USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : containing carefully prepared histories of every city and town in the county, Vol. I > Part 25
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morning Thomas had raised two forts, one upon each hill, when his men were relieved by fresh troops. The night was remarkably fine, mild, and lighted by a brilliant moon, the hills being wrapped in a soft haze which rendered them indistinguisli- able to the enemy, and in the midst of which the Americans toiled like an army of phantoms. By direction of the engineers, Gridley and Rufus Put- nam, the neighboring orchards had been cut down to form the abatis. Besides this, a number of strong casks filled with earth were placed around the works, designed, at a decisive moment, to be plunged down the steep declivity of the hills upon an attacking column.
The first part of Washington's plan had suc- ceeded; but there was a second, of which the enemy held the key. Would he attempt to carry the heights ? It was what the American general most desired. Would Washington assault the town ? It was what Howe had longed for; but now the conditions were so changed he could not be said to welcome the alternative with the same eagerness as before. This was what had been agreed upon at the Vassall House in Cambridge: If Howe launched an assaulting column upon Dorchester Heights and was repulsed, boats had been prepared and were then lying ready to transport four thousand men to the foot of Boston Common, where they were to land and carry all before them. For this glorious and at the same time hazardous coup de main there was but one man in the army. Washington had there- fore selected Putnam to lead the column of assault. It consisted of two divisions, respectively com- manded by Sullivan and Greene. Heath had been offered the command of one, but declined it because he believed the attempt would fail. His excessive discretion rendered it but too probable that the honor of Massachusetts would be safer in the hands of a Connecticut, a New Hampshire, or a Rhode Island general.
On the 5th, in the morning, this column was paraded in front of the lines, half a mile from the college, ready to embark. Every movement of the enemy was visible from the American posts in Rox- bury, from which signals were to be transmitted to Cambridge. The roll of drums, the bugles, the aids hurrying from camp to camp, signalled that the enemy accepted the challenge. Soon his col- umns were seen in battle array, and then marching to the wharves. It was evident there was to be a double assault and, without doubt, a bloody day. All these movements were plainly visible from
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HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
Dorchester Heights. Two thousand more troops had been despatched to the aid of Thomas ; while behind the works at Roxbury all the old regiments were in line of battle waiting the order to move to his support.
On the summit of Dorchester Heights Washing- ton sat on his horse calmly surveying his own and the enemy's preparations. There was neither ex- altation nor dejection, doubt nor indecision, in his demeanor. That erect figure, that face without emotion, had such martial grandeur that all in- stinctively recognized the leader. The soldiers began to clap their hands. Washington saw the British battalions embarking. Turning to those nearest him, he said : " Remember the 5th of March; avenge your brethren." These words passed through the ranks and were answered with cheer upon cheer. They became the battle-cry of the army.
At the province-house, in Boston, it had already been determined to evacuate the town; but now British honor was at stake. We have seen Sir William Howe at Bunker Hill, where his personal bravery, his example, and his invincible determina- tion to conquer or die saved the day for his sov- ereign and the honor for his soldiers. He was now to stake everything on a last effort. Defeat was equivalent to destruction ; success guaranteed his withdrawal from the town with honor un- tarnished.
The day passed quietly. Sir William meant to effect a landing under cover of the night. Besides the twenty thousand men under arms along the American lines, the hills overlooking the scene of expected combat were black with spectators. Without quitting their posts of observation, they awaited in breathless anxiety throughout the morning, the afternoon, until the tide had ebbed too far for boats to reach the shore in front of the American intrenchments. In the evening the British transports, accompanied by a floating bat- tery, dropped down to the Castle ; but during the night a furious gale rendered a landing out of the question. Three of the transports were blown ashore on Governor's Island. The Americans were subjected to much discomfort throughout the night, being compelled to bivouac, exposed to the whole violence of the storm. The works were, however, so much strengthened by daybreak of the 6th as to render an attack improbable.
In effect, the storm having frustrated his design, and seeing the hostile works hourly growing under
Inis eyes, Howe, on the 6th, called a council of war, which determined on the evacuation of the place. Orders were immediately issued to embark the army stores, artillery, and baggage as rapidly as possible. The royalists who had taken refuge within the town were notified of the general's in- tention, and were thrown into the utmost conster- nation by the intelligence. They were permitted to embark with the troops or remain. To remain was to invite the calamities from which they had fled. They therefore prepared, with heavy hearts, for their departure.
On the 8th Washington was fully apprised of what the enemy was doing.1 Suspecting he might make a bold push for New York, he despatched the rifle regiment to that place. On the 9th he resolved to hasten the enemy's departure by con- structing a battery on Nook's or Foster's Hill, within short range of the enemy's lines on Boston Neck. The enemy immediately turned all the guns he could bring to bear upon this point. This brought on a general cannonade from all the Amer- ican positions. The enemy's fire was, however, so severe that the workmen were driven from Nook's Hill with some loss.
The 10th was a day of utter confusion in Bos- ton. Troops and inhabitants were hurrying their effects on board the ships, private merchandise often taking precedence of public stores. Shops and dwellings were plundered under color of orders, soldiers and sailors wantonly destroying what they could not carry away. The 11th and 12th were but a repetition of these disorders. The soldiers not on other duty were busy barricading, digging ditches, or cutting down the fine old trees with which to obstruct the streets. The heavy ord- nance at Boston Neck, Barton's Point, and Bunker Hill which could not be expeditiously removed was to be spiked, and the carriages destroyed at the last moment.
Having their artillery and stores on board, the embarkation was fixed for the 14th; but, the wind being contrary, the troops remained in their quar- ters. On the 15th proclamation was made by the town-crier for the inhabitants to remain in their houses from eleven in the morning until dusk. At noon the troops got under arms, but the wind
1 General Howe made the safety of the town the guaranty of his own. The selectmen communicated to General Washington his purpose to destroy it if attacked. Without committing him- self, Washington allowed the inference that he would refrain from assaulting or not, according to his discretion.
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INVESTMENT OF BOSTON.
again came from an unfavorable quarter, postpon- ing the intended embarkation.
Washington had completed the battery on Nook's Hill on the 16th. This was an imperative notice to Sir William to quit the town without further delay. At four o'clock Sunday morning, it being the 17th of March, the British garrison of Boston silently and ingloriously went on board the ship- ping which was only waiting to receive it. By nine o'clock the whole were embarked and under way. About fifteen hundred of the inhabitants followed the fortunes of the royal army.
Bunker Hill was immediately taken possession of by the Americans, who found the army had left wooden sentinels standing at the abandoned posts. General Putnam having brought a portion of his troops in boats to Sewall's Point ordered them to cross the river to Boston. He himself repaired thither and assumed command of the town; while General Ward, with a column of five hundred men, under command of Colonel Learned, made their way from Roxbury though the deserted lines on Boston Neck. They found the streets encumbered with breastworks, barricades, and abatis. A dry ditch had been hastily dug across the neck, be- tween the outer and inner lines of works, a few days before the evacuation, in order further to impede the advance of an attacking column of insurgents. The town still being infected with small-pox, only sufficient troops were ordered in to furnish the necessary guards. All others were excluded until the 20th, when the whole army, except Heath's brigade, which had then marched for New York, made its triumphant entry with Washington at its head.
The few subsequent days were eventful ones for the Bostonians. Those who had remained during the siege testified the most extravagant joy on seeing the head of an American column enter the town. Those whom inclination, distress, or the policy of the British general had driven from their homes now crowded the streets, seeking ont lost relatives or hastening to their long-abandoned habitations. The town had suffered much at the hands of the besieged. Conflagration, demolition, fortifications, had sadly ruined and defaced it ; but the invaders were at length expelled, an American ensign floated over the province-house, and the first act in the great drama of revolution showed the cause of American liberty triumphing over the despotism which would forever have humbled and degraded it before nations.
The British fleet, with the army on board, dropped down the bay no farther than King's Road, before the Castle, where it remained a few days, during which the fortifications of the Castle were blown up and its armament rendered unserviceable. This being accomplished, the fleet procecded to Nautas- ket Road and again cast anchor. Several more days were occupied in getting in water and prepar- ing for sea. Washington viewed this period of delay with anxiety. He had yet no clew to the destination of the enemy, and could not venture further to weaken his army until his doubts were resolved. Finally, on the 27th, the fleet, with the exception of a few frigates left to keep up a show of blockading the port, set sail. As it stood to the northward and eastward, its destination was seen to be Halifax. Sullivan's brigade, therefore, marched for New York on the same day ; a third detachment moved on the 1st of April; and on the 4th General Spencer took the same route, with all the troops remaining, except five regiments placed under General Ward's orders for the protection of Boston. On this day also the commander-in-chief quitted Vassall House, in which he had passed nearly eight eventful months, and in which he had firmly established his title to be the head of the army.
In obedience to his instructions, Ward posted two regiments in Boston, one in the works at Dorchester, one in those at Charlestown, and the fifth at Beverly. These troops built defensive works on Fort Hill in Boston, Charlestown Point, and Noddle's Island, and restored the fortifications on Castle Island as far as possible. Much to the annoyance of the inhabitants, the blockading vessels continued in the lower harbor until June 14th, when, batteries having been raised on the islands commanding their anchorage, they too were forced to hoist sail and depart, so that now no hostile flag floated in town or harbor.
Historians will be divided in opinion as to whether Washington ought or ought not to have permitted Sir William Howe's leisurely and un- molested evacuation of the town. Beyond question it was in his power to have inflicted serious loss on the British army while in the act of being em- barked, but from considerations creditable to his humanity, if not to his military judgment, he re- frained from doing so. To have pushed matters to an extremity would doubtless have involved the destruction of the town; but whether its preserva- tion compensated for the defeat or destruction of
-
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HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
the British army is a question to be decided on military principles alone. Boston, it is true, was saved ; but Sir William Howe withdrew his armny without other loss than that of prestige, and Wash- ington had soon to mect and fight that army in another field. The capture of a large number of cannon and military stores which the enemy was forced to leave behind was, however, a substantial acquisition of great advantage to the meagre maga- zines of the investing army.
The works erected by our forces during the investment were subsequently levelled where they obstructed the highways, and their armaments re-
moved to the chain of forts built by Wash- ington for the defence of the Hudson. Time has almost wholly obliterated the traces of those intrenchments, but enough still remain to enable one familiar with the ground to fol- low the line throughout its entire length from Charlestown to City Point. It would be a pilgri- mage of great interest, one much enhanced in its profitable enjoyment, if all the principal sites were designated by appropriate monuments, however humble. Something has been done to carry out this object, but much more remains to do.
XXII.
EVENTS TO THE CLOSE OF THE CENTURY.
THE cloud of war which had so heavily brooded over the scene of our history since the memorable 19th of April, 1775, was suddenly lifted. During the long and sanguinary conflict which secured the independence of the American colonies no further warlike operations occurred upon the territory of Middlesex County. Upon the conclusion of the siege of Boston her citizens resumed their custom- ary avocations so far as the unsettled condition of the times permitted. Rumors of a new invasion, indeed, reached them from time to time, serving to keep alive the same unsettled feeling which for nearly twelve months had possessed the minds of the whole population.
The functions of government, assumed in the crisis by the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts, had now passed into more stable hands. Pursuant to the recommendation of the Continental Congress, the administration of the government of the colony was resumed after the ancient form, -by a council which acted as the executive, and a house of repre- sentatives which embodied the legislative power. The time for the election of a chief magistrate by the popular voice had not yet arrived. Upon the organization of the house of representatives the Provincial Congress, on the 19th of July, 1775, was formally dissolved, after an existence of more than ten months, during which it had not only ex- ercised the highest prerogatives of goverment, but
had stood like a wall between the people and their oppressors.
The Committee of Safety was, by a resolution of this congress, prolonged until the 30th of July, but with powers much more limited than it had previously exercised. The assumption of the army, its organization, conduct, and control, by the Con- tinental Congress, with the formation of a compe- tent staff to regulate and administer its various departments, rendered a further existence of the revolutionary committees of the colony unnecessary.
During the period of General Burgoyne's ad- vance, by Lake Champlain and the Upper Hudson, upon Albany, the inhabitants of Massachusetts were in great alarm. Many believed Boston to be the real object of this force, and the population of the country lying between the sea and the Hudson was much excited by the prospect of the enemy's march to the seaboard. The fall of the lake fortresses, the disastrous affair of Hubbardston, produced the greatest dejection. Large bodies of militia were hastily despatched to join the army of General Gates at Albany. News of the battle of Benning- ton raised the people from extreme prostration to the highest pitch of enthusiasm. This was followed by still greater intelligence. The surrender of Burgoyne's whole force at Saratoga was the signal for public and private rejoicing in every village and hamlet of the land. By the terms of capitulation,
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ETENTS TO THE CLOSE OF THE CENTURY.
the captive troops were marched to Cambridge, and were then quartered in barracks occupied by our own troops, during the siege, on Winter and Pros- pect hills in Somerville. Generals Burgoyne, Phillips, Riedesel, and Specht were assigned quar- ters in Cambridge. Here the British and Hessians remained until the summer of 1778, when they were removed to Rutland, and subsequently to Virginia. The extraordinary nature of the capitulation ac- corded by General Gates was a prolific cause of controversy between Generals Burgoyne and Phil- lips and General Heath, who commanded in Boston. For reasons which impartial history will be slow to approve, congress refused to carry the terms of the convention into effect. By its provisions, the de- feated troops were to be marched to a designated seaport and embarked for England. 1
While in the vicinity of Boston the convention troops were guarded by Middlesex militia. To officers and men the duty was anything but pleas- ing, for the prisoners, considering themselves vic- tims of a breach of public faith, were intractable and mutinous ; while the inhabitants were justly apprehensive that they would attempt to escape in a body, possess themselves of their own artillery, which was at Cambridge, and inaugurate a scene of bloodshed, anarchy, and pillage. With great relief, the population in the neighborhood of Bos- ton saw the prisoners leave their barracks on Pros- pect and Winter hills for the interior.
1 It is not generally known that England made serious over- tures to obtain from the Empress a body of Russian auxiliaries for the American War. The following extract of a letter from Edward Gibbon to J. B. Holroyd puts the matter in its true light : -
" BENTINCK STREET, October 14, 1775.
" I send yon two pieces of intelligence from the best authority, and which, unless you hear them from some other quarter, I do not wish you should talk much about. When the Russians arrive, (if they refresh themselves in England or Ireland,) will you go and see their camp ? We have great hopes of getting a body of these Barbarians. In consequence of some very plain advances, King George, with his own hand, wrote a very polite epistle to sister Kitty, requesting her friendly assistance. Full powers and instructions were sent at the same time to Gunning, to agree for any force between five, and twenty thousand men, carte blanche for the terms; on condition, however, that they should serve not as auxiliaries, but as mercenaries, and that the Russian general should be absolutely under the command of the British. They daily and hourly expect a messenger, and hope to hear that the business is concluded. The worst of it is that the Baltic will soon be frozen up, and that it must be late next year before they can get to America."
Eighteen thousand Germans were subsequently obtained from Hesse, Brunswick, and Hesse Darmstadt. Those captured at Bennington and Saratoga excited great curiosity while on the march to Cambridge.
The campaign of Rhode Island in 1778 was participated in by a portion of the Middlesex militia. Besides the calls to meet emergencies con- fronting themselves or their neighbors, there was a constant demand for recruits to fill the ranks of the Continental regiments. The fortunes of Washington's gallant little army were followed by . many brave officers and soldiers of Middlesex from Boston to Trenton, from Trenton to Monmouth, and from Monmouth to Yorktown.1
The Declaration of Independence, by decisively establishing a nationality, consolidated public opin- ion, which had hitherto been much divided upon the question of total separation from the Empire. This definite and conrageous assumption of the perils and responsibilities of government called for corresponding action on the part of the colonies. They had now only to erect the government of their choice; but a strong party still adhered to old forms and old traditions. Massachusetts, as early as 1778, attempted to form a constitution, by the action of her house of representatives, sit- ting as a convention ; but it was not until Septem- ber 1, 1779, that a body fresh from the people effected this highly important object. On that day a convention of delegates assembled at Cam- bridge. It continued by adjournments until March 2, 1780, when the work of framing a con- stitution was completed, and the result submitted to the people for their action. The instrument was duly ratified and became the organic law.
The first person to occupy the chair of governor was John Hancock, who, after seeing the opposition to Great Britain assume form and purpose in Mas- sachusetts, had been called to the more important position of president of the Continental Congress. As the head of this remarkable body of men, he was the first to affix his name to the immortal Declara- tion. He continued to hold the office of governor until 1785, when he was succeeded by James Bow- doin. In 1780 Carlisle and East Sudbury were constituted in Middlesex, the former as a district. In 1783, the year in which peace with Great Britain was concluded, Boxborough was also made a district.
1 Massachusetts furnished for the Revolution 67,097 soldiers, or more than the six Southern States of Georgia, North and South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware. She fur- nished more than New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania com- bined, although the population of the latter province nearly equalled her own. The last surviving revolutionary pensioner of Middlesex was John Goodnow, born in Sudbury, in 1762, living in 1864, at the great age of 102 years.
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HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
Peace with Great Britain did not bring with it domestic tranquillity. The birth of the new com- monwealth was signalized by civil commotions, which threatened to extinguish its brief and feeble existence almost as soon as that existence had announced itself. At the conclusion of the war everything in the new state tended towards anar- chy. This history is not less regrettable than true. The price of liberty achieved was now con- templated with something like terror. With a state debt of more than three million pounds, every town embarrassed by its efforts to furnish its quotas of men or supplies for the army, every individual embarrassed by the unheard-of depreciation of the currency and by the total decay of private credit, the situation was more than alarming.
The demands of public and private creditors which the war had postponed, or the suspension of the courts had rendered it impracticable to sat- isfy by judicial remedy, now became urgent in proportion as the means of payment decreased. Landholders wished the burdens thrown upon commerce. Commerce demanded a more equita- ble distribution of those burdens ; she would not consent to be destroyed for the benefit of the agri- cultural class. Recourse was had to imposts and excise, but these methods could afford only partial relief, and could not put off the day of the old and dreaded mode of taxation. The tax-gatherers were able to collect only a moiety of the tax, - while the state, distressed for the means of carrying on its government, was hypothecating the tax to its creditors in advance of collection.
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The attempt to collect private debts by recourse to the courts created a war between debtor and creditor, - a war of classes. Rich and poor were thus arrayed against each other. Under such eon- ditions it was not difficult for a few dangerous or designing men to inaugurate the idea of forcible resistance to the sitting of the courts, in order to prevent the issuing of executions. There is no other name than madness for the frenzy that seized upon a large portion of the people of Massachu- setts, -- a people who had just made such heroic efforts for political independence, and who had borne so honorable a share in its accomplishment. The evils which an impoverished population, with- out money and without credit, were called upon to encounter, were truly great ; but they were mag- nified by the artful, and the passions of the ignorant inflamed, until a dangerous crisis was forced upon the law-abiding inhabitants of the commonwealth,
On the 22d of August, 1786, during the incum- bency of Governor Bowdoin, a delegate conven- tion from fifty towns of Hampshire County assem- bled at Hatfield, and continued by adjournment until the 25th. The catalogue of grievances for which the people of Hampshire demanded redress through the General Court was : the existence of the senate; the mode of representation; the offi- cers of government not being dependent on the representatives alone for their salaries; all civil officers not being elected by the General Court ; the existence of the courts of Common Pleas and General Sessions of the Peace ; the fee-table; the mode of apportioning impost and excise; unrea- sonable grants to certain officers of government ; the supplementary aid granted to the United States ; the mode of paying government securities ; state taxes and their collection ; the unequal mode of laying taxation upon landed and mercantile interests ; the method and practice of attorneys at law; the want of a sufficient medium of trade ; the sessions of the General Court in the town of. Boston. To this formidable arraignment of law- makers and law-givers, of the political, judicial, and financial systems of the state, the convention added its recommendation to the towns to instruct their representatives to vote for an emission of paper money to be a legal-tender for the payment of the commonwealth's securities. A revision of the state constitution was also demanded ; and a eall made for the governor immediately to convene the General Court, in order to take steps for the redress of the grievances enumerated.
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