THE WAR CONTINUES

These are the times that try men's souls ~ Patrick Henry

Cousin William Patten and the Wooden Horse

On June 19, two days after the Battle of Bunker Hill, our cousin Artemis Ward's (4C10X) tenure as commander in chief of the Continental Army ended. Congress chose as his replacement a man who would become the most revered and respected person in the newly formed United States of America. General George Washington left his home in Virginia and arrived in Massachusetts soon after receiving the news. He took command of the army in Cambridge on July 3. His arrival is noted in the diary of our cousin Paul Lunt (3C8X): "Turned out early in the morning, got in readiness to be reviewed by the general. New orders given out by General Washington."

Note: We'll have more on Cousin Paul Lunt and his seafaring escapades in a future post.

According to J.L. Bell in his Boston 1775 blog, Washington "had his work cut out for him for he faced a force of unruly and undisciplined amateurs in its infancy. Up against the British army, the finest military machine of its time, this mob of basically unorganized militiamen with limitied military skills had little or no time to be molded into an effective fighting force."

On July 10, just one week after taking command, Washington sent out his General Orders of the day which included a reference to one punishment in particular which was custom made for commanders who had "little or no tolerance for insubordination." It just so happned that this punishment was to be meted out to our cousin William Patten (3C8X).

Cousin William was 26 years old and had seen action in the Battle of Bunker Hill. Shortly after the battle, poor William was charged with "leaving his post on guard." The man who ordered him thrown into the pokey was another cousin of ours, Colonel Jonathan Ward (5C9X).

Note: Jonathan Ward was a second cousin one time removed of General Artemis Ward (4C10X).

Patience is a virtue and it seems that Cousin William didn't have much. When no one showed up at his court-martial to testify against him, Willam naturally supposed that he would be released. General Washington, however, had other ideas. He decided not to let William go "until further consideration." William took umbrage with that decision and let his feelings be known by "threatening and abusing" the guards at the jail.

William's actions sealed his fate. Washington's orders regarding his punishment read:

The General Court Martial. . .having tried William Pattin of Colonel Gridley’s regiment, and found him guilty of ‘threatening and abusing a number of persons, when prisoner in the Quarter Guard.’ The Court sentence the prisoner to ride the wooden horse, fifteen minutes. The General approves the sentence and orders it to be put in execution at the head of the regiment.

So what exactly was the "wooden horse" punishment? According to Wikipedia. "A wooden horse. . .is a torture device. . .[used to] inflict pain by using the subject's own weight. . ." Francis Grose in his book Military Antiquities Respecting a History of the English Army, described the device:

The wooden horse was formed of planks nailed together, for as to form a sharp ridge. . .it was supported by four polls or legs. . .When a soldier or soldiers were sentenced. . .to ride this horse. . .they were placed [on the plank] with their hands tied behind them, and frequently, to increase the punishment, had muskets tied to their legs. . .

In the picture below, note the cannonballs attached to the man's ankles in order to maximize pain.

After enduring the horse for even a quarter hour, a man would be left with a sore crotch and possibly even unable to walk without pain. Washington evidently had no qualms about inflicting pain on his soldiers in order to enforce discipline. Harry M. Ward, a scholar of military justice, wrote that Washington “seems never to have been concerned. . . with the terrible suffering endured by soldiers being punished.”

Only the lowly enlisted men had to suffer such punishments. Commissioned officers in the Continental Army were considered gentlemen and thus protected from painful corporal punishments. Officers only had to endure an ocassional imprisonment or, more often, a dressing down before their fellow officers.

Cousin William survived his wooden horse ordeal. He was a native of Boston and, after the war, continued his life there. We'll hear more about William's travails in a future post about Boston's great fire of 1787.

the disastrous invasion of Quebec

Invading Quebec was familiar territory to the newly formed Patriot army. Many soldiers who were now fighting to free themselves from the Brtitish yoke had also fought with the British against the French in the final French and Indian War, twenty years prior. That war ended with Britain wresting control of Canada from the French. In the summer of 1775, the Americans set out with the high hope of seizing the Province of Quebec from the British and convincing the French-speaking Canadians to join their cause.

The overly ambitious plan to invade Qubec City was hatched in the mind of Colonel Benedict Arnold shortly after his successful takeover of both Fort Ticonderoga and Crown Point from the British in May. We wrote about Arnold's coup in our "The War Begins" post. Wanting to capitalize on his success at the two forts, Arnold convinced Washington that the advantages in taking the Bitish held province of Quebec would be well worth any risks taken by the Americans.

The entire Quebec expedition lasted from June 1775 until October 1776 and was the first major military operation by the newly formed Continental Army. Commander in chief Washington, remaining in Cambridge, sent out two companies for the operation, one commanded by Arnold and the other by General Richard Montgomery. The plan concocted was for the two companies, each taking a different route, to eventually meet up for a showdown in Quebec City.

Montgomery's operation started out well. He left Fort Ticonderoga in August and by November he had taken control of the French Fort Saint-Jean, just outside of Montreal. The presence of the Continental Army in such close quarters caused a mass abandonment of the city by the British to the safety of Quebec City, 163 miles to the northeast.

(1) Ticonderoga (2) Crown Point (3) Fort Saint-Jean (4) Quebec City

Arnold's trek north was neither easy nor lucky. His troops left Cambridge in September of 1775. Their route through the wilderness of Maine, in ever increasing harsh weather, proved far more grueling than Arnold had anticipated. During two long, difficult months of marching, his force dwindled, due to ilness and desertion, from 1,050 to 675 "starving, poorly armed soldiers." From there, everything went from bad to worse.

Arnold's forces finally arrived at Quebec City in November but, because the journey had taken so long, the walled city had time to call for reinforecments. Worse still, Montgomery's forces hadn't even left Montreal. Arnold, with his badly depleted forces, had no choice but to sit and wait with his troops in the freezing Canadian weather.

Below is a picture of Quebec City, surrounded by walls which protected the settlement from invasion.

By the time Montgomery set out from Montreal, his forces had also dwindled due to expiring enlistments. Because the bulk of the Continental Army was made up of militiamen, not regulars, with limited terms of service, generals had no way of knowing what their force would be when setting out to battle. Since the men serving in the army had farms and families that needed looking to, most militamen could not be convinced to stay once their time was up.

General Washington had made it clear to Arnold that "[if] unforeseen Difficulties should arise or if the Weather shou’d become so severe as to render it hazardous to proceed" he should use his owns judgment on whether to commit himself to battle. Despite the difficulties, Arnold and Mongomery made the ill-advised decision to soldier on. They hadn't come all that way to simply throw in the towel.

On December 31, 1775, the combined American troops assaulted the walled city of Quebec. The attack turned into a disastrous defeat for the Continental Army. General Montgomery was killed and Benedict Arnold severly wounded in the melee. The Americans suffered 84 casualties, killed or wounded to Quebec's 19. Worse, 431 of Arnold and Montgomery's men were taken captive.

The Death of General Montgomery by John Trumbull

Even though General Arnold had been shot in the leg, he wouldn't give up the fight. He decided to lay siege to Quebec City. According to historian Patrick J. Kiger:

But to Arnold’s credit, he didn’t give up. Along with the tattered remainder of his forces, he cleverly kept up the siege, moving a single cannon around and firing at the fort to create the illusion that he had more artillery. . .In that fashion, Arnold held out until spring, when reinforcements from New England arrived, and he was ordered to return home.

Arnold's replacement at the site of his siege was just one in a long list of insults he would suffer at the hands of the Continental Congress. We'll have more of his story in future posts.

Our relatives in the Quebec Expedition

Finding soldiers from our family who participated in the Quebec invasion has been difficult. It was early days in the war and the men involved were quickly scratched together. I was able to find a few of our relatives but suspect there were many more.

The Stickney family appeared to be out in full force for this operation.

Our cousin Samuel Stickney (4C7X) of Newburyport not only participated in the Quebec invasion but was also on hand for the evacuation of Boston which would happen in March of 1776. The next year, 1777, he "entered on board the Yankee Hero. . .with a complement of one hundred and seventy men. . .The vessel sailed from Boston, and was never heard from afterwards." Also on board that fateful ship was Samuel's brother, Joseph Stickney (4C7X).

Abner Brigham (4C10X) of Marlborough

Isaac Greenleaf (4C7X) of Medford

Captain Ezra Lunt (5C6X) of Newbury

Enoch Richardson (4C7X) of Newburyport

Jedediah Richardson (4C7X) of Haverhill

Thomas Stickney (1C8X) of Bradford

Jedediah Stickney (3C8X) of Haverhill

Jonathan Stickney (3C8X) of Newburyport

Jonathan Stickney ((3C8X) of Biddeford

Joseph Stickney (3C8X) of Rowley

Paul Stickney (3C8X) of Rowley