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ABSTRACT
Near the end of the Quasi-War in 1800, Jean-Pierre Boyer, future president of Haiti, was brought to New London, Connecticut with other partisans from the pro-French forces in St. Domingue. Boyer along with others were held in nearby Norwich until April 1801. A Freemason, Boyer was welcomed by Masons in Norwich while plundered by other Masons on the cruiser and in New London. In 1800, internal contention roiling Masonry in New London County readily overlapped with local political partisanry and religious controversy – all of which likewise engaged broader regional and national conflicts. The insertion of a black French partisan initiated into a foreign Masonic order enriched the presence of the Atlantic in all these contests. This essay explores how Boyer and Freemasonry helped to highlight the complex web of local, national, and Atlantic interpenetrating the political and social life of New London County.
Acknowledgements
The author acknowledges the invaluable comments and critiques of Jessica Harland-Jacobs, Jan C. Jansen, and Elizabeth Mancke. Jessica commented trenchantly on a much lengthier and very different version of this essay, which led to me writing the current essay. Both Elizabeth and Jessica pointed me to models to help situate the locality of New London County more decisively in the Atlantic while Jan helped me to contextualize the interpenetrations of St. Domingue and French Masonry with that of the United States. I am the beneficiary of extraordinary critiques from the two anonymous readers of my essay and cannot thank them enough for their time and insight. Mark Tabbert afforded yet again sage observations on the remarkable complexities of American Freemasonry after the Revolution.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Peter Hinks has worked extensively in public history and historical editing. He is the author of To Awaken My Afflicted Brethren: David Walker and the Problem of Antebellum Slave Resistance (1997) and, with Stephen Kantrowitz, the editor of the collection of essays in All Men Free and Brethren: Essays on the History of African American Freemasonry (2013). His research and writing are now focused on southeastern Connecticut, especially for the late eighteenth century.
Notes
1. For all records obtained and generated by the District Court in Hartford and its officials in New London, see the records for “U.S. v. Schooner Vengeance, 1800 Oct, Admiralty.” National Archives at Boston, Waltham, MA, Records of the District Courts of the United States (Record Group 21), U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut, Case Files, 1790–1915 (Identifier 2240989). Save for a few other newspaper references, the contemporary sources in footnotes 1–5 are all the sources the author identified after an extensive search for sources regarding the presence of Boyer and the other prisoners in New London County.
2. See designation of his office in note by the physician who treated his “Infirmities” in Tracy, P[hilemon], Physn, 26 February 1801. Connecticut Historical Society (hereafter CHS), Documents related to prisoners from Haiti, 1800–1801; see also Caulkins, History of Norwich, 428, 515, 526.
3. Caulkins, History of Norwich, 526; Baur, “Mulatto Machiavelli,” 307–309; Kihn, “French San Domingo Prisoners,” 47–63.
4. Perkins, Old Houses of Norwich, 94; Caulkins, History of Norwich, 519–520; New York Commercial Advertiser, 4 November 1800, as cited in Naval Documents, Vol. 6, 423.
5. Norwich Courier, 3 December 1800.
6. Armitage, “Three Concepts of Atlantic History,” 23–28.
7. Sidbury, “Saint Domingue in Virginia,” 535.
8. White, Encountering Revolution, 6–9, quote on 7. See also Dun, Dangerous Neighbors; Rugemer, The Problem of Emancipation, 42–44; Scott, “The Common Wind”; Jansen, “Brothers in Exile,” esp. 10–16, 21, 23–25.
9. For the early history of Connecticut’s Grand Lodge, see Storer, Records of Freemasonry, 95–141; Lipson, Freemasonry, 62–72.
10. Harland-Jacobs, Builders of Empire, 127.
11. Ibid., 99–129.
12. Lipson, Freemasonry, 79.
13. Wheeler, The Centennial, 89; Lipson, Freemasonry, 80–81; Storer, Records of Freemasonry, 127–129.
14. Lipson, Freemasonry, 104–109.
15. Impartial Herald (Suffield, CT), 1 January 1799.
16. Stauffer, Bavarian Illuminati, esp. chapter 4; Lipson, Freemasonry, 97–104; Bullock, Revolutionary Brotherhood, 172–175; Brooke, “Ancient Lodges,” 319–322, 325–326.
17. A Hint to Freemasons, 3, 8–9, 12; Lipson, Freemasonry, 90–97, 104, 342.
18. Brooke, “Ancient Lodges,” 325–326, 354, 358.
19. See esp. Bullock, Revolutionary Brotherhood, and Tabbert, American Freemasons; A Hint to Freemasons, 4.
20. See Carter, Centennial History of Somerset Lodge.; Di Bonaventura, For Adam’s Sake, admirably reveals the vigor of religious opposition in New London since the late seventeenth century and the earliest days of the Rogerenes. Loucks, “Let the Oppressed Go Free” explores religious and political opposition in Norwich and eastern Connecticut for the revolutionary era; see also Caulkins, History of Norwich, 365–426; Grossbart, “The Revolutionary Transition,” explores the post-1783 context. See also generally Purcell, Connecticut in Transition. For specific information on the affiliations and degrees of the Connecticut Masons mentioned in this paragraph see “Historical Biographical Master Card Files of All Connecticut Masons.” Connecticut Grand Lodge, Wallingford, CT.
21. Case, Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite, 18 (Through the generosity of Brothers Richard Allen and Leslie King of Somerset-St. James Lodge no. 34 in Preston, I was privileged on 2 September 2016 to examine the minute books of Somerset for the late 1790s. Unfortunately, minutes for the relevant time period appear to no longer exist.) Stauffer, Bavarian Illuminati, 292–293.
22. Pasley, “The Tyranny of Printers,” 132–147.
23. Jansen, “Brothers in Exile,” 14–19, 21; Childs, French Refugee Life, 105–108; McClellan, Colonialism and Science, 184–8; Stauffer, Bavarian Illuminati, 291–321, esp. 319–321; Upton, Negro Masonry, 74–75; Fox, Lodge of the Double-Headed Eagle, 3–29, esp. 27–28; Baynard, Scottish Rite Freemasonry, Vol. 1, 80–83.
24. Regarding the role of Huntington, see Stauffer, Bavarian Illuminati, 319, note 1; Lipson, Freemasonry, 102; Grossbart, “Revolutionary Transition,” 264; Norwich Courier, 16 July 1800. See Bee, 24 September 1800, for Dwight et al. as “our modern Illuminati.” See also Bee, 17 September 1800, for “the pretended friends […] to order and good government […] retailing stories of Illuminati […] [in order to alarm] the public with horrible ideas of the principles and designs of their opponents, the republican citizens.” John L. Brooke notes these assertions elsewhere in the US: “Ancient Lodges,” 358. See the thorough review of Republicans’ counter-charges against Morse, Federalists, and the Congregational elite as the true Illuminati in Stauffer, Bavarian Illuminati, 345–360. On the very relevant controversy of the Illuminati in England at the same time, see Harland-Jacobs, Builders of Empire, 137–143.
25. Lipson, Freemasonry, 63.
26. Norwich Courier, 16 July 1800.
27. A more precise term to use for their orientation might be “anti-episcopacy”. Lipson also overstates the degree to which Connecticut Freemasonry “was inherently antithetical to Connecticut Congregationalism” and “an expression of dissent from Connecticut’s cultural traditions.” Lipson, Freemasonry, 63–64, 78–79. Connecticut Freemasonry in the late eighteenth century included numerous elite Congregationalists and Federalists. Bullock finds Freemasonry in late eighteenth-century America as much more compatible with Christianity, especially Protestantism: Bullock, Revolutionary Brotherhood, 163–183.
28. Goen, Revivalism and Separatism, 68–93, 258–275, 288–295. See also McLoughlin, New England Dissent, and Bushman, From Puritan to Yankee.
29. Sterry and Sterry, The American Youth, iv–vii. In the same work, the Sterrys identified Newton’s development of “Fluxions,” or the calculus as “his almost divine invention”: Ibid., vi. See also Sterry and Sterry, Complete Exercise Book in Arithmetic. For Consider Sterry and navigational schools, see Norwich Packet, 31 July 1798, and Norwich Courier, 1 May 1799; Perkins, Old Houses of Norwich, 120–121.
30. The Times, 10 January 1821.
31. Harvey, History of Lodge no. 61, 189; Case, History of the Ancient Rite, 18; Garrigus, “Secret Brotherhood”; The Times, 28 November 1820; 10 January 1821. See also Poulson’s American Daily Advertiser (Philadelphia), 1 December 1820, and Weekly Aurora, 4 December 1820.
32. Naval Documents, Vol. 7, 72. On 7 February 1801, Murray wrote to Joshua Huntington, Justice of the Peace of Norwich, that “[i]t is not in my power to return the Commissions or private papers belonging to the officers, as they have never been in my possession.” CHS, Documents related to prisoners from Haiti, 1800–1801.
33. Naval Documents, Vol. 7, 72. See Stoddert’s concern regarding Jewett’s depositing of them in New London “contrary to my instructions”: Naval Documents, Vol. 7, 76. Phyllis Kihn incorrectly assumes that Jewett stopped as ordered at Norfolk and Washington, DC: Kihn, “French San Domingo Prisoners,” 55. Jewett may have failed to leave them in the Chesapeake and report to Stoddert because he sought a better prize determination in Connecticut. Stoddert even suspected Jewett of embezzlement: Naval Documents, Vol. 7, 72.
34. Bullock, Revolutionary Brotherhood, 128–129. For further examples of such returns to combatants during the American Revolution and for fraternity shared between French and English Masons, see Harland-Jacobs, Builders of Empire, 84–88; Upton, Negro Masonry, 128–130, 218.
35. Bullock, Revolutionary Brotherhood, 191–198.
36. A Hint to Freemasons, 3, 4, 7.
37. Bullock, Revolutionary Brotherhood, 104–106; Hinks, “John Marrant,” 111–112. See also Wood, Radicalism of the American Revolution, 213–225, esp. 222–225.
38. Johnson, Diplomacy in Black and White, 117.
39. Norwich Packet, 23 September 1800.
40. Naval Documents, vol. 6, 273–274; Caulkins, History of Norwich, 526. See CHS list for complete accounting of occupants of Vengeance. See also Naval Documents, Vol. 6, 300–1. Impartial Journal (Stonington), 30 September 1800.
41. Fox, Lodge of the Double-Headed Eagle, 23.
42. Case, History of the Ancient Rite, 17–21. See also Tabbert, American Freemasons, 28–32, 51–54, 193–197; Baynard, Scottish Rite Freemasonry, Vol. 1, 25–153; Burgess et al., A Sublime Brotherhood, 1–3, 75–84; Fox, Lodge of the Double-Headed Eagle; Newbury and Williams, A History of the Supreme Council, 35–73; Perkins, Old Houses of Norwich, 94; Caulkins, History of Norwich, 519–520.
43. Case, Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite, 17–19.
44. Tabbert, American Freemasons, 54.
45. See “Historical Biographical Master Card Files of All Connecticut Masons.” Connecticut Grand Lodge; Proceedings of the General Grand Chapter of Royal Arch Masons, 5–28; see also McNulty, Freemasonry, 179–199; Tabbert, American Freemasons, 93–97.
46. See “Historical Biographical Master Card Files of All Connecticut Masons.” Connecticut Grand Lodge; Sturdy, History of the Grand Commandery of Knights Templar, 107–113; Proceedings of the Grand Commandery of Knights Templars, v–viii, 4–9.
47. Bullock, Revolutionary Brotherhood, 239–273, esp. 253–263; Tabbert, American Freemasons, 29–32, 93–97; Ridley, The Freemasons, 23–28; A Hint to Freemasons, 4. John L. Brooke also asserts, but without any further substantiation, that Royal Arch Masonry was spreading on the seaboard in the 1790s in part “through the French lodges established by Haitian exiles.” Brooke, “Ancient Lodges,” 326, note 93, 350–351.
48. Bell, An Oration Delivered at Amherst, 8.
49. Fick, The Making of Haiti, 161, 185, and Dubois, Avengers of the New World, 173–176, 231–236.
50. Garrigus, Before Haiti, 267, 291–296, and Garrigus, “Secret Brotherhood.” Also Jansen, “Brothers in Exile,” 22–23.
51. Révauger, Black Freemasonry; de Cauna, “Autour de la Thèse du Complot,” 310–314; de Cauna, “Étienne de Polverel,” 170; Stein, Léger-Félicité Sonthonax.
52. Hinks, “To Commence a New Era.”
53. For example, see Hinks, ibid., 42–44, and Winch, “A Late Thing,” 81–83.
54. See for example Melish, Disowning Slavery; Sweet, Bodies Politic; and, more generally, Takaki, Iron Cages.
55. See Jansen’s excellent summary of this key characteristic, “Brothers in Exile,” 11–13.
56. See especially Bullock, Revolutionary Brotherhood, 239–273.