After War Years
After the war, Tallmadge married one of the daughters of William Floyd, settled in Connecticut. In 1783 Tallmadge settled in Litchfield, Connecticut. He was appointed the town's postmaster in 1792.
Tallmadge was the first president of the Phoenix Branch Bank. He served first as treasurer and eventually as secretary of the Society of the Cincinnati.
He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from 1801-1817. He was a member of the Federalist Party. This meant that during his entire congressional career he was part of the minority party. In 1817, Representative Tallmadge persuaded Congress not to grant a requested pension increase to the men who had originally captured Major André, John Paulding, Isaac Van Wart, and David Williams and publicly assailing their credibility and motivations. Tallmadge was the officer to whom André was taken after his capture, and he said he believed André's account over that of the three captors. He said Williams and the other two were "of that class of people who passed between both armies, as often in one camp as in the other." He said that "when Major André's boots were taken off by them, it was to search for plunder, and not to detect treason." He asserted that "if André could have given to these men the amount they demanded for his release, he never would have been hung for a spy, nor in captivity."
In 1816 he declined to be run for reelection.
Tallmadge died in Litchfield, Connecticut on March 7, 1835. He was interred in East Cemetery.
Tallmadge, Ohio is named after Benjamin Tallmadge.
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Famous quotes containing the words war and/or years:
“In peacetime, they had all been normal decent, cowards, frightened of their wives, trembling before their bosses, terrified at the passing of the years, but war had made them gallant. They had been greedy men. Now they were self-sacrificing. They had been selfish. Now they were generous. War isn’t hell at all. It’s man at his best, the highest morality he is capable of.”
—Paddy Chayefsky (1923–1981)
“After years of vain familiarity, some distant gesture or unconscious behavior, which we remember, speaks to us with more emphasis than the wisest or kindest words. We are sometimes made aware of a kindness long passed, and realize that there have been times when our Friends’ thoughts of us were of so pure and lofty a character that they passed over us like the winds of heaven unnoticed; when they treated us not as what we were, but as what we aspired to be.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)