ownership of property conquered from the enemy State, including
debts as well as personal or real property.”[108]
The richest man in New England was on a level with the poorest. However
much wealth he might have lying in the banks, he could draw only enough
for daily food. He could not take anything from his safety deposit
vaults. They were guarded by armed sentries who permitted access only
to those who came accompanied by officers.
This condition would last, as the invaders informed the people, until a
complete list of all funds had been made.
In every financial department of cities and towns were uniformed men
demanding cash statements and lists of assessed valuations for the
purpose of apportioning the amount of contribution to be levied on each
community.
While the enemy was going thus systematically to work to ascertain the
full money value of his prize, he made requisitions for immediate needs
in every place occupied by him. The troops demanded hay, oats, corn and
other forage. They paid for the supplies with written papers that
acknowledged receipt; but it was noticed that these receipts did not
promise payment.[109]
_$50,000 a Day Levied_
In Boston the municipal authorities were informed that the city was
subject to a cash levy for the support of troops at the rate of $1
daily for each man of the occupying army, making an amount payable in
bank funds of $50,000 a day.[110]
The authorities had no recourse except to find the money. Nominally in
control, they were held rigorously to account for the obedience of their
city. The Headquarters Staff of the invading army had possession of the
State House, and from this point sent out brief orders.
Prominent among the notices that were posted here and in all public
places of Boston was the announcement of the institution of the new
government. It was:
“On and after this date the City of Boston is under the rule of the
Headquarters Staff of this army. The present civil officials of the
city will continue their functions. A continuance of existing civil
and penal laws, and the exercise of legislative, executive and
administrative duties are permitted under the sanction and with the
participation of the military government.”[111]
Had Boston town gone under in flame and terror, the very fury of the
catastrophe might
[Illustration: “The Country-Club had been turned into a Brigade
Headquarters.”]
have carried men through it with less of despair than this cold
conquest. Instead of blows to be struck, or blood to be shed, there was
only humiliation--humiliation intensified hourly by the cool,
unimpassioned correctness with which the enemy treated the fallen city.
He did not even fill the city with troops. Only four thousand infantry
and a regiment of cavalry were sent in to hold all Boston. The rest of
the army remained outside, encamped or quartered on the people of the
suburbs and the towns of the metropolitan district.
_Unconcerned Conquerors_
Unconcerned, almost unguarded, the commander and his officers moved
about the town. They went in and out of the City Hall with the assurance
of superiors. They occupied the two largest hotels. Brookline people
reported that the Country Club there had been turned into a brigade
headquarters.
Dazed, as if in the bonds of an ugly nightmare that must vanish if they
could only awaken, the people of Boston looked at this handful of men
who had so easily, so calmly, made themselves utter masters of a
metropolitan district of 39 municipalities--13 cities and 26 towns all
within fifteen miles of the State House. From the State House this dozen
or two dozen quiet, business-like men in uniform ruled with a word or
two over 415 square miles with a population of more than a million and a
half of people, and a taxable value of more than two and one-half
billions of dollars.[112]
In the city so helplessly given over to them, there were, according to
the certificate then lying in the City Clerk’s office, 124,000 men
liable to enrollment in the State Militia. These were part of those
“millions of men” of whom passionate orators had spoken so often--the
millions of heroic, strong, intelligent American freemen who would
instantly spring to arms at the call of need and sweep the most daring
invader back into the sea.[113]
They were heroic. They were strong. They were intelligent. But they were
confronted by the cold truth. It stared at them from all their squares,
from all their parks, from the approaches to all their bridges. It was
the cold truth--in the shape of cannon. Even the grounds of Harvard and
of Boston University were occupied by batteries. Sentinels were on watch
in Boston’s church towers with machine guns that pointed down into the
streets.
Against that machinery of war, courage was as futile as a dream.
Strength was as helpless as an infant in a cyclone. Intelligence was
naked against the unintelligent steel.
_Helpless as Any Village_
So this city, one of the richest of the world, next to New York in its
imports, with its enormous railroad terminals that drew together the
roads of a continent’s commerce, had dropped into the invader’s hand
almost for the picking, and lay in his grasp as incapable of resistance
as if, instead of being the fourth greatest city of the United States,
it had been a seaside village.[114]
There had not been a shot fired after the last shot had sounded from the
harbor forts and the American flag had vanished from the harbor sky.
There was nothing to do. Slowly, systematically as it had invested
Boston, so the army had taken Boston. There was no commanding point in
all the country around it that was not crowned with heavy artillery.
There was no road to the city that was not held by troops who demanded
passes. Patrols moved constantly through the streets.
Through the whole metropolitan district had been sent a proclamation
issued by the local authorities, warning the people that all intercourse
between the territories occupied by belligerent armies whether by
letter, by travel, or in any other way, had been interdicted and was
punishable by fine or imprisonment, or, in cases of serious infraction,
by death after summary trial. This proclamation was countersigned by the
military commanders of the various districts.[115]
Another proclamation, issued from headquarters in the State House, said:
“The civil authorities, by and with the consent of the military
government, proclaim that troops will be quartered on the
inhabitants at the pleasure of regimental and company officers. The
troops are required to respect the persons and property of citizens
during the good behavior of the latter. Any treachery on the part
of citizens is punishable by death. Refusal to comply with any
provision of this proclamation will be punished with fine or
imprisonment, or in aggravated cases by confiscation of any
property whose use has been denied the troops.”[116]
_Clearing the Wharves_
Along the water-front an order was given to clear all the big wharves.
Owners of vessels berthed there were instructed to have them towed to
basins or anchored in the stream. Provided with diagrams of the
mine-fields that had been surrendered under the conditions of
capitulation, the mine-sweepers cleared the harbor for the entrance of
the fleet.
Floating from more than a score of warships and transports, the
Coalition’s flags moved toward the city. Cannon saluted them from the
forts, and they saluted in reply. Among the stricken thousands on shore
there were many who sobbed as they heard the foreign thunders peal
around their bay, and saw the foreign flags against their sky, with
never a starry banner on all those ancient American waters.
There were foreign ships lying under the forts, unloading spare guns to
replace those that were destroyed. All the works were busy with enemy
sailors, repairing the defenses to protect conquered Boston against
attack from its own navy.
Naval and army transports steamed up to the city, and took possession of
the wharves and the Navy Yard basins. Destroyers and small craft moved
up the channel to the Mystic River and occupied the naval and marine
hospitals. Marines and sailors came ashore in South Boston and
established a signal station on Telegraph Hill.
The naval commander seized all Federal property that had anything to do
with the conduct of the harbor. He assumed control of the quarantine and
pilot service and declared the port open under his supervision.[117]
_The News Shut Off_
All this, and all else of importance that was happening in their city,
the people of Boston could learn only slowly and in fragments, as the
news spread from man to man by word of month. The newspapers were under
armed guard, like all other important places that touched on public
business. Censors sitting at editorial desks permitted only the printing
of the most trivial routine news of local happenings that did not touch
on the real concerns of the invaded country and city.
The first pages of all the newspapers were reserved by the military
government for its announcements. These were headed:
OFFICIAL!
ORDERS AND DECISIONS BY THE MILITARY
GOVERNMENT OF MASSACHUSETTS AND
THE CITY OF BOSTON
There were so many of them that there was no room for news on the first
pages, even had news been permitted.
Within twenty-four hours the city had been set back to its condition in
the seventeenth century when Boston’s first newspaper was throttled by a
reactionary legislature.[118]
The people of Boston did not know if Connecticut had been conquered.
They did not know if New York had fallen. They did not know where their
army was or what it was doing. A great battle might be deciding the fate
of the entire country, but no whisper reached them.
As in Colonial days, they were reduced to such knowledge as might come
from rumor or from information whispered by those who learned something
by chance.
It was in this way that nearly everybody in Boston came to know that in
the State House there sat a council, dressed in uniform and bearing
military rank, but in reality a council of men learned in international
and United States law. Surrounded by great rows of books which they had
brought with them, these men were the real rulers of the conquered
land.[119]
The Commanding General and his field staff might act with summary
authority under the rules of war. The Commanding General’s name might be
signed to all the scores of orders that issued daily. But this council
of military lawyers acted as governors, judges and soldiers at once.
Their decisions in all mooted cases, their ingeniously worded orders,
were perfecting the enemy’s complete possession.[120]
_Stripping Boston of Its Treasure_
No American, great or humble, might go a step beyond the prescribed and
routine affairs of the day without first learning what their orders
were. No man held property, whether it were priceless or beggarly,
except by their favor. No man knew at any moment what remaining
liberties might not be taken from him at a word from them.[121]
With the impersonal coldness of a judicial machine they went about the
work of stripping the city of treasure. In all the departments of the
municipality were soldier experts, studying the books. In the Custom
House were half a hundred others searching the records of exports and
imports. Every financial institution of the city had been ordered to
present its accounts in the State House.
During all this time the invader made daily requisitions for the use of
the troops or for other military purposes. He demanded for the navy a
supply of 10,000 pounds of smoking tobacco, 1,000 pounds of roasted
coffee, one ton of rice, 500 pounds of salt, and 50,000 pounds of fresh
meat. He made requisition for paint, cable, ropes, hose, and steel for
the ships.[122]
There were requisitions for medical supplies, for cloth and for shoes.
To the harassed officials, who remonstrated against the hardships that
were laid on the city, and pointed to the state of its trade, the reply
was that it was one of the richest cities in the world and that the
levies were modest. When a deputation of citizens pressed the protest,
the council printed its reply in the “official” columns of the
newspapers.
“In regard to the requisitions made by the occupying army,” said this
statement, “attention is called to the fact that the United States
Supreme Court in the case New Orleans versus Steamship Company, 20 Wall,
394, decided that the military governing authority ‘may do anything to
strengthen itself and to weaken the enemy,’ and that the Court further
stated that ‘there is no limit to the powers that may be exerted in such
cases save those which are found in the laws and usages of war.’”[123]
_The Old Spirit_
Despite the cannon that glowered in all the streets, Boston’s fury at
this ironic rejoinder nearly broke through all restraint. In the old
city that had the famous Tea Party among its prized achievements, the
spirit of that past age awoke again, and spread, almost without
concerted thought or intention. Wherever men could meet they formed in
groups to ease their minds by free speech, if they could do nothing
else. In several quarters of the city there were incipient riots,
suppressed by the police only just in time to avoid bloody interference
by the soldiers.
“We must curb this town,” said the Commanding General to the military
council in the State House. “It is not one to remain cowed for long,
without repressive measures.”
The council nodded. Next morning’s newspapers had on their first pages
an announcement that made many readers rub their eyes and stare
incredulously at the printed page, for on it was such a proclamation as
might have been read in Boston town in the reign of Charles I. It was
headed:
SEDITION LAW
1. Every person resident in the territory occupied by
the power exercising sovereignty by right of conquest, who
shall utter seditious words or speeches, or write, publish or
circulate scurrilous libels against the governing authority,
or who shall conceal such practices that come to his knowledge,
shall be punished summarily and severely.
2. Every person who joins a secret society or attends a
secret meeting for the purpose of advocating sedition or
rebellion shall be punished summarily and severely.[124]
Again the citizens’ committee protested. Boston lawyers represented to
the military council that American citizens could not be held guilty of
sedition or rebellion if they adhered to their country.
_Citizens of No Country_
“The inhabitants of conquered territory,” answered the council, “are
citizens of no country. They are under the jurisdiction of the occupying
army; but they are not even entitled to the privileges of citizens of
the country which controls that army.”[125]
“But mere conquest does not entitle you to treat them as rebels,” urged
the committee. “They are within their rights to preserve their
allegiance, so long as they do not violate the rules of war by opposing
you with arms.”
One of the officers smiled. He opened a book. “Once more I must
respectfully refer you to your own court decisions,” he said, and read
from a United States Supreme Court verdict: “‘Conquest is a valid title
while the victor maintains exclusive territory of the conquered
country.’”[126]
“There is nothing that we can do,” the committee reported to the people.
It was the refrain that sounded in all the United States just then. To
the wild projects for desperate defense that were being broached every
day in the city of New York, to the frenzied demands that the volunteers
in the western camps be rushed into the field, to the curses directed at
the American army because it refused to fight, the same answer
formulated itself because there was no other. Always, from all quarters,
to all demands and imprecations, the only answer that was possible was:
“There is nothing that we can do!”
The city multitudes surrendered wearily to the situation; but there were
men whom the helpless reply drove frantic.
There were hundreds of these men in New York, Brooklyn, Jersey City,
Newark, and all the towns eastward from there into Connecticut. They
were militiamen who had not been able to join their organizations when
they went to the front, or whose organizations had been merely paper
ones. There were members of sportsmen’s clubs, accustomed to the use of
heavy-caliber fire-arms and to the trail, and there were many men who
were moved simply by the recklessness of courage.[127]
During the days while there drifted through the United States the
broken, incomplete but ever-growing story of New England’s uprising and
its fearful suppression, these men had begun to assemble in
Connecticut’s country between New Haven and Hartford, urged by no
settled plan but moving to that district simply because it was the last
American front between New York and the invading army.
_The Foe’s Slow Advance_
The enemy was moving westward slowly. He had to hold out a mighty screen
northwestward against the American army that now lay beyond the
Berkshire Hills, holding the land between western Connecticut and
Albany. That army, intact and out of his reach, was a constant, acute
danger. It endangered his communications, it endangered his base, it
endangered his divisions that occupied Boston. It forced him to advance
only in continual readiness for battle on flanks and rear-lines.
During the slow approach the men who had gathered between New Haven and
Hartford began to form some sort of an organization. Almost it evolved
itself.
The enemy pushing forward along the north, took Springfield with cavalry
and artillery. The undefended city surrendered without a blow.
From New Haven and Hartford, to the factory cities of Wallingford and
Meriden, Middletown and New Britain, along all the factory-lined
valleys, there passed a word that gathered workers from shops and idle
men from streets. All one long day, and all one evening, they moved
toward the two cities. They seemed aimless enough; but there were
leaders who put themselves at their head secretly in the night.
Suddenly they were angry, determined, united bodies of men. Suddenly,
like a suddenly awakened wind, they stormed the great arms factories of
the two towns.
They came with guns and pistols. They came with crowbars and picks. They
came with stones, and with nothing except their bare hands. They hauled
their dead aside and withered under the fire of the guards, and burst
through and took the works.
In Hartford they seized a whole train-load of rapid-firers and machine
guns that had been loaded for the American army. In New Haven they took
almost four thousand sporting rifles.
The riot fever spread to Bridgeport. The mob arose and seized the
cartridge factories.
_The Mad Adventure_
It was a mad thing, springing less from purpose than from the insanity
that invasion had laid on men’s minds. It could have but one mad end.
Yet this army of madmen was moved and molded by a touch of the American
ability to “do things”--that very ability on which the people might,
indeed, have depended with perfect assurance, if only they had not
depended on it wholly.
America did, truly, have men who would fight. They were here; and they
were to fight such a fight as would be remembered many a long day.
America had the men to lead, too. Though they knew that this was a
hopeless thing, they “took hold.”
They took hold of men armed with magnificent rifles, but of a score of
different patterns for different kinds of sport, and demanding a score
of different shapes and calibers of cartridges. They took hold of
infantry militia fragments whose companies had had only two or three
assemblies a year for target practice with average attendances of only
11 or 12 men. They improvised scout detachments of volunteers with
bicycles and motors.[128]
Young doctors took hold with nothing but emergency kits, without
ambulances, without litters, without even helpers who would know how to
find a wound or apply a first aid bandage.
The army of madmen went forward to the Connecticut River to hold the
western bank from Hartford to Middletown.
They did not know how to dig trenches.
[Illustration: “The army of madmen went forward to the Connecticut River
to hold the western bank.”]
They dug ditches. They did not know how to make defenses for their
machine guns. They piled trees that would skewer them with splinters
under shell fire, or heaped up rocks that would fly into fragments and
kill like shrapnel.
They were all of three thousand men. They were the kind of men whom
America has expected always in times of peace to call to its defense.
They were callous-handed workers in metal and wood and leather; bleached
workers from woolen mills and cotton spindles; ‘longshoremen from the
harbor cities of the Sound; professional men resolute with the fervor of
the time; road-makers and teamsters and shoemakers; hunters, yachtsmen,
and football players.
_What Americans Could Have Done_
That day along the Connecticut River they showed what America’s men
could have done had they learned how to do it in advance and had they
been armed for the work.
They lay behind their pitiable defenses, with their motley weapons,
commanded by men who did not know war. They bore the shock of machine
gun assaults from advance patrols. They bore the shock of cavalry
charges from scouting detachments.
At Middletown they were attacked in force by heavy cavalry that crossed
under cover of gun-fire and outflanked them, and charged in mass. They
sent the charge back, broken, with many empty saddles.
They lay under the fire of a 3-inch gun at Cromwell for an hour, and
endured, and died--but they denied the river crossing to a battalion.
For two long hours they held the river along their whole line. It seemed
to them that they were fighting a great battle. Surely their dead
testified to it, and the hot fire that beat on them testified to it, and
across the river, or floating down with the stream, were many enemy dead
to testify to it.
They cheered and shouted to each other hoarsely that they were winning.
They watched, with ever-growing savage lust, for more assailants.
In the headquarters of the advancing army there was received this report
from the brigade commander: “Two or three thousand raw but determined
Americans disputing passage of Connecticut River with our advance
guards. They have machine guns, no artillery. Am sending field guns
forward. Shall have passage clear in an hour.”
“Use ample force,” answered the commander. “These Americans!” he said to
his aid. “They aren’t to be underestimated. A little more preparation--”
“And we wouldn’t be here!” laughed the aid.
_Thirty Minutes Later_
Thirty minutes afterward, from points wholly invisible to the Americans,
there burst the shattering thunder of field-artillery. Explosive shells
flew over and into the trenches. Shrapnel screamed at them, and burst
like sentient things right in their faces, to drive rattling bullets in
all directions.[129]
Their machine guns were useless. There was nothing in sight at which to
fire. The men lay face down, clutching dirt, choking with fumes and
smoke, stunned by the blasting things that burrowed into their
earth-works and blew them apart and tore living bodies to pieces.
At Rocky Hill a militia company of artillery tried to move its gun into
better shelter. The plow-horses that had been seized to drag it, wild
with terror, became entangled in the traces and fell. Cutting them away,
the men wheeled the cannon into position by hand. But their armory never
had been fitted for sub-caliber practice, as it never had been fitted
for mounted instruction. None of the men had been qualified as first
class or even as second class gunners. They fired, and their shots went
wild, serving only to betray their situation to the enemy. They did not
know how to place themselves for protection from indirect fire. So they
died.[130]