USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Cambridge > History of Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1630-1913 > Part 12
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After securing the withdrawal of Lee and Danforth, the people flocked up Brattle Street to the house of Lieutenant-Governor Oliver, who had returned from Boston, and demanded his resignation from the Council. This, after demurring, Oliver gave, "My house at Cam- bridge," he wrote, "being surrounded by about four thousand people, in compliance with their command I sign my name,-Thomas Oliver." General Brattle, the colonel of the Middlesex regiment, was then sought for but had gone to Boston. Thence he wrote an explanatory and apologetic letter, in which he denounced the threatenings he had received and his prac- tical banishment from his home.
This was obviously one of the most exciting days in the history of Cambridge. The temper of the people was incapable of being misunder- stood. There was no reasonable ground for objecting to the removal of the powder and guns which really belonged to the Province and there was no collision with the troops, but it is obvious that the 2d of September, 1774, just escaped the historic importance of the 19th of April of the succeeding year.
The Massachusetts Assembly met at Salem
on October 11, 1774. The Cambridge dele- gates were Thomas Gardner and John Win- throp. After waiting two days for the Gov- ernor who never came, the members constituted themselves into a Congress, and adjourned first to Concord and later to the Cambridge Meeting-house. The Assembly first took pains to define their constitutional position, and to defend it by adducing precedents and quoting charters, and then they went on to the more pressing business of the hour. They began by ordering "that all the matters that come before the Congress be kept secret, and be not disclosed to any but the members thereof until further order of this body." Then, on the 24th of October, they appointed a committee to consider the proper time for laying in warlike stores; and on the same day the committee reported that the proper time was now. Without delay they voted the pur- chase of twenty field pieces and four mortars; twenty tons of grape and round shot; five thousand muskets and bayonets, and seventy- five thousand flints. They made an agreement to pay no more taxes into the royal Treasury, and arranged a system of assessment for the purpose of provincial defence. They then proceeded to elect by ballot three generals, Jedediah Preble, Artemas Ward and Seth Pomeroy. They appointed a Committee of Public Safety, of which John Hancock was the most notable and Joseph Warren the most active member. They invested that Com- mittee with authority to call out the militia, every fourth man of whom was expected to hold himself ready to march at a minute's notice ;- a condition of service that suggested the name of Minutemen. Then they ad- journed until the fourth Wednesday in No- vember; by which time the Committee of Public Safety, disbursing their funds thriftily, had bought in addition to the prescribed amount of ordnance three hundred and fifty spades and pick-axes, a thousand wooden messbowls, and some pease and flour. "That," said Sir George Trevelyan, "was their stock of material wherewith to fight the empire which recently, with hardly any sense of distress, had maintained a long war against France and Spain, and had left them humbled and half ruined at the end of it."
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The irrevocable step was thus taken in the Cambridge meeting-house. That which for months, and perhaps years, had been a fact became now a visible and palpable finality. The action of the Assembly at Cambridge gave aim and purpose to the seething excitement of the Province. "Appointing a receiver-general," wrote Dr. Reynolds, "it took possession of the purse; organizing a committee of safety, it seized the sword; through its committee of supplies it gathered the munitions of war; by its minute inquiries it may almost be said to have counted up every musket and fowling- piece, and weighed every ounce of powder, in the Province. It appointed commanders and
one foot beyond the girdle of the bayonets of his soldiers. "No visible lines of intrenchment rose on the hills which surrounded Boston, but all the same the beleaguerment was there, ready at the first hostile movement to become manifest and impregnable. Like the fabled net of the magician, its meshes were so fine that the keenest eye could not see them; so strong that a giant's struggles could not break them."
The tumultuous events of the 19th of April, 1775, lie somewhat outside of the scope of this narrative, but both of the British columns that marched to Lexington on that momentous
CAMBRIDGE COMMON, 1775
commissaries; it established military laws and regulations; it collected in depots provisions, clothing, tents, and military supplies of all sorts; and it purchased powder, muskets and cannon."
It is obvious that the siege of Boston was really a much longer affair than the eleven months of actual investment. It began long before those April days when the farmers from all the New England states came hurrying to Cambridge, and marched by the way of the highway over and with little or no plan of action, encamped upon the encircling hills, and with military instinct began to intrench themselves. It would be nearer the truth to say that the siege began on the day that General Gage landed, for never was he governor in Massachusetts
day trod our Cambridge soil. The first ex- pedition was ferried over the river in the boats of the fleet, landed at Phips' Farm or Lech- mere's Point, filed in the darkness along the causeway which crossed the marshes and so went on its way to destroy the stores at Con- cord. The supporting column under Lord Percy left Boston about nine in the morning the neck. Before noon Lord Percy came to the "Great Bridge," at the foot of what is now Boylston Street. The Cambridge folk had been warned of his coming. Hastily they tore up the planking of the Bridge, but frugally piled the planks on the Cambridge side of the
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river. The delay was therefore but slight for Percy's vanguard crossed on the string pieces of the bridge and quickly put the planks again in place so that the infantry could march over them. The wagon train was delayed until the planks could be more firmly secured. The many tracks crossing Cambridge Common are said to have confused Lord Percy, and he was at no small trouble before he could find anyone to tell him which road would lead him to Menotomy and Lexington. His column finally met the troops, returning from Concord, just east of Lexington, and history records that the relief came "just in time."
On his retreat from Lexington Lord Percy did not pass through Harvard Square, for he realized that this time the "Great Bridge" would undoubtedly be so dismantled as to be impassable. He therefore directed his march to Charlestown Neck, and the running battle ebbed and flowed through Menotomy, which was still a part of Cambridge, and along the base of the. Somerville hills to Charlestown. Percy was right, for the planking of the bridge had again been torn up and this time built into a strong redoubt on the Cambridge side, which was held by the militia arriving from the towns to the south and which would have completely blocked the progress of the British column.
The Cambridge Trainband had been mus- tered before daybreak on that fateful day and apparently followed the first of the British detachments nearly all the way to Concord and then joined in the running battle home again. Thomas Gardner had succeeded Gen- eral Brattle as the Colonel of the First Middle- sex Regiment, and Samuel Thatcher had succeeded Gardner as the Captain of the Cambridge Company, with John and Jotham Walton
as his lieutenants. Seventy-seven men were enrolled in the company, Wyeths, Warlands, Reeds, Frosts, Prentices, Coxes, Hastings, Goddards, Boardmans, Bradishes, Moores and Hancocks. There was another company in that part of the town which is now Arlington commanded by Captain Benjamin Locke, and it, too, was actively engaged all day. It was in Menotomy that Percy's wagon train, which had been detained at the Great Bridge, and which was hurrying to overtake the march-
ing column, was set upon by the older men who remained in the village and captured with its guard. It was in Menotomy and North Cambridge that the hottest fighting of that sultry April day took place. More than half of those on both sides who fell in the fighting were killed within what were then the bound- aries of Cambridge. All of the Cambridge men who fell were killed near Menotomy. Jason Winship and Jabez Wyman were two of the band of veterans who at midday had waylaid and captured the British wagon train. They were caught by the returning British in Cooper's Tavern at Menotomy Centre and killed. Ben- jamin and Rachel Cooper escaped into the cellar and hid till the troops had passed. Jason Russell, another old man and substantial farmer, lived just to the west of Menotomy village. The Danvers company came up just as the British approached and took post in Mr. Russell's house. There a number of them were caught between the main column march- ing down the road and a flanking party that came across the fields. Nine of the Danvers company were killed in the house and Mr. Russell was shot as he stood in his own door- way. Three of the men from Cambridge village were killed on Massachusetts Avenue just north of Spruce Street. John Hicks was one of an old Cambridge family and lived at the corner of Dunster and Winthrop Streets. He had been an active patriot, and tradition says that he was one of the Boston Tea Party. Moses Richardson was a carpenter who lived where the Law School (Austin Hall) now stands. His military spirit was reborn in his great grandson, James P. Richardson, who organized and led the first company that en- listed for the Civil War. Both Hicks and Richardson were beyond the age of military service, so they had not marched with the younger men of the trainband, but they had taken their guns and followed. The third victim, William Marcy, was killed at the same time and place. He was apparently sitting on the fence looking on when he was shot. Hicks' son, a boy of fourteen, found the three bodies in the evening, and, procuring a wagon, brought them to the village graveyard for burial at the place where the monument to their honor now stands.
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There was no sleep in Cambridge or anywhere else in Massachusetts that night. North, west and south the messengers rode furiously spreading the news. Every village green saw the muster of the trainbands. Seizing their muskets and their powder horns the minute- men, without waiting for anything else, started for Cambridge. When the alarm reached Connecticut old Israel Putnam left his plow in the furrow and rode on one horse one hundred miles in eighteen hours. The New Hampshire companies were crossing the Merrimac on the evening of the twentieth, having run rather than marched for twenty-seven miles. They halted at An- dover only long enough for a bit of bread and cheese, and, having trav- ersed fifty-seven miles in less than twenty hours, at sun- rise on the twenty -first they paraded on Cambridge Common. With- in two days ten thousand men came pouring into Cambridge, and for weeks afterwards the numbers were augmented. General Heath, who had been conspicuous among the leaders on the 19th, directed them where to go, and made a general disposition of this loosely organized and primitive army. On the morning after the battle it was his foresight that provided for the needs of the men who came rushing in from every Massachusetts town and hamlet. Later he wrote in his Memoirs, " All the eatables in the town of Cambridge which could be spared, were collected for breakfast and the college kitchen and utensils procured for cook- ing. Some carcasses of beef, and pork, pre- pared for the Boston market, were obtained and a large quantity of ship bread, said to
belong to the British navy, was taken." The college buildings were at once occupied as barracks, and the college kitchen continued to be the center of the rude commissariat. The towns hastened to send ample supplies after their men, and there was never a time when this hastily improvised New England army was not abundantly fed. The flight of the Cambridge Tories made their houses and estates available for quarters. General Putnam got as near to the enemies' lines as he could by living at the Inman house. John Stark made a headquarters for the New Hampshire men at the
BRATTLE HOUSE
Royall house in Medford. John Glover and his Essex Regiment occupied the Vassall house and grounds. The Committee of Safety and the Senior of the Massachusetts Major-Generals, Artemas Ward, accepted the hospitality of the Hastings house. With extraordinary rapidity the be- leaguering lines were drawn about Boston. It was fifteen months after Concord and Lexington before a British army again took the open field.
Sad was the fate that thus overtook with appalling suddenness the loyalist families of Cambridge. The booming of the guns at Lexington meant for them the signal to fly from their pleasant homes and seek safety behind the Boston lines. Practically the entire congregation of Christ Church departed, and, save for a few lay services held while Mrs. Washington was in Cambridge, the sound of prayer and praise was unheard within its walls for fifteen years. For a time it served as a barracks and then for years it stood deserted, its doors shattered and its windows
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broken, exposed to wind and rain and every sort of depredation. Most of the Tory mag- nates never saw their homes again. The Brattle house became the quarters of Major Thomas Mifflin, afterwards the President of Congress, while General Brattle accompanied the British army when they sailed away and died a broken-hearted old man at Halifax in the fall of 1776. His son, Thomas Brattle, was in Europe when the war broke out and was proscribed as an absentee. Later he returned to America, and in 1784 was finally permitted to come back to Cambridge and rehabilitate the old estate. He made the place the most beautiful for miles around and lived a quiet life among his flowers and his friends. . He died un- married in 1801, and with him ended the Brattle line. Thomas Oliver, the one-time Lieutenant-Governor, left Cambridge im- mediately after the uprising which had forced his resigna- tion on September 2d, 1774, and never returned. He had never, indeed, been an active opponent of the patriotic senti- ment, for he was of mild and inoffensive temperament, but all his social connections were with the Tories. He went to England and died there in 1815. His beautiful house at Elmwood was first occupied by Benedict Arnold and a Connecticut company, and later became a hospital for the besieging army, and the wounded were brought there from Bunker Hill. Those who died were buried across the road opposite the house. Colonel David Phips also went to England and died there in 1811. His estate was confiscated and his house later became the residence of Professor John Winthrop. John Borland went into Boston as soon as the troubles began and was killed by accident there on the 5th of June,
WASHINGTON ELM
1775. One of his sons entered the British army. His house, the "Bishop's Palace," was later used as a residence for General Burgoyne when he came as a prisoner to Cambridge, and was then for many years the homestead of Dr. Plympton.
Judge Danforth and Judge Lee, the two Mandamus Councillors who resigned at the behest of the people on September 2, 1774, were, like Oliver, Tories by social connection rather than by conviction. Judge Danforth was an old and respected citizen who had been a member of the Council by the choice of the Provincial Assembly for thirty-six years, and who made no greater mistake than to continue in his office when ap- pointed by the King instead of elected by the representatives of the people. He stayed in his house on the eastern side of Dunster Street, and, though understood to have royalist sym- pathies, was undis- turbed. Judge Lee went with his neigh- bors to Boston during the siege, but after- wards returned and took up his residence again in the old house on Brattle Street which is still known by his name. Ralph Inman also came back to his place after the evacuation of Boston and was unmolested, though both of his sons went to England and his daughter married Captain Linzee, who had commanded the frigate Falcon on the day of Bunker Hill. The Lechmere-Sewall estate and both the Vassall estates were confiscated after the hurried flight of their owners. Colonel John Vassall had no choice but to cross the seas with his friends, and his mansion-house became the headquarters of the American army. Mrs. Henry Vassall went to Antigua, where the family still possessed considerable property, but returned to die in Boston in 1800. Even her father, Isaac Royall, to whom hospitality
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was a passion, and who had won the affection of all around him, did not escape banishment and proscription. The Committee of Safety provided for the care and occupation of the confiscated estates, though not always without difficulty, for "the honest man's scythe refused to cut Tory grass, and his oxen to turn a Tory furrow." Isaac Royall's cherished wish was to be buried in Massachusetts; but even that boon was denied him. He died in England before the war was over, bequeathing two thousand acres of his neglected soil to endow a Chair of Law at Harvard.
The besieging force which made its center at Cambridge was a heterogeneous gathering. The militia of the various provinces served under their own officers, but the different commanders speedily agreed to subordinate themselves to General Artemas Ward, as the head of the largest body of troops. He, how- ever, had no organized staff and very inade- quate means of communicating orders and receiving reports. If Gage had attacked he could have been opposed only by scattered regiments, and not by a united force.
The size of the army was variable and un- certain. On paper there were more than twenty thousand men; as a matter of fact there can seldom have been more than three quarters of that number. It was, further, an army of volunteers where every man owned his musket and cartridge box, clothed himself, and considered himself still, to a large extent, his own master. The men, who sprang to arms on the 19th of April, had not prepared themselves for a long campaign. They had left home on the run and in the next few days many of these men went back for the necessary arrangement of their affairs and for more clothing. The larger number of them returned to camp immediately, but others stayed away for a considerable time. Even those who joined the army after more preparation often had business that called them home, in which case they considered it a hardship to be denied, "especially when that business was haying."
Nearly two months went by without any more active fighting than occasional skir- mishes as foraging parties met, or when Ameri- can detachments successfully carried off the sheep and stock from the islands in the harbor.
By the 16th of June the time had come for an aggressive move. The Committee of Safety, consulting with the more prominent officers, decided to occupy the heights of Charlestown. Ward issued the necessary orders and in the dusk of evening fifteen hundred men under command of Colonel William Prescott paraded opposite the western door of the Hastings House. From the door, in his academic gown, came President Langdon of the college, and the prayer he offered stirred the hearts of all who listened. What Prescott and his men did that night and the next day on Bunker Hill is written large in 'American history. Nathanael Greene was right when he said that the colonists were ready to sell King George another hill at the same price. To Cambridge the chief event of that momentous day was the loss of its military chief and first patriot citizen, Colonel Thomas Gardner. This able, zealous and courageous man had been the leader of the sentiment of the community throughout the years that foretokened the Revolution. He lived on the southern side of the river in what is now Allston. From 1769 until his death he was both selectman and the repre- sentative of Cambridge in the General Court and in the Provincial Congress. He served on both the local Committee of Correspondence and on the Provincial Committee of Safety. He had been the captain of the Cambridge Company and was promoted to be Colonel when General Brattle adhered to the loyalist side. His high character, his popularity, the military skill which he had already displayed, his patriotic ardor, all promised for him a most distinguished career. It is probable that, had he lived, he would have ranked among the most conspicuous of the patriot soldiers of the Revolution. He led his regiment to Bunker Hill and was just entering the engage- ment when he fell mortally wounded. He was borne back to Cambridge, where he lingered for two weeks and died on the 3d of July, just as Washington was crossing the Common to take command of the army.
The selection by the Continental Congress of a general-in-chief was an epoch-making act. John Hancock, the President of the Congress, was ambitious to secure this difficult and dangerous post, but John Adams was keen
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enough to perceive that the New England army could be knit together and its jealousies ap- peased only by the appointment of a general from another section. In military experience and ability, in strength and purity of char- acter, there was no American then living to be compared with George Washington of Vir- ginia.
While others had been discussing and hesi- tating, Washington had long ago made up his mind that the quarrel with the king must come to violent disruption. At the second Continental Congress to which he was a dele- gate it was noticed that he attended the sit- tings in his uniform of a Virginia colonel. Though he took no part in the debates, he made himself felt, and his colleague, Patrick Henry, said of him: "If you speak of solid information and sound judgment, Colonel Washington is unquestionably the greatest man on the floor." Debate ran high, but finally the Congress adopted the militia at Cambridge as a "Continental Army," appointed four major-generals: Lee, Schuyler, Ward and Putnam, and eight brigadiers; and on the 15th of June, two days before the Bunker Hill battle, chose Washington to be the commander-in-chief.
Washington himself knew better than any man the consequences of the momentous step. On the 16th of June he accepted his commission, but added: "Lest some unlucky event should happen, unfavorable to my reputation, I beg it to be remembered by every gentleman in the room, that I, this day, declare with the utmost sincerity, I do not think myself equal to the command I am honored with. As to pay, Sir, I beg leave to assure the Congress, that, as no pecuniary consideration could have tempted me to accept this arduous employ- ment, at the expense of my domestic ease and happiness, I do not wish to make any profit from it. I will keep an exact account of my expenses. These, I doubt not, they will dis- charge; and that is all I desire."
On the 3d of July, a year and a day before the Declaration of Independence, Washington reached Cambridge and under the great elm still standing by the common, he took command of the army. He made his headquarters at first in the house of the president of the college (Wadsworth House), but after a few weeks
took possession of the beautiful mansion of Colonel Vassall. That house had always been the home of generous and gracious hospitality, an association which it has never lost. Wash- ington brought with him to Cambridge the Virginia traditions of ample living. He was himself a plain soldier, and a man, besides, of remarkable self-restraint. His moderation was seen in his early and regular hours and in his simple diet, which was sometimes nothing, we are told, but baked apples or berries with milk. It was, however, his habit to gather about him, at his headquarters, the officers of the army and the prominent visitors who for public or personal reasons made their way to the Cambridge camp. In December he was joined by Mrs. Washington and the two had here their last experience of home life for many long years. They maintained at the Vassall house a style of living which com- ported with the General's position.
Almost all of the leaders of the Revolution who later won renown or shame were in Cam- bridge during the siege and constant visitors at headquarters. Hither from his vagrant wanderings over half the earth came Charles Lee, the second in command of the army. He was grotesque in appearance, satirical of speech and repulsive of countenance, but the people believed in his ability and sincerity until he had proved both his incompetency and treach- ery. He came to Cambridge heralded as a military prodigy, and though his insubordina- tion brought his boastful career to an end long before the war was over, the blackness of his treason was not known until after he and those he had tried to betray had long been dead. That other conspicuous traitor, Benedict Arnold, was daily at the Vassall house before he started on his Quebec expedition. His ability and reckless courage commended him to Washington. Had he only been so fortu- nate as to fall in his desperate charge at Still- water he would have ranked among the most valorous of our patriot heroes. Horatio Gates, the vain, weak man who later tried to push Washington from his command, was the Ad- jutant-General of the army at Cambridge, and in constant contact with his chief. The laurels he wore, but did not win, at Saratoga, faded
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