Contributor Question: Underrated Events of 1775

From time to time we ask our contributors a question about some aspect of the American Revolution and the founding era (circa 1765-1805). This month’s question was:

What is the most underrated event that occurred in 1775, and why should it get more attention?

John Ferling

In December 1775 a French army officer disembarked in Philadelphia and before Christmas covertly met three times with Congress’s Secret Committee. The officer, Achard de Bonvouloir, had been sent by France’s foreign minister to determine what help the American insurgents needed to successfully wage war against Great Britain. Bonvouloir reported to Versailles that while the congressmen were prepared “to fight to the end for their freedom,” the rebels lacked arms, ammunition, and virtually every other provision required by military forces. Bonvouloir’s report was crucial in persuading King Louis XVI to approve 1,000,000 livres for secret arms shipments to the American insurgents, assistance that would play a pivotal role in the military campaign of 1777, especially in the defeat of the British army at Saratoga.

Arthur B. Cohn

The escape of British Governor Guy Carleton from Montreal to Quebec City in 1775. General Richard Montgomery led an American invasion of Canada, advancing north through Lake Champlain. Colonel Benedict Arnold marched to Quebec through Maine. Montgomery captured Fort Chambly and St. Johns and advanced on Montreal, expecting to capture the city and Carleton. Carleton’s daring disguised escape allowed him to lead Quebec’s defense. The American New Year’s Eve assault failed, resulting in Montgomery’s death, Arnold’s wounding, and hundreds taken prisoner, transforming the invasion into a catastrophe. If Carleton hadn’t escaped, Quebec might have been captured, and the revolution might have been victorious sooner.

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Robert S. Davis

The so-called battle of the Great Cane Brake in South Carolina on December 22, 1775, demonstrated early on that the British were not going to win the hearts and minds of Americans enough to raise enough effective troops to hold South Carolina, never mind the whole South.

John Grady

The authorization by the Continental Congress to create ten rifle companies and send them to Boston on June 14, 1775, then in the heat of crisis. Although this is the birthday the United States Army celebrates, few Americans know that date and its relationship to their army. If they know the date at all, they know it only as “Flag Day,” created by Woodrow Wilson in 1916 to mark the Second Continental Congress’ adoption of the Stars and Stripes as the official flag of the United States of America. The army pre-dates the republic it is to defend and has certainly proven more important in the long run than the adoption of a national flag.

Tom Shachtman

In February 1775, responding to pressure on Britain’s merchants from the American colonies’ boycott of their goods, Prime Minister Lord North introduced into Parliament the Conciliatory Proposal, to allow the colonies to tax themselves if they paid enough of the proceeds to London to offset the costs of administration. If adopted—and there was support on both sides of the Atlantic—it could have prevented or delayed the Revolution. But King George III had had his nose tweaked and was in no mood to compromise, and American representative Benjamin Franklin could no longer trust the British to make good on promises. The failure of the compromise assured that war started within months.

Norman Fuss, Michael Cecere

The Battle of Great Bridge was one of the earliest, smallest, shortest, yet most important battles of the war. It took place on December 9, 1775—seven months after Lexington/Concord, six months after Bunker Hill, and seven months before the Declaration of Independence. Less than 300 men were involved in the actual battle (about 150 British and 90 Rebels), which lasted about five minutes. In that brief action, Lord Dunmore lost half of the only professional fighting force he had (the Rebels had one man slightly wounded in the hand). Dunmore and his adherents were forced out of Virginia, leaving the largest, wealthiest, most populous of the thirteen colonies free from organized British presence for the next four critical years, free to send massive support to Washington’s Army in the form of men, armaments and supplies—support that was critical in keeping that army in existence so that, six years later it could to march south with its French allies to Yorktown and capture a British army in the action that secured American independence.

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Michael J.F. Sheehan

The August 23, 1775 HMS Asia incident often falls by the wayside even by many enthusiasts of the period. That night, newly commissioned Capt. John Lamb and the early iteration of his artillery company, along with members of the Hearts of Oak militia and others, attempted to take British guns from The Battery in Manhattan. The HMS Asia, laying offshore, opened fire to drive the rebels away, pounding their own works. Some famous names involved aside from Lamb were Alexander Hamilton and Hercules Mulligan.

Don Glickstein

In May 1775, the Rhode Island legislature named iron monger and activist Nathanael Greene to lead its state army; one source says he was the legislature’s third choice. Although Greene had earlier helped form a militia, he had never commanded any military force. That year, he met Washington, who was impressed. In 1780, Washington named him to lead what remained of the Continental Army in South. “I think I am giving you a general,” he told South Carolina’s governor. Greene’s leadership forced a British army to retreat into Virginia and eventually Yorktown. The rest, as they say, is history.

Kim Burdick

On May 10, 1775, the Second Continental Congress was called to order. John Dickinson once again served as a Pennsylvania delegate. On June 15, those in attendance unanimously appointed George Washington as General and Commander in Chief of the newly-formed Continental Army. Militia Companies were formed and exercised, the manufacture of gunpowder and cannons was encouraged, and preparations were made to obstruct navigation on the Delaware River.

David Price

Attention is due the dispatch of secret orders from the British cabinet, written by Lord Dartmouth, to Gen. Thomas Gage, the military governor of Massachusetts and commander of the British army in North America, which he received on April 14, 1775. This directive, to end the American insurgency by force if necessary, provided the authorization for which Gage had been waiting to execute his plans for sending a regiment into the Massachusetts countryside. Dartmouth’s instructions led to the eruption of hostilities five days later. According to Nick Bunker in An Empire on the Edge (Alfred A. Knopf, 2014), the Dartmouth letter has received much less scrutiny than it deserves and has been completely disregarded by some historians.

Cho-Chien Feng

Thomas Jefferson and John Adams first met in 1775, when they were both members of the Continental Congress. Adams’ and Jefferson’s initial bond formed during their time as delegates, and both played critical roles in the push for American independence, working together on the committee to draft the Declaration. Adams insisted that Jefferson, the more eloquent writer, pen the first draft, demonstrating their mutual respect.

Charles H. Lagerbom

In 1775 Admiral Graves and General Gage ordered the removal of guns from Fort Pownal in downeast Maine (often erroneously attributed to Henry Mowatt) just days before the march on Lexington and Concord. The fort’s commander, Thomas Goldthwaite, had no choice in the matter and it further cemented his standing as a detested Loyalist in the eyes of many Mainers. As for Fort Pownal, it was later completely destroyed by American rebels led by controversial James Cargill of Newcastle.

Susan Brynne Long

While the 1775 capture of Fort Ticonderoga is not itself “underrated,” the date is. Colonels Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold captured the garrison with their militiamen on May 10. Later that same day in Philadelphia, the Second Continental Congress met for the first time. While a military victory for the American cause, the aggressive specter created by the taking of Ticonderoga and nearby Crown Point was a diplomatic disaster for the delegates, who were coveting Canadian support for the rebellion. May 10, 1775 represents an important preliminary clash of the popular, out-of-doors Revolution and the governmental, political Revolution.

Andrew Lawler

The most under-rated event in 1775 was the skirmish that took place at an obscure village called Kemp’s Landing, in what is now Virginia Beach. On November 15, a Patriot militia unit ambushed British and Loyalist troops led by Virginia’s royal governor, Lord Dunmore, only to be routed with many casualties. A Black Loyalist armed only with a sword fought and captured the militia commander, who was also his owner. This bravery helped inspire Dunmore to promulgate the continent’s first emancipation proclamation—providing hope for millions of enslaved African Americans while convincing many white Virginians to oppose Britain. Virginia’s subsequent decision to back separation unified the fractious colonies, making independence possible.

Nancy Bradeen Spannaus, David P. Ervin

What too few people realize is that during 1775, most states created new governing institutions to replace British colonial administrations—a true revolutionary shift. The Committees of Observation set up the means of collecting taxes, training militias, and carrying out other functions of government, while royal governors either fled or were ignored. In compliance with the Continental Association’s decision of October 1774, manufactures were encouraged, the slave trade was stopped, and the first anti-slavery society known to be established was founded in Philadelphia by Anthony Benezet. Simultaneously, collaboration between the colonies intensified, capstoned by the creation of the Continental Army in June 1775. As such, the Declaration of Independence in the following year was stating a fact more so than it was making a claim.

Frederic C. Detwiller

In October 1775, the first United States Navy was born according to an agreement made with George Washington, John Glover and others at “Salem & Marblehead.” The Massachusetts General Court at Salem presented to Washington two captured vessels at Marblehead and Gloucester, each to be put at Washington’s disposition “for him to improve her as an Armed Vessel for Defence of the Country, he giving his Receipt for the same accordingly.”

Ray Raphael

On April 8, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress dispatched delegates to “Connecticut, Rhode Island and New-Hampshire, informing them that we are determined to take effectual measures for the more effective security of the New England colonies and the continent … and to request them to co-operate with us, by furnishing their respective quotas for general defence.” The quotas: Massachusetts 8,000 soldiers, Connecticut and New Hampshire 3,000 each, and Rhode Island 2,000. Accordingly, the Massachusetts Revolution of 1774 expanded to a New England Revolution of 1775, and ten weeks later, on June 14, to the American Revolution.

Robert J. Walworth

The Battle of Noddle Island on May 27. Five weeks after Lexington, Patriot troops squared off with the British while clearing livestock, hay and provisions from Noddle and Hog Islands in Boston Harbor. This action deprived British troops trapped in Boston of the last local source of fresh meat, leaving them only barreled, brined meat supplied from far-away ports. In search of fresh meat, the British navy set upon the coastlines and islands of the Atlantic Ocean and Long Island Sound, commencing a terror campaign of island raiding, community extortion, and town cannonading and burning. The American response would include arming merchant vessels and building new ships of war, early steps toward the formation of the American navy.

Stuart Lyall Manson

Guy Johnson, Superintendent of Indian Affairs, was part of a prominent family in the Mohawk Valley of colonial New York. In May 1775, he and hundreds of Loyalist refugees fled to the safety of Canada, away from a fomenting rebellion. This exodus deserves greater attention, being the first wave of the Loyalist diaspora, foreshadowing thousands who would follow the same path during the American Revolutionary War. They filled the ranks of provincial regiments; their families populated refugee camps. Collectively, they resettled in what remained of British North America, becoming the founders of the Canadian provinces of Ontario and New Brunswick.

Benjamin L. Carp

John Schoonmaker of Ulster County, New York, overheard plotting by York, one of the men he enslaved, with another Black man named Joe, in February 1775. According to Schoonmaker, Black people were plotting to set fire to houses and kill whites as they fled — there was even talk of an alliance with Native Americans. White authorities discovered gunpowder and ammunition and arrested twenty alleged Black conspirators. As whispers of similar plots emerged in both the North and South, white Americans became seriously worried that their violent bid for liberty might encourage others.

Scott Syfert, Jane Sinden Spiegel

The most underrated event of 1775 was the “first” declaration of independence in the American colonies, made in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina on May 20, 1775. Once nationally known and discussed—one historian (William Hoyt, in 1907) called it “the most mooted question and acrimonious controversy of the history of the American Revolution”—the Mecklenburg Declaration is now almost entirely forgotten, even in North Carolina. An unfair fate, considering the last Royal Governor of North Carolina, Josiah Martin, said of them in June 1775: “The Resolves of the Committee of Mecklenburg … surpass all the horrid and treasonable publications that the inflammatory spirits of this Continent have yet produced.”

Derrick E. Lapp

The death of Maj. Gen. Richard Montgomery on December 31, 1775, is tremendously underrated today. At the time his star was rising faster than Horatio Gates or Nathanael Greene and his demise in the lower town of Quebec marked the high tide of the Continental Army’s (and Congress’s) attempts to enlist Canada as the fourteenth state. Contemporaries were devastated at the time when they heard of his fall. Few now realize that the many cities and counties named “Montgomery” throughout the United States are memorials to this once promising American leader who represents many “what ifs” had he been present at battles like Long Island, White Plains, Brandywine, or Camden.

Shawn D. McGhee

The most underrated process was the election of the many town- and county-level Committees of Inspection and Observation, regulatory bodies outlined by the First Continental Congress to act as the enforcement mechanisms for the Articles of Association. This directive not only democratized the resistance effort, but became, in the words of James Madison, “the method used among us to distinguish friends from foes.” And actors who adhered to the economic and social restraints joined a broader proto-national community of suffering that helped subjects transform into republican citizens.

Gene Procknow

On December 6, 1775, the Continental Congress responded to King George III’s Proclamation of Rebellion with a declaration of potential war. The Congress asserted that the colonies were defending their rights as Englishmen and were not obliged to obey Parliament. They also stated that they would retaliate if the king punished those who supported the American cause. From this point forward, there was no prospect of reconciliation.

Brian Mabeltini, Jim Piecuch

The siege of Ninety Six, South Carolina, on November 19–21, 1775. Ninety Six had long been a hotbed of revolutionary discord in the backcountry; that November the village was the scene of what is generally considered to have been the first American battlefield casualty of the war in South Carolina. On November 19, 1775, American militia troops under Major Andrew Williamson began constructing a defensive fortification at Ninety Six as Williamson’s Fort atop a hill overlooking the village. Only three hours after construction began, the post was besieged by Loyalist militia under Major Joseph Robinson and Patrick Cunningham. The Loyalists quickly occupied the village, taking control of the courthouse, jail, and main water supply. Fighting continued for three days until both sides agreed to a ceasefire on November 21, 1775. The engagement (alternately known as the First Siege of Ninety Six and the Siege of Savage’s Old Fields) resulted in one dead and twelve wounded Americans, while Loyalist casualties consisted of one dead and fifty-two wounded. This engagement set the stage for what would become a brutal civil war in the South Carolina backcountry.

Jude M. Pfister

Phillis Wheatley’s poem about George Washington, sent on October 26, 1775, with a short note ending, “Wishing your Excellency all possible success in the great cause you are so generously engaged in.” Washington (who seemed genuinely touched by the poem) responded to Wheatley on February 28, 1776, your poetry “exhibit[s] a striking proof of your great poetical talent.” Washington had to have known she was an enslaved African. She was quite famous in Boston and vicinity. Whether or not she ever visited Washington at his Cambridge (today the Henry Longfellow house) headquarters as he invited her, is unknown. In the Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson had a decidedly different view of Wheatley’s poetry, her “compositions published under her name are below the dignity of criticism.”

John Gilbert McCurdy

March 31, 1775, was the last time that Massachusetts governor (and commander in chief of the British army) Thomas Gage invoked the Quartering Act. Since its passage in 1765, the Quartering Act was cited dozens of times by Gage to get the colonists to pay for barracks, supplies, and transportation for His Majesty’s forces. In ten years’ time, Gage was able to squeeze tens of thousands of pounds out of colonial legislatures for quartering. With Parliament’s passage of the Coercive (Intolerable) Acts in 1774, the formerly-accommodating colonies turned a deaf ear to the general’s requests. In March 1775, Gage received reports of disturbances in Bristol County, Massachusetts, including at Dighton where “some Persons had hot Pitch poured on their Naked Backs.” In response, Gage offered to send a regiment to the county, but before he did, he asked the county’s magistrates to inform him “of the proper Places to Quarter Two Hundred of his Majesty’s Troops, which may be landed from his Majesty’s Ship and assist the Civil Power in preserving the Tranquility of the Country.” It does not appear that the magistrates ever answered Gage, although it would have been irrelevant if they had. Less than a month later, the first shots of the American Revolutionary War were fired at Lexington and Concord, and Parliamentary laws like the Quartering Act became forgotten relics of the colonial era.

Tyson Reeder

The most underrated event in 1775 is the Prohibitory Act. Against the backdrop of the Coercive Acts the year prior and then military battles of 1775, the Prohibitory Act seems like a formality in the march toward separation of the colonies from the British Empire. But once it passed, colonial revolutionaries considered the act, which declared them outside the crown’s protection, a vital pilar in their justification of independence. The king had declared them independent. Hence, when Jefferson wrote in his original draft that the states “reject and renounce all allegiance” to the crown, Congress could change it to “they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown.”

Gregory J.W. Urwin

One episode that gets eclipsed by the more familiar events that rocked New England in 1775 is Lord Dunmore’s War—the effort waged by John Murray, Fourth Earl of Dunmore, Virginia’s last royal governor, to uphold British authority in that colony. Most crucially, Dunmore issued a proclamation in November that declared martial law and offered freedom to any enslaved men who took up arms for the king. Dunmore’s action galvanized Virginian resistance and tilted sentiment in favor of independence, goading the Old Dominion to take the lead in demanding a final break with Great Britain.

Victor J. DiSanto

The invasion of Canada and the talk of making it the fourteenth colony. Many of the men who answered the call early on for that failed campaign later figured prominently in the war—Benedict Arnold, Daniel Morgan, Christopher Greene, David Williams, Enoch Crosby to name a few. And the idea to absorb Canada into the U.S. seems to still be floating around.

Kieran J. O’Keefe

The creation of committees of safety. Although some committees were established in 1774, the process continued into early 1775. Committees became the effective government in many localities as British authority crumbled. They enforced the Continental Association, policed Loyalists, procured supplies, raised revolutionary forces, and oversaw justice. In many respects, committees were the driving force behind the Revolution on the local level during the early period of the war. Some historians understand the importance of committees of safety, but very few in the broader public know their role in making the Revolution possible.

Jason R. Wickersty

Only six months after the start of armed hostilities, stocks provisions for British troops in Boston under Gen. William Howe were becoming worrying low. From September through November 1775, fifteen store ships left Britain, loaded with various fuel and foodstuffs, bound for Boston. A particularly turbulent season of storms over the North Atlantic heavily damaged these ships and forced them south to Antigua in the West Indies. Had they all arrived, they would have changed the course of the war in America. In a letter dated September 5, 1775, Lord Dartmouth informed General Howe that he had permission to evacuate Boston, but Howe lacked the shipping to do so. The fifteen store ships had been hired not only to deliver provisions, but to serve as transports once their cargo had been delivered—giving Howe enough food reserves and tonnage to evacuate the army directly to New York, rather than Halifax, Nova Scotia, thereby dramatically altering the course of the Campaign of 1776.

Philip D. Weaver

Today the taking of Fort Ticonderoga is treated with just a passing mention as the first aggressive action of the war, but what is overlooked is the events it set in motion. It boosted morale throughout the colonies and started a two-front war. The plan to defend the fort was scrapped in favor of the disastrous Canadian Campaign. The bickering colonies of Massachusetts, New York, and Connecticut were compelled to cooperate. Meanwhile, the Fort’s cannons were taken to Boston and used to fortify Dorchester Heights, etc. and force the British to evacuate the city in March.

Al Dickeson

The Snow Campaign of 1775 is one of the more underrated events of the year. Serving as the inciting incident of the revolution in South Carolina, it also engaged an infrequently studied portion of the rebellion’s combatants—the Loyalists. In late 1775, Continental Army Gen. Richard Richardson pushed the South Carolina Line into the backcountry of the colony to hinder Loyalist recruiting efforts. This campaign eventually led to Patriot forces holding Charleston, South Carolina, effectively ending British operations in the colony until 1778. The Snow Campaign is certainly an underrated event in the history of the Revolution.