Part 1038

"The denial that independence was the final object, was constant and general. To obtain concessions and to preserve the connection with England was affirmed everywhere; and John Adams, after the peace, went farther than this, for he said:—'There was not a moment during the Revolution, when I would not have given everything I possessed for a restoration to the state of things before the contest began, provided we could have had a sufficient security for its continuance.' If Mr. Adams be regarded as expressing the sentiments of the Whigs, they were willing to remain Colonists, provided they could have had their rights secured to them; while the Tories were contented thus to continue, without such security. Such, as it appears to me, was the only difference between the two parties prior to hostilities. … Franklin's testimony, a few days before the affair at Lexington, was, that he had 'more than once travelled almost from one end of the continent to the other, and kept a variety of company, eating, drinking, and conversing with them freely, [and] never had heard from any person, drunk or sober, the least expression of a wish for a separation, or a hint that such a thing would be advantageous to America.' Mr. Jay is quite as explicit. 'During the course of my life,' said he, 'and until the second petition of Congress in 1775, I never did hear an American of any class, or of any description, express a wish for the independence of the Colonies.' 'It has always been, and still is, my opinion and belief, that our country was prompted and impelled to independence by necessity, and not by choice.' {3222} Mr. Jefferson affirmed, 'What, eastward of New York, might have been the dispositions towards England before the commencement of hostilities, I know not; but before that I never heard a whisper of a disposition to separate from Great Britain; and after that its possibility was contemplated with affliction by all.' Washington, in 1774, fully sustains these declarations, and, in the 'Fairfax County Resolves,' it was complained that 'malevolent falsehoods' were propagated by the ministry to prejudice the mind of the king: 'particularly that there is an intention in the American Colonies to set up for independent States.' Mr. Madison was not in public life until May, 1776, but he says, 'It has always been my impression, that a reëstablishment of the Colonial relations to the parent country, as they were previous to the controversy, was the real object of every class of the people, till the despair of obtaining it,' &c. … The only way to dispose of testimony like this, is to impeach the persons who have given it."

_L. Sabine, Biographical Sketches of Loyalists of the American Revolution, volume 1, pages 64-66._

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1775 (January-September). Revolution in South Carolina.

See SOUTH CAROLINA: A. D. 1775.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1775 (April). The Beginning of the War of the American Revolution. Lexington. Concord.

"On April 19, 1775, the Committees of safety could only count up twelve field-pieces in Massachusetts; and there had been collected in that colony 21,549 fire-arms, 17,441 pounds of powder, 22,191 pounds of ball, 144,699 flints, 10,108 bayonets, 11,979 pouches, 15,000 canteens. There were also 17,000 pounds of salt fish, 35,000 pounds of rice, with large quantities of beef and pork. Viewed as an evidence of the forethought of the colonists, these statistics are remarkable; but there was something heroic and indeed almost pathetic in the project of going to war with the British government on the strength of twelve field-pieces and seventeen thousand pounds of salt fish. Yet when, on the night of the 18th of April, 1775, Paul Revere rode beneath the bright moonlight through Lexington to Concord, with Dawes and Prescott for comrades, he was carrying the signal for the independence of a nation. He had seen across the Charles River the two lights from the church-steeple in Boston which were to show that a British force was going out to seize the patriotic supplies at Concord; he had warned Hancock and Adams at Reverend Jonas Clark's parsonage in Lexington, and had rejected Sergeant Monroe's caution against unnecessary noise, with the rejoinder, 'You'll have noise enough here before long—the regulars are coming out.' As he galloped on his way the regulars were advancing with steady step behind him, soon warned of their own danger by alarm-bells and signal-guns. When Revere was captured by some British officers who happened to be near Concord, Colonel Smith, the commander of the expedition, had already halted, ordered Pitcairn forward, and sent back prudently for reinforcements. It was a night of terror to all the neighboring Middlesex towns, for no one knew what excesses the angry British troops might commit on their return march. The best picture we have of this alarm is in the narrative of a Cambridge woman, Mrs. Hannah Winthrop, describing 'the horrors of that midnight cry,' as she calls it. The women of that town were roused by the beat of drums and ringing of bells; they hastily gathered their children together and fled to the outlying farm-houses; seventy or eighty of them were at Fresh Pond, within hearing of the guns at Menotomy, now Arlington. The next day their husbands bade them flee to Andover, whither the college property had been sent, and thither they went, alternately walking and riding, over fields where the bodies of the slain lay unburied. Before 5 A. M. on April 19, 1775, the British troops had reached Lexington Green, where thirty-eight men, under Captain Parker, stood up before six hundred or eight hundred to be shot at, their captain saying, 'Don't fire unless you are fired on; but if they want a war let it begin here.' It began there; they were fired upon; they fired rather ineffectually in return, while seven were killed and nine wounded. The rest, after retreating, reformed and pursued the' British towards Concord, capturing seven stragglers—the first prisoners taken in the war. Then followed the fight at Concord, where four hundred and fifty Americans, instead of thirty-eight, were rallied to meet the British. The fighting took place between two detachments at the North Bridge, where 'once the embattled farmers stood, And fired the shot heard round the world.' There the American captain, Isaac Davis, was killed at the first shot—he who had said, when his company was placed at the head of the little column, 'I haven't a man that is afraid to go.' He fell and Major Buttrick gave the order, 'Fire! for God's sake fire!' in return. The British detachment retreated in disorder, but their main body was too strong to be attacked, so they disabled a few cannon, destroyed some barrels of flour, cut down the liberty-pole, set fire to the court-house and then began their return march. It ended in a flight; they were exposed to a constant guerilla fire; minute-men flocked behind every tree and house; and only the foresight of Colonel Smith in sending for reinforcements had averted a surrender. At 2 P. M., near Lexington, Percy with his troops met the returning fugitives, and formed a hollow square, into which they ran and threw themselves on the ground exhausted. Then Percy in turn fell back. Militia still came pouring in from Dorchester, Milton, Dedham, as well as the nearer towns. A company from Danvers marched sixteen miles in four hours. The Americans lost ninety-three in killed, wounded and missing that day; the British, two hundred and seventy-three. But the important result was that every American colony now recognized that war had begun."

_T. W. Higginson, History of the United States of America, chapter 10._

ALSO IN: _R. Frothingham, History of the Siege of Boston, chapter 2._

_E. H. Goss, Life of Paul Revere, volume 1, chapter 7._

_J. L. Watson, Paul Revere's Signal (Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, November 1876)._

_P. Force, editor, American Archives, series 4, volume 2. _

_E. Phinney, History of Battle at Lexington._

_C. Hudson, History of Lexington, chapters 6-8._

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1775 (April). The first Provincial Convention in New York.

See NEW YORK: A. D. 1775 (APRIL).

{3223}

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1775 (April-May). The siege of Boston begun.

"Reinforcements of foreign troops and supplies were constantly arriving in Boston. Howe, Clinton, and Burgoyne came, as generals, on the 25th of May. Bitterness, ridicule, and boasting, with all the irritating taunts of a mercenary soldiery, were freely poured on the patriots and on the 'mixed multitude' which composed the germ of their army yet to be. The British forces had cooped themselves up in Bos·ton, and the provincials determined that they should remain there, with no mode of exit save by the sea. The pear-shaped peninsula, hung to the mainland only by the stem called the 'Neck,' over which the tide-waters sometimes washed, was equally an inconvenient position for crowding regiments in war-like array, and a convenient one for the extemporized army which was about to beleaguer them there. … The town of Charlestown, which lay under the enemy's guns, had contained a population of between two and three thousand. The interruption of all the employments of peace, and the proximity of danger, had brought poverty and suffering upon the people. They had been steadily leaving the town, with such of their effects as they could carry with them. It proved to be well for them that they had acted upon the warning. It would seem that there were less than 200 of its inhabitants remaining in it at the time of the battle, when the flames kindled by the enemy and bombs from a battery on Copp's Hill laid it in ashes. On the third day after the affair at Concord, the Provincial Congress again assembled, voted to raise at once 13,000 men, to rally at Cambridge and the neighborhood, and asked aid from the other provinces, to which Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire responded. The forts, magazines, and arsenals, such as they then were, were secured for the country. … Of the 15,000 men then gathered, by the cry of war, at Cambridge and Roxbury, all virtually, but not by formal investment, under the command of General Ward, nearly 10,000 belonged to Massachusetts, and the remainder to New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. They have been designated since, at various times and by different writers, under the extreme contrast of terms, as an 'organized army,' and a 'mob.' Either of these terms would be equally inappropriate. … Our troops were 'minute-men' extemporized into fragmentary companies and skeleton regiments. The officers, chosen on the village-green or in its public-house, paying for the honor by a treat, or perhaps because they kept the premises where the treat could be most conveniently furnished, were not commissioned or ranked as the leaders of an army for campaign service. The yeomen of town and village had not come together at the summons of a commander-in-chief through adjutant, herald, or advertisement. They came unbidden, at an alarm from the bell on their meeting-house, or from a post-rider, or from the telegrams transmitted by tongue and ear. … And for the most part they were as free to go away as they had been to come. They were enlisted after a fashion, some prime conditions of which were their own convenience or pleasure. … Such of them as came from the seaboard might bring with them old sails for tents, while the midsummer days made it scarcely a hardship to many to have only the heavens for a roof. Generally their towns were expected to keep them supplied with food. … The forces then mustered at Cambridge as a central camp, and, stretching from the left at Chelsea almost round to Dorchester on the right, for nearly three quarters of a circle, were indeed not organized, nor yet had they any characteristic of a mere mob. They combined in fact four inde·pendent armies, united in resistance to a foreign enemy. … Each of the Provinces had raised, commissioned, and assumed the supply of its respective forces, holding them subject to their several orders. After the battle in Charlestown, the Committee of War in Connecticut ordered their generals, Spencer and Putnam, while they were on the territory of this Province, to regard General Ward as the commander-in-chief, and suggested to Rhode Island and New Hampshire to issue the same instructions to their soldiers. … General Artemas Ward was a conscientious and judicious patriot. In the French war he had earned some military experience and fame. … On October 27, 1774, the Provincial Congress, in which he was a delegate, appointed him a general officer, and on May 19 following, Commander-in-chief. As such he served at Cambridge till the arrival of Washington. On the very day of the battle in Charlestown, when the great chieftain was selected for his high service, Ward was chosen by the Continental Congress as its first major-general. Though he was only in his 48th year when he was burdened with the responsibility of the opening warfare, his body was infirm from disease and exposure. Lieutenant-General Thomas, two years the senior of Ward, was second in command. … General Israel Putnam preceded his Connecticut troops in hurrying to the scene of war on the news of the affair at Lexington and Concord. His men soon followed him, with like enthusiasm. The New Hampshire troops, on their arrival at Medford, made choice of Colonel John Stark as their leader. Colonel Nathaniel Greene commanded a regiment from Rhode Island. … A few days after the affair at Lexington, when virtually the siege began, General Gage, the British commander, at the solicitation of some of the leading citizens assembled in Faneuil Hall, had, by a mutual understanding, entered into an agreement that such of the inhabitants as wished to depart from the town should be at liberty to do so, if they would leave their arms behind them and covenant not to engage in any hostility against his army. The agreement was availed of by many of the suffering and frightened people. … But the original freedom and fulness of this understanding, on the part of General Gage, were soon reduced by a very strict examination of those who sought to go out of the town, and by a rigid search of the effects which they wished to take with them. … Several of the inhabitants remained in it from different motives: some as devoted loyalists; some as timid neutrals; some as spies, to watch each hostile movement and to communicate it to their friends outside. … After hostilities commenced, General Gage, of course, regarded the citizens as alike prisoners, either in the same sense in which he was himself under restraint, or as abettors of those who were his enemies. … The population of the town, independent of the military, was then about 18,000. To all those who were not in sympathy with them the British behaved in an insulting and exasperating manner. … To show, as members of the English Church establishment, their contempt of congregational places of worship, they removed the pews and pulpit from the Old South meeting-house, and, covering the floor with earth, they converted it into a riding-school for Burgoyne's squadron of cavalry. {3224} The two eastern galleries were allowed to remain, one for spectators, the other for a liquor-shop, while the fire in the stove was occasionally kindled by books and pamphlets from the library of a former pastor, Dr. Prince, which were in a room in the tower. … At the time of the skirmishes at Lexington and Concord there were about 4,000 British troops in Boston and at the Castle. The number was increased to more than 10,000 before the action in Charlestown."

_G. E. Ellis, History of the Battle of Bunker's Hill, pages 4-26._

ALSO IN: _R. Frothingham, History of the Siege of Boston, chapter 3._

_George Washington, Writings, edited by W. C. Ford, volume 3._

_Joseph Reed, Life and Correspondence, volume 1._

_C. Stedman [English], History of the American War, volume 1, chapters 1 and 5._

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1775 (April-June). The spreading of revolt. All the colonies in line with New England.

"On the 23d of April, the day after the dissolution of the provincial Congress of New York, the news from Lexington burst upon the city. Though it was Sunday, the inhabitants speedily unloaded two sloops which lay at the wharfs, laden with flour and supplies for the British at Boston, of the value of £80,000. … The royal government lay hopelessly prostrate. Isaac Sears concerted with John Lamb to stop all vessels going to Quebec, Newfoundland, Georgia, or Boston, where British authority was still supreme. The people shut up the custom-house, and the merchants whose vessels were cleared out dared not let them sail. In the following days the military stores of the city of New York were secured, and volunteer companies paraded in the streets. … On the 1st of May the people, at the usual places of election, chose for the city and county a new general committee of one hundred, who 'resolved in the most explicit manner to stand or fall with the liberty of the continent.' All parts of the colony were summoned to send delegates to a provincial convention, to which the city and county of New York deputed one-and-twenty as their representatives. … On the 2d of May the New Jersey committee of correspondence called a provincial congress for the 23d at Trenton. To anticipate its influence, the governor convened the regular assembly eight days earlier at Burlington, and laid before them the project of Lord North [adopted by the British parliament in February, offering to each colony freedom from taxation on its making satisfactory provision for the general defense and for support of government]. The assembly could see in the proposition no avenue to reconciliation, and declared their intention to 'abide by the united voice of the continental congress.' Such, too, was the spirit of Pennsylvania. 'Let us not have it said of Philadelphia that she passed noble resolutions and neglected them,' were the words of Mifflin, youngest of the orators who on the 25th of April addressed the town-meeting called in that city on receiving the news from Lexington. Thousands were present, and agreed 'to associate for the purpose of defending with arms their lives, their property, and liberty.' Thomas Paine from that day 'rejected the sullen Pharaoh of the British throne forever.' … In Philadelphia, thirty companies, with 50 to 100 in each, daily practiced the manual exercise of the musket. One of them was raised from the Quakers. … The Pennsylvania assembly, which met on the first day of May, rejecting the overtures of the governor, 'could form no prospect of lasting advantages for Pennsylvania but from a communication of rights and property with the other colonies.' … On the 5th Franklin arrived, after a voyage over the smoothest seas, and the next morning was unanimously elected a deputy to the congress. … In Maryland, at the request of the colonels of militia, Eden, at Annapolis, gave up the arms and ammunition of the province to the freemen of the county. Pleased with his concession, the provincial convention distinguished itself by its moderation; and its delegates to congress determined to labor for a reconciliation. In Virginia [where, in the night of April 20th, Governor Dunmore had carried off the gunpowder stored in the colony's magazine at Williamsburg, and where, as a consequence, the excited people were already in arms, though no further action had yet been taken], on the 2d of May, at the cry from Lexington, the independent company of Hanover and its county committee were called together by Patrick Henry. The soldiers, most of them young men, elected him their chief, and marched for Williamsburg, on the way greatly increasing in numbers. Alarmed by the 'insurrections,' Dunmore convened the council, and in a proclamation of the 3d pretended that he had removed the ammunition, lest it should be seized by slaves. Message after message could not arrest the march or change the purpose of Henry. … At sunrise on the 4th the governor's messenger met Henry at New Kent, and, as a compensation for the gunpowder taken out of the magazine, paid him £330, for which he was to account to the convention of Virginia. The sum was found to be more than the value of the powder, and the next Virginia convention directed the excess to be paid back. … In twelve or thirteen days the message from Lexington was borne to Newbern, in North Carolina, where it 'wrought a great change.' The governor, in his panic, ordered the cannon in the town to be dismounted; and, after a remonstrance made in the name of the inhabitants by Abner Nash, 'the oracle of their committee and a principal promoter of sedition,' he shipped his wife to New York and fled to Fort Johnston, where a sloop-of-war had its station. In South Carolina, Charles Pinckney, on learning the inflexibility of parliament, using power intrusted to him by the provincial congress, appointed a committee of five to place the colony in a state of defence; on the 21st of April, the very night after their organization, men of Charleston, without disguise, under their direction, seized all the powder in the public magazines, and removed 800 stand of arms and other military stores from the royal arsenal. The tidings from Lexington induced the general committee to hasten the meeting of the provincial congress, whose members, on the 2d of June, Henry Laurens being their president, associated themselves for defence against every foe; 'ready to sacrifice their lives and fortunes to secure her freedom and safety.' They resolved to raise two regiments of infantry and a regiment of rangers. … The people of Charleston are as mad as they are here in Boston,' was the testimony of Gage. The skirmish at Lexington became known in Savannah on the 10th of May, and added Georgia to the union. At that time she had about 17,000 white inhabitants and 15,000 Africans. Her militia was not less than 3,000. {3225} Her frontier, which extended from Augusta to St. Mary's, was threatened by the Creeks, with 4,000 warriors; the Chickasas, with 450; the Cherokees, with 3,000; the Choctas, with 2,500. But danger could not make her people hesitate. On the night of the 11th, Noble Wimberley Jones, Joseph Habersham, Edward Telfair, and others, broke open the king's magazine in the eastern part of the city, and took from it over 500 pounds of powder. To the Boston wanderers they sent 63 barrels of rice and £122 in specie; and they kept the king's birthday by raising a liberty-pole."