Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1896-10-16
clerk. and would risk my life. 1 wish
there waa


there was a war"
At seventeen he was correspondent for
Hollis New York Journal, the newspaper o!
Virginia merchant and ex-mayor Of VIII
liamsburg, Va, and this Journal was pub
lished during the whole revolution at King
ston and at Poughkeepsie, Holt becoming
printer to the state. Not improbably Ham,
ilton, while on Wash.ngton's staff. com
municated news to this paper. He was
selected by Washington to proceed from:
Philadelphia to Gen. Gates at Saratoga,
Washington saying: You are so fully &c
Quainted with the state of our army all
the situation Of the enemy that shall NJ,
enlarge.
Washington was then forty-five. Hamil
ton twenty-five. He also wrote to his M
tive islands such private letters that tt
Rev. Hugh Knox wrote in 1177, in reply
him: THE fine, impartial, laconic and high
ly descriptive account you favored me with
Of the last years campaign excited in ms
and many of your other friends here in ST
Croix an earnest desire of further account
from your pen of a war which will one day
shine illustriously. The very minutiae of
that incompatible Washington will be read
with avidity by, posterity. Make and collect
such memoirs as the urgency of your af-
fairs will permit you $50 near his person)
which may furnish materials for a history
with all that elegance and dignity Of which
your fine pen is capable. The God of
armies defend you to hand down to pos
tcrity the present important scenes!'
John Laurens wrote to Hamilton, when
Charles Lee attacked Washington: The
ancient secretary Is the Recueil of modern
history and anecdotes; the pen of Junius is
In your hand Laurens shot Charles Lee
In a duel, invoked the aid of the King of
France at levee when Franklin was too
mealy-mouthed to introduce him, and died
riding upon the enemy at the close of the
war, aged tWenty-six.
To these correspondent spirits of the rev.
olution, let us add. on the other side, Maj.
Andre and Charles Steoman, the latter in
the battles from Lexington to Yorktown,
and the first historian of the war, whose
name is revived in Edmund Clarence Sted-
man, our fellow war correspondent.
Henry Lee, the father of Robert E. Lee,
was also an elegant relator of battles of
the revolution, and his son Henry was a
still more elegant writer and beloved of
Andrew Jackson.
At the duel between Gen. Charles Lee
and Col. Laurens, Alexander Hamilton, the
second Of Laurens, took down the remark
of Lee that Every man had a right to
give his sentiments freely of military char
acters.'
A good picture Of war correspondent be-
fore the day of that profession per Sc is
Alexander Hamilton and Gen. Du Portal
watching at Bat Stove Furnace, on the Jer-
sey coast, for the French fleet to arrive.
Total stagnation of news here" wrote
Hamilton to LaurenS from headquarters.
Il always disliked the office of an aid-de-
camp" wrote Hamilton to his wife's father,
when he quilted WaSh:ngton's staff, las
having in it a kind of personal depend
ence."
1t was Hamilton who saw all the parts
of Arnold's discovery and Andres penalty
Andre, whom Hamilton described the day
he died as ''am:able in virtue, in fortitude.
in delicate sentiment and accomplished
manners" The spirit of the war cores
pondent was in Andres perilous journey
within our lines.
Revolutionary Printers.
The Declaration of Independence was not
officially printed in the journals of Con-
gress till ITS, at York. Pa, within cannon
sound of Gettysburg, by John Dunlap. AT
York the board of war was controlled by
Gen! Horatio Gates, whose home in Vir-
ginia was in cannon sound of Antietam.
In those early days the trail for pack
horses from York. the German rendezvous,
to the valley of Virginia, is said to have
been through Crampton's Gap, the site of
our monument
The New York war relator. James Riv.ng-
ton, had been like Benedict Arnold and
Gen. Knox, a bookseller, and kept his car
riage and bet on the turf, till falling in
London he removed to America and opened
bookshops in Philadelphia, New York and
Boston, and failed. and then, in 11I3, start
ed the Gazette, and after the revolution
failed again, but he sent news through the
lines and so conciliated the army author
tiles that he was allowed to live in the city
till his death, July, 1902. He survived both
Washington and Arnold, and in twenty
years was followed to New York by Ben
nett His espousing of the British side was
traceable to a Connecticut military posse,
which destroyed his establishment
The files of his paper are in the New
York Historical Society.
A daily paper was secured to New YORK
city through the revolution by four differ
ent papers dividing up the days of the
week. three Of them using day. the
fourth two days. This arrangement is
tn
they shall continue to have msfortunes.
In 1773 Rivington, the Franklin of the royal
side. claimed circulation of 5000 copies.
John Frumbull.
America produced the first correspondent
artist, and he painted in the camps of our
revolution.
In 1173, at the age of seventeen. John
Trumbull painted the death of Paulus
Emelius at the battle of Cannae, which is
| in the Trumbull Gallery at New Haven.
Tie next year he caught the growing mil
| was now governor of the colony and a
patriot" and his son studied tactics, and
| lad distant view Of the battle of Bunker
Hill, which he afterward painted. For
dra wing by stealth the eEemy's lines around
Boston, Washington put Trumbull upon
his staff, as that drawing Washington
greatly needed. As the dispenser of Wash
ington's hospitality in Cambridge at the
long, Trumbull began to feel the relation
of art and letters to the revolution. At
| tw enty he was colonel on Gates staff, and
united the natures of the artist and corre-
spondent, correcting the ideas Of the gen.
| erals by typographical and artillery expert
ments.
With him upon the staff was the
| first of our battle describers Jameo Will
kinson of Maryland, reared near the out
| let of the Monocacy into the Potomac, and
afterward the author of memoirs OF his
y,yyh1 hod IN nd
hel ding both our wars with England. Will
kirson lived to command the army of the
United States, but his pen was mightier
than his sword.
Resigning from a sense of injured rank
! in 1777, Trumbull hired Smibert's studio In