After defeat at the Battle of Brandywine (September 11, 1777) and the British occupation of Philadelphia (September 26, 1777), General George Washington sought to redeem the Continental army and force General Sir William Howe to retreat by launching a surprise attack at Germantown. Howe, on his part, may have been too confident because he did not entrench his position and had spread his troops out in Pennsylvania and New Jersey near Philadelphia. Washington, however, developed an overly complicated plan: He ordered
Four separate columns to march on the British position at night for a coordinated assault in the morning. With the best troops, such a maneuver would have been difficult. With poorly trained Continentals and militia it was courting disaster. The first of Washington’s men stumbled into British sentries about 4:00 A. M., easily pushing them back. But it was unusually foggy that morning and confusion began to reign on both sides. Washington’s columns did not attack together, and one division even fired into another. The militia never came up into position. At a crucial moment in the battle, the disciplined British shored up their line and gained reinforcements. Confronted with this defense, running out of ammunition, and confused by the smoke and fog, some of Washington’s soldiers began to withdraw. The panic spread, and soon the whole army was in retreat. Washington was convinced that had they persisted just a little longer, his men would have been victorious. The battle lasted under three hours. Each side had put about 8,000 men in the field: Howe lost about 500 men, Washington lost some 1,000 killed, wounded, and captured.
Further reading: Stephen R. Taffe, The Philadelphia Campaign, 1777-78 (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2003).
Gerry, Elbridge (1745-1814) signer of the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation, U. S. vice president
One of the revolutionary era’s most dedicated politicians and a signer of the Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776), Elbridge Gerry was born in Marblehead, Massachusetts, in 1745. Gerry was the third of 12 children, son of a wealthy, respectable, and politically active father. In 1758 Gerry entered Harvard College and graduated in 1762. Upon graduation, Gerry joined his father’s business, exporting dried fish to British colonies in the Caribbean.
Gerry’s political career began after the Boston Massacre (March 5, 1770). Marblehead residents elected Gerry town inspector to enforce an ongoing boycott of British imports protesting imperial regulation. In 1772 Marblehead elected Gerry to the colonial legislature, where Samuel Adams befriended him. Gerry used the imperial crisis and the Revolutionary War (1775-83) to bolster his political and economic fortunes. He served in the Second Continental Congress between 1776 and 1785. During the war he mixed public service with private profit, and after a quarrel over the prices paid to military suppliers in which he had a personal stake as one of those suppliers, he walked out of Congress and did not attend for three years. Throughout the contest he invested heavily in privateers (see also privateering) and trading ventures.
During the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Gerry participated in many debates. Although at times he appeared inconsistent, and according to some wits “objected to everything he did not propose,” he sought to stifle the effort to create a powerful central government because he believed it would threaten the people’s liberties and undermine state independence. Gerry signed the document regardless of his opposition but then worked against the ratification of the Constitution in Massachusetts. Once the United States Constitution came into force, Gerry put aside his concerns and served in the House of Representatives from 1789 to 1793. There, too, he reversed himself: At first he seemed to support the strong central government policies of the Federalist Party, but he came to back the pro-French and weaker central government policies of the Democratic-Republican Party. In 1797 President John Adams, who was a friend of Gerry’s, appointed him as the non-Federalist Party member of the delegation sent to France to negotiate an end to the seizures of U. S. shipping. Before the negotiations could begin, agents for Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord demanded a bribe. When news of this diplomatic affront reached the United States—the XYZ affair (1797-98)—the United States began to prepare for war and engaged in a series of naval battles with the French in the Quasi-War (1798-1800). In April 1798 Tallyrand ordered the two other U. S. delegates—Charles Cotesworth Pinckney and John Marshall—to leave France and allowed Gerry to remain, hoping to manipulate him into concessions because of his pro-French sympathies. Gerry did not yield any ground, but he did seek to find some sort of softening in the French position. Fortunately, by the time he returned to the United States in October 1798, Gerry could report to Adams that Tal-lyrand was ready to negotiate a serious agreement. After Adams received similar reports from other U. S. diplomats in Europe, he began the arduous task of sending a new delegation to France, which ultimately agreed to the Convention of 1800 ending the Quasi-War.
After the XYZ affair, Gerry became active in partisan politics on the state level and was one of the leaders of the Democratic-Republican Party in Massachusetts. Gerry ran for governor four times before he was finally elected in 1810. During his second term, he supported Democratic-Republican redistricting measures. Federalist opponents coined the term “gerrymander” to describe the practice of drawing voting district boundaries to favor one party. Although frail in health, Gerry was elected James Madison’s vice president in 1812. He collapsed and died on his way to the Senate on November 23, 1814.
Further reading: George Athan Billias, Elbridge Gerry: Founding Father and Republican Statesman (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976); William Stinchcombe, The XYZ Affair (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1980).
Girard, Stephen (1750-1831) businessman and entrepreneur
Stephen Girard was a wealthy merchant, banker, investor, and philanthropist in Philadelphia during the early republic. Born in 1750, Girard arrived in New York from France in 1774 as the son of a successful ship captain and merchant. He quickly established himself in the mercantile field in New York and spent the next few years sailing between New York and the West Indies. During the Revolutionary War (1775-83), he relocated to Philadelphia, where he built a very successful trading business and became one of the wealthiest persons in the United States by 1810. Girard faced financial complications between 1807 and 1812 due to the embargo Of 1807 and the escalating tension between the United States and Great Britain. However, he successfully liquidated most of his physical holdings in European ports and turned to domestic banking. In 1812, he opened the Girard Bank in the building that housed the late Bank Of the United States with $1,200,000 of his own capital. The Girard Bank operated between 1812 and 1832 as a privately owned bank, without a state charter. Nevertheless, the bank achieved financial parity with the other major Philadelphia banks by 1816.
Girard also played a pivotal role in financing the War of 1812 (1812-15). Along with merchants David Parish and John Jacob Astor, he invested approximately $10 million in government stock to fund the war effort in 1813. He also used his political influence and financial holdings to support the successful effort to establish a Second Bank of the United States in 1816. Girard distinguished himself in service to the people of Philadelphia by personally volunteering and funding yellow fever relief efforts in the 1790s (see also disease and epidemics). In his will, he left substantial funds for the operation of a home for orphaned boys in Philadelphia, which would become known as Girard College. Girard died in 1831 with no immediate family and left most of his $7.5 million estate to the city of Philadelphia.
Further reading: Donald R. Adams, Jr., Finance and Enterprise in Early America: A Study of Stephen Girard’s Bank, 1812-1831 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1978); Belden L. Daniels, Pennsylvania: Birthplace of Banking (Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Bankers Association, 1976).
World History
