Friends in Low Places: Philadelphia Merchants,

Trans-Atlantic Smuggling, and the Secret Deals that Saved

the American Revolution

By Tynan McMullen

University of Colorado Boulder

History Honors Thesis

Defended 3 April 2020

Thesis Advisor

Dr. Virginia Anderson, Department of History

Defense Committee

Dr. Miriam Kadia, Department of History

Capt. Justin Colgrove, Department of Naval Science, USMC 1

Introduction

Soldiers love to talk. From privates to generals, each soldier has an opinion, a fact, a story they cannot help themselves from telling. In the modern day, we see this in the form of leaked reports to newspapers and controversial interviews on major networks. On 25 May 1775, as the

British American colonies braced themselves for war, an “Officer of distinguished Rank” was running his mouth in the Boston Weekly News-Letter. Boasting about the colonial army’s success ​ ​ during the capture of Fort Ticonderoga two weeks prior, this anonymous officer let details slip about a far more concerning issue. The officer remarked that British troops in Boston were preparing to march out to “give us battle” at Cambridge, but despite their need for ammunition

“no Powder is to be found there at present” to supply the Massachusetts militia.1 This statement was not hyperbole. When George Washington took over the Continental Army on 15 June, three weeks later, he was shocked at the complete lack of munitions available to his troops. Two days after that, New England militiamen lost the battle of Bunker Hill in agonizing fashion, repelling a superior British force twice only to be forced back on the third assault. Rather than alleviate concerns about the state of the army, this distinguished officer’s comments revealed that the

Revolution was in dire straits.

With hindsight, we know that the munitions shortage would be overcome through foreign aid, and that General Washington and the Continental Army would prevail. Traditionally, this narrative centers around the French-American alliance struck on 6 February 1778 along with the

1 Boston News-Letter (Boston, Massachusetts), no. 3736, May 25, 1775: [2]. Readex: America's Historical ​ ​ ​ Newspapers. ​ https://infoweb-newsbank-com.colorado.idm.oclc.org/apps/readex/doc?p=EANX&docref=image/v2%3A1036CD22 1971FE08%40EANX-107B06025BE3DCB0%402369510-107B0602851EDA20%401.

2 actions of prominent French figures such as the Comte de Vergennes and Pierre Beaumarchais.

Through the lobbying of Connecticut merchant Silas Deane on behalf of the Continental

Congress, Vergennes and Beaumarchais were able to begin secretly funneling crown money to send arms and ammunition to the Americans in 1776. This narrative follows the actions of the

French and American states, where politicians utilized merchants to achieve military and diplomatic ends. These actions, while covert, were officially sponsored on both sides of the

Atlantic.

This process of French-American cooperation did not happen overnight, and

Revolutionary historians acknowledge that a shadowy trade existed between French and

American merchants before the arrival of Silas Deane in Paris in March 1776. But the rapidity of the process suggests that there was more to the story. In an era when it took weeks for people and correspondence to cross the Atlantic, Americans began picking up shipments of French arms from Europe and the Caribbean almost immediately after hostilities broke out. A closer examination of congressional records and personal letters reveals that illicit trade between

American and French merchants was a common phenomenon, a phenomenon centered around the mercantile city of Philadelphia. From the City of Brotherly Love, merchants with pre-existing smuggling connections to Europe were able to gain influential positions on the

Continental Congress and quickly convert their illegitimate business to sanctioned covert arms dealing. Rising above competitors from New York, Boston, and Charleston, Philadelphia shippers utilized a long history of illegal French trade to arm the Revolution and prevent an early collapse of Washington’s army.

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Philadelphia’s role in the American Revolution and its prominence as a trading port has been well studied by Revolutionary historians. For a general history of Philadelphia, Russel

Weigley’s 1982 book Philadelphia: A 300 Year History begins with William Penn, and richly ​ ​ ​ details the social, cultural, and economic development of colonial Philadelphia. Weigley goes to great effort to demonstrate how Philadelphia’s planned infrastructure, religious tolerance, and geographic fortunes made it all but predestined to be a thriving mercantile city. By 1775,

Philadelphia was the shipping and political capital of the colonies, and would have an outsized importance in the early Revolution. Weigley’s research has stood as the preeminent history of

Philadelphia, and any subsequent projects on the city benefit from reading his work.2

Regarding the shipping, trade, and economy of colonial and wartime Philadelphia, three books give us a complete picture of the mercantile industry. Arthur Jensen’s 1963 work The ​ Maritime Commerce of Colonial Philadelphia provides an excellent background on the trade ​ economy of Philadelphia and the activities of its merchants prior to the Revolution. Maritime ​ Commerce also dedicates an entire chapter to pre-Revolutionary smuggling along with the ​ British trade acts that encouraged it. Thomas Doerflinger’s incredibly thorough A Vigorous Spirit ​ of Enterprise, written in 1982, gives a complete analysis of the merchant community in the ​ 1770s. Doerflinger organizes the staggering number of trades during this era into a single cohesive narrative that covers issues of class, conflict, and economics while providing financial and trade details through primary sources. He highlights the significance of particular merchants, most notably Robert Morris, in the pre-war and wartime Philadelphia economy. Finally, John

McCusker and Russell Menard’s 1991 The Economy of British America 1607-1789 places ​ ​

2 Russell Frank Weigley, Philadelphia: A 300 Year History (New York: W.W. Norton, 1982). ​ ​ ​

4

Philadelphia into the trans-Atlantic economy, and compares it to New York, New England, and

Southern trade. While each of these works does an excellent job at defining the merchant communities and detailing the mercantile system upon which Philadelphia was based, they are broad histories that do not give particular focus to the early years of the Revolution. While they touch on smuggling, these works do not provide details on the political machinations behind them, or the impact of Philadelphia trade on the battlefield.3

The politics behind Philadelphia’s smuggling are best described in Elizabeth Nuxoll’s

1985 dissertation Congress and the Munitions Merchants, which examines the importation of ​ ​ French arms during the Revolution through the lens of the Secret Committee of Trade.

Throughout the dissertation she examines the political and logistical mechanisms of the

Revolutionary arms trade, specifically how members of the Secret Committee lobbied French merchants and politicians. Nuxoll’s work focuses primarily on activities in the middle and later years of the Revolution, drawing on the history of Franco-American smuggling as a background rather than an area of focus. While Nuxoll acknowledges the centrality of Philadelphia in this trade, she does not go as far as to argue that Philadelphia’s mercantile history was crucial to this trade or elaborate on the pre-war relationships that contributed to the efficiency of wartime dealings.4

The excellent work by these historians has given us a comprehensive understanding of the trading economies of colonial and wartime Philadelphia, but I believe they overlook a crucial

3 Arthur L. Jensen, The Maritime Commerce of Colonial Philadelphia (Madison: State Historical Society of ​ ​ ​ Wisconsin for the Dept. of History, University of Wisconsin, 1963)., Thomas M. Doerflinger, A Vigorous Spirit of ​ Enterprise: Merchants and Economic Development in Revolutionary Philadelphia (Chapel Hill: University of North ​ Carolina Press, 1986)., John J. McCusker and Russell R. Menard, The Economy of British America, 1607-1789 ​ (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985). 4 Elizabeth Miles Nuxoll, Congress and the Munitions Merchants: The Secret Committee of Trade during the ​ ​ American Revolution, 1775-1777 (New York: Garland Pub, 1985). ​

5 human factor in Philadelphia’s history that would go on to save the Revolution. It’s not what you know, it's who you know, and Philadelphia’s merchant class was the best connected group to the

French in British North America. Researching the Journals of the Continental Congress, George

Washington’s writings, and bits of correspondence from Philadelphia merchants, a picture emerges of a complex and lucrative trading network dating back to the 1750s. Merchants, politicians, and generals discussed the shocking lack of American powder, detailed trade with

European ports, and shadowy meetings with French agents. The records of these conversations paint a picture of a network that would be activated well before the signing of the Declaration of

Independence on 4 July 1776. Engagements at Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill in 1775 made it clear the colonies needed help to survive the upcoming year.

This help came in the form of Philadelphia’s merchant elite, who combined business opportunity and patriotism to keep the Continental Army afloat. For decades prior to independence, American and French traders had engaged in illegitimate, and highly lucrative, dealings on neutral Caribbean islands such as St. Eustatius. These dealings, where Pennsylvania grain and lumber were exchanged for rum and slaves, made Philadelphians like Thomas Willing and Robert Morris very wealthy, and very opposed to British trade restrictions. Once hostilities broke out in 1775, the Continental Congress needed a mechanism to import arms before they were overrun by British reinforcements. Philadelphia merchants were the men for the job. A

Secret Committee of Trade was assembled in 1775 for just this purpose, and it was dominated by men from the Philadelphia shipping industry. With their smuggling history and the mercantile infrastructure of Philadelphia, these men were uniquely situated to bring in the sheer number of

European arms that would be necessary to supply Washington’s troops. These early supplies

6 would play a crucial role in preventing the disintegration of the Continental Army, and would prove essential for its defining victory at Trenton in December, 1776. This vital munitions trade can trace its roots past the pleas of General Washington in 1775, past the backroom deals of the

French and Indian War, all the way back to 1682, when an English dissident decided to build a city with a grid system.

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Chapter 1: Grid Squares and Rum Smuggling

First impressions are everything, and Dr. Alexander Hamilton’s initial comments upon arriving at Philadelphia in 1744 captured the essence of the city as well as any official history.

Crossing the Schuylkill River into Philadelphia, the Scottish doctor noticed the “pleasant country,” that surrounded the city between the Schuylkill and the Delaware. The city itself was composed of “rectangular squares” and “frequent building.”5 Located near the agricultural breadbasket of colonial America and situated on the massive harbor of the Delaware, the planned, densely populated city of Philadelphia struck Dr. Hamilton as unique to the colonies, an impression that would be confirmed by his stay in the bustling merchant city. From its founding in 1682, Philadelphia was designed to attract merchants, promote trade, and avoid the stagnation of crowded European cities. Every aspect of Dr. Hamilton’s description of Philadelphia helps us to explain the city’s later significance to the American Revolution, beginning with the very layout of the city itself.

Upon receiving his charter from King Charles II of England in 1681, William Penn set to work building a city that would be unlike any other in North America. As a religious dissident,

Penn wanted a city where Quakers and other denominations could practice their faith in peace, but as a merchant, Penn designed a city with an explicitly commercial vision. The city limits

5 Alexander Hamilton, Itinerarium in Wendy Martin, Colonial American Travel Narratives (New York: Penguin ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Books, 1994), 189.

8 were laid out in a 1200 acre grid, where wealthy investors could reserve the best plots of land located by the rivers. Penn wanted a “greene country town” with large, open properties and designated parks that was, above all, orderly.6 Running from east to west, this order was imposed by a strict system of streets that were meant to ease congestion and prevent a high population density. Storefronts would be clustered by the docks on the Delaware to receive shipping, with the rest of the town dominated by sizable lots of private homes surrounded by open space.

Philadelphia would thrive on the quality of its diverse and wealthy population, Penn reasoned, rather than the unwieldy masses of London or New York City.

Penn’s vision of an organized, green town was on full display in 1759 when the

Englishman Andrew Burnaby toured the middle colonies. As he travelled east into Philadelphia,

Burnaby described the countryside surrounding the city as “better cultivated, and beautifully laid out into fields of clover, grain, and flax.” Upon arriving in the city itself, Burnaby remarked on the “great regularity” and paving of Philadelphia’s “well lighted” streets. Furthermore, the

Englishman paid special attention to the prominence of public buildings such as libraries, the mental hospital, and the large stadt-house. Interspersed among the streets and houses were “eight or ten places of religious worship” of Quaker, Lutheran, and Calvinist denominations.7 Diverse and modern, through proper planning Philadelphia had begun to overtake New York and Boston as the premier city in the American colonies.

Fast forward to 1775, and Philadelphia had exploded into the largest, most prosperous city in the American colonies, a city that combined a mercantile spirit with the vision of William

Penn. On the eve of the Revolution 30,000 souls, easily the largest urban center in the British

6 Weigley, Philadelphia: A 300 Year History, 1. ​ ​ 7 Andrew Burnaby, Rufus Rockwell Wilson, and Francis Fauquier. Burnaby's Travels through North America (New ​ ​ York: A. Wessels Company, 1904), 90.

9 colonies, called Philadelphia home. The Delaware waterfront, in particular, had become one of the most densely populated locales in the colonies, as hundreds of middling merchants and artisans desperately competed to handle shipping contracts and commissions. Over the course of the 18th century, Philadelphia became the most prolific ship building center in the colonies, with a massive and diverse range of industries rising to support it. A visitor walking through the

Philadelphia docks would have found blacksmiths, foundries, tanneries, breweries, tailors, even artisans manufacturing luxury items such as buttons and chocolate.8 That same visitor could leave the docks, and find himself entertainment at a cockfight, coffeehouse, theater, or any one of the ubiquitous taverns in Philadelphia.9 For those who wished to spend extended time in the

City of Brotherly Love, there was an ample supply of taverns, inns, and private homes offering rooms for weary travelers.

While Philadelphia was certainly more crowded than Penn had ever envisioned, the

Society of Friends still worked to maintain Penn’s grid system, religious tolerance, and civic centralization. By 1775 Philadelphia was renowned for the quality of its city streets, which were paved, cleaned, and well lit to ensure a constant flow of product to and from the harbor. Riding down Philadelphia’s streets, a traveler would see the religious diversity’s impact on the city’s architecture. The old Swedish church of Gloria Dei stands to the present day, and was the iconic fixture of the early Philadelphia skyline. Joining it were the steeples of the German Reformed

Church, the Presbyterian Church, and the dominating 196 foot Anglican Christ Church steeple that welcomed visitors by land and by sea. Mixed in with the churches, taverns, and shops, was the social and political infrastructure that would become crucial during the Revolution. The

8 Roger D. Simon, Philadelphia : A Brief History, (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Historical Association, 2017), 5. ​ ​ ​ 9 On 10 NOV 1775 the U.S. Marine Corps was in fact founded in Tun Tavern, Philadelphia. ​

10

Library Company of Philadelphia, the Walnut Street Prison, and a large barracks were all established as Philadelphia institutions by 1775.10 Our hypothetical visitor could end his tour at the State House, which would become the home of the Continental Congress in 1774.

On the eve of the Revolution, Philadelphia was the most prosperous, well developed, and diverse city in the American colonies, supported by its burgeoning mercantile economy. A variety of factors explain Philadelphia’s success, first and foremost being simple geography. The entire region was protected from the extremities of weather by the Appalachians to the west, and the city never had to worry about being crushed by a harsh winter or drought. Despite being located a hundred miles up the somewhat treacherous Delaware River, the harbor at Philadelphia was one of the finest in the British colonies. Deep enough to anchor dozens of “the greatest ships” at a time, the harbor was near a cove that offered sandy beaches for use by smaller vessels.11 The construction of Philadelphia around the Delaware riverfront allowed for a rich import and export market. Goods offloaded from the Delaware were shipped across town to the

Schuylkill River, where ferries brought wares to the Pennsylvania hinterlands, and returned loaded with grain, meat, and lumber.12

Pennsylvania’s hinterlands was the decisive factor in Philadelphia’s rapid economic rise, providing traders with goods in highest demand throughout the British Empire: sustenance in the form of meat and cereal grains. In the Caribbean, and to a lesser extent the Southern colonies, the overwhelming majority of arable acres were not used for subsistence farming, but were set aside to grow cash crops such as sugar and tobacco for profit. That land was worked by literal armies

10 Weigley, Philadelphia: A 300 Year History, 121. ​ ​ ​ 11 Pehr Kalm, Travels into North America: Containing its Natural History, and a Circumstantial Account of its ​ Plantations and Agriculture in General trans. John Reinhold Forster (Warrington: printed by William Eyres, 1770), ​ 48. 12 Simon, Philadelphia: A Brief History, 5. ​ ​ ​

11 of African slaves, who required a significant amount of calories to survive. Foodstuffs had to be imported in bulk to maintain plantation slavery throughout the Empire, and Pennsylvania met demand with supply. The farmland surrounding Philadelphia was among the best in the colonies, and produced vast quantities of beef, pork, corn, and wheat that was shipped to both Northern and Southern colonies, the West Indies, Africa, and Europe.13

As was the case throughout the colonies, Philadelphians lacked the specie on hand to purchase critical English goods - glass, paper, cloth, gunpowder, etc.-, and merchants sought to remedy the deficit through the export of agricultural goods.14 The slave economies of the West

Indies were an obvious and popular destination for export. From the first days of Pennsylvania,

Philadelphia’s early investors saw a potential market in the Caribbean for foodstuffs, and by

1691, the first ships left for the West Indies to exchange wheat and other agricultural goods for sugar.15 Records from the late colonial period indicate that nearly one third of all shipping trade, both import and export, in Philadelphia during the early 1770s went directly to and from the

West Indies. Throughout the colonial period, Philadelphia was the leading supplier of both flour and lumber to the Caribbean, while also trading salted meats, rye, and corn.16 Flour and lumber products were incredibly lucrative, and their exchange paved the way for Philadelphia to become the colonies’ leading importer of rum (over half a million gallons per year) and a major importer of Caribbean sugar.17 Less frequently, Philadelphia ships returned with slaves. The sheer amount

13 Gary B. Nash, First City: Philadelphia and the Forging of Historical Memory (Philadelphia: University of ​ ​ ​ Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 46. 14 Simon, Philadelphia: A Brief History, 4. ​ ​ ​ 15 Jensen, Maritime Commerce, 43. ​ ​ 16 Jensen, Maritime Commerce, 45. ​ ​ ​ 17 Much of it undoubtedly disappeared into Philadelphia’s numerous taverns. ​

12 of product moving through Philadelphia in a given year from the West Indies made the city a boon for traders who could find opportunities in a crowded market.

To succeed, these traders needed to be able to navigate the complex political geography of the Caribbean. While British Jamaica and Barbados dominated the sugar trade, shippers found themselves setting up trade deals with Dutch, Spanish, Danish, and French territories. Each of the European powers had a considerable investment in sugar plantations, and trading with the proximate and established agricultural markets of North America was the most convenient way of feeding the slave labor force. Due to imperial regulations preventing the direct importation of

British goods to French and Spanish holdings, Philadelphia traders found it easier to enter the re-export market, where American goods were shipped to a British or neutral island with the intent of resale to a Spanish or French holding. Of particular importance was St. Eustatius, a

Dutch island with no restrictions on trade where many Philadelphia merchants cut their teeth moving agricultural products outside of His Majesty’s territory. For more adventurous

Philadelphia shippers, trading with the French and Spanish directly was a means of circumventing an increasingly depressed foodstuff market. Colonial governors on Caribbean islands were known to turn a blind eye to American traders before the French and Indian War, but as customs laws were enforced Americans were forced to turn to smuggling in order to sell their products to the French and Spanish.18 As a result, the shrewdest Philadelphia traders had to develop a comprehensive knowledge of imperial regulations and a propensity for smuggling as they attempted to maximize their profits in the West Indies.

18 Jensen, Maritime Commerce, 52. ​ ​ ​

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While Philadelphia shippers in the Caribbean had to deal with a cutthroat market for

American foodstuffs, competing with New York and Boston, by the eve of the Revolution

Philadelphians dominated the American trade with Southern Europe. A series of bad harvests in

Spain and Portugal in the 1750s forced the Iberian peninsula to import grain, which was a surplus crop throughout the rich farmlands of Pennsylvania.19 Philadelphia’s merchants quickly established trade connections with Southern Europe, exporting flour and importing wine, in a new trans-Atlantic market centered around Lisbon. This new market would be dominated by

Philadelphia until the Revolution. By 1772, Philadelphia shipped twice as much flour to

Southern Europe as any other North American city as its merchants became familiar faces in the

Mediterranean.20 In addition this European trade gave Philadelphia merchants increased access to trade with France itself, with at least four officially recorded shipments arriving in Philadelphia between 1765 and 1776, despite the ostensible hostilities between the French and British.21

Beyond these few documented shipments, little concrete evidence remains about the

Franco-American trade prior to the American Revolution. Due to the strict regulations placed on trade between agents of the French and British empires, the majority of trade between colonists and the French involved smuggling. For obvious reasons, these smugglers left little in the way of manifestos or receipts, but a contemporary estimate from 1765 assessed the value of goods smuggled into the British colonies from Europe at over 500,000 pounds annually.22 During the

French and Indian War, American merchants seemed to be fairly unscrupulous with their wartime dealings, supplying the French under the table through islands in the West Indies to turn

19 McCusker and Menard, The Economy of British America, 194. ​ ​ 20 McCusker and Menard, The Economy of British America, 196. ​ ​ 21 Doerflinger, A Vigorous Spirit of Enterprise, 112. ​ ​ 22 Richard Warner Van Alstyne, Empire and Independence: The International History of the American Revolution. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ (New York: Wiley, 1965), 23.

14 a profit. Prior to the strict enforcement of the Navigation Acts in the 1760s, many colonial officials viewed regulations on trading with other European empires as general guidelines rather than a strict code. As mentioned earlier, Philadelphia merchants in particular were apt to skirt customs officials in the Caribbean, and by 1775 had developed an extensive trade network in both the West Indies and Southern Europe. Although the records are fragmentary at best, smuggling in Philadelphia was a known and lucrative business, albeit one that would stay in the shadows before coming to the fore with the American Revolution.

In addition to bountiful farmland and robust economic opportunity, Philadelphia benefited from the religious freedom promoted by William Penn and the Quakers. This attracted a diverse population of talented merchants who could not have found the same success in New

England or Europe. Early on, the Society of Friends, better known as the Quakers, dominated the city's merchant elite having been recruited to Philadelphia by Penn in the seventeenth century.

This upper crust intermarried and traded heavily with each other’s firms, creating a social as well as economic circle based on kinship and religious affiliation. As the 1700’s progressed,

Philadelphia’s reputation for both shipping and tolerance brought in traders from Europe and the colonies alike. Merchants from Ireland, German speaking regions, and France all found themselves at home in Philadelphia, many of them scrambling to find a niche in the shipping industry.23 The middling class of merchants was made up of a variety of Christian denominations, ranging from Moravians to Presbyterians to Huguenots, all of whom formed tight knit social communities akin to the Quakers. Much like the English Quakers, these religious groups tended to correspond with ethnic affiliation, such as the German Moravians or French

23 Doerflinger, A Vigorous Spirit of Enterprise, 15. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

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Huguenots. While a diverse array of European peoples would find success in Philadelphia, by the

American Revolution a surging Anglican population had risen to prominence in the City of

Brotherly Love, and began to compete with Quakers as the city’s dominant social group.

No merchant was more emblematic of the Anglican ascent than Thomas Willing, a blue blood shipper with an impressive Philadelphia pedigree and a long history of successful trans-Atlantic trade. Born in 1731 to Charles Willing and Anne Shippen Willing, Thomas began his life with all the connections necessary to become one of Philadelphia’s great merchants. His father, Charles, was an Anglican merchant who managed a successful shipping firm and Anne

Shippen was the granddaughter of Edward Shippen, Philadelphia’s first mayor. Young Thomas spent his teenage years in England, learning law and business in Bath and at the Watt’s Academy in London. Returning to Philadelphia in 1749, Willing formally joined his father’s firm and became the managing partner after Charles’s death in 1754. Known affectionately as “Old

Square Toes,” from his habit of wearing broad toed shoes, Willing quickly expanded his father’s shipping business throughout the French and Indian War, becoming one of the preeminent dry goods traders in North America.24On top of his personal business, in 1758 Willing was appointed one of Pennsylvania’s commissioners of Indian trade, a position which he held for the next seven years. But his business grew primarily from the sale of flour to the West Indies, particularly during the French and Indian War. At first these goods were mainly exchanged for molasses and rum in the Caribbean, but as the Revolution approached, the range of Willing’s shipping expanded.

24 Jensen, Maritime Commerce, 92. ​ ​ ​

16

This expansion included a partnership with a young Robert Morris, who would find later fame as the “Financier of the Revolution” but earned his stripes in the pre-revolutionary

Philadelphia shipping industry. Born in England during the winter of 1735, Morris moved to

Philadelphia in 1747 at the behest of his father, a Maryland tobacco agent, to apprentice at the firm of a certain Charles Willing. Working for Willing, Morris showed an incredible aptitude for commerce and shipping, and became fast friends with Thomas, a friendship that would last a lifetime. After Charles passed away in 1754, Morris remained with the firm and assumed an even larger role, acting as the company’s supercargo on two trips to the West Indies. In fact, on the second of these trips, Morris was captured and briefly held by French privateers. His conduct during his captivity would earn him a full partnership in Willing’s firm, and on May 1, 1757,

Willing, Morris, and Company was formally established and would quickly rise to become

Philadelphia’s preeminent shipping company.25

The rapid ascent of Willing, Morris, and Company is a subject of some mystery; very few receipts and correspondence are left from the 1760s produced by the firm or written by either partner. However by examining their activities in the 1750’s and the early 1770’s, we can make some educated inferences about the firm's rise to Philadelphia dominance. In the early years of the partnership, the firm had three ships, which remained on the west side of the Atlantic, moving flour, lumber, and meat from the mainland colonies to the West Indies in exchange for rum and molasses. Not all of this was strictly legal; letters between Charles and Thomas Willing in 1754 mention the ease of bringing French sugar into Philadelphia, despite British regulations.

26 Similarly, Willing and Morris were not intimidated by the dangers of the French and Indian

25 Clarence L. Ver Steeg, Robert Morris: Revolutionary Financier: With an Analysis of His Earlier Career ​ (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1954), 2. 26 Jensen, Maritime Commerce, 131. ​ ​ ​

17

War, braving embargoes, privateers, and volatile markets as they plied their wares throughout

Caribbean and European markets.27 Throughout the French and Indian War, Philadelphia merchants were known for their involvement in illegal trade in the West Indies, and with

Willing’s prior involvement with the French and the events of Morris’s capture in 1757, it seems all but a certainty that the firm was smuggling dry goods to the French on the side.

When the surviving records of transactions by Willing, Morris, and Co. improved in the early 1770s, we see a powerhouse shipping company with tentacles spread across the Atlantic.

The firm had tripled its fleet to ten ships which completed over twenty voyages per year.28 In addition to the West Indies, these ships picked up dry goods from Great Britain and wine, salt, and lemons from the Iberian Peninsula, dropping off lumber and flour in exchange.29 By 1774,

Willing and Morris were the leading exporters of flour to England from Philadelphia, due in no small part to the English contacts of the two partners. At the outset of the American Revolution,

Willing, Morris, and Company was arguably the preeminent mercantile company in

Philadelphia, and one of the most prominent and well connected shipping businesses in North

America. The diversity of their contacts, along with the sheer volume of products shipped, would make them a formidable economic force in the upcoming Revolution.

If Willing and Morris represent the success to be had by established Philadelphians in the shipping industry, John Bayard represents the kind of middling merchant who struggled to rise above the pack in the Philadelphia docks. Bayard was born in 1738 to Maryland planters who descended from the Huguenot refugees of the 17th century. While little is known about Bayard’s early career, by 1754 he had joined the mercantile firm of John Rhea, and in 1763 he was already

27 Ver Steeg, Robert Morris, 4. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ 28 Doerflinger, A Vigorous Spirit of Enterprise, 38. ​ ​ ​ 29 Ver Steeg, Robert Morris, 5. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

18 well respected as a merchant in his own right. He was the senior partner in the shipping firm of

Bayard, Jackson, and Co., which traded flour to destinations in Europe and the West Indies.

While many of the details of his solid, if unremarkable, mercantile career are lost to time, his rapid ascension into revolutionary politics is worth noting. As the American colonies became increasingly restless under British taxes and trade restrictions, Philadelphia merchants were in a quandary. While British duties put a damper on merchants’ bottom lines, the economic framework of the British Empire gave them an expansive, well defined trans-Atlantic market in which to operate. Many merchants, Bayard among them, eventually chose to protest against

Britain, preferring the potential of economic liberty over the increasingly restrictive imperial policies.

John Bayard was one of the earliest radical merchants, and would use his hardline stance against British impositions to rise on the Philadelphia political scene. A signer of the 1765

Nonimportation Agreement against the Stamp Act, Bayard quickly developed a reputation as a leader in the Patriot community, and was an active member of the Sons of Liberty in 1766.30 In

1774, he appeared on the roster of the Philadelphia Committee of Inspection and Observation as a secretary, in an effort by merchants and mechanics to coordinate a diverse resistance to British policy. The Committee made the rounds around the docks of Philadelphia, taking stock of every ship that came into the city, and registering their imports for resale in accordance with

Committee rules and new non-importation measures.31 After violence erupted at Lexington and

Concord on 19 April 1775, the city of Philadelphia quickly organized a militia, creating three

30 James Grant Wilson, Colonel John Bayard (1738-1807) and the Bayard Family of America: The Anniversary ​ ​ Address before the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, February 27, 1885 (New York: Trow's ​ Printing and Bookbinding Co, 1885), 8. 31 Richard Alan Ryerson, Revolution is Now Begun: The Radical Committees of Philadelphia, 1765-1776. ​ ​ ​ (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 98.

19 battalions and appointing 150 officers, including a Major John Bayard. Notably, in May of 1775

Bayard and the Committee organized their members at Frankford, a small town north of

Philadelphia, with the purpose of persuading members of the recently assembled Second

Continental Congress to appoint George Washington as Commander-in-Chief of American forces.32

While a few Philadelphia merchants, including John Bayard, Charles Thomson, and

Thomas Mifflin took up arms to protect their liberties, the overall response of the Philadelphia elite was far more mixed. The expanding, and duty-free, provisions trade with Southern Europe after the French and Indian War had offset the costs of British impositions, and even the Tea Act in 1773 failed to radicalize much of the merchant class. Before 1774, Thomas Willing pondered the potential revolution in strictly economic terms, and concluded that the stability of the British

Empire was better for business.33 Although he had been a signer of the 1765 Nonimportation Act and a vocal supporter of colonial liberties, Willing, like many merchants, would remain opposed to open revolution through 1776. Throughout the late 1760s, business in the provisions market was booming, and many of the merchants involved, including Willing and Morris, were deeply connected to Britain itself and its markets across the Atlantic. When combined with strict Quaker rules on pacifism, the economic success of Philadelphia’s merchants seemed to be an adequate foil to the rising revolutionary fervor in both Philadelphia and the colonies in general.

This conservative mercantile mindset began to change on 19 May 1774, when Paul

Revere brought a call for aid from Boston. In the wake of the infamous Tea Party the previous

December, Parliament cracked down on the unruly Massachusetts city through the Coercive Acts

32 Wilson, Colonel John Bayard (1738-1807), 8. ​ ​ ​ 33 Doerflinger, A Vigorous Spirit of Enterprise, 194. ​ ​ ​

20 of 1774 by closing its port, appointing royal officials to colonial positions, and undercutting local courts. Like all the colonial cities, Philadelphia depended on its port to produce revenue and import goods. Fears of closed ports gave the Patriots just cause to call for a unified colonial resistance to the British Empire, and quickly mobilized many Philadelphia moderates into taking action. When Pennsylvania Governor John Penn refused to convene the Pennsylvania Assembly after Revere’s arrival, on June 18th, thousands of colonists met at Philadelphia's State House

Yard to discuss the prospects of a colonial congress. This meeting was presided over by the preeminent writer and lawyer, John Dickinson, along with the reluctant Thomas Willing. It was at this assembly that Philadelphians decided to support the creation of a Continental Congress, and created the Committee of Correspondence, chaired by Willing, to appoint delegates.

As other colonies held their own meetings and from committees to discuss the once outlandish possibility that the colonies unify against Great Britain, the Massachusetts Assembly proposed Philadelphia as a location for the upcoming Congress. Well situated in the center of the

Eastern Seaboard, Philadelphia would be a (relatively) short trip for delegates from the major population centers of the Chesapeake, New England, and Charleston. Due to the moderation of the city’s elite, Philadelphia had also avoided the imperial scrutiny that had befallen Boston and

New England more generally. For visiting delegates, Philadelphia’s prosperity offered all the necessary meeting houses, accommodations, and entertainment, all with the “manifestations of luxury” one expected from a great city.34 Beautiful Chippendale architecture and excellent hospitality contributed to the city’s charm. On 5 September, 1774, the First Continental Congress

34 Weigley, Philadelphia: A 300 Year History, 119. ​ ​ ​

21 assembled in Carpenter’s Hall, Philadelphia, on Chestnut Street, as delegates from across colonies took the first great step towards the American Revolution.

By the summer of 1775, Philadelphia had a population of thirty thousand souls, a strategically located port, economic prosperity, and had become the de facto political capital of the American colonies. Despite its moderate politics and Quaker pacifism, Philadelphia would be dragged to the fore of the American Revolution by its outsized status among the colonial cities.

The skirmishes at Lexington and Concord launched a war with Great Britain, and the shipping industry that produced Philadelphia’s prosperity would have to adapt accordingly. Traditional markets to Europe, the Caribbean, and even the other American colonies, would be threatened by the dominance of the British Royal Navy. Moderate merchants were justified in their concerns about revolution; not only would they lose the comforting economic structure of the British

Empire, they would now have to move their goods around its warships. As the gunsmoke cleared from the battlefields of New England, Philadelphia’s merchants began to ask themselves: how would our way of life survive this war?

22

Chapter 2: Gunpowder from Nantes to New York

Writing to the Massachusetts Assembly on 11 August, 1775, George Washington was incredulous as he rejected an outlandish proposal from the Massachusetts Council Committee that he lead an expedition to invade Canada. Washington had been asked to take 1,000 regulars up to Nova Scotia in order to invite their population to ally with the other colonies and help to destroy the Royal dockyard at Halifax. Washington pointed out the difficulties of outmaneuvering the British Navy en route to Nova Scotia, and the impossible task of actually holding Halifax from the British. Important as these operational concerns were, Washington concluded his letter on another note. He emphatically pointed out that, no matter what the plan, any offensive operations by the Continental Army were out of the question for the foreseeable future. Due to the “situation as to Ammunition,” Washington insisted that not a “single ounce” of gunpowder would be sent from the American camp at Cambridge.35 The “situation” was so grim after the battle at Bunker Hill in June that the Army was essentially hamstrung, and would have been quickly overwhelmed had the better equipped British Army forced them into a decisive engagement. As the limited campaign season of 1775 drew to a close, Washington knew that the

Army would need a logistical miracle to survive the following year, let alone hold off the British.

35 George Washington to Massachusetts Council Committee, George Washington Papers, Series 2, Letterbooks 1754 to 1799: Letterbook 9,- Aug. 8, 1776. 1775. Manuscript/Mixed Material. https://www.loc.gov/item/mgw2.009/. ​ ​

23

Little did he realize that the miracle was already taking shape in Philadelphia, where war profiteers and Frenchmen met in smoky rooms to discuss a series of trade propositions that could save the Revolution.

The American war effort hinged on a single, crucial ingredient: gunpowder. Since well over half of American men owned guns, putting arms in the hands of soldiers was not the most pressing issue.36 However, British policy in the fall and winter of 1774 had wisely targeted the colonists’ supply of powder. On 1 September 1774, General Thomas Gage, the military governor of Massachusetts, had sent a force of British Regulars under the cover of darkness to seize over

250 barrels of gunpowder at Charlestown. This raid, and similar expeditions that winter in Rhode

Island and New Hampshire, launched a great Powder Alarm in New England as colonists worried about defending themselves against British military incursions.37 Simultaneously, King

George III declared a six-month ban on the exportation of ammunition and arms from Britain, essentially cutting off the colonies’ supply of weaponry. In an October 1774 letter to the British

Prime Minister, Lord North, a haughty King George celebrated these “steps taken with regard to fire-arms and gunpowder” intended to break the back of America’s military resistance.38British officials knew that Americans had little ability to produce their own powder, and quickly took action to exploit this critical vulnerability.

By the summer of 1775, the fledgling Continental Army was feeling the effects of British restrictions and seizures. The limited supply of powder had been mostly exhausted at Lexington,

Concord, and Bunker Hill, where American troops were famously overwhelmed only after they

36 Gordon Wood, Robert Churchill, Edward Cook, James Lindgren, Wilbur Miller, Eric Monkkonen, and Randolph ​ Roth. "Counting Guns." Social Science History 26, no. 4 (Winter, 2002): 699-708. ​ ​ 37 Kevin Phillips 1775: A good year for revolution (New York: Viking 2012), 30. ​ ​ ​ 38 George III, King of Great Britain and Frederick North Lord. The Correspondence of King George the Third with ​ ​ Lord North 1768 to 1783 (New York: Da Capo Press, 1971), 212. ​

24 had run out of ammunition.39 George Washington himself was “at a Loss what to say” when pressed by Connecticut Governor Jonathan Trumbull in August of 1775 on the nature of the powder situation in his army.40 For all practical purposes, the Continental Army was completely out of ammunition, reduced to the expedient of posting sentries with empty muskets around

Boston.41 In a letter to Trumbull, Washington begged for powder reserves to be brought from the limited stores at Hartford to alleviate the shortage. Throughout most of his correspondence with colonial officials during August 1775, Washington pestered the Massachusetts and Connecticut assemblies about new sources of powder for the Army. Unfortunately, the solution to the powder problem could not be answered by a single colony. The rapid acquisition and transportation of arms and ammunition across multiple colonies would take an unprecedented level of centralized control and coordination, something that could only be accomplished by the Continental

Congress in Philadelphia.

Congressional delegates did not look far in their search to procure munitions, handing out three shipping contracts between July and September 1775. They issued the first two to

Meredith, Clymer, and Mifflin of Philadelphia, and the other to Livingston, Alsop, and Lewis of

New York, $25,000 dollars each with a 5% commission for the merchants.42 While the results of these early contracts are unknown, we can assume the Continental Congress’s redoubled efforts later that year reflected a failure to meet General Washington’s needs. In early September, a hefty $80,000 contract was given to Philadelphia’s Willing, Morris, and Co. to acquire powder

39 Origin of the “whites of their eyes” quote from Israel Putnam, in an attempt to increase accuracy and save ​ ammunition at Bunker Hill. 40 George Washington to Johnathan Trumbull, George Washington Papers, Series 2, Letterbooks 1754 to 1799: Letterbook 9,- Aug. 8, 1776. 1775. Manuscript/Mixed Material. https://www.loc.gov/item/mgw2.009/. 41 James A. Huston Logistics of Liberty: American Services of Supply in the Revolutionary War and After. (Newark: ​ ​ ​ University of Delaware Press, 1991), 111. 42 Nuxoll, Congress and the Munitions Merchants, 27. ​ ​

25 from an unspecified location in Europe, on a voyage by the Lion. However, the Lion came back ​ ​ ​ ​ empty handed from Europe, and the Continental Army’s situation was growing more desperate by the day. Dissatisfied with previous contracting efforts, the delegates decided that a specialized group would be needed to ensure that powder was acquired quickly and reliably. On 19

September, Congress authorized the creation of the Secret Committee of Trade as a sub-committee with the explicit goal of negotiating extra-legal arms contracts with European suppliers.43

An important distinction must be made between the Secret Committee of Trade and the

Secret Committee of Foreign Correspondence. The Secret Committee of Foreign

Correspondence was established on 29 November 1775 under the initiative of the well-connected

Benjamin Franklin to establish diplomatic support in Europe and seek out sympathy in Great

Britain.44 This committee was dominated by Franklin, and is best known for sending Silas Deane to France in search of financial support. The Secret Committee of Trade, on the other hand, was initially formed to handle a single contract: the acquisition of 500 tons of gunpowder, 40 brass field pieces, and 20,000 muskets.45 Although they were not immediately given free rein to negotiate contracts, the Secret Committee of Trade would quickly shift to an organization with more general power and funding to conduct trade. For the remainder of this paper, all references to the “Secret Committee” will be to the Secret Committee of Trade.

From its inception, the Secret Committee was an institution deeply connected to, and dependent on, its home city of Philadelphia. The initial nine members were Samuel Ward of

43 Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1775, 2:31. ​ 44 Benjamin Franklin and Thomas J. Fleming. Benjamin Franklin: A Biography in His Own Words (New York: ​ ​ Newsweek; distributed by Harper & Row, 1972), 264. 45 Nuxoll, Congress and the Munitions Merchants, 28. ​ ​ ​

26

Rhode Island, Thomas McKean of Delaware, John Langdon of New Hampshire, Silas Deane of

Connecticut, Philip Livingston and John Alsop of New York, and Benjamin Franklin, John

Dickinson and its chairman Thomas Willing of Pennsylvania.46 Each of these men was chosen for his political connections, and most, notably Willing, Franklin, Alsop, and Livingston, had experience conducting business in Europe. The Secret Committee was given essentially a blank check to supply the army and expected to work in complete secrecy; tact, influence, and trade acumen were essential requirements. Philadelphians dominated the Committee, quite likely because the nature of their work seemed tailored to the port and trading connections of their city.

Arms and ammunition were not cheap, and the new American government was struggling to come up with the specie to pay for it. Compounding this problem was the policy of non-exportation, controversially approved by Congress in September 1775 as a tactic to pressure

Britain to address colonial grievances. In violation of Congress’s own policy, the Secret

Committee was authorized to secretly sell “Provisions or other Produce of these colonies as they shall judge expedient for the Purchase of Arms & Ammunition.”47

For decades Philadelphia merchants had been engaged in the (sometimes illegitimate) provisions trade with European powers, developing contacts across the Atlantic ready to buy flour. Pennsylvania frequently had grain surpluses, and with exportation officially banned across the colonies, a few select merchants now had unfettered access to the trans-Atlantic market. But who was buying? Selling arms to American rebels would be tantamount to opening hostilities with Britain itself, and a war-weary Europe had little appetite for a conflict with the Royal Navy

46 Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789, 1067. ​ 47 Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1775, 2:130. ​

27 at sea. Thankfully for George Washington and the Continental Congress, French hatred of the

British would carry the day.

A December 1775 letter from Congress addressed to a Monsieur Julien Achard de

Bonvouloir asked this Frenchman a very particular question: “Can we have directly from France arms and other military supplies, in exchange for the products of our country [?]”48 Brief and blunt, Congress saw an opportunity to save their army with Bonvouloir’s help. To understand what Bonvouloir was doing in Philadelphia, and why Congress seemed comfortable rushing into negotiations with him, requires a brief examination of France’s strategic goals. Still smarting from their ugly defeat in the French and Indian War, the Bourbon monarchy was looking for any opportunity to disrupt the British dominance in North America. As early as 1764, French spies were in the American colonies, looking for signs of dissent.49 By 1775, French merchants had begun to ship munitions to Saint-Domingue in anticipation of their resale to North America.50

The brewing civil war inside the British Empire was ideal for the French, as they could sponsor the bloodletting of the British without risk to their own forces.

Julien de Bonvouloir, a decorated naval officer with extensive experience traveling in the

American colonies, had been designated a secret agent by the French Foreign Minister, the

Comte de Vergennes, with the explicit purpose of discreetly alerting Congress to the possibility ​ of trading munitions with the French. This mission had to be conducted carefully; the colonies had not declared independence yet and a direct offer of French military aid could be seen as an act of war by the British. To work around this, Bonvouloir was sent to Philadelphia via London under the false identity of the “Count de Guines,” a French ambassador to London. Upon

48 Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1775, 2:541. ​ 49 Huston, Logistics of Liberty, 105. ​ ​ ​ 50 Phillips, 1775, 299. ​ ​ ​

28 arriving in Philadelphia on 28 December, Bonvouloir made contact with Francis Draymond, the head of the Philadelphia Library and a friend of Benjamin Franklin. Explaining his mission,

Bonvouloir was immediately introduced to Franklin and the rest of the Secret Committee by

Draymond, sparking heated discussions in Congress over a potential relationship with the once hated French.51 While no record of these conversations remain, judging by the extremely direct

New Year’s Eve letter to Bonvouloir sent three days later, these discussions quickly yielded to the Army’s need for munitions.

Even as Bonvouloir was making coy overtures to the Continental Congress, a pair of

French businessmen landed in Providence, Rhode Island, with the intent of making some money off of Washington’s desperation. Emmanuel de Pliarne and Pierre Penet represented a shipping firm based in Nantes that had a history of trading with Philadelphians, including Willing, Morris, and Co.. After making contact with Governor Nicholas Cooke, in mid-December the two

Frenchmen pitched to the governor a scheme in which American tobacco would be traded for

French arms and ammunition.52 Cooke immediately referred Penet and Pliarne to General

Washington, giddily announcing in a letter that he might have a solution for “providing Powder” to the Continental Army.53 While Penet and Pliarne were not official French agents, they were likely aware of Bonvouloir’s upcoming entreaty to Congress, and sought to capitalize on the opportunity to expand into the American market.

George Washington, upon meeting the Frenchmen and hearing their proposal, was ecstatic. Writing to Congress President John Hancock on 14 December, Washington stated that

51 The Revolutionary Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States, 1775, 1:334. ​ 52 John Ferling, Almost a Miracle : The American Victory in the War of Independence, (Cary: Oxford University ​ ​ ​ Press USA - OSO, 2009), 116. 53 George Washington Papers, Series 4, General Correspondence: Nicholas Cooke to George Washington. 1775. Manuscript/Mixed Material. https://www.loc.gov/item/mgw444270/.

29 the “plan for supplying this Continent with arms and ammunition” through Penet and Pliarne ​ should be sent “at the publick expense, to Philadelphia” immediately.54 Prior to this meeting, ​ ​ Washington had been skeptical about the possibilities of importing new sources of arms, and was considering raids into British Canada to seize gunpowder stores as his only viable alternative.

With Bonvouloir, Penet, and Pliarne all arriving in Philadelphia during the winter of 1775-76, clandestine foreign trade was not just a possibility, but now an imminent reality. Once in

Philadelphia, these French ambassadors would find a community of politically connected merchants with a deep history of trans-Atlantic trade. The eagerness of American leaders must have surpassed France’s wildest expectations as Washington and Congress committed to trade deals in a matter of days. By January of 1776, the trade deals that would save the Revolution began to form as the Secret Committee prepared to arm Washington’s armies for the campaign seasons of 1776.

These transactions were in most respects similar to the ones executed by Philadelphia merchants prior to the Revolution, with the added element of smuggling and subterfuge to escape the agents of the British Empire. An incident involving Bayard, Jackson, and Co., in April of

1776 highlights the illicit history between Philadelphia and French traders, the brass tacks of war time trading, and the pitfalls of challenging the British Empire. On 26 December 1775, the Secret

Committee awarded Bayard a contract to send the Dickenson to Nantes in order to trade for arms ​ ​ and ammunition.55 In a subsequent letter addressed to the Nantes merchants Montaudouin and

Frere from 18 January, 1776, Bayard opens by cheerfully referencing their “last adventure” which they had discussed in April 1775. This familiarity continued in the conclusion, with a

54 George Washington to John Hancock, December 14, 1775. ​ https://digital.lib.niu.edu/islandora/object/niu-amarch%3A79203. ​ 55 Letters of Delegates to Congress 1775, 2:523. ​

30 thanks for the “ready and cheerful assistance afforded us by many of your merchants, both from the West-Indies and Europe.” These statements are loaded with historical innuendo, hinting at an ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ elaborate history of illegal trade that Philadelphians undertook across the Atlantic in the years prior to the Revolution. The Secret Committee did not just connect French and American traders, it gave existing business partners the green light to bring their illegitimate shipping to bear for the Patriot cause. While the records of smuggling in the 1760s and early 1770s may be lost to history, these allusions in Revolution-era documents certainly suggest the existence of widespread black market dealings by Philadelphians.56

Much like previous shipping contracts between Philadelphians and Europeans, Bayard was shipping Europe’s favorite American product, flour, for industrial goods not available in the colonies. A cargo of flour, candles, and beeswax was loaded onto the Dickenson, with the goal of ​ ​ sale in Nantes to purchase “fifteen tons of gunpowder...one thousand five hundred stand of arms, fitted with bayonets and steel ramrods; and one thousand bolts of Russia duck or canvass.”57 This ​ ​ purchase was backed up by an assurance from Congress that if the provisions failed to sell, the funds would be provided in the form of gold and silver, valued at $15,000.58 The financial value and sheer size of the order suggests a bit of desperation on the part of the Secret Committee.

Aforementioned ventures from 1775 had yielded few results for the Continental Army, and cost

Congress money it could not pay with hard specie. Furthermore, the amount of powder purchased, fifteen tons, reflected the dire straits faced by the army in New England. All of the militia raids on British forts and ships in 1774 and 1775 combined had only yielded the army

56 Bayard, Jackson, and Co. to Montandouin and Frere, 18 January 1776. ​ https://digital.lib.niu.edu/islandora/object/niu-amarch%3A102140. ​ 57 Bayard, Jackson, and Co. to Montandouin and Frere, 18 January 1776. ​ ​ https://digital.lib.niu.edu/islandora/object/niu-amarch%3A102140. ​ 58 Letters of Delegates to Congress 1775, 2:523. ​

31 roughly eleven and half tons of gunpowder.59 Needing enough powder to supply an entire army, the Secret Committee issued riskier contracts for large sales of munitions in late 1775, and would pay the price for its boldness that spring.

To widen the dragnet for illegal munitions sales, Great Britain offered significant reward money for any sailors who seized American shipments. Bayard warned his French counterparts of the “spies” that lurked in every European seaport, waiting to gather intelligence on American vessels, and attempted to conduct his business with “as much secrecy as possible.”60 However, in the case of the Dickenson, the fox was already in the henhouse. Unfortunately for the Secret ​ ​ Committee, Bayard had not stocked the crew of the outgoing Dickenson with loyal Patriots. ​ ​ Instead he picked up four Irishmen, four Scotsmen, and one Englishman on the docks in

Philadelphia, who proceeded to mutiny halfway across the Atlantic, locking up the captain and commandeering the ship into Bristol in April 1776 in search of a British payout. All of the ship’s papers were seized, which, while giving historians their best manifest of a pre-Independence smuggling run, compromised most of the American vessels sailing under the aegis of the Secret

Committee. Willing, Morris, and Co. would lose the Aurora off of Gibraltar later that spring as a ​ ​ result of the information given up in the Dickenson affair. Disastrous for the Revolutionary ​ ​ cause, the capture of the Dickenson incited fears among the merchants of Philadelphia that the ​ ​ massive contracts handed out by the Secret Committee would not succeed.

To the relief of Congress, the nightmare of the Dickenson affair would be an isolated ​ ​ event. The Secret Committee, chaired by Willing’s partner Robert Morris beginning on 14

March 1776, decided to exploit the deep connections between merchants in Philadelphia and

59 Huston, Logistics of Liberty, 105. ​ ​ ​ 60 Bayard, Jackson, and Co. to Montandouin and Frere, 18 January 1776. ​ ​ https://digital.lib.niu.edu/islandora/object/niu-amarch%3A102140. ​

32

Nantes. It was no coincidence that Bonvouloir, Pliarne, and Penet all had come to America via

Nantes. France was the leading manufacturer of gunpowder in Europe during the late eighteenth century due to its natural abundance of saltpeter, and many of these factories were located near

Nantes on the western coast. Historically, traders from Nantes had shipped gunpowder to West

Africa and the Caribbean, giving foreign merchants a legitimate reason to load their ships with munitions while docked there. Furthermore, American merchants, including Bayard, Jackson &

Co. and Willing, Morris, and Co. had made connections with French merchants in Nantes during a French grain shortage in the early 1770s, when American flour from Pennsylvania filled the gap.61 Willing and Morris had been trading partners with Penet and Pliarne through the provisions trade for several years before the two Frenchmen opened negotiations with the Secret

Committee.62 John Bayard’s connection to Nantes and the prominent trader Montaudouin was unfortunately exposed by the Dickenson affair, but it would not deter either merchant from ​ ​ trading into 1776. The prominence of Nantes shippers in early arms smuggling would solidify their place in America’s munition supply. The Philadelphians on the Secret Committee saw an opportunity to use their own Nantes connections for country and for profit, connections that would continue well into the war.

Although most of the records of the Secret Committee were destroyed throughout the war to avoid another Dickenson debacle, enough evidence remains to suggest that plans for a robust ​ ​ munitions trade began in Philadelphia during the spring of 1776. A 6 February Secret Committee meeting authorized “Josiah Hewes of the City of Philadelphia...for the speedy procuring…[of] ​ 50 barls. 100 lb wght each, of good gunpowder.” The money advanced to Hewes, the number of

61 Nuxoll, Congress and the Munitions Merchants, 314. ​ ​ ​ 62 Ferling, Almost a Miracle, 116. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

33 ships he would take, and even his European destination were all left blank as the Committee guarded the details of its adventures.63 Willing and Morris were given a contract on 5 February to

“with the utmost dispatch they can possibly & prudently make procure by themselves or their

Agents the quantity of 2000 barrls. good Gunpowder,” with further logistical details once again left unspecified.64 A letter from Willing, Morris, and Co. to William Bingham, a Philadelphian and Secret Committee agent in French Martinique, on 3 June hints at the extent of Secret

Committee ambitions.The Philadelphia partners advise Bingham to use his posting to “make

Connections with some good Houses that will Ship West India Produce this way & have in return the produce of these colonies.”65 As independence grew closer, the Secret Committee continued to both pursue aggressive munitions smuggling and expand the existing Philadelphia trade network, with increasing secrecy and success.

Although Philadelphia merchants were the most prominent in Secret Committee contracting, they did not have a monopoly. The New York firm of Livingston, Alsop, Lewis, and

Co. received several of the largest contracts of the early Revolution. New York merchants, including Livingston, had a history of trading with the French through St. Eustatius and Curacao in the Caribbean.66 Each of these men was a committed patriot, with Livingston and Alsop appointed to the Secret Committee. On 9 October 1775 the firm was tasked to procure “fifty tonns of powder twelve brass six pounds cannon a thousand stand of good soldiers muskets & bayonets'' from an unknown location.67 The firm was also heavily involved in the transportation

63 Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1776. 3:211 64 Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1776, 3:203. 65 Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1776, 4:134. 66 Thomas M. Truxes, Defying Empire: Trading with the Enemy in Colonial New York (New Haven: Yale ​ ​ ​ University Press, 2008), 76. 67 Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1775, 2:153. ​

34 of supplies by land.68 Even Connecticut merchant Thomas Mumford got a sizable cut from the

Secret Committee, taking a contract for “fifty tons of good gunpowder” on 28 November 1775.69

These businessmen had unique connections of their own that were exploited by the Secret

Committee, but they remained decidedly junior partners in the trans-Atlantic trade.

Dominated by the political and mercantile figures of Philadelphia, the Secret Committee was able to address General Washington’s request for arms, albeit with hit-or-miss early results.

A lengthy relationship between merchants in Philadelphia, the West Indies, and Nantes centered around Pennsylvania flour was converted overnight for the purpose of smuggling munitions into the colonies as the Secret Committee, led by Willing and Morris, became increasingly comfortable maneuvering around the British Empire. Contracts were made in Philadelphia, ships were sent to Europe, and in the late spring of 1776 the same ships began to return as Patriot fervor came to a boil in the colonies. Any hopes that negotiations might end the war that spring evaporated as British General William Howe began landing troops at New York on 2 July, four months after General Gage’s ejection from Boston. As the Continental Congress formally declared independence from Great Britain on 4 July, Washington and the Continental Army dug into fighting positions on Manhattan and Long Island. His powder “situation” had improved from the previous winter, but it was far from ideal. The colonies were too important to the

British Empire to relinquish without a fight, and Washington would need to lead a protracted, ugly conflict if the Americans were to have any chance of winning. Long wars are not decided by single battles or military genius, but the logistics of fielding, feeding, and arming an army.

General Washington had the strategy to succeed, and his soldiers had the courage and training to

68 Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1775, 2:446. ​ 69 Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1775, 2:402. ​

35 stand up to the dreaded redcoats. Would the Secret Committee be able to get them enough munitions in time to hold off the British onslaught?

36

Chapter 3: The Logistics of the Victory at Trenton

As the winter of 1776 began, the American Revolution was in shambles. A December

1775 expedition into Canada to seize British supplies led by Richard Montgomery and Benedict

Arnold had ended in disaster at Quebec. Losing over a quarter of their forces over the course of the campaign, by October of 1776 the Americans had retreated under Arnold’s command to Fort

Ticonderoga, bracing for the massive British counterattack that was coming in 1777. Elsewhere, the strategic situation was similarly bleak. George Washington had abandoned New York City on 30 August, after his divided forces had been routed by General Howe at the Battle of Long

Island. Decisive victories by Howe at White Plains and Fort Washington had driven the

Continental Army out of New York completely by November, and Washington’s forces retreated to Pennsylvania with morale at an all time low. Enlistments in the Army were made on a yearly basis; once 1776 ended, Washington’s forces would be further decimated by the departure of thousands of his soldiers, unless he could incentivize them to stay in the fight for one year longer. Since the Declaration of Independence, the Americans had failed to win a single major battle, and without any progress, how could Washington and Congress convince men to fight for freedom? As General Washington contemplated his next move, in Philadelphia, the labor of the

Secret Committee began to bear the fruit that would save the Revolution.

By the summer of 1776, the Secret Committee had finally begun to put munitions in the hands of America’s desperate army. On 11 May, Washington was forwarded “Ten Tons of Gun

Powder which Your Excellency will cause the proper officers to receive” by the Secret

37

Committee from Philadelphia, giving Washington some breathing room.70 Writing to the General on 2 August 1776, chairman Robert Morris was proud to “transmit you five Tons of Musquet ​ Powder” as Washington attempted to hold onto his tenuous positions in New York.71 As General

Howe’s massive army of thirty-two thousand British troops arrived on Staten Island for their assault on Long Island, Washington would have sufficient, if not ideal, supplies to fight the

British from fortified positions on Guan and Brooklyn Heights. Ultimately, the Continental

Army would lose the Battle of Long Island after being overwhelmed at Guan Heights after

Washington diverted the bulk of his forces to Manhattan. However, the fierce resistance of the outnumbered 1st Maryland Regiment as they held back the British advance at Brooklyn while

Washington evacuated the Continental Army was indicative of a new reality of this war:

American troops would fight to the death, and were armed well enough to do it.

These munition procurements, plus the Continental Army’s tenacity at New York, were not isolated events, but rather reflected the efficiency of the Secret Committee at moving arms into and throughout the colonies. In November, twenty barrels of gunpowder were shipped to

Maryland via “a Brig arrived there from Martinique” by Thomas and Isaac Wharton, brothers who were middling merchants in Philadelphia before the war.72 As 1776 progressed, the Secret

Committee took the lead in distributing munitions between the different colonies. When directed by Congress, the Committee would send out powder “for the use of the inhabitants of Salem county, in New Jersey” or “forward three tons of gun powder for the defence” of North Carolina.

73 More than just shipping munitions, the Secret Committee used Philadelphia as the nerve center

70 Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1776, 3:657. ​ 71 Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1776, 4:603. ​ 72 Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1776, 5:441. ​ 73 Journals of the Continental Congress, 1776, 358., Journals of the Continental Congress, 1776, 332.

38 for distribution across the colonies. Once powder arrived from Europe, the Continental Congress would appropriate it based on the lobbying of colonial officials (and quite frequently George

Washington), and direct the Secret Committee to oversee the transportation of the munitions themselves. All of the merchants on the committee, especially Willing, Morris, and the representatives from New York, put their experience trading within the colonies to good use resupplying the Continental Army and colonial militias.

These supplies followed the same path that illicit goods had entered North America before the war, along the trans-Atlantic path from Europe, then the West Indies, and finally

Philadelphia. On 22 August, Robert Morris sent a letter to Thomas Mumford thanking him for his previous dealings, and informing him that the Secret Committee had “lately recd here 44 half barrells shipped by your Friends in St Eustatia.”74 In addition to St. Eustatius, merchants travelled to the Caribbean trading posts at Cape Francois and Martinique “to purchase & ship by them all the woollen manufactures, Arms & Ammunition.”75 This entire process of transporting munitions, all the way from French powder mills to cartridges in New York was not a novel wartime innovation, but a simple shift of a preexisting, structured economy from peace to war.

The same American merchants shipped the same provisions and lumber to the same Caribbean ports with the same European contacts that they had been using since the French and Indian War.

Besides a shift in imports to munitions, the only meaningful difference from the peacetime economy was the singular importance of Philadelphia and its traders to the whole process. In charge of the Secret Committee, Willing and Morris turned their own business, as well as other

74 Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1776, 5:50. 75 Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1776, 5:352. ​

39

Philadelphia firms, towards the entire chain of negotiation, acquisition, and distribution of vitally needed wartime resources.

While the exact amount of money that went into the pockets of Philadelphia’s traders is unknown, the best estimates suggest it made a very small group of merchants incredibly wealthy.

Willing’s and Morris’s strategic placement at the head of the Secret Committee had given them a golden opportunity to maintain trans-Atlantic trade, and they used their connections to equip the

Continental Army and generate a massive windfall. Robert Morris, in particular, took advantage of the official ban on exportation to expand his own personal fortune through his firm’s incredible trading network. By 1777, Morris was easily the “commercial king” of Philadelphia, and one of the richest men in America. As the war progressed, a circle of merchants connected to

Morris, including Silas Deane and William Bingham, shared in this wealth while the majority of

American merchants were devastated by the Revolution.76

Questions of war profiteering aside, by mid-1776 the efforts of the Secret Committee had yielded tangible results for Washington’s armies. Sufficiently equipped with musket and powder,

Washington began to take more initiative distributing powder to his commanders. On 5 May,

Washington wrote to Congress with an update on the financial and logistical status of the

Continental Army, referencing sixty barrels of gunpowder sent to Colonel “Mad Anthony”

Wayne.77 Two weeks later, Washington directed General Israel Putnam to distribute two more tons of powder to the defense of New York.78 Washington’s increased ability to decentralize the

76 Doerflinger, A Vigorous Spirit of Enterprise, 239. ​ ​ ​ 77 George Washington to the President of Congress, May 5, 1776, in The Writings of George Washington, vol. IV ​ ​ (1776) [1889], ed. Worthington Ford, ​ https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/washington-the-writings-of-george-washington-vol-iv-1776. ​ 78 George Washington to Major-General Schuyler, May 22, 1776, in The Writings of George Washington, vol. IV ​ (1776) [1889], ed. Worthington Ford, ​ https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/washington-the-writings-of-george-washington-vol-iv-1776. ​

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Army’s munitions supply reflects both a growing confidence in his subordinates and a sufficient supply of ammunition to mount an extended war. While gunpowder was by no means plentiful in the summer of 1776, Washington’s strategic position was slowly improving as he looked for an opportunity to change the course of the Revolution.

The initial British strategy of putting down the rebellion by brute force had been extremely effective during the campaign season of 1776. The thirty thousand British troops sent to New York in August under General Howe. quickly forced the Continental Army out of the city, and dealt them a pair of crushing defeats at White Plains and Fort Washington. By that winter, the battles of 1776 had taught the Americans some harsh lessons. British troops, who were highly disciplined and could mass in great numbers, would always defeat the Continental

Army on the conventional battlefield. American bravery has long been immortalized in the lore of the Revolution, but in the New York campaign this determination simply led to an incredibly high American casualty rate as they lost a series of defensive battles. As Howe settled the British forces into winter quarters in New York, he began to draw up plans for the endgame of the

Revolutionary War. Once the summer of 1777 rolled around, his massive army would move northwest to link up with General Burgoyne’s forces advancing south from Quebec. The two armies would meet in central New York and isolate the militant New England colonies from the more moderate middle and southern colonies, a move that British generals were confident would break the back of the Revolution.

While George Washington’s strategic situation was not quite as bleak as the British imagined, the winter of 1776 was still a critical juncture for the Continental Army. Although

Washington had suffered heavy losses in the New York campaign, he had avoided the single

41 decisive battle that General Howe, like all traditional European generals, was trying to maneuver him into. Washington’s retreats had delayed the British forces from penetrating deeper into the countryside, postponing any further expeditions to New England until 1777. But even though

Washington had avoided a truly catastrophic defeat, his army was on the verge of falling apart.

Morale in the Continental Army was at an all time low after the defeats in New York, as soldiers became demoralized in the wake of the losses. Enlistments in the Continental Army expired at the end of the year, and many troops, cold, hungry, and defeated, saw little reason to re-up their commitment. Washington could only count on about 5,400 men after retreating west of the

Delaware into Pennsylvania, a number that was being diminished by desertions and expiring enlistments that winter. To stem the bleeding of his army and retake the initiative in the

Revolution, Washington looked east at British forces bunkered in New Jersey and chose an aggressive course of action.

This aggression was made feasible by over a year of Congress carefully acquiring, stockpiling, and distributing munitions. As the British forces massed in New Jersey, Washington wrote to Congress “that all the military stores yet remain in Philadelphia,” and should be secured ​ by the Continental Army before the British assaulted the city.79 Despite the peril of Philadelphia, it was evident by December of 1776 that the Secret Committee had held up its end of the bargain. The hundreds of tons of powder that crossed the Atlantic over the early months of 1776 had been centralized in Philadelphia for further use. Washington no longer had to beg for the bare minimum to defend his camps, but was controlling the supply himself and conducting active operations with his supply. As winter began in earnest, Washington’s stores of gunpowder and

79 George Washington to the President of Congress, November, 9, 1776, George Washington, The Writings of ​ ​ George Washington, vol. V (1776-1777) [1890], ed. Worthington Ford, ​ https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/washington-the-writings-of-george-washington-vol-v-1776-1777

42 arms was more than sufficient for a significant offensive.80 By the time of the Battle of White

Plains, the Continental Army was a far cry from the “whites of their eyes” force that lost at

Bunker Hill after running out of shot, but was instead losing primarily due to inferior numbers.

As British forces and their Hessian auxiliaries settled into winter quarters across the New Jersey side of the Delaware, they were spread out in a thin line of posts, vulnerable to a concentrated

American attack.

The story of Washington’s Delaware crossing has become perhaps the most legendary operation in American military history. Paintings of George Washington, standing stoically at the prow of a rowboat in the half frozen Delaware adorn modern textbooks, and the battle is remembered as one of the great turning points of the Revolution. And while Washington deservedly became the focus of popular history, the crossing would not have been possible without the labors of the Secret Committee and its Philadelphia merchants. Make no mistake, the army was in ragged condition on Christmas day in 1776. Most soldiers were thinly clothed and many did not even have shoes, their feet bleeding through wrapped rags as they walked down the icy roads towards their destination of Trenton, New Jersey. Food was scarce and sleet poured onto the Continental Army as it marched from its boats to Trenton. But amidst the human suffering of the Continental Army was a well equipped, emboldened force that was the finest yet fielded by the colonies.

Joining forces with Generals Horatio Gates and John Sullivan, along with several hundred conscripted Pennsylvanians, Washington was able to field an army of over 7,500 men at

McConkey’s Ferry, Pennsylvania. Each one of these men, and their officers, would go across the

80 David Hackett Fischer, Washington's Crossing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 155. ​ ​

43

Delaware with a musket and forty rounds of ammunition per man.81 They were in turn supported ​ by eighteen cannons and howitzers crossing over under the command of Henry Knox. Marching towards the Hessians’ garrison in Trenton, soldiers had the desperate optimism of a force that was finally on the offensive. In spite of the lack of proper cooking equipment, American troops would happily skewer meat on their ramrods to cook it throughout the campaign.82 They were in high spirits as they crossed the Delaware on the frigid morning of 26 December, and in higher spirits as they marched towards Trenton. For the first time, American troops outnumbered and outgunned the enemy, and were conducting the boldest assault of the war yet under the direct command of George Washington.

Despite the hype surrounding it, the Battle of Trenton itself was fairly quiet. Advancing through the driving sleet, the Continental Army caught 1,000 sleepy, hungover, Hessians completely by surprise. The fighting was over in less than forty five minutes as American troops stormed the garrison. Well armed and supported by heavy artillery, the Continental troops were able to effectively mass their firepower towards the oblivious Hessians and advance under the cover of the big guns. Almost the entire Hessian force was taken prisoner in the first American victory, which also netted Washington forty horses, six cannons, one thousand muskets and an unknown, but sizable, amount of alcohol.83 Only four Americans had been wounded, and for the first time since Independence, the Patriot cause had a tangible victory to celebrate. Washington carried his momentum at Trenton to lead his forces to victories at the battles of Assunpink Creek and Princeton that January.

81 Christopher Ward, The War of the Revolution (New York: Macmillan, 1952), 293. ​ ​ ​ 82 Huston, Logistics of Liberty, 169 ​ ​ ​ 83 Huston, Logistics of Liberty, 174 ​ ​ ​

44

Just days before Washington’s foray across the Delaware, the Revolution had seemed bleak with the Continental Army falling apart at the seams as the British prepared a major offensive. The victory at Trenton, combined with the subsequent New Jersey operations, had given the Patriot population faith in the Continental Army and had renewed the passion of young men to volunteer for their fledgling country. Men across the colonies volunteered for two-month tours in their state militias, while such an influx of men joined the Continental Army that it was reorganized into a new force altogether. George Washington had saved the prospects of the

Revolution and his reputation in one fell swoop. Facing increasing skepticism from his string of summer failures, his electrifying raid on Trenton made him a celebrity in the eyes of the

American people and, more importantly, the Continental Congress. Given the temporary power to raise men and commandeer supplies for the army on December 27, Washington would no longer need to beg for scraps to support his army.84 While the fighting in North America would continue for five more brutal years, never again would Washington be so desperate for arms and men as he was in the dark days of 1775 and 1776.

Although General Washington’s legacy as the great hero of the American Revolution has been cemented in American history, the Secret Committee deserves almost as much credit for this rise to prominence as Washington himself. Like essentially every general throughout history,

Washington struggled when his forces were poorly equipped and suffered from manpower shortages. Perhaps his best maneuver before crossing the Delaware was the recommendation of

Penet and Pliarne to Philadelphia and aggressively pushing for Congress to get involved in the arms trade. Without an influx of arms from Europe and the West Indies, the Continental Army

84 Ward,The War of the Revolution, 305. ​ ​ ​

45 would not have been able to hold a single city, let alone conduct an extended delaying action against the massive British Army. These arms did not appear in America overnight, but rather were funneled through Philadelphia as the decades old trade between American and European merchants shifted to a wartime footing. The well equipped army that Washington led to glory in the winter of 1776-77 could trace its roots back to the shadowy smuggling expeditions in the

1750s led by Willing and Morris. Popular history becomes inordinately fixated on the proximate factors of a victory, such as the genius of a certain commander, while the indirect factors that precipitate it fall to the wayside of an appealing narrative. In this light, the battles of the early

Revolution reflected not only the changing strategy of American leaders, but also the increasing efficiency of the Secret Committee’s trade network to acquire and distribute armaments to a desperate army.

46

Conclusion

A surveyor in his youth, George Washington was no stranger to the vicissitudes of geography. “Could any thing but the River Delaware have sav'd Philadelphia?,”85 the general ​ remarked to the Continental Congress five days before he crossed that same Delaware to rout the

Hessians at Trenton. The river that had buffered his troops from the British in 1776 had kept the city’s trade alive in 1775. The Continental Army and Pennsylvania militias certainly had done little, poorly armed and decisively beaten back by the British army. To survive, the fledgling

American government had to rely on Philadelphia’s extraordinary powers of importation instead.

The Delaware had allowed Philadelphia to thrive as a merchant city for almost a century, connecting the rich farmland of Pennsylvania to the trans-Atlantic world. Blessed by geography,

Philadelphia’s merchants had utilized their strategic location to trade under the King’s nose decades prior to open rebellion, a connection they were all too happy to exploit on the behalf of their new nation.

This connection, forged in smuggling and war profiteering, was made possible by

Philadelphia’s population as much as its geography. The vision of William Penn was borne into reality as Philadelphia emerged as a beacon of religious tolerance, economic opportunity, and intelligent leadership in the colonies. Capable, opportunistic people came to Philadelphia because of the city’s diversity of industry, religion, and entertainment. Once there, the city’s location and trading network gave merchants from the “Great Man” Robert Morris to the middling patriot John Bayard opportunity for fantastic wealth in the trans-Atlantic trade. Pursuit

85 George Washington to the President of Congress. George Washington Papers, Series 3, Varick Transcripts, 1775 ​ to 1785, Subseries 3A, Continental Congress, 1775 to 1783, Letterbook 2: Sept. 24, 1776. 1776. Manuscript/Mixed Material. https://www.loc.gov/item/mgw3a.002/.

47 of profit trumped loyalty to the metropole as these men traded with the French during Britain’s wars, and continued trading with them after those wars were over. By the Revolution,

Philadelphia’s merchants were a part of a shipping network that stretched from New York to

Jamaica to Lisbon.

After the “shot heard ‘round the world” on 19 April 1775, this network hardly shifted in response. Instead the powerful men who traded in it, such as Willing and Morris, turned it to their advantage, connecting that network to the Continental Congress by means of the Secret

Committee. Philadelphia merchants now got their money from Congress, and imported guns and powder instead of rum, but every other aspect of the trade remained the same. Ships still ran

British patrols in the Caribbean and clandestinely conducted business in France, making even greater profits than before. By the fall of 1775, after a few missteps such as the Dickinson affair, ​ ​ arms and ammunition began to show up in the colonies, and by the spring of 1776 these weapons began to make a difference as Washington braced for war in New York. Congress did not need to extend any radical propositions to supply its army, it merely needed to tap into the shadowy smuggling network that had existed in Philadelphia for decades. Merchants had done the initial diplomacy in the 1750s when they began trading with the French; all men like Willing and

Morris needed was the power of the Congressional purse to make that trade official. Viewed in this light, the formation of the Secret Committee was not a mechanism to discover a new means of arms procurement, but rather a process for incorporating an existing commercial network into the Revolutionary fold.

And the Secret Committee’s munitions procurement could have not occurred at a better time. In the summer and fall of 1775, the Continental Army was so poorly equipped that even

48

Washington admitted that his army would be overwhelmed by any serious offensive. While the might of the British army has been somewhat exaggerated in American legend, it was a large, capable, and well supplied force that could easily defeat American forces in a decisive conflict.

This was proven by Washington’s crushing defeat in Manhattan, and his subsequent losses throughout the New York campaign as American morale plummeted. But amidst the defeats,

Washington had the men and, as importantly, the munitions to make a stand and keep the British army tied down, preventing them from simply seizing colonial cities. As Washington’s forces retreated into Pennsylvania, the seeds of a turnaround had been planted. Fierce resistance in New

York, combined with an influx of arms from the Secret Committee, had proven to American leaders that Washington’s men could win a battle, if only given the opportunity. As 1776 drew to a close, Washington marshalled over seven thousand men, and the muskets, cartridges, and cannons to support them. If he could get a victory before the British 1777 offensive, he could raise morale, save his command, and perhaps postpone an American surrender for just long enough to keep them in the fight.

On Christmas Day, 1776, that was exactly what happened. The best armed American troops thus far in the Revolution captured Trenton and turned Washington into the face of the rebellion as a single victory halted a string of operational disasters. The Americans bought themselves enough time to capture General Burgoyne’s army at Saratoga in October 1777, and gain the official support of the French in 1778, which would slowly turn the war in their favor.

Just a year before Trenton, the army had been so poorly armed that they could not have marched into battle, let alone put up a fight against the redcoats. This turnaround from the unarmed militiamen guarding Boston to the heavily armed force that seized Trenton took a little over a

49 year, and began well before any official aid with France would arrive. The rapid transformation of the army would be the salvation of the United States, as a reorganized, better equipped military began to fight on a more even footing with British forces.

George Washington was likely concerned about the appearance of the next barrel of gunpowder, and probably gave little thought to its origins as long as it arrived. But that single barrel tells the fascinating story of trans-Atlantic commerce. American lumber from

Pennsylvania was made into the barrels used by the French in their Caribbean colonies, barrels that could have transported gunpowder manufactured in western France. These barrels had been part of the trade going back to the days of the French and Indian War when the French shipped rum to Philadelphia in exchange for desperately needed American grain and meat. A stack of wooden staves, perhaps sold to St. Eustatius twenty years earlier by a Philadelphia trader trying to make an extra pound, could have made its way back to Washington’s camp at McConkey’s

Ferry in the form of a barrel carrying French gunpowder. That powder might have been purchased by the very same Philadelphia merchant who sold the staves to the French, now acting on behalf of the Continental Congress. In a war started by a single gunshot, arms and ammunition from ‘round the world - France, the Caribbean, all centered around Philadelphia- would make the difference.

50

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