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Appendix 2: The Polarized Legacy of General David Wooster
- University Press of New England
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Appendix 2 The Polarized Legacy of General David Wooster By almost any measure, David Wooster has been given short shrift in the American historical record. His biographical background and abbreviated Revolutionary War career have been examined in remarkably few works; more significant,the sparse sketches of Wooster’s life and military experience come almost exclusively from extreme perspectives: either those lauding his patriotism and zeal for his troops, or those portraying him as a doddering incompetent. The limited amount of treatment falling between those poles tends to be peripheral. In the pro-Wooster catalog,a number of hagiographic—and often derivative —nineteenth-century biographies are typified by Henry C.Deming’s “An Oration Upon the Life and Services of Gen. David Wooster”and Cornelius Moore’s Leaflets of Masonic Biography.1 These accounts proudly extol a Connecticut warrior, aristocratic yet popular with many of his troops, who was martyred early in the Revolutionary cause while countering the 1777 Danbury Raid in his home state. On the other side, two important historians of the Canadian campaign— Justin Smith and Kenneth Roberts—are among Wooster’s harshest critics,and their view seems to prevail among most modern historians.2 Roberts boldly asserted that Wooster “antagonized everyone with whom he came in contact,” and that “nobody, from Washington down, had anything good to say about Wooster during his stay in Canada”—both statements being incorrect,at least in their extreme scope. Roberts also impugned the general by claiming he “drank large amounts of flip [a popular Connecticut mixture of rum,pumpkin, beer, and brown sugar] each day, and was ‘countrified’ in his appearance and conduct.”3 There is only marginal support for these characterizations in sparse historical anecdotes, which referred to the general’s preferred beverage and his somewhat shocking willingness to fraternize with “common”men.4 Smith similarly portrays Wooster as “a bluff, hearty man of the people,” opining 360 Appendix 2 that the old Yankee “must have been a very effective general in the opinion of a hay-field. All the farmers within reach of his voice would have nodded approval.”5 With the little extant primary source material on Wooster, such views seem to be the historians’ projections of their own biases, rather than well-supported assessments of the historical individual. This work was not intended to rehabilitate Wooster’s historical reputation, but in research and writing, the author found that the general’s story was far more complex than the near-caricatures offered by earlier historians. Given the scant amount of surviving Wooster correspondence, and the polarized character of secondary accounts, this book’s picture of the general has been pieced together from a wide array of documentary sources,carefully weighed in a deliberate effort to accurately record General Wooster’s neglected role in the confused early days of the Continental Army and in many of the Canadian campaign’s most contentious moments. ...