Not Your Father's Founders (7 page)

Dublin, Ireland
1728−December 28, 1789
A Mother's Instinct

When the British occupied Philadelphia on September 26, 1777, the Darraghs were told to vacate their dwelling as the Quartering Acts allowed the British to demand.

Lydia Darragh asked General Howe, who was domiciled nearby, if she could stay in her home. She explained that she had already sent her two youngest children to live with relatives and that she had no place else to go.

Howe offered a compromise. If she would reserve a room in her house where British officers could hold meetings, she could stay, as long as she gave them complete privacy.

Done, said Darragh. Unknowingly, Howe had made a tactical blunder.

There were no discernible problems with Darragh's living arrangements at first. On December 2, 1777, several British officers, including Howe, showed up at the house for a meeting. They warned Darragh to make sure nobody lingered around the meeting room. Howe's purpose for the meeting was twofold: to discuss new information he had acquired from his spies regarding Washington's move to a new camp and to plan how to catch the Americans in the open, when they were most vulnerable.

Darragh suspected the British were up to devilry, and that their plans might have a bearing on her son Charles, who was fighting with the Second Pennsylvania Regiment stationed near White Marsh. Darragh's maternal instincts prompted her to turn a linen closet next to the meeting room into a listening post. What she heard through the wall confirmed her suspicions. Howe was planning to attack Washington near White Marsh, thirteen miles down the road.

She improvised a plan to thwart the British.

Darragh decided on a way to warn Washington. All she needed was a pass and a flour sack. Local citizens often asked British authorities for passes to places outside the city where they could buy supplies. The British routinely authorized the requests. Accordingly, Darragh procured a pass to the flour mill in nearby Frankford.

With flour sack in hand, she headed through the snow in that direction. She also had with her a notebook in which she kept notes about the information she garnered in Philadelphia. She reached the mill—and kept right on going.

According to the diary of Colonel Elias Boudinot, Washington's commissary general of prisoners, she handed her notebook to him as he was dining at the Rising Sun Tavern, north of the city, along the route to White Marsh. Boudinot passed the information to Washington.

The British marched out of Philadelphia on December 4 to surprise Washington. But Washington was ready for them. Based on the information Darragh had fed Boudinot, Washington knew Howe's strength. According to Boudinot, Darragh had given him “a piece of paper rolled up into the form of a pipe shank. On unrolling it I found information that General Howe was coming out the next morning with 5,000 men, 13 pieces of cannon, baggage wagons, and 11 boat on wheels. On comparing this with other information, I found it true and immediately rode post to headquarters.”

The two armies sparred around the area for the next few days. Neither gained an advantage, and damages were held to a minimum.

Howe returned to Philadelphia, convinced that he could not destroy Washington's army. That ended the fighting in 1777. Six months later the British left Philadelphia and the reunited Darragh family moved back into their house on Second Street—but not before Lydia misled the British for the last time.

The day after the British troops returned to Philadelphia, British Major John André visited Darragh's house and asked her if she had tipped off the Americans about Howe's plans. She said no. André was not convinced, but he let the matter drop. Unfortunately, the Quakers did not.

Technically, Darragh could have been treated as a traitor and executed had the British determined that she was a spy, but they didn't. However, the Quakers excommunicated her in 1783—the same year her husband died—because of her involvement in the war. They reinstated her in 1789—the same year she died.

After the war, Darragh operated a store in Philadelphia, the city that owed her so much for her heroic stand that saved it from possible permanent occupation—and Washington from a devastating military defeat.

Groton, Connecticut
December 24, 1737−September 23, 1789
Framed Framer

Silas Deane was solidifying his reputation in Connecticut as a man to be trusted in the days leading up to the American Revolution based on his integrity as a businessman and representative in the colony's General Assembly. When the call went out for delegates to the First Continental Congress in 1774, Deane was among those chosen, and he was reappointed in 1775.

Deane was optimistic that the Congress could find a way to get the colonies out from under British rule. He was even more convinced after he arrived in the thriving city of Philadelphia, the largest city in the colonies at the time, and met the other delegates of distinction. Congressional leaders were so impressed with his abilities that they sent him to France to seek French support for American independence.

Deane joined Franklin and Lee in Paris to negotiate an alliance with France. The United States and France signed two separate treaties on February 6, 1778: the Treaty of Alliance, and a Treaty of Amity and Commerce that promoted trade and commercial ties between the two countries. According to the terms of the Treaty of Alliance, both countries agreed not to negotiate a separate peace with Great Britain. More importantly, American independence would be a condition of any future peace agreement.

The arms and supplies France sent to the Continental Army played a major role in its surprising victory over British troops at Saratoga, New York, in September and October 1777. Historians suggest that the victory was the turning point in the war. It elevated the Continental Army's morale and removed the aura of invincibility many Americans thought surrounded their British foe.

But Arthur Lee grew jealous of Silas Deane's success in Paris and accused Deane that year of embezzling some of the funds intended to pay for such arms. Lee suspected Franklin had done the same thing, which Franklin denied.

Congress recalled Deane to investigate his alleged questionable conduct. On November 27, 1777, it appointed John Adams to replace Deane in Paris.

Deane delayed his return to the colonies until the treaties were signed. Then he returned in a triumphant manner aboard a French warship to defend himself. It was not surprising that Deane made a few business deals of his own in Paris. After all, he arrived there in July 1776 ostensibly as a businessman. The Committee of Secret Correspondence had told him, “On your arrival in France, you will for some time be engaged in the business of providing goods for the Indian trade. This will give good countenance to your appearing in the character of a merchant, which we wish you continually to retain among the French, in general, it being probable that the court of France may not like it should be known publicly that any agent from the Colonies is in that country.”

Perhaps Deane created some of his troubles. Several of the European officers he recruited comported themselves badly during the war. Irish General Thomas Conway became involved in a cabal to overthrow General George Washington, and Comte de Broglie, the Marquis de Lafayette, and Baron de Kalb hatched a scheme to install Lafayette as the commander in chief of the American army. Critics viewed Deane's involvement with such officers as a reflection on his inability to assess officers' ethics and leadership skills. And there was no doubt Deane and some silent partners were making lucrative business deals on the side. There were no direct connections between and among the various charges and suspicions about Deane's conduct in Paris, but Congress was determined to investigate Lee's allegations.

The long, bitter hearings regarding Deane's conduct were messy. France refused to furnish copies of receipts and other documents, claiming that to do so would demonstrate that they had been involved in diplomatic negotiations with a noncountry prior to signing treaties with it. That would embarrass the French.

Deane went on the offensive. He demanded that Congress break off diplomatic relations with France and questioned the integrity of members of Congress who disagreed with him.

Deane returned to Paris in 1781 to find copies of documents such as receipts and journal entries that would prove his innocence. But, Congress was in no hurry to review the accounts he prepared. His cause was lost. Worse, his American colleagues were reluctant to let him return to the colonies because they thought he was a traitor to their cause.

Deane stayed in Europe for a few years, first in the Netherlands and then England, where he lived in poverty. He published a defense of his actions in
An Address to the Free and Independent Citizens of the United States of North America
, which was published in Hartford, Connecticut, and London in 1784. He planned a return to the United States in 1789 to establish his innocence and reclaim his wealth, but he became mysteriously ill before his ship sailed for home. There was some speculation that he had been poisoned deliberately by a British spy. He died on September 23, 1789.

Congress never found Deane guilty of anything. His family did not believe he was. His granddaughter Philura and her husband pressed Congress to review his case. It did—and exonerated him.

Deane was one of the most ill-fated of the founders of the United States. At least he has a highway, a school, and a library named after him in Wethersfield, Connecticut. Someone believed in him—albeit many years after he died in disgrace.