Joseph Plumb Martin is well known as the chronicler of the Revolutionary War from the foot soldier’s perspective. His diaries are a rich source of eye-witness information about what it was like to be in the trenches, literally.

“Plumb” started his military career with a trial run. Uncertain that he wanted to become a soldier, Plumb signed up at 15 in the Connecticut militia in June, 1776. He fought in the Battle of Brooklyn and the Battle of White Plains, among other actions. But, when winter came, he went home instead of reenlisting.

Whether homelife was unexciting or for some other reason, Plumb had had enough of farm life and enlisted in the Continental Army the next spring. He soon showed an ability and affinity for building fortifications. He was later assigned to the Corps of Sappers and Miners and commanded a platoon that built fortifications for the Siege of Yorktown and the end of the War.

Here is a story from Plumb’s diary when he was assigned to Fort Mifflin on Mud Island in the Delaware River:

Mud Island

After the British took Philadelphia, Plumb was stationed at Fort Mifflin on Mud Island – an outpost on little more than a sand bar in Delaware Bay. The mission of the regiment positioned there was to interfere with British warships as much as possible.

The fortifications were as crude as could be imagined. The troops piled logs and sealed the gaps with mud and debris. The Fort had cannons and openings were left in the logs through which to shoot. Behind the log fortifications were crude barracks and the rest was an open area called the parade ground.

The British had a fortification on the mainland at Hospital Point overlooking Fort Mifflin. It was far enough away that their cannons could not reach Mifflin with direct fire, but they could lob cannon balls and grape shot into it. Their most effective cannon was a thirty-two pounder which could reach the parade ground in a high arc.

Plumb’s regiment had a thirty-two pounder, too. But, there was just one problem – they had no cannon balls for it. So, here’s where more American ingenuity came in.

The Continental artillery officers offered a gill of rum (four ounces) for each thirty-two pound cannon ball that the troops retrieved. Plumb wrote that as many as fifty men stood impatiently on the parade ground, waiting for an incoming shot. When one landed, it would often be picked up even before it stopped rolling.

The lucky retriever would deliver the cannon ball to Mifflin’s thirty-two pounder before downing the reward and returning to the parade to wait for another. The Continental artillerymen would then shoot the retrieved ball back at Hospital Point, or, if British ships were threatening, would save it to shoot at them.

It wasn’t long before Plumb’s regiment could no longer defend Fort Mifflin. His regiment left, except for 75 or so who stayed behind to destroy the place. Plumb was one of them. After setting fire to it, he and his detachment escaped by boat to fight another day.

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Barb Underhill of Utah suggested this post topic: “Wonder what our Founding Fathers would think of the role of the Electoral College today? My thought is that the rural states gain a big enough voice through their (our) equal numbers in the Senate, regardless of population… In Utah, no matter what or when, the electoral votes will always be Republican, so nobody’s vote matters. It makes no sense to me why my neighboring swing states of Nevada and Colorado mean more to the parties and candidates than my state. 3rd parties haven’t a prayer with winner take all.”

Barb, I’ll start with a brief review of the Electoral College. The Founders sought to prevent tyranny wherever they thought it could arise. One source of tyranny was what they called the tyranny of the majority – the many ganging up on the few. You rightly noted that they curbed this source of tyranny in law making by providing two seats in the Senate for each State, large or small, and by making the Senate at least equal to the House of Representatives in law making power.

It is also important to note the more basic curb on the tyranny of the majority in law making – representation. As a republic, we elect representatives to act for us rather than having direct votes on every law. This provides a more deliberative environment for laws to be thought out.

In the same way, the Electoral College is designed to prevent the tyranny of the majority in the election of the President. When the people in a State vote for President, they are voting for representatives called Electors. The Electors in each State cast their votes in the Electoral College as the representatives of those who voted in that State.

If we had direct elections of the President, a few States could cooperate to tyrannize the rest. California, New York, Pennsylvania, and Illinois are nearly one-fourth of our population. And, the populations of Texas, Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina are nearly one-fifth. The winner-take-all rule in each State further reduces the chance that an interest group could tyrannize the minority through a nationwide maneuver.

In addition to their desire to prevent a tyranny of the majority, the Founders also wanted to encourage an honest voting process. If anything, the campaigns then were more dishonest than they are today. Registration and vote buying were common, electoral corruption, voter intimidation at the polls, multiple voting, and voting by the dead and by non citizens were tried everywhere.

So, the voting “irregularities” of today would be familiar to the Founders. Suppression of military voting through bureaucratic “bungling,” on the other hand, would have been unthinkable to them and a source of outrage and condemnation.

The Founders discouraged electoral dishonesty by opening the Presidential electoral process to view. Although then, as now, Electors pledged their support to candidates in advance, the Electors of that day were more thoughtful than are today’s Electors, who with rare exceptions vote as they have pledged in a process that no one sees.

Ultimately, “irregularities” are rarely on a scale that makes a difference. In that sense, no one person’s vote “counts,” although votes in swing states don’t count less than those in states with heavy majorities. We are unlikely to see another Florida 2000, yet the Presidential election of Thomas Jefferson in 1800 may have been even more tumultuous. In the Electoral College vote, Jefferson and Aaron Burr came out tied. That threw the election into the House of Representatives where Jefferson was finally elected after 36 ballots.

In sum, the system is operating today pretty much as the Founders intended. They would have urged you to vote, despite knowing that you are in a state where most vote one way. You never know. As to third parties, the Founders would have urged you to get together with like-minded people to see what you could do.

Now, you may be curious about pledging by Electors and whether they are true to their pledges. History is full of exceptions and I’ll talk about them in a future post.

This is the first of three stories about Joseph Plumb Martin, Revolutionary War Soldier.

Joseph Plumb Martin was born in 1760 in Beckham, a small western Massachusetts town. He joined the Continental Army at the age of 15 and served in the Revolutionary War, seeing frequent action for eight years. He started as a Private and rose to Sergeant.

Despite being in the lowest rank, “Plumb” was educated and kept a diary. His detailed descriptions of the life of a Continental soldier and the battles in which he fought provide us with a rich source of eye witness testimony. His accounts have been used for several television and film productions of the period.

Rather than rehash what has already been portrayed, I will tell three lesser-known stories about him. They tell of his ingenuity and the ingenuity of his fellow soldiers that typify the American spirit. The first: Valley Forge.

Valley Forge

Plumb’s descriptions of the conditions at Valley Forge during the winter of 1777 match those of many others. He tells about the starvation, disease and lack of clothing and shelter. He verifies the reports of bloody footprints in the snow and widespread suffering.

We wonder how the troops survived. The truth is that many didn’t. Plumb suffered just as did the others until an opportunity came his way.

Plumb heard about a detachment being formed to take wagons into the countryside to bargain with farmers for whatever supplies they could spare. Plumb’s fellow soldiers wanted nothing to do with the assignment, but the ingenious Plumb thought he could make something of it, so he volunteered.

Even though most farmers didn’t have much that could make a dent in the needs at Valley Forge, they had enough to feed themselves and, of course, they had farmhouses.

At the last farm of each day, whether the farmer had provisions to fill the wagons or not, Plumb persuaded them, at least, to invite him and his detachment to the table and put them up for the night. Plumb reports that he was never turned down and he spent the rest of the Valley Forge winter quite warm and well-fed.

Plumb’s ingenuity and willingness to take a risk showed how our forefathers could turn bad situations to their advantage with bold thinking and determination.

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While giving lip service to the U.S. Constitution, some try to undermine it. One way has been to dismiss it as being out of date. Even Presidents have said things like, “It (the Constitution’s limited powers concept) can be applied… only in a primitive community…” or, “The old theory of the sovereignty of the States has lost its vitality…” or “(It was written for) the horse-and-buggy age…”

Did the Founders write the Constitution to apply to the society of the future?

Plain Talk

The future that the Founders were worried about was immediate – the takeover of the country by the federal government and the tyranny that an all-powerful government could impose. They were worried about the forces in the new nation that wanted to take away our God-given freedoms. And they were worried about the temptation of people in power to want ever more power.

To forestall this, the Founders put limits on what powers the federal government could have and reserved all other powers for the States and for the people individually. The Founders believed that nearly all interests varied from state to state and that, being closer to their particular interests, each State and it’s people were better prepared to understand and deal with them than a remote and self-serving federal government.

For those few interests that the Founders knew to be national, such as interstate commerce, they defined federal government powers over them in simple, direct terms. Still, they knew that such powers would have to be put into practice at a level of detail they didn’t intend the Constitution to have.

Continuing with the interstate commerce example, the Constitution gives Congress the power “To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes…” That’s it. No powers in interstate commerce are mentioned for the President or for the Courts, just Congress.

Reading the interstate commerce clause, did the Founders intend for members of Congress to stand at state borders and observe the movement of goods across the lines themselves? Of course not. The Founders meant for Congress to give others the authority to put the clause into practice. So, the Founders meant for the Constitution to be interpreted. And, that’s where things get sticky.

The need for interpretation opens the door for assumption of greater power. FDR said, “The United States Constitution has proved itself the most marvelously elastic compilation of rules of government ever written.” He thought the Constitution ought to let him do whatever he wanted. But, an elastic band can stretch only so far and he went too far and was denied (until he could appoint new Supreme Court Justices).

This brings us back to limited powers, simply and directly defined. The Founders put limits on the regulation of interstate commerce when it used the phrase, “…among the several States.” Meaning that Congress could not get into commerce within a state, only between states.

But, power-hungry forces have not been deterred. They have stretched the elastic little by little until Congress has become fully engaged in commerce within the states, authorized by the Supreme Court. Are there limits to this power? It appears that the Supreme Court has begun to recognize the need to reduce these powers in both the Lopez and Obamacare decisions. But, those are subjects for another day.

Only one other question needs to be answered: “Are there interests today that cannot be dealt with by current Constitutional provisions or by States or individuals?”

What has been demonstrated is that the Constitution is not out of date. It applies equally to the 21st Century as it did to the 18th because it trusts the people to govern themselves. But, there will always be the power-hungry, trying to find a way around or through it. If the Founders were alive today, they would say, “See? We told you so.” It is up to us to stay vigilant as the Founders would have wanted.

Perhaps through spies or just the keen attention of Loyalists, the British learned of the build-up of guns and ammunition in the village of Concord, Massachusetts in early 1775.  The British knew that such an arsenal would be essential to the rebel militias in their opposition to the King.  It should come as no surprise that the British would want to take the weapons.

 At that time, the British troops were stationed in Boston, a city confined to two peninsulas – islands, almost – into Boston Harbor.  The “islands” were Boston and Charlestown and each was connected to the mainland by a narrow strip of land.

The village of Concord was 17 miles west of Boston, along a well-traveled road.  Located between Boston and Concord was the village of Lexington.  Both Concord and Lexington were well known for their rebellious townspeople.

The British decided to send troops to Concord to find and take the rebels’ arsenal.  General Thomas Gage was the overall commander of the British troops in Boston.  He had received secret orders from London to disarm the rebels.  He planned to do it using small regiments that struck quickly and without warning. 

Unbeknownst to Gage, his orders from London had been found out before he received them.  Word got back to the rebels in Concord and on April 8 they began to move the arsenal to other towns.  Knowing that Loyalists and spies were about, the rebels completed the move under cover of darkness over several nights.    

Meanwhile, General Gage was overseeing the preparation of his troops for the secret mission to Concord.  He had chosen April 19 as the date and 700 of his troops were selected to go.

The night before the British left Boston, Dr. Joseph Warren, an active supporter of the rebel cause, told Paul Revere, the planner of the rebel resistance, that the British would be leaving Boston by boat early the next morning.  Revere told the janitor of the Old North Church to climb into the steeple and hold up two lanterns to signal the British intentions.  Then, Revere and William Dawes rode by different routes to Lexington and Concord to be sure the townspeople were warned – the British were coming.

The British landed in the early morning, marched to Lexington, confronted the Lexington militia, and fired the “Shot Heard ‘Round the World” – said to be the first shot of the Revolutionary War.  When the smoke had cleared, eight colonial militiamen were dead and several wounded.  The British suffered one minor wound.  Some say that the militiamen were unarmed, but the scene was reported to have been mass confusion in any event.

The British then quick-marched to Concord where they searched the village and found… nothing.  By this time, the rebel militias had them nearly surrounded and the battle began.  Out-maneuvered and without cover, the British were forced into retreat on the road back to Boston.  What remained of the British troops made it across the land bridges to temporary safety, but the militias used this as an opportunity to set up a siege and two months later the British finally abandoned Boston, by ship.

So, how did Dr. Warren find out that the British were coming on April 19?  Who spilled the beans?  While there is some disagreement among historians as to who it was, there is evidence to suggest that it was General Gage’s wife!

Margaret Gage was not British.  She was the daughter of a wealthy New Jersey businessman and granddaughter of the New York City Mayor and she did not consider herself a Loyalist.  Margaret had long-held beliefs in the righteousness of the rebel cause.  She had a close friendship with Dr. Warren and some speculate that she learned of the plan from her husband and passed the word to Dr. Warren. 

While there isn’t much documentary evidence that it was Margaret and some that it wasn’t, there is one other clue that she was the one.  Just two months after the Battle of Concord, General Gage put Margaret on a ship back to England.  On the other hand, when he was relieved of command in September, he returned to England, rejoined Margaret and they lived out their years together. 

You be the judge.

Today, I am launching my new blog – Freedom’s Foundry – a place for plain talk about our nation’s founding and the lessons it teaches.  You will also be able to find here updates on the progress of my book.  I hope you like it.