North Carolina Office of Archives and History

The Papers of George Washington. Revolutionary War Series. Vol. 5, June-August 1776 byPhilander D. ChaseReview by: E. Wayne CarpThe North Carolina Historical Review, Vol. 71, No. 4 (OCTOBER 1994), pp. 500-501Published by: North Carolina Office of Archives and HistoryStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23521858 .

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500 Book Reviews

much about the agendas of printers, publicists, and clergymen as about the criminals

they have discovered.

Above all, criminal narratives provided a vivid portrait of the community, its moral

barriers, and the view of that sacred space and moral demarcations from the outside. It

was not premeditation that so offended moral and social order. Confessing to rape, Thomas Powers, an African American and former slave, in Norwich, Connecticut, described seeing a young woman while out riding one evening. "I passed on by her ...

till after a little querying with myself, and finding nothing to oppose, but rather the

devil to assist me, I determined to make an attempt on her virgin chastity. So I waylaid her. ... I threw her on the ground, and in spite of her cries and entreaties, succeeded in my hellish designs." Powers then returned to his master's house and played his usual

game of checkers with the children. It was Powers's lack of premeditation, his ability to be a serial rapist within the confines of the existing social order and his mask of

civility that the readers and probably the editors of his memoirs found chillingly instructive.

Three of the narratives are by women. Patience Boston of Falmouth, Massachusetts,

got into a drunken argument with her husband and, to vex him, claimed that she had murdered their infant daughter who had died suddenly a few weeks earlier. Her 1738 memoir is a searing account of a violent, drunken, dysfunctional marriage. By the end of the eighteenth century, women's criminal narratives became much more stylized. Those of Elizabeth Wilson (1786) and Rachel Wall (1789) titillated readers with notions of involuntary female criminality produced by "the subtlety of Satan and the

corruptions of nature the soul-destroying sin of fornication." Pillars of Salt is a major source on early American social and moral history.

University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Robert M. Calhoon

The Papers of George Washington. Revolutionary War Series. Vol. 5, June-August 1776. Edited by Philander D. Chase. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993. Frontispiece, edito

rial apparatus, maps, index. Pp. xxviii, 739. $67.50.)

On the deck of the flagship Arbella, crossing the Atlantic in 1629, Governor John Winthrop reminded the Puritans that "we shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all

people are upon us" and that if they failed to carry out their covenant with God, "we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world." Almost 150 years later, the Continental army's commander in chief had similar thoughts. On July 1, 1776, in

anticipation of a climactic showdown with the thirty-thousand-man British army on

Long Island, George Washington exhorted his troops to "conquer or die," because "the

Eyes of all our Countrymen are now upon us," and that if they were defeated, "we should become infamous to the whole world." Of course, Washington's soldiers were crushed at the Battle of Long Island in August 1776. The many reasons for their defeat are amply revealed in this impeccably edited volume covering the two months before the battle.

The problems facing the Continental army were enormous. In June, the extent of

the "shattered, divided, and broken" Northern army's defeat in Canada became fully known at the moment the British fleet, with thousands of reinforcements for General William Howe's army, landed at Staten Island. Washington's acquiescence in recruiting

THE NORTH CAROLINA HISTORICAL REVIEW

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Book Reviews 501

Indians to fight and his importuning for state militia to join his forces underscored British troop superiority of two to one on the battlefield. Not only was Washington's undisciplined, poorly supplied army outnumbered, but it operated in a hotbed of

toryism, never knowing whether civilian cooperation would be forthcoming. Com

pounding these difficulties, Washington had to make do with an empty pay chest, resentful regimental surgeons, quarreling general officers, and the threat of smallpox. The only bright spot during these two months was the reading of the Declaration of

Independence to the troops, which, given the unpropitious circumstances, was as great an act of faith as the Puritans' voyage to America.

One can only hope that Congress manifests similar faith in these valuable documen

tary editions and resists the shortsighted impulse to balance the budget at the expense of the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.

Pacific Lutheran University

E. Wayne Carp

The Papers of George Washington. Presidential Series. Vol. 4, September 1789-January 1790. Edited

by W. W. Abbot and Dorothy Twohig. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993.

Editorial apparatus, illustrations, map, index. Pp. xxxii, 636. $65.00.)

Three major themes implicitly run through this volume of George Washington's

presidential papers. The newly elected chief executive was flooded with applications from or on behalf of men of all ranks seeking means to repair their broken fortunes, but

he searched laboriously, at times frustratingly, for federal nominees. He gave particular attention to judicial posts, seeking gentlemen of experience and distinction, believing his selections for that department were the most important in giving tone and weight to the new government. But a good many of his first choices turned him down because

the judgeships paid too little, involved inconvenient circuit riding, or simply lacked

the dignity the president hoped those gentlemen might impart to the federal judiciary. The frankness of so many to look out for their own interests should perhaps prompt

historians to view Federalist gentlemen's self-proclaimed disinterestedness with some

of the skepticism expressed by their Antifederalist opponents. Meanwhile, from both the southwestern and northwestern frontiers, Washington

received intelligence of tensions, clashes, and perhaps impending warfare with various

Indian nations. Negotiation of a peace treaty with the Creek collapsed. Other south

eastern nations allied with the United States requested arms, as did alarmed and

belligerent white settlers from Georgia to Ohio who essentially wanted wars of extir

pation. The president's policy dilemma was how to manage both the settlers and the

native peoples, how to prevent war while ensuring ultimate subjugation of the Indians,

and how to keep those various interests, white and Indian, from going over to the

Spanish. The situation necessitated that he review military defenses along the interior

borderlands and get the government of the Northwest Territory running, the latter a

political task tied up with—and slowed down by—the appointments process. In addition, in the autumn the president took his first tour of the states, visiting New

England but avoiding Rhode Island, which had yet to ratify the Constitution. The

political aim of this junket was, of course, to consolidate support of the new federal

VOLUME LXXI • NUMBER 4 • OCTOBER 1994

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