Pennsylvania's Political and Military Leaders

It is with inexpressible pain that I inform your Excellency of the mutiny which took place in the Pennsylvania line last evening. Every possible exertion was made to suppress it, but the torrent was too potent to be stemmed. General Anthony Wayne.

On New Year's Day, 1781, the Pennsylvania Continentals, a full quarter of Washington's army, finally lost faith. They had not been paid in 12 months, yet their government was offering $81 in cash to recruit convicts willing to trade a jail cell for an army jacket.

As night fell in Morristown, New Jersey, 1,500 soldiers seized artillery, gunpowder, and cannonballs, and filed out of camp. They intended to march to Philadelphia and lay their grievances directly before the Pennsylvania State Council and the Congress. Two officers who tried to stop them were wounded. A third was killed.

Word of the mutiny reached the British in New York. The commander, General Henry Clinton, immediately dispatched a loyalist named John Mason to tempt the mutineers with amnesty and money if they would switch sides.

But these rebels were mutineers, not traitors. Defection, once called turning coat, was now known as turning Arnold. The soldiers arrested Mason and his guide. Three days later, both men were convicted as spies and hanged from a tree by a horse's collar.

On January 6th, officials from Congress and the State of Pennsylvania arrived to hear the mutineers' complaints. The soldiers claimed they had enlisted for three years, and their term was up. The officials insisted they had signed on for the duration of the war.

After two days of negotiation, the soldiers won their point. More than 1,300 men were given the right to re-enlist or leave, as they saw fit. Most re-enlisted.

Just as the mutiny seemed at an end, 200 New Jersey Continentals marched out of their camp.

Now for George Washington, this is intolerable. A pattern is starting to show up here. He's not going to tolerate that. So he just absolutely drops the hammer on them, sends two divisions down. They surround them, they crush the mutiny. I mean, the guys never have a chance to even really articulate their demands before they're surrounded.

The sergeants who were the quote "ringleaders" are identified. Three are picked by lot. And the rest of the ringleaders are told, "you're the firing squad." They make their fellow sergeants shoot their own friends.

Being themselves guilty, they were greatly distressed with the duty imposed upon them. And when ordered to load, some of them shed tears. The wretched victims, overwhelmed by the terrors of death, had neither time nor power to implore mercy and forgiveness of their God. Dr. James Thatcher.

Fire!

In 1812, the year after Fort Astoria was founded, Louisiana was admitted to the Union as the 18th state and the first state with land west of the Mississippi River. That was also the year a Russian trading company established a small colony on the rocky coast of Northern California. Back then, it was called Fort Rossiya. Now it is known simply as Fort Ross.

In 1812, California was a Spanish possession that was dotted with large mission settlements and cattle ranches. Russia hoped that by founding a colony in California, it would be able to trade with the Spanish for beef and grain, and at the same time, further expand its huge empire. At that time, Russia was making a lot of money in the fur trading business and it desperately needed food to supply its hunting communities scattered along the icy shores of Alaska, which back then was an overseas territory of Russia.

The rugged coast of California also attracted Russia because of its fur-bearing animals. The colonists planned to harvest the valuable pelts of the sea otters that thrive just offshore. So the Russians brought Native Alaskan hunters with them to California. In fact, the Native Aleuts outnumbered the Russians at the colony by more than three to one.

The Aleuts used small skin-covered boats called kayaks. They were such skilled hunters that it didn't take long before the sea otters were nearly driven to extinction. Without sea otter pelts, the main source of income for the colony vanished. After that, the Russians tried to focus on farming, but they were unsuccessful. And early in the 1840s, Fort Ross was abandoned.

[MILITARY DRUMS]

In Washington--