Independence Page 16

  Occasionally, a congressman served on an Association committee. John Adams, for instance, was already a member of the Board of Selectmen in Braintree, Massachusetts, which was given responsibility for enforcing the boycott in the village. Adams’s committee superintended the embargo and regulated prices brought on by the scarcities caused by the boycott. In addition, it published the names of violators so that “all such foes to the rights of British America may be publickly known and universally Contemned as the enemies of American liberty and thence forth We respectively will break off all dealings with him or her.”43

  Some Association committees instituted loyalty oaths. Those who signed the oath pledged their willingness to abide by the boycott. Those who refused to take the oath were designated as Tories. This was the first instance in the colonial protest that an entire segment of the population was readily identifiable as Loyalists or Tories, and the first time too that those who were seen as hostile to the popular cause were placed under surveillance. In some locales Tories were disarmed. In rare instances they were incarcerated. Nearly everywhere Tories were forced to resign from public office. In some villages throughout Massachusetts, the local Association committee denied Loyalists admittance to worship services, though the Boston Committee of Correspondence inveighed against that practice. Many committees compelled Tories to make public apologies for their transgressions. Shots were fired into the home of one outspoken Tory in Taunton, Massachusetts, though no one was injured.44 When General Gage sought to recruit Loyalists into a newly formed Tory “Corps of Infantry,” Massachusetts militiamen in Bristol County, about forty miles south of Boston, turned out on April 10 and rounded up those who volunteered. They were stripped of their weapons, and eleven men who had signed on to soldier for the king were imprisoned in an abandoned salt mine.45

  As in England, the colonies witnessed an explosion of pamphleteering during the winter of 1775. Pamphlets defending and attacking British policies had appeared in America since Parliament’s initial attempt to tax the colonists, but never had so many tracts been issued by both sides in such a brief period. With war hanging in the balance, most of these publications assumed a strident, urgent tone rarely seen before. A wave of pamphlets attacking the First Continental Congress appeared first. Most of the authors were Anglican clerics and one, Jonathan Boucher, the priest of Saint Barnabas Church in Prince George’s County, Maryland, was an acquaintance of Colonel Washington and the former tutor of his stepson. Several who condemned Congress’s actions were lawyers, including Jonathan Sewall and Daniel Leonard in Massachusetts and Galloway in Pennsylvania.

  Few of the Tory publications shed new light on the American crisis. Rehashing what the defenders of parliamentary taxation had been writing throughout the past decade, most attributed the empire’s woes to American troublemakers who supposedly had a hidden agenda: independence and democratization. The Tories attacked Congress for having failed to seek a settlement with the mother country. One after another wrote that there could be only one sovereign government and, if the empire was to survive, that government must be the Crown and Parliament. Some played on class prejudices, warning that the rebellion would elevate tradesmen and maybe even those without property to high office, and that they would confiscate the wealth of their social superiors. Joseph Galloway produced the shrillest pamphlet. He predicted that “companies of armed, but undisciplined men, headed by men unprincipled” would enter “your homes—your castles—and sacred repositories of safety for all you hold dear and valuable—seizing your property and carrying havock and devastation wherever they head—ravishing your wives and daughters, and afterwards, plunging the dagger into their tender bosoms.” Other writers warned that when unchecked turbulence prevailed, the natural order of things would be turned on its head. “When the pot boils, the scum will rise” was a favorite Tory epigram. By it, they meant that war and revolution inevitably resulted in the triumph of those whom they called the “lower sort.”46

  The one newsworthy Tory publication was Galloway’s Candid Examination of the Mutual Claims of Great Britain and the Colonies. What set it apart from the others was that he not only revealed, and fleshed out, the compromise plan he had introduced in Congress, but he also notified the colonists and residents of the mother country alike of the deep divisions that had cleaved Congress. He described a Congress under the control of ambition-mad “demagogues” who had chosen a course certain to lead to hostilities, for war offered their only hope of attaining their secret “scheme of independence.” He had waited patiently through the first three weeks of Congress for another delegate to introduce a plan for reconciliation, Galloway claimed. When none stepped forward, he introduced his plan of union in the hope of preventing a catastrophic war. But by the narrowest margin his formula for “harmony and liberty” was defeated, and for reasons that he was willing to “let America determine,” the radicals who had dominated Congress chose a path of “industriously concealing it from the world.”47

  The Tory pamphleteers were answered in numerous essays by patriots, or “Whigs,” as they were usually called. Though obscure at the time, two who countered the detractors of Congress would become among the best-known members of the Revolutionary generation. John Adams hurriedly dashed off thirteen newspaper essays to rebut Leonard. Nineteen-year-old Alexander Hamilton responded to Samuel Seabury, the Anglican rector of the town of Westchester, New York.

  Adams was a marvelous letter writer, invariably composing his missives with clarity and often with spice and humor. When he wrote for publication, however, his literary style regularly turned cloudy and ponderous, and his articles were nearly unreadable. Writing as “Novanglus” in 1775, Adams poured out an overly lengthy and legalistic opus that could not have been read and understood by many colonists. Even Adams appeared to recognize the hopelessness of reaching an audience with what he had written, as near the end of his slog he characterized his work as a “fatigueing ramble.” Through a haze of Latin and legalese—“Nos itaque … says King Ed I”; “This statutum Walliae … is well worthy of the attention and study of Americans”; “Another incontestable proof of this, is the ordinatio pro statu Hiberniae”—Adams set out to prove that the colonies were not subject to the Parliament’s jurisdiction. He conceded, as had Congress, that the Americans would submit to Parliament’s regulation of imperial commerce, but to be subject to parliamentary taxation would be to accept the yoke of slavery.48

  Though only an undergraduate at King’s College, Alexander Hamilton was the better polemicist of the two. Late in 1774 he answered Seabury with two lively rejoinders. Hamilton, who would later grow famous for his lacerating pen, waged a slash-and-burn offensive against his Tory adversary, denigrating the cleric’s writing abilities and thought processes. Most of what Hamilton had to say with regard to constitutional issues had been said before many times over. What was new in Hamilton’s pamphlets was his contemplation of hostilities with the mother country, a topic that had been largely off-limits before the worrisome winter of 1775. Of course, Hamilton was responding to a Tory pamphleteer who had asserted that the colonists could not win a war against Great Britain. Hamilton proved to be the superior prophet. He not only took for granted that war was inevitable; he also said that it could be won by the Americans. The colonists could arm more men than Britain could send to subdue the rebellion, he said, and he added that it was inevitable that France and Spain—and, less directly, the Dutch—would aid the Americans. Hamilton granted that the British would have field trained, professional soldiers while the Americans were amateurs, but he forecast that the colonists could win the war by employing Fabian tactics. He explained: “The circumstances of our country put it in our power to evade a pitched battle. It will be better policy to harass and exhaust the [British] soldiery by frequent skirmishes and incursions [than] to take the open field with them.”49

  The tract that appears to have reached the largest audience between Congress’s adjournment and the outbreak of hostilities was written by neit
her Adams nor Hamilton, but by Lieutenant Colonel Charles Lee, a native of Great Britain who had been a redcoat officer for nearly twenty years. He had fought in America in the French and Indian War, suffering wounds in an engagement at Fort Ticonderoga. Shortly after that war, he resigned his commission and moved to Virginia. An acid-tongued eccentric, Lee, who was well educated and capable of wielding a corrosive pen with panache, answered one of the Loyalist pamphleteers. With a writing style that was seldom equaled in rhythm and cadence, Lee defended Congress and devoted some space to the argument that the best way to prevent a war was to prepare for one. But the heart of his piece addressed the question of whether the Americans could win a war against Great Britain. Lee left no doubt that the colonists would be victorious. The British soldiers were overrated and often led by incapable officers who owed their positions more to wealth and politics than to talent. The Americans were inexperienced, he acknowledged, but the art of soldiering was not a mystery. Americans could learn combat skills in short order. Besides, the Americans had a psychological asset. They were fighting for something tangible and invaluable: their liberty. The colonists seemed to welcome Lee’s pamphlet as evenhanded and illuminating. For many, it demystified war; while for others, it tore down the mystique of invincibility that shrouded the British army.50

  The colonists’ world changed forever on April 19, 1775, the day that General Gage acted on Dartmouth’s order to use force to smash the American rebellion.

  Three months elapsed between the dispatch of the American secretary’s order and its implementation, a delay occasioned because the ship carrying Dartmouth’s order to America was forced by storms to return to England. On its second attempt, the vessel succeeded in making the long, slow Atlantic crossing, docking in Boston during the second week in April. Gage had already drawn up plans for an operation to destroy an arms depot that the rebels had constructed in Concord, about twenty miles west of Boston. It was hardly the only rebel arsenal, but it was the one closest to Boston, and attacking it offered the best hope of completing a lightning strike before the American militiamen in the surrounding countryside could respond. Dartmouth had also ordered Gage to seize the ringleaders of the Massachusetts insurrection. Gage’s intelligence had correctly reported that John Hancock and Samuel Adams were residing in Lexington, a tiny village about seven miles east of Concord, near where the rebel provincial assembly was meeting. Like a good soldier, Gage acted rapidly to carry out his orders. He spent a few days ironing out the final details of the march on Lexington and Concord. All the while, he took precautions to keep his plans secret. No one knew better than Gage that surprise was vital to the success of his operation.

  Gage’s efforts at stealth came to grief. The rebels had their own surveillance network. Through spies, abundant clues, and loose-lipped British officers (and possibly their wives), American intelligence gleaned a day or two in advance that Gage was preparing a march. By about ten P.M. on April 18 the rebels knew that Concord was the target. An hour later Paul Revere set off on his most famous ride, and at about the same time William Dawes, a Boston tanner, also set off to carry the alarm to Lexington, though he rode a different route. Revere had been given Brown Beauty, the fastest horse available. Speed was crucial for Revere. He was to race westward from Charlestown and alert Hancock and Adams to flee before the regulars arrived. While in Lexington, Revere was also to awaken the residents and let them know that Gage’s soldiers were coming. Next, he was to spur his mount to Concord and spread the alarm. It is likely that Revere and Dawes were only two of several riders who set off from near Boston on that clear, mild night. Others likely rode different routes to towns scattered through the hinterland. Their mission was to awaken militiamen—and especially the so-called minutemen, some one third of the men in each Massachusetts militia company who were to be ready to march “on a minute’s notice”—so that they could descend on the Concord Road and intercept the redcoats’ formidable striking force of more than nine hundred men. Furthermore, once a town was alerted, it almost always sent one of its own to neighboring towns to sound the alarm.

  Thinking the lobsterbacks were only a step behind, Revere pushed Brown Beauty to her limit. He had more time than he realized. At midnight, the regulars marched to Boston’s Back Bay, but the navy bollixed the plans for rapidly transporting the soldiers across the Charles River. It was past two A.M. before the redcoats actually stepped off along Concord Road. The first streaks of sunrise were visible in the eastern sky by the time they finally reached Lexington. Nearly five hours had elapsed since Revere, whose ride was four miles shorter than Dawes’s, had reached the town, sounded the alert, and persuaded Hancock and Adams to flee. Long before the regulars arrived, some sixty Lexington militiamen under Captain John Parker, a forty-six-year-old farmer and mechanic who was deep in the fatal clutches of tuberculosis, had assembled on the village green to await them.

  When the regulars entered Lexington, Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith, whom Gage had put in charge of the day’s operation, detached six companies—about 240 men—under Major John Pitcairn to disband and disarm the rebel militiamen under Captain Parker. Pitcairn marched his regulars toward the village green. The immaculate, red-clad regulars advanced smartly on the ragged, white-faced Americans. As the early-morning light glinted off the bayonets of his soldiers, Pitcairn wasted no time on pleasantries. Visibly contemptuous of the armed yeomen and tradesmen before him, Pitcairn loudly and curtly commanded, “Lay down your arms, you damned rebels!” One of the villagers heard another British officer cry out, “Ye villains, ye rebels, disperse, damn you, disperse!” Seeing that he was outnumbered by as much as four to one, and hardly wishing to be arrested and charged with treason, Parker rapidly ordered his men to hold their fire and disperse. But he did not command them to surrender their arms. As the men disbanded, someone fired a shot. It might have been a horribly ill-timed accidental discharge of a weapon. Or, just as likely, a nervous or trigger-happy soldier on either side may have squeezed off the shot. Many thought it was fired by someone hiding behind a nearby stone wall, someone who was not a soldier. Whoever it was that discharged his weapon, he had fired the first shot in what was to be an eight-year war.

  The musket’s loud blast set off a chain reaction among the edgy redcoats. Several fired into ranks of the militiamen. To Revere, who was still in Lexington, the volley sounded like a “continual roar of musketry.” A handful of militiamen answered with fire of their own, though most of the citizen-soldiers broke and fled for safety. British officers screamed the order to cease firing, but they had difficulty controlling their men, who were now flooded with adrenaline. With a febrile intensity, scores of redcoats charged after the bolting Americans. By the time order was restored, a pall of white smoke and the odor of burnt powder hung heavy over Lexington Green. Bodies littered the commons—some the victims of gunfire, some of bayonets. From start to finish, the incident in Lexington had lasted no more than a couple of minutes, but the carnage was incredible. Seventeen Americans were casualties, many suffering horrid wounds. Eight colonists were dead. One regular had been hit, though his wound was not life-threatening.

  Colonel Smith did not linger in Lexington. His objective was Concord, nearly seven miles away. Revere and Dawes, who had rendezvoused in the village, had long since departed to warn the residents of Concord and those who lived along the way. Neither Revere nor Dawes succeeded in reaching their destination. Near Lincoln, about halfway to Concord, Revere was taken captive by a patrol of British regulars, but he was released after a brief detention. He returned to Lexington and witnessed the shooting. Dawes barely escaped the same patrol, after which he too came back to Lexington. But Concord was warned during the still, dark night by Dr. Samuel Prescott, a local physician who was courting his girlfriend in Lexington when he heard the alarm carried by Revere. He galloped home to spread the word.

  Thus, by nine A.M., when the redcoats at last marched into Concord under a bright sun high in a blue sky, the residents had known for se
veral hours that they were coming. Nevertheless, the regulars marched into the village unopposed. Colonel James Barrett, the Middlesex regimental commander who was the officer in charge of the five trainband companies that were present in Concord—probably a bit fewer than two hundred men—found himself, like Captain Parker, badly outnumbered and unwilling to order his men to resist the king’s troops.

  The regulars set right to work destroying the arsenal. During their first hours in town, few of the hardworking, sweaty soldiers saw the Concord militia, which remained passively on its muster field across the Concord River, nearly a mile away. As the morning progressed, Concord’s militiamen were joined by minutemen who arrived from neighboring towns. Slowly, steadily, the American force grew. By midmorning nearly five hundred militiamen were present. Wired and eager for a fight, some pleaded with Colonel Barrett, a sixty-year-old miller who had taken the field this day wearing his soiled leather work apron, to do something. Still outnumbered, Barrett refused to budge. But around eleven A.M. the militiamen spotted black smoke curling above the bare trees in Concord. Though the regulars had torched only ordnance in the arsenal, word spread like wildfire that the British army was burning the town. Barrett could wait no longer. He ordered his men to load their pieces and march to the North Bridge that spanned the river. The Americans found 115 redcoats guarding the bridge on the other side. Men on both sides were jittery and armed, a dangerous combination. The lead element among the militiamen crowded onto the bridge and moved forward. As the rebels advanced, a shot rang out. This time there was no mistaking its source. A British soldier had fired his musket. As had happened at Lexington, the sharp, jolting sound of the shot caused men on both sides to open fire. The exchange was brief but deadly. Six Americans were wounded, two fatally. One who died was Captain Isaac Davis, an Acton farmer who had built a firing range behind his house to hone his skills as a marksman; he was shot through the heart in the first nanosecond of his combat experience. Twelve regulars were cut down by the return fire of the rebels. Three suffered mortal wounds, the first of the king’s soldiers to perish at the hands of colonists.