A People's History
of the American Revolution
Page Smith
[Excerpts from Volume One, A New Age Now Begins,
published by McGraw-Hill in 1976]
PART III of IV
The British Blunder Again / 1
The new kind of consciousness produced by the Protestant Reformation
and planted in the fertile soil of America had resulted in an
individual who drew his strength from his membership in a faithful
community, and whose values were so internalized that he moved,
however modest his condition of life and his antecedents, with
confidence and a sense of assurance into quite novel situations. Such
individuals were able to form, in an astonishingly brief time, fresh
combinations, communities, or organizations. [p. 270]
That England should have repeatedly emphasized the ingratitude of the
colonies is significant. The call for gratitude is the unmistakable
signal that all moral authority has been dissipated; nothing is left
but a generally fruitless appeal to gratitude. [p. 271]
[John] Dickinson [of Philadelphia] began his third "letter"
[from a farmer in Pennsylvania] with an admonition to his readers to
avoid any violent or unlawful action; "The cause of liberty,"
he wrote, "is a cause of too much dignity to be sullied by
turbulence and tumult. It ought to be maintained in a manner suitable
to her nature. Those who engage in it should breathe a sedate, yet
fervent spirit, animating them to actions of prudence, justice,
modesty, bravery, humanity, and magnaminity." P.278 Finally, in
the twelfth and last letter, Dickinson summed up his position: "let
these truths be indelibly impressed on our minds - that we cannot be
happy without being free - that we cannot be free without being secure
in our property - that we cannot be secure in our property if without
our consent others may as by right take it away - that taxes imposed
on us by Parliament do thus take it away - that duties laid for the
sole purpose of raising money are taxes - that attempts to lay such
duties should be instantly and firmly opposed - that this opposition
can never be effectual unless it is the united effort of these
Provinces - that therefore benevolence of temper towards each other
and unanimity of councils are essential to the welfare of the whole -
and lastly, that for this reason, every man amongst us who in any
manner would encourage either dissension, diffidence, or indifference
between these colonies is an enemy to himself and to his country."
[p. 279]
The Case of the Liberty / 2
Hancock, only thirty-one years old in 1768, was already one of the
most prosperous merchants in Boston. It was often Hancock who paid the
bill when the Sons of Liberty bought banners, or needed handbills
printed... He was a marked man, a dangerous one in British eyes, and
the customs officers kept a close watch to see if they could catch him
violating any of the regulations governing imports and exports. [pp.
281-282]
The episode of the
Liberty seems, quite clearly, to have forced the hands of the
patriot leaders.
Both sides, as we would say today, overreacted,
and events spiraled closer and closer toward a showdown. [p. 286]
The ultimate effect, then, of the Liberty incident - in
itself neither very important nor unusual - was the dispatch of armed
forced in the form of two regiments of redcoats that would (the
British cabinet hoped) cow the people of Boston into submission.
[pp. 291-292]
The Repeal of the Townshend Duties / 3
The Townshend Duties were turning out to be difficult to enforce and
were not producing anything like a substantial revenue. Meanwhile the
nonimportation agreements were so successful that English exports to
America, which had come to 2,378,000 pounds in 1768, dropped to
1,634,000 pounds n 1769. [p.295]
The repeal of the Townshend Acts meant, in practical fact, that
Parliament could not tax the colonies without the armed occupation of
the colonies, and doubtfully even then. [p. 295]
To admit a mistake is, unfortunately, a most difficult step for most
human beings. And it seems even more difficult when they are in power
as a government. Their own private vanities and ambitions compound an
already difficult task. They seem to prefer any other course,
including complete defeat and, on occasion, the destruction of the
nation whose best interests they sincerely intend to serve. At the
bottom of all this lies that strange human emotion that we call pride.
[p. 296]
David Ramsay in his
History of the American Revolution, published a few years
after the end of the war, gave a succinct analysis of the problem. "Great
and flourishing colonies
already grown to the magnitude of a
nation, planted at an immense distance, and governed by constitutions
resembling that of the country from which they sprung, were novelties
in the history of the world. To combine Colonies so circumstanced, in
one uniform system of government with the Parent State, required a
great knowledge of mankind, and an extensive comprehension of things.
It was an arduous business, far beyond the grasp of ordinary
[men], whose minds were narrowed by the formalities of laws, or the
trammels of office. An original genius, unfettered with precedents,
and exalted with just ideas of the rights of human nature, and the
obligations of universal benevolence, might have struck out a middle
line, which would have secured as much liberty to the Colonies, and as
great a degree of supremacy to the Parent State, as their common good
required: But the helm of Great Britain was not in such hands."
P.297
Soon after New York and Philadelphia capitulated, other major port
cities also gave in and resumed trade with Britain. Except in
intransigent Boston, the embargo was effectively broken. [p. 299]
Redcoats in Boston / 4
The dispatch of redcoats to Boston at the very moment when feelings
had been inflamed by the Townshend Duties was perhaps the most
ill-advised of all the unwise moves made by the British government
during the period from 1765 to 1770.
Sending troops was inviting
catastrophe. [p. 300]
There was indeed, among the more militant, open discussion of
revolution and independence. [p. 303]
Within two weeks of the occupation of Boston, seventy soldiers had
deserted and taken refuge in the interior of the colony.
They
had hardly arrived before the attractions of colonial life proved so
compelling that they began to join the ranks of the colonists they had
been sent to police. [p. 306]
The patriot leaders most feared and resented the soldiers' presence
because, by inciting numerous incidents that threatened to flame into
major riots, they undermined the control of these leaders over the
more volatile elements in the population. [p. 309]
The Battle of Golden Hill / 5
In New York, as in Boston, the Sons of Liberty entertained bitter
feelings toward the governor and his supporters and the more
conservative merchants. But the hostility was most intense between the
city's sailors and artisans on the one hand and the British soldiers
on the other. One source of friction was the fact that the troops, to
supplement their miserable wages, were hiring out as cut-rate
laborers, thus taking jobs away from members of the city's labor
force. [pp. 315-316]
the Battle of Golden Hill, so called because the major
fighting took place on a promontory near the center of the city
had been ferocious, a measure of the hatred that had been sown between
the people and those symbols of British power, the redcoats. Most
important, a man had been killed - the first colonial killed by
British soldiers. [p. 317]
The New York patriot intelligentsia did not lead and control the
populace. As a result, the New York mob was in fact, much more of a
riotous and ill-disciplined rabble than the people who poured into
Boston's streets to protest. Nor did the New Yorkers have any
long-term object in view, such as the repeal of the Townshend Duties
or the removal of all troops from the colony.
The Battle of
Golden Hill, then, despite the two deaths, was not as politically
important as, for example, the Stamp Act riot in Boston. [p. 318]
More Trouble In Boston / 6
Each side was devoted to its own particular conspiracy theory, seeing
a plot in every chance happening, a design in the most coincidental
combination of events. So it is in all times of revolution. That
indeed is why they are revolutionary. Attitudes and beliefs become so
polarized that words cease to bear the same meaning for those on
different sides of a widening abyss. The revolutionaries must use old
words in such a way as to illuminate new realities; the
representatives of the existing order are equally insistent on using
old words to obscure the existence of those same new realities. Hence,
suspicion and distrust - and eventually violence - became inevitable.
[p. 330]
The Boston Massacre / 7
Although two regiments of the troops that had garrisoned Boston had
been removed in the fall of 1769-70, two regiments still remained. And
baiting these remaining "lobsterbacks" continued to be a
favored occupation of the town's rougher elements. Both sides hurled
violent and obscene epithets;
It was an explosive situation,
[p. 331]
Though a writer must, almost of necessity, impose some order on the
scene simply by describing it, the scene itself was, in essence,
indescribable. The noise, the shouting and clatter, the ringing of
bells, the throbbing movement of the crowd as those in back pressed
forward and those in front tried to prevent themselves from being
pressed against the points of the soldiers' bayonets, the efforts of
bolder spirits to gain a place in the front ranks and of the more
prudent to withdraw - all this presented a picture of hopeless
confusion. It must also be remembered that this took place with no
more illumination than the moon and such fitful light as might be
provided by torches and lamps. None of those present were later able
to given a very coherent picture of what had happened, and among the
many different versions there were innumerable discrepancies or
outright contradictions. [pp. 337-338]
That is was no worse is a tribute to British military discipline and
the coolness of Captain Preston. It is also a tribute to the patriot
leaders, who kept the mob from exploding into greater violence.
Finally, it is a tribute to Thomas Hutchinson, who acted with great
decision and courage. But last of all, it is a testament to the folly
of the English government in adopting policies that could make the
colonists so hate the mother country that such violence was
inevitable. [p. 342]
The Aftermath of the Massacre and the Trial / 8
The funeral of the slain men took place on March 8.
An enormous
crowed of some twelve thousand men and women marched in the cortege.
Watching with contempt, the Reverend Mather Byles turned to an
acquaintance and said, "They call me a brainless Tory. But tell
me, my young friend, which is better - to be ruled by one tyrant three
thousand miles away, or by three thousand tyrants not one mile away."
It was a witty comment, but it suggested a serious truth. Many of
those colonists who aligned themselves with the Tories did so less out
of love for their distant monarch than out of distaste for "popular
government" or, as they would have put it, mob rule. [p. 345]
The generation of men who fashioned the revolution had a veneration
for the law that in most ages has been reserved for the deity. [p.
351]
When the court reconvened, Josiah Quincy spoke first for the defense
[John] Adams spoke next. Here was an ideal opportunity for him to
place the massacre and the tangled congeries of events and emotions
that preceded and surrounded it in the larger framework of history,
and in doing so, to instruct the people of Boston about the nature of
revolutionary upheavals and the dangers they posed to the fabric of
society, to humane and civil existence. "In the continual
vicissitudes of human things," he declared amidst the shocks of
fortune and the whirls of passion that take place at certain critical
seasons, even in the mildest governments, the people are liable to run
into riots and tumults. There are church quakes and state quakes in
the moral and political world, as well as earthquakes, storms and
tempests in the physical.
We have been entertained with a great
variety of names to avoid calling the persons who gathered at the
custom-house a mob. Some have called them shavers, some call them
geniuses. The plain English is, gentlemen, a motley rabble of saucy
boys, Negroes and mulattoes, Irish teagues and outlandish jack tars.
And why should we scruple to call such a set of people a mob? I cannot
conceive unless the name is too respectable for them. The sun is not
about to stand still or go out, nor the river to dry up, because there
was a mob in Boston on the fifth of March that attacked a party of
soldiers. Such things are not new in the world, nor in the British
dominions, though they are, comparatively, rarities and novelties in
this town." [p. 355]
And then Adams directed a special word at the citizens of Boston,
represented by the twelve jurors who sat listening to the small,
florid man who was addressing them. "The law, in all vicissitudes
of government, fluctuations of the passions, or flights of enthusiasm,
will preserve a steady undeviating course; it will not bend to the
uncertain wishes, imaginations and wanton tempers of men.
It
does not enjoin that which pleases a weak, frail man, but without any
regard to persons, commands that which is good and punishes evil in
all, whether rich or poor, high or low - 'tis deaf, inexorable,
inflexible.' On the one hand it is inexorable to the cries and
lamentations of the prisoners; on the other it is deaf, deaf as an
adder, to the clamors of the populace." [p. 356]
One important by-product of the massacre was that the control of
affairs passed more securely than every into the hands of the
patriots. [pp. 362-363]
The Gaspee Affair / 9
The Massachusetts Committee of Correspondence, with its headquarters
in Boston and operating under the direction of Adams, became a model
of revolutionary organization, circulating a stream of information to
Sons of Liberty in every community, and binding leaders together with
ties of unusual strength and durability. [p. 368]
Perhaps it is not too much to say that it was the British attitude
toward their country cousins in America more than British policy that
made the Revolution inevitable. There was soon to be evidence of the
disastrous effects of such an attitude. [p. 372]
The Boston Tea Party / 10
What disturbed the patriot leaders was the strong sense that British
policy remained substantially unchanged, and whatever relief the
colonists enjoyed was due to indecision or inattention and was thus
temporary.
They knew it was only a matter of time before Lord
North and his cabinet proposed some new law that would once again stir
up trouble. [p. 373]
What was novel about the activities of the East India Company was
that it set about to conquer, govern, and exploit not a wilderness but
a series of ancient and wealthy cultures extending over the entire
subcontinent of India. [p. 374]
The nineteenth-century British historian, William Lecky, wrote a
vivid description of the activities of the East India Company's
agents: "They defied, displaced or intimidated all native
functionaries who attempted to resist them. They refused to permit nay
other traders to sell the goods in which they dealt. They even
descended upon villages, and forced the inhabitants, by flogging and
confinement, to purchase their goods at exorbitant prices, or to sell
what they desired to purchase, at prices far below the market value.
Monopolizing
the trade in some of the first necessaries of life, to the utter ruin
of thousands of native traders, and selling those necessaries at
famine prices to a half-starving population, they reduced those who
came under their influence to a wretchedness they had never known
before." [p. 374]
Doubtless more disasters have overtaken mankind as a consequence of
not taking seriously the claims of the "other side" than
from any other single cause. [p. 375]
The Boston Tea Party was what we today would call guerrilla theater,
a striking and dramatic enactment of an ideological position, an
episode, as John Adams at once discerned, that would capture the
popular imagination as few acts in history have.
[T]he Tea Party
showed more clearly than volumes of exposition how far the patriot
cause had come from its tumultuous beginnings some eight years before.
By now the patriot leaders had established firm control. There were no
rioters among the carefully drilled Mohawks who dumped the tea in
Boston Harbor; they were rather a corps of irregulars who might, on
the next occasion, carry loaded muskets. [p. 384]
The Boston Port Bill / 11
Nobody is more apt to be mortally offended than someone who has done
something venal and stupid and in consequence suffers rebuff and
humiliation. [p. 385]
In virtually every historical crisis, there are men who see quite
clearly, as Burke did, what needs to be done, and, what is more
difficult, how to do it. The problem is that, with tragic frequency,
the people and their rulers will not listen. It proved impossible even
for Burke to penetrate the mass of prejudices, misconceptions, and
bitter animosities held by the generality of the British people and
their leaders. However wisely and eloquently Pitt and Burke spoke,
they did not speak for any substantial portion of the English ruling
class, and certainly not for the North ministry. [p. 386]
In the ranks of ordinary Englishmen, there were strong indications of
sympathy and support for the Americans. Much emphasis, of course, was
placed on the value of the colonies to the mother country: "America
is a Hen that lays her Golden Eggs for Britain; and
she must be
cherished and supported as part of the great family of Britain."
British merchants were owed some four million pounds by their American
customers, and any action by the ministry that put this debt in hazard
was a disservice to the nation. [pp. 388-389]
the other colonies must be persuaded to give some substantial
evidence of support for the beleaguered Bostonians.
The Boston
Port Bill was thus for Massachusetts certainly, and doubtless for the
patriot cause as a whole, the moment of truth. Was there a solid
foundation of sentiment in every colony that would be evoked by such
an appeal? The answer was a ringing affirmative. [pp. 390-391]
It is difficult for people living in a relatively stable society to
imagine the anxieties that must be aroused when that order is
imperiled. What is to happen to one's children? Will the sons march
off to war to be maimed or killed? Will daughters be raped by
licentious soldiers? How will one's family be fed and clothed? And all
one's cherished personal possessions - how will they fare in civil
disorder and war? Would patriot leaders be taken to England and tried
and hanged as traitors, their families and their fortunes proscribed?
[pp. 395-396]
Today revolutions are old hat. In many countries revolutions are an
almost yearly occurrence; we use the word "revolution" as
casually as we pick up a spoon.
But in the eighteenth century,
the word as we most commonly use it today had hardly been discovered.
Today there are only a few "colonies" left. Nearly
every colony has thrown off, by one means or another, at least the
direct control of the nation that held it as a colony. In the
eighteenth century no such thing had happened, nor was it imagined by
most people that it could happen. [p. 398]
The notion of revolution against the mother country - had the
colonists been forced to confront the true nature of their acts and
the consequences that must inevitably follow - might well have been
too formidable for the great majority of patriots; their devotion to
their liberties would perhaps have melted away in the merciless light
of the true situation. It was much better, certainly much easier, to
go step by step, eyes fixed on the path ahead, placing one's faith in
the ultimate benevolence of the King-Father. The strange nature of the
English kingship in the middle years of the eighteenth century allowed
them to continue to live a kind of double life - loyal revolutionaries
of His Majesty, George III. [p. 400]
The Massachusetts Government Act and the Quebec Act / 12
The ... Quebec Act ... extended the province of Quebec from Canada
down the eastern bank of the Connecticut River to 45 degrees of
latitude, through Lake Champlain to the St. Lawrence and Lake Ontario,
thence to Lake Erie and the western boundaries of Pennsylvania to the
Mississippi and then northward to Hudson Bay. The act had the effect
of sealing off most of the western lands from colonial land
speculators and emigrants. [p. 402]
The Americans, of course, wre not without their advocates. Stephen
Fox, the huge and cumbersome brother of Charles James Fox, a leader of
the Whigs, stoutly opposed the measure. "I rise sir," he
said, "with an utter detestation and abhorrence of the present
measures. We are either to treat the Americans as subjects or as
rebels. If we treat them as subjects, the will godes too far; if as
rebels, it does not go far enough. We have refused to hear the parties
in their defence and we are going to destroy their charter without
knowing the constitution of their Government." [p. 402]
Jonathan Shipley, the pro-American Bishop of Asaph, supported Fox: "My
Lords, I look upon North America as the only great nursery of freemen
now left upon the face of the earth." As for the colonies "whom
we are now so eager to butcher," the bishop believed that all
Englishmen should "cherish them as the immortal monuments of our
public justice and wisdom; as the heir of our better days, of our old
arts and manners, and of our expiring national virtues. What work of
art, or power, or public utility, has ever equalled the glory of
having peopled a continent without guilt or bloodshed, with a
multitude of fee and happy commonwealths: to have given them the best
arts of life and government, and to have suffered them under the
shelter of our authority, to acquire in peace the skill to use them."
But, the bishop continued, "by enslaving the Colonies you not
only ruin the peace, the commerce and the fortunes of both countries,
but you extinguish the fairest hopes, shut up the last asylum of
mankind. I think, my Lords ... that a good man may hope that heaven
wil take part against the execution of a plan that seems big not only
with mischief but impeity." [pp. 402-403]
There was thus, by the late summer of 1774, a rising tide of sympathy
for the beleaguered Americans. England's Bill of Rights Society sent
five hundred pounds to the Boston patriots, and the Common Council of
the City of London held a meeting in which much indignation was
expressed at the Coercive Acts.[p.406]
To imagine the frame of mind of most Bostonians, it is necessary to
recall that Boston was almost an island in the eighteenth century,
virtually surrounded by water and connected to the mainland only by a
narrow spit of land known as Boston Neck. Thus wherever Bostonians
looked, they could see British warships, a silent and perpetual
menace. [p. 410]
The plans of the ministry, the fate of Boston and of the colonies,
the fate of America, and possibly the fate of the world rested on one
simple question: Were the ordinary people of America, 90 per cent of
them farmers in modest circumstances, distributed over a vast extent
of land - of forest and mountain and field and farm - were they free
born "Americans"? Did they care about the principles of
abstract justice? Was freedom a word that evoked for them a powerful
reality, or was it a cant word of philosophers and political
theorists? [p. 412]
Historians have
given comparatively little attention to the
most important phenomenon of all: the formation of a national
consciousness between 1765 and 1774. The new breed of man - the
American - responded with determination and courage to all threats to
what he understood to be his freedom. [p. 412]
Charles Lee -- formerly an English officer, now living in America --
hearing of Gage's prediction that the colonists could be readily
subdued, wrote from Pennsylvania to a wig friend in England: "What
devil of a nonsense can instigate any man of General Gage's
understanding to concur in bringing about this delusion? I have
lately, my Lord, run through almost the whole colonies from the North
to the South. I should not be guilty of an exaggeration in asserting
that there are 200,000 strong-bodied active yeomanry, ready to
encounter all hazards. They are not like the yeomanry of other
countries, unarmed and unused to arms. They want nothing but some
arrangement, and this they are now bent on establishing. [p. 413]
PART IV
The Continental Congress: Nursery of American Statesmen / 1
New York conservatives had proposed an intercolonial congress modeled
on the one occasioned by the Stamp Act.
A plan for
constitutional union should also be framed that would include an
American Bill of Rights guaranteeing American liberties. The congress
should then frame "a Message of Peace unmixt with Threats or
threatening Behavior." [p. 417]
The congress of committees or delegates from the various colonies was
to meet in Philadelphia on the fifth of September, 1774. [p. 419]
Pennsylvania, like every other colony, had its quota (and indeed more
than its quota, if one counted the Quakers, as one surely must) of "trimmers"
of those who professed "to be against the Parliament-army claims
of Right to tax Americans, to be Friends of our Constitutions, our
charter, etc." These men only bided their time to try to
frustrate the plans of the patriots for resistance. [p. 426]
In order for a great conflagration to be ignited in human society, it
is usually necessary that each party to the dispute make
miscalculations concerning the intent and the courage of its adversary
sufficiently profound to allow it to proceed on a course that will
inevitably bring disaster. [p. 428]
Down to Business / 2
The first issue to perplex the delegates was whether they should vote
as individuals or by colony.
John Adams listed some of the
problems involved in his diary. "If We vote by Colonies, the
Method will be liable to great inequality and injustice, for 5 small
Colonies with 100,000 People each may out-vote 4 large ones, each of
which has 500,000 inhabitants. If We vote by the Poll [that is simply
as individuals], some Colonies have more than their Proportion of
[Delegates], and others have less. If we vote by interests, it will be
attended by insuperable difficulties, to ascertain the true importance
of each Colony - is the Weight of a Colony to be ascertained by the
number of inhabitants merely - or by the Amount of their Trade, the
Quantity of their Exports and Imports, or by any compound Ratio of
both. This will lead us into such a Field of Controversy as will
greatly perplex us." It was not even possible to obtain a true
count of the population of each individual colony. [p. 431]
Henry repeated his view that "the Government is at an End. All
distinctions are thrown down. All America is thrown into one Mass."
John Jay was uneasy at such talk. One might suppose that the delegates
had been assembled for the purpose of framing an American constitution
instead of endeavoring to correct the faults in an old one. The
Measure of arbitrary Power is not full, and I think it must run over,
before we can undertake to frame a new Constitution." [p. 432]
On the third day of the discussions, Joseph Galloway, the most
formidable of the conservative faction, rose to speak.
He was
skeptical of the argument based on natural rights or on the laws of
nature; they were too abstract and theoretical to be of much use in
the present crisis. The issue was, in essence, one of the distribution
of power. Power resulted from the landed property of a society. A
review of British history illustrated how the owners of landed
property had fought for and won protections for their estates against
rapacious monarchs. [p. 433]
The colonial upper classes considered the securing, preparing, and
eating of food a central aspect of their lives. More than that, they
treasured the company and the conversation occasioned by such repasts,
the flow of good humor, the witty sallies, the skillfully presented
arguments, the learned allusions, the precise steps in a logical
analysis, the net turns of phrase that might support a delicately
balanced proposition. In short, they relished that noble and proper
accompaniment of good food, good talk. And that good food and wine and
talk wove a subtle but powerful web among their affections, binding
them into a unity of spirit and a bond of concord, in which agreeable
harmony lay the seeds of a nation. [p. 437]
Democratic politics rest, in considerable part, on trust, and trust
quite clearly rests on the mutual confidence that comes most commonly
out of knowing the people that one trusts. [p. 437]
Men faced with taking difficult and costly actions are prone to grasp
at straws. Most men prefer to avoid or delay hard decisions. [p. 440]
It was odd also that no one picked up Galloway's warning, i.e., that
if war was to come, nonimportation and nonexportation, far from being
the means by which the British government was to be brought to terms,
might be the means of fatally weakening the colonies and leaving them
an easy prey to the armed might of the mother country. [p. 441]
The clearest division among the delegates was over the issue of
whether or not Parliament had the right to regulate trade.
It
might be assumed that these patriots were, as a logical consequence of
their position, in favor of immediate independence for the American
colonies. But to presume that would be to assume that men are ruled by
logic, and history gives no support to that assumption. The fact was
that many of those who rejected the authority of Parliament over the
colonies
in all cases whatsoever rejected the idea of independence,
wished to remain within the British Empire, and somehow believed that
they could. [p. 441]
Perhaps the only substantial achievement of the Congress was to have
come together, to have established a basis, at least among the bolder
delegates, of mutual understanding and trust. The British would be
much more impressed (though still insufficiently) by the demonstration
of colonial unity offered by the fact that the Congress had convened,
and that it had drawn together many of the ablest men in the various
colonies, than by anything that happened. [p. 445]
As with all deliberative bodies, the discussions of the delegates to
the First Continental Congress were extensive and at times tedious.
The delegates were, as time would prove, a remarkably able group of
men; it has been common to call them the ablest in history who have
gathered together to contemplate some form of political action. They
were, on the whole, remarkably learned. They had read most of the
great classical authors - Vergil and Cicero especially, but the
historians Herodotus, Thucydides, Polybius, Tacitus and Livy as well.
They knew modern writers on law and government - Locke, of course, and
Harrington, and the authorities on jurisprudence that Galloway had
referred to in introducing his plan of union. [p. 446]
Adams replied to a pamphlet by Daniel Leonard, a Tory
spokesman. Leonard had attacked the committees of correspondence as "the
foulest, subtlest, and most venomous serpent that ever issued from the
eggs of sedition." Adams defended them warmly. "Almost all
mankind," he wrote, "have lost their liberties through
ignorance, inattention, and disunion. These committees are admirably
calculated to diffuse knowledge, to communicate intelligence, and
promote unanimity.
The patriots of this Province desire nothing
new: they wish only to keep their old privileges. For one hundred and
fifty years they had been allowed to tax themselves and govern their
internal concerns as they thought best. Parliament governed their
trade as they thought fit. This plan they wish may continue forever."
[p. 448]
Then Adams came to the heart of the matter. The "noblemen and
ignoblemen [of England]," he declared, "ought to have
considered that Americans understand the laws and politics as well as
themselves, and that there are six hundred thousand men in it, between
sixteen and sixty years of age; and therefore it will be very
difficult to chicane them out of their liberties by 'fiction of law'
no matter upon what foundation." [p. 449]
England / 3
When Parliament convened in January 1775, the first subject for
debate was American affairs. Pitt appeared dramatically in defense of
the colonies.
Edmund Burke joined his own voice in the plea for
conciliation. "The use of Force alone," he reminded the
members, "is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment; but it
does not remove the necessity of subduing again; and a nation is not
governed, which is perpetually to be conquered.
" [pp.
452-453]
Truth and justice were with Chatham and Burke, but the votes were
with North. Parliament gave solid support to that minister's
determination to bring the rebellious colonies to heel. [p. 454]
The Lull Before the Storm / 4
To the British and the Tories, the fact that patriots were quite
evidently busy preparing for war - while at the same time still
declaring their undying allegiance to George III - was prima facie
evidence of a quality that had been attributed to the New Englanders
since the Puritans first landed in the Bay: hypocrisy. [p.460]
Those colonials who had fought beside British soldiers in the French
and Indian War came forward with reassuring tales of ineptness,
cowardice, and stupidity, all adding up to the fact that the English "knew
not how to fight." [p. 461]
Of course, the British were, if anything, even more contemptuous of
the colonials than the colonials were of them. Their experience in the
French and Indian War was that the colonials were poorly trained and
unreliable. [p. 461]
Lexington / 5
The atmosphere had so far changed that Galloway dared to speak out
boldly in the Pennsylvania assembly, censuring "the measures of
the Congress in every thing" and declaring that the actions of
the delegates "all tended to incite America to sedition, and
terminate in Independence." [pp. 470-471]
The committees of correspondence and those numerous committees
appointed to enforce nonimportation did not always find easy sailing.
Their authority, after all, rested on very precarious grounds.
Government, to be accepted, must be legitimated, otherwise it is
simply a mater of your neighbor trying to tell you what to do - in
which case all kinds of awkward personal matters enter the picture.
[p. 471]
it might be said as a rule of political life that the less
legitimate the authority, the more brutal the exercise of it is apt to
be. If you are without the support of courts and magistrates, sheriffs
and jailers, you are very apt to resort to direct force and
intimidation to achieve your ends. [p. 471]
Gage and his staff, preserving the strictest secrecy, proceeded to
make careful plans for a raid on Concord.
The patriots, of
course, were well aware as the British of the egresses from the city,
either across Boston Neck or by boat. Patriot spies kept close watch
on both avenues - the narrow corridor over the Neck and the much
broader area of the harbor and river. [pp. 472-473]
At Lexington, the militiamen had been mustered on the common in the
early morning hours to the number of perhaps a hundred or so,
A
beating of drums would summon them when they were needed. [p.478]
As the advance guard of British soldiers approached within one
hundred yards of the common, the Minutemen began to file off to the
cover of a stone wall that ran along the right margin of the green.
Five
or six shots were fired by the Minutemen, wounding a soldier and Major
Pitcairn's horse in two places. At this point the light infantry fired
a deadly volley that killed ten of the militiamen, four of them
members of two families, and wounded nine others, among them Prince, a
black man. [p. 479]
The British soldiers had opened a heavy fire without orders. As for
the Minutemen, it is clear that there was no order for them to fire
and no general firing on their part.
By their undisciplined
actions, the [British] soldiers provoked that nightmare of death and
suffering that they and their companions were to live through that
day. [p. 480]
Concord / 6
By the time the British had taken up the march to Concord, the
militia of that town had been augmented by contingents from a
half-dozen communities, to the number of two battalions, which
stationed themselves on a small hill just east of the town. [p. 482]
The British, as one officer reported, received "heavy fire
form all sides, from Walls, Fences, Houses, Trees, Barns, etc."
The retreat, orderly at first, soon approached a rout. [p. 485]
Probably the most effective work was done by those militia who
depended on stone walls and tree trunks for cover. They fought like
the Indians, firing and then withdrawing to load their cumbersome
pieces with nervous, fumbling fingers, find a new position, and fire
again. What was disheartening of all to the British was the accuracy
with which these farmers fired their muskets. As the effective British
force dwindled away through casualties and exhaustion, the number of
colonists, fresh and eager to have a shot at last at the hated
redcoats, swelled by the hundreds. [p. 487]
the very style of fighting adopted by the Americans doubtless
made it impossible for them to take advantage of the demoralization of
the British troops. They did not constitute an army, but rather a
horde or a swarm of individuals who stung and flew on to sting again.
At Bunker Hill they would fight much in the same fashion. Indeed it
would be Washington's principal task to make these individuals cohere
into an army capable of carrying on sustained campaigns, pursuing an
advantage, or extricating itself from a defeat. [p. 488]
It is instructive to place the American reaction beside that of the
British general.
What to the British was simply an unfortunate
skirmish involving the death of a few soldiers, was to the colonists
the most piercing and agonizing assault upon their homes, families,
and friends.
To the [British] it meant a setback, an
inconvenience, more trouble and expense, explanations, and the usual
embarrassing problem of fixing blame. To the colonist it seemed as
though the whole order of the universe had been disturbed; he felt
imperiled in the most sacred recesses of his personal life - the
safety of his wife and children, of a son or a brother. [pp. 490-491]
Boston Besieged / 7
Nathanael Greene was purely a texbook soldier.
Greene had
educated himself in military history, in mathematics, and in political
theory.
When he went to Boston in 1773 to buy himself a gun, he
also purchased a work on the life of the great French general Henri
Turenne, and he brought back with him a British deserter to instruct
his company in drill.
Apparently his beng chosen as general of
the Rhode Island militia was the consequence of his intelligence, his
quiet authority, and his confidence in himself and in his ability to
lead others. It was a confidence by no means misplaced. Greene was to
become Washington's most brilliant general. [pp. 497-498]
The besieging colonials around Boston and the besieged British waited
uneasily day after day for the other side to take the initiative.
Having underestimated the determination of the colonists and the
degree of their solidarity, Gage now overestimated their numbers and
their ability to mount an attack. For their part, the colonists daily
anticipated a massive assault by the British, supported by the guns of
the naval vessels in the harbor. [p. 506]
Bunker Hill / 8
Perhaps the most gifted of the senior officers assigned to occupy and
fortify the high ground above Charlestown was Colonel Richard Gridley,
a brilliant engineer who, in the French and Indian War, had performed
the heroic task of getting two cannon up the sheer cliffs that rose to
the plains of Abraham
It was his job to direct the
fortifications on the top of Bunker Hill once that promontory had been
occupied by the Americans. [p. 511]
As the war progressed, it came to be a truism that the colonial
farmer-soldier was not only a fast digger, but also that he would
fight stoutly if his legs were protected. A farmer with one leg or a
mangled foot was of little use, and the great majority of the American
soldiers were farmers first and soldiers second. [pp. 512-513]
When the British staff
gathered early on the morning of June
17 for a council of war, there was unanimous agreement that the
Americans must be driven off the high ground in Charlestown; otherwise
their guns would command most of the city.
It was simply
inconceivable to the British generals that the untrained rebels would
stand in the face of a vastly superior force of British soldiers
supported by artillery and by the guns of the entire fleet. Howe may
have welcomed the opportunity to teach the colonials the crushing
lesson that he had planned for a few days later.
[p. 515]
Gage and his generals were proud of their troops. They liked to play "soldiers,"
almost as though the brightly colored figures
were toy counters
in a splendid game.
One of the basic principles of military
action is speed. But the British generals thought otherwise. Things
had to be done with "decency and order" - virtues that
ranked high in the eighteenth century, certainly higher than speed.
[p. 516]
[Colonel William] Prescott [of Massachusetts] was the crucial figure
in the unfolding drama. It had frequently been observed during the
French and Indian War that Americans would fight well if they were
well led. They would be well led on this day. [p. 518]
Howe
watched the scene with horror. He saw the careful order,
on which the success of any such operation rested, broken as the first
and second lines of the light infantry "fell into disorder"
and became hopelessly entangled and confused.
That moment must
rank in military history with the battle of Agincourt in 1415, where
heavily armored French knights were cut down by English bowmen. The
misnamed Battle of Bunker Hill was the symbolic military enactment of
a profound change in Western history. [p. 524]
as at the retreat from Lexington, the militia were able during
the course of an engagement to take an initiative without formal
orders from above when they saw an opportunity to play an effective
part in the unfolding of the action. This is the most desirable
quality in a soldier - the ability to see where some pressure, however
slight, if skillfully applied can change the whole course of battle.
Such action, because it must be improvised on the spot, is seldom the
result of a command decision. [p. 525]
With the British at last in possession of the crude and simple fort
and the Americans in retreat, it was time for an accounting. Howe had
lost all his aides and most of his officers. [p. 531]
[Boston] was filled with the agony of war. It became a vast hospital
and mortuary for the injured and the dead.
A Tory lady wrote
bitterly that there were many in the British army who fell that day
who were "of noble family, many very respectable, virtuous and
amiable characters, and it grieves me that gentlemen, brave British
soldiers, should fall by the hands of such despicable wretches as
compose the banditti of the country, amongst whom there is not one
that has the least pretension to be called a gentlemen. They are the
most rude, depraved, degenerate race, and it is a mortification to us
that they speak English and can trace themselves from that stock."
[p. 532]
A British officer put the mater most acutely: "From an absurd
and destructive confidence, carelessness, or ignorance, we have lost a
thousand of our best men and officers and have given the rebels great
matter of triumph by showing them what mischief they can do us."
[pp. 532-533]
It fell to Gage
to write the official dispatches to Lord
Barrington, Secretary of State for War. "These people," the
chastened general wrote, "shew a spirit and conduct against us
they never shewed against the French, and every body has judged of
them from their former appearance and behaviour when joined with the
Kings forces in the last war, which has led many into great mistakes.
They were now spirited up by a rage and enthusiasm as great as ever
people were possessed of, and you must proceed in earnest or give the
business up.
The loss we have sustained is greater than we can
bear.
I have before wrote your Lordship my opinion that a large
army must at length be employed to reduce these people, and mentioned
the hiring of foreign troops. I fear it must come to that.
"
[p. 533]
On the American side, the principal achievements of the defenders of
Bunker Hill
flowed from the inability of the colonists to fight
as the rules of eighteenth-century warfare indicated they should,
holding their formations at all costs, loading and firing "by the
numbers" and on command. [p. 534]
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