America's Hidden History: Untold Tales of the First Pilgrims, Fighting Women, and Forgotten Founders Who Shaped a Nation Paperback (19 page)

“It was a glorious morning for America,” in Samuel Adams’ (perhaps apocryphal) words. “The shot heard round the world”—as Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose grandfather was then the minister in Concord, would famously call it—had provided Samuel Adams with the deadly encounter he knew was needed. There would be no turning back. It was a glorious morning that turned into a struggle that lasted six and a half long and often desperate years, until major hostilities ended on October 17, 1781, at Yorktown.

The shooting war had now begun. But the propaganda war that would be even more critical to Americans’ hopes for independence was also getting under way. Dr. Joseph Warren, who had rushed from Boston to join in the fighting in Menotomy, knew that how the story was told—both in America and England—was paramount. Quickly | 151 \

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gathering depositions from witnesses, including the wounded British officers in patriot hands, Dr. Warren soon wrote a letter to town committees that began, “The barbarous murders committed on our innocent brethren, on Wednesday, the 19th instant, have made it absolutely necessary that we immediately raise an army to defend our wives and children from the butchering hands of the inhuman soldiery, who, in-censed at the obstacles they met in their bloody progress, and enraged at being repulsed from the field of slaughter, will, without the least doubt, take the first opportunity in their power to ravage this devoted country with fire and sword.”

The nearly one hundred depositions Warren had collected and a letter he addressed to the “Inhabitants of Great Britain” were dispatched on a speedy American schooner. Reaching London before General Gage’s own official report of the battle could, Warren’s open letter caused a sensation, painting the Americans as victims of an un-provoked British slaughter. All England was shocked at the concept of their finest troops—even though they were not, for the most part, battle-tested regulars—being sent flying by the raw Massachusetts militia. Having dismissed the American battlefield threat as of no consequence, the British government was put completely on the defensive.

Friends of the American cause in England, while few, had powerful new arguments.

Back in America, the influence of Warren’s propaganda coup was felt even more powerfully. As David Hackett Fischer noted: “This second battle of Lexington and Concord was waged not with bayonets but broadsides, not with muskets but depositions, newspapers and sermons. In strictly military terms, the fighting on April 19 was a minor reverse for British arms, and a small success for the New England militia. But the ensuing contest for popular opinion was an epic disaster | 152 \

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for the British government and a triumph for American Whigs. In every region of British America, attitudes were truly transformed by news of this event.”22

In the immediate aftermath of the fighting of April 19, a hodge-podge, ragtag army of New England militiamen began descending on the outskirts of Boston. They came not only from Massachusetts but from neighboring colonies as well. In Connecticut, portly, aging Israel Putnam, a legend for his heroism during the French and Indian War, left his farm to join the Connecticut men who streamed off to Massachusetts. From Pennsylvania came a contingent of buckskin-clad backwoodsman, led by Daniel Morgan and toting the long rifles that would add to their legendary stature as American marksmen who would take such a heavy toll on British officers. These were among the farmer-minutemen of Revolutionary War mythology, but some did not stay long: they had farms to tend, or their terms of enlistment would expire in a few months.

But many of the others trooping into Cambridge were the poor, the unemployed, the young, and the restless, looking for adventure and a payday. These recruits would become the core of Washington’s Continental army. Lacking organization or experienced leadership, it was essentially a rapidly growing small town, numbering between fifteen thousand and twenty thousand men, short on supplies and lacking any sense of basic sanitation. But they would succeed in bottling up the bloodied British troops still licking their wounds in Boston under a shocked, crestfallen General Gage.

Meanwhile in Philadelphia, Congress dithered. That the other colonies would join in the rebellion was still not, in a modern phrase, a “slam dunk.” Conservatives and moderates eager to avoid war held sway in Congress. The Massachusetts delegates, already viewed as rad-

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ical troublemakers, had to lie low and keep their counsel, although the ambitious, egotistical John Hancock hoped to be named commander of the American forces. His dream was dashed by the Adamses, who had agreed on another candidate. As Samuel Adams biographer Mark Puls recounts it, “John Adams rose to argue for the need for Congress to adopt the army around Boston. John could see a satisfied expression cross Hancock’s face; he believed he was about to be nominated commander-in-chief of the Continental army. When John Adams then nominated George Washington, Hancock was astonished. ‘I never remarked a more sudden and striking change of countenance. Mortifica-tion and resentment were expressed as forcibly as his face could exhibit them.’ Samuel Adams seconded the motion.”23

Grandson of Lexington’s minister, John Hancock was one of the wealthiest men in Massachusetts and all of America. In spite of his prestigious Puritan bloodlines, he had not been born to wealth. His father, an impoverished Congregational minister, died when he was seven and the boy grew up in his grandfather’s Lexington parsonage.

The source of Hancock’s fortune was his bachelor uncle Thomas, who had made a killing as a smuggler and supplier to the British army during the Seven Years’ War. When Thomas Hancock died, John Hancock inherited both business and fortune in 1764, and by continuing its illegal pursuits, prospered in spectacular fashion. Around Boston, it was said that Hancock’s true interest in wanting to be free of Britain was to get out from under the £100,000 in fines he owed for smuggling. Shortly after winning his inheritance, Hancock had been invited into the patriot inner circle by Samuel Adams, who had bankrupted just about every business endeavor he had put his hands on. More than a few Boston wags nudged and winked. With his deep pockets, Hancock became bankroller to Adams’ cause. But the slight | 154 \

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over Washington’s selection, as Hancock perceived it, left a deep frac-ture between the Boston patriots. It was a bitter rift that was never completely repaired.

On June 15, the Continental Congress unanimously approved George Washington’s appointment, and a day later he left for Boston.

By this time, General Gage had been joined in Boston by three more British generals—“Gentleman Johnny” Burgoyne, Sir Henry Clinton, and Sir William Howe. Arriving with more reinforcements in late May, the trio also brought along fishing rods, as if planning for a country outing instead of a long campaign. They were shocked to discover that Gage’s troops were pinned down by what they considered “rabble.”

On June 16, 1775, the patriot militia erected a battery on Breed’s Hill, near Bunker Hill. The next day, the British attacked the hill in what has come down in history as the battle of Bunker Hill. The British won the day, eventually chasing the rebel forces from the hill, but they suffered horrendous casualties, losing a third of their men.

Among them was Major Pitcairn, killed when hit by a shot fired by Peter Salem, a freed slave and one of a number of blacks at Bunker Hill. Rhode Island militia leader Nathanael Greene is said to have quipped, “I wish we could sell them another hill at the same price.”

A Quaker who had learned his soldiering from the military books he shared with fellow Quaker and bookseller Henry Knox, Greene was shunned by the pacifist Society of Friends for his military pursuits. He would go on to become one of George Washington’s most trusted and successful lieutenants.

But on the patriot ledger too, the price of Bunker Hill was steep.

Among the losses was Dr. Joseph Warren. Although he had been named a general, Warren insisted on fighting in the front lines. Ral-

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lying some men to the hottest point of the British attack, Warren was struck in the head at point-blank range by a musket ball and died instantly. A British officer in charge of the burial detail who later reported finding his body said he had “stuffed the scoundrell with another Rebel into one hole and there he and his seditious principles may remain.”24

On the day of the battle, Warren’s four children were in the care of Abigail Adams in Quincy, where the doctor had sent them for safety, with Boston under siege. When she received word of Warren’s death at Breed’s Hill, she wrote to John in Philadelphia: “Not all the havoc and devastation they [the British] have made has wounded me like the death of Warren. We want him in the Senate; we want him in his profession; we want him in the field. We mourn for the citizen, the senator, the physician, and the warrior. When he fell, liberty wept.”

Several months later, Paul Revere and a few other patriots went to the battle site in Charlestown to locate Warren’s remains and provide a proper burial for the patriot leader. They were able to find his body, which Revere identified by the false teeth he himself had set in Warren’s mouth, now credited as the first known instance of forensic dentistry in American history.

So much had changed since that March night in Old South. Like Cicero, Warren had died for his republican ideals. Now his toga was replaced by the mantle of a revolutionary martyr.

a Atermath z

Not long after the events at Concord, General Gage packed his wife aboard a ship and sent her back to England. Following the Bunker | 156 \

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Hill disaster, Gage remained in America for more than a year, until October 1776, when he returned to London. Deemed responsible for the British calamities at Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill, Gage was the scapegoat. His own men essentially mutinied; he was replaced by General Howe as acting commander in chief. After his return to England, Gage became estranged from his wife, Margaret, and died in 1787. Margaret Gage survived him for more than thirty years, never revealing any role in the events in Boston. But leading historians, such as David Hackett Fischer, conclude, “All of this circumstantial evidence suggests that it is highly probable, through far from certain, that Doctor Warren’s informer was indeed Margaret Kemble Gage— a lady of divided loyalties to both her husband and her native land.”25

In Philadelphia, the war’s outbreak cut both ways. For John Adams, who had walked through the devastation at Lexington and Concord before setting off for the Second Congress, there was no going back.

To him, the key was how to bring the other reluctant colonies along.

Many other more moderate voices still hoped for reconciliation with London. One of them was Philadelphia’s John Dickinson, a wealthy but hesitant patriot and Quaker who drafted a petition that not only opposed taxation of Americans but demanded a guarantee of colonial rights and strictly prohibited any changes in provincial charters.

The king was not amused. After the hostilities in Massachusetts, King George III was not remotely interested in reading Dickinson’s “Olive Branch Petition,” as it was called. Instead, in August 1775, after the Continental Congress had adjourned for the summer, the king issued a proclamation, reading in part: Whereas many of our subjects in divers parts of our Colonies and plantations in North America misled by dangerous and ill-designing men | 157 \

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and forgetting the allegiance which they owe to the power that has protected and supported them; after various disorderly acts committed in disturbance of the public peace to the obstruction of lawful commerce and to the oppressions of our loyal subjects carrying on same: have at length proceeded to open and avowed rebellion by arraying themselves in a hostile manner to withstand the execution of the law and traitorously preparing, ordering and levying war against us; And whereas there is reason to apprehend that such rebellion has been much promoted by the traitorous correspondence . . . We have thought fit by and with the advice of our Privy Council, to issue our Royal Proclamation . . .

to suppress such rebellion and to bring the traitors to justice.

—King George III, Proclamation of Rebellion (August 23, 1775)
By the time King George issued his proclamation, George Washington had reached his newly minted army in Cambridge. He was appalled at the condition of the camps and the behavior of the troops.

Washington found one militia officer shaving some of his men. A barber before the fighting began, the man had been elected captain of the company. Democracy might be a fine way to run a legislature, in Washington’s view, but no way to run an army. Over the next few months, Washington would attempt to organize and discipline his forces.

He was also confronted with another shocking reality in this new “democratic” American army he had been presented with: it included black men with guns. Some of them had fought at Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill. “Freedom” was a catchy tune, and although slavery was still widespread in the northern colonies, the abolitionist spirit was growing. That was not going to sit well with Washington’s southern planter friends, who were probably much more concerned | 158 \

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about slave rebellions than about the American Revolution. Washington initially balked at allowing blacks to serve. But as time went by and he needed every fighting man he could muster, he was forced to moderate his policies.

As Simon Schama wrote in
Rough Crossings,
“George Washington, despite the voiced hostility of fellow officers and civilian delegates to his camp at Cambridge, was reluctant to let black volunteers go, so he put the question to Congress. There, the horror expressed by Southern representatives such as Edward Rutledge at the idea of arming slaves predictably overcame the lukewarm gratitude for black service.