President Reed of Pennsylvania. A reply to Mr. George Bancroft and others ... February, A.D. 1867

Front matter

Darlington Memorial Library

Maak .

PRESIDENT REED

Introduction

It will be apparent to every reader of the following pages that the historical materials they illustrate have not been recently colleded. Most of them have been in my possession for many years, but for reasons which I have frankly stated, were not used. Indeed, but for Mr. Bancroft's late volume, which literally is the straw which broke the back of my endurance, they would not be used now. His book however, renders it necessary that I should break my silence. To those who think it would have been better had I not opened the whole subjed: of the attacks on Mr. Reed, but confined myself to Mr. Bancroft's share of them, I suggest that, dealing as I am with at least one unscrupulous adversary, it would be hazardous to leave for his use the testimony, such as it is, of past times, and thus subject myself to the necessity of a rejoinder. Though Mr. Bancroft, with the exception of a single and unaccredited quotation, is silent as to the Pamphlets of the last century, he knows all about them, and had I answered the Donop fidion alone, he would have brought them forward as his fresh reserve. I had no alternative but to discuss the whole subjed, and I have endeavoured to exhaust it.

Chestnut Hill^ January^ 1867. W. B. Reed.

ORE than eighty years after my ancestor was laid in his honoured grave, I am called on to vindicate his name. Instead of partisan misrepresentation (to use a mild word,) being allowed to die with the passions of a period of revolutionary excitement, it has been industriously kept alive, until at last, in the second and almost the third generation, the necessity of correcting and repelling it has arisen. There is, in this country, a class of men, happily not numerous, who take pleasure in disparaging the accredited patriots of the first revolution. They do so either from hereditary or personal animosity, or on a principle of paradox and contradidion. They have two words of detraction for each one of praise which filial pride, or any good motive prompts, and their delight is to rummage in forgotten libels. For them, the acrimonious pamphlets of past time, scraps of discreditable and hostile diaries and letters are cherished treasures. They are a fund on which they draw freely. Sometimes they forge.

Occasionally what may be described as these defamatory experiments, have gone so far and assumed a shape so precise as to require notice. This was so in one instance, within the recoIle6lion of many of my immediate fellow citizens. I refer to a series of anonymous publications as to General Reed, in the autumn of 1842, under the signature of "Valley Forge," in a Philadelphia newspaper. Though these libels were met so promptly and decisively as to force an admission that the evidence on which they rested was forgery in its most flagrant form; though the infamy of the whole affair recoiled so fatally as to destroy the paper in which the publications appeared; though falsehood was, to the eye of any historical student, palpable in every line, and the result of detedion proved it to be so; there were those who read and believed it all, and applauded the agents of this dark plan of detraftion. I have no doubt there are some yet who are willing to believe in what was marked with the stain of conceded fraud, and that the "Valley Forge forgeries" are carefully preserved to be revived, hereafter, to vilify anew the charader of the dead, and wound the affedions of the living. Two of these spurious letters were re-printed as genuine in this city, within the last three years.*

* Evening Bulletin of Oftober 12th, 1863. The first communicetion of "Valley Forge" appeared on the 14th of September, the last on or about the 24th of October, 1842. The Journal ceased to exist some time during the same winter. Its Editor having in vain endeavoured to ascertain the anonymous writer who had decoyed him into this scheme of infamy, voluntarily surrendered the manuscripts to the

It is doing General Reed's eontemporary enemies injustice to conned them with assailants of this description. Yet the association is not mine. But for what is known as the Cadwalader pamphlet, the slanders of a later daywould have perished at their birth, it being the practice of the authors of the new coinage, whenever their spurious issue was deteded, to fall back on it; and the argument always has been, that this pamphlet was genuine, and worthy of notice and reply. It is the ultimate reliance, and by an ingenious involution of the genuine and the spurious, the ends of calumny have been attained, and the charader of a patriot of the Revolution, a man who filled, with honour, more high public trusts than usually are conferred on one, is whispered or clamoured away, in the city of his life and fame. To all this, it would be afFedation in me to pretend indifference. I have felt it, and felt it deeply. With ample materials of vindication at hand; with a trust for the charader of the dead, which seemed to press more strongly upon me as I watched from day to day the course and apparent fruition of these schemes of detradion, it has been hard to be silent. For a long while, with a determination not to be dragged, by secret and anonymous assailants, into possible controversy with the living, I was content to wait till I should be able to submit to the public a carefully digested mass of positive evidence, in the form of a biographical work, on

gentlemen whose families had been defamed, and died in May, 1 845, at Washington.

which my ancestor's claim on the gratitude of his country might rest. My biography of President Reed was published in 1847, and, so far as I am able to judge, was kindly welcomed. In one respeft, especially, this approval gratified me, aside from the pleasure of knowing that my labour had not been in vain to make Pennsylvania proud of one of her sons. It gratified me to find that my personal friends, and even those who were still more disinterested, approved of the moderation with which I discussed points of disputed politics; and of the absence of anything tending to give pain to a living being. I am not aware of one written word of my own, that was not in a kind spirit, and in deference to the feelings of others, and this, too, with strong temptation occasionally, to speak out painful truth, let it wound whom it might. When, in m.y biography, I came to the Cadwalader controversy, I thus referred to it :

"Judging from the newspapers and pamphlets, the year 1782, which found Mr. Reed a private citizen, was more convulsed by party spirit, raging apparently without restraint, than any previous period. The accredited newspaper organs of the two parties were filled with articles of extreme ferocity, directed at the respective leaders; and towards Mr. Reed especially, as one whose mere resignation of authority did not satisfy his enemies, the most intense animosity was manifested. There was no stint to anonymous defamation. On the side of the Constitutionalists quite as able partisans were in the field, using their pens offensively as well as defensively. Among them, one who wrote under the name of "Valerius," and v/hose identity never was clearly ascertained, attraded great attention. The main objed; of his assault, made with great bitterness and eloquence, was Mr. Dickinson, who in November, 1782, had been eleded President by a small majority over General Potter, the Constitutional candidate. So effedive did these attacks become, that Mr. Dickinson found it necessary to answer them, and to make an elaborate defence of his public condud, in reply to this anonymous assailant. It would be entirely aside from the aim of these volumes to revive or minutely to refer to such controversies. They were in everv way discreditable; they may be consigned to the oblivion which has nearly overtaken them, and may well be left for the congenial research of a class of men, happily very limited, who take a malignant pleasure in defaming the memory of our Revolutionary patriots. Occasionally, controversies of a graver kind occurred at this season of diseased excitement. Of this description was one of a very painful nature, which, in the fall of 1782, Mr Reed was involved in, with his former companion-in-arms. General John Cadwalader. Pamphlets of great acrimony were published on each side. These pamphlets are now before me, but it is most consonant with my feelings to the living and the dead, that the controversy should be dismissed with this incidental reference, which its importance at the time seemed to require, and with the expression of the convi<5tion that had the lives of the parties, and especiallv of him who made the assault, been prolonged, and opportunities such as we now have, been afforded, of collating testimony, and allowing transient resentments to subside, the fierceness of the controversy would have been succeeded by far more amiable feelings. But in less than three years from its date both parties were in their graves."^*

This seemed to be the best mode of treating a subjedl which, in some of its relations, was of great delicacv. To omit all reference to it, would have been to give colour to the idea that I was unprepared, (unwilling I certainly was,) to discuss it. To do so in detail, would be to open anew a controversy long since gone by, to excite unpleasant feelings, and possibly to afFed: my personal relations to those with whom I have always lived on terms of friendliness, and to whom I had no desire to give pain. To speak of it as a subjedt on which, time, had the lives of the parties been prolonged, might have shed a conciliatory influence, and yet, as one, as to which, if forced into controversy, I had no misgiving, seemed to be the true course. In pursuing it, I have reason to believe I had the approval of all fair-minded and considerate readers. Those only were disappointed, who

* Life of Reed, vol. 2, page 382. Mr. Reed died March 5th, 1785 Mr. Cadwalader, loth February, 1786.

9 ■ •

hoped to see the living discredited by a revival of the altercations of the dead.

No sooner, however, was the biography of President Reed given to the public — no sooner were kind words of approval heard — no sooner did it seem certain that his public character and services were, by the simple exposition of truth, about to be appreciated in Pennsylvania, and, throughout the country — no sooner were the letters of Washington, and Lafayette, and Greene, and Wayne, and Henry Lee, to Mr. Reed read, and his adual position, as their most valued and thoroughly trusted friend, illustrated by evidence, than it was thought necessary, in a sort of restless, mischief-making spirit, to try further experiments on public credulity, and to burnish up ancient weapons which had nearly rusted in their sheaths ; in other words, to print and circulate the Cadwalader Pamphlet of 1783. Of its merits, I mean to speak clearly and decisively, so that about it, now, or hereafter, there shall be no misunderstanding. A single word as to Its various re-publications, the first of which was in 1848. I was willing to account for this by attributing the enterprise to a mercenary motive; the cupidity of an unscrupulous publisher, who hoped, by a new edition of an ancient story, to make a few dollars. But I am constrained to believe, that it, too, was the fruit of secret and inveterate hostility, to be gratified, at any cost, and by any means; in short, that the authors of the forgeries of 1842, were again, in another form, lO

busy at the secret work of malevolence. In this instance, they were working on genuine materials. No one questions that General Cadwalader's pamphlet is genuine, or that it involved charges by a responsible accuser. That it did great injustice, and that its allegations were groundless, having their origin in intense political animosity, and were so interpreted at the time, it will be my effort to demonstrate. The mode and number of these re-publications are remarkable. The first, in 1848, was printed in secret, with a preface endorsing and adopting the forgeries of 1842, and, though deposited for sale at an obscure book store, with pains taken, as the contrivers of the scheme imagined, to secure extensive circulation. The date of the preface was "Trenton, December, 1846;" in point of fa6l the pamphlet was printed in 1848, at Philadelphia. Why all this indirection; this falsifying of dates, had the objed been a fair one? — and why, if the aim were the mere corredion of a mistake of history, was it necessary to distribute secretly, thousands of advertising circulars, all carefully direded and prepaid ? Yet, this was done. It seemed as if the desire to do me and mine injustice, was not to be checked by considerations of labour or expense. One result, immediately ensued. There was an universal burst of indignation, and the faint whispers of approval, or excuse, were scarcely audible. None, I have reason to know, were more annoyed by it than General Cadwalader's descendants.