AMERICA AGAINST BRITAIN.—BOSTON TAKEN.
On the thirty-first day of December, 1775, Admiral Shuldham reached
Boston with reënforcements for its garrison, and relieved Admiral Graves
in command of all British naval forces. The troops within the lines were
held under the most rigid discipline, although amusements were provided
to while away the idle hours of a passive defence.
The winter was memorable for its mildness, so that the American troops,
encamped about the city in tents, did not suffer; but the in-gathering
of recruits, to replace soldiers whose enlistments had just expired,
involved the actual creation of a new army, directly in the face of a
powerful, well-equipped, and watchful adversary. And yet, this very
adversary must be driven from Boston before the American patriot army
could move elsewhere, and engage actively against the combined armies
and navy of the British crown.
Indications of increasing hostilities on the part of royal governors of
the South were not wanting to stimulate the prosecution of the siege to
its most speedy consummation; and although unknown to Washington at the
time, the city of Norfolk, Va., had been bombarded on New Year’s day by
order of Lord Dunmore.
[Illustration: Boston and Vicinity.]
Impressed by the urgency of the crisis, Washington, on the same day, was
writing to Congress in plain terms, as follows, leaving the last word
_blank_, lest it might miscarry: “It is not, perhaps, in the power of
history to furnish a case like ours; to maintain a post within
musket-shot of the enemy, within that distance of twenty, old British
regiments without——”
General Greene kept his small army well in hand, watchful of the
minutest detail, inspecting daily each detachment, as well as all
supplies of ammunition and food; and on the fourth of January, writing
from Prospect Hill (see map of Boston and Vicinity), thus reported his
exact position to the Commander-in-Chief: “The night after the old
troops went off, I could not have mustered seven hundred men,
notwithstanding the returns of the new enlisted men amounted to nineteen
hundred and upwards. I am strong enough to defend myself against all the
force in Boston. Our situation has been critical. Had the enemy been
acquainted with our situation, I cannot pretend to say what might have
been the consequences.”
The reader will appreciate at a glance the real opinion of the American
Commander-in-Chief as to his own immediate future, and the general scope
of operations which he regarded as supremely important in behalf of
American Independence. He understood thoroughly, that Lord Dartmouth
originally opposed the military occupation of Boston in order to prevent
a collision between British troops and the excited people, which he
regarded as an inevitable result. That distinguished and far-sighted
statesman, in order to prevent any overt acts of resistance to the
established representatives of the crown at business or social centres,
wrote to Lord Howe as early as October 22, 1775, to “gain possession of
some respectable port to the southward, from which to make sudden and
unexpected attacks upon sea-coast towns during the winter.” But British
pride had forced the increase of the army in Massachusetts Colony, and
initiated a disastrous campaign. Lord Dartmouth never wavered in the
opinion that New York was the only proper base of operations in dealing
with the Colonies at large. Lord Howe himself had advised that New York,
instead of Boston, should be made the rendezvous and headquarters of all
British troops to be sent to America. Only the contumacy of General Gage
had baffled the wiser plans of superior authority.
During the first week of the new year, and while the American army was
under the stress of reconstruction, Washington learned that General
Clinton had been promised an independent command of a portion of the
fresh troops which accompanied Admiral Shuldham to America, and would be
detailed on some important detached service remote from New England
waters. As a remarkable fact, not creditable to the king’s advisers, the
Island of New York, at that time, was practically without any regular
military garrison; but its aristocratic tory circles of influence could
not conceive of a popular uprising against the supremacy of George III.
within their favored sphere of luxury and independence.
Washington appreciated the situation fully. He recognized the
defenceless condition of New York and its adaptation for the
Headquarters of the Army of America. He was also thoroughly convinced
that General Clinton’s proposed expedition would either occupy New York,
or make the attempt to do so. He acted without delay upon that
conviction, although reserving to himself the responsibility of first
reducing Boston with the least possible delay. General Lee, then upon
detached service in Connecticut, had written to him, urging, in his
emphatic style, “the immediate occupation of New York; the suppression
or expulsion of certain tories of Long Island; and that not to crush the
serpents before their rattles were grown, would be ruinous.”
Washington was as prompt to reply; and ordered Lee to “take such
Connecticut volunteers as he could quickly assemble in his march, and
put the city in the best possible posture of defence which the season
and circumstances would admit of.”
Meanwhile, every immediate energy of the Commander-in-Chief was
concentrated upon a direct attack of the British position. The business
capacity of Colonel Knox had already imparted to the Ordnance Department
character and efficiency. Under direction of Washington he visited Lake
George, during December, 1775, and by the last of February hauled upon
sleds, over the snow, more than fifty pieces of artillery to the
Cambridge headquarters. This enabled him to make the armament of
Lechmere Point very formidable; and by the addition of several half-moon
batteries between that point and Roxbury, it became possible to
concentrate upon the city of Boston the effective fire of nearly every
heavy gun and mortar which the American army controlled.
It had been the intention of Washington to march against Boston, across
the ice, so soon as the Charles river should freeze sufficiently to bear
the troops. Few of the soldiers had bayonets, but “the city must be
captured, with or without bayonets,” and his army released for service
elsewhere. In one letter he used this very suggestive appeal: “Give me
powder, or ice, and I will take Boston.” Upon the occasion of “one
single freeze and some pretty strong ice,” he suddenly called a council
of war, and proposed to seize the opportunity to cross at once, and
either capture or burn the city. Officers of the New England troops who
were more familiar with the suddenness with which the tides affect ice
of moderate thickness, dissuaded him from his purpose; but in writing to
Joseph Reed, for some time after his Adjutant-General, he thus refers to
the incident: “Behold, while we have been waiting the whole year for
this favorable event, the enterprise was thought too hazardous. I did
not think so, and I am sure yet, that the enterprise, if it had been
undertaken with resolution, would have succeeded; without it, _any_
would fail.” “P.S.—I am preparing to take post on Dorchester Heights, to
try if the enemy will be so kind as to come out to us.” This postscript
is an illustration of Washington’s quick perception of the strategic
movement which would crown the siege with complete success. He added
another caution: “What I have said respecting the determination in
Council, and the possession of Dorchester, is spoken _sub-rosa_.”
The month of February drew near its close, when Washington, in the
retirement of his headquarters, decided no longer to postpone his attack
upon the city and its defences. Two floating batteries of light draught
and great strength were quickly constructed, and forty-five batteaux,
like the modern dredge-scow, each capable of transporting eighty men,
were assembled and placed under a special guard. In order to provide for
every contingency of surmounting parapets, or improvising defences in
streets, or otherwise, fascines, gabions, carts, bales of hay,
intrenching-tools, two thousand bandages, and all other contingent
supplies that might, under any possible conditions, be required, were
also gathered and placed in charge of none but picked men. Gen. Thomas
Mifflin, his Quartermaster-General, who had accompanied him from
Philadelphia, shared his full confidence, and was unremitting by night
and by day in hastening the work intrusted to his department.
The inflexibility of purpose which marked Washington’s career to its
close, asserted its supremacy at this crucial hour of the Revolutionary
struggle, when, for the first time, America was to challenge Britain to
fight, and fight at once. It had begun to appear as if his submission of
a proposition to a council of officers implied some doubt of its
feasibility, or some alternate contingency of failure. Washington
discounted all failure, by adequate forethought. Jomini, who admitted
that Napoleon seemed never to provide for a retreat, very suggestively
added: “When Napoleon was present, no one thought of such a provision.”
In like manner Washington had the confidence of his troops.
It certainly is not anticipating the test of Washington, as Soldier, to
state some characteristics which were peculiarly his own. His most
memorable and determining acts were performed when he was clothed with
ample authority by Congress, or the emergency forced him to make his own
will supreme. In the course of this narrative it will appear that
Congress did at last formally emancipate him from the constraint of
councils. Whenever he doubted, others doubted. Whenever he was
persistent, he inspired the nerve and courage which realized results,
even though in a modified form of execution. Partial disappointments or
deferred realization did not shatter nor weaken his faith. Washington,
the American Commander-in-Chief, was in such a mood on the first day of
March, 1776. He had a plan, a secret plan, and kept his secret well,
until the stroke was ready for delivery.
And yet, the progress of the siege up to this date, and through two long
winter months, had not been wholly spent in details for its certain
success. Even after the first day of January, when he became acquainted
with the proposed movement of General Clinton, he began to anticipate
such a movement as an indication of his own future action. A selection
of guns for field service was carefully made; batteries were organized
and thoroughly drilled. Then, as ever after, during the war,
artillerists were few in number, and the service was never popular. The
hauling of heavy guns by hand, then with rare exceptions habitual, made
the service very hard; and accuracy of fire cost laborious practice,
especially where powder was scarce, even for exigent service. Wagons
were also provided. Medical supplies were collected and packed in
portable chests. He also inquired into the nature of the New England
roads when the frosts of spring first tweak the soil, and was informed
that they would be almost impassable for loaded wagons and heavy
artillery.
During the same months the condition of Canada had become seriously
critical, through the activity of General Carleton who expected
reënforcements from England, and had already threatened the northern
border. It seemed to Washington that Congress might even divert a part
of his own army to support the army in Canada, upon the acquisition of
Boston and the retirement of its British garrison. The ultimate
destination of that garrison, in whole or in part, was full of uncertain
relations to his own movements. The disposition of the large royalist
element in Boston was also an object of care; but looming above all
other considerations was the supreme fact that the war now begun was one
which embraced every Colony, every section; and that the conflict with
Great Britain was to be as broad and desperate as her power was great
and pervasive.
And yet, under so vast and varied responsibilities, he matured and
withheld from his confiding troops the secret of his purpose to capture
Boston suddenly and surely, until the day of its crowning fulfilment
arrived.
Just after sunset, on that New England spring evening, from Lechmere
Point, past Cobble Hill, and through the long range of encircling
batteries, clear to the Roxbury line on the right, every mortar and
cannon which could take Boston in range opened fire upon the quiet city.
But this was only a preliminary test of the location, range, and power
of the adversary fire. The British guns responded with spirit, and
equally well disclosed to competent artillery experts distributed along
the American lines, the weight, efficiency, and disposition of their
batteries so suddenly called into action.
At sunrise of March 2d, the American army seemed not to have heard the
cannonading of the previous night; or, wondering at such a waste of
precious powder, shot, and shell, rested from the real experience of
handling heavy guns against the city and an invisible foe, at night. And
through the entire day the army rested. No parades were ordered. Only
the formal calls of routine duty were sounded by fife and drum. No heads
appeared above the ramparts. The tents were crowded with earnest men,
tilling powder-horns, casting or counting bullets, cleaning their
“firelocks,” as they were called in the official drill manual of those
times, and writing letters to their friends at home. The quiet of that
camp was intense, but faces were not gloomy in expression, neither was
there any sign of special dread of the approaching conflict, which
everybody felt to be immediately at hand. As officers went the rounds to
see that silence was fully observed, it was enough to satisfy every
curious inquirer as to its purpose,—“It is Washington’s order.” And all
this time, behind the American headquarters, Rufus Putnam, civil
engineer, Knox, Chief of Artillery, Mifflin, Quartermaster-General, and
General Thomas, were ceaselessly at work, studying the plans and taking
their final instructions from the Commander-in-Chief.
On the night of the third of March, soon after that evening’s sunset-gun
had closed the formal duties of the day, and seemingly by spontaneous
will, all along the front, the bombardment was renewed with the same
vigor, and was promptly responded to. But some of the British batteries
had been differently disposed, as if the garrison either anticipated an
attack upon their works on Bunker Hill, or a landing upon the Common,
where both land and water batteries guarded approach. (See map.)
This second bombardment had been more effective in its range. One solid
shot from the city reached Prospect Hill, but no appreciable damage had
been done to the American works; but some houses in Boston had been
penetrated by shot, and in one barrack six soldiers had been wounded.
Places of safety began to be hunted for. Artificial obstructions were
interposed in some open spaces for protection from random shot and
shell. No detail under orders, and no call for volunteers, to break up
the investment of the city, had been made. No excited commander, as on
the seventeenth of June, 1775, tendered his services to lead British
regulars against Cambridge, to seize and bring back for trial, as
traitor, the arch-rebel of the defiant Colonists. Red uniforms were
indeed resplendent in the sunlight; but there was no irrepressible
impulse to assail earthworks, which had been the work of months, and not
of a single night, and behind which twenty thousand countrymen eagerly
awaited battle. And on this day, as before, the quiet of the graveyard
on Beacon Hill was no more solemn and pervasive than was the calm and
patient resting of the same twenty thousand countrymen, waiting only for
some call to duty from the lips of their silent Commander-in-Chief.
The fourth of March closed, and the night was mild and hazy. The moon
was at its full. It was a good night for rest. Possibly such a whisper
as this might have pervaded the Boston barracks, and lulled anxious
royalists to slumber. “Surely the rebels cannot afford further waste of
powder. They impoverish themselves. Sleep on! Boston is safe!” Not so!
As the sun went down, the whole American camp was alive with its teeming
thousands; not ostentatiously paraded upon parapet and bastion, but
patiently awaiting the meaning of a mysterious hint, which kept even the
inmates of hospital tents from sleeping, that “Washington had promised
them Boston on the morrow.”
From “early candle-lighting” to the clear light of another dawn,
incessant thunder rolled over camp and city. The same quick flashes
showed that fire ran all along the line; and still, the occupants of
camp and city, standing by their guns, or sheltered from their fire,
dragged through the night, impatiently waiting for daylight to test the
night’s experience, as daylight had done before.
At earliest break of day it was announced to General Howe that “two
strong rebel redoubts capped Dorchester Heights.” The news spread
quickly, after the excitements of the night. There was no more easy
slumber in the royal bed-chamber of British repose, nor in the luxurious
apartments of the favored subjects of George III., in the city of
Boston, on that fifth day of March, 1776.
“If the Americans retain possession of the Heights,” said Admiral
Shuldham, “I cannot keep a vessel in the harbor.”
General Howe advised Lord Dartmouth that “it must have been the
employment of at least twelve thousand men.”
Another British officer said, “These works were raised with an
expedition equal to that of the genii belonging to Aladdin’s lamp.”
Lord Howe said, further, “The rebels have done more in one night than my
whole army would have done in a month.”
“Perhaps,” said Heath, “there never was as much done in so short a
space.”
The reader of this narrative, whether citizen or soldier, cannot fail to
be interested in some account of the extreme simplicity with which the
construction of these works had been carried on. The earth, at that
time, was frozen to the depth of eighteen inches, rendering the use of
pick-axe and shovel, and all intrenching-tools, of little use; besides,
the noise of their handling would have betrayed the workmen. The secret
of Washington’s silent preparatory work, and the accumulation of such
heaps of material behind his headquarters, is revealed. Hoop-poles, for
hurdles and fascines,—branches cut from apple orchards, and along
brooks, for abatis, even as far out as the present suburban towns of
Brookline, Milton, Mattapan, and Hyde Park, had been accumulated in
great quantities. Large bales of compressed hay, which were proof
against any ordinary cannon-ball, had been procured also, so that the
merely heaping up and arranging these under the personal direction of
Engineer Putnam, according to a plan fully digested in advance, was but
easy work for a class of country soldiers peculiarly “handy” with all
such materials. Then, on the tops of the improvised redoubts, were
barrels filled with stones. These, at the proper time, were to be rolled
down the hill, to disconcert the formal array of steadily advancing
British regulars.
The management of the whole affair was hardly less simple. Eight hundred
soldiers, not needed during the cannonading, quietly marched out of camp
the night before,—some between Boston and Dorchester Heights, and others
at the east end of the peninsula, opposite Castle Island; while still
others, with tools, and a supporting party of twelve hundred soldiers
under General Thomas, followed the advance. Three hundred carts, loaded
with suitable material, followed.
All this movement was liable to be discovered in spite of the incessant
roar of heavy ordnance over the works of besiegers and besieged. The
flash of heated guns or bursting bombs might light up the trail of this
slowly crawling expedition, and vast interests were staked upon the
daring venture. But, along the most exposed parts of the way, the bales
of pressed hay had been placed as a protecting screen; and behind its
sufficient cover, the carts passed to and fro in safety. Even the moon
itself only deepened the shadow of this artificial protector, while in
position to light, as by day, the steps of the advancing patriots. And
there was, also, a brisk north wind which bore away from the city,
southward, all sounds which were not already lost in the hurricane of
war that hushed all but those of battle.
But the American Commander-in-Chief had fully anticipated the possible
incident of a premature discovery of his design against Dorchester. The
success of his plans for the night did not wholly depend upon the
undisturbed occupation and fortification of Dorchester Heights. That
silent procession of two thousand countrymen was not, as at Bunker Hill,
a sort of “forlorn-hope” affair. It was not hurried, nor was it costly
of strength or patience. Reliefs came and went; and the system, order,
and progress that marked each hour could not have been better realized
by day. Instructions had been explicit; and these were executed with
coolness and precision, as a simple matter of fact, to be done as
ordered by Washington.
The silent preparations of the preceding day had provided for the main
body of the American army other employment than a listless watch of a
vigorous bombardment and its pyrotechnic illumination of the skies. At
battery “Number Two,” the floating batteries and batteaux were fully
manned, for crossing to Boston. Greene and Sullivan, with four thousand
thoroughly rested troops, and these carefully picked men, were ready to
move on the instant, if the garrison attempted to interfere with
Washington’s original purpose.
An eminent historian thus characterized the event: “One unexpended
combination, concerted with faultless ability, and suddenly executed,
had, in a few hours, made General Howe’s position at Boston untenable.”
As soon as General Howe appreciated the changed conditions of his
relations to the besieging rebels, he despatched Earl Percy, who had met
rebels twice before, with twenty-four hundred troops to dislodge the
enemy from Dorchester Heights. The command moved promptly, by boats, to
Castle Island, for the purpose of making a night attack. Sharp-shooting,
by the American “Minute Men,” in broad daylight, behind breastworks, was
not courted by Percy on this occasion, nor desired by General Howe.
During the afternoon a storm arose from the south, which increased to a
gale, followed at night by torrents of rain. Some boats were cast
ashore, and the entire expedition was abandoned.
By the tenth of March, the Americans had fortified Nook’s Hill; and this
drove the British from Boston Neck. During that single night, eight
hundred shot and shell were thrown into the city from the American
lines.
On the seventeenth of March, the British forces, numbering, with the
seamen of the fleet, not quite eleven thousand men, embarked in one
hundred and twenty transports for Halifax. The conditions of this
embarkation without hindrance from the American army had been settled by
an agreement on the part of the British authorities that the city should
be left intact from fire, or other injury, and that the property of
royalists, of whom nearly fifteen hundred accompanied the troops, should
be also safe from violation by the incoming garrison. As the last boats
left, General Ward occupied the city with a garrison of five thousand
troops.
[Illustration:
WASHINGTON AT BOSTON.
[From Stuart’s painting.]
]
Of two hundred and fifty cannon left behind, nearly one-half were
serviceable. Other valuable stores, and the capture of several
store-vessels which entered the harbor without knowledge of the
departure of the British troops, largely swelled the contributions to
the American material of war.
The siege of Boston came to an end. New England was free from the
presence of British garrisons. The mission of Washington to
Massachusetts Colony, as Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army of
America, had fulfilled its purpose.