USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : containing carefully prepared histories of every city and town in the county, Vol. I > Part 19
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The executive committees were to have contin- ued their sessions at M'enotomy on the 19th, had not the battle deranged their plans. They, how- ever, met on the 20th at Cambridge, which was now become the headquarters of the Massachusetts forces. Every nerve was being strained to assem- ble an army. The labors of the committees were incessant. Each moment was considered precious. Accounts of the engagement of the 19th, with appeals for help, were sent to Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. Appeals, the most urgent, were also made to the towns to send for- ward men to take the places of those who had flocked to arms on the 19th of April, and who, upon the entreaty of their officers, had remained in camp at Cambridge or Roxbury ever since. These forces had, indeed, blocked up the approaches to Boston ; but it was every hour feared that Gen- eral Gage would seek to retrieve the disaster of the 19th before preparation for successful resistance could be made.
Congress resolved to raise 13,000 men im- mediately. General Preble having declined the commission tendered him, General Ward became commander-in-chief, with headquarters at Can- bridge. General Thomas took command of the
forces at Roxbury, with the rank of lieutenant- general. General Heath continued in command at Cambridge until the arrival of General Ward, on the afternoon of the 20th. A distribution of the available troops was made, camps formed, alarm-posts designated, and the formal investment of Boston fairly begun.
But what were the neighboring colonies doing in this crisis? Even while the fighting was going on, up and down the historic highway, couriers were despatched over the great routes to Connecti- cut and New Hampshire with the news that war had actually begun. Every town, every obscure hamlet reached, was in turn electrified. The entire population sprang to arms; nor were those whose kindred had been slaughtered at Lexington more eager, more determined to avenge the blood poured out there than were their sympathizing brethren of New England. But while soldiers were hastily mustering for the long march to Cambridge, the impetuous ardor of some heroic men overbore all delay. The martial instinct of the veterans warned them of the value of moments in such an emier- gency. Hardly had the cry, "To arms !" reached the borders of Connecticut, when one of the most gallant spirits that ever unsheathed a sword in the cause of liberty, on the very spot where the news overtook him, sprang into the saddle, and spurred for the scene of action.
On the 21st Israel Putnam rode into Concord on the same horse he had mounted, the afternoon before, at Pomfret, on hearing of the fighting at Lexington and Concord. The gallant veteran had not stopped to change his clothing, or to unyoke the oxen with which he was ploughing. After conferring with the provincial delegates, he on the same day wrote back to hasten the despatch of Connecticut troops to Cambridge. The next day he was in Cambridge, ready for any call that might be made upon him. His presence was a tower of strength to the provincials ; in him the provincial soldiers recognized the leader.
When the tidings that Americans were fighting
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THE SITUATION BEFORE BUNKER HILL.
with British soldiers reached the village of Derry- field, since Manchester, in New Hampshire, John Stark was in ten minutes on horseback, and on his rapid way to Lexington. His name, like Putnam's, was known in every household of New England. Outstripping the New Hampshire soldiers, who were already on the march, he reached headquarters in season to be assigned to duty on the 22d. Paul Dudley Sargent of New Hampshire was also early on the ground. . Medford became the rendezvous of the soldiers from this colony.
Congress appointed committees to prepare an account of the events of the 19th of April, and to take depositions showing that the British troops had provoked hostilities by first firing upon the American militia. These documents, with an address to the people of Great Britain, were de- spatched to Benjamin Franklin, at London, by a swift vessel. Captain Derby was enjoined to keep his destination a profound secret.
The headquarters of the patriot army were fixed in the house of Jonathan Hastings,1 the college steward, where the Committee of Safety also held its sessions. In faet, this committee constituted the supreme executive head from which General Ward derived his orders, and which cut out all the work relative to the army for the action of the Provincial Congress. Here, on the 29th of April, Captain Benedict Arnold reported with a company from Connecticut. The confusion incident to the entrance of troops into the usually quiet town de- cided the authorities of Harvard College to dismiss the students for the present.2 The buildings were immediately occupied by provincial troops. Presi- dent Langdon was appointed chaplain to the army. A hospital was organized. William Burbeck of Boston and Richard Gridley of Stoughton were engaged as engineers, the latter to rank as chief.3
The want of proper field and siege artillery was keenly felt at headquarters. Only a few light brass pieces were in the possession of the besiegers. A
few iron cannon and two or three mortars consti- tuted the entire siege train. At this juncture Cap- tain Arnold presented himself before the Committee of Safety, with the information that there were at Ticonderoga eighty heavy cannon, twenty being of brass, and ten or twelve mortars. He boldly pro-
1 Still standing, and known to the present generation as the birthplace of Oliver Wendell Halmes.
2 The college was temporarily removed to Concord, where the term was resumed in October.
" The agreement with Gridley provided for a life-annuity to be paid him after the colony forces should he disbanded.
posed to undertake the capture of this post. His offer was considered and approved by a council of war, and at the end of three days Arnold received a commission from the committee empowering him to raise four hundred men for the proposed secret expedition. Before he could carry his plan into effect, he was forestalled by Ethan Allen and others who had conceived the same idea. Arnold there- fore joined Allen at Castleton. The confeder- ates arrived before Ticonderoga on the evening of the 9th with one hundred and forty men, and at daybreak Allen made his andacious and success- ful demand for the surrender of the fortress. In the event of his success, Arnold was to have at once transported the most serviceable artillery to Cambridge; but the fortress being taken by the joint efforts of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Connecticut, its disposition was referred to the Continental Congress, and its dismantling for the present prevented.
No systematic effort to secure their position, other than by some light intrenchments carried from the college green towards the river, and a redoubt on the Cambridge shore opposite Boston Common, seems to have been made by the Americans before the 12th of May. The main body of the army was at Cambridge, with its pickets well ont towards Charlestown, and the New Hampshire troops, under Stark, encamped about the Royall farm at Medford. General Thomas occupied Roxbury, thus closing the only avenue into Boston by land. The British general, were he disposed to attempt a sortie in force, might either march out over the neck and attack Thomas in front, or by landing his troops at Dorchester Neck, and making a considerable détour, turn that general's position. There was nothing to prevent the execution of the latter plan at this early stage of the siege.
While Thomas held Roxbury firmly, Cambridge could only be attacked by a force marching from Charlestown, or from Lechmere's Point, or from some point on Charles River above the great basin. In either case the attacking column must mnove to the place of disembarkation in boats, which was a serious disadvantage. To meet the first of these contingencies the Americans had only to fortify the heights commanding Charlestown Neck. Pros- pect Hill was the key to this line of defence, with the two inferior summits, then called Cobble Hill,1 and Ploughed Hill,2 well advanced on its right and
1 McLean Asylum site.
2 Mt. Benedict, on the Mystic side, now partly levelled.
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HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
left, and admirably situated, not only for enfilading the neck, but also for controlling the approach by water. These hills were all within the American line of outposts.
A force landing at Lechmere's Point would be exposed to all the difficulties which had rendered the expedition to Lexington abortive. But the greatest objection to an attempt from this direction was the absolute impossibility of moving artillery over the marshes, which must be crossed before reaching firm ground. It was hardly to be sup- posed that after the lesson of the 19th of April the British general would attack the insurgent army withont cannon; yet there was a strong preposses- sion in General Ward's mind that an attack was to be expected in this quarter, apparently founded upon the circumstance that the Lexington expedition had effected a landing here. A landing higher np Charles River, nearer to the American encampment, must be effected under fire, and as the river was too shallow to allow heavy ships to come up in order to cover a disembarkation, and the Americans now had cannon mounted, little apprehension was felt that an attempt would be made on this side.
On the 12th of May a joint committee of the Committee of Safety and Council of War, after an examination of the ground, reported in favor of throwing up earthworks on both sides of the road to Charlestown, near the head of Willis's Creek ;1 and of erecting strong redoubts on Prospect Hill and Bunker Hill. This recommendation, there is now no room to doubt, was communicated to Gen- eral Gage by Benjamin Church, chairman of the sub-committee of the Committee of Safety.
The reference to Bunker Hill here is interest- ing and significant as showing when a purpose to occupy this important position was first seriously entertained; but the eyes of both the British and American commanders were at the present moment fixed in a different direction. Gage feared an attack from Dorchester Heights. He was less apprehen- sive that his enemy would occupy those of Charles- town, because the approach to that peninsula was fully commanded by the batteries of several ships of war. He had evacuated it after the battles of the 19th of April, evidently considering it securely guarded by the guns of the fleet. But with Dor- chester Heights the case was different. Ilere was a position which not only commanded the town of Boston, and enfiladed his laboriously prepared works on the neck, but where artillery would sweep
1 Miller's River, now nearly obliterated.
the inner roadstead clean of shipping. Moreover, it conld be reinforced from Roxbury without expos- ing the relieving troops to the destructive fire which could be concentrated on Charlestown Neck. This reasoning was so conclusive, that we can only wonder at the fatuity which prevented the prompt seizure of Dorchester Heights by General Gage; so unanswerable, that the amazing apathy of Gen- eral Howe in leaving these heiglits unoccupied through the ensning summer and winter led in- evitably to the evacuation of Boston at the moment when his more enterprising antagonist opened his batteries there.
By the 4th of May General Gage had almost completed a battery for ten twenty-four-pounders, bearing upon Dorchester peninsula, which he hoped would effectually prevent the erection of rebel works there. On this day the Committee of Safety addressed pressing appeals to the colonies of Rhode Island and Connecticut for additional troops, in order, as they write, " to enable us to secure a pass of the greatest importance to our common interest, and which the enemy will certainly pos- sess themselves of as soon as their reinforcements arrive; and if they once get possession, it will cost ns much blood and treasure to dislodge them ; but it may now be secured by us, if we had a force sufficient, without any danger." On the 9th the war council decided to call in enough of the neigh- boring militia to enable the army to take possession of and defend Dorchester Heights withont weaken- ing the camp at Roxbury. The next day an order was sent to all the colonels absent on recruiting service to repair forthwith to Cambridge. Two thousand Suffolk and Middlesex militia were di- rected to concentrate at Roxbury, enlisted men were ordered to their regiments, and no furlonghs were to be granted until further orders.
For some unexplained reason the intention to assume the offensive on the south of Boston at this time was abandoned ; but on the 12th the far more andacious and far more dangerons idea of seizing the heights of Charlestown on the north was developed by the revolutionary council. The de- clared purpose of fortifying Bunker Hill was to annoy an enemy coming out of Charlestown by land or going by water to Medford. It is possi- ble that the Americans entertained the fear that, having full control of all water approaches, the enemy might make a descent at Medford, through which a way might be found to the left flank and rear of the army at Cambridge. Colonel Stark, it
13
THE SITUATION BEFORE BUNKER IIILL.
will be remembered, held this village. Bunker Hill also commanded the usual ferry-way over Mystic River to Malden. Not only its importance in a military view, but the language of the committee when advocating the measure, declare the seizure of Bunker Hill an aggressive act, - one not at all essential to successful defence of the American position, but a direct defiance to the British com- mander in Boston.
Briefly to recapitulate, the American army occu- pied Cambridge, with its right on the Charles and its left on the Mystic. Willis's Creek divided this position nearly in the centre. Thomas's corps was cantoned in Roxbury. Stark was in Medford, and a few militia garrisoned Malden and Chelsea, in order to protect those towns from the enemy's foraging parties. Ward's extreme right was covered by earth- works reaching from the college to the river. His front was protected by an intrenchment carried over the summit of Dana, then Butler's Hill. Behind this hill, and within half a mile of headquarters, the road from Charlestown to Cambridge crossed the head of Willis's Creek by a bridge. Breast- works were thrown up here on each side of the road. The way from headquarters to Lechmere's Point passed by Inman's farm,1 and crossed to the west side of Willis's Creek, which it descended to where a low causeway and bridge, nearly correspond- ing with Gore Street, crossed the creek to the Point. During the early days of the siege General Putnam took post with the Connecticut troops at Inman's ; and where the bridge and causeway connected Lechmere's Point with the Charlestown shore, earthworks were thrown up on each side of the road. Somewhere on the Cambridge shore the Americans had built a square redoubt which was guarded by two or three hundred men. These works were all defensive, being designed to cover those possible points of attack that have already been mentioned.
General Gage was not idle, but, not feeling him- self strong enough to act on the offensive, his ex- ertions were directed to putting Boston in as good a condition of defence as possible before the attack which he daily expected should take place. He had advice that reinforcements were on the way to him, and believing that the Americans also knew it, he expected they would make an assault before the garrison was further strengthened. Fearing also that in the event of an attack upon him from withont the inhabitants would rise and begin a 1 Ralph Inman's house stood on what is now Inman Street.
massacre of the soldiers, he entered into a treaty with the selectmen by which the inhabitants were allowed to leave the town upon surrendering their arms. In consequence of this agreement the arms were given up and deposited in the place desig- nated. For a time the engagement was carried out in good faith. Hundreds availed themselves of the permission to escape from the beleaguered capi- tal; but thousands who were too indigent to re- move still remained. To facilitate their departure the Provincial Congress provided for the distribu- tion of these poor people among the towns of the province, where they were to be cared for until further action could be taken for their relief.1 But before the work of removal could be finished the agreement was violated by General Gage, over whose sense of honor the importunity of the tory population prevailed. It was alleged by them that the presence of those who sympathized with the rebels was the safeguard of the town; so that all at once the vacillating general became as anxious to keep as he had before been to be rid of them. Passes were refused. Suffering and privation be- came the lot of those who were thus cruelly de- tained.
The people of Charlestown, fully sensible that they were exposed to the danger of seeing their town become a battle-ground of the contending forces, began to leave it soon after the 19th of April. Moreover, the utter ruin of their business prosperity had followed the shutting up of the port of Boston. According to the historian of the town, only one or two hundred, of a population numbering from two to three thousand souls, were still remaining in the town on the 17th of June.
So long as the people were permitted freely to pass out of Boston, the patriot chiefs were, of course, well informed as to what was going on there. On the other hand, the Provincial Congress had accorded to the loyalists, throughout the prov- ince, the privilege of removing with their effects into. Boston; so that General Gage had also his opportunities of obtaining intelligence. Many Middlesex families availed themselves of the per- mission to seek an asylum under the protection of the British flag. The heads of these tory fam- ilies were men who had held office under the crown ; in general they believed the rebellion would be quickly crushed ; but the rigid surveillance they were under, the indignity to which some had been 1 Congress allotted to Middlesex 1,016 of an estimated total of 5,000 persons.
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HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
subjected, or the apprehension felt for their per- sonal safety, decided them to abandon the homes to which very few were destined ever to return. Cambridge probably had a greater proportion of these families than any other town in the province. To leave their stately mansions, with all the ease and luxury to which they had been accustomed, for the squalor of a garrisoncd town was a bitter alternative; to be rudely torn from a society to which they had so long given tone, and of which they were the pillars, was indeed hard to bear: but their situation had become intolerable, and there was no help for it. Their elegant residences were no sooner abandoned than they were seized by the provincial authorities. Many of them still remain to show what was the prevailing idea of architec- tural magnificence introduced by this wealthy and long-privileged class of colonial magnates ; and one is still the most justly celebrated private man- sion in America.
General Gage's engineers were kept busily at work while the reinforcements from England and Ireland were arriving. Some of these had reached him by the 25th of May, when the Cerberus came into port with Generals Howe, Clinton, and Bur- goyne on board. The British commander now had under his orders five or six thousand of the best troops in the empire. Several of the regiments bore a distinguished and ancient record. Some had served in Canada, in Germany, or in the West Indies. Besides infantry, there was a battalion of royal artillery ; and by the middle of June a regi- ment of dragoons arrived, constituting a corps highly effective in all arms, and burning to re- trieve the disgrace of Lexington and Concord.
The generals and most of the coloncls 1 had seen service. Howe, second in command, and Clinton had fought in Germany, Burgoyne in Portugal. Howe, it was said, was averse to the service in America ; but opportunities for distinction were too few to permit an ambitious officer to indulge in sentimental regrets, and he accepted it. His per- sonal bravery was known to the whole army. Bur- goyne was both capable and brave ; but his esti- mate of himself was not justified by his subsequent career. Howe was brilliant and dashing; Clinton cool and sagacious ; Burgoyne pompons, over- confident, and inclined to bombast.
Besides his advanced lines on Boston Neck,
formed of two strong bastions joined by a curtain, the battery already mentioned as bearing on Dor- chester Heights, and the old fortification at the narrowest part of the narrow isthmus, repaired and strengthened, General Gage's engineers had thrown up a small field-work on Copp's Hill, at the ex- treme north part of the town, bearing upon Charles- town Heights, and another on Beacon Hill, designed to command the town itself. The largest body of troops were encamped on the Common; the re- mainder, with the exception of a battalion at Bar- ton's Point, occupied empty warehouses on the wharves and in different parts of the town. Every night the lines on the neck were strongly rein- forced, patrols traversed the streets, and guard- boats from the ships of war glided about the harbor and the rivers.
Captain Harris, of the 5th Regiment, thus de- scribes the superb view from his encampment on the 5th of May : "I have now before me one of the finest prospects your warm imagination can picture. My tent door abont twenty yards from a piece of water nearly a mile broad, with the country beyond most beantifully tumbled about in hills and valleys, rocks and woods, interspersed with straggling villages, with here and there a spire peeping over the trees, and the country of the most charming green that delighted eye ever gazed on. Pity these infatuated people cannot be content to enjoy such a country in peace ! But alas! this moment their advanced sentinels are in sight, and tell me they have struck the fatal blow."
The situation of affairs in the town is feelingly depicted by a letter-writer of this time. Under date of the 6th of May lie says : "You can have no conception, Bill, of the distresses the people in general are involved in. You'll see parents that are lucky enough to procure papers (passes), with bundles in one hand and a string of children in the other, wandering out of the town (with only a snfferance of one day's permission) not knowing whither they 'll go. . . .. You must know that no person who leaves the town is allowed to return again, and this morning an order from the governor has put a stop to any more papers at any rate, not even to admit those to go who have procured 'em already."
In regard to the difficulty of procuring fresh provisions after the investment of the town, the same writer says: " We have now and then a carcass offered for sale in the market, which for-
1 Junius acenses Lord Percy of having been given a regiment at the expense of some braver and more deserving officer. He was, however, a general favorite with the army.
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THE SITUATION BEFORE BUNKER HILL.
merly we would not have picked up in the street ; but, bad as it is, it readily sells for eight pence law- ful money per lb., and a quarter of lamb, when it makes its appearance, which is rarely once a week, sells for a dollar. . . . . To such shifts has the necessity of the times drove us : wood not scarcely to be got at twenty-two shillings a cord. Was it not for a trifle of salt provisions that we have 't would be impossible for us to live. Pork and beans one day and beans and pork another, and fish when we can catch it."
The same officer we have previously quoted jo- cosely alludes to the army commissariat in his letter as follows : " However we block up their port the rebels certainly block up our town, and have cut off our good beef and mutton, much to the discomfiture of our mess. But while I get sufficient to sustain life, thongh of the coarsest food, with two nights out of three in bed, I shall not repine, but rejoice that fortune has given me a constitution to endure fatigue, and prove that it is accident, not inclination, that has made me hitherto eat the bread of idleness." Such sentiments entitle the writer to the respect even of an enemy, and show in the young captain of grenadiers qualities which subsequently advanced him to the rank of lieutenant-general.1
The Provincial Congress resolved, on the 3d of May, to borrow one hundred thousand pounds, at six per centum, payable in two years, and to issue certificates of indebtedness for the same. On the 5th a resolve passed declaring that by his acts, both before and on the 19th of April, General Gage had " utterly disqualified himself" to serve the colony as governor or in any other capacity ; "and that no obedience ought in future to be paid by the several towns and districts in this colony to his writs for calling an assembly, or to his procla- mations, or any other of his acts or doings ; but that, on the other hand, he ought to be considered and guarded against as an unnatural and inveter- ate enemy of his country."
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