Profiles of 1776 | Nathan Hale

tanding beneath the noose fashioned for him and beside his freshly dug grave, Captain Nathan Hale uttered some of the most famous words in American history. Valorous, undefeated, uncowed, he said, “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.” He was only twenty-one when the British executed him on September 22, 1776, with the country he died for a mere three months old.

In his capacity as the best known American spy, Hale was a most unusual and a downright poor choice. He was the son of a Connecticut minister, raised a strict New England Congregationalist with the fear of God paramount in his life and with a vibrant antagonism to tyranny alive in his heart. Hale was expected to follow his father into the ministry but first he went to Yale, excelling at Latin and Greek.

The Nathan Hale Homestead, Coventry, Connecticut—despite the name, Nathan Hale never lived in this house; after his death, his parents razed the original house (where he had lived) and built this in its place, but on the same location

Yale in the 1770s, for all its protocol and its pomposity, still managed to be a place where camaraderie flourished and the ideas of the age were put through the crucible of biblical thought. Paradoxically to modern historians, and perfectly in keeping with the Christian tradition that formed the place, the college bred a restless, insubordinate ethos among its students, not least when the subject was the Mother Country. General Thomas Gage, commander of British forces in North America, branded it “a seminary of democracy.” One of the teachers, a Reverend Dr. Huntingdon, interrupted his Latin declensions and conjugations with personal rants on the iniquity of the Stamp Act. His students, including Hale, digested the rants, carried them into the university’s debating societies, and saw them leave again as printed essays.

Debating and theatrical societies were the lifeblood of the college’s social life and, through such exercises, the young patriot sharpened his reason. There Hale learned his Cicero and Plato, his rhetoric and his logic, and came into contact with Joseph Addison’s 1713 play Cato, with its line: “What a pity it is. . . . That we can die but once to serve our country.”

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) was a British author, playwright, and politician, best known for his 1712 play, Cato, a Tragedy

Hale graduated from the class of 1773 and went back home and took up the utterly domestic profession of a schoolmaster. It is recorded he was well liked; it was rumored he fell in love. This quiet life lasted two years, then came the shot heard ’round the world. Militias were called up. Of Hale’s class of thirty-five Yale graduates, thirteen continued into the ministry and thirteen joined the Continental Army. Hale was among the latter.

Nathan Hale’s commission as captain in the nineteenth regiment of foot, dated January 1, 1776 and signed by John Hancock

When Washington’s army left Boston in 1776 and took up position at New York, Hale was in the ranks, and already grieved by what he saw in the city. Two-thirds of it remained staunchly Tory. He wrote his brother that “it would grieve every good man to consider what unnatural monsters we have, as it were, in our very bowels.” A few days later the front of Washington’s army collapsed under Lord Howe. The battle for Brooklyn had begun, and it would prove disastrous.

Washington and his commanders debated what to do with New York as they abandoned it. The New Englanders wanted it burned, so the British would winter in a blackened husk. The New Yorkers were reluctant to raze their own property. Congress settled the question by forbidding destruction. Washington withdrew accordingly, and found himself surrounded, without reliable intelligence of the enemy’s strength, positions, or intentions.

Washington then tasked one of his generals to find him a volunteer who would infiltrate British lines in the guise of a civilian to gather critical data to plan his next move. In other words, he needed a spy in a time when the very word was odious to the gentlemanly sensibilities of both sides. Military reconnaissance and scouting were staple roles in both armies, and the captured members of these special forces were treated with the honor of combatants. Washington himself had been such a scout in the French and Indian War. But a secret agent—a spy—was quite another matter.

Years later, in 1826, when interviewed by his grandson, an aging Asher Wright recounted that when Washington’s call for a volunteer went out: “[My officer] refused, along with the rest of them, saying, ‘I am willing to go & fight them, but as for going among them in disguise & being taken & hung up like a dog, I will not do it’.”

No soldiers (let alone officers) in Knowlton’s Rangers—the regiment specializing in providing Washington with information—wanted to take the ignoble job of secret agent. And it was then, remembered Asher, that “Hale stood by and said, ‘I will undertake the business’.” Washington met with him personally, and Hale’s orders were strictly to spy out Long Island and come home. Yet, within days of being dropped off along the sound of Long Island, Hale was betrayed to Major Robert Rogers by loyalists who recognized him as one of the “patriot Hales of Connecticut.”

Seal of the United States Army Intelligence—the “1776” refers to the formation of Knowlton’s Rangers

Like Washington, Major Rogers himself was an old veteran and scout of the French and Indian War, and had in fact offered his services to Washington the previous year, hoping to play both sides. Washington knew of Rogers’ unethical reputation and declined his services out of suspicion of his sincerity—and he was right to be suspicious, for within weeks of being spurned, Rogers was receiving a hefty pension, had garnered a promotion, and was given a regiment of Queen’s Rangers to track down patriot informants for General Howe. Rogers would prove a brutal enemy for the Patriots, and his first prey was the ill-fated Nathan Hale.

Robert Rogers (1731-1795)

Two soldiers of Roger’s Rangers with a British soldier

Rogers befriended the young man, shared numerous meals with him, and proposed that they travel together—all under the pretense of being a fellow patriot caught behind enemy lines. When Hale joined him on the third day for another meal spent together, Rogers sprang his trap and had Hale arrested as a spy, clapped in irons, and his person searched for incriminating documents, of which there were many.

Very late the next night, Rogers unceremoniously deposited Hale at General Howe’s headquarters in Manhattan. Deliberation on Hale’s execution for espionage was a mere formality. General Howe was in the midst of orchestrating a major battle campaign and had no time to conduct a full court-martial for espionage, even if one had been required. The evidence was blatant and entirely uncontroversial: Rogers had provided witnesses who could attest to Hale’s identity, and others who asserted that he had been sent by Washington; Hale himself had at last admitted that he was an officer in the Continental Army. But, as Hale was captured in civilian clothes behind enemy lines and carrying a sheaf of incriminating documents, there was neither reason nor need for Howe to agonize over this spy. After Howe, roused from his bed, had sleepily signed Hale’s death warrant, the young patriot was placed under the guard of the provost marshal to await his execution.

Beekman House, reportedly the site of Nathan Hale’s captivity on his final night

After breakfast, it was time. Hale’s destination was the artillery park, about a mile away, next to the Dove Tavern, at what is now Third Avenue and Sixty-sixth Street in Manhattan. His hands were pinioned behind his back, while a couple of guards led the way. Behind him marched a squad of redcoats with loaded muskets and fixed bayonets. Accompanying the party was a cart loaded with rough pine boards for his coffin.

At the site, the noose was haphazardly swung over a rigid horizontal branch about fifteen feet up, and Hale shakily climbed the ladder that would soon be kicked away for the drop. Next to the tree there was a freshly-dug grave awaiting him.

At the apex of the ladder, Hale was permitted the traditional last words. The only written witness account we have of them comes from the British Captain Frederick MacKenzie, who wrote in his diary for September 22: “He [Hale] behaved with great composure and resolution, saying he thought it the duty of every good officer, to obey any orders given him by his commander-in-chief; and desired the spectators to be at all times prepared to meet death in whatever shape it might appear.”

Execution of Nathan Hale

The now famous “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country”, lifted from Joseph Addison’s play Cato, once so popular among the Yale graduates, was put into Hale’s mouth many years later by fellow student William Hull. Hull was not present to witness his friend’s death, but knew it to be one of Hale’s favorite lines, and the most likely sentiment animating his friend’s heart in his last moments. Hull was not far wrong, although Hale’s emphasis seemed to have been, as any good Christian’s would be at the hour of death, on exhorting all to be always ready to meet the Great Judge, coupled with a fearless lack of remorse for the course of action which had led to his cruel demise.

William Hull (1753-1825)

Hanging is a most awful business, one easily bungled, especially without the presence of a quick-drop platform or an expert at positioning the noose. Still, it was a method that had been cultivated amongst civilized societies to be an instant and tidy form of execution. Hangmen were masters of their grim craft and, in the case of a typical court-martial, an expert would be employed to execute the sentence. No such bare-minimum consideration was afforded Nathan Hale. He was made to climb a ladder which would then be kicked out from under him, a rope was thrown over a nearby branch, and his hangman was a recently freed slave with no experience in minimizing the agony of the executed.

A plaque memorializing Hale’ sacrifice, near the site where it took place

These gruesome details are not relayed in any way to distress readers unduly, but they are what reached the ears of Washington and Hale’s distraught family when word of his sacrifice spread. They are the ugly realities of the cost exacted of patriotic men and women for our liberty. Hale’s body was left hanging in Manhattan as an example and a deterrent for three days beside a disfigured effigy of Washington, until he was cut down by a slave and buried in the unmarked grave beside the tree.

Nathan Hale never saw the army he served win a campaign; he never saw the city he had entered in disguise fall back into American hands, his country unoccupied, or the Constitution adopted. At twenty-one, as a schoolmaster turned captain, engaged to be married, beloved by his family, Hale submitted to what Providence required of him and spent his last breath telling the men who killed him to be ready for a greater Judge than General Howe. In this way, he became a symbol of the American Spirit and a testament to the merit of dying well, with his legacy long outlasting his career.

Monument to Nathan Hale

Image Credits: 1 Nathan Hale Homestead (wikipedia.org) 2 Joseph Addison (wikipedia.org) 3 Hale’s Commission (wikipedia.org) 4 Seal of the United States Army Military Intelligence (wikipedia.org) 5 Robert Rogers (wikipedia.org) 6 Roger’s Rangers (wikipedia.org) 7 Beekman House (wikipedia.org) 8 Hale’s Execution (wikipedia.org) 9 William Hull (wikipedia.org) 10 Memorial Plaque (wikipedia.org)

Profiles of 1776 | Richard Stockton

efore war came to the thirteen colonies, Richard Stockton of New Jersey, the first from that state to sign the Declaration of Independence, stood at the pinnacle of his legal, social, and political world.

Morven, birthplace and home of Richard Stockton, in Princeton, New Jersey

He was born in 1730 at Morven, the family’s large Princeton estate, into a wealthy landowning Quaker family that had helped bring the College of New Jersey (later Princeton) to the town. He graduated in the college’s first class in 1748, read law under David Ogden (then the leading attorney in the province), and was admitted to the bar in 1754. By the early 1760s he was widely regarded as one of the most eloquent and successful lawyers in the middle colonies; contemporaries called him the head of the profession in New Jersey. He trained several future notables, including Joseph Reed and William Paterson, and in 1763 received the rare degree of sergeant-at-law, the highest legal rank then used in the colony.

Richard Stockton married Annis Boudinot around 1758. She was the daughter of Elias Boudinot, a silversmith and merchant of French Huguenot descent, and later a signer of the Declaration. Annis had become renowned in her own right for writing and publishing poetry as a young woman; she later became one of the better-known patriot poetesses of the Revolution and a friend and correspondent of George Washington’s. Contemporaries described Richard and Annis as a strikingly attractive pair in their prime, and theirs was a close, confiding match. Surviving letters and Annis’ later elegies for her husband support the picture of a genuine intellectual and affectionate partnership rather than a purely practical arrangement.

Richard Stockton (1730-1781)

Annis Stockton, née Boudinot (1736-1801)

Their extended families then doubled the colonial connections when Annis’s brother, Elias Boudinot—who later served as President of the Continental Congress and first Director of the U.S. Mint—studied law in Stockton’s office and married Stockton’s sister Hannah Stockton. So Richard and Elias became brothers-in-law twice over. Richard and Annis also acquired another relation in respected physician and signer of the Declaration, Benjamin Rush, when he married their daughter, Julia.

Elias Boudinot IV (1740-1821)

Hannah Boudinot, née Stockton (1736–1808)

Stockton was also a major figure at Princeton college itself: being first alumnus elected as a trustee and serving as such for 26 years, then later clerk of the board. In this capacity he traveled to Britain and Scotland on the college’s behalf, presented an address to George III thanking him for repeal of the Stamp Act, mixed with the grandiose likes of Rockingham, Burke, and Chatham, and personally recruited John Witherspoon as president—an appointment that shaped Princeton and the patriot clergy for a generation.

Politically he moved from private life into high colonial office. In 1768 Governor William Franklin appointed him to the Provincial Council. In 1774 he was named a justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court. He remained a moderate for some time, even sending Lord Dartmouth a 1774 plan that would have given the colonies internal self-government while keeping allegiance to the Crown. In the meantime, Stockton enjoyed horse racing, collecting art, and the ever stimulating company of his wife. Any greater change in pace seemed unthinkable. “The public is generally ungrateful” he wrote during this time, convinced his time in politics would be short lived, “And I will never become a servant of it, till I am convinced that by neglecting my own affairs I am doing more acceptable service to God and man.”

The very servant of God that Stockton had recruited to preside over Princeton, the worthy John Witherspoon, convinced him to reconsider these thankless duties. His fellow American elites were greatly motivated for independence, and as a consummate lawyer himself, their appeals for justice rang true. When Stockton took his seat in the Continental Congress in June 1776, this moderate man had already made up his mind to vote for independence and forever risk his way of life. That same summer the new state legislature tied him with William Livingston for governor; after Livingston won by a single vote, the legislature unanimously elected Stockton the first Chief Justice of the independent New Jersey Supreme Court. He declined the bench to stay in Congress. Congress then sent him, with George Clymer, on a two-month inspection of the Northern Army.

It was on this mission that, while staying at the home of his friend, Richard Stockton was targeted and captured by a band of loyalists for his participation in the break with England. Hauled from his bed on the night of November 30, 1776, one letter from a friend attested that his captors “treated him with the greatest barbarity, driving him, on foot, through rivers and creeks, with the greatest precipitation, to Amboy, where he lies dangerously ill.” Loyalist William Smith recorded with satisfaction that they “apprehended and forced [him] away naked to Amboy, in a most distressed condition.”

Benjamin Rush (1746-1813)

Julia Rush, née Stockton (1759-1848)

Stockton was then turned over to British authorities at Perth Amboy, New Jersey, placed in irons, and treated as a common criminal rather than a gentleman or political prisoner. Reports from the period state he was kept without food for 24 hours and afterward given only coarse, limited rations, and that he was needlessly exposed to the winter cold. His son-in-law Benjamin Rush wrote on December 30 that Stockton “suffers many indignities and hardships from the enemy, from which not only his rank, but his being a human, ought to exempt him.” On January 3, 1777 Congress formally protested his being targeted and that he had been “ignominiously thrown into a common gaol.” Stockton endured roughly five weeks of this harsh captivity while his family, which included the aforementioned prestigious web of patriot notables and wealthy elites, pleaded with Congress to do something.

In early January 1777 he was unexpectedly released on parole. He had accepted General Howe’s general amnesty to rebels who would renounce their participation in the cause of American independence and renew their allegiance to King George. Stockton, near death from exposure and cruelty, and with great concern for the safety of his family, took this pardon and gave his word not to take further part in the rebellion. He would be the only signer to do so. His release immediately followed.

When word of his choice spread, the reactions of his contemporaries varied, but it is worth noting that all such were, in line with the stringent decorum of the times, made in private. No great denouncement was made of him by his fellows, some of whom suffered similarly and did not resort to capitulation.

Elbridge Gerry would view the matter with scathing judgement: “Judge Stockton of the Jerseys,” he wrote a friend, “who was also a member of Congress has sued for pardon. I wish every timid Whig or pretended Whig in America would pursue the same plan, as their weak & ineffectual system of politics has been the cause of every misfortune that we have suffered.” Conversely, his friend John Witherspoon emphasized his sufferings and the practical complications of his actions: “Judge Stockton is not very well in health & much spoken against for his conduct.” President of the Congress, John Hancock, made a stoic summary upon receiving Stockton’s resultant resignation, “Stockton it is said, & truly, has received General Howe’s protection.”

Elbridge Gerry (1744–1814)

It was the same winter that Thomas Paine wrote “these are the times that try men’s souls”, and while there was great animosity felt toward any weakness of spirit, still restraint was shown toward a man who had suffered great duress for the cause. Stockton’s son-in-law, Benjamin Rush, refused to join in the chatter about it, despite his famed love for gossip and intrigue. His brother-in-law, Elias Boudinot would say nothing on the matter, but spent much of the war in his official capacity as Commissary General of Prisoners for the Continental Army, remonstrating against the unjust and barbaric treatment of American men.

The estimate for all American men who died as prisoners of the British comes to 18,000. Over twice as many as died in battle.

After Stockton turned in his resignation to Congress, he returned to his home at Morven where he found his estate plundered, his remarkable library scattered and his furnishings destroyed or carried off, the livestock and grain also taken. For years afterward his wife, Annis Stockton, would strive to locate his priceless papers which would have revealed so much of his service to our country in the years leading to independence. Seemingly aware of her great distress during this time, General Washington wrote to her in their private correspondence, assuring Annis that her recently besmirched husband was “never forgotten” by him.

Morven—Richard Stockton’s beloved home in Princeton, New Jersey—is now preserved as a museum and garden

Stockton would renew his allegiance to the state of New Jersey the following year, but he would rarely offer council to his country or neighbors in the following years. For, on top of all these great discouragements, Stockton was soon stricken with cancer, possibly a result of his weakened physical state, and suffered tremendous pain from it. He underwent surgery on his mouth without anesthesia, but soon his ailment spread to the throat and proved fatal. Of his great forbearance under this trial, his pastor bore witness, saying “in the midst of as much as human nature could endure, he always discovered a submission to the wheel of heaven, and a resignation to his fate, that could only flow from the expectation of a better life.”

His wife faithfully attended him in his last days, and Richard Stockton died at his beloved home near Princeton at the age of 50, in February of 1781.

While his memory is clouded by being the only signer to renounce the cause, Richard Stockton also remains the only signer to have been so singularly targeted for revenge because he signed the Declaration, not because of the general hazards of war. And it is worth remembering the greater portion of his tortures were inflicted by his fellow Americans; all was not cohesive or harmonious as to what shape the future of our country should take. It is well to reflect, as Stockton did in his will:

“I urge my children, not only to subscribe to the entire belief of the great and leading doctrines of the Christian religion, such as the being of God, the universal defection and depravity of human nature, the divinity of the person, the completeness of the redemption purchased by the Blessed Savior, and the universality of the divine Providence, but also, in the bowels of a father’s affection, I charge and exhort them to remember that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.”

Image Credits: 1 Morven (wikipedia.org) 2 Richard Stockton (wikipedia.org) 3 Annis Stockton, née Boudinot (wikipedia.org) 4 Elias Boudinot IV (wikipedia.org) 5 Hannah Boudinot née Stockton (wikipedia.org) 6 Benjamin Rush (wikipedia.org) 7 Julia Rush née Stockton (wikipedia.org) 8 Elbridge Gerry (wikipedia.org) 9 Morven (wikipedia.org)

Profiles of 1776 | John Witherspoon

t was a distinguished feature of the American Revolution that religious feeling was closely connected with political action. This manifested in the galvanizing effects of the Great Awakening and the marshaling of entire congregations as in the famed “black-robed regiment.” So crucial was the role of the clergy in the colonies that King George III dubbed the American Revolution “a Presbyterian Parson’s Revolt.”

In the case of John Witherspoon, the only minister to put his name to the Declaration of Independence, his influence in the cause of establishing the American Republic under God was second to none. In his singular position as President of the College of New Jersey (Princeton) in the decade prior to the war, Witherspoon turned the erstwhile seminary for prospective clergymen into “a seedbed of the Revolution.”

John Witherspoon (1723-1794)

It was in his practical application of Biblical ethics into tangible action, and his “belief that the function of such a college was not merely to educate candidates for the ministry, but also to send out into the widening spheres of colonial life Christian gentlemen and scholarly men of affairs,” that Witherspoon produced a generation of men whose scope and influence was unparalleled among their peers.

The fruit of his rich tutelage produced one President of the United States, one vice president, three Supreme Court justices, ten cabinet officers, twenty-eight U.S. Senators, forty congressmen, thirty-seven State Judges, twelve State Governors, thirteen College presidents and five delegates to the Constitutional Convention.

When Witherspoon took his seat as a delegate for New Jersey at the Continental Congress in 1776, twelve of his fellow members had previously been his pupils.

He owed his presence in America to another delegate and fellow signer, Benjamin Rush, who had recruited Witherspoon from his native Scotland to come to America and lend his hand to the efforts of shaping American minds. Of Witherspoon, Rush wrote:

“It reflects no small honour upon Dr. Witherspoon, that he should consent to cross the ocean, and take charge of a college in a new country, leaving behind him a sphere of great respectability, comfort, and use-fulness. . . . It deserves also to be mentioned, that a little previous to his embarking for America, and while still in a state of suspense, respecting his duty, a gentleman of considerable fortune, and a relation of the family, offered to make him his heir, provided he would remain in Scotland.”

Benjamin Rush (1746-1813)

Witherspoon’s contemporary in Scotland had been the Enlightenment’s darling, David Hume, and there had been none who stood up against Hume’s godless rationale with greater scholarship and ruthless precision than John Witherspoon. His great grasp on the tenets of doctrinal orthodoxy in law and application became the keystones of the American vision, one that coalesced in a cause that, in the words of Paul Johnson, utilized “Enlightenment ideals filtered through a Protestant, covenantal, English-speaking culture that already had a century and a half of self-government, written compacts, and revivalist religion to restrain it.”

It was said that Witherspoon “became an American from the moment he landed on the shores of America” in 1768, and he bore great criticism from the broader intelligentsia for his association with and mentorship of patriot leaders. Undeterred by their censure, at the College of New Jersey’s 1769 commencement—Witherspoon’s first full year as president—he awarded honorary degrees to two prominent critics of British policy: John Dickinson and John Hancock. Hancock’s honor came shortly after British customs officials seized his sloop Liberty.

Maclean House—known as The President’s House—at Princeton University, built in 1756

Having already become a noted voice amongst the patriot cause, and having served upon the Committee of Correspondence and in the Provincial Congress, John Witherspoon was elected by the provincial authorities of New Jersey to serve in the Second Continental Congress. His written instructions explicitly authorized him and his fellow delegates to join the other colonies “in declaring the United Colonies independent of Great Britain” if they judged it necessary.

Less than a month after taking his seat, Witherspoon would cast his vote to adopt the Declaration. Before he left Princeton for this great task, he delivered a stirring sermon, titled “The Dominion of Providence over the Passions of Men.” In it he exhorted his students, many of whom would serve or die in the upcoming conflict:

“Upon the whole, I beseech you to make a wise improvement of the present threatening aspect of public affairs, and to remember that your duty to God, to your country, to your families, and to yourselves, is the same. True religion is nothing else but an inward temper and outward conduct suited to your state and circumstances in providence at any time. Exert yourselves, every one in his proper sphere, be of good courage, and let us behave ourselves valiantly for our people and for the cities of our God, and let the Lord do that which is good in his sight.”

In the aftermath of the Declaration, Witherspoon remained in Congress and had already taken part, through New Jersey’s provincial congress, in framing his state’s constitution. The latter half of 1776 would see repeated patriot defeats, with the loss of New York and New Jersey to the British.

In light of this, Witherspoon closed the college on November 29 and sent the students home or to enlist. When the British arrived on December 7 they spent about three weeks in what locals called the “twenty days’ rage.” They stabled horses in the basement of Nassau Hall, used rooms as prison cells, wrecked much of Witherspoon’s library, and plundered the town. Washington then made the last great attempt of the year: crossing the frozen Delaware from the Pennsylvania shore to the New Jersey side, taking Trenton from the Hessian garrison on December 26. He lost it again to Cornwallis on January 2. The fighting was brief both times, but the devastation of repeated occupations was lasting, particularly for the college.

Nassau Hall at Princeton University—built in 1756, it is the oldest building on campus

One witness, Thomas Nelson, Jr., wrote to Thomas Jefferson about the damage wrought by the enemy: “Old Witherspoon has not escap’t their fury. They have burnt his Library. It grieves him much that he has lost his controversial Tracts.” Also bringing grief was the damage done to the college he had worked so hard to build up. His library of two thousand books was scattered and the Rittenhouse planetarium broken.

Witherspoon, the ultimate Scottish Presbyterian, was saddened but unsurprised by these displays of depravity, and was more greatly moved by the atrocities inflicted on the people of his colony, denouncing them thus in his official capacity:

“While the shadow of hope remained that our enemies could be taught by our example, to respect those laws which are held sacred among civilized nations, and to comply with the dictates of a religion which they pre-tend, in common with us, to believe and revere, they have been left to the influence of that religion and that example. But since their incorrigible dispositions cannot be touched by kindness and compassion, it becomes our duty, by other means, to vindicate the rights of humanity—We, therefore, the congress of the United States of America, do solemnly declare and proclaim, that if our enemies presume to execute their threats, or persist in their present career of barbarity, we will take such exemplary vengeance as shall deter others from a like conduct.”

The conduct of the British in the years following 1776 would continue to merit much holy outrage, and the men in Washington’s army, borne up by their minister’s insistence in the rightness of their cause, would stop at nothing to drive out the foe. In these years, and beyond them, Dr. Witherspoon would contribute an unfathomable amount of wisdom and sacrifice to the cause and the formation of our nation, urging always for the pursuit of Christian virtue and vigilance against apathy and corruption. To detail them would (and has) taken volumes.

Witherspoon Hall at Princeton, named for John Witherspoon

Suffice it to say, Witherspoon taught and preached until the end of his life, while playing a major role in two editions of the Bible, including one from 1791, considered to be America’s first family Bible. He died on November 15, 1794, at 73 years of age at his home and was buried in the president’s lot at Princeton. Thus ended his long and useful life, spent teaching what he called “the permanent things,” and which had influenced so greatly the establishment of this new country.

He left the same charge he had lived. In the matter of making one’s life useful, John Witherspoon asked of us:

“How, can any person bend his knees in prayer every day with his family, without its being a powerful restraint upon him from the indulgence of any sin which is visible to them? Will such a one, think you, dare to indulge himself in anger, or choose to be seen by them, when he comes home staggering with drunkenness, unfit to perform any duty, or ready to sin still more by the manner of performance? But besides being a restraint from gross crimes, I cannot help saying, that speaking of the things of God with the concern of a parent, or the humanity of a master, must give a solemnity of spirit, and a sense of their moment, even greater than before. Let me, therefore, earnestly recommend the faithful discharge and careful management of family duties, as you regard the glory of God, the interest of His church, the advantage of your posterity, and your own final acceptance in the day of judgment.”

Witherspoon’s grave in Presidents Row at Princeton Cemetery

Image Credits: 1 John Witherspoon (wikipedia.org) 2 Benjamin Rush (wikipedia.org) 3 Maclean House (wikipedia.org) 4 Nassau Hall (wikipedia.org) 5 Witherspoon Hall (wikipedia.org) 6 Witherspoon’s Grave (wikipedia.org)

“The people of Israel shall camp each by his own standard, with the banners of their fathers’ houses.”
—Numbers 2:2

Profiles of 1776 | Susannah Elliot

n the twenty-eighth of June, 1776, Susannah Elliot watched from shore with crowds of fellow onlookers as an enormous British fleet tried to force their way into Charleston Harbor, pummeling the patriot’s crudely constructed first line of defense with shot and shell. Made of palmetto logs and sand thrown up hastily on Sullivan’s Island, Fort Sullivan’s ferocious patriot garrison defied all suggestions to leave their post or submit to their terrible odds. Susannah’s new husband of five months was Major Barnard Elliott, commanding a regiment of artillerymen in that garrison. Her suspense and prayers thus were twofold.

Battle of Fort Sullivan (now Fort Moultrie), 1776

For ten hours Susannah watched as the South Carolinians withstood the onslaught of the greatest navy in the world, and when once their flag had been struck down by a barrage, a Sergeant William Jasper hurled himself over the parapet, exposing himself to almost guaranteed death in order to retrieve it and plant it once again atop the defiant little fortress. There would be no mistaking it for a false surrender. By nightfall the British fleet sailed away, heavily battered, and Charleston was saved from British occupation for the time being.

The morning after the battle, Susannah received word from her husband, still living by God’s grace and exulting in the incredible triumph, “Now, my dear wife,” he wrote to her after commending the bravery of his men, “let us not forget to whom we are indebted for this success against our enemy. Let us return [to] God thanks for it. It is He that does all for us—He inspires our officers and men with courage, and shields their heads in the day of battle—He is the wonderful God of victory.”

Three days later the valiant 2nd Carolina Regiment was drawn up to receive honors from Governor Rutledge and a grateful populace. On this occasion, Mrs. Elliott stepped forward with a costly new pair of silk flags, (colors) embroidered by her own hands and presented to Colonel Moultrie and his Lt. Colonel; whereupon she charged them:

“Your gallant behavior in defense of liberty and your country, entitles you to the highest honors; accept these two standards as a reward justly due to your regiment; and I make not the least doubt, under Heaven’s protection, you will stand by them as long as they can wave in the air of liberty.”

Susannah Elliot’s Blue Flag, currently on loan from the Smithsonian and on display at the South Carolina State Museum for their America’s 250th birthday exhibit

Flags have never been just pretty emblems of identification or a device to communicate across a battlefield. From the Roman signifer whose duty it was to bear the Roman Eagle into conquest, to the brave Marines who raised the Stars and Stripes on Iwo Jima, one’s flag was everything. In the smoke and roar of battle such standards were the only sure rallying point. Men dressed on them, advanced by them, and, when all else failed, gathered again to die beneath them. In American history they were almost always meticulously crafted by the mothers, wives and daughters of the men who fought beneath them, and the flag a man carried was therefore not only the emblem of his country or his cause; it was the visible token of the home he had left and the people for whom he fought.

For her colors, Mrs. Elliot chose one to be blue and one to be red. The blue silk that survives is marked “II REGT”, which means second regiment. At the center, within a wreath of acorns and small flowers, a drum rests on a patch of green. On the drum is a crescent that would later be adopted as the state’s emblem. Beside it are a liberty cap on a pole and draped fabrics of pale blue and tan. Across the emblem, now faded, runs the Latin Vita potior libertas—Liberty rather than life.

This motto would be exacted of Susannah herself in a personal cost when two years later, in October of 1778, her beloved husband Lieutenant Colonel Barnard Elliott was struck down, died and was buried at St. Philips in Charleston with full military honors. Men of the Second Regiment walked in the cortege carrying the silk colors his wife made for them.

St. Phillip’s Episcopal Church and Graveyard, Charleston, South Carolina—final resting place of Lieutenant Colonel Barnard Elliott

Despite this terrible loss, the faith and patriotic fervor of this woman were remarked upon by all who came in contact with her, including General Nathanael Greene who offered her an escort through the lines so that she might better fulfill her self-appointed duties to the militiamen. Mrs. Daniel Hall, a close neighbor, said Susannah was “one of the most busy among the Revolutionary women, and always active among the soldiers.”

Meanwhile at home on her plantation called the Hut, Susannah Elliot proved to be the savior of two Continental officers who were staying at her home when the British came by in a raid. She quickly hid two of them in a closet behind the hearth, known only to herself, while the third trusted his horse to make his escape. He was killed within sight of the house.

The British raiding party ransacked her home and demanded her silver, to which she could honestly reply she had none in the home since she had hid it in the Carolina swamp months before. Two large mounds in her back yard were likewise questioned and she informed them they were the graves of two British soldiers who had died in her home. After much digging, it was proven she was being truthful on this score, as well. The raiding party then left, leaving behind much damage, including the defacement of a portrait of Mrs. Elliot herself. Still owned by her descendants, it shows her to be beautiful and mild in expression, but marred by a tear in the canvas from where a sword had been run through one eye.

A commemorative Medallion issued by the Franklin Mint shows Susannah Elliot presenting her finished flags to the regiment

In October, 1779 during the battle to take Savannah, the patriots under Francis Marion carried Mrs. Elliots colors into the thickest of the fray. It is recorded that at the Spring Hill redoubt, Lieutenant Bush planted one standard on the British earthworks and was shot down. Then a Lieutenant Hume, going to plant the other, fell in the same way. Lieutenant Gray, supporting them, received his mortal wound. “Liberty rather than life”, their motto, had once again been exacted from their bearers.

Then it was that Sergeant Jasper—who in 1776 had received acclaim for rescuing the flag during the bombardment of Fort Sullivan—seized the colors and succeeded, for a moment, in planting them at the very top of the British redoubt. Then a retreat was called, and Sergeant Jasper succeeded in regaining the American camp with the colors in hand. It became apparent then that he too had received his death wound in bearing them up. It was recorded later that in his last moments Sergeant Jasper charged his commanding officer, Major Horry: “Tell Mrs. Elliott I lost my life supporting the colors she presented to our regiment.”

Memorial statue to Sergeant William Jasper in Savannah, Georgia

At the fall of Charlestown in 1780, the 2nd Regiment was captured by the British army, and their standards with them. The blue silk was taken off by Colonel Augustine Prévost and carried to England, where his family kept it as a trophy for more than two hundred years.* In 1989 the South Carolina State Museum and the Smithsonian Institution purchased it jointly. It is now displayed in Columbia, South Carolina. The red standard was never recovered. Of their fame in the war, and of the brave men who died under them rather than disprove their implacable motto, Colonel Moultrie would write to Mrs. Elliot, “There were never colors more honorably supported and never were colors better disposed of.”

*Author’s Note: As with many domestic stories of the Revolution, quotations, letters, and even some dates in this account rest on later recollection—some secondhand, and often preserved by descendants rather than by wartime contemporaries. Historians also disagree on when the surviving blue standard was taken. Nineteenth-century narratives regularly place its capture at the fall of Charleston in 1780; modern research and museum curators hold to it being a trophy of Savannah in 1779.

Image Credits: 1 Battle of Fort Sullivan, 1776 (wikipedia.org) 2 2nd South Carolina colors (scmuseum.org) 3 St. Phillip’s Church & Graveyard (wikipedia.org) 4 Medallion (scdar.org) 5 Sergeant William Jasper memorial (wikipedia.org)