Benjamin Lincoln

Benjamin Lincoln was born on January 24, 1733, in Hingham, Province of Massachusetts Bay, the sixth child and first son of Colonel Benjamin Lincoln and his second wife Elizabeth Thaxter Lincoln. Lincoln's ancestors were among those who first settled in Hingham, beginning with Thomas Lincoln 'the cooper,' who was among several Lincolns who settled in Hingham when it was part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Lincoln's father, one of the wealthiest men in Suffolk County, served as a member of the governor's council from 1753 until 1770, and occupied many other civic posts before his death in 1771. Lincoln's maternal grandfather, Col. Samuel Thaxter, one of the most prominent and influential citizens in Hingham, became Colonel in a regiment and one of those commissioned to settle the boundary between Massachusetts and Rhode Island in 1719. In his early life, Lincoln worked on the family farm, and attended the local school. He followed his father into government, becoming town constable at 21, and in 1755 he joined the 3rd Regiment of the Suffolk County militia (where his father was colonel) as an adjutant. They had eleven children, seven of whom survived to adulthood. In 1757, he was elected the town clerk of Hingham, a post he held for twenty years. He continued to be active in the militia during the French and Indian War, but saw no action, and was promoted to major by the end of the conflict in 1763. Lincoln was elected a Hingham town selectman in 1765, a post to which he held for six years. During this tenure political opposition rose in the province to Parliamentary tax measures, polarizing the political landscape of the colony. Lincoln sided with the opposition, eventually becoming a leading force among Hingham's Patriots. In 1770, in a list of resolutions passed by the inhabitants of Hingham, Lincoln outlined the measures urged by residents towards the non-importation of British goods, and he condemned the Boston Massacre. In 1772, Lincoln was promoted to lieutenant colonel of the 3rd Regiment of the Suffolk militia. That same year he won election as a representative of the town to the provincial assembly. ==American Revolution==

With the arrival of General Thomas Gage as governor of the colony in 1774, the provincial assembly was dissolved, but reformed itself into the Massachusetts Provincial Congress. Lincoln continued to win election to this body, and was placed on committees overseeing militia organization and supply, a position that came to be of utmost importance when the American Revolutionary War broke out with the Battles of Lexington and Concord in April 1775. He was then appointed to the congress' committee of safety, and also was elected to its executive council, which exercised executive authority over the province outside besieged Boston. He was deeply involved in ensuring that supplies of all sorts reached the nascent Continental Army outside Boston, procuring supplies from blankets to gunpowder. Defense of New York In January 1776, Lincoln was promoted to major general of the Massachusetts militia, overseeing the coastal defenses of the state. After the British evacuated Boston, he and Continental Army General Artemas Ward oversaw attempts to improve the state's coastal fortifications, and he was ordered to hold the state's militia brigades in readiness in case the British returned. In May 1776 he directed the state forces that successfully drove the last Royal Navy ships from Boston Harbor. Despite his lack of combat experience, Lincoln began lobbying state representatives to the Continental Congress for a Continental Army officers commission, anticipating that the aging and ill General Ward might soon step down. The idea was generally well received, with one representative writing that Lincoln was "a good man for a Brigadier General" and "a man of abilities", even though he had not "had much experience". While a Continental commission was not immediately forthcoming, Lincoln was placed in command of a brigade of militia the state sent to join General George Washington at New York Town in September 1776. Lincoln's troops secured the Continental retreat to White Plains, New York, and were in the main Continental formation during the subsequent Battle of White Plains in October 1776; this portion of the troops saw no action in the battle. The enlistment terms of his men expiring, Lincoln returned briefly to Massachusetts to take command of new recruits for the coming year's campaigns. Based on a recommendation from General Washington as "a gentleman well worthy of notice in the Military Line", Congress commissioned Lincoln a major general in the Continental Army on February 14, 1777. Lincoln's first command was that of a forward outpost at Bound Brook, New Jersey, only from British sentries outside New Brunswick. He established his headquarters at the nearby Van Horne House. Lincoln returned to Washington's main army. He led a large portion of the Army south from Head of Elk Maryland to Hampton, Virginia, to march to the west to Yorktown where the British were encamped. Lincoln played a major role in the siege of Yorktown and the surrender of Lord Cornwallis on October 19, 1781. Cornwallis plead illness, and so did not attend the surrender ceremony, choosing instead to send his second-in-command, the Irish general Charles O'Hara. General Washington refused to accept Cornwallis' sword from O'Hara, directing O'Hara to present it instead to Lincoln, Washington's own second-in-command. Secretary at War (1781–1783) From 1781 to late 1783, Lincoln served as the first United States secretary at war. He was appointed by the Confederation Congress under the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, adopted 1781. He was succeeded in the post by Continental Army artillery chief, Major General Henry Knox, (who later continued in the position as the first United States secretary of war from 1789 to 1795 under the new Federal Constitution of 1787, during George Washington's two terms as the first president of the United States). He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1781. While Secretary at War, Lincoln was admitted as an original member of The Society of the Cincinnati in the state of Massachusetts and was elected as the first president of the Massachusetts Society on June 9, 1783, subsequently supporting the election of George Washington as the first President General of The Society of the Cincinnati on June 19. ==Post-war politics==

In early 1787, Lincoln helped put an end to an uprising of western Massachusetts farmers opposed to increased taxation and government coercion in their trade, known as Shays's Rebellion; Lincoln commanded 3,000 privately funded militia to disperse the opposition, and captured over one hundred. The uprising with the near-capture of a federal arsenal by rebels caused a national uproar, and it was an important part of the national crisis that justified calling the Constitutional Convention. The next year, as a Suffolk County, Hingham delegate, Lincoln voted to support the United States Constitution at the Massachusetts Federal Convention, which ratified 187 to 168 on February 6, 1788. On February 4, 1789, Lincoln was one of only 12 men who received electoral votes during the first election for President and Vice President of the United States, receiving the vote of an unrecorded elector from the State of Georgia. Lincoln also served as one of the first trustees of Derby Academy, founded in Hingham by Sarah Hersey Derby, widow of a wealthy Salem shipping magnate. He stayed active in public life in various capacities, including a term as Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts and many years as the Collector of the Port of Boston. In 1806, Lincoln attempted to resign as Collector but President Thomas Jefferson requested he stay until he appointed a successor. This act led to Representative Josiah Quincy III to attempt to have Jefferson impeached in January 1809, even though Jefferson was set to leave office in March of that year. He retired from public life in 1809 and died in Hingham on May 9, 1810. ==Legacy==

, where Lincoln was born Lincoln is buried in the Old Ship Burying Ground behind the Old Ship Church in Hingham. Among the pallbearers at Lincoln's funeral were John Adams, Cotton Tufts, Robert Treat Paine, Richard Cranch and Thomas Melvill. In Lincoln's honor, the bells at Boston and other places were tolled for an hour; the flags of vessels, and those at Fort Independence and Fort Warren, as well as those at the Charlestown Navy Yard were lowered to half-mast. He was one of the few men to have been involved in the three major surrenders of the American Revolutionary War: twice as a victor (at Yorktown and Saratoga), and once as the defeated party (at Charleston). In spite of the major role he played during the war, he tends to be less well-remembered than many of his contemporaries in the Continental Army. He was a founding member of The Massachusetts Society for Promoting Agriculture (M.S.P.A.) one of the earliest agricultural societies in the United States. The Society was incorporated by an act of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts on March 7, 1792. While there are a few exceptions, places named "Lincoln" in the American South tend to be named after Benjamin Lincoln rather than Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President. Counties and/or towns in Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, and Tennessee are named in his honor, as are communities in North Carolina (Lincolnton), Georgia (Lincolnton), Vermont (Lincoln), and Maine (Lincolnville). Streets in Columbia, South Carolina, and Savannah, Georgia (Lincoln Street), bear his name, as does Lincoln Hall at the United States Coast Guard Training Center in Yorktown, Virginia. Lincoln's lifelong home still stands. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1972, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Benjamin Lincoln is believed to have married Mary Cushing. ==Notes==