Unsung Americans

February 17, 1980 (probably)
Lakeland (probably)

Unsung Americans

Almost always in the days of February 12 to 22, we think of Washington and Lincoln. They are our greatest and most acclaimed presidents, and along with Thomas Jefferson the greatest Americans.

Seldom does one write anything about the best of our American ideals and values without finding that Abraham Lincoln wrote the most terse but also most comprehensive statement. Seldom does one seek to affirm a principle of American freedom without finding that Jefferson stated it already, concisely and grandly.

Henry Steele Commanger, a superior American historian asks, “Why was a country with a population less than half that of Los Angeles able to produce men like John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, George Mason, and John Marshall? “A galaxy of leaders we cannot for all our numbers, wealth, science, and universities begin to duplicate today.”

Endless praise is due these famous Americans; never-ending wonder at their gathering in the generations that needed most their talents, leadership, wisdom, and courage. Deservedly they will be acclaimed as long as the Republic endures.

But I am not going to talk about them today. I want to speak of the “millions who, humble and nameless, the straight hard pathway trod” - the unsung Americans. Although, I mention only a few, without the unsung Americans the nation could not have been established and endure to this hour – with all its fears, yet with all its hopes.

Unless you are an American Revolution history buff, or have spent time in Marblehead, Massachusetts, the name of John Glover may ring no bells in your memory. But for John Glover and his Marblehead fishermen, Lord Howe and his British army, together with the British fleet, would have captured or destroyed Washington’s army in the Battle of Long Island in August 1776. Such a disastrous defeat would have postponed a successful revolution for many years, perhaps decades.

John Glover, in pre-revolutionary days, had been a ship-owning merchant in Marblehead. He had been active in many of the agitations and grievances against England.

When the Revolutionary War broke out he recruited a regiment in Marblehead, the 14th Continental, for the most part comprised of rugged fishermen and sailors. They could handle sails and oars as well as fire muskets. Their uniforms were blue jackets, white caps and tarred trousers, the same clothes they wore when fishing off the Grand Banks. They marched to Cambridge to join Washington’s army.

Colonel (soon to be General) John Glover’s 14th Continental regiment acted bravely and skilfully in land battles, but the most valuable contributions were at the Battle of Long Island and the famous crossing of the Delaware.

After defeating Washington’s army badly in the Battle of Long Island (August 1776), Lord Howe had 9000 of the finest Revolutionary troops trapped on Long Island. Washington had 7000 on Manhattan Island. In addition, the British fleet, with complete control of the sea, was approaching the East River. Once there, the Revolutionary troops would be cut off completely.

Washington ordered all possible boats recruited. Keeping his plans secret, Washington entrusted the evacuation operation to Glover’s 14th and Hutchinson’s 27th, a unit also largely made up of fishermen and sailors from Salem, Lynn, and Danvers.

The operation had to be carried out in a single night, for if the British discovered what was happening, they would immediately attack and overwhelm the Revolutionary Army.

Navigating in total darkness, because no light could be used, the mariners crossed again and again with boatloads of troops. In less than 9 hours, nearly 9000 soldiers and their supplies and materiel, including horses, were ferried across to Manhattan. A disastrous defeat averted, General John Glover and his unsung fishermen and sailors, sometimes called the “first amphibious regiment” had saved the Colonial cause.

There are probably few more famous patriotic paintings than the oil by Emmanuel Leutze - “Washington crossing the Delaware” (inaccurate in many respects; quite improbable that Washington would have stood so close to the bow).

Washington and his army had retreated from New Jersey into Pennsylvania, with the Delaware River separating them from the British. The British could not get enough boats to cross the Delaware. British General Howe decided to close the campaign for the winter and marched most of his forces back to New York, leaving a chain of garrisons including Trenton, New Jersey.

Washington decided that the British garrisons were vulnerable and decided on a daring campaign. [Four] forces were to cross the Delaware separately on Christmas night, 1776.

Various difficulties caused 3 of the 4 forces to fail to cross. Washington’s own crossing depended on General Glover and his sailor-soldiers. 2400 Revolutionary soldiers marched 9 miles to the ferrying point, where Glover’s regiment was. There they boarded the waiting boats – Durham boats, quite unlike the ones created by the imaginative artist. In a howling storm the boats were boarded; the river was high and littered with ice. With little visibility, Glover’s men navigated the narrow crossing, again and again, until all 2400 troops were ferried across. [CJW note: no loss of life – not even a cannon]

At dawn, Trenton was attacked; it was victory for the Continentals! Trenton, though not a large battle, helped turn the tide; Washington’s hopes and American spirit were lifted from a low point. The British historian, Trevelyan, wrote, “It may be doubted whether so small a number of men were ever employed so short a period with greater and more lasting results upon the history of the world.” The fishermen, the sailors are unsung. There is a Glover Square in Marblehead. It seems fitting that the statue of private John Russell of the 14th Continental stands guard at the base of the Trenton battle monument.

Unsung Americans – yet without them, George Washington would have been a discredited general and the American colonies would have remained that, colonies; and who knows when nationhood would have or could have been achieved.

Among the most unsung are the women of the American Revolution. True, Molly Pitcher was one celebrated heroine; but almost the only one. Page Smith, in his finely detailed history of the American Revolution, A NEW AGE BEGINS, has a chapter on “Women in the Revolution.”

There was Esther Reed – she raised 300,000 pounds in Philadelphia for the Pennsylvania Continental soldiers. [CJW note: And Philadelphia was then occupied by the British.]

There was a country girl, name now unknown, who visited Philadelphia (when it was held by the British) ostensibly to sell eggs, but really collected information about British plans. She was almost captured by the British – not far from the city, Major Benjamin Tallmadge pulled her up behind him on his horse and galloped to the safety of American lines.

There was Lydia Darragh who wandered into an inn at Rising Sun, Maryland. There, Elias Boudinot, in charge of intelligence for the American army, was having dinner. He told the story, “A little poor insignificant old woman came in and solicited leave to go into the country to buy some flour. While we were asking some questions, she walked up to me and put into my hands a dirty old needlebook with various small packets in it.” When she left, he examined the needlebook. In the last pocket there was a piece of paper rolled up like a pipestem. On it was information that General Howe planned to march out of Philadelphia with a large force and attack Washington’s army. The information was passed to General Washington, who moved staff headquarters and changed the deployment of his ragged, overmatched army with the result that General Howe returned to Philadelphia after only inconclusive skirmishes.

Then there was Mary Philipse dramatized in the third act of Maxwell Anderson’s play, “Valley Forge.” Mary Philipse, who may have been the mistress of British commanding general, Lord Howe, brings Washington and Howe together because the latter believes Washington will surrender. But General Howe learns that Washington will not surrender, dreadful as the suffering is at Valley Forge. Secretly, Mary Philipse passes information to Washington that the French will help the Colonials, news that will make all the difference. He thanks her and says, “it will be remembered.” Mary then says,

“Why then I’m glad.
I know my destiny, little though I may like it
and it’s not as high as yours.
There are some men
who lift the age they inhabit
till all men walk
on higher ground in that lifetime.”

She was too modest. The unsung as well as the famous “lift the age they inhabit – till (all) walk on higher ground.”

Louisa May Alcott is not among the unsung. her novels were famous, particularly LITTLE WOMEN. Almost unknown, however, is her little book, HOSPITAL SKETCHES.

During the fratricidal agony of the Civil War, she served as a volunteer nurse in a mansion, converted to a hospital, near Washington. The sufferings of the wounded were intense. After the numerous amputations and dressing of jagged bullet wounds, the most the volunteers could do was to wash the wounded give human comfort. In its own way, HOSPITAL SKETCHES is a poignant and penetrating anti-war testimony.

Among many tragic and pathetic stories is that of John (last name not given). She had tended John on his arrival at the hospital, then she received word he was weakening. As he lay dying he asked her to write a letter for him.

She asks him if the letter should be to his mother, or his wife. He answers, “I’m not so very young, ma’am, thirty in May and have been what you call settled these ten years, for mother’s a widow. I’m the oldest child she has, and it wouldn’t do for me to marry until Lizzy has a home of her own and Laurie’s learned his trade; for we’re not rich, and I must be a father to the youngest children....

Louisa asks, “Yet, John, how come you went to war, if you felt so; wasn’t enlisting as bad as marrying?”

“No ma’am, not as I see it, for one is helping my neighbor, the other pleasing myself. I didn’t want the glory or the pay; I wanted the right thing done....”

Two days later, John died. Louisa May Alcott was with him, holding his hand with a long sigh as death came. She concludes, “Then I left him, glad to have known so genuine a man, and carrying with me an enduring memory of the brave Virginia blacksmith, as he lay serenely waiting for the dawn of that long day which knows no night.”

Louisa May Alcott had an enduring memory of this soldier. We do not even know his last name. He is one of the unsung; one of the hundreds of thousands who died in war believing the cause was just. Their crosses and Stars of David punctuate the landscape at Arlington, Chateau Thierry, and thousands of other burial grounds.

How many would say to us, if they could, “no more war; never again” ?

Thus, it seems to me that however distinguished our great names – and rightly praised and honored – in the shadows of their glory are the unsung. Some of them recognized by a few; none of them known by all. But without them, the famous would have been losers – dishonored and infamous.

It is not only in detailed histories or obscure biographies alone that we may respond occasionally to the unsung – who they were and what they did. The unsung have been in our own lives when we take the time to remember.

“Recognitions are clearings in the jungle of life, where space opens enough to let the mind run free.” Reflect now and then on those in your life who provided clearings and space enough for your mind to run free. Perhaps a parent, a grandparent, a school teacher, an early employer who may have been taught by discipline and example that a job was more that just time-serving in order to collect a weekly wage. I think of Matilda Clement, a teacher of English literature, who took a crude hunk of boy away from reading Tom Swift and his Air Glider, Zane Grey, Merriwell Brothers and the Rover Boys, and somehow taught him to seek the beauty and insight of the Shakespearean treasure; led him to try ever to feel with the great poets who knew much more about the meaning of life than he would ever have recognized otherwise.

There is another unsung person I remember from my earliest years. He was Harry the Junkman. His plodding old horse pulled a dilapidated wagon through the streets of our city, calling in his thick accent, “any bottles and rags.” Harry ... was an immigrant from Eastern Europe. He bought rags, bottles, scrap metals, almost anything he could sort and re-sell. His clothes were almost as junky as the scrap he bought. His task was dirty, unpleasant, and I’m sure his labor unending except for Friday night Sabbath. With the peculiar cruelty of city children, we would run alongside Harry’s wagon, imitating his calls and hooting at him. But Harry’s two sons graduated from college and Harvard Law School. Only in later years did I recognize that Harry had been a fine American whose worth was unsung, except for his immediate family.

Think on your life – have there not been the Miss Clements and Harry the Junkmans?

Carl Sandburg, in THE PRAIRIE YEARS, tells (p. 56) of a small town in Illinois where a court trial was being held. Bill Greene was on the witness stand when a lawyer asked him who were the principal citizens of New-Salem. Bill Greene answered, “There are no principal citizens; everyone in New-Salem neighborhood is a principal citizen.”

Of course, seldom is it ever recognized that everyone is a principal citizen – there are too many disinherited for whom the heritage of discrimination and lack of power is obvious. But as we increasingly know that the greatest persons would be unknown if were not for the unsung, then perhaps we can embrace the reality that “recognitions are clearings in the jungle of life where space opens enough to let the mind run free.”