1745. Jacobite rising in Scotland. Charles Edward, the young Pretender,

is victorious at Prestonpans. The New England troops, under Sir William

Pepperell, reduce the French fortress of Louisburg.

1746. Jacobite defeat at Culloden.

1748. The Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle terminates the War of the Austrian

Succession and King George’s War in America. Louisburg restored to

France.

1749. The Ohio Company receives its grant from George II.

1753. Friction between French and Americans on tributaries of the

Alleghany, along American western frontier. Washington’s vain protest

against the French seizure of Venango.

1754. Beginning of the French and Indian War in America. Washington’s

attack upon Jumonville, near Great Meadows, the first action. The

French compel Washington to capitulate at Fort Necessity.

1755. Braddock’s expedition against Fort Duquesne and his disastrous

defeat. Abortive expeditions by the English against Niagara and Crown

Point.

1756. Formal declaration of hostilities between France and England, and

beginning of the Seven Years’ War. Capture of Oswego by the French.

1757. Montcalm takes Fort William Henry on Lake George.

1758. Victory of Montcalm at Ticonderoga. Reduction of Louisburg, and

capture of Forts Frontenac and Duquesne by the English.

V

THE FALL OF QUEBEC, 1759

[The visits of Breton fishermen to Newfoundland in the early

sixteenth century, the voyages of Cartier to the St. Lawrence in

1534 and 1541–43, the foundation of Port Royal in Acadia in 1605,

and of Quebec by Champlain in 1608, were the beginnings of a French

occupancy of the northern and central portions of North America

which led inevitably to conflict with England and the American

colonists. The title based upon Marquette’s discovery of the

Mississippi in 1673, and La Salle’s exploration and claim to the

whole vast valley in 1682, would have confined the English to the

Atlantic seaboard. The contact between the wholly different types

represented in English and French colonization caused friction

which became acute when King William’s War broke out in 1689. The

eight years of that war, with its profitless capture of Port Royal,

Nova Scotia, were followed by Queen Anne’s War, 1702–13, and King

George’s War, 1744–48, and the interval after the Treaty of Utrecht

was a truce rather than peace. The French were strengthening their

hold along the western frontier of the English colonists, at Fort

Duquesne, and elsewhere. Braddock’s defeat in 1755, and attacks

upon Crown Point and Niagara, preceded the formal declaration of

hostilities between France and England in 1756, the beginning of

the Seven Years’ War, involving nearly all Europe, with England

and Prussia facing Russia, France, Austria, Sweden, and Saxony. In

America, in 1756–57, the incompetency of Loudon and Abercrombie,

the dilatory preparations to attack Louisburg, and Montcalm’s

capture of Fort William Henry, made the first stage of the war

a gloomy one. But Pitt’s entrance into the British cabinet as

Secretary of State brought an intelligent and active prosecution

of the war. The next year, 1758, witnessed the capture of Fort

Frontenac on Ontario, Fort Duquesne, and Louisburg by the English

and American forces.--EDITOR.]

The British Parliament met late in November, 1758, at a time when

the nation was aglow with enthusiasm over the successes of the

year--Louisburg and Frontenac in North America, and the driving of the

French from the Guinea coast as the result of battles at Sénégal (May)

and Gorée (November).[22] The war was proving far more costly than

had been anticipated, yet Pitt rigidly held the country to the task;

but not against its will, and the necessary funds were freely voted.

Walpole wrote to a friend: “Our unanimity is prodigious. You would as

soon hear ‘No’ from an old maid as from the House of Commons.” The

preparations for the new year were on a much larger scale than before;

both by land and sea France was to be pushed to the uttermost, and the

warlike spirit of Great Britain seemed wrought to the highest pitch.

The new French premier, Choiseul, was himself not lacking in activity.

He renewed with vigor the project of invading Great Britain,

preparations therefor being evident quite early in the year 1759. Fifty

thousand men were to land in England, and twelve thousand in Scotland,

where the Stuart cause still lingered. But as usual the effort came

to naught. The Toulon squadron was to co-operate with one from Brest;

Boscawen, who now commanded the Mediterranean fleet, apprehended the

former while trying to escape through the Straits of Gibraltar in a

thick haze (August 17), and after destroying several of the ships

dispersed the others; while Sir Edward Hawke annihilated the Brest

fleet in a brilliant sea-fight off Quiberon Bay (November 20).[23]

Relieved of the possibility of insular invasion, the Channel and

Mediterranean squadrons were now free to raid French commerce, patrol

French ports, and thus intercept communication with New France, and to

harry French--and, later, Spanish--colonies overseas.

[Illustration: PROGRESS OF FRENCH DISCOVERY IN THE INTERIOR

1600–1762]

In 1757 Clive had regained Calcutta and won Bengal at the famous battle

of Plassey. Two years thereafter the East Indian seas were abandoned by

the French after three decisive actions won by Pitt’s valiant seamen,

and India thus became a permanent possession of the British empire.[24]

In January, 1759, also, the British captured Guadeloupe, in the West

Indies.[25] Lacking sea power, it was impossible for France much longer

to hold her colonies; it was but a question of time when the remainder

should fall into the clutches of the mistress of the ocean.

Notwithstanding all this naval activity, Pitt’s principal operations

were really centred against Canada. The movement thither was to be

along two lines, which eventually were to meet in co-operation.

First, a direct attack was to be made upon Quebec, headed by Wolfe,

who was to be convoyed and assisted by a fleet under the command of

Admiral Saunders; second, Amherst--now commander-in-chief in America,

Abercrombie having been recalled--was to penetrate Canada by way of

Lakes George and Champlain. He was to join Wolfe at Quebec, but was

authorized to make such diversions as he found practicable--principally

to re-establish Oswego and to relieve Pittsburg (Fort Duquesne) with

reinforcements and supplies.

Wolfe’s selection as leader of the Quebec expedition occasioned general

surprise in England. Yet it was in the natural course of events. He

had been the life of the Louisburg campaign of the year before, and

when Amherst was expressing the desire of attacking Quebec after the

reduction of Cape Breton he wrote to the latter: “An offensive, daring

kind of war will awe the Indians and ruin the French. Block-houses and

a trembling defensive encourage the meanest scoundrels to attack us. If

you will attempt to cut up New France by the roots, I will come with

pleasure to assist.”[26]

Wolfe, whose family enjoyed some influence, had attained a captaincy

at the age of seventeen and became a major at twenty. He was now

thirty-two, a major-general, and with an excellent fighting record

both in Flanders and America. Quiet and modest in demeanor, although

occasionally using excitable and ill-guarded language, he was a refined

and educated gentleman; careful of and beloved by his troops, yet a

stern disciplinarian; and although frail in body, and often overcome

by rheumatism and other ailments, capable of great strain when buoyed

by the zeal which was one of his characteristics. The majority of his

portraits represent a tall, lank, ungainly form, with a singularly

weak facial profile; but it is likely that these belie him, for he had

an indubitable spirit, a profound mind, quick intuition, a charming

manner, and was much thought of by women. Indeed, just before sailing,

he had become engaged to the beautiful and charming Katharine Lowther,

sister of Lord Lonsdale, and afterward the Duchess of Bolton.[27]

On February 17 Wolfe departed with Saunders’ fleet of twenty-one sail,

bearing the king’s secret instructions to “carry into execution the

said important operation with the utmost application and vigor.”[28]

The voyage was protracted, and after arrival at Louisburg he was

obliged to wait long before the promised troops appeared. He had

expected regiments from Guadeloupe, but these could not yet be spared,

owing to their wretched condition; and the Nova Scotia garrisons had

also been weakened by disease, so that of the twelve thousand agreed

upon he finally could muster somewhat under nine thousand.[29] These

were of the best quality of their kind; although the general still

entertained a low opinion of the value of the provincials, who, it must

be admitted, were, however serviceable in bush-ranging, far below the

efficiency of the regulars in a campaign of this character. The force

was divided into three brigades, under Monckton, Townsend, and Murray,

young men of ability; although Townsend’s supercilious manner--the

fruit of a superior social connection--did not endear him either to his

men or his colleagues.

On June 1 the fleet began to leave Louisburg. There were thirty-nine

men-of-war, ten auxiliaries, seventy-six transports, and a hundred and

sixty-two miscellaneous craft, which were manned by thirteen thousand

naval seamen and five thousand of the mercantile marine--an aggregate

of eighteen thousand, or twice as many as the landsmen under Wolfe.[30]

While to the latter is commonly given credit for the result, it must

not be forgotten that the victory was quite as much due to the skilful

management of the navy as to that of the army, the expedition being in

all respects a joint enterprise, into which the men of both branches of

the service entered with intense enthusiasm.

The French had placed much reliance on the supposed impossibility of

great battle-ships being successfully navigated up the St. Lawrence

above the mouth of the Saguenay without the most careful piloting. This

portion of the river, a hundred and twenty miles in length, certainly

is intricate water, being streaked with perplexing currents created by

the mingling of the river’s strong flow with the flood and ebb of the

tide; the great stream is diverted into two parallel channels by reefs

and islands, and there are numerous shoals--moreover, the French had

removed all lights and other aids to navigation. But British sailors

laughed at difficulties such as these, and, while they managed to

capture a pilot, had small use for him, preferring their own cautious

methods. Preceded by a crescent of sounding-boats, officered by Captain

James Cook, afterward of glorious memory as a pathfinder, the fleet

advanced slowly but safely, its approach heralded by beacons gleaming

nightly to the fore, upon the rounded hill-tops overlooking the long

thin line of riverside settlement which extended eastward from Quebec

to the Saguenay.[31]

The French had at first expected attacks only from Lake Ontario and

from the south. But receiving early tidings of Wolfe’s expedition,

through convoys with supplies from France that had escaped Saunders’

patrol of the gulf, general alarm prevailed, and Montcalm decided to

make his stand at Quebec. To the last he appears to have shared in

the popular delusion that British men-of-war could not ascend the

river; nevertheless, he promptly summoned to the capital the greater

part of the militia from all sections of Canada, save that a thousand

whites and savages were left with Pouchot to defend Niagara, twelve

hundred men under De la Corne to guard Lake Ontario, and Bourlamaque,

with upward of three thousand, was ordered to delay Amherst’s advance

and thus prevent him from joining Wolfe. The population of Canada at

the time was about eighty-five thousand souls, and of these perhaps

twenty-two thousand were capable of bearing arms.[32] The force now

gathered in and about Quebec aggregated about seventeen thousand, of

whom some ten thousand were militia, four thousand regulars of the

line, and a thousand each of colonial regulars, seamen, and Indians; of

these two thousand were reserved for the garrison of Quebec, under De

Ramezay, while the remainder were at the disposal of Montcalm for the

general defence.[33]

The “rock of Quebec” is the northeast end of a long, narrow triangular

promontory, to the north of which lies the valley of the St. Charles

and to the south that of the St. Lawrence. The acclivity on the St.

Charles side is lower and less steep than the cliffs fringing the St.

Lawrence, which rise almost precipitously from two to three hundred

feet above the river--the citadel cliff being three hundred and

forty-five feet, almost sheer. Either side of the promontory was easily

defensible from assault, the table-land being only reached by steep and

narrow paths. Surmounting the cliffs, at the apex of the triangle, was

Upper Town, the capital of New France. Batteries, largely manned by

sailors, lined the cliff-tops within the town, and the western base,

fronting the Plains of Abraham, was protected by fifteen hundred yards

of insecure wall--for, after all, Quebec had, despite the money spent

upon it, never been scientifically fortified, its commanders having

from the first relied chiefly upon its natural position as a stronghold.

At the base of the promontory, on the St. Lawrence side, is a wide

beach occupied by Lower Town, where were the market, the commercial

warehouses, a large share of the business establishments, and the homes

of the trading and laboring classes. A narrow strand, little more than

the width of a roadway, extended along the base of the cliffs westward,

communicating with the up-river country; another road led westward

along the table-land above. Thus the city obtained its supplies from

the interior both by highway and by river.

[Illustration: THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM ON THE MORNING OF THE BATTLE]

Entrance to the St. Charles side of the promontory had been blocked by

booms at the mouth of that river, protected by strong redoubts; and off

Lower Town was a line of floating batteries. Beyond the St. Charles,

for a distance of seven miles eastward to the gorge of the Montmorenci,

Montcalm disposed the greater part of his forces, his position being

a plain naturally protected by a steep slope descending to the meadow

and tidal flats which here margin the St. Lawrence. This plain rises

gradually from the St. Charles, until at the Montmorenci cataract

it attains a height of three hundred feet, and along the summit of

the slope were well-devised trenches. The gorge furnished a strong

natural defence to the left wing, for it could be forded only in the

dense forest at a considerable distance above the falls, and to force

this approach would have been to invite an ambuscade. Wolfe contented

himself, therefore, with intrenching a considerable force along the

eastern bank of the gorge, and thence issuing for frontal attacks on

the Beauport Flats--so called from the name of the village midway.

Montcalm had chosen this as the chief line of defence, on the theory

that the approach by the St. Charles would be the one selected by the

invaders; as, indeed, it long seemed to Wolfe the only possible path to

the works of Upper Town.

Westward of the city, upon the table-land, Bougainville headed a

corps of observation, supposed continually to patrol the St. Lawrence

cliff-tops and keep communications open with the interior; but this

precaution failed in the hour of need. The height of Point Lévis,

across the river from the town, on the south bank, was unoccupied.

Montcalm had wished to fortify this vantage-point, and thus block the

river from both sides, but Vaudreuil had overruled him, and the result

was fatal. Other weak points in the defence were divided command and

the scarcity of food and ammunition, occasioned largely by Bigot’s

rapacious knavery.

On June 26 the British fleet anchored off the Isle of Orleans, thus

dissipating the fond hopes of the French that some disaster might

prevent its approach. Three days later Wolfe’s men, now encamped on the

island at a safe distance from Montcalm’s guns, made an easy capture

of Point Lévis, and there erected batteries which commanded the town.

British ships were, in consequence, soon able to pass Quebec, under

cover of the Point Lévis guns, and destroy some of the French shipping

anchored in the upper basin; while landing parties harried the country

to the west, forcing _habitants_ to neutrality and intercepting

supplies. Frequently the British forces were, upon these various

enterprises, divided into three or four isolated divisions, which might

have been roughly handled by a venturesome foe. But Montcalm rigidly

maintained the policy of defence, his only offensive operations being

the unsuccessful dispatch of fire-ships against the invading fleet.

On his part, Wolfe made several futile attacks upon the Beauport

redoubts. The position was, however, too strong for him to master, and

in one assault (July 31) he lost half of his landing party--nearly five

hundred killed, wounded, and missing.[34] This continued ill-success

fretted Wolfe and at last quite disheartened him, for the season was

rapidly wearing on, and winter sets in early at Quebec; moreover,

nothing had yet been heard of Amherst. There was, indeed, some talk

of waiting until another season. However, more and more British

ships worked their way past the fort, and, by making frequent feints

of landing at widely separated points, caused Bougainville great

annoyance. Montcalm was accordingly obliged to weaken his lower forces

by sending reinforcements to the plains west of the city. Thus, while

Wolfe was pining, French uneasiness was growing, for the British were

now intercepting supplies and reinforcements from both above and below,

and Bougainville’s men were growing weary of constantly patrolling

fifteen or twenty miles of cliffs.[35]

Meanwhile, let us see how Amherst was faring. At the end of June the

general assembled five thousand provincials and sixty-five hundred

regulars at the head of Lake George. He had previously dispatched

Brigadier Prideaux with five thousand regulars and provincials to

reduce Niagara, and Brigadier Stanwix, who had been of Bradstreet’s

party the year before, to succor Pittsburg, now in imminent danger from

French bush-rangers and Indians who were swarming at Presque Isle, Le

Bœuf, and Venango.

Amherst himself moved slowly, it being July 21 before the army started

northward upon the lake. Bourlamaque, whose sole purpose was to delay

the British advance, lay at Ticonderoga with thirty-five hundred

men, but on the twenty-sixth he blew up the fort and retreated in

good order to Crown Point. On the British approaching that post he

again fell back, this time to a strong position at Isle aux Noix, at

the outlet of Lake Champlain, where, wrote Bourlamaque to a friend,

“we are entrenched to the teeth, and armed with a hundred pieces

of cannon.”[36] Amherst now deeming vessels essential, yet lacking

ship-carpenters, it was the middle of September before his little navy

was ready, and then he thought the season too far advanced for further

operations.[37] Amherst’s advance had, however, induced Montcalm to

defend Montreal, Lévis having been dispatched thither for this purpose.

Prideaux, advancing up the Mohawk, proceeded to Oswego, where he left

half of his men to cover his retreat, and then sailed to Niagara.

Slain by accident during the siege, his place was taken by Sir William

Johnson, the Indian commander, who pushed the work with vigor. Suddenly

confronted by a French force of thirteen hundred rangers and savages

from the West, who had been deflected thither from a proposed attack on

Pittsburg, with the view of recovering that fort, Johnson completely

vanquished them (July 24). The discomfited crew burned their posts in

that region and retreated precipitately to Detroit. The following day

Niagara surrendered, and thus, with Pittsburg also saved, the West was

entirely cut off from Canada, and the upper Ohio Valley was placed in

British hands. The work of Stanwix having been accomplished by Johnson,

the former, who had been greatly delayed by transport difficulties,

advanced as promptly as possible to the Forks of the Ohio, and in the

place of the old French works built the modernized stronghold of Fort

Pitt.[38]

On August 20, Wolfe fell seriously ill. Both he and the army were

discouraged. The casualties had thus far been over eight hundred men,

and disease had cut a wide swath through the ranks. Desperate, he at

last accepted the counsel of his officers, that a landing be attempted

above the town, supplies definitively cut off from Montreal, and

Montcalm forced to fight or surrender. From September 3 to 12, Wolfe,

arisen from his bed but still weak, quietly withdrew his troops from

the Montmorenci camp and transported them in vessels which successfully

passed through a heavy cannonading from the fort to safe anchorage in

the upper basin. Reinforcements marching along the southern bank, from

Point Lévis, soon joined their comrades aboard the ships. For several

days this portion of the fleet regularly floated up and down the river

above Quebec, with the changing tide, thus wearing out Bougainville’s

men, who in great perplexity followed the enemy along the cliff-tops,

through a beat of several leagues, until from sheer exhaustion they at

last became careless.

On the evening of September 12, Saunders--whose admirable handling

of the fleet deserves equal recognition with the services of

Wolfe--commenced a heavy bombardment of the Beauport lines, and feigned

a general landing at that place. Montcalm, not knowing that the

majority of the British were by this time above the town, and deceived

as to his enemy’s real intent, hurried to Beauport the bulk of his

troops, save those necessary for Bougainville’s rear guard. Meanwhile,

however, Wolfe was preparing for his desperate attempt several miles up

the river.

Before daylight the following morning (September 13), thirty boats

containing seventeen hundred picked men, with Wolfe at their head,

floated down the stream under the dark shadow of the apparently

insurmountable cliffs. They were challenged by sentinels along the

shore; but, by pretending to be a provision convoy which had been

expected from up-country, suspicion was disarmed. About two miles above

Quebec they landed at an indentation then known as Anse du Foulon,

but now called Wolfe’s Cove. From the narrow beach a small, winding

path, sighted by Wolfe two days before, led up through the trees and

underbrush to the Plains of Abraham. The climbing party of twenty-four

infantrymen found the path obstructed by an abatis and trenches; but,

nothing daunted, they clambered up the height of two hundred feet by

the aid of stunted shrubs, reached the top, overcame the weak and

cowardly guard of a hundred men, made way for their comrades, and by

sunrise forty-five hundred men of the British army were drawn up across

the plateau before the walls of Quebec.[39]

[Illustration: SIEGE OF QUEBEC]

Montcalm, ten miles away on the other side of the St. Charles, was

amazed at the daring feat, but by nine o’clock had massed his troops

and confronted his enemy. The battle was brief but desperate. The

intrepid Wolfe fell on the field--“the only British general,” declared

Horace Walpole, “belonging to the reign of George the Second who can

be said to have earned a lasting reputation.”[40] Montcalm, mortally

wounded, was carried by his fleeing comrades within the city, where he

died before morning. During the seven hours’ battle the British had

lost forty-eight killed and five hundred and ninety-seven wounded,

about twenty per cent. of the firing-line; the French lost about twelve

hundred killed, wounded, and prisoners, of whom perhaps a fourth were

killed.[41]

Tom by disorder, the militia mutinous, the walls in ruins from the

cannonading of the British fleet, and Vaudreuil and his fellows fleeing

to the interior, the helpless garrison of Quebec surrendered, September

17, the British troops entering the following day. The English flag now

floated over the citadel, and soon there was great rejoicing throughout

Great Britain and her American colonies; and well there might be, for

the affair on the Plains of Abraham was one of the most heroic and

far-reaching achievements ever wrought by Englishmen in any land or

sea.

SYNOPSIS OF THE PRINCIPAL EVENTS, CHIEFLY MILITARY, BETWEEN THE CAPTURE

OF QUEBEC, 1759, AND THE BATTLE OF BUNKER HILL, 1775

1760. Accession of George III. to throne of England. The English

capture Montreal.

1761. American commerce and industry closely restricted by enforcement

of navigation laws, acts of trade, and writs of assistance. Protests of

James Otis and Patrick Henry.

1762. England declares war against Spain and captures Havana.

1763. Treaty of Paris, and cession of Canada to England.

1765. Passage of the Stamp Act by the British Parliament, followed by

American protests.

1766. Repeal of the Stamp Act.

1767. The British Parliament, by the Townshend Acts, imposes duties on

paper, glass, tea, etc., imported into America.

1769. Massachusetts House of Representatives refuses to pay for

quartering British troops. Defeat of Paoli and subjection of Corsica by

the French.

1770. “Boston Massacre”--British soldiers, provoked by citizens, kill

three and wound several.

1772. First partition of Poland between Russia, Austria, and Prussia.

Samuel Adams actively advocates independence in Boston. British ship,

the _Gaspee_, burned by Rhode Islanders. Virginia Assembly appoints

Committee of Correspondence to keep in touch with other colonies.

1773. “Boston Tea-party”--taxed tea from England thrown overboard in

Boston harbor by disguised Americans.

1774. Five oppressive Acts, including Boston Port Bill, passed by

British Parliament. General Gage, commissioned as Governor, comes

to Boston with additional British troops. A Congress meets in

Philadelphia, with delegates from all colonies except Georgia, and

issues a “Declaration of Rights,” frames Articles of Association,

and indorses opposition of Massachusetts to the Oppressive Acts of

Parliament.

1775. General Gage sends troops to destroy supplies gathered at

Concord. Battles of Lexington and Concord. North Carolina the first to

instruct delegates to Congress for independence. Battle of Bunker Hill.

Seizure of Ticonderoga and occupation of Crown Point by Americans.

Washington takes command of the army at Cambridge. The Americans

capture Montreal. Arnold repulsed at Quebec and Montgomery killed.

VI

CAUSES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

I

Not a clause in the Declaration of Independence sets forth the real

and underlying cause of the American Revolution. The attention of

its writer was bent upon recent events, and he dwelt only upon

the immediate reasons for throwing off allegiance to the British

government. In the dark of the storm already upon them, the men of

the time could hardly look with clear vision back to ultimate causes.

They could not see that the English kings had planted the seeds of

the Revolution when, in their zeal to get America colonized, they

had granted such political and religious privileges as tempted the

radicals and dissenters of the time to migrate to America. Only

historical research could reveal the fact that from the year 1620 the

English government had been systematically stocking the colonies with

dissenters and retaining in England the conformers. The tendency of

colonization was to leave the conservatives in England, thus relatively

increasing the conservative force at home, while the radicals went to

America to fortify the radical political philosophy there. Thus England

lost part of her potentiality for political development.

Not only were radicals constantly settling in the colonies, because

of the privileges granted them there, but the Crown neglected to

enforce in the colonies the same regulations that it enforced at

home. The Act of Uniformity was not extended to the colonies, though

rigidly enforced in England; the viceregal officers, the governors,

permitted themselves again and again to be browbeaten and disobeyed by

the colonial legislatures;[42] and even the king himself had allowed

Massachusetts (1635) to overreach him by not giving up her charter.[43]

After a century of great laxity toward the colonies--a century in

which the colonists were favored by political privileges shared by no

other people of that age; after the environment had established new

social conditions, and remoteness and isolation had created a local

and individual hatred of restraint; after the absence of traditions

had made possible the institution of representation by population,

and self-government had taken on a new meaning in the world; after a

great gulf had been fixed between the social, political, and economic

institutions of the two parts of the British empire--only then did the

British government enter upon a policy intended to make the empire a

unity.[44]

Independence had long existed in spirit in most of the essential

matters of colonial life, and the British government had only to seek

to establish its power over the colonies in order to arouse a desire

for formal independence. The transition in England, therefore, to an

imperial ideal, about the middle of the eighteenth century, doubtless

caused the rending of the empire. Walpole and Newcastle, whose

administrations had just preceded the reign of George III., had let

the colonies alone, and thus aided the colonial at the expense of the

imperial idea; while their successors, Grenville and Townshend, ruling

not wisely but too well, forced the colonists to realize that they

cared more for America than for England.

The time had come, though these ministers failed to see it, when the

union of Great Britain with her colonies depended on the offspring’s

disposition toward the mother-country. Good feeling would preserve the

union, but dissatisfaction would make even forcible control impossible.

Social and political and economic ties still bound the colonists to the

home land, but these were weak ties as compared with an irrepressible

desire for self-growth. The expression of their political ideals

unrestrained by the conservatism of the parent was a desired end to

which they strove, almost unconscious of their object.

To understand the American Revolution, therefore, several facts must

be clearly in mind--first, that Great Britain had for one hundred and

fifty years been growing to the dignity of an empire, and that the

thirteen colonies were a considerable part of that empire; second,

the colonies had interests of their own which were not favored by

the growing size and strength of the empire. They were advancing to

new political ideals faster than the mother-country. Their economic

interests were becoming differentiated from those of England. They

were coming to have wants and ambitions and hopes of their own quite

distinct from those of Great Britain.

At the fatal time when the independent spirit of America had grown

assertive, the politically active part of the British people began

unconsciously to favor an imperial policy, which their ministers

suggested, and which to them seemed the very essence of sound reasoning

and good government. They approved of the proposed creation of

executives who should be independent of the dictation of the colonial

assemblies. There were also to be new administrative organs having

power to enforce the colonial trade regulations; and the defensive

system of the colonies was to be improved by a force of regular troops,

which was in part to be supported by colonial taxes.

In order to accomplish these objects, the king’s new minister, the

assiduous Grenville, who knew the law better than the maxims of

statesmanship, induced Parliament, in March, 1764, to resolve upon

“certain stamp duties” for the colonies. A year later the “Gentle

Shepherd,” as Pitt had dubbed him, proved his watchfulness by getting

a stamp act passed,[45] which, though nearly a duplicate of one in

force in England, and like one of Massachusetts’ own laws, nevertheless

aroused every colony to violent wrath.

This sudden flame of colonial passion rose from the embers of

discontent with Grenville’s policy of enforcing the trade or navigation

laws--those restrictions upon colonial industries and commerce which

were the outgrowth of a protective commercial policy which England had

begun even before the discovery of America.[46] As the colonies grew

they began to be regarded as a source of wealth to the mother-country;

and, at the same time that bounties were given them for raising

commodities desired by England, restrictions were placed upon American

trade.[47] When the settlers of the northern and middle colonies began

manufacturing for themselves, their industry no sooner interfered with

English manufactures than a law was passed to prevent the exportation

of the production and to limit the industry itself. This system of

restrictions, though it necessarily established a real opposition

of interest between America and England, does not seem on the whole

to have been to the disadvantage of the colonies;[48] nor was the

English colonial system a whit more severe than that of other European

countries.

In 1733, however, the Molasses Act went into effect,[49] and, had

it been enforced, would have been a serious detriment to American

interests. It not only aimed to stop the thriving colonial trade with

the Dutch, French, and Spanish West Indies, but was intended to aid

English planters in the British West Indies by laying a prohibitive

duty on imported foreign sugar and molasses. It was not enforced,

however, for the customs officials, by giving fraudulent clearances,

acted in collusion with the colonial importers in evading the law; but,

in 1761, during the war with France, the thrifty colonists carried on

an illegal trade with the enemy, and Pitt demanded that the restrictive

laws be enforced.

The difficulty of enforcing was great, for it was hard to seize the

smuggled goods, and harder still to convict the smuggler in the

colonial courts. Search-warrants were impracticable, because the legal

manner of using them made the informer’s name public, and the law was

unable to protect him from the anger of a community fully in sympathy

with the smugglers. The only feasible way to put down this unpatriotic

trade with the enemy was to resort to “writs of assistance,” which

would give the customs officers a right to search for smuggled goods

in any house they pleased.[50] Such warrants were legal, had been used

in America, and were frequently used in England;[51] yet so highly

developed was the American love of personal liberty that when James

Otis, a Boston lawyer, resisted by an impassioned speech the issue of

such writs his arguments met universal approval.[52] In perfect good

faith he argued, after the manner of the ancient law-writers, that

Parliament could not legalize tyranny, ignoring the historical fact

that since the revolution of 1688 an act of Parliament was the highest

guarantee of right, and Parliament the sovereign and supreme power.

Nevertheless, the popularity of Otis’ argument showed what America

believed, and pointed very plainly the path of wise statesmanship.

When, in 1763, the Pontiac Indian rebellion endangered the whole West

and made necessary a force of soldiers in Canada, Grenville, in spite

of the recent warning, determined that the colonies should share the

burden which was rapidly increasing in England. He lowered the sugar

and molasses duties,[53] and set out to enforce their collection by

every lawful means. The trouble which resulted developed more quickly

in Massachusetts, because its harsh climate and sterile soil drove it

to a carrying-trade, and the enforced navigation laws were thought

to threaten its ruin. It was while American economic affairs were in

this condition that Grenville rashly aggravated the discontent by the

passage of his Stamp Act.

As the resistance of the colonies to this taxation led straight to

open war and final independence, it will be worth while to look rather

closely at the stamp tax, and at the subject of representation, which

was at once linked with it. The terms of the Stamp Act are not of great

importance, because, though it did have at least one bad feature as a

law, the whole opposition was on the ground that there should be no

taxation whatever without representation. It made no difference to its

enemies that the money obtained by the sale of stamps was to stay in

America to support the soldiers needed for colonial protection. Nothing

would appease them while the taxing body contained no representatives

of their own choosing.

To attain this right, they made their fight upon legal and historical

grounds--the least favorable they could have chosen. They declared

that, under the British constitution, there could be no taxation

except by persons known and voted for by the persons taxed. The wisest

men seemed not to see the kernel of the dispute. A very real danger

threatened the colonies--subject as they were to a body unsympathetic

with the political and economic conditions in which they were

living--but they had no legal safeguard.[54] They must either sever

the existing constitutional bond or get Parliament of its own will to

limit its power over the colonies. All unwittingly the opponents of the

Stamp Act were struggling with a problem that could be solved only by

revolution.

Two great fundamental questions were at issue: Should there be a

British empire ruled by Parliament in all its parts, either in England

or oversea? or should Parliament govern at home, and the colonial

assemblies in America, with only a federal bond to unite them? Should

the English understanding of representation be imposed upon the

colonies? or should America’s institution triumph in its own home? If

there was to be a successful imperial system, Parliament must have the

power to tax all parts of the empire. It was of no use to plead that

Parliament had never taxed the colonies before, for, as Doctor Johnson

wrote, “We do not put a calf into the plough: we wait till it is an

ox.”[55] The colonies were strong enough to stand taxation now, and the

reasonable dispute must be as to the manner of it. To understand the

widely different points of view of Englishmen and Americans, we must

examine their systems of representative government.

In electing members to the House of Commons in England certain ancient

counties and boroughs were entitled to representation, each sending two

members, regardless of the number of people within its territory. For a

century and a half before the American Revolution only four new members

were added to the fixed number in Parliament. Meanwhile, great cities

had grown up which had no representation, though certain boroughs, once

very properly represented, had become uninhabited, and the lord who

owned the ground elected the members to Parliament, taking them, not

from the district represented, but from any part of the kingdom. The

franchise was usually possessed either by the owners of the favored

pieces of land or in the boroughs chiefly by persons who inherited

certain rights which marked them as freemen. A man had as many votes as

there were constituencies in which he possessed the qualifications.

In the colonial assemblies there was a more distinct territorial basis

for representation, and changes of population brought changes of

representation. New towns sent new members to the provincial assembly,

and held the right to be of great value. All adult men--even negroes

in New England--owning a certain small amount of property could vote

for these members. In the South only the landholders voted, but the

supply of land was not limited, as in England, and it was easily

acquired. Finally, the voter and the representative voted for must, as

a rule, be residents of the same district. From the first the colonial

political ideals were affected by new conditions. When they established

representative government they had no historic places sanctified by

tradition to be the sole breeding-places of members of Parliament.

Backed by such divergent traditions as these, the two parts of the

British empire, or, more accurately, the dominant party in each section

of the empire, faced each other upon a question of principle. Neither

could believe in the honesty of the other, for each argued out of a

different past. The opponents of the Stamp Act could not understand the

political thinking which held them to be represented in the British

Parliament. “No taxation without representation” meant for the colonist

that taxes ought to be levied by a legislative body in which was seated

a person known and voted for by the person taxed. An Englishman only

asked that there be “no taxation except that voted by the House of

Commons.” He was not concerned with the mode of election to that house

or the interests of the persons composing it. The colonists called the

Stamp Act tyranny, but the British government certainly intended none,

for it acted upon the theory of virtual representation, the only kind

of representation enjoyed by the great mass of Englishmen either at

home or in the colonies. On that theory nothing was taxed except by the

consent of the virtual representatives of those taxed. But, replied an

American, in England the interests of electors and non-electors are

the same. Security against any oppression of non-electors lies in the

fact that it would be oppressive to electors also; but Americans have

no such safeguard, for acts oppressive to them might be popular with

English electors.[56]

When the news of the Stamp Act first came oversea there was apparent

apathy. The day of enforcement was six months away, and there was

nothing to oppose but a law. It was the fitting time for an agitator.

Patrick Henry, a gay, unprosperous, and unknown country lawyer, had

been carried into the Virginia House of Burgesses on the public

approval of his impassioned denial, in the “Parson’s Cause” (1763),

of the king’s right to veto a needed law passed by the colonial

legislature. He now offered some resolutions against the stamp tax,

denying the right of Parliament to legislate in the internal affairs of

the colony.[57] This “alarum bell to the disaffected,” and the fiery

speech which secured its adoption by an irresolute assembly, were

applauded everywhere. Jefferson said of Henry, that he “spoke as Homer

wrote.”

As soon as the names of the appointed stamp-distributers were made

known (August 1, 1765) the masses expressed their displeasure in a way

unfortunately too common in America. Throughout the land there was

rifling of stamp-collectors’ houses, threatening their lives, burning

their records and documents, and even their houses. Their offices

were demolished and their resignations compelled--in one case under a

hanging effigy, suggestive of the result of refusal. The more moderate

patriots cancelled their orders with British merchants, agreed not to

remit their English debts, and dressed in homespun to avoid wearing

imported clothes.

On the morning that the act went into effect (November 1, 1765)

bells tolled the death of the nation. Shops were shut, flags hung at

half-mast, and newspapers appeared with a death’s-head where the stamp

should have been. Mobs burned the stamps, and none were to be had to

legalize even the most solemn and important papers. The courts ignored

them and the governors sanctioned their omission. None could be used,

because none could be obtained. All America endorsed the declaration

of rights of the Stamp-Act Congress, which met in New York, October,

1765. It asserted that the colonists had the same liberties as British

subjects. Circumstances, they declared, prevented the colonists from

being represented in the House of Commons, therefore no taxes could be

levied except by their respective legislatures.[58]

This great ado was a complete surprise to the British government. On

the passage of the Stamp Act, Walpole had written,[59] “There has

been nothing of note in Parliament but one slight day on the American

taxes.” That expressed the common conception of its importance; and

when the Grenville ministry fell (July, 1765), and was succeeded by

that of Rockingham, the American situation had absolutely nothing

to do with the change. The new ministry was some months in deciding

its policy. The king was one of the first to realize the situation,

which he declared “the most serious that ever came before Parliament”

(December 5, 1765). Weak and unwilling to act as the new ministry was,

the situation compelled attention. The king at first favored coercion

of the rebellious colonies, but the English merchants, suffering

from the suspended trade, urged Parliament to repeal the act. Their

demand decided the ministry to favor retraction, just as formerly

their influence had forced the navigation laws and the restrictions on

colonial manufactures. If the king and landed gentry were responsible

for the immediate causes of the Revolution, the influence of the

English commercial classes on legislation was the more ultimate cause.

After one of the longest and most heated debates in the history of

Parliament, under the advice of Benjamin Franklin, given at the bar

of the House of Commons,[60] and with the powerful aid of Pitt and

Camden, the Stamp Act was repealed. Another act passed at the same

time asserted Parliament’s power to legislate for the colonies in all

cases whatsoever.[61] Thus the firebrand was left smouldering amid the

inflammable colonial affairs; and Burke was quick to point out that

the right to tax, or any other right insisted upon after it ceased to

harmonize with prudence and expediency, would lead to disaster.[62]

It is plain to-day that the only way to keep up the nominal union

between Great Britain and her colonies was to let them alone. The

colonies felt strongly the ties of blood, interest, and affection

which bound them to England.[63] They would all have vowed, after the

repeal of the Stamp Act, that they loved their parent much more than

they loved one another. They felt only the normal adult instinct to act

independently. Could the British government have given up the imperial

idea to which it so tenaciously clung, a federal union might have been

preserved.

The genius of dissolution, however, gained control of the ministry

which next came into power. When illness withdrew Pitt from the “Mosaic

Ministry,” which he and Grafton had formed, Townshend’s brilliant

talents gave him the unquestioned lead. This man, who is said to have

surpassed Burke in wit and Chatham in solid sense, determined to try

again to tax the colonies for imperial purposes.[64] He ridiculed the

distinction between external and internal tax; but since the colonists

had put stress on the illegality of the latter he laid the new tax

on imported articles, and prepared to collect at the customhouses.

The income was to pay the salaries of colonial governors and judges,

and thus render them independent of the tyrannical and contentious

assemblies. Writs of assistance, so effective in enforcing the revenue

laws but so hated by the colonists, were legalized. The collection of

the revenue was further aided by admiralty courts, which should try the

cases without juries, thus preventing local sympathy from shielding the

violators of the law.[65]

All the indifference into which America had relapsed, and which the

agitators so much deplored, at once disappeared. The right of trial

by jury was held to be inalienable. The control of the judiciary and

executive by the people was necessary to free government, asserted the

pamphleteers. Parliament could not legalize “writs of assistance,” they

rashly cried. The former stickling at an internal tax was forgotten,

and they objected to any tax whatever--a more logical position, which

John Dickinson, of Pennsylvania, supported by the assertion “that any

law, in so far as it creates expense, is in reality a tax.” Samuel

Adams drew up a circular letter, which the Massachusetts assembly

dispatched to the other colonial assemblies, urging concerted action

against this new attack on colonial liberties.[66] The British

government, through the colonial governors, attempted to squelch this

letter, but the Massachusetts assembly refused to rescind, and the

other colonies were quick to embrace its cause.

Signs were not wanting that the people as well as the political

leaders were aroused. When the customs officials, in 1768, seized John

Hancock’s sloop _Liberty_ for alleged evasion of the customs duties,

there was a riot which so frightened the officers that they fled to the

fort and wrote to England for soldiers.

This and other acts of resistance to the government led Parliament

to urge the king to exercise a right given him by an ancient act to

cause persons charged with treason to be brought to England for trial.

The Virginia assembly protested against this, and sent their protest

to the other colonies for approval.[67] The governor dissolved the

assembly, but it met and voted a non-importation agreement, which also

met favor in the other colonies. This economic argument again proved

effective, and the Townshend measures were repealed, except the tax on

tea; Parliament thus doing everything but remove the offence--“fixing

a badge of slavery upon the Americans without service to their

masters.”[68] The old trade regulations also remained to vex the

colonists.

In order that no disproportionate blame may be attached to the king

or his ministry for the bringing on of the Revolution, it must be

noted that the English nation, the Parliament, and the king were all

agreed when the sugar and stamp acts were passed; and though Parliament

mustered a good-sized minority against the Townshend acts, nevertheless

no unaccustomed influence in its favor was used by the king. Thus the

elements of the cloud were all gathered before the king’s personality

began to intensify the oncoming storm. The later acts of Parliament and

the conduct of the king had the sole purpose of overcoming resistance

to established government. Most of these coercive acts, though no

part of the original policy, were perfectly constitutional even in

times of peace. They must be considered in their historical setting,

however, just as President Lincoln’s extraordinary acts in a time of

like national peril. Henceforth we are dealing with the natural, though

perhaps ill-judged, efforts of a government to repress a rebellion.

After the riot which followed the seizure of the _Liberty_ (June,

1768), two regiments of British soldiers were stationed in Boston.

The very inadequacy of the force made its relations with the citizens

strained, for they resented without fearing it. After enduring months

of jeering and vilification, the soldiers at last (March 5, 1770) fired

upon a threatening mob, and four men were killed. Much was made of the

“massacre,” as it was called, because it symbolized for the people the

substitution of military for civil government. A Boston jury acquitted

the soldiers, and, after a town-meeting, the removal of the two

regiments was secured.

A period of quiet followed until the assembly and the governor got

into a debate over the theoretical rights of the colonists. To spread

the results of this debate, Samuel Adams devised the “committees of

correspondence,”[69] which kept the towns of Massachusetts informed

of the controversy in Boston. This furnished a model for the colonial

committees of correspondence, which became the most efficient means for

revolutionary organization. They created public opinion, set war itself

in motion, and were the embryos of new governments when the old were

destroyed.

The first provincial committee that met with general response from the

other colonies was appointed by Virginia, March 12, 1773, to keep its

assembly informed of the “_Gaspee_ Commission.”[70] The _Gaspee_ was

a sort of revenue-cutter which, while too zealously enforcing the

Navigation Acts, ran aground (June 9, 1772) in Narragansett Bay. Some

Providence men seized and burned the vessel, and the British government

appointed a commission to inquire into the affair.[71] The commission

met with universal opposition and had to report failure.

From this time on the chain of events that led to open rebellion

consists of a series of links so plainly joined and so well known

that they need only the barest mention in this brief introduction

to the actual war. The British government tried to give temporary

aid to the East India Company by permitting the heavy revenue on

tea entering English ports, through which it must pass before being

shipped to America, and by licensing the company itself to sell tea in

America.[72] To avoid yielding the principle for which they had been

contending, they retained at colonial ports the threepenny duty, which

was all that remained of the Townshend revenue scheme. Ships loaded

with this cheap tea came into the several American ports and were

received with different marks of odium at different places. In Boston,

after peaceful attempts to prevent the landing proved of no avail, an

impromptu band of Indians threw the tea overboard, so that the next

morning saw it lying like seaweed on Dorchester beach.

This outrage, as it was viewed in England, caused a general demand

for repressive measures, and the five “intolerable acts” were passed

and sent oversea to do the last irremediable mischief.[73] Boston’s

port was closed until the town should pay for the tea. Massachusetts’

charter was annulled, its town-meetings irksomely restrained, and its

government so changed that its executive officers would all be under

the king’s control. Two other acts provided for the care and judicial

privileges of the soldiers who soon came to enforce the acts. Finally,

great offence was given the Protestant colonies by granting religious

freedom to the Catholics of Quebec, and the bounds of that colony were

extended to the Ohio River,[74] thus arousing all the colonies claiming

Western lands. Except in the case of Virginia, there was no real attack

on their territorial integrity, but in the excitement there seemed to

be.

Some strong incentive for the colonies to act together had long been

the only thing needed to send the flame of rebellion along the whole

sea-coast. When the British soldiers began the enforcement of the

punishment meted to Boston, sympathy and fear furnished the common

bond. After several proposals of an intercolonial congress, the step

was actually taken on a call from oppressed Massachusetts (June

17, 1774).[75] Delegates from every colony except Georgia met in

Philadelphia in September, 1774. Seven of the twelve delegations were

chosen not by the regular assemblies, but by revolutionary conventions

called by local committees; while in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and

Connecticut, three of the remaining five states, the assemblies that

sent the delegates were wholly dominated by the revolutionary element.

Local committees may therefore be said to have created the congress,

and they would now stand ready to enforce its will.

The assembled congress adopted a declaration of rights, but their

great work was the forming an American association to enforce a

non-importation and non-consumption agreement.[76] Local committees

were to see that all who traded with England or refused to associate

were held up as enemies of their country. The delegates provided for a

new congress in the following May, and adjourned.

Meanwhile, General Gage and his “pretorian guard” in Boston were

administering the government of Massachusetts with noteworthy results.

A general court of the colony was summoned by Gage, who, repenting,

tried to put it off; but it met, formed a provincial congress, and,

settling down at Cambridge, governed the whole colony outside of

Boston. It held the new royal government to be illegal, ordered the

taxes paid to its own receiver instead of Gage’s, and organized a

militia. Gage at last determined to disarm the provincials. His raid

to destroy the stores at Concord (April 19, 1775) resulted in an

ignominious retreat and the loss of two hundred and seventy-three men,

to say nothing of bringing sixteen thousand patriots swarming about

Boston.

II

THE OUTBREAK OF WAR, 1775

Though mainly social and economic forces brought the revolution to the

stage of open warfare, a Massachusetts politician had so used these

forces that both his friends and enemies thought the blame or the

honor to be his. Samuel Adams began to desire independence as early

as 1768. From that time it was his unwearying effort to keep alive

the opposition to the British ministry. For years he sought to instil

in the minds of rising youths the notion of independence. His adroit

mind, always awake and tireless, toiled for but one end; and he was

narrow-minded enough to be a perfect politician. Two opposing views

could never occupy his mind at the same time. For sharp practices

he had no aversion, but he used them for public good, as he saw it,

and not for private gain. He was a public servant, great or small,

from his earliest manhood--as inspector of chimneys, tax-collector,

or moderator of town-meetings. He was ever a failure in business;

in politics, shrewd and able. The New England town-meeting was the

theatre of his action;[77] he directed the Boston meetings, and the

other towns followed. His tools were men. He was intimate with all

classes, from the ship-yard roustabouts to the ministers of the gospel.

In the canvass and caucus he was supreme. Others were always in the

foreground, thinking that theirs was the glory. An enemy said that he

had an unrivalled “talent for artfully and fallaciously insinuating”

malice into the public mind. A friend dubbed him the “Colossus of

debate.” He was ready in tact and cool in moments of excitement; his

reasoning and eloquence had a nervous simplicity, though there was

little of fire, and he was sincere rather than rhetorical.

Adams was of medium stature, but in his most intense moments he

attained to a dignity of figure and gesture. His views were clear and

his good sense abundant, so that he always received profound attention.

Prematurely gray, palsied in hand, and trembling in voice, yet he had

a mental audacity unparalleled. He was dauntless himself, and thus

roused and fortified the people. Nor were his efforts confined to the

town-meeting, for he was also a voluminous newspaper writer. He showed

no tolerance for an opponent, and his attacks were keenly felt. “Damn

that Adams. Every dip of his pen stings like a horned snake,” cried an

enemy. Thus he went on canvassing, caucusing, haranguing, and writing

until the maddened Gage attempted to seize him and the munitions of war

which he and his fellow-politicians had induced the colony to collect.

Concord and Lexington and the pursuit into Boston were the results.

At the close of that long day of fighting (April 19, 1775) it was plain

that war had begun, and the Massachusetts politicians who had pushed

matters to that stage may well have had misgivings. A single colony

could have no hope of success, and there was little in the past to

make one believe that the thirteen colonies would unite even to defend

their political liberties. Franklin gave a vivid picture of their

different forms of government, different laws, different interests,

and, in some instances, different religious persuasions and different

manners.[78] Their jealousy of one another was, he declared, “so

great that, however necessary a union of the colonies has long been

for their common defence, ... yet they have never been able to effect

such a union among themselves.” They were more jealous of each other

than of England, and though plans for union had been proposed by their

ablest statesmen, they had refused to consider them.[79] There were

long-standing disputes between neighboring colonies over boundaries,

over relations with the Indians, and over matters of trade.

The greatest danger, however, that confronted the American cause was

political division on the subject of the relations with England. As the

quarrel with the mother-country grew more bitter, it was seen that the

British government had many friends in America who, if they did not

defend the action of the ministry, at least frowned upon the violent

opposition to it. They believed that America’s best interests lay in

the union with Great Britain. The aristocracy of culture, of dignified

professions and callings, of official rank and hereditary wealth tended

to side with the central government.[80] The more prosperous and

contented men had no grievances, and conservatism was the character one

would expect in them. They denounced the agitators as demagogues and

their followers as “the mob.”

Through the long ten years of unrest preceding the Revolution, these

Tories, as they were called, had suffered at the hands of mobs, and

now, when Gage was powerless outside of Boston, an active persecution

of them began.[81] Millers refused to grind their corn, labor would

not serve them, and they could neither buy nor sell. Men refused to

worship in the same church with them. They were denounced as “infamous

betrayers of their country.” Committees published their names, “sending

them down to posterity with the infamy they deserve.” After the siege

of Boston had begun, those who were even suspected of Toryism, as their

support of the king was called, were regarded as enemies in the camp.

The Massachusetts committees compelled them to sign recantations or

confined them in jails for refusal. If they escaped they were pursued

with hue and cry.

Some fled to other colonies, but found that, “like Cain, they had some

discouraging mark upon them.” In exile they learned that the patriot

wrath visited their property: their private coaches were burned or

pulled in pieces. A rich importer’s goods were destroyed or stolen, and

his effigy was hung up in sight of his house during the day and burned

at night. Beautiful estates, where was “every beauty of art or nature,

every elegance, which it cost years of care and toil in bringing

to perfection,” were laid waste. Looking upon this work of ruin, a

despairing loyalist cried that the Americans were “as blind and mad as

Samson, bent upon pulling the edifice down upon their heads to perish

in the ruins.”

The violence of the patriots’ attack upon the loyalists seemed for a

time to eliminate the latter from the struggle. The friends of royal

power in America expected too much, and while the king’s enemies were

organizing they waited for him to crush the rising rebellion. They

looked on with wonder as the signal flew from one local committee to

another over thirteen colonies, who now needed only a glowing fact

like Lexington to fuse them into one defensive whole. The news reached

Putnam’s Connecticut farm in a day; Arnold, at New Haven, had it

the next day, and in four days it had reached New York.[82] Unknown

messengers carried it through Philadelphia, past the Chesapeake, on to

Charleston, and within twenty days the news in many garbled forms was

evoking a common spirit of patriotism from Maine to Georgia. It was

commonly believed that America must be saved from “abject slavery” by

the bands of patriots encompassing Boston.

The farmers and mechanics who had hurried from their work to drive the

British from Concord into Boston were not an army. They settled down in

a great half-circle around the port with a common purpose of compelling

Gage to take to his ships, but with no definite plan. Confusion was

everywhere. Men were coming and going, and there were no regular

enlistments.[83] A few natural leaders were doing wonders in holding

them together.[84] Among them the brave and courteous Joseph Warren,

the warm friend of Samuel Adams and zealous comrade in the recent work

of agitation, was conquering insubordination by the manly modesty and

gentleness of his character. Others who were old campaigners of the

French and Indian wars worked ceaselessly to bring order out of chaos.

Yet not even the fanatic zeal of the siege could banish provincial

jealousies. There were as many leaders as there were colonies

represented. New Hampshire men were led by John Stark, a hero of

the French war; Connecticut men were under Israel Putnam, more

picturesque as a wolf-slayer than able as a leader. Nathanael Greene,

the philosophic and literary blacksmith, commanded the Rhode Island

militia.[85] It was with difficulty that “the grand American army,”

as the Massachusetts congress called it, finally intrusted the chief

command to General Artemas Ward, who, in turn, was controlled by the

Massachusetts committee of safety.

Even with some organization and a leader there was little outward

semblance of an army. In the irregular dress, brown and green hues

were the rule. Uniforms like those of the British regulars, the

hunting-shirt of the backwoodsman, and even the blankets of savages

were seen side by side in the ranks of the first patriot armies. There

was little distinction between officer and private.[86] Each company

chose its own officers out of the ranks,[87] and the private could

not understand why he should salute his erstwhile friend and neighbor

or ask his permission to go home. The principle of social democracy

was carried into military life to the great detriment of the service.

Difference in rank was ignored by the officers themselves, who in some

cases did menial work about camp to curry favor with their men.

Fortunately, there was in this raw militia a good leaven of soldiers

seasoned and trained in the war with France. These men led expeditions

to the islands of Boston Harbor in the effort to get the stock before

it should be seized by the British.[88] Numerous slight engagements

resulted, turning favorably, as a rule, for the patriots, and the new

recruits gained courage with experience. Thus nearly two months passed

away, and an elated patriot wrote that “danger and war are become

pleasing, and injured virtue is now aroused to avenge herself.”

The only way to drive Gage out of Boston was to seize one of the

commanding hill-tops either in Dorchester or Charlestown, whence they

might open a cannonade on the city. Gage saw this danger, and with the

arrival of reinforcements under Howe, Clinton, and Burgoyne a plan

was made to get control of the dangerous hill-tops. With ten thousand

well-equipped soldiers to pit against an ill-trained and poorly

commanded multitude of farmers the task seemed easy. After trying to

terrify the rebels by threatening with the gallows all who should be

taken with arms, and offering to pardon those who would lay them down,

Gage prepared to execute this plan. The patriots forestalled him by

sending twelve hundred men under the veteran Colonel Prescott to seize

Bunker Hill, in Charlestown.

VII

THE BATTLE OF BUNKER HILL, 1775.

In May, 1775, the British force in Boston had increased by fresh

arrivals from England and Ireland to ten thousand men. The man-of-war

_Cerberus_ arrived on the 25th with Generals Howe, Clinton, and

Burgoyne--three officers experienced in the military tactics of Europe,

but little prepared for service here. They were surprised at the aspect

of affairs, and Gage was reproached for his apparent supineness.

However, unity of action was necessary, and the new-comers heartily

co-operated with Gage in his plans, such as they were, for dispersing

the rebel host that hemmed him in. He issued a proclamation on June

12 insulting in words and menacing in tone. It declared martial law;

pronounced those in arms and their abettors “rebels, parricides of the

Constitution,” and offered a free pardon to all who would forthwith

return to their allegiance, except John Hancock and Samuel Adams, who

were outlawed, and for whose apprehension as traitors a reward was

offered. This proclamation, so arrogant and insulting, served only

to exasperate the people. In the mean while several skirmishes had

occurred between parties of the British regulars and the provincials,

upon some of the cultivated islands that dot the harbor of Boston.

At this time (May, 1775) but little progress had been made by the

Americans in erecting fortifications. Some breastworks had been thrown

up at Cambridge, near the foot of Prospect Hill, and a small redoubt

had been formed at Roxbury. The right wing of the besieging army,

under General Thomas, was at Roxbury, consisting of four thousand

Massachusetts troops, including four artillery companies, with

field-pieces and a few heavy cannon. The Rhode Island forces, under

Greene, were at Jamaica Plains, and near there was a greater part of

General Spencer’s Connecticut regiment. General Ward commanded the left

wing at Cambridge, which consisted of fifteen Massachusetts regiments,

the battalion of artillery under Gridley, and Putnam’s regiment, with

other Connecticut troops. Most of the Connecticut forces were at

Inman’s farm. Paterson’s regiment was at the breastwork on Prospect

Hill, and a large guard was stationed at Lechmere’s Point. Three

companies of Gerrish’s regiment were at Chelsea; Stark’s regiment was

at Medford, and Reid’s at Charlestown Neck, with sentinels reaching to

Penny Ferry and Bunker Hill.

It was made known to the Committee of Safety that General Gage had

fixed upon the night of June 18 to take possession of and fortify

Bunker Hill and Dorchester Heights. This brought matters to a crisis,

and measures were taken to perfect the blockade of Boston. The

Committee of Safety ordered Colonel Prescott, with a detachment of one

thousand men, including a company of artillery, with two field-pieces,

to march at night and throw up intrenchments upon Bunker Hill, an

eminence just within the peninsula of Charlestown, and commanding the

great northern road from Boston, as well as a considerable portion

of the town. Bunker Hill begins at the isthmus, and rises gradually

for about three hundred yards, forming a round, smooth hill, sloping

on two sides toward the water, and connected by a ridge of ground

on the south with the heights now known as Breed’s Hill. This was a

well-known public place, the name, “Bunker Hill,” being found in the

town records and in deeds from an early period. Not so with “Breed’s

Hill,” for it was not named in any description of streets previous to

1775, and appears to have been called after the owners of the pastures

into which it was divided, rather than by the common name of Breed’s

Hill. Thus, Monument Square was called Russell’s Pasture; Breed’s

Pasture lay farther south, and Green’s Pasture was at the head of Green

Street. The easterly and westerly sides of this height were steep. On

the east, at its base, were brick-kilns, clay-pits, and much sloughy

land. On the west side, at the base, was the most settled part of

the town. Moulton’s Point, a name coeval with the settlement of the

town, constituted the southeastern corner of the peninsula. A part of

this tract formed what is called Morton’s Hill. Bunker Hill was one

hundred and ten feet high, Breed’s Hill sixty-two feet, and Moulton’s

Hill thirty-five feet. The principal street of the peninsula was Main

Street, which extended from the Neck to the ferry. A road ran over

Bunker Hill, around Breed’s Hill, to Moulton’s Point. The westerly

portions of these eminences contained fine orchards.

A portion of the regiments of Prescott, Frye, and Bridge, and a fatigue

party of two hundred Connecticut troops with intrenching tools,

paraded in the Cambridge camp at six o’clock in the evening. They were

furnished with packs and blankets, and ordered to take provisions for

twenty-four hours. Samuel Gridley’s company of artillery joined them,

and the Connecticut troops were placed under the command of Thomas

Knowlton, a captain in Putnam’s regiment, who was afterward killed in

the battle on Harlem Heights. After an impressive prayer from the lips

of President Langdon, of Harvard College, Colonel Prescott and Richard

Gridley, preceded by two servants with dark lanterns, commenced their

march, at the head of the troops, for Charlestown. It was about nine

o’clock at night, the sky clear and starry, and the weather very warm.

Strict silence was enjoined, and the object of the expedition was not

known to the troops until they arrived at Charlestown Neck, where they

were joined by Major Brooks, of Bridge’s regiment, and General Putnam.

A guard of ten men was placed in Charlestown, and the main body marched

over Bunker Hill. A council was held, to select the best place for

the proposed fortification. The order was explicit, to fortify Bunker

Hill; but Breed’s Hill being nearer Boston, and appearing to be a more

eligible place, it was concluded to proceed to fortify it, and to throw

up works, also, on Bunker Hill, to cover a retreat, if necessary,

across Charlestown Neck. Colonel Gridley marked out the lines of the

proposed fortifications, and, at about midnight, the men, having

thrown off their packs and stacked their arms, began their perilous

work--perilous, because British sentinels and British ships-of-war were

almost within sound of their picks.

Officers and men labored together with all their might, with pickaxes

and spades, and were cheered on in their work by the distant signals of

safety--“All’s well!”--that came from the shipping and the sentinels

at the foot of Copp’s Hill. It proclaimed that they were still

undiscovered; and at every cry of “All’s well!” they plied their tools

with increased vigor. When the day dawned, at about four o’clock, they

had thrown up intrenchments six feet high; and a strong redoubt, which

was afterward the admiration of the enemy, loomed up on the green

height before the wondering eyes of the astonished Britons like a work

of magic. The British officers could hardly be convinced that it was

the result of a few hours’ labor only, but deemed it the work of days.

Gage saw at once how foolish he had been in not taking possession of

this strong point, as advised, while it was in his power to do so.

The fortification was first discovered at dawn, by the watchmen on

board the British man-of-war _Lively_. Without waiting for orders, the

captain put springs upon his cables, and opened a fire on the American

works. The noise of the cannon aroused the sleepers in Boston, and when

the sun arose on that bright morning, every eminence and roof in the

city swarmed with people, astonished at the strange apparition upon

Breed’s Hill. The shots from the _Lively_ did no harm, and, defended by

their intrenchments, the Americans plied their tools in strengthening

their works within, until called to lay aside the pick and shovel for

gun and knapsack.

[Illustration: PLAN OF THE REDOUBT ON BREED’S HILL]

On June 17 Admiral Graves, the naval commander at Boston, ordered the

firing to cease; but it was soon renewed, not only by the shipping, but

from a battery of six guns upon Copp’s Hill in the city. Gage summoned

a council of war early in the morning. As it was evident that the

Americans were rapidly gaining strength, and that the safety of the

town was endangered, it was unanimously resolved to send out a force to

drive them from the peninsula of Charlestown and destroy their works

on the heights. It was decided, also, to make the attack in front, and

preparations were made accordingly. The drums beat to arms, and Boston

was soon in a tumult. Dragoons galloping, artillery trains rumbling,

and the marching and countermarching of the regulars and loyalists,

together with the clangor of the church bells, struck dismay into many

a heart before stout in the presence of British protectors. It is said

that the danger which surrounded the city converted many Tories into

patriots; and the selectmen, in the midst of that fearful commotion,

received large accessions to their list of professed friends from the

ranks of the timid loyalists.

Toward noon between two and three thousand picked men from the British

army, under the command of General Sir William Howe and General Pigot,

embarked in twenty-eight barges, part from the Long Wharf and some

from the North Battery, in Boston, and landed at Morton’s, or Moulton’s

Point, beyond the eastern foot of Breed’s Hill, covered by the guns of

the _Falcon_ and other vessels.

The Americans had worked faithfully on their intrenchments all the

morning, and were greatly encouraged by the voice and example of

Prescott, who exposed himself, without care, to the random shots of the

battery on Copp’s Hill. He supposed, at first, that the enemy would not

attack him, but, seeing the movements in the city, he was convinced

to the contrary, and comforted his toiling troops with assurances of

certain victory. Confident of such a result himself, he would not at

first send to General Ward for a reinforcement; but between nine and

ten o’clock, by advice of his officers, Major Brooks was dispatched

to headquarters for that purpose. General Putnam had urged Ward early

in the morning to send fresh troops to relieve those on duty; but

only a portion of Stark’s regiment was allowed to go, as the general

apprehended that Cambridge would be the principal point of attack.

Convinced otherwise, by certain intelligence, the remainder of Stark’s

regiment, and the whole of Reed’s corps, on the Neck, were ordered to

reinforce Prescott. At twelve o’clock the men in the redoubt ceased

work, sent off their intrenching tools, took some refreshments, hoisted

the New England flag, and prepared to fight. The intrenching tools were

sent to Bunker Hill, where, under the directions of General Putnam, the

men began to throw up a breastwork. Some of the more timid soldiers

made the removal of the tools a pretext for leaving the redoubt, and

never returned.

It was between twelve and one o’clock when the British troops,

consisting of the fifth, thirty-eighth, forty-third, and fifty-second

battalions of infantry, two companies of grenadiers, and two of light

infantry, landed, their rich uniforms and arms flashing and glittering

in the noonday sun, making an imposing and formidable display.

General Howe reconnoitred the American works, and, while waiting for

reinforcements, which he had solicited from Gage, allowed his troops

to dine. When the intelligence of the landing of the enemy reached

Cambridge, two miles distant, there was great excitement in the camp

and throughout the town. The drums beat to arms, the bells were rung,

and the people and military were speedily hurrying in every direction.

General Ward used his own regiment, and those of Paterson and Gardner

and a part of Bridge’s, for the defence of Cambridge. The remainder

of the Massachusetts troops were ordered to Charlestown, and thither

General Putnam conducted those of Connecticut.

At about two o’clock the reinforcement for Howe arrived, and landed

at the present navy-yard. It consisted of the Forty-seventh battalion

of infantry, a battalion of marines, and some grenadiers and light

infantry. The whole force (about four thousand men) was commanded and

directed by the most skilful British officers then in Boston; and every

man preparing to attack the undisciplined provincials was a drilled

soldier, and quite perfect in the art of war. It was an hour of the

deepest anxiety among the patriots on Breed’s Hill. They had observed

the whole martial display, from the time of the embarkation until the

forming of the enemy’s line for battle. For the Americans, as yet,

very little succor had arrived. Hunger and thirst annoyed them, while

the labors of the night and morning weighed them down with excessive

fatigue. Added to this was the dreadful suspicion that took possession

of their minds, when only feeble reinforcements arrived, that treachery

had placed them there for the purpose of sacrifice. Yet they could not

doubt the patriotism of their principal officers, and before the action

commenced their suspicions were scattered to the winds by the arrival

of their beloved Doctor Warren and General Pomeroy. Warren, who was

president of the Provincial Congress, then sitting at Watertown, seven

miles distant, informed of the landing of the enemy, hastened toward

Charlestown, though suffering from sickness and exhaustion. He had

been commissioned a major-general four days before. Putnam, who was

at Cambridge, forwarding provisions and reinforcements to Charlestown,

tried to dissuade him from going into the battle. Warren was not to be

diverted from his purpose, and, mounting a horse, he sped across the

Neck and entered the redoubt, amid the loud cheers of the provincials,

just as Howe gave orders to advance. Colonel Prescott offered the

command to Warren, as his superior, when the latter replied, “I am come

to fight as a volunteer, and feel honored in being allowed to serve

under so brave an officer.”

While the British troops were forming, and preparing to march along

the Mystic River for the purpose of flanking the Americans and gaining

their rear, the artillery, with two field-pieces, and Captain Knowlton,

with the Connecticut troops, left the redoubt, took a position near

Bunker Hill, and formed a breastwork seven hundred feet in length,

which served an excellent purpose. A little in front of a strong stone

and rail fence, Knowlton built another, and between the two was placed

a quantity of new-mown grass. This apparently slight breastwork formed

a valuable defence to the provincials.

It was now three in the afternoon. The provincial troops were placed

in an attitude of defence as the British column moved slowly forward

to the attack. Colonel Prescott and the original constructors of the

redoubt, except the Connecticut troops, were within the works. General

Warren also took post in the redoubt. Gridley and Callender’s artillery

companies were between the breastworks and rail fence on the eastern

side. A few troops, recalled from Charlestown after the British landed,

and a part of Warner’s company, lined the cart-way on the right of the

redoubt. The Connecticut and New Hampshire forces were at the rail

fence on the west of the redoubt, and three companies were stationed in

the main street at the foot of Breed’s Hill.

[Illustration: GENERAL PLAN OF THE BATTLE]

Before General Howe moved from his first position he sent out strong

flank guards, and directed his heavy artillery to play upon the

American line. At the same time a blue flag was displayed as a signal,

and the guns upon Copp’s Hill and the ships and floating batteries in

the river poured a storm of round-shot upon the redoubt. A furious

cannonade was opened at the same moment upon the right wing of the

provincial army at Roxbury, to prevent reinforcements being sent by

General Thomas to Charlestown. Gridley and Callender, with their

field-pieces, returned a feeble response to the heavy guns of the

enemy. Gridley’s guns were soon disabled; while Callender, who alleged

that his cartridges were too large, withdrew to Bunker Hill. Putnam

was there, and ordered him back to his first position. He disobeyed,

and nearly all his men, more courageous than he, deserted him. In the

meanwhile, Captain Walker, of Chelmsford, with fifty resolute men,

marched down the hill near Charlestown and greatly annoyed the enemy’s

left flank. Finding their position very perilous, they marched over

to the Mystic, and did great execution upon the right flank. Walker

was there wounded and made prisoner, but the greater part of his men

succeeded in gaining the redoubt.

Under cover of the discharges of artillery the British army moved up

the slope of Breed’s Hill toward the American works in two divisions,

General Howe with the right wing, and General Pigot with the left.

The former was to penetrate the American lines at the rail fence; the

latter to storm the redoubt. They had not proceeded far before the

firing of their artillery ceased, in consequence of discovering that

balls too large for the field-pieces had been sent over from Boston.

Howe ordered the pieces to be loaded with grape; but they soon became

useless, on account of the miry ground at the base of the hill. Small

arms and bayonets now became their reliance.

Silently the British troops, burdened with heavy knapsacks, toiled

up the ascent toward the redoubt in the heat of a bright summer’s

sun. All was silent within the American intrenchments, and very few

provincials were to be seen by the approaching battalions; but within

those breastworks, and in reserve behind the hills, crouched fifteen

hundred determined men, ready, at a prescribed signal, to fall upon

the foe. The provincials had but a scanty supply of ammunition, and,

to avoid wasting it by ineffectual shots, Prescott gave orders not

to fire until the enemy were so near that the whites of their eyes

could be seen. “Then,” he said, “aim at their waistbands; and be sure

to pick off the commanders, known by their handsome coats!” The enemy

were not so sparing of their powder and ball, but when within gunshot

of the apparently deserted works commenced a random firing. Prescott

could hardly restrain his men from responding, and a few did disobey

his orders and returned the fire. Putnam hastened to the spot, and

threatened to cut down the first man who should again disobey orders,

and quiet was restored. At length the enemy reached the prescribed

distance, when, waving his sword over his head, Prescott shouted,

“Fire!” Terrible was the effect of the volley that ensued. Whole

platoons of the British regulars were laid upon the earth like grass

by the mower’s scythe. Other deadly volleys succeeded, and the enemy,

disconcerted, broke and fled toward the water. The provincials, joyed

at seeing the regulars fly, wished to pursue them, and many leaped the

rail fence for the purpose; but the prudence of the American officers

kept them in check, and in a few minutes they were again within their

works, prepared to receive a second attack from the British troops,

that were quickly rallied by Howe. Colonel Prescott praised and

encouraged his men, while General Putnam rode to Bunker Hill to urge on

reinforcements. Many had arrived at Charlestown Neck, but were deterred

from crossing by the enfilading fire of the _Glasgow_ and two armed

gondolas near the causeway. Portions of regiments were scattered upon

Bunker Hill and its vicinity, and these General Putnam, by entreaties

and commands, endeavored to rally. Colonel Gerrish, who was very

corpulent, became completely exhausted by fatigue; and other officers,

wholly unused to warfare, coward-like kept at a respectful distance

from danger. Few additional troops could be brought to Breed’s Hill

before the second attack was made.

The British troops, reinforced by four hundred marines from Boston,

under Major Small, accompanied by Doctor Jeffries, the army surgeon,

advanced toward the redoubt in the same order as at first, General

Howe boldly leading the van, as he had promised. It was a mournful

march over the dead bodies of scores of their fellow soldiers; but

with true English courage they pressed onward, their artillery doing

more damage to the Americans than at the first assault. It had moved

along the narrow road between the tongue of land and Breed’s Hill, and

when within a hundred yards of the rail fence, and on a line with the

breastworks, opened a galling fire, to cover the advance of the other

assailants. In the meanwhile, a carcass and some hot shot were thrown

from Copp’s Hill into Charlestown, which set the village on fire. The

houses were chiefly of wood, and in a short time nearly two hundred

buildings were in flames, shrouding in dense smoke the heights in the

rear whereon the provincials were posted. Beneath this veil the British

hoped to rush unobserved up to the breastworks, scale them, and drive

the Americans out at the point of the bayonet. At that moment a gentle

breeze, which appeared to the provincials like the breath of a guardian

angel--the first zephyr that had been felt on that sultry day--came

from the west and swept the smoke away seaward, exposing to the full

view of the Americans the advancing columns of the enemy, who fired as

they approached, but with little execution. Colonels Brener, Nixon,

and Buckminster were wounded, and Major Moore was killed. As before,

the Americans reserved their fire until the British were within the

prescribed distance, when they poured forth their leaden hail with such

sure aim and terrible effect that whole ranks of officers and men were

slain. General Howe was at the head, and once he was left entirely

alone, his aids and all about him having perished. The British line

recoiled, and gave way in several parts, and it required the utmost

exertion in all the remaining officers, from the generals down to the

subalterns, to repair the disorder which this hot and unexpected fire

had produced. All their efforts were at first fruitless, and the troops

retreated in great disorder to the shore.

General Clinton, who had beheld the progress of the battle with

mortified pride, seeing the regulars repulsed a second time, crossed

over in a boat, followed by a small reinforcement, and joined the

broken army as a volunteer. Some of the British officers remonstrated

against leading the men a third time to certain destruction; but

others, who had ridiculed American valor, and boasted loudly of British

invincibility, resolved on victory or death. The incautious loudness

of speech of a provincial, during the second attack, declaring that

the ammunition was nearly exhausted, gave the enemy encouraging and

important information. Howe immediately rallied his troops and formed

them for a third attack, but in a different way. The weakness of the

point between the breastwork and the rail fence had been discovered

by Howe, and thitherward he determined to lead the left wing with the

artillery, while a show of attack should be made at the rail fence

on the other side. His men were ordered to stand the fire of the

provincials, and then make a furious charge with bayonets.

So long were the enemy making preparations for a third attack that the

provincials began to imagine that the second repulse was to be final.

They had time to refresh themselves a little and recover from that

complete exhaustion which the labor of the day had produced. It was too

true that their ammunition was almost exhausted, and, being obliged

to rely upon that for defence, as comparatively few of the muskets

were furnished with bayonets, they began to despair. The few remaining

cartridges within the redoubt were distributed by Prescott, and those

soldiers who were destitute of bayonets resolved to club their arms

and use the breeches of their guns when their powder should be gone.

The loose stones in the redoubt were collected for use as missiles if

necessary, and all resolved to fight as long as a ray of hope appeared.

During this preparation on Breed’s Hill, all was confusion elsewhere.

General Ward was at Cambridge, without sufficient staff-officers

to convey his orders. Henry (afterward General) Knox was in the

reconnoitring service, as a volunteer, during the day, and upon his

reports Ward issued his orders. Late in the afternoon, the commanding

general despatched his own, with Paterson and Gardner’s regiments,

to the field of action; but to the raw recruits the aspect of the

narrow Neck was terrible, swept as it was by the British cannon.

Colonel Gardner succeeded in leading three hundred men to Bunker

Hill, where Putnam set them intrenching, but soon ordered them to the

lines. Gardner was advancing boldly at their head, when a musket-ball

entered his groin and wounded him mortally. His men were thrown into

confusion, and very few of them engaged in the combat that followed,

until the retreat commenced. Other regiments failed to reach the lines.

A part of Gerrish’s regiment, led by Adjutant Christian Febiger, a

Danish officer, who afterward accompanied Arnold to Quebec and was

distinguished at Stony Point, reached the lines just as the action

commenced, and effectually galled the British left wing. Putnam, in the

mean time, was using his utmost exertions to form the confused troops

on Bunker Hill and get fresh corps with bayonets across the Neck.

All was order and firmness at the redoubt on Breed’s Hill as the enemy

advanced. The artillery of the British swept the interior of the

breastwork from end to end, destroying many of the provincials, among

whom was Lieutenant Prescott, a nephew of the colonel commanding.

The remainder were driven within the redoubt, and the breastwork was

abandoned. Each shot of the provincials was true to its aim, and

Colonel Abercrombie and Majors Williams and Speedlove fell. Howe was

wounded in the foot, but continued fighting at the head of his men.

His boats were at Boston, and retreat he could not. His troops pressed

forward to the redoubt, now nearly silent, for the provincials’ last

grains of powder were in their guns. Only a ridge of earth separated

the combatants, and the assailants scaled it. The first that reached

the parapet were repulsed by a shower of stones. Major Pitcairn, who

led the troops at Lexington, ascending the parapet, cried out, “Now for

the glory of the marines!” and was immediately shot by a negro soldier.

Again numbers of the enemy leaped upon the parapet, while others

assailed the redoubt on three sides. Hand to hand the belligerents

struggled, and the gun-stocks of many of the provincials were shivered

to pieces by the heavy blows they were made to give. The enemy poured

into the redoubt in such numbers that Prescott, perceiving the folly

of longer resistance, ordered a retreat. Through the enemy’s ranks the

Americans hewed their way, many of them walking backward and dealing

deadly blows with their musket-stocks. Prescott and Warren were the

last to leave the redoubt. Colonel Gridley, the engineer, was wounded,

and borne off safely. Prescott received several thrusts from bayonets

and rapiers in his clothing, but escaped unhurt. Warren was the last

man that left the works. He was a short distance from the redoubt, on

his way toward Bunker Hill, when a musket-ball passed through his head,

killing him instantly. He was left on the field, for all were flying

in the greatest confusion, pursued by the victors, who remorselessly

bayoneted those who fell in their way.

Major Jackson had rallied Gardner’s men upon Bunker Hill, and,

pressing forward with three companies of Ward’s, and Febiger’s party

from Gerrish’s regiment, poured a destructive fire upon the enemy

between Breed’s and Bunker Hill, and bravely covered the retreat from

the redoubt. The Americans at the rail fence, under Stark, Reed,

and Knowlton, reinforced by Clark, Coit, and Chester’s Connecticut

companies and a few other troops, maintained their ground, in the

meanwhile, with great firmness, and successfully resisted every attempt

of the enemy to turn their flank. This service was very valuable,

for it saved the main body, retreating from the redoubt, from being

cut off. But when these saw their brethren, with the chief commander,

flying before the enemy, they too fled. Putnam used every exertion to

keep them firm. He commanded, pleaded, cursed and swore like a madman,

and was seen at every point in the van trying to rally the scattered

corps, swearing that victory should crown the Americans. “Make a stand

here!” he exclaimed; “we can stop them yet! In God s name, fire and

give them one shot more!” The gallant old Pomeroy, also, with his

shattered musket in his hand, implored them to rally, but in vain.

The whole body retreated across the Neck, where the fire from the

_Glasgow_ and gondolas slew many of them. They left five of their six

field-pieces and all their intrenching tools upon Bunker Hill, and they

retreated to Winter Hill, Prospect Hill, and to Cambridge. The British,

greatly exhausted, and properly cautious, did not follow, but contented

themselves with taking possession of the peninsula. Clinton advised an

immediate attack upon Cambridge, but Howe was too cautious or too timid

to make the attempt. His troops lay upon their arms all night on Bunker

Hill, and the Americans did the same on Prospect Hill, a mile distant.

Two British field-pieces played upon them, but without effect, and,

both sides feeling unwilling to renew the action, hostilities ceased.

The loss of the Americans in this engagement was one hundred and

fifteen killed and missing, three hundred and five wounded, and thirty

who were taken prisoners; in all, four hundred and fifty. The British

loss is not positively known. Gage reported two hundred and twenty-six

killed, and eight hundred and twenty-eight wounded; in all, ten hundred

and fifty-four. In this number are included eighty-nine officers. The

Provincial Congress of Massachusetts, from the best information they

could obtain, reported the British loss at about fifteen hundred. The

number of buildings consumed in Charlestown, before midnight, was

about four hundred; and the estimated loss of property (most of the

families, with their effects, having moved out) was nearly six hundred

thousand dollars.

The number engaged in this battle was small, yet contemporary writers

and eye-witnesses represent it as one of the most determined and

severe on record. There was absolutely no victory in the case. The

most indomitable courage was displayed on both sides; and when the

provincials had retired but a short distance, so wearied and exhausted

were all that neither party desired more fighting, if we except Colonel

Prescott, who earnestly petitioned to be allowed to lead a fresh corps

that evening and retake Breed’s Hill. It was a terrible day for Boston

and its vicinity, for almost every family had a representative in one

of the two armies. Fathers, husbands, sons, and brothers were in the

affray, and deep was the mental anguish of the women of the city, who,

from roofs and steeples and every elevation, gazed with streaming eyes

upon the carnage, for the battle raged in full view of thousands of

interested spectators in the town and upon the adjoining hills. In

contrast with the terrible scene were the cloudless sky and brilliant

sun.[89]

SYNOPSIS OF THE PRINCIPAL EVENTS, CHIEFLY MILITARY, BETWEEN THE BATTLE

OF BUNKER HILL, 1775, AND THE BATTLE OF SARATOGA, 1777

1775. Washington conducts the siege of Boston. The Americans take

Montreal. Unsuccessful assaults on Quebec. Settlement of Kentucky by

Daniel Boone.

1776. The British evacuate Boston. The British repulsed at Charleston,

S. C. The Continental Congress adopts the Declaration of Independence.

The British, under Howe and Clinton, defeat the Americans, under Putnam

and Sullivan, in the battle of Long Island. The British occupy New

York. The Americans defeated at White Plains. Washington surprises the

Hessians at Trenton.

1777. Washington is victorious at Princeton. Burgoyne takes

Ticonderoga. The Americans are victorious at Bennington. Washington

defeated by Howe in the battle of the Brandywine. Battle of Stillwater.

The British enter Philadelphia. Repulse of Washington at Germantown.

Battle of Saratoga.

VIII

THE BATTLE OF SARATOGA, 1777.

In 1777 the British ministry had planned, in addition to the

operations of the main army against Philadelphia, an invasion from

Canada, apprehensions of which had led the Americans into their late

unsuccessful attempt to conquer that province. Such supplies of men or

money as they asked for were readily voted; but in England, as well

as in America, enlistments were a matter of difficulty. Lord George

Germaine was possessed with an idea, of which Sir William Howe found it

very difficult to disabuse him, that recruits might be largely obtained

among the American loyalists. In spite, however, of all the efforts of

Tryon, Delancey, and Skinner, the troops of that description hardly

amounted as yet to twelve hundred men; and Howe complained, not without

reason, of the tardiness of the ministers in filling up his army.

* * * * *

The American Northern Department, again placed under the sole command

of Schuyler, had been so bare of troops during the winter that serious

apprehensions had been felt lest Ticonderoga might be taken by a

sudden movement from Canada over the ice. The Northern army was still

very feeble; and the regiments designed to reinforce it filled up so

slowly, notwithstanding the offer of large additional bounties, that

Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire were obliged to resort

to a kind of conscription, a draft of militia men to serve for twelve

months as substitutes till the regiments could be filled. In forming

the first New England army, the enlistment of negro slaves had been

specially prohibited; but recruits of any color were now gladly

accepted, and many negroes obtained their freedom by enlistment.

The Middle and Southern colonies, whence Washington’s recruits were

principally to come, were still more behind-hand. Of the men enlisted

in those states, many were foreign-born, redemptioners, or indented

servants, whose attachment to the cause could not fully be relied

upon. Congress had offered bounties in land to such Germans as might

desert from the British, and Howe now retorted by promising rewards

in money to foreigners deserting the American service. Congress, as a

countervailing measure, at Washington’s earnest request relinquished a

plan they had adopted of stopping a portion of the pay of the indented

servants in the army as a compensation to their masters for loss of

service. That compensation was left to be provided for at the public

expense, and the enlisted servants were all declared freemen.

Washington was still at Morristown, waiting with no little anxiety the

movements of the British. The expected reinforcements and supplies,

especially tents, the want of which had kept Howe from moving, had at

last arrived. Burgoyne had assumed the command in Canada; but what

his intentions were Washington did not know--whether he would advance

by way of Lake Champlain, or, what seemed more probable, would take

shipping in the St. Lawrence and join Howe in New York. Nor could he

tell whether Howe would move up the Hudson to co-operate with Burgoyne,

or whether he would attempt Philadelphia; and if so, whether by land or

water.

Philadelphia, however, seemed the most probable object of attack;

and the more effectually to cover that city, leaving Putnam in the

Highlands with a division of Eastern troops, Washington, on May 28th,

moved to a piece of strong ground at Middlebrook, about twelve miles

from Princeton. He had with him forty-three battalions, arranged in

ten brigades and five divisions; but these battalions were so far from

being full that the whole amounted to only eight thousand men.

On June 13th Howe marched out of New Brunswick with a powerful army,

designing apparently to force his way to Philadelphia. Washington

called to his aid a large part of the troops in the Highlands; the

New Jersey militia turned out in force; Arnold, to whom had been

assigned the command at Philadelphia, was busy with Mifflin in

preparing defences for the Delaware. It was Howe’s real object, not

so much to penetrate to Philadelphia as to draw Washington out of

his intrenchments and to bring on a general engagement, in which,

upon anything like equal ground, the British general felt certain of

victory. With that intent he made a sudden and rapid retreat, evacuated

New Brunswick even, and fell back to Amboy. The bait seemed to take;

the American van, under Stirling, descended to the low grounds, and

Washington moved with the main body to Quibbletown. But when Howe

turned suddenly about and attempted to gain the passes and heights

on the American left, Washington, ever on the alert, fell rapidly

back to the strong ground at Middlebrook. In this retrograde movement

Stirling’s division lost a few men and three pieces of artillery; but

the American army was soon in a position in which Howe did not choose

to attack it.

Defeated in this attempt to bring on a general action, and having made

up his mind to approach Philadelphia by water, the British commander,

on June 30th, withdrew into Staten Island, where he embarked the main

body of his army, not less than sixteen thousand strong, leaving

Clinton, who had been lately honored with the Order of the Bath, to

hold New York with five thousand men, and, by expeditions up the Hudson

and into New Jersey, to co-operate as well with Burgoyne as with the

attack upon Philadelphia.

Washington knew from spies, of whom he always had a number in New

York, that a fleet of transports was fitting out there, but its

destination was kept secret. Perhaps Howe meant to proceed up the

Hudson to co-operate with Burgoyne; and the probability of such a

movement seemed to be increased by the arrival of news that Burgoyne

was advancing up Lake Champlain. Perhaps, with the same object of

aiding Burgoyne, Howe might make an attempt upon Boston, thus finding

employment at home for the New England militia and preventing any

reinforcements to Schuyler’s army. Under these impressions, Washington

moved slowly toward the Hudson; but when the British fleet went to sea,

he retraced his steps toward the Delaware; and news arriving that the

ships had been seen off Cape May, he advanced to Germantown. Instead of

entering the Delaware, the British fleet was presently seen steering

to the eastward, and all calculations were thus again baffled. It was

thought that Howe was returning to New York or had sailed for New

England, and the army was kept ready to march at a moment’s notice.

Washington, in the interval, proceeded to Philadelphia and there had an

interview with Congress.

* * * * *

The force in Canada at Burgoyne’s disposal had been a good deal

underrated by Washington and by Congress; nor could they be induced

to believe that anything was intended in that quarter beyond a

feigned attack upon Ticonderoga, in order to distract attention from

Philadelphia. Hence the less pains had been taken to fill up the ranks

of the Northern army, which, indeed, was much weaker than Congress had

supposed. At least ten thousand men were necessary for the defence of

Ticonderoga alone; but St. Clair, who commanded there, had only three

thousand, very insufficiently armed and equipped. The posts in the rear

were equally weak.

It was a part of Burgoyne’s plan not merely to take Ticonderoga, but to

advance thence upon Albany, and, with the co-operation of the troops at

New York, to get possession also of the posts in the Highlands. The

British would then command the Hudson through its whole extent, and New

England, the head of the rebellion, would be completely cut off from

the Middle and Southern colonies.

Burgoyne started on this expedition with a brilliant army of eight

thousand men, partly British and partly Germans, besides a large

number of Canadian boatmen, laborers, and skirmishers. On the western

shore of Lake Champlain, near Crown Point, he met the Six Nations in

council, and, after a feast and a speech, some four hundred of their

warriors joined his army. His next step, on June 29th, was to issue a

proclamation, in a very grandiloquent style, setting forth his own and

the British power, painting in vivid colors the rage and fury of the

Indians, so difficult to be restrained, and threatening with all the

extremities of war all who should presume to resist his arms.

Two days after the issue of this proclamation, Burgoyne appeared

before Ticonderoga. He occupied a steep hill which overlooked the

fort, and which the Americans had neglected because they thought it

inaccessible to artillery. Preparations for attack were rapidly making,

and St. Clair saw there was no chance for his troops except in instant

retreat. The baggage and stores, placed in bateaux, under convoy of

five armed galleys, the last remains of the American flotilla, were

despatched, on July 6th, up the narrow southern extremity of the lake

to Skenesborough, now Whitehall, toward which point the troops retired

by land, in a southeasterly direction, through the New Hampshire Grants.

While General Fraser pursued the retreating troops, followed by General

Riedesel with a corps of Germans, Burgoyne forced the obstructions

opposite Ticonderoga, and, embarking several regiments, he speedily

overtook the American stores and baggage, all of which fell into his

hands.

[Illustration: BURGOYNE’S ROUTE]

The garrison of Skenesborough, informed of Burgoyne’s approach, set

fire to the works and retreated up Wood Creek to Fort Anne, a post

about half-way to the Hudson. They had a sharp skirmish with a British

regiment which followed them; but, other troops coming up, they set

fire to the buildings at Fort Anne and retired to Fort Edward.

The van of St. Clair’s troops, at the end of their first day’s march,

had reached Castleton, a distance of thirty miles from Ticonderoga;

but the rear, which included many stragglers, and amounted to twelve

hundred men, contrary to St. Clair’s express orders, stopped short

at Hubberton, six miles behind, where they were overtaken on the

morning of July 7th and attacked by Fraser. One of the regiments fled

disgracefully, leaving most of their officers to be taken prisoners.

The two other regiments, under Francis and Warner, made a stout

resistance, but when Riedesel came up with his Germans they too gave

way. Francis was killed, and many with him; some two hundred were

taken prisoners. Those who escaped, though dispersed for the moment,

reached St. Clair in detached parties. Warner, with some ninety men,

came up two days after the battle. This was at Rutland, to which place

St. Clair, having heard of the fall of Skenesborough had continued his

retreat. For some time his whereabouts was unknown, but, after a seven

days’ march, he joined Schuyler at Fort Edward, on the Hudson. Here was

assembled the whole force of the Northern army, amounting to about five

thousand men; but a considerable part were militia hastily called in,

many were without arms, there was a great deficiency of ammunition and

provisions, and the whole force was quite disorganized.

The region between Skenesborough and the Hudson was an almost unbroken

wilderness. Wood Creek was navigable as far as Fort Anne; from Fort

Anne to the Hudson, over an exceedingly rough country, covered

with thick woods and intersected by numerous streams and morasses,

extended a single military road. While Burgoyne halted a few days at

Skenesborough to put his forces in order and to bring up the necessary

supplies, Schuyler hastened to destroy the navigation of Wood Creek

by sinking impediments in its channel, and to break up the bridges

and causeways, of which there were fifty or more on the road from

Fort Anne to Fort Edward. At all those points where the construction

of a side passage would be difficult he ordered trees to be felled

across the road with their branches interlocking. All the stock in

the neighborhood was driven off, and the militia of New England was

summoned to the rescue.

The loss of Ticonderoga, with its numerous artillery, and the

subsequent rapid disasters came like a thunderbolt on Congress and the

Northern States. “We shall never be able to defend a post,” wrote John

Adams, President of the Board of War, in a private letter, “till we

shoot a general.” Disasters, the unavoidable result of weakness, were

ascribed to the incapacity or cowardice of the officers. Suggestions of

treachery even were whispered, and the prejudices of the New-Englanders

against Schuyler broke out with new violence. In the anger and vexation

of the moment, all the Northern generals were recalled, and an inquiry

was ordered into their conduct; but the execution of this order was

suspended on the representation of Washington that the Northern army

could not be left without officers. Washington shared the general

surprise and vexation, but he had confidence in Schuyler, and he did

all in his power to reinforce the Northern army. Two brigades from

the Highlands, Morgan with his rifle corps, the impetuous Arnold, and

Lincoln, a great favorite with the Massachusetts militia, were ordered

to the Northern Department. Washington declined the selection of a new

commander tendered to him by Congress, and that selection, guided by

the New England members, fell upon Gates.

Burgoyne meanwhile issued a new proclamation for a convention of ten

deputies from each township, to assemble at Castleton, to confer with

Governor Skene, and to take measures for the re-establishment of

the royal authority. Schuyler, in a counter-proclamation, threatened

the utmost rigor of the law of treason against all who complied

with Burgoyne’s propositions. Subsequently to the Declaration of

Independence, the inhabitants of Vermont had organized themselves into

an independent state, had applied to Congress for admission into the

Union, and had adopted a constitution. A Continental regiment had been

raised and officered in Vermont, of which Warner had been commissioned

as colonel. But Congress, through the influence of New York,

disclaimed any intention to countenance the pretensions of Vermont to

independence; and the Vermont petition for admission into the Union had

been lately dismissed with some asperity. If Burgoyne, however, founded

any hopes of defection upon this circumstance, he found himself quite

mistaken.

The advance from Skenesborough cost the British infinite labor and

fatigue; but, beyond breaking up the roads and placing obstacles

in their way, Schuyler was not strong enough to annoy them. These

impediments were at length overcome; and Burgoyne, with his troops,

artillery, and baggage, presently appeared on the banks of the Hudson.

The British army hailed with enthusiasm the sight of that river, object

of their toil, which they had reached on July 29th with great efforts

indeed, but with an uninterrupted career of success and a loss of not

above two hundred men.

It now only remained for the British to force their way to Albany; nor

did it seem likely that Schuyler could offer any serious resistance.

His army, not yet materially increased, was principally composed of

militia without discipline, the troops from the eastward being very

little inclined to serve under his orders and constantly deserting.

Fort Edward was untenable. As the British approached, the Americans

crossed the river, and retired, first to Saratoga, and then to

Stillwater, a short distance above the mouth of the Mohawk.

Hardly had Schuyler taken up this position when news arrived of another

disaster and a new danger. While moving up Lake Champlain, Burgoyne

had detached Colonel St. Leger, with two hundred regulars, Sir John

Johnson’s Royal Greens, some Canadian Rangers, and a body of Indians

under Brant, to harass the New York frontier from the west. On August

3d St. Leger laid siege to Fort Schuyler, late Fort Stanwix, near the

head of the Mohawk, then the extreme western post of the State of New

York. General Herkimer raised the militia of Tryon County, and advanced

to the relief of this important post, which was held by Gansevoort and

Willett, with two New York regiments. About six miles from the fort,

owing to want of proper precaution, Herkimer, on August 6th, fell into

an ambush. Mortally wounded, he supported himself against a stump and

encouraged his men to the fight. By the aid of a successful sally by

Willett, they succeeded at last in repulsing the assailants, but not

without a loss of four hundred, including many of the leading patriots

of that region, who met with no mercy at the hands of the Indians and

refugees.

Tryon County, which included the whole district west of Albany,

abounded with Tories. It was absolutely necessary to relieve Fort

Schuyler, lest its surrender should be the signal for a general

insurrection. Arnold volunteered for that service, and was despatched

by Schuyler with three regiments; with the rest of his army he withdrew

into the islands at the confluence of the Mohawk and the Hudson, a more

defensible station than the camp at Stillwater.

The command of Lake George, as well as of Lake Champlain, had passed

into the hands of the British. That lake furnished a convenient means

of transportation; a large quantity of provisions and stores for the

British army had arrived at Fort George, and Burgoyne was exerting

every effort for their transportation to his camp on the Hudson. The

land carriage was only eighteen miles, but the roads were so bad and

the supply of draught cattle so small that, after a fortnight’s hard

labor, the British army had only four days’ provisions in advance.

“To try the affections of the country, to mount Riedesel’s Dragoons,

to complete Peter’s Corps of Loyalists, and to obtain a large supply

of cattle, horses, and carriages,” so Burgoyne expressed himself in

his instructions, it was resolved to send a strong detachment into the

settlements on the left. Colonel Baum was sent on this errand, with two

pieces of artillery and eight hundred men, dismounted German dragoons

and British marksmen, with a body of Canadians and Indians, and Skene

and a party of Loyalists for guides.

Langdon, the principal merchant at Portsmouth, and a member of the

New Hampshire council, having patriotically volunteered the means to

put them in motion, a corps of New Hampshire militia, called out upon

news of the loss of Ticonderoga, had lately arrived at Bennington

under the command of Stark. Disgusted at not having been made a

brigadier, Stark had resigned his Continental commission as colonel,

and, in agreeing to take the leadership of the militia, had expressly

stipulated for an independent command. On that ground he had just

declined to obey an order from Lincoln to join the main army--a piece

of insubordination which might have proved fatal, but which, in the

present case, turned out otherwise. Informed of Baum’s approach, Stark

sent off expresses for militia and for Warner’s regiment, encamped at

Manchester, and joined by many fugitives since the battle of Hubberton.

Six miles from Bennington, on the appearance of Stark’s forces (August

14th), Baum began to intrench himself, and sent back to Burgoyne for

reinforcements. The next day was rainy, and Stark, also expecting

reinforcements, delayed the attack. Baum improved the interval in

throwing up intrenchments. Breyman marched to his assistance, but was

delayed by the rain and the badness of the roads, which also kept back

Warner’s regiment. Having been joined on August 16th by some Berkshire

militia under Colonel Simmons, Stark drew out his forces, and about

noon approached the enemy. “There they are!” exclaimed the rustic

general--“we beat to-day, or Molly Stark’s a widow!” The assault was

made in four columns, in front and rear at the same time, and after a

hot action of two hours the intrenchments were carried. The Indians

and provincials escaped to the woods; the Germans were mostly taken

or slain. The battle was hardly over, and Stark’s men were in a good

deal of confusion, when, about four in the afternoon, Breyman was seen

coming up. Warner’s regiment luckily arrived at the same time. The

battle was renewed and kept up till dark, when Breyman abandoned his

baggage and artillery, and made the best retreat he could. Besides

the killed, about two hundred in number, the Americans took near six

hundred prisoners, a thousand stand of arms, as many swords, and four

pieces of artillery--a seasonable supply for the militia now flocking

in from all quarters. The American loss was only fourteen killed and

forty-two wounded.

Just at the moment when a turn in the affairs of the Northern

Department became fully apparent, the two brigades from the Highlands

having arrived, and the militia fast pouring in, Schuyler, much to

his mortification, was superseded by Gates on August 22d. He still

remained, however, at Albany, and gave his assistance toward carrying

on the campaign. The day after Gates assumed the command, Morgan

arrived with his rifle corps, five hundred strong, to which were

presently added two hundred and fifty picked men under Major Dearborn,

of Scammell’s New Hampshire regiment.