The Witness Box

Eyewitness American history at its strangest

Charles Morris told the American story through the people who saw it happen — which is why it is so strange. A general who forgets which war he is in, a witch trial hung on the accusers going deliberately dumb, ramparts built of sugar. Each account links to the chapter where a witness tells it.

1. At San Juan Hill, ex-Confederate general "Fighting Joe" Wheeler forgot which war he was in and yelled to his U.S. troops: "Give those Yankees h-ll now, boys!" — then sheepishly explained, "I'm a Yankee myself, now."Read it: Influence of the Spanish-American War on Our Foreign Trade
2. Baron von Steuben drilled Valley Forge troops by swearing in three languages at once, and when he ran dry called for backup: "Viens, mon ami Walker… I can curse dem no more."Read it: Washington at Valley Forge
3. King George III was so furious at Franklin that he ordered Franklin's LIGHTNING RODS torn off Buckingham House — and replaced with inferior ones.Read it: The Tea Tax and the Boston Port Bill
4. At the Battle of New Orleans the American ramparts were built of SUGAR: hogsheads of it rolled from the plantation barns and stood upright in the parapets — sugar batteries facing cotton-bale batteries, "though neither proved very suitable for the purpose."Read it: The Defence of New Orleans
5. Salem, 1692: Samuel Wardwell confessed to witchcraft and was safe — then retracted the lie out of shame and was hanged "not for witchcraft, but for denying witchcraft."Read it: The Salem Witchcraft: Burroughs and Andover
6. Daniel Boone, a Shawnee captive, understood every word of the war-council planning to attack the fort holding his family — because he had feigned total ignorance of the language from the day of his capture. He escaped and crossed 160 miles of wilderness to give warning.Read it: The Pioneer of Kentucky
7. The book's electricity chapter, in one sentence: "It stores speech in the phonograph and executes condemned criminals, both devices being American."Read it: Triumphs of the Republic in Practical Science
8. A Russian woman was saved from being BURIED ALIVE by the microphone, which made her feeble heart-beats audible.Read it: Triumphs of the Republic in Practical Science
9. Juan Ortiz was twice condemned to be burned alive by his captors and twice saved by the chieftain's daughter — a Pocahontas story played out in Florida some seventy years before Pocahontas.Read it: Hernando De Soto: Ortiz and Florida
10. The Kentucky revival of 1800, clinically catalogued: "the falling, the jerking, the rolling, the running, the dancing, and the barking exercise" — seizing people "almost while the jest or open blasphemy was upon their lips."Read it: The First Quarter of the Century
11. The only American killed at the Battle of Manila Bay was an engineer who dropped dead from the heat — the furnace rooms ran 125 to 160 degrees, and no other man left his post in 36 hours.Read it: Sinking the Spanish Fleet
12. Decatur's burning frigate Philadelphia fought on by herself: as her guns heated they fired, delivering one broadside at Tripoli and the other at Fort English, her flaming rigging forming "glowing columns and fiery capitals."Read it: Stephen Decatur and the Frigate Philadelphia
13. Nathaniel Bacon's grave has never been found: friends hid the body from the vengeful Governor Berkeley — stones on a decoy coffin by one tradition; sunk in the York River, "where the winds and the waves might still repeat his requiem," by another.Read it: The Bacon Rebellion: Seth Sothel and Bacon's
14. The United States began 1782 literally broke: "without a dollar in the public treasury," and by June 1 it held twenty thousand dollars — "little more than was required for the use of one day."Read it: The Army and Country after the War
15. A handful of Confederate cruisers destroyed only about 175 ships — but frightened more than 700 American merchant vessels into switching to the British flag, "many of them never to come back."Read it: National Defence
16. Emilio Aguinaldo was captured by soldiers pretending to be his own reinforcements: the fake officers marched in, paid their respects to him, excused themselves "for a moment," stepped outside, and ordered their men to open fire.Read it: Later Developments in Philippine Affairs
17. Franklin attended the court of Versailles "in the dress of an American farmer" — straight unpowdered hair and a brown coat amid "the laced and embroidered coats, and powdered and perfumed heads" of the courtiers.Read it: Franklin in France
18. Wounded blind at the Monitor's peephole, Captain Worden's first words on regaining consciousness were: "Did we save the Minnesota?"Read it: The Monitor and the Merrimack
19. The Angel of Hadley: during an Indian attack, "a venerable stranger suddenly appeared, put himself at the head of the townsmen, and drove back the foe" — said to be General Goffe, one of the judges who condemned Charles I, secretly hidden in the town for years.Read it: The Death of King Philip
20. At George Burroughs's witch trial the accusers went dumb. "Who hinders these witnesses?" demanded the judge. "I suppose the devil," said Burroughs. The judge's retort — "How comes the devil so loath to have any testimony borne against you?" — helped hang him.Read it: The Salem Witchcraft: Sarah Cloyce and George Burroughs
21. John Willard was the officer sent to arrest Salem's witches; he saw through the fraud and refused — so the accusers denounced HIM, and he was convicted and hanged.Read it: The Salem Witchcraft: Sarah Cloyce and George Burroughs
22. Giles Cory, eighty years old, saw that everyone who denied guilt was convicted — so he refused to plead at all, and was pressed to death: the only such sentence ever executed in the colonies.Read it: The Salem Witchcraft: Burroughs and Andover
23. Cotton Mather interviewed the devil (through a "bewitched" girl) and reported his findings: the devil was skilled in languages — except one Indian tongue — and "all devils are not alike sagacious."Read it: The Salem Witchcraft
24. The dying chief Opechancanough, displayed to a gawking crowd, asked for the governor and delivered one line: "Had I taken Sir William Berkeley prisoner, I would not have exposed him as a show to my people."Read it: The Indian Massacre in Virginia
25. During the Great Blizzard of 1888, the ONLY working link between Boston and New York for days was a single long-distance telephone wire that withstood the storm which wrecked every telegraph line.Read it: Triumphs of the Republic in Practical Science
26. Chinese annals describe a far-eastern land called Fu-Sang — plus a "Kingdom of Women" and a "Land of Tattooed Bodies" — and one scholar argued Fu-Sang was MEXICO, its sacred fu-sang tree the maguey.Read it: The Kingdom of Fu-Sang
27. Philadelphia is called "the only city that was planned and definitely laid out by the early settlers of America. The other ancient cities of the country grew as chance willed."Read it: The Quaker Colony
28. General St. Clair survived his great defeat with EIGHT bullet holes through his clothes.Read it: War with the Western Indians
29. The French commander Dieskau's marching order, 1755: Indians are not to stop for scalps until the enemy is entirely defeated, "since they can kill ten men in the time required to scalp one."Read it: The Battle at Lake George
30. Langley's bolometer could register a temperature change of ONE-MILLIONTH of a degree Fahrenheit.Read it: Triumphs of the Republic in Practical Science
31. In Puritan-conquered Maryland (1655), four condemned royalists were executed — the rest were saved by "the incessant petitioning and begging of some good women," and the condemned governor himself was "beg'd" free by the soldiers.Read it: The Settlement of Maryland
32. The men who fortified Bunker Hill didn't know where they were going: only when they reached the hill and found the wagon of entrenching tools "were the men made acquainted with the nature and purpose of the expedition."Read it: The Battle of Bunker Hill
33. John Locke — the philosopher — designed Carolina's "Grand Model" government from his study: an aristocratic scheme the book calls "magnificently-absurd," solemnly imposed on a wilderness of democrats.Read it: The "Grand Model" Government
34. At Buena Vista, Santa Anna's white flag carried a masterpiece of stalling: a message "simply a demand… to know what the American general wanted" — sent so his trapped right wing could slip away while the firing ceased.Read it: The Battle of Buena Vista
35. Paul Jones, asked "Have you struck your colors?" mid-battle aboard his sinking ship: "I have not yet begun to fight."Read it: The Bon Homme Richard and the Serapis
36. Missouri's territorial delegate threatened Congress in 1819 that Missouri would organize a state government with or without permission; Jefferson feared Missouri would be "lost by revolt."Read it: The Missouri Compromise
37. In 1900, about 7,000 Americans, Britons, Germans and Norwegians — 2,200 of them island-born — "control the destinies of Hawaii" among a population of tens of thousands of plantation laborers.Read it: The Annexation of Hawaii
38. The Whiskey Rebellion's leaders decided between war and submission by SECRET BALLOT, too afraid of each other to vote openly: 34 for peace, 23 against.Read it: The Whiskey Insurrection in Pennsylvania
39. A journalist's cable from St. Pierre days before Mount Pelée destroyed the city: "The air is oppressive; your nose burns… What has to-morrow in store for us?… Will give you my last thought if I must die."Read it: Martinique and St. Vincent
40. Wordsworth is said to have learned Bryant's "Thanatopsis" BY HEART — an American poem written by a teenager.Read it: The Literary Retrospect
41. Long-distance telephony's march, as the book tallies it: Paris–London 1891, New York–Chicago 1892, and conversations between Texas and Maine — 2,600 miles apart.Read it: Triumphs of the Republic in Practical Science
42. Governor Fletcher demanded Connecticut surrender its militia "in two words, Yes, or No" — the Assembly answered with neither and kept its charter rights.Read it: The Tyrant of New England
43. Tituba, Samuel Parris's enslaved servant, was FLOGGED into confessing witchcraft by the minister himself — the confession that lit the Salem fire.Read it: The Salem Witchcraft
44. Berkeley to the king on Bacon's Rebellion: "I have above thirty years governed the most flourishing country the sun ever shone over, but am now encompassed with rebellion like waters."Read it: The Bacon Rebellion: William Berkeley and Jamestown
45. Ingersoll's verdict on the Thames campaign: "English murderers and thieves became cowards in Canada; hard words, but true."Read it: The Battle of the Thames