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Henry Dearborn - A superb and enlightening archive!
Henry Dearborn - A superb and enlightening archive!
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Dearborn Henry

Henry Dearborn - A superb and enlightening archive!

 

HENRY DEARBORN, Archive of letters, pamphlet, and earrings, 1814-1824. 3 letters, 9 pp. total, 8" x 10" to 8" x 13"; pamphlet, 28 pp., 5.75" x 9.5"; earrings, 1.25" x 1.75" each. Letters have expected folds and some tears along folds, staining and foxing. Some loss of text in one letter. Expert repair to separations at fold of letter date Sept 15, 1817. Pamphlet is bound with string and chipped on edges, not affecting text. Earrings are very good.

 

This interesting archive of materials relates to the later life of General Henry Dearborn, a veteran of both the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, the fifth Secretary of War of the United States from 1801 to 1809, and the Senior Officer of the United States Army from 1812 to 1815. This archive includes two letters to his son, a letter from his wife, and a pamphlet his son prepared to defend him against accusations from a fellow officer over whose court-martial Dearborn had presided a decade earlier. The collection also includes a pair of earrings made from the gold buttons of Dearborn’s waistcoat. The second letter to his son is particularly fascinating, as it is written from Washington in the midst of the contested 1824 presidential election.

 

 

Excerpts:

 

Henry Dearborn to his son Henry A. S. Dearborn, Autograph Letter Signed, February 1, 1814, Greenbush, New York:

“I herewith enclose to you three blank notes for from two to three thousand dollars. I hope they will arrive in [?].”

Henry A. S. Dearborn (1783-1851) was Henry Dearborn’s son by his second wife. The younger Dearborn attended Williams College for two years and graduated from the College of William and Mary in 1803. He studied law and practiced in Massachusetts and Maine. In 1808, he oversaw the construction of forts for the defense of Portland, Maine, and during the War of 1812, he commanded volunteers defending Boston harbor. He succeeded his father as collector of the port of Boston and held that position from 1813 to 1829. He was the first president of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society and authored several books.

 

Sarah Bowdoin Dearborn to her husband Henry Dearborn, Autograph Letter Signed, September 15, 1817, Boston, Massachusetts:

“Yesterday we attended meeting in Brattle St both parts of the day  a young man by the Name of Walker preached. he is quite an ofhand man at prayer, has a good voice, and his tongue does not appear to be too big for his mouth. I was not much pleased with his sermon in the morning, but was quite pleased with his afternoon sermon.”

“Your good daughter Dearborn has this minute come in. She, her husband, & children have been to Salem. I am happy to tell you that your son continues better.”

Sarah Bowdoin Dearborn (1761-1826) married her cousin James Bowdoin III in 1780, but they did not have any children. After his death in 1811, she married Henry Dearborn in 1813. Well ahead of her time, she created a prenuptial agreement that protected all property she brought into the marriage. She devoted much of her life to the relief of the poor and to missionary efforts. In 1803, she was a founding officer of the Boston Female Asylum.

 

Henry Dearborn to his son Henry A. S. Dearborn, Autograph Letter Signed, December 4, 1824, Washington, D.C.:

“We are very comfortably lodged in Pennsylvania Avenue near the Presidents House & the public offices. we have had lots of calls, and have been constantly employed in returning them, and at dinner & evening parties. a large proportion of the Members of Congress have arrived. I have got through the settlemt of my accounts and received a balance quite as large as I had contemplated. the Crawford party are considered as completely prostrated, beyond any chance of recovery. I left my card at his house, and at the houses of the other heads of Departments, & foreign Ministers. they have all returned my call except Mr Crawford. I have several times met the other heads of Departments but have not had the honor of seeing Mr Crawford.”

“no appointment of Collector for Salem has yet been made. I have told the President that from what I had heard, I presumed that the appointment of Genl Miller would give more general satisfaction in Salem than either of the other candidates. I think you said that you presumed the appointment of Miller would be generally approved at Salem. if you could with propriety write to that effect to the President in confidence, it would probably have an effect on the appointment, and also in relation to poor Grafton, who has an increasing family and has much more positive merit than either of the other candidates. they are good men negatively but have personally but little claim on the score of active service either political or otherwise.”

“Virginia ha? [missing] her votes for Crawford and Macon.”

Dearborn writes to his son in the midst of the contested election of 1824. When President James Monroe declined to seek a third term, the Democratic-Republican Party broke into factions. Monroe’s Secretary of State John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts, Monroe’s Secretary of the Treasury William H. Crawford of Georgia, House Speaker Henry Clay of Kentucky, and Senator Andrew Jackson of Tennessee all pursued the Presidency. The Congressional caucus overwhelmingly nominated William H. Crawford for president and Albert Gallatin for vice-president. Gallatin later withdrew, and Nathaniel Macon of North Carolina replaced him.

In popular voting between October 26 and December 2, Andrew Jackson attracted 41 percent of the vote and 99 electoral votes, mostly in the South and West but also in the middle-Atlantic states. John Quincy Adams won 31 percent of the popular vote and 84 electoral votes, mostly from New England and New York. Henry Clay attracted 13 percent of the popular vote and 37 electoral votes from Ohio, Kentucky, Missouri, and a few from New York. William H. Crawford garnered a little over 11 percent of the popular vote and won the electoral votes of Georgia, Virginia, Delaware, and a few from New York and Maryland.

Since no candidate received a majority, the U.S. House of Representatives had to select among the top three candidates in the electoral vote: Jackson, Adams, and Crawford. When Henry Clay threw his support to Adams, the House selected Adams as the winner by a state vote of 13 for Adams, 7 for Jackson, and 4 for Crawford, on February 9, 1825. When Clay became Adams’s Secretary of State, Andrew Jackson accused them of striking a “corrupt bargain.”

Though Crawford’s chances for the Presidency were, as Dearborn wrote, “completely prostrated,” he did have an opportunity to remain in federal service. Crawford declined incoming President Adams’s offer to remain as Secretary of the Treasury and returned to Georgia at the end of his term in March 1825. There, he was appointed a state superior court judge and held that position until his death a decade later.

 

Henry A. S. Dearborn, Defence of Gen. Henry Dearborn against the Attack of Gen. William Hull. Boston: Edgar W. Davies, 1824.

 

“General William Hull, late of the army, having made an appeal ‘to the People of the United States,’ in which he has attempted to exonerate himself from blame, by attributing his unfortunate surrender of the army at Detroit to my father, it becomes my duty, in his absence, to present a statement of facts, which will show, that the causes of the disasters of the North Western Army were those, which induced a court martial to sentence the commander ‘to be shot to death,’ and that there is not the shadow of a reason to warrant him in attributing his unconditional surrender of an entire army and territory, to the conduct of General Dearborn.” (p3)

            “To the clemency of the members of this court, which he has so much abused, is Gen. Hull indebted for his life, as it is probable he would have suffered the just sentence of death, had they not ‘earnestly recommended him to the mercy of the President of the United States.’

            “He has introduced the surrender of Burgoyne, General Lincoln, Lord Cornwallis and Washington as parallel to his at Detroit. What monstrous presumption, and horrible profanation! Those officers fought battle after battle, and were overwhelmed, after gallantly disputing every inch of ground with the enemy.

            “As to the mean and contemptible vituperation, in relation to General Dearborn, it is sufficient to say that it is the wanton act of a desperate man, who has no character to lose,—of General Hull.

            “This has been the most painful act of my life. I should never have exposed the character of General Hull, had it not been my duty as a Son, during the absence of a much injured Father.” (p28)

 

In 1805, President Thomas Jefferson appointed William Hull (1753-1825) as governor of the Michigan Territory, where Hull worked to purchase land from Native Americans for European-American settlement. During the War of 1812, Hull served as commander of the Army of the Northwest, headquartered at Detroit. While urged to invade Canada, he had requested the construction of a naval fleet on Lake Erie to defend Detroit, Fort Mackinac, and Fort Dearborn, but his requests were ignored. He began an invasion of Canada in mid-July 1812, but quickly withdrew when he learned that the British had captured Fort Mackinac. One month later, on August 16, 1812, against the advice of his subordinates, Hull surrendered Fort Detroit to the British without mounting a serious defense. General Henry Dearborn presided over the March 1814 court-martial trial of Hull, at which subordinates Lewis Cass and Robert Lucas blamed Hull for the surrender. Cass went on to succeed Hull as governor of the Michigan Territory, while Lucas later became governor of Ohio and territorial governor of Iowa. Convicted of cowardice and neglect of duty, Hull was sentenced to be shot but the court recommended mercy, and Hull received a reprieve from President James Madison.

Hull published two books, Defence of Brigadier General W. Hull (Boston: Wells and Lilly, 1814) and Memoirs of the Campaign of the North Western Army of the United States, A.D. 1812 (Boston: True & Greene, 1824) to vindicate himself. The latter publication eventually took the form of thirty-eight letters to the public, the last four of which were written in response to Dearborn’s booklet published serially in the American Statesman and City Register (Boston, Massachusetts) in 1824.

When Hull published his Memoirs, Henry Dearborn was serving as minister plenipotentiary to Portugal.

 

Pair of Earrings in a J. E. Caldwell & Co. / Philadelphia velvet box, 4" x 3.25"

Attached note: “This earing was made from 2 gold waiscoat buttons of Genl Henry Dearborn.”

 

 

 

Henry Dearborn (1751-1829) was born in New Hampshire and studied medicine with a doctor in Portsmouth before opening his own practice in Nottingham, New Hampshire in 1772. In 1775, he fought at the Battle of Bunker Hill as a captain in the 1st New Hampshire Infantry. He was captured during the Battle of Quebec at the end of 1775 and was released on parole in May 1776 but not exchanged until March 1777. He fought at Ticonderoga and in the Saratoga campaign. He joined General George Washington’s main army at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, as a lieutenant colonel. Dearborn joined Washington’s staff in 1781 as deputy quartermaster general and commanded the 1st New Hampshire at the Battle of Yorktown with the rank of colonel. He was discharged from the Continental Army in June 1783 and settled in Maine. He served in the U.S. House of Representatives as a Democratic-Republican from the District of Maine (then part of Massachusetts) from 1793 to 1797. In 1801, President Thomas Jefferson appointed him Dearborn as Secretary of War, a post he held until March 1809. President James Madison appointed him as collector of the port of Boston, a position Dearborn held from March 1809 to January 1812, when he became the Commanding General of the U.S. Army. After mediocre service in the War on the northern frontier with Canada, Dearborn was discharged from the army in June 1815. In 1818, Dearborn ran for Governor of Massachusetts, but his article criticizing Israel Putnam’s performance at the Battle of Bunker Hill sparked a long-lasting controversy that harmed his campaign in a largely Federalist state. The Senate rejected Madison’s nomination of Dearborn for Secretary of War, and Dearborn served as minister to Portugal from May 1822 to June 1824. He then retired to his home in Massachusetts. Dearborn married three times—to Mary Bartlett in 1771, to Dorcas Marble in 1780, and to Sarah Bowdoin, widow of James Bowdoin, in 1813.

 

 

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