flour] also for sum work.”70 He had to balance the needs of the local people with the needs of Governor Trumbull and of George Washington’s army.
Washington himself arrived at Shaw’s granite mansion in New London on April 9, 1776, on his way from Boston to New York. He had been there twenty years earlier during the French and Indian War, while serving as a colonel in the British army.71 He remembered old Captain Shaw well and was happy to meet his son, bringing seventeen bottles of wine and eating a huge meal on creamware dishes at the mahogany dining table, along with Gen. Nathanael Greene and Cdre. Ezekial Hopkins. Washington and the three men planned the naval war before the exhausted commander in chief retired to old Temperance Shaw’s maroon and mustard bedroom.72
Norwich lawyer Samuel Huntington, now in Congress, had finally sent official instructions for privateers, giving them permission to attack British ships.73 Shaw had already been arranging these expeditions for a year, but it was nice to have official permission from the new government. His job was to get supplies and take enemy ships, and these two duties often coincided. Jonathan Mix, now recovered from broken ribs received on the march to Canada, joined one of these expeditions out of New London during the spring of that year, joining the fleet under Commodore Hopkins. They sailed to the Bahamas, landed at Nassau, stormed the fort, and took the governor of the islands prisoner. As new British ships arrived, the American navy took them one by one, building up a store of supplies. When the ships were full, they sailed back to New London, slipping past the British fleet at the end of the Sound and depositing a huge supply of cannons, arms, and ammunition, which, as Mix said, “proved to be of great and timely use to our country.”74 Shaw used some of the captured cannons for defenses in Groton and New London, sent others to Newport, and shipped mortars and shells to Washington in New York.
Despite successes like this, Shaw settled in for a long war. He voted to restrict gunpowder use even for shooting game, to inoculate the populace for smallpox, and to provide for soldiers’ families. He also secured the town records in the western hills, a move that kept them safe from the burning four years later, and at a full town meeting approved the Articles of Confederation “as being the most effectual measures whereby the freedom of said states may be secured and their independency established on a solid and permanent basis.”75 He often used his own money to supply the defense of the city and the troops and often went without payment from Congress.76
William Ledyard became Shaw’s agent to Hartford that summer and discussed finances with Governor Trumbull, finally getting £300 recompense for his new boss.77 He also was given command of the nascent Fort Griswold on Groton Heights for the first time.78 Then, on July 10, 1776, Trumbull appointed Shaw agent of the colony for collecting naval supplies and taking care of sick sailors, another official sanction for a job he was already doing.79 The Continental Congress followed, prompted by his friend Samuel Huntington, who recommended him, saying, “I had the pleasure of procuring you to be appointed Agent, being the most suitable person I could think of.”80 Of course, this meant he was taking orders from both Lebanon and Philadelphia, like the micromanaging order from John Hancock to “deliver Mr. Barnabas Deane any Continental Stores in your possession which he may want for the up[keep] of the Frigate Trumbull now filling out in your state.”81
Shaw and Ledyard lived under constant threat of invasion from the superior British navy. A “ship-of-war” ran a captured prize ship onto the rocks by Fisher’s Island, but luckily “armed men from Stonington” and Capt. Elisha Hinman in the Cabot took the supplies ashore.82 Next, on July 25 three British men-of-war, the Rose, the Swan, and the Kingfisher, anchored outside the harbor to blockade the town. Shaw kept his good humor, sending George Washington a report a few days later and, along with it, an epicurean gift and joke: “as the Turtle was Intended for the Support of our Enemys, we thought best to Send him to head Quarters, to be Dealt with.”83 Washington thanked Shaw for “an extreme fine turtle” and commiserated about a lost prize ship.84 Then, on August 5 and 6 nine ships and several other vessels arrived but did not attack, being more interested in plundering Fisher’s Island, where they took over a thousand sheep, cattle, and other provisions. On this occasion they paid the Tory owner but stole from other islands like Gardiner’s and Plum without paying.85
After this scare, Shaw wrote a more urgent letter to Trumbull the following day, begging for help: “This town has been drained of men already, so that there is scarcely a sufficiency of hands left to get in the harvest.”86 Ledyard had already begun improving the land fortifications, saying, “no place lies more exposed than we do.” Ships had appeared in the Sound as early as 1775 and “appeared to be beating in but they came to Anchor off Fisher’s Island.” Ledyard “alarmed the country,” but so many people showed up to his signal that “we could not agree on a plan to oppose [the raiders] till Monday morning when they had got all the stock off.” Ledyard was one of the people who lost sheep in this raid.87 Later that autumn a commission found “that there is in Groton, nearly opposite the old Fort at New London, a hill or an eminence…. It seems nature had prepared a place to plant cannon for the protection of that port or harbor.”88 Now in 1776 the Groton citizens dug ditches and built fortifications around the harbor. At Waterman’s Point below Norwich, a small battery with four six-pound cannons was also erected to receive a potential invasion. But the process was slow. Acquiring the sledges, hammers, shovels, timber, and other supplies took ages, and every sight of sails would remind them that the work was incomplete. The lack of effective central government haunted small projects like this as much as it did George Washington’s much larger needs.89
And Washington’s problems had become very serious indeed. His army had gathered in New York, waiting for an invasion they knew was coming. One of the soldiers gathering with Washington was Nathan Hale, who had reenlisted on New Year’s Day. His friend Benjamin Tallmadge had also decided to drop his job as high school superintendent and join the army. Perhaps one of Hale’s hilarious poems of rhyming couplets had done the trick and inspired his friend, who was quite a fan of versified letters.
Reviv’d a little by your letter,
With