USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Celebration of the centennial anniversary of the evacuation of Boston by the British Army, March 17th, 1776 > Part 5
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EVACUATION OF BOSTON.
THE PATRIOT COMMANDER.
When Washington, in the glory of his manhood, at the age of forty-three, shaped and moulded in form, feature and mien after nature's finest modelling, sat mounted under the shade of the elm-tree on Cambridge Common, we might have seen in him the frontispiece and title-page of a new volume of the world's biography and history. IIe had had military experience in the wilderness, con- verse with men, and practice in the administration of local magistracy. But the Commander-in-Chief was made and trained here. And while he was learning here the art of war, the method of self-mastery in which his pupilage began, trained him to such a knowledge of the arts of peace as to fit him to be the master-ruler of the country which he had created. Congress had commissioned him as commander without providing him with an army, and the army which they imagined as in existence they did not furnish with weapons, sustenance or pay. And for any powers of authority, range of sway, or defined plans, either in civil or military affairs, Congress, to which the commander was responsible as a servant, was as shadowy and imaginary a body as was the army of which he was the head. But he surveyed the work before him, and summoned his advisers and helpers. One is tempted to say, - indeed, he wrote it himself, - that he would not have assumed the responsibilities committed to him had he foreseen the conditions, discomfitures and perplexities which were to thicken upon him. The nobler then was the constancy which met, without quailing, all these thronging spectres as they came out of shadow into
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reality. Enough that what he had to encounter of them day by day yielded to the resources in himself and in Providence. It was never a distrust or regret about the cause that came even in his most depressed hour, but a preference for the command of a regiment to that of the army.
Hle rode the circuit of the lines, detecting successively the weak points, and strengthening and multiplying the defences, till he had filled every gap in them. The out- bursts of a resolved and defiant spirit in popular ha- rangues and in the writing's of ardent patriots, had natur- ally led him to expect that he should here find among the rustic groups some of the primary, essential qualities of soldiers in a camp; and also, in the provincial constitu- ency of these soldiers, a readiness to respond to his call for needful measures and supplies. Sadly and oppress- ively was his noble spirit tried by strange deficiencies and contrary tokens in these matters. And herein lay the grandeur of his magnanimity and of his equanimity. In- stead of yielding to dismay and so losing the mastery over himself, he boldly faced the facts with which he had to deal, traced them to natural and, so far, to necessary, occasions, temporized with them patiently, slowly mingled in with them qualifying and restraining agencies, and then saw them yield to his calm and steadfast purpose. Ile found the men, in what could hardly be called the ranks, enlisted but for days or weeks; their companies were fragments, and their regiments were skeletons; their officers were their village or county notables, commis- sioned by local partialities, and on terms of rude and dis- orderly familiarity with their men. All of them were on
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provincial establishments, crude, raw and temporary. Dissension and jealonsy were incident to enforced sub- ordination, and an adjustment of rank and the restraints of discipline. Most of these extemporized soldiers felt at liberty to come and go at their pleasure, taking for granted that more, just like them, could come in their room. They had left houses, fields, mills, workshops, and families, without guardians or laborers. Who was to care for those at home, aye, or provide the food by-and-by for the wastefulness of camps? So, whether loiterers or enlisted, the mass of those whom Washington first saw as constituting his command were inconstant and unsteady, and to some extent intractable. Yet the very vagrancy and fluctuation of these provincial forces led the enemy in Boston to overestimate their numbers and the effective- ness of the service they could perform. This misleading fancy was in fact the reason why the patriot camp was not vigorously assailed when it was really the most ex- posed and weak. Yet an enormous amount of hard work with hand and spade had been done on the in- trenchments, though engineers were wholly lacking, and tools were few and poor.
When Washington instituted an inquiry, the result reported to him was, that he had 14,500 men fit for some sort of military service. But of such as could be relied on as soldiers he never had that number during the whole siege, and there were critical intervals in the expiration of enlistments, and the dilatory substitution of new recruits, when he had not even 4,000. On an extreme emergency he would rely for a few days on the militia. This was the situation of the commander in full view of a vigilant
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enemy, whose force was estimated at 11,500, thoroughly officered, equipped, disciplined and supplied, and with an auxiliary fleet in the bay and rivers.
The lack of powder in the patriot camp was a matter of such anxiety to Washington, that even his efforts to obtain it, by any shift and from any quarter, were most jealously disguised, that the enemy might not come to a full knowledge of the fact. Yet it would seem as if this deficiency must have been well known in Boston through deserters or tories. The Massachusetts Assembly, too, by a resolve of Aug. 17, 1775, had "recommended to the inhabitants of this colony not to fire a gun at beast, bird or mark, without real necessity therefor." Precautions had been taken to have the live stock of the neighboring towns driven back into the country, and a rendezvous had been designated for the provincials in the event of their lines being broken. For Washington had resolved to hold his ground and to strengthen his works, making as close an approach to the enemy as the natural features of the environs would permit. As soon as his eye had mas- tered the panorama, his thought and purpose rested upon those unoccupied southern heights on which his decisive batteries were at last planted. His all-engrossing work was to effect the paramount object of bringing the pro- vincial forces under a continental, or general establish- ment, with corresponding commissions for officers.
During the first half of the siege of Boston, Washing- ton was in dread suspense and apprehension of an assault from the enemy, while, he was so utterly unprepared to meet it. Through the last half of the siege he chafed, with somewhat better preparation, under the impatience of
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a constrained inactivity, because the enemy did not come out against him, and his own officers would not counsel a venture against them - which he twice proposed, once by boats, and once upon the ice. He was cheered in Octo- ber by a visit and conference with a committee from the Continental Congress, with the sagacious Franklin at the head of it, to whom the town of his birth must have pre- sented itself from outside in a strange plight. The letters of the commander prove that his firmness never came so near faltering as when he was forced to realize, as autumn approached, that he might have to pass the winter and wait for the spring just where and as he was. The enemy would not bring the issue to a decision, and it was not wise for him to force one. With most anxious care he at once took measures for covering and warming the soldiers through the severities and the dismal shadows of a New England winter on those bleak hills. Midway in that winter the enlistments of a large portion of his men would expire; and some of them, in their straits or un- easiness, were for anticipating their release. He was able, however, to send forth a detachment for an enter- prise in Canada. Transports with armed vessels were occasionally seen going out of the harbor, and Wash- ington was in painful perplexity as to their destina- tion. Thus he writes to Congress at the opening of the year 1776: "It is not in the pages of history, perhaps, to furnish a case like ours. To maintain a post within musket-shot of the enemy for six months together withont | powder ], and at the same time to dis- band one army and recruit another, within that distance of twenty odd British regiments, is more, probably, than
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ever was attempted." These are the words of a calm re- serve, in utterance, which were to be read before many listeners. But they hide the secret distress which bur- dened his spirit. This he occasionally discloses con- fidentially to his nearest friend and secretary, Joseph Reed, thus: "I have many an unhappy hour when all around me are wrapped in sleep." All the while the country, conscious of having serious ends in view, and of having made effort and sacrifice, was daily expecting some great movement to be ventured, and complaints reached Washington of his supposed inactivity and indecision. Hle dared not silence these complaints by revealing what was fully known only to himself of his alarming exposure, deficiencies and weakness. He wrote to Reed that the same means used to conceal his real situation from the enemy concealed it also from his friends, and that he had been obliged to avail himself of art to hide it from his own officers. He was cheered, near the close of the year 1775, by the arrival, Dec. 11, of Mrs. Washington, with her son, Mr. Custis and wife, whose society afforded him moments of solace. In the middle of January, in a council of officers, attended, at Washington's request, by John Adams, the General very earnestly urged the importance of an attack on the enemy before the arrival of reinforce- ments; but the council, agreeing in the desirability of the movement, pronounced our resources to be wholly inad- equate. On the twenty-fourth of the month, Washington wrote to Congress, "No man upon earth wishes more ardently to destroy the nest in Boston than I do. No person would be willing to go greater lengths than I shall to accomplish it, if it shall be thought advisable; but if we
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have neither powder to bombard with, nor ice to pass on, we shall be in no better situation than we have been in all the year; we shall be worse, because their works are stronger."
These are but snatches and fragments out of the rehearsal of those incidents, and that period which marked the in- vestment of Boston. The signal quality of the time and scene was, that it was the school of training and discipline for the patriot army, and emphatically so for its com- mander. He had to defer to, and take advice from, a body which had no authority to require or exact the conditions needful to meet the wants of their General. Practically, there was committed to him, individually, during the year preceding the Declaration of Independence, the enormous task of bringing the loose material of the provincial forces daily fluctuating before him, on a continental establish- ment, and of holding them subject to terms required by an authority which any one of them might challenge as merely assumed. It was for him to devise and to dispose all the arrangements and details necessary to effect that purpose. It was for him to abate and reconcile the partialities and jealousies of officers and men; to exact rigid subordination; to enforce a stiff military routine and observance in the camp with all punctilios and for- malities, and a stern prohibition of the familiarity and levity that had marked the relations between those who were to give and those who were to obey orders. It was for him to exercise a lynx-eyed watchfulness against sur- prises, treacheries and disasters; to be constantly planning and accomplishing new defences and safer means for annoying the enemy. His advanced works were now
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so close to those of the British, that the belligerents were within musket-shot of each other. The naked eye or spy- glass could take note of the movements in either camp or garrison. For a long time the provincials had had to bear a frequent cannonading from the enemy, without being able to return it, harmless as it was. The new year had brought some supplies, which, with their advanced works, allowed the provincials to retaliate.
The great lesson which Washington had to teach to each individual, officer or private, in his command, was to learn to abate his own personal independence, that he might secure the independence of his country. There, too, he learned how to deal with men, with friends as well as with enemies - with human nature, in all its workings of impulse and motive, its nobleness and meanness. And, as his order-book gives abundant and impressive evidence, he was thoughtful of those strengthening or enfeebling agencies which act upon health and virtue. He counselled cleanliness, high and pure morality, and the devoutness and reverence of religion in sentiment and observance. As the crisis of the situation was near, while forbidding cards in the camp, he advised a serious preparation of mind as a security against cowardice.
One appreciative word, at least, is due to the letters which Washington wrote at this time to Congress, while meeting all the stern and dismal conditions of the service to which they had called him, and in which their power and their resources could do so little either to direct or to aid him. It is a small thing to say of those letters that they are remarkable productions for one untrained by literary culture. They are often strikingly felicitous in the choice
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of words, and in the form of expression. But beyond this, their tone and purport, their directness, simplicity and dig- nity of sentiment, express the self-respect of the writer, and a marvellously just apprehension of the relation in which he stood to the body which he addressed. He, at least, owed allegiance to Congress, if no one beside him did in the whole country. The agitations and excitements which vexed his own spirit never passed into those letters. They are passionless, free from murmurs, complaints, cen- soriousness and sharp invectives. Yet they never sacrifice force to tameness. They deal with facts; are concise; with no cloudiness or mystification of meaning; with no insinua- tions or implications beyond the assertion. He could be urgent with Congress without being impatient. He could make suggestions with deference. When, on rare occa- sions, he offered advice, or even remonstrance, he did not disguise the intent in the form of it, but wrote it for what it was, frankly, boldly; always making allowance for delays and indecisions incident to the composition and limited power of Congress, -as yet only an advisory body, neither homogeneous nor harmonious, but feeling its way in an unexplored course.
And so his letters to individuals, official or private, when giving instructions or information, were direct, clear, positive, cautious - as the occasion required. When he had to mediate between sensitive parties, or to complain, or to rebuke, his moderation held in check all vehemence or temper, and his own dignity was suggestive of the grace of it to others. His most approved form of censure was that which made an offender apportion his own sen- tence. All the while burdened with work for his pen,
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frequently lacking a confidential secretary, he was writing almost daily letters of instruction and detail to the mana- ger of his land-estates. A reference to these homely letters of thrift and husbandry would not be in place here, ex- cept as they reveal a winning trait in his character. His emphatic direction is, that the hospitalities of his home, and especially its free dispensings of benevolence and money to the needy, shall in no wise fail or slacken. One other engrossing anxiety was crowded into the burdens of the worn and worried chief in this early stage of a struggle, which was to decide whether the halter or the wreath would be the emblem of his fate. While watching the beleaguered foc in Boston, he had to keep in thought a whole continent, with its coasts, and towns and people, and to prepare to meet the enemy where he might strike next. No graver's work on a map was ever more sharply cut than that which was wrought in his mind.
THE INVESTED TOWN, SOLDIERS AND INHABITANTS.
While civilians in local and continental councils, and soldiers in the wide-stretched camp so anxiously watched over by Washington, were thus taking care for the pat- riot cause, the invested town of Boston, alike to those outside of it as to those within it, was the object of pain- ful and absorbing interest. From the General down to the humblest menial in his train, there was not a man that did not sooner or later realize that he had come on a fool- ish and bootless errand. The exposure of their situation, and the constant apprehension of an assault, required unceasing watchfulness, and the construction almost week by week of some new defences. Their sufferings from
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the prevalence of foul diseases, the member of the sick and wounded among them, and the scarcity of fresh pro- visions, vegetables and fuel, became, at one crisis, very serions and alarming. Ghastly efforts were made by the officers during the winter to amnse themselves with dances, theatricals, and a masquerade. The old South Church, given up to a riding-school, afforded shows of horsemanship, as seen by festive spectators from its east- ern gallery. Burgoyne got up a play to be acted in Fanenil Hall, which was, however, rudely arrested in its performance by the rattling of shot from the nearest pro- vincial battery. The remnant of patriotic inhabitants in the town were grievously distressed. Some sought in vain the privilege of leaving it. Others, who resolved to stay and wait the catastrophe, were strictly watched, lest they should communicate with the besiegers. The tory element too, natives and refugees from the country, showed the excitements of an intense bitterness and of a craven trepidation. The General summoned them to organize into an association, as a town-guard, armed and receiving rations. They became a serious burden to him, as, knowing well what treatment they would receive from their outraged countrymen, they demanded special privi- leges during the siege, and the first thought and favor of the commander at the Evacuation. Gage was called home in October, embarking on the tenth, having received flat- tering addresses from the tories on his departure. He reported himself in London, Nov. 14. Burgoyne followed him in December. Howe was left in command. Before Gage went away he had allowed more of the inhabitants to leave the town, though under severer restrictions. In
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November and December nearly five hundred men, women and children, in a most pitiable condition, were put ashore at Chelsea and Point Shirley, and the provincials thought the design was to spread the small-pox among them.
But all the other annoyances and inflictions borne by the besieged were endurable by proud and self-respecting 1 British soldiers, in comparison with the humiliation and mortification of their position. Those whom they had sneered at and insulted as a rabble of unarmed country- men and cowards whom the smell of the red-coats' pow- der would tame into loyalty, were cooping them up on two small peninsulas, defying their vengeance, taunting their conceit, and, with seant charges of powder, return- ing them their own balls. General Gage, assuming that the few disabled men that had been seized in the battle at Charlestown were in no sense prisoners of war, but felons " destined to the cord," put them into jail in Boston, with some of the citizens whom he suspected, and gave them jail diet. With dignified remonstrance Washington wrote to him, as he did afterwards to Howe, that we had some of their friends, as yet forbearingly dealt with, on whom retaliation could and would be visited.
With a purpose of making a raid into the country, Gage had written for heavy reinforcements, with ord- nance, wagons, horses and supplies. These were so delayed, so niggardly furnished, and so insufficient, that officers and men began to complain that the ministry had forgotten them, had brought them into peril and disgrace, and then abandoned them. Yet, as these supplies, from time to time, sailed in between our capes, our adroit skippers and 'longshoremen, intrepid and watchful, extem-
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porizing their schooners and whale-boats into private vessels of war till they provided themselves with better ones, as prizes, began the business which afterwards proved vastly rewarding. They turned over a large pro- portion of the burden of the transports, ordnance, arms, powder, and all sorts of valuables, to the provincials, who needed them quite as much as did the British. The Pro- vincial and Continental Congresses had both authorized the necessary measures for naval warfare with vessels of marque and reprisal. The pine-tree flag and a code of signals were at once adopted. At the end of November, the stanch Commodore Manly took into Cape Ann the British ordnance brig " Nancy," so rich in her cargo for us and so grudged by the enemy, that Washington, apprehending that a sturdy effort might be made to reclaim her, sent down four companies to protect her stores. Among these were 2,000 muskets - our General had just that number of men without any - 100,000 flints, 30,000 round-shot, more than thirty tons of musket-shot, eleven mortar-beds, and a brass mortar weighing nearly 3,000 pounds, to which "Old Put," helped by a bottle of rum, gave the name "Congress." A bold movement of Gen. Thomas, in Roxbury, had narrowed the enemy's lines on the Neck.
It is marvellous to realize how comfortably and even lavishly the slender resources of our own province for clothing, equipping, and feeding fighting men were rein- forced from English and Irish armories, magazines, flocks, coal-pits, and wine and beer vaults. And all this while British officers were writing home bitter complaints of their starved rations and mean food. From correspond-
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ence and documents which have come to light in recent years we learn of the councils, advices, instructions, and half-formed plans, looking to the voluntary withdrawal by the British General from his inhospitable quarters. But the difficulty was about the going away, the getting out, and the getting off. He could not divide his force, and he had not sufficient shipping in which to remove men and property. When this was finally accomplished, as we shall see, it was by the allowance of the provincials, and on the score of a consideration.
When all these humiliations of the besieged army became known in England, chagrin and ridicule divided about equally the tone of the comments. Howe's letters to Lord Dartmouth in November and December betray real alarm. He would leave Boston if he had tonnage enough. The questions, criticisms and censures uttered in Parliament were bitter and taunting from the opposition, obstinate and defiant from the ministry. On November 1, Burke said of the army, the rebels " coop it up, besiege it, destroy it, crush it. Your officers are swept off by their rifles, if they show their noses." Col. Barre said, " They burn even the light-house under the nose of the fleet, and carry off the men sent to repair it." With the barb of his keenest irony, Horace Walpole wrote to his clerical corre- spondent, August 7, 1775, "Mrs. Britannia orders her senate to proclaim America a continent of cowards, and vote it should be starved unless it would drink tea with her. She sends her only army to be besieged in one of her towns, and half her fleet to besiege the terra firma; but orders her army to do nothing, in hopes that the American Senate in Philadelphia will be so frightened at the British
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army being besieged in Boston, that it will sue for peace." He wrote to Conway, "We have thrown a pebble at a mastiff, and are surprised it was not frightened." The ministers resolved to send enormous reinforcements and supplies, and at such mighty cost that the people of Britain have not yet finished paying for them. There were 5,000 oxen, 14,000 sheep, etc., with hay and vinegar, oats, beans, flour, beer, coal, and even fagots. Extor- tionate freights, delays and disasters impeded the trans- portation, and the ocean tracks showed many of the dead animals floating. However, our privateers had a fair share in the spoil.
Towards the end of the siege a flag, with drum and trumpet, went every Tuesday to the Roxbury lines, to afford opportunities for such intercourse, conversation with friends, or the exchange of letters, or for the en- trance or exit of individuals, as was allowed on special favor, or for a money consideration. In old family cab- inets and antiquarian repositories there are extant, in rich abundance and variety, some time-stained papers, relating all sorts of private and public incidents which transpired in Boston during those dreadful months. Most of the letters that passed by the flag are, of course, written as from the depths of wretchedness, and reproduce their ago- nies in the reader of them. Some of the papers, however, have a strange levity and jollity. We have a few diaries and scraps from the pens of resolute or timid patriots, men and women, who, by compulsion or free-will, stayed by the dear old home, through all its woes. The letters that got out of it by stealth or allowance unite the sundered heart- strings of the members of separated families, or report the
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