Homegrown Terror. Eric D. Lehman
about his conflicted feelings of responsibility, and Tallmadge wrote back, saying,
When I consider you as a Brother Pedagogue, engaged in a calling, useful, honorable, and doubtless to you very entertaining, it seems difficult to advise you ever to relinquish your business, and to leave so agreeable a circle of connections and friends…. On the other hand, when I consider our country, a land flowing as it were with milk and honey, holding open her arms, and demanding assistance from all who can assist her in her sore distress, methinks a Christian’s counsel must favor the latter.21
Tallmadge’s letter must have hit a nerve. On Friday, July 17, two weeks after Washington rode through Connecticut, Hale tendered his resignation, and as he left “gave [his students] earnest counsel, prayed with them, and shaking each by the hand, bade them individually farewell.”22 He joined the Seventh Connecticut Regiment as a lieutenant and recruited more soldiers from the area, such as Stephen Hempstead. A year younger than Hale, Hempstead lived in an old 1678 house a few blocks from the schoolhouse, at the bottom of a large hill. He idolized Hale and joined up as his sergeant.23 Nathaniel Shaw gave his protégé Hale a gift of powder and shot before he left.24
At the siege of Boston Hale livened up the dull camp life with sporting events and games, but always meticulous, he carefully wrote down instructions for himself in his diary: “It is the utmost importance that an officer should be anxious to know his duty, but greater that he should carefully perform what he does know.” He settled into a routine, drinking coffee in the morning and brandy at night, drilling his soldiers and preparing for the battles he knew would come.25 Tallmadge visited the siege before returning to his job, where he weighed his options all summer and fall, aching to join up, but careful of his duties, unwilling to take his own advice.
Hale received many letters from friends he had made in New London; he had left behind many broken hearts. Gilbert Saltonstall wrote with tongue in cheek, “The young girls … have frequently desir’d their compliments to Master, but I’ve never thought of mentioning it ’till now—you must write something in your next by way of P.S. that I may show it them.”26 But Hale had left the pleasures of youth behind and was now on his way to becoming a man. Promoted to captain, he dined with Gen. Israel Putnam at headquarters several times, initiated fully into the circle of Connecticut Revolutionaries.27
Jonathan Trumbull, shown here with his wife, Faith, earned the respect of his contemporaries for his civil-work ethic and service in Connecticut government. Stuart, Life of Jonathan Trumbull.
The growing army needed to be supplied, and one hundred miles from Boston, safe in the New England interior, the hilltop town of Lebanon became one of the centers of the revolutionary effort. On the enormous, comet-shaped village green, livestock were gathered, soldiers billeted, and Governor Trumbull’s country store became the “war office,” where he would hold no less than nine hundred meetings of his Council of Safety during the course of the Revolution. Riders hurried to Lebanon from Boston and New York, and Trumbull remained one of the best informed figures in the war.28 In fact, he may have been George Washington’s most frequent correspondent, and the “the mutual friendship and esteem” that grew between the two men helped both.29 Though the religious Connecticutian was twenty years older than the Virginian, they spoke on equal terms, and legend has it that Washington called him “Brother Jonathan,” leading to the use of the term for the common Yankee soldiers during the war. Whether its origin is apocryphal or not, the term began to be used freely and proudly throughout the northern colonies.30
Trumbull saw the Revolution as something of a religious quest. He was also a born egalitarian, with a simple approach to everyday life that stemmed from his puritanical background. At one point he was mocked by Loyalists on Long Island for the baffling habit of getting shaved at the local barber shop, where he “stands among the rest, and among them takes his turn in the chair,” rather than having a servant do this work.31 This dated criticism reveals how strange and new these democratic ideas were, and how the class-conscious British society was easy for someone like Trumbull to reject.
His sons all graduated from Harvard, and like their father became devout advocates for the Revolution. Born in 1740, Jonathan Jr. supervised the family’s Lebanon flour mill and East Haddam shipyard and now became the paymaster for the northern department of the army. The governor’s youngest son, John, only nineteen years old, became an aide to George Washington, and his eldest, Joseph, took the greatest responsibility of all. Joseph lived in Norwich at the outbreak of hostilities and began serving as commissary general of the Connecticut troops in April. He was recommended to Congress by Silas Deane and had done such a fine job so far that they appointed him commissary general for the entire Continental army on July 19.32
The Commissary Department of the army immediately became the largest economic organization on the continent. Joseph siphoned grain from Virginia and salted pork and fish from Connecticut.33 He sent and answered hundreds and hundreds of letters, requests, and orders.34 His job was not an easy one and was praised by Washington, who said, “Few Armies, if any, have been better and more plentifully supplied than the Troops under Mr. Trumbull’s care.”35 Having the governor of Connecticut as his father helped, and his mother, Faith, supported local charities, instituted clothing drives for the troops and kept up morale among the wives left at home.36
Under Governor Trumbull’s zealous management, Connecticut became a model of a functional war state, with daily and weekly ration schedules for beef, pork, flour, molasses, milk, coffee, chocolate, rice, peas, beans, butter, corn meal, sugar, rum, beer, soap, candles, and tobacco. Clothing was supplied by establishing quotas in each town, and these efforts led to supplying not only the Connecticut troops but others throughout the colonies.37 The state produced gunpowder at a far more rapid rate than any other, despite trouble importing saltpeter and sulfur. Muskets were put together by skilled craftsmen for five shillings a gun, enough so that almost all the Connecticut militia and troops in the Continental army were armed. The Salisbury foundry in the far northwest of the state produced cannon, grapeshot, and round shot for the fortifications around New York and along the Connecticut coast. Trumbull’s operation became by far the most productive per capita of any colony.38 While in New York, Arnold told his aide Richard Varick to get supplies directly from Connecticut, because his home state was so reliable.39
Governor Trumbull also supervised the daunting job of recruitment for the Continental army and local militia. Connecticut’s population was about two hundred thousand, and one-fifth saw military service during the war, almost all men of military age. However, just as in every other state, there were many desertions. Trumbull offered bounties, though they still struggled to keep the Continental army recruitment up to a respectable level. Rather than lacking interest in the cause of liberty, the soldiers were frustrated by intermittent pay, inadequate provisions, and other problems that plagued the army.40 Hale reported a private deserting to the enemy as early as October 1775, but it was rare enough to mention.41 Two months later, though, when the Connecticut troops completed their initial enlistments, many chose to leave the siege of Boston and go home. Upon hearing about this disgraceful desertion of troops, Gideon Saltonstall wrote to Hale from New London, saying, “The behavior of our Connecticut Troops makes me Heartsick—that they who have stood foremost in the praises and good wishes of their Countrymen, as having distinguished themselves for their Zeal of Publick Spirit, should more shamefully desert the Cause, and at a critical Moment too, is really unaccountable—amazing.”42 Washington cursed the troops’ “dirty, mercenary spirit,” and despite the early valiance of Arnold, Putnam, and others, Connecticut briefly lost its reputation.43 Indeed, when many of the militia returned home they found a hostile reception from their families and colleagues. Perhaps because of this pressure, many joined up again, and by the beginning of 1776 Connecticut’s regiments were almost at full strength.44
Trumbull also commissioned two hundred privateers, which would capture more than five hundred enemy ships. But he had help with this job from an old friend’s son, Nathaniel Shaw Jr. He was the