War and the Decline of Science

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English Connection. The Revolutionary War had immediate and overwhelmingly negative effects on the pursuit of science and technological improvement in America. Perhaps most obviously, many of the professional connections with British men of science, so slowly and painstakingly cultivated by men such as Benjamin Franklin, John Winthrop, and Alexander Garden, were irretrievably lost when the fighting began (some correspondence resumed, however, after the peace). Also, not all Americans were revolutionary. The rebellious colonies lost perhaps a third of their doctors and scientists in a Loyalist “brain drain.” John Jeffries and Alexander Garden, for example, fled their homes in America—Garden never returned.

ONE DOCTOR’S ARMY EXPERIENCE

After the battles of Saratoga, New York, in the autumn of 1777, the American, British, and German wounded were sent to nearby Albany for treatment. James Thacher, of the American army, recorded that “not less than one thousand wounded and sick are now in this city; the Dutch Church, and several private houses are occupied as hospitals.” Thacher and his colleagues had much to do: “I am obliged to devote the whole of my time, from eight o’clock in the morning to a late hour in the evening, to the care of our patriots.... Amputating limbs, trepanning fractured skulls, and dressing the most formidable wounds, have familiarized my mind to scenes of woe.” He added, bitterly, “here is a fine field for professional improvement [employment].”

Source; James Thacher, Military Journal of the American Revolution (New York: Arno, 1969).

Arrested Development. The war interrupted efforts at scientific and technological improvements that would have advanced learning, public health, and productivity. Plans for a public observatory near Philadelphia, headed by David Rittenhouse, were dashed by the opening of hostilities—there was simply no public money available for anything that did not directly benefit the war effort. A New York City plan for a public water system, delivered through hollowed logs, was curtailed for the same reason and then stopped altogether when the British occupied that city. For obvious reasons the revolutionary movement sparked interest in American manufactures, which had been long discouraged by British imperial

economy. Just before the war began, a plan for a water-powered spinning mill was presented to the American Philosophical Society, two decades before Samuel Slater built his famous mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. But building factories for pottery, finished iron goods, and especially textiles, required large outlays of capital, not to mention overseas markets for finished products not consumed at home. America’s great manufacturing potential would have to wait for realization. Private efforts to encourage useful technology also suffered setbacks. Virginia’s Society for the Promotion of Useful Knowledge, founded in 1773, gave its first gold medal to John Hobday for his threshing machine, but it did little else. It might have if the imperial crisis had not intervened, but the society declined during the war and never recovered.

Higher Learning. America’s fledgling centers of science and learning were located mainly in its cities. Several of these were occupied by the British in the course of the war, and others suffered from friend and foe alike. Early in the fighting Harvard College was forced to close when the American army used its buildings as barracks. New York’s King’s College was looted by British troops in 1776, its instruments and books sold off by the soldiers for drinking money. The College of Philadelphia had its halls used as barracks by Americans and later as hospitals by British troops. Rhode Island College (later Brown University) was a barracks during most of the war, first for American and then French soldiers. Princeton College in New Jersey actually became a battleground: Nassau Hall still bears the scars made by American cannons against redcoats who barricaded themselves inside.

Conclusion. Whatever America’s triumphs in the conflict with Britain, the war was a severe setback for American science. Nearly all the gains made in the previous decades were compromised by the consequences of a long war with the former colonies’ chief patron of the sciences. Together with the damage done to higher learning institutions, the loss of talented Loyalists, and the disruption of the economy, the scientific community required great efforts to repair itself in the postwar years.