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The Easter Rising Jolts the New England Irish

Just after noon on Easter Monday, April 24, 1916, seven men stood on the steps of Dublin’s General Post Office and touched off the Easter Rising, Éirí Amach na Cásca in Gaelic.

One of the men, Patrick Pearse, read, “The Proclamation of a Free Irish Republic.” “In this supreme hour the Irish nation must . . . prove itself worthy of the august destiny to which it is called,” he said.

The fighting then began.

About 1,200 armed members of Irish paramilitary groups, including the women’s Cumann na mBan, seized City Hall, the General Post Office, a telegraph office, the workhouse, the courts and a railway station. They barricaded the streets and proclaimed the Irish Republic.

A Dublin street barricaded during the Easter Rising.

The British responded with thousands of soldiers, artillery and a gunboat. After six days of street fighting, the rebels surrendered unconditionally. British forces rounded up 3,500 prisoners, sending 1,800 to internment camps. They quickly executed nearly all of the instigators, sparing one of them, Eamon de Valera, because he’d been born in the United States.

It was the latest in a long series of failed Irish rebellions against English Rule. There’d been 1641, 1798, 1803, 1879-1881, as well as guerilla skirmishes and Home Rule campaigns. Like the others, the Easter Rising would fail, at least in the short term. But unlike the others, the Irish would continue to fight and ultimately prevail. The Irish in America who supported the war effort made the difference. The British couldn’t get at them.

From Irish communities throughout the Northeast came lawyers, guns and money for the cause of Irish freedom. And after a bloody war for independence, the Irish Free State came into existence in 1921.

Easter Rising

The British had plenty of warning that Irish America would significantly aid the cause of Irish freedom. From New York, Patrick Ford, editor of the Irish World newspaper, warned the British, “You are now, unlike the past dealing with two Irelands. The Greater Ireland is on this side of the Atlantic. This is the base of operations. We in America furnish the sinews of war. We in America render moral aid.”

In Britain, Home Secretary Sir William Harcourt observed the Irish were in Ireland during former rebellions. “We could reach their forces, cut off their reserves in men and money and then to subjugate was comparatively easy,” he wrote. “Now there is an Irish nation in the United States, equally hostile, with plenty of money, absolutely beyond our reach and yet within ten days sail of our shores.”

Not all the Irish in America supported the Easter Rising, not at first. But many did. They hadn’t forgotten centuries of persecution nor the horrors of the Great Hunger. Still fresh were the memories of the famine ships, grinding poverty in American slums and bigotry embodied in the warning, “No Irish need apply.”

The shell of the General Post Office in the aftermath of the Easter Rising.

In some cases, an even more intimate connection existed between Irish New England and Ireland. James Connolly, one of the seven leaders of the Easter Rising, had lived and worked in Roxbury, Mass., for a time. Hartford police Det. Sgt. Daniel McAuliffe had had a childhood friendship with another Irish leader, Michael Collins.

One old New Bedford sailor, Henry C. Hathaway, had years earlier aided the cause of Irish independence. In 1869, as fourth officer of a whaling bark, Hathaway rescued the Fenian John Boyle O’Reilly from an Australian penal colony. O’Reilly had been recruiting men to a regiment of the Irish Republican Brotherhood when the British arrested him. After his rescue, he moved to Boston and advocated for the Irish community as editor of The Pilot.

John Boyle O’Reilly. Editor of the Boston Pilot, he died before the Easter Rising.

A Mass Movement for Irish Independence

Before the Easter Rising, the Irish in America didn’t all support a violent uprising against British rule. Two Irish American groups in Boston made the difference clear. The United Irish League of America, founded by the professional and business class, raised money to support a peaceful transfer of power under Home Rule. But Ireland would still belong to the United Kingdom. The Clan na Gael (Fenian Brotherhood), founded in 1867 by Irish working-class immigrants, supported violent rebellion to win Irish independence.

In the wake of the Easter Rising, American newspapers reported how Britain put Ireland under martial law and ruthlessly quashed any dissent. That solidified support in Irish America for an independent republic, turning it into a mass movement.

The execution of James Connolly, one of the seven leaders, proved especially provocative. Severely wounded in the street battles, he had but a day to live when British executioners tied him to a chair — he couldn’t stand up — and shot him to death. Connolly’s daughter Nora came to New England to speak about her father and raise money for the cause. She did an interview with the Boston Globe and met with Mayor James Michael Curley, who gave her a purse full of money.

The American Irish Rise Up

The Easter Rising sparked mass rallies throughout Massachusetts and Connecticut. In Massachusetts they rallied in Lawrence and Lowell, Fall River, North Attleboro, Brockton, Worcester, Chicopee, Springfield, Holyoke and Pittsfield.

Hartford held mass rallies and sent aid to the Republicans. So did New Britain, which sent rifles to Ireland.

A New Haven lawyer, John M. Sullivan, suffered in Kilmainham Jail after his arrest on the streets of Dublin. When Daniel McAuliffe returned from Ireland, the Hartford Police Department put him back on the force.

Branches of Friends of Irish Freedom formed throughout New England and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the cause.

The Boston Symphony Orchestra performed a free concert for Clan na Gael to raise money for widows and orphans. The concert opened with Beethoven’s march, “Dead Heroes.”

De Valera Comes to America

Eamon de Valera

In 1918, a majority of newly-elected Ministers of Parliament from Ireland refused to take their seats in London. Instead, they convened at Dublin’s Mansion House, declared Irish independence and elected de Valera president of the new Irish Republic.

The Irish war for independence would continue for another four years. In the meantime, de Valera spent a year and a half in the United States. He spoke to large crowds, seeking financial support and international recognition for an independent Ireland.

He spoke to crowds in Connecticut and Rhode Island, then to 50,000 at Fenway Park. The Massachusetts General Assembly received him warmly, and New Hampshire Gov. John Bartlett invited him to Manchester. He gave a speech at the Lexington Opera House in Kentucky and spoke to a crowd at Madison Square Garden in New York. For 18 months he received warm greetings by crowds, official welcomes, the freedom of cities and two honorary degrees.

The British couldn’t get to him.

On Dec. 6, 1921, the Irish Free State came into existence. More years of struggle followed, but Ireland was well on its way to becoming a republic — with the continued help of Irish America.

Historian Catherine B. Shannon described the Irish-American aid as essential. “Support from Irish America, unified by the brutal British suppression of the Easter Rising, ultimately proved crucial in the subsequent War of Independence from 1919-1921 that secured freedom for the twenty-six counties that now constitute the Republic of Ireland,” she wrote.

With thanks to: The Easter Rising: CT Ties to Bloody Irish Revolt of 1916, April 24, 2016, at 11:35 a.m. | UPDATED: December 12, 2018 at 4:47 p.m. Hartford Courant. Also to De Valera in the United States, 1919 by James P. Walsh, Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia, Vol. 73, No. 3/4 (September, December, 1962), pp. 92-107 (16 pages).

Images: Irish Republican Brotherhood flag By Fred the Oyster – https://flagspot.net/images/i/ie_1798.gif, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35369203

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The Enigma of Dr. Benjamin Church

One man’s traitor is often another man’s patriot, depending on who does the labeling. Frequently the victor in a war dictates the label. But often the label is not that simple and clear. Such is the case of Dr. Benjamin Church, often called “America’s First Traitor.” The problem comes from the fact that “America” did not exist at the time of his alleged treason.

Dr. Benjamin Church

Benjamin Church

Benjamin Church was born in Newport, Colony of Rhode Island, British America, on Aug. 24, 1734. A Mayflower descendant through his ancestor Elizabeth Warren Church, his heritage was steeped in the founding of the New World. His father was a merchant. His grandfather, Col. Benjamin Church, played a prominent role in King Philip’s War and led the force that hunted down and killed King Philip.

Col. Benjamin Church, ca 1675

Being the son of a prominent, well-to-do family, much would have been expected of him. He went to Boston Latin School to prepare for Harvard, from which he graduated in 1754. He studied medicine in British America for a time before continuing the study in London. In England that he met and married his wife, Hannah Hill. After his return to Boston, he started a highly successful medical practice and was known for his medical and surgical skills.

By the 1760s Church began to be seen as a supporter of the burgeoning movement in Colonial America that would eventually lead to revolution. He became a prominent member of the Whig Party and was an intimate of Dr. Joseph Warren and Samuel and John Adams. The narrow telling of the story of the American Revolution has long fostered the myth that the intended purpose of the of the Patriot movement was dissolution of the union with England. But this is completely false. Most individuals who espoused the Patriot cause were not seeking to break their English bonds but to have perceived grievances redressed within the existing system. Open, armed rebellion was not a general cause celebre before 1775.

A Leading Patriot

Residing in Boston, Church became a trusted confidant of many of the prominent patriots. In the aftermath of the Boston Massacre, he treated some of the wounded and examined Crispus Attucks’ body. He was a skilled orator, and three years after the Massacre, he gave a spirited oration commemorating the event.

The Boston Massacre, engraving by Paul Revere

Church’s involvement in Massachusetts politics culminated in his 1774 election to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress. Thereafter, he became a prominent member of the Committee of Public Safety. To all outward appearances, Benjamin Church was a leading patriot, deeply involved in the cause. Church commanded such respect that in July 1775 the nascent Continental Congress appointed him the first director general and chief surgeon of the new Medical Department.

However, sometime in early 1775, Church began to spy for the British military, with direct links to Gen. Thomas Gage. It is not clear how much information passed between them before the fatal shots on Lexington Green. His motives are still not clear.

General Thomas Gage (John Singleton Copley)

Certainly, the British paid him, and he did maintain a lavish lifestyle that required a large income. Was money the primary motivation for his ostensible change of heart? Or did he grow disenchanted with n increasingly militant patriot cause? Or was it a combination of greed and disenchantment?

The Coded Letter

There is even some suggestion, without any real proof, that he was a closet Tory. It is not likely that the truth will ever be known. The one thing to remember – often conveniently overlooked – is that treason can be a two-way street. Under British law, the law of the land in the colonies, patriots plotting against the government hovered on the borders of treason. When they began an armed conflict against the government, then they openly committed treason under the British law that governed them.

Church passed his messages to General Gage through a series of messengers. Then in October 1775, one of Church’s former mistresses gave a coded message to a Rhode Island patriot, who turned it over to Gen. Nathanael Greene instead of passing it along. Greene then sent it onward to General Washington.

Washington had the coded letter given to two men good at puzzles. They independently deciphered the message and came up with identical results. The letter provided details of ammunition, recruiting, American strength, New York artillery and Bunker Hill casualties. It was a damning missive.

Nathanael Greene

The former mistress, described as “a very lusty woman much pitted with smallpox,” was arrested and brought to Boston. Through her interrogation and clues from the letter, its author was identified as Dr. Benjamin Church. Church was immediately arrested and brought before the war council. He admitted to sending the letter, but professed innocence of any evil intent. Church claimed he sent it as a ruse to fool the enemy about the Americans’ real situation. He further claimed that nothing in the letter could not be gleaned from public documents and knowledge.

Despite his smooth talk, his lengthy protestations of innocence fell on deaf ears.

Church’s code. Photo courtesy National Park Service.

The Dilemma of Benjamin Church

The problem came when it was time to decide how to deal with him. It was one thing to call his conduct treason, but another to give it the force of law. In open rebellion, the Colonies could not simply fall back on British law and the articles of war adopted in Philadelphia said nothing about treason or espionage. In fact, under the current legal conditions, his actions did not rise legally to a crime of any kind. The easiest thing for Congress to do was strip Church of his appointment as Surgeon General and to turn Church over to the Massachusetts to decide his fate.

Church appeared before the Massachusetts House of Representatives to plead his innocence in an hour-long oration. Again, it fell on deaf ears. The House expelled him. But Massachusetts had the same legal problem as the Continental Congress. It had no laws governing treason, so it could not pass sentence. Congress simply ordered Washington to send him under arrest to Connecticut for indefinite confinement.

He was confined in a damp, dark cell, and specifically denied pen, ink and paper. He won a brief parole when several physicians attested to his poor health in confinement. But this release did not last long, as rioters sacked his Boston house. He returned to prison for his own protection. Efforts to use him in a prisoner exchange also failed. In 1778 he was released and sent in exile to Martinique. However, he never reached his destination as his ship was lost at sea. His wife and children made their way to London. There, the King granted her a £150 pension, over £30,000 today.

Treason or Not?

For 150 years, the single intercepted letter served as the only real proof of Church’s “treason.” Then definite proof emerged in General Gage’s papers showing that he spied for the British since at least the early part of 1775. Among the information passed on by him: the existence of Patriot arms in Concord. And the British paid him for all the information he gave them.

The question remains, however: Did he commit treason? Information passed to British authorities before April 19, 1775, when the Revolution broke out, would not have risen to the level of treason. Everyone was a British subject at the time so he could not have committed treason against any government.

It can be argued that he betrayed the trust of others. But that is not a crime. After April 19, 1775, from a British standpoint, the rebels committed treason against the Crown. So Church’s spying for British authorities, whether for money or not, served as patriotism to the mother country. Furthermore, at the time of his arrest, the colonies, while in open rebellion, had not declared independence.

Certainly, his contemporaries faced a quandary about what to do with him. Dangerous to the patriot cause, certainly, so they could not simply let him go free. But they didn’t find him guilty of anything.

Traitor or patriot? It depends on your point of view.

Bill Utley has a B.A. in History from Syracuse University and an M.A. in Criminal Justice from the University of New Haven. He has co-authored a book on the French history of Fort Niagara. Retired from the U.S. government, he is an Army veteran and Dr. Benjamin Church’s fifth cousin, seven times removed.

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New Release: ‘Eat Like a President’ in Paperback and Ebook

If you really want to know what a president was like, find out what he ate. That’s what Leslie and Dan Landrigan did with the six presidents from New England. The authors wrote the New England Historical Society’s new book, Eat Like a President: 30 Recipes from the White House to Your House, which tells you about the presidents’ families, their servants, their friends — and how they struggled to run the White House and the country at the same time.

You’ll find some surprises in Eat Like a President. Calvin Coolidge, for example, loved to play practical jokes on the servants. Chester A. Arthur indulged in fine dining despite having a fatal kidney disease. John Quincy Adams had a passion for Madeira wine.

Other presidential preferences won’t surprise you. The revolutionary presidential couple, John and Abigail Adams, served distinctly American food. Franklin Pierce, the backwoodsman, preferred comfort food from his native New Hampshire. And Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy loved fancy French cuisine.

The book also explores the historic setting in which the food was made and served. Each president grappled with America’s defining conflicts over freedom and equality. How they treated their servants revealed a lot about their attitudes toward servitude and slavery. Abigail Adams hated the Constitutional compromise that allowed slavery, and she hated watching enslaved servants toiling just outside the White House. She treated her own servants like family. Then, more than a century later, Calvin Coolidge tried to pass an anti-lynching bill and took his ill African American wine steward with him on an Adirondacks vacation to improve his health.

You’ll get a fuller picture of the difficulties a president faces from Eat Like a President. Among pressing cares about war, disaster, legislation and re-election, they still have to meet with hundreds of people every week – and feed many of them. A presidential couple still must host a state dinner even if their child is dying. A president has to spend hours shaking hands even when his enemies are killing his infrastructure bill. In the midst of all that, the first couple has to try to make the White House presentable.

You’ll also get a fuller picture of the presidential couples and their times just from what they ate and drank. Jane Pierce, a teetotaler, came from a cold roast Boston family, while Franklin, an alcoholic, grew up in a tavern. They didn’t appear together publicly very often.

Calvin Coolidge loved the Vermont pickles of his modest boyhood. People even said he looked like he was weaned on one. And yet he also enjoyed Chinese food, a cuisine embraced by aspirational middle-class city dwellers. Coolidge was both.

In the reckless 1960s, the Kennedys served tumblers of Cuba Libres at their White House Twist parties. Those were prosperous times, and the Kennedys — Jackie especially — spent lavishly. At one party they served 10 pounds of caviar in a gold bucket.

Finally, Eat Like a President describes where the presidents ate – in the White House. The first couples had to keep improving the building as America grew in power and prestige. In 1800, Abigail Adams furnished a drafty, unfinished 36-room house; 162 years later, Jackie Kennedy turned a 132-room mansion into an elegant showplace.

In the book…

Let’s face it, food is a fun way to learn about history. And history is a fun way to cook food.

In this book you will get step-by-step instructions on how to make 30 different kinds of presidential food in a modern American kitchen. The foods range from fairly simple colonial fare to fancy French dishes preferred by the Kennedys and the Chinese entrees the Coolidges loved.

You will also get an engaging account of each president’s White House years, with historical background and context. High school students might find it a compelling way to learn about American history — and American cooking.

Just click here to buy the ebook, here for the paperback.

About the authors

Dan and Leslie Landrigan are the authors of the New England Historical Society website. Over the past decade, they’ve written thousands of stories about New England history. They now live on an island in Maine, where they do a lot of cooking for themselves.

This books is the fourth in a series about historic foods. The others are 21 Historic Thanksgiving Foods, 29 Historic Apple Recipes: Cooks’ Favorites from 1650 to 1960, and Historic Italian Christmas Cookies, all ebooks available from Amazon.

Love history?

Then you probably want to join the New England Historical Society community by signing up for our e-newsletter, which comes out once a week. Click here to sign up.

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Louisa Adams Parties Into the Presidency

Louisa Adams wanted her husband to be president of the United States. Her husband didn’t have much choice in the matter. John Quincy Adams grew up believing he would disgrace himself if he didn’t.

“If you do not rise to the head not only of your profession, but of your country, it will be owing to your own Laziness, Slovenliness, and Obstinacy,” wrote his father, the founding father, John Adams.

In 1824, the time was right for John Quincy to run for president. One man stood in his way: the U.S. Senator from Tennessee, Andrew Jackson.

Louisa Adams tried to help get Jackson out of the way — by throwing a magnificent ball in his honor. Because that’s the way they did it in 1824.

Louisa Adams

She met her husband in England in 1790. He was a rising young diplomat, the son of the vice president of the United States. She had been born in London and spent much of her childhood in France as the daughter of a wealthy American merchant and diplomat. The two probably couldn’t have differed more.

She was a charming, fashionable, hot-blooded socialite. He was reserved, taciturn and cold. Louisa described him in a novel:

“a man of extraordinary talents…his natural disposition was ardent and impetuous, but a perpetual watchfulness over these natural defects, had taught him to master them completely, and it was only those who were the most constantly with him, who were aware that occasions could arise in which the internal volcano would sometimes produce an eruption that was short but violent in its explosion. “

They married in 1797. Around the time of the wedding, Louisa’s father told John Quincy he had lost most of his money. Financial troubles plagued the Adamses for the rest of their lives.

Louisa followed her husband to his diplomatic postings in Russia, Ghent and London. During their marriage she had 15 pregnancies and delivered three sons and a daughter, who died in infancy.

Back to the USA

In 1817, President James Monroe appointed John Quincy Adams secretary of state. They moved to Washington, D.C., and eventually bought the house Monroe had lived in on F (now I) Street.

The house that James Monroe and John Quincy Adams lived in.

By 1824, Monroe neared the end of his term, which gave John Quincy Adams a chance to run for president. He knew he’d probably face Jackson, a war hero, for the prize.

Adams and Jackson had little in common other than their age (57), their ambition and their early promise. Adams’ career as a diplomat began at 14, when he went to St. Petersburg to work as secretary to the U.S. minister to Russia, Francis Dana. Jackson began his career as a soldier at the age of 13, when he volunteered to fight in the American Revolution for the local militia.

Andrew Jackson

In 1824, men did not campaign for president the way they do today. There was no gladhanding the public, no caucuses or primaries. In six of the 24 states, legislators cast the vote for president. And in all the states, only white male adults could go to the polls.

Politicians shunned retail politics. Instead, they played social politics, appealing to political power brokers in their own parlors.

It was not something Adams was good at. Jackson, on the other hand, was. Dashing and tempestuous, he had won enormous popularity after winning the Battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812.

Louisa Adams made up for her husband’s shortcomings. She had shone as a diplomat’s wife and a society hostess. She threw herself into Washington’s social whirl, hosting dinners and levees at their F Street mansion for people important to her husband’s career.

John Quincy Adams by George Peter Alexander Healy

Louisa Adams’ Ball to End All Balls

Louisa held a grand ball on Jan. 8, 1824, the ninth anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans. The purpose of the party was ostensibly to honor Jackson, but really to eclipse him. On the social front, Jackson’s backwoods wife, Rachel, couldn’t hope to compete with the worldly Louisa. Plus, by “honoring” Jackson, the Adamses hoped to win his endorsement for president. They might even persuade him to run as vice president.

Louisa invited a thousand people to the house on F Street, so many they had to remove all the furniture and doors. They even built pillars to keep the floor from caving in. Louisa filled the house with flowers, hired the marine band and served a lavish buffet.

The party was a smash, Louisa a legend. People talked about it for days. The National Republican printed a poem in her honor, which ended,

Belles and matrons, maids and madams,

All are gone to Mrs. Adams.

They continued to go to Mrs. Adams. In March, her husband recorded they’d had 235 visitors in their home that month alone.

The prize

Jackson still ran against Adams for president, and he even won the popular vote in a three-way Electoral College tie. The election then went to the House of Representatives.

Adams beat Jackson by making a deal with Henry Clay, then Speaker of the House. After Clay threw the election to Adams, Adams made Clay his secretary of state.

Drawing of the President’s House by Benjamin Latrobe

That enraged Jackson, who accused Adams of making a corrupt bargain. Jackson was already furious with Adams’ supporters because they had attacked Rachel. He resigned his Senate seat and almost immediately launched a grassroots campaign to defeat Adams for reelection. Jackson and his supporters would make the next four years the most miserable of John Quincy and Louisa Adams’ lives.

Images: Latrobe, Benjamin Henry, Architect. The White House “President’s House” Washington, D.C. South front elevation / Jan. , B H Latrobe. Washington D.C, 1817. Jan. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2001698953/. Adams house By APK – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=117668495. With thanks to Louisa: The Extraordinary Life of Mrs. Adams by Louisa Thomas.

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Easy Money: How New England Puritans Invented Our Currency

Easy money is perhaps New England’s least famous contribution to humanity. Around the world, currency is still mostly in the form of legal tender paper money. It’s a special type of paper money. Unlike numerous types of paper money in history, it is not convertible to gold upon demand. Nor is its quantity “backed” or restricted in any way by its issuer’s gold stock. In general, it is not forced on sellers in private spot transactions. It is just a pure legal tender money.

This means that creditors cannot reject payments of obligations in that object. Most critically, these creditors include the tax authority, and no other object has this status. Every taxpayer must obtain legal tender money in order to pay taxes. This legal status distinguishes the dollar from bitcoin, both of which have no intrinsic value and no relation to gold. It is a major reason why bitcoin hasn’t and probably couldn’t replace the dollar. And it is a major reason why governments can inflate their money at will. Taxpayers still have to obtain it, typically by selling goods and services for it. For the government, it is easy money.

This device, of flimsy appearance but enormous power, was invented in the colony of Massachusetts Bay in the period 1690-1692. From there it spread to other colonies. Because of the Revolutionary War, the idea spread to Europe. Monetary history would never be the same. No country ever again manipulated the content of its gold coins, as they had for two millennia, in order to finance a war. The printing press took over war finance.

Why Massachusetts Puritans?

Why and how did the Massachusetts Puritans invent this new type of money? They numbered 50,000 people at the edge of Western civilization, far less numerous and far less sophisticated than the great financial centers of Amsterdam and London. The first step to answering this question is to recognize that the innovative legal tender paper money was not born in a normal economy. Its invention did not simply replace precious metal coins. The items eligible for use as tax payments in 1690 Massachusetts, just before the invention of legal tender paper money, didn’t just include coins. They also included wheat, barley, barley malt, rye, maize, peas, oats, beef and pork.

It was a very odd monetary economy that saw its roots in the beginning of the English colonization of America. Let’s then take a journey further back in time – and space – all the way to Pocahontas.

An 1850s painting of John Rolfe and Pocahontas

Pocahontas’ husband, John Rolfe, started tobacco planting in Jamestown in the 1610s. Quickly everyone who could became a tobacco planter. The planters desperately needed European goods and food. And so when European ships came for their tobacco the planters exchanged all their tobacco – but also most of their coins – for European products. As a result, very few coins remained for domestic circulation. Tobacco quickly emerged as the alternative to coins. By 1624, even the colony’s budget was expressed in pounds of tobacco.

A Pattern of Easy Money

The pattern repeated itself in all the non-Iberian colonies: maize in Plymouth, sugar in Barbados, boards in Maine, beaver furs in Canada and whalebones in Long Island. Each colony adopted its main product as money. As a matter of course, in 1630 the young colony of Massachusetts Bay adopted three official currencies: English silver coins, grains and beaver furs.

But Massachusetts soon became different because its people were different. Relatively affluent, highly educated and commercially oriented, the Massachusetts Puritans were not content with using commodities as money. They also had the means and the expertise to try something better. An unusual period of experimentation began. In 1635, lead bullets were adopted as small change. Bullets served in their traditional role in the 1637 Pequot War, which gave Massachusetts access to Long Island shores. That was the production center of wampum – the seashell jewelry/money of Native Americans. So in 1637, Massachusetts made wampum legal tender for small debts.

Pilgrims Going to Church by George Henry Boughton

In 1639, the colony legalized bullion brought by privateers for tax payments. In 1642, Massachusetts was the first colony to recognize foreign (Spanish and Dutch) coins and to encourage their imports. The abolition of monarchy in England annulled the royal minting prerogative, leading Massachusetts to be the only colony to open a mint (in 1652).

Charles II

But royalty returned in 1660, and in the late 1670s King Charles II pressed Massachusetts on the issue of the independent mint, which was seen as nothing short of treason. It was shut down in 1682. At the same time, a private bank started operations in Boston. It issued banknotes awkwardly backed by land titles rather than coins. The bank ceased operations shortly thereafter, perhaps because England threatened to abolish all land titles in Massachusetts.

Charles II

In 1684, the charter of the Massachusetts Bay Company was annulled in England, and in 1686 a new regime was imposed by the new king, James II. This Dominion of New England was a pure dictatorship, unlike the colony’s General Court, which was a democracy among male church members. Another attempt at a land bank was made, but it was aborted as soon as the English dictator, Sir Edmund Andros, invalidated all land titles.

With local coins gone and bank projects in ruin, in 1688 Massachusetts was not much better, in terms of its existing currency, than when it was founded in 1630. Some English coins and grains still facilitated daily transactions within the colony. But the monetary laboratory that operated there during these six decades was not entirely in vain. It was powered by English America’s largest merchants, concentrated in Boston, and by graduates of English America’s only college (Harvard). As a merchant republic, Massachusetts was similar to previous hubs of financial innovation – Venice and Amsterdam. The shocks of both the new environment and England’s constitutional upheavals caused Massachusetts to replicate humanity’s monetary history in 60 years: seashell jewelry, grains, uncoined precious metal, coins and banknotes.

Glorious Revolution

Then came the Glorious Revolution in England. It soon inspired a revolution in Boston, which dismantled the Dominion and restored the charter government de facto. The Glorious Revolution also dragged the English colonies into their first war with French Canada. The revolutionary Massachusetts government lobbied the monarchs William and Mary to restore their charter at the same time that they launched expensive attacks on distant Canada. In the fall of 1690, these two tasks collided on the beaches below Quebec City. Massachusetts tried to occupy the French colony, counting on God to provide a Puritan victory over Catholics. The expected plunder was supposed to pay the soldiers. But it was not to be. The soldiers returned defeated in November, ravaged by smallpox, frozen and hungry, and demanded pay for their horrible three-month journey.

The batteries of Quebec bombard the New England fleet

The government promptly increased taxes enormously, but it would have taken too much time to collect them (in coin, grains, and other goods). The soldiers were “mutinous,” reported Boston pastor Cotton Mather. Mather and the elite knew that the very same place they tried to occupy (Quebec) was in the habit of issuing paper money (manually, from playing cards!). The Canadian money was in the Old World style: It was forced on all sellers under penalty and the government committed to exchange it for incoming French silver coins. As the intellectual capital of English America, Massachusetts had printing presses and thus had the technical ability to easily pull off a paper money issue. The problem was a constitutional one: William and Mary, considering restoration of the colony’s charter, would not have been happy seeing Massachusetts once again violating the royal monopoly on money creation. What to do?

A Solution

The government, experienced in monetary innovation, figured out a solution: There will not be “paper money” but only “bills.” No private party will be forced to accept them – no sellers in the markets, not even the soldiers. The soldiers will be informed that they can receive the “bills” if they want, instead of waiting for tax proceeds to be collected, and taxpayers will be informed that they can discharge their enormous tax obligations with these “bills.” That is, only tax collectors will be forced to accept the bills.

In modern parlance, the bills were only legal tender for taxes. Officially, it was not money at all, and thus England should not care. I call it “easy money” because it was money that was easy to issue – no need for precious metal and a mint – and it was made in a dishonest way to fool England.

Easy Money

The bills were enacted into law on December 24, 1690. Printing soon began. The issue of the bills was handed to a committee of five bay merchants,. They included Elisha Hutchinson, grandson of the religious dissident, Anne, and grandfather of the governor and historian, Thomas; Treasurer John Phillips, Mather’s father-in-law; and Adam Winthrop – the first Harvard graduate of that famous name.

In January 1691, the bills were given to soldiers but the public was reluctant to accept the bills. Members of the elite rushed to save the new experiment. Among them were Cotton Mather, who wrote a fiery pamphlet, and the rich Sir William Phips (leader of the Quebec expedition). Phips reputedly exchanged some of his own coins for bills to establish their credit. It worked.

William Phips

England, as planned, did not care about this experiment. In October 1691, William and Mary granted a new charter to the Province of Massachusetts Bay. Upon the charter’s arrival in 1692, the new government understood that it no longer had to fear England’s reaction regarding its money-issuing activities. In the summer it decided that the “bills of credit” (as they came to be known) will be legal tender not only for taxes but for any monetary obligation. In this step, the bills became identical in legal status to England’s silver coins. However, since they were not made of precious metal, they were identical to our modern currency. Ironically, this time of brilliant innovation was also the summer of Salem witch trials.

The Expedient of Easy Money

Mather later summarized his people’s ingenuity.

“In this extremity they presently found out an expedient, which may serve as an example, for any people in other parts of the world, whose distresses may call for a sudden supply of money to carry them through any important expedition.”

Mather, the mad genius of Boston, was right. Founder John Winthrop did not think of paper money when he said in 1630: “We shall be a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.” But in the context of money that was what eventually happened.

Cotton Mather

Of course, silver and later gold made a comeback, again and again, to prevent inflation, only to be discarded during wars. Gold coins disappeared from American shops and homes in the Great Depression. Gold remained behind the scenes until 1971, loosely “backing” an ever-increasing amount of paper dollars. Only foreign central banks had the legal right to convert the dollars they held into U.S. gold. But the system came under pressure of increasing government expenditures: The Vietnam War, President Johnson’s War on Poverty and the war on gravity (the Space Program) cost so much money that the dollar’s relation to gold lost its credibility. In 1971 President Richard Nixon “suspended” the convertibility promise, and in fact, took the entire world off gold.

Massachusetts Money

Since then, our currency is Massachusetts currency. If and when it a digital version replaces it, its legal status will remain the same. Even if it disappears from shops in favor of electronic payments of various sorts, it still forms the foundation of the monetary and financial systems. These systems consist mostly of promises to pay “dollars” – the paper money and token coins issued by the federal government.

And it all started in a futile attempt of New Englanders to occupy Quebec.

Dror Goldberg is the author of Easy Money: American Puritans and the Invention of Modern Currency, to be published by the University of Chicago Press in April 2023.

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Abigail Adams, Matchmaker

Nothing cheered Abigail Adams so much as a wedding. During her lifetime of difficulty and sadness, she needed cheering. Her husband was often absent, a beloved son died young, a daughter lost a battle with breast cancer, another son became a dissolute alcoholic. Through it all, her family and servants came to view her as Abigail Adams, matchmaker.

She thought of her servants as family, kept their secrets and hosted their marriage ceremonies. She married off six pairs of them, five of them in her own home.

In 1801, that meant the White House.

1793 plans for the White House by James Hoban

Abigail Adams, Matchmaker

Abigail’s nephew, William Smith Shaw, knew how much she loved weddings. “I declare I wish you would have, Aunt, a wedding every night in the week, for I plainly see that it gives you better spirits and consequently better health, than all the medicine in the world,” he wrote to her in 1798.

“I am a great friend to Matrimony, and always like to promote it, where there is a prospect of happiness & comfort,” she replied.

Portrait of William Smith Shaw by Gilbert Stuart.

She had just hosted the wedding of her servant Abigail Hunt and a local farmer, Ebenezer Harmon, at her farm in Quincy, Mass. “I regaled them with a Glass of wine, & some cake and Cheese,” she wrote. Then she went to bed as the wedding party went off dancing. “I retired to rest at about nine, and with the pleasurable reflection of having made Several honest families happy & pleasd I enjoyd a comfortable nights repose.”

John Adams heartily approved of Abigail’s matchmaking among the servants. “I hope you will marry Louisa & Betcy Howard and all the single ones, who are ripe,” he wrote to her from Philadelphia in 1798.

The First Wedding

In 1784, Abigail Adams made her first match. John Adams was then serving as minister to Great Britain and she was about to sail for London to join him. She hired John Briesler, a local man, to accompany her across the Atlantic. Before she left, she wrote to her husband about him . She called Briesler “a steady frugal fellow, with a mind much above the vulgar.” The Adamses came to depend on Briesler. “As good a servant as ever bore the name,” she later wrote. If it hadn’t been for him, she wrote years later, she never would have gone into public life. He was “virtuous, handy and attentive.”

Briesler was especially attentive to Abigail’s 23-year-old ladies’ maid, Esther Field. In 1788, just a few weeks before they were to return to America, Esther came to Abigail in much distress. She confessed Briesler had gotten her pregnant.

“[P]oor Brisler looks so humble and is so attentive, so faithfull & so trust worthy, that I am willing to do all I can for them,” Abigail wrote to her sister, Mary Cranch.

abigail-adams-attacked-thomas-jefferson-portrait

Abigail Adams by Gilbert Stuart

Abigail Adams, matchmaker, got them married a few days later in St. Marylebone church in London. Abigail worried about Esther delivering the baby aboard the ship returning home. She arranged for a nurse to come with them to help with the childbirth. The baby, a girl, was born aboard the ship. “We got through this business much better than I feared we should. I had for the first time in my life, to dress the little animal,” she wrote to her daughter.

Over the years, Esther had more babies. Abigail, however, found ways to keep her employed.

In 1797, she hosted the wedding of another servant, Polly Doble Howard, and Jonathan Baxter, Jr.

The White House

Abigail had managed the farm and family during her husband’s long absences. She engineered the moves to join him. She set up official houses in London and Paris on his diplomatic missions; to New York when he served as vice president of the United States and to Philadelphia as president. Then, three years into his presidency she had to set up another house. This time, she did it in the Wilderness City – Washington, D.C. – where the seat of government had moved.

It was November 1800. Abigail was 56 years old and not looking forward to the move. She had stayed at her Quincy farm fighting off raging fevers as her husband fought off his political enemies. He moved into the President’s House a few weeks earlier than she.

John Briesler was with him. Abigail had also sent William Shipley ahead of her to help. Another of John Adams’ servants was also probably in Washington: Richard Dexter, an “honest and faithful domestick” who handled horses.

John Adams by Gilbert Stuart

White House Wedding

A week before Abigail was to leave for Washington, she sent two of her housemaids ahead. John Adams had called the White House “habitable,” but that may have been charitable. The staircases hadn’t been finished, the plaster hadn’t dried on the wall and none of the rooms had been furnished.

Rebecca Tyrell was one of the maids Abigail sent ahead. Rebecca had worked for Abigail since 1790 and nursed her through various illnesses. Abigail viewed her almost as a daughter. She called Rebecca “my most beloved domestic who was to me as a child in sickness and in Health.”

Betsy Howard went with Rebecca. She was Polly Doble Howard’s sister, and one of the domestics John Adams considered “ripe.” She would sleep on the same floor of the President’s House as Abigail and John Briesler. Their rooms, wrote Abigail, were as “handsome and well-furnishd as any of my Bed chambers at Quincy.”

The other servants slept along the ground floor corridor, in the basement.

So why did Betsy Howard get special treatment? “[F]or Many reasons I chose to have her under my own Eye,” wrote Abigail to her doctor, Cotton Tufts.

Abigail was probably worried that Betsy might find herself in the same position as Esther Field had 16 years earlier. Or maybe she had.

In January 1801, Betsy Howard married William Shipley in the President’s House.

Abigail Adams, Matchmaker Twice More

Abigail Adams spent only four months in the cold, unfinished White House, where she had famously hung her washing to dry in the East Room.

Her grandson, Charles Francis Adams, would observe, “there is something in the climate and habits of this place very hostile to the happiness of New Englanders.” She and John had, in fact, been miserable in the White House.

Two weeks after Abigail Adams arrived in Washington, their son Charles died, a homeless alcoholic, in New York City. Two weeks after that they would learn John had lost the presidential election. During that time they had only 13 servants to do the work of 30 – furnishing the big house, hosting official entertainments and keeping the fires going to dry the plaster.

Abigail left Washington happily in February 1801. “My residence in this city has not served to endear the world to me. I am sick, sick and sick of Publick life,” she wrote as she left.

Peacefield, the Adams home in Quincy

She wasn’t sick of matchmaking. In 1802, Elizabeth Epps and Tilly Whitcomb married at the Adams’ farm in Quincy.

Rebecca Tyrell stayed with Abigail another three years after they left Washington. John Adams had brought Richard Dexter back with him to Quincy. In 1804, Rebecca Tyrell married him at the Adams farm. Abigail would remember Rebecca in her will, bequeathing her $30 and a gown.

After the ceremony, Abigail Adams, matchmaker, bragged of her love matches to her friend, Hannah Phillips Cushing.

“At the Wedding,” Abigail continued, “amongst other Guests were six couple who had lived with me during her residence with me all of whom had been married from me in that period & all but one married in my family. This I believe is rather a singular instance.”

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