Henry Dearborn
Henry Dearborn was an American military officer and politician. In the Revolutionary War, he served under Benedict Arnold in his expedition to Quebec, of which his journal provides an important record. After being captured and exchanged, he served in George Washington's Continental Army. He was present at the British surrender at Yorktown. Dearborn served on General George Washington's staff in Virginia.
He served as Secretary of War under President Thomas Jefferson, from 1801 to 1809, and served as a commanding general in the War of 1812. In later life, his criticism of General Israel Putnam's performance at the Battle of Bunker Hill caused a major controversy. Fort Dearborn and Dearborn Park in Illinois, Dearborn County, Indiana, and Dearborn, Michigan, were named in his honor.
Early life
Henry Dearborn was born February 23, 1751, to Simon Dearborn and Sarah Marston in North Hampton in the Province of New Hampshire. He was descended from Godfrey Dearborn, from Exeter in England, who came to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1639. Godfrey Dearborn settled first at Exeter, New Hampshire, and soon after at Hampton, where four successive generations of his descendants lived. Henry spent much of his youth in Epping, where he attended public schools. He grew up as an athletic boy, notably strong and a champion wrestler. He studied medicine under Dr. Hall Jackson of Portsmouth and opened a practice on the square in Nottingham, New Hampshire, in 1772.Dearborn was married three times: to Mary Bartlett in 1771, to Dorcas Marble in 1780, and to Sarah Bowdoin, widow of James Bowdoin, in 1813. Henry Alexander Scammell Dearborn was his son by his second wife.
Revolutionary War service
When fighting in the American Revolutionary War began, Dearborn fought with the Continental Army as a captain in the 1st and 3rd New Hampshire Regiments; he soon rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel. He was appointed Deputy Quartermaster General in July 1781 and served on George Washington's staff while in Virginia. At age twenty-three, he organized and led a local militia troop of sixty men to the Boston area, where he fought on June 17, 1775, at the Battle of Bunker Hill as a captain in Colonel John Stark's 1st New Hampshire Regiment. During the battle, Dearborn observed that "Not an officer or soldier of the continental troops engaged was in uniform, but were in the plain and ordinary dress of citizens; nor was there an officer on horseback." Dearborn years later would accuse Israel Putnam of failing his duty during that battle, resulting in what has since been known as the Dearborn-Putnam controversy.Dearborn volunteered to serve under Colonel Benedict Arnold in September 1775, during the difficult American expedition to Quebec. Later Dearborn would record in his Revolutionary War journal their overall situation and condition: "We were small indeed to think of entering a place like Quebec. But being now almost out of provisions we were sure to die if we attempted to return back and we could be in no worse situation if we proceeded on our rout."
On the final leg of the march, Dearborn was taken seriously ill with fever, forcing him to remain behind in a cottage on the Chaudière River. Later he rejoined the combined forces of Arnold and Gen. Richard Montgomery in time to take part in the assault on Quebec. Dearborn's journal is an important record for that campaign. During the march he and Aaron Burr became companions. Along with a number of other officers, Dearborn was captured on December 31, 1775, during the Battle of Quebec, and detained for a year. He was released on parole in May 1776, but he was not exchanged until March 1777.
After fighting at Ticonderoga in July 1777, Dearborn was appointed major in the regiment commanded by Alexander Scammell.
In September 1777, he took part in the Saratoga campaign against Burgoyne at Freeman's Farm. The first battle was largely fought by troops from New Hampshire, Dearborn's home state. The New Hampshire brigade under General Poor and a detachment of infantry under Major Dearborn, numbering about three hundred, along with detachments of other militia, and Whitcomb's Rangers, co-operated with Morgan in the repulse of Fraser's attack. The cautious General Horatio Gates reluctantly ordered a reconnaissance force consisting of Daniel Morgan's Provisional Rifle Corps and Dearborn's light infantry to scout out the Bemis Heights area. Gates later noted Dearborn's marked ability as a soldier and officer in his report. Thereafter Dearborn joined General George Washington's main Continental Army at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, as a lieutenant colonel, where he spent the winter of 1777–1778.
Dearborn fought at the Battle of Monmouth in New Jersey in 1778, following the British evacuation of Philadelphia to retreat to concentrate at New York City, in the final major battle of the Northern Theatre, and in the summer of 1779 he accompanied Major General John Sullivan on the Sullivan Expedition against the Iroquois in upstate New York and in the Battle of Newtown against the Six Nations, thereafter laying waste to the Genesee Valley and the various regions around the Finger Lakes.
During the winter of 1778–1779, he was encamped at what is now Putnam Memorial State Park in Redding, Connecticut. Dearborn rejoined General Washington's staff in 1781 as deputy quartermaster general and commanded the 1st New Hampshire at the siege of Yorktown with the rank of colonel and was present when Cornwallis surrendered in October of that year.
In June 1783, Dearborn received his discharge from the Continental Army and settled in Gardiner, Maine, where he became Major General of the Maine militia. Washington appointed him marshal of the District of Maine. Dearborn served in the U.S. House of Representatives from the District of Maine, 1793 to 1797. He was an original member of the New Hampshire Society of the Cincinnati.
Revolutionary War journals
During the American Revolution Dearborn maintained six separate journals where he recorded the various campaigns, battles, and other notable events from his point of experience. His Revolutionary War journals of Henry Dearborn, 1775-1783, have provided historians of early American history with valuable first-hand information from the perspective of an officer who was engaged in the various battles and surrounding events. His journals were first published in 1939 by the Caxton Club of Chicago and were edited from the original manuscripts by historians Lloyd A. Brown and Howard Henry Peckham; the publication includes a biographical essay of Dearborn by Hermon D. Smith. The six journals are enumerated as follows:Dearborn also wrote An Account of the Battle of Bunker Hill. Various scholars have cited the short work as being culturally important and greatly contributing to the knowledge base of early American history.
Post-Revolution
Dearborn was commissioned as a brigadier general in the Massachusetts Militia in 1787 and was promoted to major general in 1789. The same year he was appointed as the first U.S. Marshal for the District of Maine under the new Constitution of 1787 by President Washington. He represented this district as a Democratic-Republican in the Third and Fourth Congresses from 1793 to 1797, when he lost re-election to Isaac Parker. Dearborn attempted to return to his former congressional seat in 1798 and 1800, losing both times to Silas Lee, who had succeeded Parker after one term.In 1801, third President Thomas Jefferson appointed Dearborn Secretary of War, a post he held for eight years until March 7, 1809. Dearborn advised Jefferson in matters of military personnel when Jefferson was formulating the Military Peace Establishment Act in 1800-01, which outlined a new set of laws and limits for the military and also led to the founding of a national military academy at West Point. In April 1801, Dearborn asked George Baron, an Englishman who was Dearborn's friend from Maine, to be the mathematics instructor at the academy. Dearborn also offered the superintendency of the school to Jonathan Williams, who had translated into English some European treatises on artillery and fortification.
During the 1801 and 1802 period, Dearborn and Jefferson corresponded frequently, discussing various political and military matters. Notable among them was Dearborn's report of May 12, 1801 on the War Department, and his recommendation for "designating the boundary line between the United States, and the adjacent British possessions, in such manner as may prevent any disputes in future..."
During his tenure, he helped Jefferson form a policy on Native Americans, the goal being to establish a western boundary by procuring lands along the Mississippi River.
In 1805, while events in the Burr conspiracy were beginning to unfold, Aaron Burr and Louisiana Territory governor James Wilkinson were allegedly planning war with Mexico, with the aim of establishing a secessionist state in the Southwest in the process. Hoping to incite war with Spain, Wilkinson in a letter to Secretary of War Dearborn urged him to attack Western Spanish Florida from Baton Rouge. Prompted by prevailing rumors of war, Dearborn ordered him to send three companies of troops to Fort Adams in Western Florida as a precaution. The prospect of war in turn was used by Wilkinson to justify sending an exploratory military expedition into the Southwest to find a route that would be used to supply a war effort at the U.S.-Spanish-Mexican border. In May, Dearborn ordered Wilkinson to the Orleans territory, directing his general to "repel any invasion of the United States east of the Sabine River or north or west of the bounds of what has been called West Florida..." Dearborn further maintained that any such movements across these borders would constitute "an actual invasion of our territorial rights". This was the opportunity both Burr and Wilkinson were hoping for, thinking that Spanish officials were on edge over the prospect of confrontation with the U.S. and could easily be provoked into war. When Wilkinson, however, had asked Dearborn to send an exploratory military expedition into the Southwest, Dearborn replied that, "you, Burr, etc., are becoming too intimate... keep every suspicious person at arm's length." At this time Dearborn also warned his top general that "your name has very frequently been mentioned with Burr's." Shortly thereafter Burr was arrested for treason.
Dearborn was appointed collector of the port of Boston by President James Madison in March 1809, a position he held until January 27, 1812, when he was appointed as the Commanding General of the United States Army.