Benjamin Church

Dr. Benjamin Church (August 24, 1734 – 1776) was effectively the first Surgeon General of the U.S. Army, serving as the "Chief Physician & Director General" of the Medical Service of the Continental Army from July 27, 1775 to October 17, 1775. Church's loyalty to the American Revolution fell under suspicion, and he was forced from office in public disgrace, convicted of "communicating with the enemy".

Biography

Family and education

Church was born in Newport, Rhode Island, the son of Benjamin Church, a merchant of Boston and deacon of the Hollis Street Congregation Church conducted by the Rev. Mather Byles. His grandfather, Captain Benjamin Church, took a prominent part in the war with the Narragansett Indians and led the force which hunted King Philip to his death on August 12, 1676.

The third Benjamin attended the Boston Latin School and graduated from Harvard College in 1754. He studied medicine with Dr. Joseph Pynchon, later continuing his studies in London. While there, he married Hannah Hill of Ross, Herefordshire. Returning to Boston he built up a reputation as a talented physician and a skillful surgeon.

Political ambiguities

With growing friction between the colonies and Great Britain, Church supported the Whig cause vigorously with his pen, but even in the early stages of the controversy, he was accused of being secretly a supporter of the government. There is evidence that during this period he was variously considered as an ardent Patriot and as a secret Tory sympathizer. He examined the bodies of the dead and treated some of the wounded in the Boston Massacre on May 5, 1770, and, in 1773, he delivered the annual Massacre Day oration, "To Commemorate the Bloody Tragedy of the Fifth of May 1770", which marked him as an orator of high order.

In 1774, after a secret meeting of Whig leaders, it was stated that the business of the meeting had been divulged to the Tories, and Church was accused of having furnished the information. He continued, however, in the confidence of the Whig leaders and, in 1774, he was appointed a delegate to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and to membership in the Committee of Safety, which had charge of preparation for armed conflict. On February 21, 1775, the Provincial Congress appointed him with Dr. Joseph Warren a committee to make an inventory of medical supplies necessary for the army and, on March 7, voted them the sum of five hundred pounds for the purchase of such supplies. On May 8, he was appointed a member of an examining board for surgeons for the army and, on June 19, a resolution ordered "that Dr. Church, Dr. Taylor, and Dr. Whiting be a committee to consider what method is proper to take to supply the hospitals with surgeons and that the same gentlemen be a committee to provide medicine and other necessaries for hospitals." As the chairman of a subcommittee of the Committee of Safety, he signed a report on May 12 which recommended a system of defensive works on Prospect Hill and Bunker Hill. On the other hand, he came under criticism for having entered Boston after the Battle of Lexington and Concord and having been in conference with British General Thomas Gage.

Director General

In May, he went to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to consult the Continental Congress about the defense of Massachusetts colony. On July 27, that body authorized the establishment of a Medical Department of the Army with a Director General and Chief Physician who would be head of both the Hospital Department of the first Army Hospital and of the first headquarters of regimental surgeons (located in the Henry Vassall House, Cambridge, MA). In the meantime, on July 2, General George Washington had arrived at Cambridge to take command of the colonial forces and Church was one of the committee appointed to receive him.

From the day of his appointment, Church was in difficulty. Though of undisputed professional skill and of distinguished literary and political ability, he was deficient in the administrative skills essential in an army staff officer and rather unfit to cope with the personnel that were to give succeeding medical chiefs their main trouble -- the regimental surgeons. His relations with these medical officers became so strained that a storm of complaints poured into Army headquarters and Washington was compelled to order an investigation of the Medical Service. In his own defense, Church complained of the jealousy of rivals for his position and is said to have asked for permission to leave the Army. In the meantime, an incident arose which brought him before an Army court martial on October 4, 1775.

"Criminal correspondence" & court martial

In July 1775, Church had sent a cipher letter addressed to a Major Cane, a British officer in Boston. The letter was intercepted and was sent to Washington in September. It was decoded and found to contain an account of the American forces before Boston, but contained no disclosures of great importance. It contained, however, a declaration of Church's devotion to the Crown and asked for directions for continuing the correspondence.

The matter was placed before a court of inquiry made up of general officers, Washington presiding, to whom Church admitted the authorship of the letter, but explained that it was written with the object of impressing the enemy with the strength and position of the colonial forces in order to prevent an attack while the Continental army was still short of ammunition and in hopes of aiding to bring about an end to hostilities. The court considered that Church had carried on a criminal correspondence with the enemy and recommended that the matter be referred to the Continental Congress for its action. The report of Washington to the President of Congress is in part as follows:

I have now a painful though necessary duty to perform, respecting Doctor Church, the Director of the Hospital. About a week ago, Mr. Secretary Ward, of Providence, sent up one Wainwood, an inhabitant of Newport, to me with a letter directed to Major Cane in Boston, in occult letters, which he said had been left with Wainwood some time ago by a woman who was kept by Doctor Church. She had before pressed Wainwood to take her to Captain Wallace, Mr. Dudley, the Collector, or George Rowe, which he declined. She gave him the letter with strict injunctions to deliver it to either of these gentleman. He, suspecting some improper correspondence, kept the letter and after some time opened it, but not being able to read it, laid it up, where it remained until he received an obscure letter from the woman, expressing an anxiety as to the original letter. He then communicated the whole matter to Mr. Ward, who sent him up with the papers to me. I immediately secured the woman, but for a long time she was proof against every threat and persuasion to discover the author. However she was at length brought to a confession and named Doctor Church. I then immediately secured him and all his papers. Upon the first examination he readily acknowledged the letter and said that it was designed for his brother, etc. The army and country are exceedingly irritated.

Congress on October 17, 1775, elected Dr. John Morgan "in the room of" Dr. Church and on November 7 passed the following resolution:

That Doctor Church be close confined in some secure jail in the Colony of Connecticut, without use of pen, ink and paper, and that no person be allowed to converse with him except in the presence and hearing of a magistrate of the town or the sheriff of the county where he is confined, and in the English language, until further orders from this or a future Congress.

In accordance with this resolution, he was confined at Norwich, Connecticut. Previous to this action, however, he was arraigned on November 2 before the Massachusetts Provincial Congress. Despite an eloquent appeal in his own defense, he was unanimously expelled as a member of the House. Owing to the unfavorable effects of confinement upon his health, he was, in January 1776, released from jail and was permitted considerable movement under guard. On May 13, he was permitted to return to Massachusetts under bond. Shortly thereafter he sailed from Boston, presumably for the West Indies, but the vessel on which he took passage was never heard from again.

Assessment

It is a difficult proposition, in retrospect, to estimate the degree of Dr. Church's guilt. He was deeply in debt and the position he had won, promising eminence and profit, had proven only a source of trouble and devoid of adulation. He was convicted, not of treason, but of "communicating with the enemy". Moreover, Church's letter was written at a time when independence was in the minds of only a few political leaders. The colonial conflict was popularly viewed as a struggle of British citizens for British rights. Church was an ambitious man with considerable personal conceit. A charitable viewpoint was that "he visualized himself as the arbitrator who should bring about the restoration of friendly relations between the fatherland and the colonies, little suspecting that its effects would place him in the ranks of those we brand as traitors."

Appearances were decidedly against him, and at a time when party zeal and prejudice were avid in search of men suspected of disloyalty. However harmless his letter to his British officer friend may have been, its discovery marked him as a traitor to a cause to which he was ostensibly giving distinguished service.

His widow and family were pensioned by the British government.

Trivia

*Church was briefly incarcerated in a room of the Henry Vassall House in Cambridge where his carved initials can be seen today.

"Parts of this article were originally based on public domain [http://history.amedd.army.mil/tsgs/Church.htm text] produced by the U.S. government."