Report of a Plan to Invite Foreign Officers in the British Service to Desert, 27 August 1776
Report of a Plan to Invite Foreign Officers in the British Service to Desert
Aug. 27. 1776.
The Congress proceeding to take into further consideration the expediency of inviting from the service of his Britannic majesty such foreigners as by the compulsive authority of their prince may have been engaged therein and sent hither for the purpose of waging war against these states, and expecting that the enlightened minds of the officers having command in those foreign corps will feel more sensibly the cogency of the principles urged in our resolution of the 14th. instant, principles which being derived from the unalterable laws of god and nature cannot be superseded by any human authority or engagement, and willing to tender to them also, as they had before done to the soldiery of their corps a participation of the blessings of peace, liberty, property and mild government, on their relinquishing the disgraceful office on which they have been sent hither Resolved that they will give to all such of the said foreign officers as shall leave the armies of his Britannic majesty in America and chuse to become citizens of these states, unappropriated lands in the following quantities and proportions to them and their heirs in absolute dominion. To a Colonel 1000 acres, to a Lieutenant Colonel 800 as. to a Major 600 as. to a Captain 400 as. to an Ensign 200 as. to every noncommissioned officer 100 as. and to every other officer [or] person employed in the said foreign corps and whose office or emploiment is here specifically named, lands in the like proportion to their rank or pay in the said corps: and moreover that where any officers shall bring with them a number of the said foreign soldiers, this Congress, besides the lands before promised to the said officers and soldiers, will give to such officers further rewards proportioned to the numbers they shall bring over and suited to the nature of their wants. Provided that such foreign officers or soldiers shall come over from the said service before these offers be recalled, [or within after ].1
Dft (DLC).
On 21 May 1776, on the receipt of copies of the treaties between his Britannic Majesty and the German princelings who had agreed to furnish mercenary troops for service in America, Congress appointed a committee “to extract and publish the treaties; … and to prepare an address to the foreign mercenaries who are coming to invade America” (, iv, 369). TJ was a member of this committee, but the Journals do not record any action on its part. (There is, however, in DLC: TJ Papers, 1: 146, a draft address in George Wythe’s hand probably drawn up at this time and for this purpose; it is printed in , iv, 708, note.) On 9 Aug. Congress appointed James Wilson, TJ, and Richard Stockton a committee “to devise a plan for encouraging the Hessians, and other foreigners, employed by the King of Great Britain … to quit that iniquitous service” (, iv, 640). The committee brought in a report, in the form of a stirring appeal to both the humane and selfish instincts of the hired troops, on 14 Aug.; this was spread on the Journals and is printed in , iv, 653–5, but since no MS survives, its authorship is not determinable. It was probably written by TJ. Franklin was at this time added to the committee, which was instructed to have the appeal translated into German and distributed within the enemy camp (which was on Staten Island). To facilitate their acceptance, Franklin had some of the printed handbills folded and tobacco placed inside them (Franklin to Thomas McKean, 24 Aug., Burnett, Letters of Members, ii, No. 90). The good effects of the handbills were noticed in the American camp at Amboy, and an officer wrote from there suggesting that a similar appeal be addressed to the German officers (Col. James Wilson to John Hancock, 22 Aug., Force, Archives, 5th ser., i, 1110). Congress thereupon (26 Aug.) appointed TJ, Franklin, and John Adams a committee to prepare such an appeal. TJ drafted the Report (the present document), which was agreed to by Congress next day (, iv, 707–8). In the TJ Papers, 2: 299, is a proposed preamble for this Report, in John Adams’ hand, which was rejected; it is printed in , iv, 655, note, but there wrongly associated with the resolutions of 14 Aug. Franklin, in a letter to Gen. Gates of the 28th (first printed in Force, Archives, 5th ser., i, 1193), sent copies of both kinds of handbill (i.e., for privates and for officers), but extensive search has yielded only a single surviving example of either, namely, a copy of the version intended for officers, now in the German State Archives at Marburg, seat of the former Landgraves of Hesse. A fuller account of this early instance of psychological warfare will appear in the Library Bulletin of the American Philosophical Society for 1949, by L. H. Butterfield.
1. Brackets in MS.