Prof: Now I want to turn
to the lecture,
and I'm going to start the
lecture with my true confession
of the day.
 
Okay.
 
I did something a little insane
and I'm not entirely sure how
this is going to work out.
 
I did it for you.
 
I--Basically,
on the syllabus it says that
the title of this lecture is
"Citizenship and
Leadership"
or "Leadership and
Citizenship."
 
I don't even remember which one
I put first.
And initially,
my idea had been when I wrote
the syllabus for this course
before the semester even
started--
well, this is going to be a
lecture that has something to do
with new ways of--
how the Revolution changed
people's sense of themselves as
citizens,
how people were behaving
differently because of the
approach of Revolution and then
because of the fighting of
Revolution.
And I was going to talk a
little bit about crowd actions
and about how the Revolution
itself wouldn't really have been
possible without crowd actions.
 
I talked, I know,
a little bit about mob actions
and we've seen some in action.
 
So I was basically going to
talk about how the Revolution
politicized people,
how it--on a mass scale for
many different kinds of
Americans--
brought them in to the public
sphere,
made them think and act
politically in a way that
perhaps they hadn't before.
 
And then I was going to
accompany that with a brief
discussion about the elite in
this environment being on the
one hand appreciative of the
sort of mass popular involvement
because there would be no
Revolution without it--
that is the Revolution--but on
the other hand they're elite
folk so they're all--
some of them at least are a
little nervous about all of this
sort of popular sentiment and
crowd action.
 
And I even had--let me find my
favorite arrogant aristocratic
quote.
 
Okay.
 
So I even found random arrogant
elite guy quote in 1774 who
observed with true disdain:
"The mob begin to think
and reason."
 
This is Gouverneur Morris,
who actually has a really great
sense of humor but also he's
really kind of aristocratically
disdainful.
 
And he says he believes
"with fear and trembling
that if the disputes with
Britain continue,
we shall be under the worst of
all possible dominions.
We shall be under the
domination of a riotous
mob."
 
Okay.
 
So Gouverneur Morris is an
extreme example of some sort of
elite concern about what the
Revolution means,
what does it mean that people
are rising up.
So that was going to be today's
lecture.
That was my plan.
 
But when I started thinking
about the lecture and thinking
about just preparing it and
tweaking it,
and again I had last thought
about it back in December--
and you know,
when you make a syllabus for a
course you think about the
course,
you outline it,
you think it's all going to go
well,
and then you get halfway
through the course and sometimes
different things seem exciting
to you or you suddenly get a gut
feeling that:
'wow,
I was going to have a really
abstract discussion today,
and I don't want to have an
abstract discussion.
 
[laughs]
I want us to be grounded in the
actual Revolution.'
 
All of those things happened to
me when I was thinking about
today's lecture,
and I decided at the absolute
last minute I wasn't going to
give that lecture--
at literally the absolute last
minute.
Today--This morning for me was
like a reality show called
"The Lecture"
and I was like:
'Freeman,
three hours--research and write
a new lecture.'
 
So I was sort of frantically at
my desk.
So not only did I research and
write a new lecture,
but it's based entirely on
primary research.
So I mean--I really researched,
you'll hear,
and I'm going to explain in a
moment what I'm actually going
to be lecturing on,
which is related to what I'm
supposed to be lecturing on.
 
But basically I just came up
with something that to me felt
more interesting,
more immediate,
that's going to show some of
the same things I would have
been talking about in my big,
broad, general way with my
leadership and citizenship
lecture,
but instead I'm actually going
to base it on real people in a
real place,
sort of really showing you as
the Revolution's unfolding what
happens to people in this place
and how do events and ideas
affect them.
So when I said I hope I have a
minute or two at the end--
given that I literally was
printing this out as I was
grabbing my coat to run here,
hopefully this is all going to
work and the lecture will go
swimmingly.
This is true confessions.
 
Right?
 
I should never get up in front
of you and say,
"Maybe my lecture will
die."
[laughter]
Okay.
Hopefully, it won't die,
but I'm going to aim for a
grand slam, and we'll try.
 
But one way or another,
what I am going to do today is
get across some of the ideas in
a concrete way that I had been
thinking I was going to approach
in an abstract way and that just
didn't get me excited this
morning,
so it's a little experiment for
me.
And what I'm going to do,
my little experimental thing,
is I'm actually going to be
talking about citizenship and
leadership and the American
Revolution by focusing on Yale
and New Haven.
 
This was my brilliant thought
for the morning.
Ah ha, I could focus right here.
 
I could talk about us here now,
and look at--
throughout the 1770s--some of
the ways in which people were
actually experiencing the
Revolution,
some of the ways in which the
Revolution was getting them to
take action,
what it is they were doing,
why they were doing it,
who was doing it,
who was taking action.
 
So again we're not just going
to be looking at three elite
guys in a room sort of writing
proclamations but we're actually
going to be talking about
students and the people of New
Haven.
 
So that's my experimental
lecture for this morning and,
as you're going to see,
average New Haven residents
took strong action at an early
point in the growing conflict
between the colonies and Great
Britain.
So really, in a main and a sort
of major way what we're going to
be looking at is their story
today, the story of average
people in New Haven.
 
Students are kind of above
average because they would have
been from more elevated
families.
We're going to be looking at
students too,
but we're going to be looking
at a lot of what's happening
just in the town of New Haven,
which in a way is the best way
to look at the Revolution,
which is really how it's
unfolding on the ground.
 
Plus this means I get to talk
about the British invasion of
New Haven, which--I've been
waiting for my moment.
I've never actually talked
about it in this class before.
I discovered it when I was
writing the introductory lecture
and then having discovered it it
was like: 'okay,
well, now I have to find a way
to talk about the invasion of
New Haven.'
 
So after I had my brilliant
idea I realized ha,
[laughs]
this means I get to talk about
the attack on New Haven in
today's lecture--
so that will be there today too.
 
Okay.
 
So let's actually turn now to
Yale and New Haven at the
opening of the Revolution.
 
And most of the lecture today
is going to focus on the 1770s,
but I will mention in starting
that Yale students were
certainly caught up in all of
the fervor that I've been
talking about in past lectures.
 
And I know I mentioned once
before that Yale students
decided in protest at one point
to give up importing fine wines,
[laughs]--the sacrifice--on the
part of Yale students.
In the 1760s,
Yale students,
like many other people
throughout the colonies,
were engaged in acts of sort of
personal protest like that,
giving something up.
 
Okay.
 
Maybe on the part of Yale
students it was just fine wines,
but still--
Or on another occasion in 1769
in response to the Townshend
Acts and then the idea of
non-importation,
the senior class of Yale came
up with the following
proclamation,
which they made publicly:
"The Senior Class of Yale
College have unanimously agreed
to make their Appearance at the
next public Commencement,
when they are to take their
first Degree,
wholly dressed in the
Manufacturers of our own
Country: And desire this public
Notice may be given of their
Resolution,
so their Parents and Friends
may have sufficient Time to be
providing Homespun Cloaths for
them."
[laughter]
It was like:
'we are making a proclamation.
 
Mom, send me some clothes.'
 
[laughter] That was like--okay.
 
[laughs]
But the feeling was there.
[laughs]
And even better,
they want their parents to
provide homespun clothes,
"that none of them may be
obliged to the hard Necessity of
unfashionable Singularity,
by wearing imported Cloth."
Okay.
 
'Mom, if you don't send me
clothes,
I'm going to have to wear
imported clothes and I'm going
to be really unpopular'--
so--[laughter]
guilting the parents.
 
Okay, but anyway that's--Yale
students of the 1760s actually
making acts of protest,
organizing themselves into
active protest.
 
Now Yale isn't unique in this
way, actually.
Throughout the--this period,
colonial colleges in a variety
of different places were places
that tended to brew sentiment--
political sentiment that was
rebellious or outraged at some
of the acts being imposed by the
British government.
Actually, Yale and Harvard and
the College of New Jersey,
which is now Princeton,
tended to be particularly
well-known as sort of seedbeds
of unrest--
particularly angry students who
had strong political feelings,
but there were other colleges
as well where the students
really were provoked to acts of
protest in a variety of
different ways.
 
And I--this morning in
researching for this lecture,
I found a bunch of
Princeton/College of New Jersey
students who decided that no one
in Princeton should be drinking
tea.
 
So they went out into the town
and just personally forced their
way in to people's houses and
when they found tea they burned
it.
 
That would be really
popular--right?--and then one of
them said something like,
"That was a real
frolic."
 
[laughter] Okay.
 
[laughs]
The town must have been very
pleased.
 
I think in another college the
commencement exercises,
the speeches that the students
gave at a commencement exercise,
at a pretty early point
actually, they debated,
one for, one and against the
possibility of independence.
I think that was in 1769.
 
You had students at one college
who decided that would be what
would be happening at their
commencement ceremony is they
would have that debate.
 
It's a really early point and
again, pretty radical.
So we're kind of looking at a
long-standing pattern of college
students being bold and radical
during times of political
controversy and political
unrest,
and this is happening
throughout the colonies in this
period.
 
And it kind of makes sense.
 
You have a cluster of people
together and you have a variety
of different avenues,
ways for students to make their
thoughts known,
so colleges and,
as I said, particularly Yale
became known as the sort of
seedbed of sedition.
 
As one Loyalist said of Yale in
the 1770s,
The college is no longer
remarkable for its scholarship
but instead for "its
persecuting spirit,
its republican principles,
its intolerance in
religion"--
but this is a person of
Loyalist sympathies,
who says, 'Yale used to be
great.
 
It's all downhill now.
 
They have those crazy,
wild, radical students.'
Or, as a British officer put it
in 1779--
he happens to be the British
officer who invaded New Haven--
quote, "That place (New
Haven) is a spacious and very
considerable town;
it has the largest university
in America, and might with
propriety be styled the parent
and nurse of rebellion."
 
Okay.
 
We are the parent and nurse of
rebellion--'Yale,
hate Yale.'
 
Okay, but this is not to say
that colleges in this period are
little isolated seedbeds of
rebellion and everybody else is
sort of sitting around whittling
pieces of wood,
thinking, 'oh,
I wonder what the British are
doing today.'
 
Right?
 
It's not as though the colleges
are isolated from the
communities or that the colleges
only notice the communities when
they're going to go out and burn
random citizens' tea as they did
in New Jersey.
 
There were obviously,
there were connections between
whatever was going on in these
colleges and whatever was going
on in these towns,
and we're going to see that
play out a couple of times in
this lecture today.
Sometimes things that went on
in the town spread their way
onto the Yale campus.
 
An example of this is in the
late 1760s when there was a
rally on the New Haven town
green against British policy,
and the Yale students
apparently attended that rally
and got very stirred up by the
rally and decided to continue it
on the Yale campus,
at which point a big group of
students decided it would be a
really great idea to declare
their political sentiments by
toasting English radical John
Wilkes.
 
And they decided not--And I
don't know where this number
came from,
because I didn't have time to
research where the number came
from,
but you'll hear why I
questioned it.
They decided that they would
toast John Wilkes forty-five
times.
 
[laughter] Okay.
 
That's forty-five drinks.
 
[laughs]
So one observer,
who I gather from my research
this morning had Loyalist
sympathies,
said that "instead of
drinking 45 glasses in honor of
Wilkes and Liberty,"
the Yale students "drank
themselves 45 degrees in extremo
DRUNK."
 
[laughter]
So we've got plastered Yale
students like:
'yeah, liberty'--[laughter]
but that's the town spreading
into the realm of the gown.
Now, in the 1660s we're seeing
these sort of public
demonstrations--
New Haven, Yale campus
protesting policies--
but not anything that dramatic
happening.
 
But things become worse as
relations between England and
its colonies became worse and as
actions became more aggressive
on both sides.
 
People in New Haven,
as in a lot of other places,
became more aggressive in their
politics and became stronger in
their actions.
 
They made bolder decisions,
and a great example of that is
again here in New Haven,
1774.
A group of about sixty men from
New Haven,
normal townspeople--I'm going
to talk about them in a moment--
decided that they were going to
hire someone to teach them
military exercises so that
hopefully they would learn
something and that somewhere
down the road if they had to be
they could organize themselves
into a military unit and protect
the town of New Haven.
 
Okay.
 
So here's sixty random people
in New Haven who hire someone--
I think they paid him three
dollars a lesson or something--
to teach them how to drill,
and what to do with guns,
and how to walk in formation,
and basic military things so
that they would know what to do,
in case they ever actually had
to fight.
 
Again that's kind of a dramatic
action.
That's a big step to take.
 
'Okay.
 
Now I need to be militarily
drilling in case I need to
defend my family,
my property,
and my town.'
 
So that certainly gives you a
sense of what it felt like,
what was sort of floating in
the air at this time for people
in New Haven to take that kind
of an action.
In early 1775,
they met as a group and they
decided that they would really
organize themselves into a real
military unit,
as opposed to guys taking
lessons on how to drill.
 
So they met,
they voted on uniforms,
they figured out the best way
to obtain arms so that they'd
know where they'd be getting
them from,
and then not long after that
they actually wrote to the
Connecticut State Assembly and
said that they,
quote, "Anxious for the
safety of our country and
desirous of contributing all in
their power to the support of
our just rights and liberties,
have formed themselves into a
military company"--
and then added that they wanted
the Connecticut State Assembly
to officially make them a sort
of district military unit.
 
So they wanted official
recognition from the Connecticut
State Assembly.
 
Again, really
interesting--random sixty guys:
'maybe we better know something
military.'
Then after that they decide:
'oh, okay, well,
maybe we actually had
better--we could organize
ourselves so that this will
actually be real.
Hey, now that we've organized
ourselves,
we can actually get state
recognition so that we'll be on
call and armed and ready in case
something bad happens.'
Again kind of an interesting
chain of events,
series of personal decisions on
the part of those random sixty
men.
 
Now let's look for a minute at
who they are.
One of them apparently owned a
hat store on Chapel Street.
One of them was a barber who
was described,
quote, as "a rather
eccentric person."
I don't know what that means,
although I was dying to have
the time to figure out why the
barber was rather eccentric,
but we have an eccentric barber
who's one of the sixty,
a chair maker,
a few sailors,
someone who was just described
as a man of leisure--
[laughter]--it's interesting to
ponder what that means--
a lawyer, a few grocers.
 
There was a grocer who lived on
State Street and a grocer who
lived on the corner of Chapel
and Church--
and of course for me
researching this this morning,
it's really fascinating to be
finding people living in places
that,
of course, we all know.
That's always--Because you can
exactly picture:
oh, the corner of Chapel and
Church.
I know exactly where that
person lived.
One person worked in the New
Haven bank, and decided that he
wasn't really very skilled at
horsemanship;
in case that they were going to
fight, he probably would need to
know how to be really good on
horseback.
So apparently he regularly took
his horse into his yard and
practiced on the horse in
private.
He took it into his yard so no
one would see that he was the
guy who had to practice
horsemanship,
but he was sort of there doing
his own little private drilling
so that he'd be prepared in case
there was actual fighting.
Okay.
 
So there you see a group of
people,
all different levels of
society--lawyers,
man of leisure,
eccentric barbers,
chair makers,
grocers--all different levels
of society who have all come
together for this one purpose
and have gone over a series of
months here to increasingly
become more and more serious
about what it is that they're
doing.
 
So it certainly tells you
something about the mindset in
New Haven in early 1775,
and not only in New Haven,
as we've already heard in the
course.
Things became more dramatic on
April 21,1775,
when news of the Battle of
Lexington arrived in New Haven.
And what was interesting to me
this morning was when I was
reading accounts of people in
New Haven reporting when they
heard this news,
several of them literally
stated the precise time of day,
like: 'at noon on the 21^(st)
someone told me.'
 
They actually had it down to
the hour and the minute when
they heard about the events at
Lexington,
which to me was really telling,
because it's what you do--
afterwards--when something
really momentous or tragic or
notable or historic happens,
you think: where was I when
that happened?
 
Where was I when the Challenger
blew up?
I was a receptionist at an
advertising agency sitting at my
desk,
but I remember that,
because I remember everyone
around me getting upset and it
was a big deal.
 
And so here are these people
kind of doing the same thing,
remembering after the fact:
'I remember where I was.
It was noon on the 21^(st) when
we heard in New Haven that the
British had actually fired on
colonists in Lexington.'
In New Haven,
a Yale student wrote in his
diary: "Today tidings of
the Battle of Lexington,
which is the first engagement
with the British troops,
arrived at New Haven.
 
This filled the country with
alarm and rendered it impossible
for us to pursue our studies to
any profit."
And this is the moment I
mentioned in Tuesday's lecture
when Benedict Arnold--
who is one of the men in that
group of sixty guys who decide
they'd better arm and drill;
he's one of those men--when he
decides that they need arms and
they're going to march to
Massachusetts,
and he sort of fights the New
Haven town committee to get the
key so that he can grab arms and
go march with his men up to
Massachusetts.
 
So I'm linking today's lecture
with Tuesday's lecture,
so I'm very proud.
 
And actually,
he and his men,
as they were preparing to leave
town and sort of go off to
fight,
they drew up an agreement which
they all signed,
a sort of pledge to each other,
and a public statement as to
what they were doing and why
they were doing it,
which is worth quoting because
you'll hear in the middle of it
something you might not expect
to see in a statement being
drawn up by a bunch of guys who
just--
by force--armed themselves and
they're going to go march to
Massachusetts to fight the
British.
 
So this is the beginning of
their statement:
"Be it known that we,
the subscribers,
having taken up arms for the
relief of our brethren and
defense of their,
as well as our,
just rights and privileges,
declare to the world that we
from our hearts disavow every
thought of rebellion to His
Majesty,
as supreme head of the British
Empire."
 
Okay.
 
They've taken up arms,
they're marching to fight the
British,
and the first thing they say in
the first sentence of their
proclamation is we're not
rebelling against the King.
 
That--When I read this I
thought, wow,
that's--And I've been saying
over and over again in class
it's--that all of these things
are mixed in together.
People are upset,
they're angry at what's going
on,
they're angry at British
policy, and they're loyal to the
King,
and they're thinking about
independence,
but they're unsure about
independence,
and they're still linked to
England.
And in a way,
that statement is a great
example of that;
guys who are holding guns and
about to march to fight,
are being sure to state that
they are not rebelling against
His Majesty as supreme head of
the British empire--
or, they don't want to be
accused of "opposition to
his legal authority,
and shall on every occasion
manifest to the world by our
conduct this to be our fixed
principle."
So they're not rebelling
against the King.
Instead they said that they
were, quote,
"Driven to the last
necessity,
and obliged to have recourse to
arms in defense of our lives and
liberties."
 
So they're saying,
'We're not rebels who are out
to rebel against the King.
 
We're actually--We've been
driven to this by what's going
on in Massachusetts and we're
protecting ourselves,
but this is a defensive act and
not an aggressive act.'
And then when you read a little
further on in the statement,
after all of this sort of
noble, lofty sentiment,
they then promise each other
they're not going to get drunk
or gamble or swear.
 
[laughs]
It's down to practicalities.
Now that we've declared our
purpose to the world,
no heavy drinking.
 
Okay.
 
The next day,
April 22,1775,
classes at Yale were suspended
and a lot of students went home.
Some, a few,
actually, went off to fight.
So you can kind of see the way
that the wind is blowing in New
Haven.
 
You can imagine,
given these sorts of events
potentially how much fun it
would have been to be a college
student with Loyalist leanings
at this particular moment.
It would not have been very
fun--and sure enough in 1775
there was that student.
 
I discovered that student this
morning.
There was a--I don't know if
he's the only one,
but he's the guy who got in
trouble.
There was one college student
here at Yale who was a declared
Loyalist, 1775.
 
He did not make other Yale
students very happy.
He must have been loud about
being a Loyalist.
Otherwise don't know how it
would have been so obvious to
everyone that he was a Loyalist,
but the--a large chunk of the
Yale student body decided to
have a meeting to debate what
should be done about this
student.
Okay.
 
Obviously, things are not going
to go well for the student.
'What should we do about this
student?'
They decide that they are going
to formally denounce him as--
publicly, as,
quote, "an enemy to his
country"--
and that no one will be allowed
to socialize with this student
ever again.
Okay.
 
They've just ostracized
this--Can you imagine?
Sorry.
 
'You've just been entirely
ostracized from every other
person at Yale University
[laughs]
because we don't like your
politics.'
So when I first found this this
morning, I was like:
oh, poor guy,
and I couldn't figure out what
happened next and I just felt
sorry for him.
Then I found a little bit more
about him and I felt a little
less sorry for him because he
took action.
Apparently, he was from New
Haven,
this particular Loyalist
student, so learning that he had
been ostracized by all of the
Yale student body,
he went home and got some of
his townie friends to go back to
Yale and beat up some Yale
students [laughter]--
which they did.
 
And then the Yale students got
really mad at this apparently,
and armed themselves with clubs
and were going to go attack
these townies when the Yale
president,
Naphtali Daggett, intervened.
 
It was like:
'okay, we're done with the war
now'--[laughter]
like, 'nice idea,
done with the war.'
 
So the fighting stopped and
eventually--I don't know
when--the Loyalist withdrew from
Yale--so, you can't blame him at
this point.
 
Okay.
 
So we have people in New Haven
forming military units and
marching off to fight.
 
We have students ostracizing
that one lone Loyalist student.
Not long after this,
Yale students organized their
own military company and
actually began training,
and not long after that the New
Haven town meeting voted,
and here's what they declared:
Quote,
"That the Governor be
desired to permit one hundred
stands of arms to be lodged in
the library for the use of a
company in Yale College ...
 
That should a company in
college be formed and accoutred,
they draw half a pound of
powder to each man."
Okay.
 
Yale students have just started
militarily drilling and the New
Haven town meeting has voted to
store arms in the Yale library;
in case the students actually
get it together and form an
organized unit,
they'll have arms stored in the
Yale library ready in case
fighting has to happen.
Which again is a really
dramatic kind of a decision to
make.
 
It's stated in a very plain way
in the document that I found,
but that's a dramatic kind of a
decision.
So again, you can see even just
in that example how some of
these really general ideas I've
been talking about over the
course of many,
many lectures--building
resentments,
shared fears,
continued loyalty to the King--
are playing out here on a small
scale in New Haven in real life.
 
Now the Yale military unit
apparently had its main moment
of glory that same year in 1775,
when George Washington,
who was now the newly named
Commander-in-Chief of the
Continental Army,
actually passed through New
Haven on his way to join the
Continental Army outside of
Boston.
 
And I'll be talking about
George Washington in the next
lecture so I'm feeling very
fancy once again that I have
magically somehow seemed as
though this lecture was really
planned all along.
 
But apparently,
Connecticut newspapers noted
that people from New Haven went
out;
they wanted to see Washington;
they wanted to see what was
going on;
they wanted to watch the Yale
students do a drill,
which they did apparently--a
formal drill in front of
Washington and his escort.
Noah Webster,
dictionary Webster,
was a Yale freshman that year,
and in later years he told
people that he remembered that
event;
he remembered Washington
watching the drilling students;
he remembered that the body of
the--the military body of
students, escorted Washington
out of town.
And Webster said that he
himself played some kind of
music to accompany the marching
of the Yale students with
Washington out of town--
but he remembered that a long
time later as sort of a
memorable moment from the war.
Now in the interest of time,
I'm going to leap to 1777,
because in 1777 warfare now is
unfolding throughout the
northern states and some people
then began to conclude that
actually staying in New Haven
and studying at Yale might be
just too dangerous for Yale
students--
because New Haven was an
exposed port,
which we're going to see in
about five minutes.
It is an exposed port.
 
So the Yale authorities sent
students out to different towns.
They didn't close Yale.
 
They just said, 'Okay.
 
We're going to send students to
random places in Connecticut
where they will be safer than
they are in New Haven.'
So freshmen went to Farmington,
sophomores and juniors went to
Glastonbury, and seniors went to
Wethersfield.
I cannot tell you why those
particular places seemed like
logical places,
but you and your class were
sent to a random place to
continue your studies.
On their way out,
Yale officials asked the town
to please protect the abandoned
college buildings from troops--
American or British--troops,
and some library books were
moved inland to protect them in
case troops came to New Haven.
So again, people are feeling
there's a potential real threat
here.
 
Yale eventually did come back
into session in New Haven,
not without serious
problems--and again you're going
to see the playing out here of
something I've talked about
before.
 
I've talked before about the
problems of supplying the army.
It was hard to get food.
 
People weren't sort of giving
up food and supplies to the
army.
 
Apparently, they--it was really
hard for people to get food and
supplies into Yale too,
that people just
weren't--whatever sources of
supplies had been serving Yale
in the past were no longer doing
that in a time of war.
So in 1778, Yale sent out the
following notice to parents of
Yale students.
 
September 30,1778:
"The steward of Yale
College hereby requests the
Parents and Guardians of the
Students to assist in furnishing
a supply of Provisions"--
okay, 'parents,
would you please send food?
[laughs] We don't have a lot;
we really need
it'--'"without which it
will be very difficult if not
impracticable for him to subsist
the Scholars the ensuing winter.
A generous and full Price shall
be allowed and paid either in
Money, or their Son's Quarter
Bills, shall be most
agreeable."
 
Okay. 'Please send us food.
 
We don't have any,
and if you do we'll either pay
you or we won't charge you
tuition for your son so please
give us food'--
which again--Can you imagine
being the parent who gets the
sorry,
there's no food for your son;
[laughter] send some now?
While you're sending the
homespun clothes,
send the food too.
 
Okay.
 
So the war is a real presence,
even on the college campus:
drilling students,
fighting men,
guns stored in the Yale
library,
people having a hard time
getting food and supplies.
1779 is when things become much
worse because that is the peak
year of violence in New Haven;
that is the year when the
British invaded New Haven.
 
And Ezra Stiles,
who was President of Yale at
the time,
noted in his diary the events
as they unfolded--
and again, it's really
interesting to see his diary
entries.
He later wrote another account
that had full sentences,
but to me what was more
interesting--
and I'll read some of them
here--were some of his diary
entries because they're really
immediate,
and he's kind of recording his
reaction to events as they're
happening.
 
So on July 4,1779,
he says he heard news that
there was a British fleet of
ships that had been seen near
Bridgeport,
and supposedly rumor said it
was heading to New Haven.
 
So again, being the responsible
president of Yale,
he asks for militia to be sent.
 
In case this is actually true,
they're going to need some real
soldiers,
but he writes in his diary:
"Would not believe the
enemy intended landing."
Okay.
 
He hears the rumor and he takes
action but he actually literally
cannot believe that the British
are actually going to get off
the ships and attack.
 
That can't be real;
can't be really happening.
The next day,
July 5, Stiles,
using a telescope,
says that he "saw the
ships distinctly from the
steeple of College Chapel"
and,
he continues,
"Began to remove all
property....
Militia meeting.
 
Tories calm.
 
With telescope from the tower
or steeple clearly saw the boats
putting off from the ship and
landing a little after
sunrise."
 
He sees the smaller boats going
off of these ships,
with soldiers,
to land on the shore.
"Immediately,
I sent off College records and
papers ...
 
and a bag of my own
things,"
sent his family away.
 
The next day,
July 6, Stiles writes:
"Enemy paraded.
 
Sailors came on shore and took
their turn at plunder."
I'm going to continue a couple
days here and then go back to
the actual invasion,
just because the series of
things he writes here are
interesting and they become
weirdly personal,
which again reminds me that
this is a real person's
experience.
He says: July 7,11 o'clock
p.m., "enemy landed and
burnt Fairfield."
 
July 8, "Removing my
furniture"--
(he's now moving his furniture
out of Yale) --
"Removing my furniture
broke my Fahrenheit Thermometer
which I have had since
1762."
[laughter]
I was like: oh,
okay, I feel sorry you're
moving your furniture and he
broke his thermometer.
 
July 12, "the whole town
moving,"
and then July 23 this little,
tiny reminder that Yale is
still an institution that
exists.
July 23, Stiles spent the day
writing diplomas onto parchment.
[laughs]
'Yeah, I know this is a little
taxing.
 
I've still got students and
they still have to graduate so
I'm going to write out their
diplomas'--which I think is
really kind of striking.
 
Okay.
 
Let's turn back for a minute to
look at precisely what happened
as the British invaded New
Haven.
Apparently, they decided to
attack the Connecticut shore to
draw some of Washington's troops
away from White Plains,
New York, where I guess they
were, and that was I guess a
strong position to hold,
so the British thought well,
if they attack the Connecticut
shore,
they'll entice Washington to
send some of his troops to
Connecticut and that way maybe
they can defeat them on both
fronts.
 
And New Haven ends up being the
first target in this plan,
so on July 5 the British debark
in New Haven Harbor.
They had about two thousand
soldiers.
One part of the troops was
going to enter New Haven from
East Haven and the other part
was going to enter from West
Haven.
 
Stiles wrote in his diary,
"Perhaps one-third of the
adult male inhabitants flew to
arms and went out to meet them.
A quarter removed out of town
doing nothing,
the rest remained unmoved,
partly Tories,
partly timid Whigs,"
and then he adds that some of
the Tories armed themselves and
then went out to fight with the
British.
 
That's a great example of how
our--I think our impulse is to
say, 'Well, the people were
united in unity against the
British.'
 
It's like--well,
no.
The entire town wasn't a big
lump--a big lump of rebels.
It was people with different
ideas,
and you just--Stiles in that
one little sentence--
He has people going to fight
with the British,
people going to fight against
the British.
He has people sort of not
knowing what to do and kind of
just staying in town and then
people not wanting to do
anything,
just wanted to get themselves
out of there--
all sort of happening at the
same time.
 
People are making decisions,
some pretty dramatic decisions,
and they're having to make them
spur of the moment,
and you can see them in a lot
of cases here taking a side,
taking a formal side in a way
that could have pretty dire
consequences.
 
Yale immediately was dismissed,
and some students immediately
ran for home.
 
Supposedly, according to a
diary, one student,
a sophomore,
instead of going home decided
to go to a nearby town and read
Blackstone's
Commentaries.
 
Why that made sense I don't
know.
'What, the British are coming?
 
I think I'll go to Fairfield
and read Blackstone now.'
[laughter]
And in later years,
he said he so enjoyed himself
reading Blackstone during that
period that he decided to become
a lawyer right there and then.
Okay.
 
It's this one lone little
reading calm student in the
midst of not a lot of other
reading calm students from what
I could tell.
 
Unlike that little Blackstone
student,
a volunteer company of about
seventy Yale students--
which is roughly half of the
student body at that point--
formed to fight.
 
They were led by Captain James
Hillhouse.
He is indeed New Haven
Hillhouse.
He was a Yale graduate of a few
years before,
so he's not that much older
than these men.
And a Yale senior,
who ends up being one of these
fighting Yale students,
offers an account of what
happened at this point.
 
He says--He notes that troops
landed in the south part of West
Haven,
"about five miles from the
center of the town.
 
College was of course broken up
and the students,
with many of the inhabitants,
prepared to flee on the morrow
into the neighboring country.
 
To give more time for
preparation and especially for
the removal of goods,
a volunteer company of about a
hundred young men was formed,
not with the expectation of
making any serious stand against
such a force,
but simply of retarding or
diverting its march."
So these students formed;
they don't think they're going
to beat the British,
but maybe they can delay them a
little bit.
 
"In common with others of
the students,
I was one of the number,
and I well remember the
surprise we felt the next
morning (July 5) as we were
marching over West Bridge
towards the enemy,
to see Dr. Daggett,"
who is the former President of
Yale,
Naphtali Daggett,
who is now a professor of
divinity,
so he's a Yale professor,
"how surprised we were the
next morning,
to see Dr. Daggett riding
furiously by us on his old black
mare with his long fowling piece
in his hand ready for action.
 
We knew the old gentleman had
studied the matter thoroughly
and satisfied his own mind as to
the right and propriety of
fighting it out,
but we were not quite prepared
to see him come forth in so
gallant a style to carry his
principles into practice."
 
So, they see this professor go
riding off with his gun,
going to fight the British,
like: 'wow, [laughs]
that's pretty impressive.'
 
And I think in the first
lecture I mentioned this,
and said it was the President
of Yale riding out.
Daggett had retired as
President, so for the sake of
accuracy, he's now not President
but a professor riding off to
fight the British with his gun.
 
So now this student goes on:
"Giving him a hearty cheer
as he passed,
we turned down towards West
Haven at the foot of the Milford
Mills,
while he, Daggett,
ascended a little to the west
and took his station in a copse
of wood where he seemed to be
reconnoitering the enemy like
one who was determined 'to bide
his time.'
 
As we passed on towards the
south we met an advanced guard
of the British,
and taking our stand at a line
of fence,
we fired upon them several
times, and then chased them the
length of three or four fields
as they retreated,
until we suddenly found
ourselves involved with the main
body"--
Okay, [laughter]
so it was--a couple of soldiers
were like: 'get them,
uh oh [laughter]--"and in
danger of being surrounded.
 
It was now our turn to run,
and we did for our lives.
Passing by Dr. Daggett
[laughs]
in his station on the hill we
retreated rapidly across West
Bridge,
which was instantly taken down
by persons who stood ready for
the purpose to prevent the enemy
from entering the town by that
road."
Okay.
 
So that's where his account
ends.
Now we're going to pick it up
with Daggett who offered his own
account afterwards of what
happened.
Okay.
 
"On Monday morning,
the 5^(th) instant the town of
New Haven was justly alarmed,
with the threatening appearance
of a speedy invasion from the
Enemy.
Numbers went out armed to
oppose them....
Having gone as far as I
supposed was sufficient,
I turned down the hill to gain
a little covert of bushes which
I had in my eye;
but to my great surprise I saw
the Enemy much nearer than I
expected,
their advance guards being a
little more than 20 rods
distant,
with plain open ground between
us.
 
They instantly fired upon me,
which they continued till I had
run a dozen rods,
discharging not less than 15 or
20 balls at me alone;
however thro' the preserving
providence of God,
I escaped from them all unhurt,
and gained the little covert at
which I aimed,
which concealed me from their
view,
while I could plainly see them
thro' the weeds and bushes,
advancing towards me within 12
rods.
I singled out one of them,
took aim and fired upon
him."
 
Okay. So he takes one shot.
 
"I loaded my musket again,
but determined not to discharge
it any more,
as I saw I could not escape
from them [laughs]
and I determined to surrender
myself as a prisoner."
 
So he's charged out with his
gun, he takes one shot,
and he's like:
'what am I doing?
[laughter]
I'm a guy with a gun and the
British Army.
 
What am I doing?'
 
He's like: 'okay,
I'll surrender myself as a
prisoner.'
 
"I begged for Quarter and
that they would spare my life.
They drew near to me,
I think two only in number,
one on my right hand,
the other on my left,
the fury of infernals glowing
in their faces,
they called me a damned old
Rebel and swore they would kill
me instantly.
 
They demanded,
quote, 'What did you fire upon
us for?'"
[laughter]
Okay. I love the question.
 
'Why are you shooting at us,
you old crazy man sitting in
the bushes?'
 
"I replied,
'because it is the exercise of
war.'" [laughter]
That did not impress the
British,
and apparently,
they actually--they didn't
treat him very well so they--
one of them pretended to stab
at him with his bayonet and
actually stabbed him a little
bit,
and some of them sort of
[laughter]
hit him on the head,
and there's a long account here
which I don't have time to read
in which he talks about:
'this guy hit me in the head
and that guy hit me on the shin
and then some guy hit me with
the barrel of his gun.'
And he actually--he ends up
being forced to march at the
head of the British troops back
to New Haven,
from wherever he is.
 
And he says I think in his
account, 'I finally--I saw the
New Haven green and I was so
happy I was back in New Haven.'
But I think he--Oh,
and also I should say they
stole his shoes,
his knee buckles,
his pocket handkerchief,
and a little,
old tobacco box,
so they also just stripped him
of whatever he had,
but he actually I think was
kind of badly hurt and he's sick
for a while.
And then a couple years later
he died,
and people later said that
maybe he died because of
injuries sustained at that
moment after the crazy charge of
one guy,
the noble professor going off
to fight the British.
 
Okay.
 
So troops entered New Haven
proper a little after noon after
one last skirmish where Whaley
and Dixwell meet.
This was the last little
skirmish and then the British
entered.
 
They entered New Haven and
immediately began to plunder
Loyalist and Rebel houses alike,
breaking windows and doors,
carrying off valuables.
 
As Stiles described it,
"Plunder,
Rape, Murder,
Bayoneting, Indelicacies toward
the Sex"--
okay, women were not being
treated respectfully --
"Insolence and Abuse and
Insult toward the Inhabitants in
general."
One woman later recalled that a
British soldier in town cut off
her necklace to keep,
and stole her shoe buckles.
Someone who lived on State
Street said he was sitting in
his door on State Street as the
British came,
and he saw a British officer
come riding down Elm Street and
turn up State Street towards
Grove,
and then he saw someone he knew
from East Haven ride over,
holding a musket which he
leveled and fired at the British
officer,
who fell off his horse and sort
of crawled into someone's garden
at which point the East Haven
guy grabbed the officer's horse
and rode away.
'So [laughter]
I shot me someone from the
British Army,
and I got a horse too.'
Some people fled town.
 
One man who was stuck in town
with his wife because she was
too ill to run,
saw British officers enter town
and apparently went up to one
and asked for protection and the
officer asked,
'Are you a friend to King
George?,' and the man said,
'I am,'--so his house was not
attacked,
but apparently he was not a
friend to King George,
he was not a Tory,
so for there,
after in the town he was
someone who was highly unpopular
because he had--
I suppose in a sense--sold
himself out to protect his
house;
again a sort of decision of the
moment that makes sense but that
then had implications.
Some New Haven Loyalists
actually fled with the British
Army, which as they left,
actually, they left a lot of
destruction in their wake.
 
Okay.
 
So what have we seen today?
 
We've definitely seen how ideas
and events happening in places
pretty far removed from New
Haven are distilling their way
down,
right here--Yale College,
New Haven,
Connecticut--and really driving
people to take action,
sometimes pretty dramatic
action.
 
We've seen average citizens,
average people from New Haven,
stirred to act:
merchants, lawyers,
sailors, shoemakers,
students.
We've seen how the coming of
war revealed all kinds of
divisions among local people,
as well as unity,
because people did have to make
choices of all kinds.
So basically,
we've seen in this one little
real-life example how the coming
of the Revolution and then the
carrying out of the Revolution
drove average people to become
politically active and also
militarily active,
to think through their options,
to decide what they really
believed,
and then in many cases to take
a stand.
 
So Professor Daggett--The
student says,
'We know he'd been thinking
about it and he had been
thinking about what he wanted to
do and he had decided that if
pushed,
he would fight.'
The student is kind of
surprised he's actually heading
out with a gun,
but again--the student knows
that Daggett was thinking
through what his actions were
going to be,
and then he watches him take
action,
like the Loyalists who left New
Haven with the British;
again a really dramatic action.
So in just this little sort of
case study of New Haven and
Yale,
you can see how citizenship and
leadership came to have
different meanings,
how people were understanding
what they were supposed to be
doing as citizens in a different
way as they lived the experience
of fighting a Revolution.
 
Okay. I ended that on time.
 
I even read my--I'm so
impressed with
myself--[laughs/laughter]
the instant lecture.
Okay.
 
And I ended two minutes early,
so you have time to get your
midterms.
 
Have a wonderful spring break,
and I will see you after.
 
 
