learn from it that the prisoners were all treated with exceptional humanity; a lame man and the women and children were carried bodily throughout a greater portion of the journey. One of the women was delivered of a daughter in the evening of the first day, and was afterwards carried with. her babe, by relays of men, upon a frame like a bier covered with skins. The child was christened "Captivity" by Chaplain Norton. Mother and child bore the journey well, but both died the following spring. The French arrived at Crown Point on the 27th, and after a short stay reached Quebec September 16. Great mortality prevailed among the prisoners there, brought from various quarters. Four of the soldiers, and all of the women and children from Fort Massachusetts died in captivity.

The French account of the expedition is that it left Montreal the third of August, under Monsieur de Rigaud de Vaudreuil. Besides the regular officers, there were four hundred colonists and three hundred Indians. They attacked a fort on a branch of the Hoosac, which had a garrison of twenty-two men with three women and five children, and after a fight of twenty-six hours with small loss, the garrison surrendered. The fort was burned on the same day.

The General Court of Massachusetts ordered the fort to be rebuilt, and it was completed in June, 1747. In the following year a large force of the enemy placed themselves in ambush near it, but they were driven. off by a strong party from the fort with small loss on both sides. The treaty of peace in 1849 closed hostilities in this region.

As the traveller of to-day is hurried luxuriously through this historic valley he will notice, when about half way between North Adams and Williamstown, looking to the south, an extensive verdant meadow the borders of which are fringed by noble trees which mark the windings of the Hoosac river. In the background the forest-clad ridges of Saddleback mountain rise boldly, and to the north is the craggy eminence from which the chaplain says, "the enemy could shoot over into the middle of the parade." The site of the old fort is marked by a solitary elm.

Pierre Francois Rigaud de Vaudreuil was the brother of the last French governor of Canada. He was successively lieutenant-governor of Quebec, governor of Three Rivers and Montreal, and was reputed a brave soldier, plain, affable and beneficent.

DD Sende

VINDICATION OF GENERAL SAMUEL HOLDEN PARSONS

Editor of Magazine of American History:

My attention has recently been drawn to that portion of the "Secret Intelligence Papers of Sir Henry Clinton" which relates to the correspondence of W. Heron in reference to General Parsons, published in the Magazine of American History, 1883-1884.* This record, as it appears, involves General Parsons in a charge of treasonable correspondence with Sir Henry Clinton while in command of American forces during the War of the Revolution. Will you allow me to present my views of this matter, and the facts I have ascertained, which I do with the conviction that I can remove from the fame which General Parsons has so long enjoyed in American history every shadow which the lately discovered correspondence has cast over it.

General Parsons, as is well known, was the son of Rev. Jonathan Parsons, a strong-minded and influential New England clergyman, who was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1705, and was graduated at Yale in 1729. He was pastor of the church in Lyme, Connecticut, from 1731 to 1745, where he married the sister of Governor Matthew Griswold, a lineal descendant of Henry Wolcott, the ancestor of the eminent Wolcott family, in Connecticut; but, having become a friend and follower of Whitfield, he removed to Newburyport, and gave the great preacher a home in his declining years. Samuel Holden Parsons, born in Lyme, in 1737, inherited the strong intellectual and moral qualities of both his parents, was graduated from Harvard in 1756, studied law with his uncle, Governor Matthew Griswold, was admitted to the bar in 1759, and settled as a lawyer in Lyme. He entered at once upon important civil service, was in the state legislature eighteen sessions, was an influential member engaged in supporting many measures of interest to the commonwealth, and in adjusting difficulties with the adjoining states. He originated the plan of forming the first Congress which prepared the way for organizing the Continental Congress. In 1773 he removed to New London, and was a member of the revolutionary committee of correspondence. During these years of active civil life he had turned his attention somewhat to military affairs, and "on 26th April, 1775, was appointed colonel of the Sixth Regiment,

*Beginning with October issue, 1883, Vol. IX., page 327.

stationed at Roxbury, Massachusetts, until the British evacuated Boston, and was then ordered to New York."

Having obtained from Benedict Arnold an account of the condition of Ticonderoga, he projected the plan for the capture of that fort, and without consulting the civil authorities of Connecticut, obtained money from her treasury to defray the expenses of the expedition on his own receipt, called Ethan Allen with New Hampshire recruits to his aid, was strength. ened by volunteers from Berkshire, Massachusetts, and actually captured the fortress. He participated in the battle of Long Island in 1776, was made a brigadier-general for gallant service, served at Harlem Heights and White Plains, and was stationed at Peekskill to protect the important posts on the North River. "He planned the expedition to Sag Harbor and reinforced Washington in New Jersey." He commanded the troops in the Highlands in 1778-79, when General Rufus Putnam constructed the fortifications at West Point. He prevented the incursion of the British into Connecticut; was one of the board that tried Major John André; was commissioned as major-general in 1780; succeeded General Israel Putnam, and served until the close of the war. During all this period he commanded the entire confidence of Washington, was in constant correspondence with him, and co-operated with all his military operations in and around New York.

Colonel Humphreys, the scholar and poet of the American army, the brave soldier, the favorite and confidential friend of Washington, in his poem on The Happiness of America, says of Parsons:

"I too

Shall tell from whom I learnt the martial art,
With what high chiefs I played my early part,

With Parsons first, whose eye, with piercing ken,
Reads through their hearts, the characters of men."

At the close of the war General Parsons resumed the practice of law at Middletown, Connecticut; was appointed by Congress a commissioner to treat with the Miami Indians in 1785; was an active member of the state constitutional convention in 1788, and the same year was appointed by Washington the first judge of the Northwest Territory. He was an active and efficient member of the Ohio company, and joined Rev. Manassah Cutler and Rufus Putnam in organizing the settlement at Marietta. For all this long life of civil and military service he was deemed worthy of an elaborate sketch in "Hildreth's Pioneers of Ohio;" was counted among the wise leaders of the colony in the oration which I delivered at Marietta

on the ninety-fifth anniversary of the settlement of Ohio, as “a son of a most learned and pious minister of Massachusetts, the sagacious companion of Washington, one of the first and ablest of this state of his adoption ;" and he was eulogized by the Hon. George P. Hoar in his Centennial oration at the same place the present year, who spoke of him as "soldier, scholar, judge, one of the strongest arms on which Washington leaned, who first suggested the Continental Congress, from the story of whose life could almost be written the history of the northern war."

Of this American soldier, jurist and statesman, who has been considered worthy of such honorable record for nearly a century, the Cyclopædia of American Biography, lately issued, says, quoting from the "Secret Intelligence" published in your magazine as before-mentioned: "It has recently been discovered in a letter that is preserved in the manuscript volume of Sir Henry Clinton's original record of daily intelligence, now in the library of Dr. Thomas Addis Emmet of New York city, that Gen. Parsons was in secret communication with Sir Henry Clinton, and that one William Heron, a representative from Fairfield in the Connecticut legislature, was the intermediary to whom Parsons wrote letters, which with the knowledge of their author were sent to the enemy's headquarters. Under date of 8th July, 1781, he wrote: The five regiments of our states are more than 1,200 men deficient of their complement, the other states (except Rhode Island and New York who are fuller) are nearly in the same condition. Our magazines are few in number. Your fears for them are groundless. They are principally at West Point, Fishkill, Wapping Creek and Newburg, which puts them out of the enemy's power, except they attempt their destruction by a force sufficient to secure the Highlands, which they cannot do, our guards being sufficient to secure them from small parties. The French troops encamped yesterday on our left, near the Tuckeyhoe road. Their number I have not had an opportunity to ascertain. Other matters of information I shall be able to give you in a few days.' This letter was sent by Heron to Major Oliver De Lancey, to whom Heron wrote that he had concerted measures with Parsons by which he would receive every material article of intelligence from the American Parsons's treason is also corroborated by Revolutionary papers of

Major John Kissam of the British army."

And Winsor, in his Narrative and Critical History of the United States, speaks of Parsons in a footnote as "A Spy for the British army." The letter to Heron upon which the charge of treason against General Parsons is made to hang, is the conclusion of a long list of letters written by Heron to Sir Henry Clinton, and is capable of two interpretations.

Had it been

written to Washington it would have been received as a friendly communication stating the weakness of both sides, the American and the English -and of no great value as an account of either. On its very face it bears this interpretation. But Heron, after repeated promises that he could enlist Gen. Parsons in the British cause against his own country, offers this letter to the enemy as a contribution of Parsons to the British commander, written as to a "confidential friend" in order to disguise its purpose. Heron had promised for six months to enlist Parsons as an English ally, and his promise had not been fulfilled, and so, on July 15, 1781, he wrote to Major De Lancey announcing that "our friend" (Parsons) was ready to convey all intelligence in accordance with a conversation between himself (Heron) and De Lancey in form of "queries and answers," April 25th, and states that Parsons would write to a confidential friend" who could use the information as he pleased. The queries were: 1. The state of the army. 2. The state of the French. 3. How each army is situated. 4. What enterprises they mean to undertake. 5. What supplies, and whence do they expect to subsist. 6. Where the magazines and how to be destroyed. 7. The movement of the French fleet and their intentions. 8. News from the southward of consequence. 9. Situation of the different posts. 10. News from Europe. 11. The hopes of the ensuing campaign. All of which Heron answers with great caution. And in order to prove Parsons's fidelity Heron announced his (Parsons's) desire to obtain a place for his son in the British navy. Heron says also, that he (Heron) came under the sanction of a commission from Governor Trumbull to cruise in the Sound, and that he entered upon the expedition "purely to draw in our friend," who was not drawn in after six months of Heron's efforts and written promises to Clinton. In this letter Heron inclosed Parsons's letter of July 8th to himself, which the Cyclopædia publishes as proof of Parsons's disloyalty!

The letter from Lieutenant-Colonel De Wunub to Major Kissam, April 23, 1781, also referred to in the Cyclopædia, is as follows: "Sir: I enclose a passport for Mr. Heron and should wish for his return to Stamford whenever the wind will permit it. I have not yct received answer from New York, but as soon as those things wanted by General Parsons shall arrive I will forward them to the General by another flag. I have the honor to be &c DE WUNUB."

We are not informed what " those things" were, nor is there any further reference to them. The correspondence between Heron and Sir Henry Clinton and Oliver De Lancey, which ended with the letter of Heron,

VOL. XX.-No. 4.-20