siege, were so many appliances in the practical training-school of war,
which Washington promptly seized, appropriated, and developed. The
capture of Boston was not the chief aim of Washington, when, on the
third day of July, 1775, he established his headquarters at Cambridge.
Boston was, indeed, the immediate objective point of active operations,
and the issue, at arms, had been boldly made at Lexington and Concord.
Bunker Hill had practically emancipated the American yeomanry from the
dread of British arms, and foreshadowed the finality of National
Independence. However the American Congress might temporize, there was
not alternative with Washington, but a steady purpose to achieve
complete freedom. From his arrival at Cambridge, until his departure for
New York, he worked with a clear and serene confidence in the final
result of the struggle. A mass of earnest men had come together, with
the stern resolve to drive the British out of Boston; but the patriotism
and zeal of those who first begirt the city were not directed to a
protracted and universal colonial resistance. To the people of
Massachusetts there came an instant demand, imperative as the question
of life or death, to fight out the issue, even if alone and
single-handed, against the oppressor. Without waiting for reports from
distant colonies as to the effect of the skirmish at Lexington and the
more instructive and stimulating experience at Breed's Hill, the penned
the British in Boston and determined to drive them from the land. Dr.
Dwight said of Lexington: "The expedition became the preface to the
history of a nation, the beginning of an empire, and a theme of
disquisition and astonishment to the civilized world."
The battle of Bunker Hill equalized the opposing forces. The issue
changed from that of a struggle of legitimate authority to suppress
rebellion, and became a context, between Englishmen, for the
suppression, or the perpetuation, of the rights of Magna Charta.
The siege of Boston assumed a new character as soon as it became a part
of the national undertaking to emancipate the Colonies, on and all, and
thereby establish one great Republic.
From the third of July, 1775, until the seventeenth of March, 1776,
there was gradually developed a military policy with an army system,
which shaped the whole war.
Many battles have been styled "decisive." many slow tortures of the
oppressed have prepared the way for heroic defiance of the oppressor.
Many elaborate preparations have been made for war, when at last some
sudden outrage or event has precipitated and unlooked-for conflict, and
all preparations, however wisely adjusted, have been made in vain. "I
strike to-night!" was the laconic declaration of Napoleon III, as he
informed his proud and beautiful empress, that "the battalions of France
were moving on the Rhine." The march of Lord Percy to Concord was
designed to clip off, short, the seriously impending resistance of the
people to British authority. With full recognition of all that had been
done, before the arrival of Washington to assume command of the
besieging militia, _as the "Continental Army" of America_, there
are facts which mark the months of that siege, as months of that wise
preparation which ensured the success of the war. Washington at once
took the offensive. He was eminently aggressive; but neither hasty nor
rash. Baron Jomini said that "Napoleon discounted time." So did
Washington. Baron Jomini said, also, that "Napoleon was his own best
chief-of-staff." So, pre-eminently, was Washington.
The outlook at Cambridge, on the third of July, 1775, revealed the
presence of a host of hastily-gathered and rudely-armed, earnest men,
well panoplied, indeed, in the invulnerable armor of loyalty to country
and to God; fearless, self-sacrificing, daring death to secure liberty;
but lacking that discipline, cohesion, and organized assignment to place
and duty, which convert a mass of men into an army of soldiers.
Washington stated the case, fairly, in the terse expression: "They have
been accustomed, officers and men alike, to have their own way too long
already."
The rapidly succeeding methods through which that mass of fiery patriots
became a well-ordered army, obedient to authority, and accepting the
delays and disappointments of war with cheerful submission, will stand
as the permanent record of a policy which cleared the way for an assured
liberty.
As early as 1775, Lord Dartmouth had asserted, with vigor, that Boston
was worthless as a base, if the authority of the Crown was to be
seriously defied by the colonies, acting in concert. He advocated the
evacuation of Boston, and the consolidation of the royal forces at New
York. Washington, early after his arrival at Cambridge, saw that the
British commander had made a mistake. His letters to Congress are full
of suggestions which citizens could only slightly value, so long as they
saw Boston still under British control. It is difficult to see how the
war could have been a success, if New York had been occupied, in force,
by Lord Howe in 1775, and the rashness of Gates had not precipitated the
skirmish at Lexington and the battle of Bunker Hill. It is no less hard
to see where and how Washington could have found time, place, and
suitable conditions for that practical campaign experience which the
siege of Boston afforded.
The mention of some of these incidents will suggest others, and
illustrate that experience.
A practical siege was undertaken, under the most favorable
circumstances. The whole country, near by, was in sympathy with the
army. The adjacent islands, inlets, and bays swarmed with scouting
parties, which cut off supplies from the city. The army had its redoubts
and trenches, and the heights of Bunker Hill were in sight as a pledge
of full ability to resist assault. As a fact, no successful sortie was
made out of Boston during the siege; but constant activity and
watchfulness were vital to each day's security. Provisions were abundant
and the numerical strength was sufficient. System and discipline alone
were to be added.
The details of camp life in the immediate presence of skilled enemies
compelled officers and men, alike, to learn the minutest details of
field engineering. Gabions, fasces, abattis, and other appliances for
assault or defence were quickly made, and all this practical schooling
in the work of war went on, under the watchful cooperation of the very
officers who afterward became conspicuous in the field, from Long Island
to Yorktown. THE CAMP ABOUT BOSTON MADE OFFICERS, Its discipline
dissipated many colonial jealousies; and there was developed that
confidence in their commander, which, in after years, became the source
of untold strength and solace to him in the darkest hours of the war.
The details of the personal work of the commander-in-chief read more
like some magician's tale. Every staff department was organized under
his personal care, so that he was able to retain even until the end of
the war his chief assistants. Powder, arms, provisions, clothing,
firewood, medicines, horses, carts, tools, and all supplies, however
incidental, depended upon minute instructions of Washington himself.
A few orders are cited, as an illustration of the system which marked
his life in camp, and indicate the value of those months, as preparatory
to the ordeal through which he had yet to pass.
To withhold commissions, until some proof was given of individual
fitness, involved grave responsibility. He did it. To punish swearing,
gambling, theft, and lewdness, evinced a high sense of the solemnity of
the hour. He did it. To rebuke Protestants for mocking Catholics was to
recognize the dependence of all alike upon the God of battles. He did
it. To repress gossip in camp, because the reputation of the humblest
was sacred; to brand with his displeasure all conflicts between those in
authority, as fatal to discipline and unity of action, and to forbid the
settlement of private wrongs except through established legal methods,
showed a clear conception of the conditions which would make an army
obedient, united, and invincible. These, and corresponding acts in the
line of military police regulations, and touching every social, moral,
and physical habit which assails or enfeebles a soldier's life and
imperils a campaign, run through his papers.
It is in the light of such omnipresent pressure and constraint that we
begin to form some just estimate of the relations which the siege of
Boston sustained to the subsequent operations of the war, and to the
work of Lee, Putnam, Sullivan, Greene, Mifflin, Knox, and others, who
were thus fitted for immediate service at Long Island and elsewhere, as
soon as Boston was evacuated.
It is also through these orders that the careful student can pass that
veil of formal propriety, reticence, and dignity which so often obscured
the inner, the tentative, elements of Washington's military character.
While the slow progress of the siege afforded opportunity to study the
contingencies of other possible fields of conflict, a double campaign
was made into Canada: namely, by Arnold through Maine, and by Montgomery
toward Montreal. This was based upon the idea that the conquest of
Canada would not only protect New England on the north, but compel the
British commanders to draw all supplies from England. The fact is noted,
as evidence of the constant regard which the American commander had for
every exposed position of the enemy which could be threatened, without
neglecting the demands of the siege itself. Frequent attempts were made
to force the siege to an early conclusion. The purpose was to expel or
capture the garrison before Great Britain could send another army, and
open active operations in other colonies, and not, merely in the
indolence of the mere watchdog, to starve the enemy into terms. "Give me
powder or ice, and I will take Boston," was the form in which Washington
demanded the means of bombardment or assault, and gave the assurance
that, if the river would freeze, he would force a decisive issue with
the means already at command.
Meanwhile, he sent forth privateers to scour the coast and search for
vessels conveying powder to the garrison; and soon no British transport
or supply-vessel was secure, unless under convoy of a ship-of-war.
At last, Congress increased the army to twenty-four thousand men and
ordered a navy to be built. Washington redoubled his efforts, confident
that Boston was substantially at his mercy; but seeing as clearly that
the capture or the evacuation of the city would introduce a more general
and desperate struggle, and one that would try his army to the most.
At this juncture, General Howe was strongly reinforced. When he
succeeded Gates, on the tenth of October, 1775, he "assumed command of
all his Britannic Majesty's forces, from Nova Scotia to Florida," and
thus indicated his appreciation of the possible extent of the American
resistance. It was a fair response to the claim of Washington to
represent "_The Colonies, in arms_." Howe's reinforcements had
reported for duty by the thirty-first of December. During the preceding
months, and, in fact, from his arrival at Cambridge, Washington had
freely conferred with General Greene. That young officer had studied
Caesar's Commentaries, Marshal Turenne's Works, Sharp's Military Guide,
and many legal and standard works upon government and history, while
drilling a militia company, the Kentish Guards, and following the humble
labor of a blacksmith's apprentice. He fully appreciated the value of
the hours spent before Boston. Together with General Sullivan, who, as
well as himself, commanded a brigade in Lee's division, he looked beyond
the lines of the camp rear-guard, and spent extra hours in discipline
and drill, to bring his own command up to the highest state of
proficiency.
The following is the theory which he entertained, in common with
Washington, as to the proper method for prosecution of the war; and he
so expressed himself, when he first encamped before Boston and united
his destinies with those of America.
His words are worthy of double recognition by the citizens of the United
States, because they not only furnish a key to the embarrassments which
attended the uncertain policy of Congress during the Revolution, but
they illustrate some of the embarrassments which attended the
prosecution of the war of 1861-65.
First. "One general-in-chief."
Second. "Enlistments for the war."
Third. "Bounties for families of soldiers in the field."
Fourth. "Service: to be general, regardless of place of enlistment."
Fifth. "Money loans to be effected equal to the demands of the war."
Sixth. "A Declaration of INDEPENDENCE, with the pledge of all the
resources of each Colony to its support."
Such was the spirit with which the American army hastened its operations
before Boston. Every week of delay was increasing the probability that
Great Britain would occupy New York, in force. The struggle for that
city would be the practical beginning of the war anew, and upon a
scientific basis.
Lord Dartmouth alone had the military sagacity to give sound advice to
the British cabinet. He maintained that by the occupation of New York,
and the presence of a strong naval force at Newport, Rhode Island
(within striking distance of Boston), and the control of the Hudson
River, the New England Colonies would be so isolated, as neither to be
able to protect themselves, nor to furnish aid to the central Colonies
beyond the Hudson River.
For the same reason, an adequate garrison at New York might detach
troops to seize the region lying on the waters of the Delaware and
Chesapeake, and thereby separate the South from the centre. When General
Howe, in 1775, formally urged the evacuation of Boston and the
occupation of New York and Newport, he also advised the seizure of "some
respectable seaport at the southward, from which to attack seacoast
towns, in the winter."
Washington never lost sight of the fact, that, while an important issue
had been joined at Boston, its solution must be so worked out as to
conserve the general interests of the Colonies as a Nation, and that the
delay which was incident to scarcity of powder, and the resulting
inability to assault the city, was to be employed, to the utmost, in
preparing the troops for an ultimate march to New York, there to face
the British in the field.
The reinforcement of General Howe, at midwinter, when an attack upon the
American lines would be without hope of success, quickened Washington's
preparations for crowding the siege, while constantly on the watch for
some manifestation of British activity in other directions.
Within a week after the garrison of the city had been thus strengthened,
Washington learned that Clinton had been detached, to make some
expedition by sea. General Lee, then in Connecticut on recruiting
service, was ordered to New York to put the city in a condition for
defence, and arrived on the very day that Clinton anchored at Sandy
Hook. Clinton, however, neglected his opportunity, and sailed southward
to attack Charleston. Lee also went South, to co-operate with Governor
Rutledge, in the defense of that city. The repulse of that expedition at
Fort Sullivan (afterwards called Fort Moultrie) could not be known to
Washington; but the knowledge that the British had enlarged their
theatre of active war was a new stimulus to exertion.
The strain upon the American Commander-in-Chief, in view of this rapid
development of hostilities beyond the reach of his army, was intense.
Clinton had been authorized to burn all cities that refused submission.
In a letter to Congress, Washington wrote: "There has been one single
freeze, and some pretty good ice," but a council of war opposed an
assault. At last he conceived an alternative plan, in the event that he
would not have sufficient powder to risk a direct assault, and the two
plans were balanced and matured in his own mind with the determination
to act promptly, and solely, at his own independent will.
Few facts testify more significantly of the value to the army and the
American cause of that long course of training, in the presence of the
enemy, than the preparations thus made by Washington, without the
knowledge of most of the officers of his command. He collected
forty-five batteaux, each capable of transporting eighty men, and built
two floating batteries of great strength and light draught of water.
Fascines, gabions, carts, bales of hay, intrenching-tools, and two
thousand bandages, with all other contingent supplies, were gathered,
and placed under a guard of picked men.
Three nights of _mock bombardment_ kept the garrison on the alert,
awaiting an assault. "On the night of the fourth of March, and through
all its hours, from candle-lighting time to the clear light of another
day, the same incessant thunder rolled along over camps and city; the
same quick flashes showed that fire was all along the line, and still,
both camps and city dragged through the night, waiting for the daylight
to test the work of the night, as daylight had done before."
When daylight came,--
"Two strong redoubts capped Dorchester Heights."
By the tenth of March, the Americans had fortified Nook's Hill, and this
drove the British from Boston Neck. Eight hundred shot and shell were
thrown into the city during that night. On the morning of March 17, the
British embarked for Halifax.
Five thousand American troops entered the city, under General Ward (the
venerable predecessor of Washington) as the last boats left.
On the eighteenth of March, and before the main army had entered Boston,
General Heath was ordered to New York with five regiments of infantry
and a part of the field artillery.
On the twenty-seventh, the whole army, excepting a garrison of five
regiments, was ordered forward, General Sullivan leading the column.
On the evening of April fourteenth, after the last brigade marched,
Washington started for his new field of duty.
The siege of Boston is indeed memorable for that patient, persistent
pressure by which the Colonists grasped, and held fast, all approaches
to the city, until a sufficient force could be organized for a
systematic siege; but, as the eye rests upon an outline map of the
principal works of the besieging force, and we try to associate Ploughed
Hill, Winter Hill, Prospect Hill, and other memorable strongholds, with
the surroundings of to-day, we are glad to find an abounding source of
comfort in the assurance, that the whole struggle for our National
Independence is indelibly associated with the names, the vigils, and the
experiences which belong to those long months of education in the art
and appliances of war.
Swiftly as that well-instructed army moved to New York, they had only
time to gain position, before they realized the value of their training
in the trenches and redoubts around Boston; and no battle or siege,
including the capture of Yorktown, is without its tribute to the
far-reaching influence which that training assured.
The echoes of the national salute which have so recently commemorated
the one hundredth anniversary of the close of the official career of
Washington as commander-in-chief of the army of the Revolution, may well
be associated with those midnight salvos of artillery which crowned his
first campaign with an enduring success, and, once for all, rescued the
soil of the Bay State from the tread of a hostile foot.
* * * * *
THE RAILWAY MAIL SERVICE.
[Footnote: Illustrated by pen and ink sketches furnished by the author.]
BY COLONEL THOMAS P. CHENEY.
[Superintendent New England Division United States Railway Mail
Service.]
[Illustration: YE FASTE MAILE OF YE OLDEN TYME.]
It is not the purpose of this paper to give a history of the growth of
this important branch of the government service, so much as to impart,
perhaps to an indifferent degree, the methods of its intricate workings,
and the care and study employed to expedite the vast correspondence of
the country. A system as colossal as the Railway Mail Service of this
country is, could not be organized but through a process of development
meeting needs as they arise. This development is best shown by a
comparative illustration from an early date to the present time.
In 1811, there were 2,403 post-offices, and during the year the mail was
carried 46,380 miles in stages, and 61,171 miles in sulkies and on
horseback. In Postmaster-General Barry's report for the fiscal year
ending November 1, 1834, it is said, that, "The multiplication of
railroads in different parts of the country promises within a few years
to give great rapidity to the movements of travelers, and it is a
subject worthy of inquiry whether measures may now be taken to secure
the transportation of the mail upon them. Already have the railroads
between Frenchtown in Maryland and New Castle in Delaware, and between
Camden and South Amboy in New Jersey, afforded great and important
facilities to the transmission of the great Eastern mail." The lines of
railway at that time, 1834, amounted to seventy-eight miles.
In 1838, the Railway Mail Service began with 1,913 miles of railroad
throughout the country. In 1846, mails were carried over 4,092 miles of
railway, which increased in 1882 to 100,563 miles.
The miles of annual transportation of mail by railroad in 1852 amounted
to 11,082,768, which increased to 113,995,318 in 1882, with an increase
in the number of Railway Mail Service employees from 43 in 1846 to 3,072
in 1882. This wonderful expansion was but proportional with the
development of the country at large. At the close of the war of the
Rebellion, business was at its height. Industry and intelligence were
seeking together new channels for their diffusion. The Pacific Railway
was the grand conception that met this demand, and by its means were
united the borders of the continent, and communication thus made more
frequent and rapid between our interior, the West, and Europe: the most
ancient civilization of the world in the Orient greeted the youngest in
the Occident, and completed the girdle about the earth.
The lumbering stage and caravan laboring across the plains, and the
swift mustang flying from post to post, frequently intercepted by the
wily savage, were but things of yesterday, though fast becoming
legendary. When those slower methods by which correspondence was
conveyed at a great expense and delay, and current literature was to a
great extent debarred, were supplanted by a continuous line of stages,
it was considered a revolution in the wheel of progress, and the
consummation. The possible accomplishments of the present day, if
entertained at all at that time, were in general considered Munchausen,
and not difficulties to be surmounted by practical engineering and
undaunted perseverance. The civilization of the world has kept pace with
its channels of communication and has accordingly rendered invaluable
aid to it. In our country the field in this direction is exceedingly
broad.
There is no branch of the government service that reaches so near and
supplies the wants of the people as the Post-Office Department, and
whose ramification may not be inaptly compared to the human system with
its arteries filled with the life-current coursing through the veins and
diffusing health and vigor to the various parts; in the same manner the
people in the different sections of the country interchange their
information. The centres of art and literature, conveying to the vast
producing region in the West the products of their refined taste,
scientific research, and mechanical achievements, keep alive and
propagate the spirit of inquiry, making remote parts of the nation
homogeneous in tastes, knowledge, and a common interest in all matters
of national advancement.
If a map of the United States with every railway that crosses and
recrosses its broad surface were laid before us, it would appear that a
regulated system for an expeditious transmission of the mails in such an
intricate confusion of lines, apparently going nowhere yet everywhere,
would be an impossibility; but by study and untiring energy this has
been accomplished.
The machinery of the Post-Office Department is a system of cog-fitting
wheels, in all its component parts; and were it not so, in the
necessarily limited period and space allotted, the work in postal-cars
could not be successfully accomplished.