Valley Forge

 “Awake, awake, Sir Billy

There a forage in the plain.

Ah, leave your little Filly,

And open the campaign.”

   Doggerel poking fun at General William Howe

Had William Howe, commander of English forces occupying Philadelphia, led an attack on General George Washington’s ragtag Continental army at Valley Forge during the winter of 1777-1778, it is conceivable that he might have snuffed out the colonial rebellion.  Instead, as Cokie Roberts wrote in “Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation” (2004), the notorious Betsey Loring kept him lustily occupied in the “City of Brotherly Love,” inspiring snide stanzas, including these lines:

    Sir William, he, snug as a flea,

     Lay all this time a-snoring

     Nor dreamed of harm as he lay warm

     In bed with Mrs. L----g.

Growing up in Fort Washington, PA, not far from Valley Forge, I visited those “hallowed grounds” numerous times, most memorably on a beautiful spring day with California cousins Tommi and Judy and their parents, my dad’s oldest brother Jim and Aunt Tut. Tommi would have had my name, James Buchanan Lane, had she not been born a girl. Judy, whom I’d never met before, was slightly older than I, beautiful and sophisticated but very friendly.  I haven’t seen her since.  In recent years I have been in touch with Tommi.Valley Forge was also a Pennsylvania turnpike exit where I’d sometimes meet Toni on my way home from college at Bucknell.

In July the history book club to which I belong will reconvene at Gino’s in Merrillville after a long hiatus due to the pandemic. Cal Bellamy will lead a discussion of Joel Richard Paul’s “Without Precedent: Chief Justice John Marshall and His Times” (2018). It opens with the lowborn Marshall, the eldest of 15 children who grew up in a two-room Virginia log cabin and had virtually no formal education, joining General Washington’s army as a rifleman during the terrible winter of 1777-1778. Conditions were so dire that common soldiers were deserting in large numbers even though if caught they could be hanged. Some were reduced to roasting their own leather shoes in efforts, usually futile, to stave off starvation, while officers were eating mutton and veal in comfortable quarters toasting Washington’s health with the General’s favorite Madeira.  The experience left an indelible mark on Marshall in terms of shaping his belief in the necessity of a strong central government and in gaining respect for the leadership qualities of George Washington.

“Without Precedent” concentrates on the momentous judicial decisions that the Supreme Court issued during the 35 years of Marshall’s leadership, which increased the federal government’s authority.  Most being familiar to me, I was more interested in Marshall’s private life and in the diplomatic mission to France that he undertook in the late 1790s during the John Adams administration, sometimes known as the XYZ Affair.  Marshall’s mother was descended from the eccentric Randolph family, and Marshall was also the third cousin of his lifelong arch-rival Thomas Jefferson. 

From Cokie Roberts’ “Founding Mothers” I was acutely aware that colonial women during this time were expected to produce multiple children, no matter the stress on their physical and mental health. Marshall’s wife Polly, the daughter of Jefferson’s first love, with whom John was smitten when she was 13 and married when she was 16, produced three children within four years, two of whom died, leaving her severely depressed. Altogether she underwent ten difficult pregnancies, four of which ended tragically.  John Marshall, Jr., became an alcoholic who got kicked out of Harvard and left a mountain of debt when he succumbed to his addiction. For most of her life, Polly was a virtual recluse, frequently bedridden and emotionally exhausted.  By age 50, according to Paul, Polly “had shrunk into a skeletal, childlike figure,” terrified at night that somebody was hiding under her bed. Though the author claims that Marshall doted on her, he “viewed his wife’s unhappiness as a failure of will,”  was absent for long periods, engaged in an affair in Paris with one of Minister Talleyrand’s spies (femme fatale Madame Reine de Villette), enjoyed a bachelor’s life while court was in session, remained “an incurable flirt” well into his sixties and in all probability had other trysts while away “from his long-suffering wife.” 

 

September’s book club speaker Rich Maroc will discuss the effects of the French Huguenot diaspora on the American Revolution; but, with nobody volunteering for November, secretary Joy Anderson asked if I’d talk about my Steel Shavings volume on “Life in Northwest Indiana during the Plague Year, 2020.” While many members will consider my journal to be current events, I’ll defend it as a primary source for future scholars and compare it to Daniel Defoe’s “Journal of the Plague Year” and Frederick Lewis Allen’s classic social history of the 1920s, “Only Yesterday.”  It will also provide an opportunity to summarize my interest in studying history from the bottom up, starting with the personal and including such aspects of popular culture as music, sports, recreation, and work experiences. Traditionalists, including the several Abrahan Lincoln buffs, will come across information on historical events that occurred in the 1860s, as well as the “Roaring Twenties,” 1950s and other past decades. I’ll be curious about what members think and look forward to the feedback.

I invited Post-Tribune columnist Jerry Davich to July’s book club meeting and told him I’d been speaking in November.  Shortly after people’s lives began changing as a result of the pandemic, Davich encouraged readers to keep a journal documenting what it was like  experiencing this dark period in our history and publicized a facebook site urging a similar practice.  After I published “Life in Northwest Indiana during the Plague Year,” I sent him a copy but never heard back from him.  it’s possible he never received it, so I told him there would be copies available at the July meeting.His name appears a half-dozen times, as indicated by the Index, mainly in connections with articles he wrote, including one about Brent Schroeder, 55, who during the 1980s and 1990s played with the heavy metal bands Prisoner and Hap Hazzard. I thought of those bands when I read that Faster Pussycat will be performing at the Art Theater in Hobart, whose albums include “The Power and the Glory Hole” and whose singles include “Bathroom Wall.” Members brag about appearing in the rockumentary “The Decline of Western Civilization, Part 2.”