“Within that ‘war office,’ with its old-fashioned ‘hipped’ roof and central chimney-stack, he met his Council of Safety during almost the entire period of the war. Here he received commissaries and sub-commissaries, many in number, to devise and talk over the means of supply for our armies. From hence started, from time to time during the war, besides those teams to which we have just alluded, numerous other long trains of wagons, loaded with provisions for our forces at the East, the West, the North, and the South; and around this spot—from the fields and farmyards of agricultural Lebanon and its vicinity—was begun the collection of many a herd of fat cattle, that were driven even to the far North around Lake George and Lake Champlain, and to the far distant banks of the Delaware and the Schuylkill, as well as to neighboring Massachusetts and the banks of the Hudson.
“Here was the point of arrival and departure for numberless messengers and expresses that shot, in every direction, to and from the scenes of revolutionary strife. Narragansett ponies, of extraordinary fleetness and astonishing endurance—worthy such governmental post-riders as the tireless Jesse Brown, the ‘alert Samuel Hunt,’ and the ‘flying Fessenden,’ as the latter was called—stood hitched, we have heard, at the posts and palings around, or by the Governor’s house, or at the dwelling of his son-in-law Williams, ready, on any emergency of danger, to fly with advices, in any desired direction, on the wings of the wind. The marks of the spurs of the horsemen thus employed were but a few years back visible within the building—all along upon the sides of the counters upon which they sat, waiting to receive the Governor’s orders.
“So we find him during the period now under consideration (1775), executing in person the business of furnishing troops, and of procuring and forwarding supplies—now flour, particularly from Norwich; now, from various quarters, beef and pork; now blankets; now arms; but especially, at all times, whenever and wherever he could procure it, powder, the manufacture of which vital commodity he stimulated through committees appointed to collect saltpeter in every part of the State. ‘The necessities of the army are so great’ for this article, wrote Washington to him almost constantly at this time, ‘that all that can be spared should be forwarded with the utmost expedition.’—‘Soon as your expected supply of powder arrives,’ wrote his son-in-law, Colonel Huntington, from Cambridge, August 14th, ‘I imagine General Putnam will kick up a dust. He has got one floating battery launched, and another on the stocks.’ The powder was sent—at one time six large wagon-loads, and at the same time two more for New York, on account of an expected attack in that direction. ‘Our medicine-chests will soon be exhausted,’ wrote Huntington at the same time. The medicine-chests were replenished. And before September Trumbull had so completely drained his own State of the materials for war that he was obliged to write to Washington and inform him that he could not then afford any more.”
In these thrilling days the people awaited the news upon the village green.
The village green of Lebanon! Across it the old war Governor walked a thousand times to attend meetings at the office in the interests of the State and the welfare of man. A monument to him should arise there.
The village greens of New England were fields of the highest patriotism, and their history would be a glorious record. The church spires rose over them; the schoolhouse bells; and on them or in a hall near them the folkmotes were held. These town meetings were the suggestions of republican government and the patterns of the great republic.
How the words “Brother Jonathan,” that became the characteristic name of the nation, reached the ears of Washington at Cambridge we do not know. It became the nickname—the name that bespoke character to the army through Washington. It will always live.
How did the people of Lebanon among the cedars come to give that name to the great judge, assistant, and governor that rose among them? In his official life he was so dignified and used such strong Latin-derived words to express his thoughts that one could hardly have suspected a Roger de Coverley behind the courtly dressed man and his well-weighed speech. He was an American knight.
But in his private life he was as delightful as a veritable Roger de Coverley, even if he did not fall asleep in church. The true character of an old New Englander was in him. He loved his neighbors as his own self with a most generous and sympathetic love. No tale of knight-errantry could be more charming than that of the life he led among his own folk in Lebanon.
He probably studied medicine that he might doctor the poor. Were any poor man sick, he sent another in haste to consult Brother Jonathan; and Brother Jonathan, in gig, and possibly in wig, with his greatcoat in winter, and vials, and probably snuff-box, and all, hurried to the sick-bed.