USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Old landmarks and historic fields of Middlesex > Part 15
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We obtain the following account of the manner in which the Convention troops were quartered at Rutland from the state- ment of one of the prisoners :-
" Here we were confined in a sort of pen or fence, which was con- structed in the following manner : A great number of trees were ordered to be cut down in the woods. These were sharpened at each end and drove firmly into the earth, very close together, en- closing a space of about two or three acres. American sentinels were planted on the outside of this fence, at convenient distances, in order to prevent our getting out. At one angle a gate was erected, and on the outside thereof stood the guard-house. Two sentinels were con-
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stantly posted at this gate, and no one could get out unless he had a pass from the officer of the guard ; but this was a privilege in which very few were indulged. Boards and nails were given the British, in order to make them temporary huts to secure them from the rain and the heat of the sun. The provisions were rice and salt pork, delivered with a scanty hand. The officers were allowed to lodge in the farm-houses which lay contiguous to the pen ; they were per- mitted likewise to come in amongst their men for the purpose of roll-call and other matters of regularity."
On the 9th November, 1778, the British and Germans, in accordance with a resolve of Congress, began their march for Virginia in six divisions, each of which was accompanied by an American escort. Each nationality formed a division. The first English division consisted of the artillery, grenadiers, and light infantry, and the 9th (Taylor's) regiment, under command of Lieutenant-Colonel Hill. The second English division con- sisted of the 20th (Parr's) and 21st (Hamilton's) regiments, commanded by Major Forster; and the third, composed of the 24th (Fraser's), 47th (Nesbitt's), and 62d (Anstruther's) regiments, were under the command of Brigadier Hamilton. The first German division consisted of the dragoons, grenadiers, and the regiment Von Rhetz, under Major Von Mengen. In the second division were the regiments Von Riedesel and Von Specht, led by General Specht ; the third was made up of the Barner Battalion, the regiment Hesse Hanau, and the artillery, under Brigadier Gall. The divisions marched respectively on the 9th, 10th, and 11th, keeping one day in advance of each other on the route. Burgoyne having been permitted to return to England, General Phillips was in command of all the Con- vention troops. He had been placed in arrest by General Heath for using insulting expressions in connection with Lieutenant Brown's death, but Gates, who now succeeded to the command, relieved the fiery Briton from his disability.
The story of the sojourn of the British army in the interior of Massachusetts closes with a domestic tragedy. Bathsheba Spooner was the daughter of that tough old tory, Brigadier Ruggles, of Sandwich, Massachusetts, who fought with Sir
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William Johnson in 1755. He had been at the head of the bench of the Court of Common Pleas, and a delegate to the Congress of 1765, where his course subjected him to reprimand from the Massachusetts House. In 1774 he was a Mandamus Councillor, and in the following year, after taking refuge in the then tory asylum of Boston, he attempted to raise a loyal corps there, of which Howe appointed him commandant. In some respects Ruggles was not unlike Putnam, - he was brave and impetuous. Like him, also, he was a tavern-keeper; but he wanted the love of country and rough good-humor which made every one admire Old Put.
Bathsheba proved to be a sort of female Borgia. Her husband, Joshua Spooner, was a respected citizen of Brookfield, Massa- chusetts. His wife, who had conceived a lawless passion for another, found in William Brooks and James Buchanan - soldiers of Burgoyne - two instruments fit for her bloody pur- pose. She employed them to murder her husband, which they did without remorse. The murderess, her two assassins, and another participant were tried, convicted, and executed at Worcester in July, 1778, for the crime. There is not in the criminal annals of Massachusetts a more horrible and repulsive record than this trial affords. For such a deed we can but think of the invocation of Lady Macbeth :-
" Come, come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here ; And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full Of direst cruelty ! make thick my blood, Stop up the access and passage to remorse, That no compunctious visitings of nature Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between The effect and it !"
Buchanan, one of the criminals, is supposed to be the same who was a corporal in the 9th regiment. He had been a leader in the mutiny on Prospect Hill, and was in arrest at the time of the Henley trial. In taking leave for the present of the Convention troops, we recall the pertinent inquiry : "Who would have thought that Mr. Burgoyne's declaration would have been so soon verified when he said in Parliament that at
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the head of five thousand troops he would march through the continent of America ?"
The remains of the works on Prospect Hill may still be fol- lowed, with here and there a loss of continuity where houses have been built, or the original level cut away so as to conform to a certain grade. We found little difficulty in pursuing the entire line from the redoubt near the new High School on Central Hill, which terminated the defences on this side, to the extreme summit of Mount Prospect, where stood the citadel.
The ground in the vicinity of the High School is upheaved into mounds, which evidently formed a part of the old redoubt. The line of the ditch can still be traced to where it is crossed by Highland Avenue. Beyond here, again, the intrenchment still remains breast-high, with a well-defined fosse, in which trees are growing. At this point a stone with a brief inscrip- tion would in future call to remembrance the site of the intrenchment.
Leaving this, the northerly of the two eminences of Prospect Hill, we pass on to the extreme summit, where an enchanting view bursts upon the sight. The homes of half a million of people are before you. The tall chimneys of East Cambridge, the distant steeples of the city and of its lesser satellites, whose hands are grasped across the intervening river, form a won- drous and instructive exhibition of that prosperity which our fathers battled to secure.
Could the shades of those who by day and by night kept watch and ward on this embattled height once again revisit the scene of their trials and their triumphs, we could scarcely ex- pect them to recognize in the majestic, dome-crowned city the gray old town which they beheld through the morning mists of a century gone by, or even to identify the winding river on whose bosom lay moored the hostile shipping, and from whose black sides,
"Sullen and silent, and like couchant lions, Their cannon through the night,
Holding their breath, had watched in grim defiance The sea-coast opposite."
.
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The relics of the ancient citadel and its outworks are plainly marked, though in some places mere drifts of earth give the contour. Thick and solid must have been the ramparts to have endured the storms of ninety odd years, and even now they are to fall at the command of improvement before their outline has been beaten back by the elements into the earth from which they sprung.
On all sides the hill is being digged down, and erelong Put- nam's and Greene's strong fortress will have melted away. The hill would have been in all time a favorite resort, which good taste might have converted into a beautiful park. The site is wanted for building, and, no voice potent enough being raised to arrest its destruction, this bold headland of the Revolution, so remarkable for its height and its associations, must fall. We bid a reluctant adieu to Mount Prospect.
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CHAPTER VIII.
OLD CHARLESTOWN ROAD, LECHMERE'S POINT, AND PUTNAM'S HEADQUARTERS.
" Poor Tommy Gage within a cage Was kept at Boston ha', man, Till Willie Howe took o'er the knowe For Philadelphia, man."
O F the many whose custom it is to pass over the high-road leading from Charlestown to Cambridge Common it is likely that few are aware that they follow the course over which condemned criminals were once transported for execution. Its antecedents may not be as prolific of horrors as the way from Newgate to Tyburn, which counts a life for every rod of the journey, but its consequence as one of the most frequented highways of colonial days caused its selection for an exhibition which chills the blood, and carries us back within view of the atrocious judicial punishments of the Dark Ages.
To kill was not enough. The law was by no means satisfied with the victim's life. The poor human shell must be hacked or mangled with all the savagery which barbarous ingenuity could devise ; and at last Justice erected her revolting sign by the public highway, where the decaying corse of the victim creaked in a gibbet, as it mournfully obeyed the behest of the night-wind. Gibbeting, burning, impaling, have all a precedent in New England, of which let us relate an incident or two.
In the year 1749 a fire broke out in Charlestown, destroying some shops and other buildings belonging to Captain John Codman, a respectable citizen and active military officer. It transpired that Captain Codman had been poisoned by his negro servants, Mark, Phillis, and Phœbe, who were favorite domestics, and that the arson was committed to destroy the 8
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evidence of the crime. The man had procured arsenic and the women administered it. Mark was hanged, and Phillis was burnt at the usual place of execution in Cambridge. Phœbe, who was said to have been the most culpable, became evidence against the others. She was transported to the West Indies. The body of Mark was suspended in irons on the northerly side of Cambridge road, now Washington Street, a little west of and very near the stone quarry now there. The gibbet remained until a short time before the Revolution, and is mentioned by Paul Revere as the place where he was intercepted by a patrol of British officers on the night he carried the news of the march of the regulars to Lexington. A specimen of one of these bar- barous engines of cruelty may be seen in the Boston Museum. It was brought from Quebec, and looks as though it might have been put to horrid purpose.
This was, in all probability, the latest occurrence of burning and NIX'S MATE. gibbeting in Massachusetts. Earlier it was not uncommon to condemn malefactors of the worst sort to be hung in chains. As long ago as 1726 the bodies of the pirates, William Fly, Samuel Cole, and Henry Greenville, were taken after execution to Nix's Mate, in Boston harbor, where the remains of Fly were sus- pended in chains ; the others were buried on the island, which then contained several acres. Hence the superstitious awe with which the place is even now regarded by mariners, and which the disappearance of the island has served so firmly to establish.
We must confess that while our humanity revolts at these barbarous usages of our ancestors, we cannot but admit that punishment followed crime in their day with a certainty by no means paralleled in our own. The severity of the code, the infliction of death for petty crimes, we must abhor and con- demn ; but we may still contrast that state of things, in which the criminal's life was held so cheaply, with the present time,
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in which condemned malefactors repose on luxuriant couches, while the law jealously guards them from the penalty of crime, and justice, uncertain of itself, repeals its sentence and sets the guilty free. To something we must attribute the startling increase of crime. Can it be the laxity of the law ?
Thomas Morton, the Merry Andrew of Mount Wollaston, relates, in his New English Canaan, an occurrence which, he says, happened to Weston's colony, in what is now Weymouth ; and upon this slight foundation Hudibras built his humorous account of the hanging of a weaver for the crime of which a cobbler had been adjudged guilty : --
" Our brethren of New England use Choice mal-factors to excuse, And hang the guiltless in their stead, Of whom the churches have less need ; As lately happened."
Morton's story goes that, one of Weston's men having stolen corn from an Indian, a parliament of all the people was called to decide what punishment should be inflicted. It was agreed that the crime was a felony under the laws of England, and that the culprit must suffer death. Upon this a person arose and harangued the assembly. He proposed that as the accused was young and strong, fit for resistance against an enemy, they should take the young man's clothes and put them upon some old, bedridden person, near to the grave, and hang him in the stead of the other. Although Morton says the idea was well liked by the multitude, he admits that the substitution was not. made, and that the course of justice was allowed to take effect upon the real offender.
Branding was not an unusual punishment in former times. A marine belonging to one of his Majesty's ships lying in Bos- ton harbor, in 1770, being convicted of manslaughter, was immediately branded in the hand and dismissed. Mont- gomery and Killroy, convicted of the same crime for participa- tion in the 5th of March massacre, were also branded in the same manner.
Directly in front of Mount Prospect, of which it is a lesser
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satellite, is the hill on which is situated the Asylum for the Insane, named for noble John McLean. During the siege this elevation was indifferently called Miller's and Cobble Hill, and subsequently Barrell's Hill, from Joseph Barrell of Boston, whose superb old mansion is still standing there.
The work on Cobble Hill was laid out by General Putnam and Colonel Knox. It was begun on the night of November 22, 1775, and was considered, when completed, the best speci- men of military engineering the Americans could yet boast of, - receiving the name of Put- nam's impregna- ble fortress. To Washington's great surprise, he was allowed to finish the work without the least interruption from the enemy.
Cobble Hill was within point-blank range of the enemy's lines on Bunker Hill, and the post was designed to command the ferry between Boston and Charlestown, as well as to pre- vent the enemy's vessels of war from moving up the river at pleasure, - a result fully accomplished by arming the fort with 18 and 24 pounders.
As Colonel Knox had a principal share in laying out the fort on Cobble Hill, the only one of the works around Boston he is certainly known to have designed, the eminence should retain some association with the name of this distinguished soldier of the Revolution.
At the time he quitted Boston to repair to the American camp, Knox rented of Benjamin Harrod a store in old Cornhill (now the site of the "Globe " newspaper), who readily con-
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sented that Knox's goods might remain there, in the belief that his tory connections - he had lately married the daughter of Secretary Flucker - would be a safeguard for both. The store, however, was rifled by the British, and the landlord put in a claim against Knox for the time it was shut up, which Knox indignantly refused to allow. After the evacuation, William Knox, brother of the general, continued the business of a book- seller at the same stand.
When the Revolution began, Knox was a lieutenant of the Boston Grenadiers, commanded by Thomas Dawes, with the rank of major. Dawes was an officer of activity and address, and had exerted himself to bring the militia to a high standard of excellence. The presence of some of the best regiments in the British service offered both a model and incentive for these efforts. The company was composed of mechanics and profes- sional men, selected with regard to their height and martial bearing, no member being under five feet ten inches, and many six feet in height. Joseph Peirce was a lieutenant with Knox, and Lemuel Trescott (afterwards a distinguished officer in the Massachusetts line) was orderly-sergeant. The company made a splendid appearance on parade, and Knox was considered a re- markably fine-looking officer. So at least thought one young lady, who, it is said, became captivated with her tall grenadier through those broad avenues to the female heart, admiration and pity, and by the following circumstance : -
Harry Knox had been out gunning some time previous, when the piece he carried, bursting in his hands, occasioned the loss of several of his fingers. "He made his appearance in the company," says Captain Henry Burbeck, "with the wound handsomely bandaged with a scarf, which, of course, excited the sympathy of all the ladies. I recollect the circumstance as well as though it had only happened yesterday. I stood at the head of Bedford Street and saw them coming up."
It is probable that Lucy Flucker was a frequent visitor to Knox's shop, for he reckoned the cream of the old Bostonians, as well as the debonair officers of his Majesty's army and fleet, among his customers. Longman was his London correspondent,
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and that arch-knave, Rivington, his New York ally in trade; be it known that New York relied on Boston chiefly for its advices from England before the Revolution. There is evidence that the affair of Knox and Miss Flucker was a love-match not sanctioned by her family. Lucy Flucker, with a true woman's faith and self-devotion, espoused the cause and embraced the fortunes of her husband. She followed him to the camp and to the field.
Knox's great reputation as an. officer of artillery had its beginning here before Boston. He succeeded Gridley in the command of the Massachusetts regiment of artillery, a regiment of which Paddock's company formed the nucleus, and of which some twenty members became commissioned officers in the army of the Revolution. That company nobly responded when Joseph Warren demanded of them how many could be counted on to serve in the Army of Constitutional Liberty when it should take the field. And David Mason, who had raised the company, subsequently Paddock's, made no effort to obtain promotion for himself, but declared his willingness to serve under Knox, if the latter could be appointed colonel of the artillery.
Knox became very early a favorite with Washington. We know not whether the general-in-chief was of Cæsar's way of thinking, but it is certain Knox would have fulfilled the Roman's desire when he exclaims from his heart : -
" Let me have men about me that are fat ; Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights."
We have seen that Washington told Greene he meant to keep Knox near him. On the other hand, Knox loved and revered his commander as a son. At that memorable leave- taking at Francis's tavern in New York, which no American can read without emotion, the General, after his few, touching words of farewell, invites his comrades to take him by the hand. "Knox, being nearest, turned to him. Incapable of utterance, Washington, in tears, grasped his hand, embraced, and kissed ' him. In the same affectionate manner he took
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leave of each succeeding officer." History does not record such another scene as this.
Wilkinson says Knox facilitated the passage of the Delaware before Trenton by his stentorian lungs and extraordinary exer- tions. He was in the front at Monmouth, placing his pieces at a critical moment where they stemmed the British onset and restored the battle. But Harry Knox " won his spurs " by his successful exertions in removing the artillery from Crown Point to the camp at Cambridge. At one time failure stared him in the face. The advanced season and contrary winds were near preventing the transportation of his ponderous treasures across the lake. The bateaux were rotten, and some, after being loaded with infinite difficulty, either sunk or let the cannon through their leaky bottoms. With joy at last Knox saw his efforts crowned with success. He writes to Washington, " Three days ago it was very uncertain whether we could have gotten them until next spring, but now, please God, they must go."
The cannon and mortars were loaded on forty-two strong sleds, and were dragged slowly along by eighty yoke of oxen, the route being from Fort George to Kinderhook, and from thence, via Great Barrington, to Springfield, where fresh cattle were provided. The roads were bad, and suitable carriages could not be had, so that the train could not proceed without snow. Fortunately the roads became passable, and the sin- gular procession wound its tedious way through the moun- tains of Western Massachusetts and down to the sea. "We shall cut no small figure in going through the country with our cannon, mortars, &c., drawn by eighty yoke of oxen," says Knox.
General Knox, notwithstanding his later pecuniary diffi- culties, in which some of his best friends were unfortunately involved, was the soul of honor. When the war broke out he was in debt to Longman and other London creditors to a con- siderable amount, but at the peace he paid the greater part of these debts in full. Well might Mrs. Knox, after her bereave- ment, speak of " his enlarged soul, his generous heart, his
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gentleness of demeanor, and his expansive benevolence." He deserved it all.
When the General became a resident of Boston again, ten years after he had quitted it for the service, he was a tenant of Copley's house on Beacon Hill. He was then very fat, and wore in summer a high-crowned Leghorn hat, a very full shirt- frill, and usually carried a green umbrella under his arm. His injured hand was always wrapped in a silk handkerchief, which he was in the habit of unwinding when he stopped to speak with any one. Knox County and Knoxville in East Tennessee were named for the General while Secretary of War.
Mrs. Knox was a fine horsewoman. She was affable and gracious to her equals, but was unbending and unsocial with her inferiors, so that when her husband went to live in his elegant home at Thomaston, Maine, she found the society but little congenial. Her winters were chiefly passed in Boston, among her former friends, where she was often to be seen at the evening parties. When at home the General and lady re- ceived many notable guests, and many are the absurd stories still related of the General's prodigality. Mrs. Knox is said to have had a penchant for play, which, it must be remembered, was the rule and not the exception of fashionable society in her day. To show to what extent this practice prevailed in the good old town of Boston in 1782, we give the testimony of the high-bred Marquis Chastellux, to whom such scenes were familiar : -
" They made me play at whist, for the first time since my arrival in America. The cards were English, that is, much hand- somer and dearer than ours, and we marked our points with Louis d'ors. When the party was finished the loss was not difficult to settle ; for the company was still faithful to that voluntary law estab- lished in society from the commencement of the troubles, which pro- hibited playing for money during the war. This law, however, was not scrupulously observed in the clubs and parties made by the men themselves. The inhabitants of Boston are fond of high play, and it is fortunate, perhaps, that the war happened when it did to moderate this passion, which began to be attended with dangerous consequences."
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When General Knox was with the army under Washington, in the neighborhood of New York, his wife remained at a cer- tain town in Connecticut, awaiting an opportunity of rejoining her husband after the event of the campaign should be decided. Mrs. Knox had for a companion the wife of another Massa- chusetts officer. The person who let his house for a short time to the ladies asserted that, after their departure, twenty-five gal- lons of choice old rum which he had in his cellar, and of which Mrs. Knox had the key, were missing.
It is not a little curious that while the splendid seat erected by Knox after the war, at Thomaston, which he named Mont- pelier, has been demolished, the old wooden house in Boston in which the General was born is still standing on Federal Street (old Sea Street) opposite Drake's Wharf, - that part of Boston being formerly known as Wheeler's Point. General Heath says in his memoirs that, being well acquainted with Knox before the war, he urged him to join the American army, but that Knox's removal out of Boston and the state of his do- mestic concerns required some arrangement, which he effected as soon as possible, and then joined his countrymen.
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