On This Date in History

On November 7, 1775, shortly after the conviction of Dr. Benjamin Church, America’s first traitor, the Continental Congress added a mandate for the death penalty as punishment for acts of espionage to the “articles of war.” Dr. Church corresponded with the British general Gage about Continental troops and arsenal locations.
Church was court marshaled, removed from his post as Director General, and arrested. He was briefly jailed in Norwich, Connecticut, until January 1776 until he got ill and was allowed to live under house arrest at his home in Massachusetts until 1778 when he was named in the Massachusetts Banishment Act, forcing those who supported the British or “joined the enemies thereof” to leave the United States. He sailed from Boston headed for the Caribbean, but the ship was lost at sea, and Church likely perished along with it.