Benjamin Lincoln, born Jan. 24, 1733, at Hingham, Massachusetts, led
the life of a farmer; but warmly espousing the cause of the colonists
when troubles began with Great Britain, was intrusted with various
military offices, and after two years of active service with the
Massachusetts troops, was commissioned major-general in the Continental
army on the 19th of February, 1777. In the following October, he
received a severe wound which lamed him for life, and prevented his
rejoining the army until August, 1778. In September, Congress gave
him the chief command of the Southern army, but upon repairing to
Charleston, South Carolina, he found the entire State of Georgia in
the hands of the British, and the American army in the South almost
destroyed. Setting about his task with courage and resolution, he
busied himself in collecting the necessary supplies and recruits,
and making all needful preparations for driving the enemy from their
various strongholds. In each engagement, however, he was unsuccessful,
and was at last taken prisoner at the surrender of Charleston, on the
12th of May, 1780. He was exchanged in November, and rejoined the army
in June, 1781. Again he was despatched to the South, but this time with
far different results.
When the siege of Yorktown ended in the surrender of Cornwallis, that
general feigned illness; to escape the mortification of surrendering
his sword personally, he sent it by General O’Hara. Washington, with
a fine delicacy of feeling, ordered the sword to be delivered to
General Lincoln, who, eighteen months before, had been compelled to
surrender to Sir Henry Clinton at Charleston, Cornwallis being one of
the principal officers. This campaign closed Lincoln’s active service
in the field, as he was soon after appointed Secretary of War, and held
that responsible position until the disbanding of the army in October,
1783. Shays’ Rebellion, in 1786, again called him into the field, and
after quelling it, he served as Lieutenant-Governor of Massachusetts in
1788, and collector of the port of Boston from 1789 to 1806, when the
infirmities of old age necessitated his withdrawal. He died on the 9th
of May, 1810, in the seventy-eighth year of his age. Harvard College
conferred upon him the degree of M. A. in 1780.