The First Thanksgiving Day
In keeping with my long established tradition (since 2006) of honoring the heroes of America’s first Thanksgiving, what follows is an essay composed shortly after reading “The Unknown Revolution” by Gary B. Nash, professor of history at UCLA. The book came out in 2005 and is the culmination of almost 40 years of research by Professor Nash and his associates. As opposed to rehashing the well known legends of the American Revolution that we all learned about in high school history class (college too for that matter), much of “The Unknown Revolution” focuses on the contributions of unsung, unknown heroes. So, too, this essay focuses on the heroics of a young soldier named Joseph Plumb Martin. Private Plumb, as his comrades preferred to call him, saw action in many of the most important battles of the American Revolution from Brooklyn, New York to Yorktown, South Carolina.
At a time when less than half of all Americans were literate, Joseph “Plumb” Martin, was an exception. Though young and penniless, Private Plumb could read and write. Very well, in fact, having received a free education while growing up in Massachusetts, the most progressive of the colonies.
Private Plumb had no family. Like most of the soldiers in his regiment, the Eighth Connecticut, Private Plumb was an out-of-work farm laborer. He was born in the tiny farming village of Becket in western Massachusetts and migrated to Connecticut looking for work. There, he joined the newly formed Continental Army in 1776 at the age of 17 and was quickly accepted into the “band of brothers”, as many of the enlisted soldiers referred to themselves. (The “band of brothers” was a loosely knit fraternal organization; it was a poor man’s version of the Order of Masons to which most of the officers belonged. Later, the name got changed to the “band of brotherhood” and in so doing, unlike the Masons, it accepted women, blacks and Catholics into the organization.)
Private Plumb’s journal entry, written on Thanksgiving Day, 1777 was timely – and poignant. In plainspoken but penetrating prose, the eighteen-year-old Martin conveyed in stark detail what the common soldier faced, endured, and - sometimes - survived.
"We had nothing to eat for two or three days previous, except what the trees of the fields and forests afforded us," he wrote in mid-December 1777, as Washington's army marched along a rutted road from Gulph Mills, west of Philadelphia, to the Valley Forge encampment where they would spend the winter. "But we must now have what Congress said, a sumptuous Thanksgiving to close the year of high living we had now nearly seen brought to a close." [Congress had indeed called for a day of thanksgiving on December 18th, a day of wind and freezing rain, to remind Americans that their tattered army still survived.] "Our country, ever mindful of its suffering army, opened her sympathizing heart so wide upon this occa¬sion as to give us something to make the world stare. And what do you think it was, reader?" [Private Plumb exhibits a flair for the sardonic.] "Guess. You cannot guess, be you as much of a Yankee as you will. I will tell you: It gave each and every man half a gill of rice and a tablespoonful of vinegar!" [A gill is one cup so half a gill would be four ounces.] “With this extraordinary superabundant donation, we were ordered out to attend a meeting and hear a sermon delivered upon the happy occasion .... The army was now not only starved but naked. The greatest part were not only shirtless and barefoot but destitute of all other clothing, especially blankets. I procured a small piece of raw cowhide and made myself a pair of moccasins, which kept my feet (while they lasted) from the frozen ground. Though the hard edges of the moccasins galled my ankles, this was better than going barefoot, as hundreds of my companions had to, till they might be tracked by their blood upon the rough frozen ground.”
While private Joseph Plumb Martin is standing in formation listening to the sermon the men were obliged to hear, through the benefit historical hindsight, let us temporarily switch channels and tune in to the mansion of one Charles Carroll at the same time in history, December 1777, just two hundred miles south in the state of Maryland, as Charles prepares to write a fireside letter to his father, the distinguished John Carroll of Baltimore.
The Carroll family was one of the wealthiest in the state of Maryland and, in spite of severe economic hardship throughout the colonies, managed to get even wealthier during the Revolutionary War. Charles Carroll was president of Maryland’s constitutional convention which, out of all of the 13 colonies, had just drafted the most conservative state constitution according to Gary Nash. Carroll’s vision of the new American society did not differ very much from the conservative, English society which the colonists were revolting against.
For example, through influence and outright bribery, Carroll crafted a bi-cameral legislature in Maryland with a lower house composed of representatives of the common people and an upper house, similar to the English House of Lords, composed of wealthy land owners, merchants and lawyers which had veto power over the lower house – effectively giving all power to the wealthy, aristocratic, social elite. Furthermore, under Carroll’s constitution, all judges, sheriffs and state employees were to be appointed by the Governor and not elected by the people. Carroll’s original plan was to restrict the vote to those owning 1000 acres or more. Begrudgingly, he reached a compromise with the “radical democrats”, many of them followers of Benjamin Franklin from neighboring Pennsylvania, whom he referred to as “evil and designing men”, to grant the vote to anyone who owned at least 50 acres of land. As part of the compromise, the Carroll plan made it a requirement that only those who owned 500 acres of land or more could run for public office. Thus, although the smaller farmers and planters could vote, only the largest land owners could hold political office. The end result was that suffrage - the right to vote - was restricted to less than half of the adult white males in the state and all political power was concentrated in a handful of wealthy white men.
In the winter of 1777, when Maryland’s constitution was published (it was ratified without public review), there was outrage throughout the colony. Not a single soldier from the great state of Maryland who had enlisted in the Continental Army had been given the right to vote by the new state constitution. The farmers, craftsmen and artisans who were expected to constitute the Maryland Regiment, refused to enlist, re-enlist or outright deserted. (Desertion rates were high in Washington’s army. During 1777, four out of ten troops from the state of New Jersey deserted and one out of three from New York.) When the opposition of the “radical democrats” to the new conservative government surfaced, Carroll grew despondent. To his father, in December 1777, he wrote:
“We are miserably divided, not only colony against colony, but in each colony there begins to appear such a spirit of disunion and discord that I am apprehensive, should we succeed against Great Britain (which I think very improbable under our circumstances), we shall be rent to pieces by civil wars and factions. Rather than hazard civil wars against ourselves, it might be better to abandon the quest for independence and sue for peace with Great Britain.”
Charles Carroll, born into wealth, is given a place of honor among America’s founding fathers. Statues of him adorn public parks throughout Maryland, streets and towns throughout America are named after him, but Charles Carroll, one of the original signers of the Declaration of Independence, was, let’s face it, a quitter. One year into the revolution, he was ready to sue for peace with Great Britain. Fortunately for the newly independent republic, there were still some men, men of real determination, who were willing to endure far greater hardship than Charles Carroll had ever known.
We return you now to Valley Forge where the minister is urging Private Plumb and hundreds of other poor foot soldiers to fulfill their obligations honorably and to be content with their wages. Despite the misery and the soldiers' resentment at Congress's pitiful ration for the proclaimed Day of Thanksgiving, Private Joseph Plumb Martin showed his true colors. His journal entry concluded:
"Our prospect was indeed dreary .... However, there was no remedy, no alternative but this or dispersion [desertion]; but dispersion, I believe, was not thought of - at least I did not think of it. We had engaged in the defense of our injured country and were willing nay, we were determined, to persevere as long as such hardships were not altogether intolerable."
Not altogether intolerable??? How could conditions possibly be any worse?! Martin reenlisted in 1777 for the duration of the war - which made him one of a small stouthearted minority determined to stick it out. Year in, year out, through the end of warfare in 1783 life in the army improved little. No thanks to men like Charles Carroll who at every turn reneged on promises made to America’s first military veterans.
Thankfully, there were men like Joseph Plumb Martin to whom all credit should be given for securing independence.
Be it resolved, that in honor of the men (and women) who persevered in the cause for a radical new democracy during times of unimaginable hardship back in 1777, that on Thanksgiving Day we will honor the memory of men like Private Plumb to whom this nation should be forever grateful.
Post Script #1. It is important to remember that during the winter of 1777, many Americans believed that the war was over and that the British had won. The purpose of the first Day of Thanksgiving, decreed by Congress, was to remind the revolutionaries throughout the colonies that America’s Army, the Continental Army, still existed and was still in need of volunteers. This is the true origin of the first Thanksgiving.
Post Script #2. Most of the material for this essay was taken from chapter 5 of “The Unknown American Revolution”. The sub-title of that chapter is “The Dual Revolution”. Gary Nash makes it clear that the War of Independence really was a civil war within a revolution. The civil war was a battle between the radical democrats and the conservative ruling elite.
Post Script #3. For over 80 years, Thanksgiving Day was observed in December and was intended to honor the men who were serving in the military. It was not until Abraham Lincoln’s presidency that the holiday was moved to the third Thursday in November. It was Lincoln’s intent to make Thanksgiving more of a harvest festival and less of a military recognition day. Part of his rationale was that the vast majority of men who had served in the War of Independence came from the northern states (southern states, to their shame, participated only half-heartedly) and he did not want to politicize this national holiday at a time when his number one priority was to re-unite the nation.
The first Thanksgiving
As recounted in Private Joseph Plumb Martin’s
Diary Entry on December 18th, 1777
We had nothing to eat for two or three days previous,
except what the trees of the fields and forests afforded us,
but we must now have what Congress said,
a sumptuous Thanksgiving to close the year of high living
we had now nearly seen brought to a close.
Our country, ever mindful of its suffering army,
opened her sympathizing heart so wide
upon this occa¬sion as to give us
something to make the world stare.
And what do you think it was, reader? Guess.
You cannot guess, be you as much of a Yankee as you will.
I will tell you: It gave each and every man
half a gill of rice and a tablespoonful of vinegar!
After this extraordinary superabundant donation,
we were or¬dered out to attend a meeting
and hear a sermon delivered upon the happy occasion....
The army was now not only starved but naked.
The greatest part were not only shirtless and barefoot
but destitute of all other clothing,
especially blankets.
I procured a small piece of raw cowhide
and made myself a pair of moccasins,
which kept my feet (while they lasted) from the frozen ground.
Though the hard edges of the moccasins galled my ankles,
this was better than going barefoot, as hundreds of my companions had to,
till they might be tracked by their blood upon the rough frozen ground.
Our prospect was indeed dreary....
However, there was no remedy,
no alternative but this or dispersion;
but dispersion, I believe, was not thought of -
at least I did not think of it.
We had engaged in the defense of our injured country
and were willing nay, we were determined,
to persevere as long as such hardships
were not altogether intolerable.
