USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Pittsfield > The history of Pittsfield (Berkshire County), Massachusetts, from the year 1734 to the year 1800 > Part 21
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In the latter part of October, the Provincial Congress took measures to impart vigor to the militia ; and, among other recom- mendations, advised companies which had not completed their organization to do so at once, and that the captains and subal- terns then forthwith choose field-officers.
Under this advice, James Easton - the deacon of our previous story - became colonel of the Berkshire militia; Col. Williams's royal commission being set aside for one with a seal much less exquisitely cut. At the same time, two regiments of minute-men were put in effective readiness to take the field on the most sudden alarm, - one in the northern and middle section of the county, under Col. John Patterson of Lenox; the other in the south, under Col. John Fellows of Sheffield : both the commanders being members of the Provincial Congress, and afterwards reputa- ble brigadiers.
Capt. Noble's company of Pittsfield and Richmond men, in Col. Patterson's regiment, continued to increase in numbers and disci- pline ; and, before it was called into service, numbered fifty-one men from the former town, twenty-one from the latter, all well drilled, armed, and equipped. Pittsfield voted in January to pay each man from that town who enlisted in this " Piquet " company one shilling and sixpence a day; "he equipping and furnishing himself with proper and sufficient arms and accoutrements fit for war, and standing ready at a minute's warning to march and oppose the enemies of the country if called thereto." Every minute-man was required to appear and exercise for three hours, four times a
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month, on penalty of a fine of three shillings for every neglect to do so, for which an excuse "satisfactory to the officers of said Piquet" was not furnished. The annual meeting in March continued this establishment of the company "till further orders."
The company was, however, indebted for its arms and equip- ments to the generous enthusiasm of its commander, - one of the most splendid displays of patriotism in the Revolutionary story of Pittsfield. Capt. Noble, in the alarm of September, went to Boston, and there became more thoroughly impressed with the imminence of the conflict, and the necessity of the earliest prep- aration for it. Upon his return, he sold two farms in Stephentown, N.Y., and one or two in Pittsfield, receiving pay, for the former at least, in gold, - a circumstance which his son was enabled to recollect in his old age, from the fact that the purchaser brought the coin to Pittsfield quilted into every part of his under-garments, from which the narrator's aunt had a serious task in ripping the glittering pieces.
With the money obtained by this sacrifice of his property, Capt. Noble supplied his company with one hundred and thirty stand of arms, and uniformed them in neat and substantial "regimentals ; " their breeches being of buckskin, and their coats "of blue, turned up with white." To obtain the material for these, he went to Philadelphia, where he also hired a breeches-maker, who returned with him to Pittsfield; and the uniforms were made up during the winter at his own house.1
The company, thus generously equipped, drilled with corre- sponding zeal, and acquired an efficiency which was soon called into exercise.
Nor was the patriotic activity of the town confined to Capt. Noble and his minute-men. In almost every family, excepting the fifteen or twenty Tory households, all were busy in fitting out
1 No repayment was ever made of the sums expended by Capt. Noble for the support of his company at this or other times; but, in 1841, his heirs presented to Congress a claim for the seven-years' half-pay granted to the widows and children of officers who died in the service. This claim, although favorably reported upon, was postponed by technical impediments until 1858, when it was allowed upon a report, full of patriotic sympathies, made by Hon. H. L. Dawes of Pittsfield, from the Committee upon Revolutionary Claims; to which we are indebted for many of the facts given in this volume concerning Capt. Noble.
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the young soldiery for the field ; so that, for one campaign at least, something of the comfort of home might be communicated to the camp. That winter saw bnsier scenes than were ever before wit- nessed even in New-England kitchens; while the click of the loom and the hnm of the spinning-wheel made music harmonious with that of the drum and fife. Then (for in 1774 no thousand-spin- dled factories clothed armies by contract) there were "spinning- matches " and " clothing-bees;" parties of " the fair daughters of Pittsfield"-the married against the single, the West against the East Part, dames, or however the match might be made up- con- tending for the palm in those now lost domestic arts; the product going to clothe the army. And the laughter, although louder and more frequent than when such gatherings had been held in token of good will to the minister, had an undertone which showed that none were cheated of their forebodings. Then the village pastor - the very embodiment of patriotic ardor, but full of the tenderest sympathies for the suffering which must needs be that the right might prevail - went from gathering to gathering, and from house to house, and everywhere left a new sense of the holiness which invested the impending strife for liberty.
In measures of preparation like these, the Pittsfield patriots passed that anxious winter; and, when the call to arms came, it found them ready. The news of the battle of Lexington - or, more probably, the alarm set on foot by Paul Revere on the night preceding the "excursion of the king's troops"-reached Pitts- field on the 21st of April, at noon ; 1 and at sunrise the next morn- ing, Capt. Noble's minute-men, the flower of the youth of Pitts- field and Richmond, were, with the regiment to which they were attached, on their march to Cambridge. Dr. Timothy Childs was one of its lieutenants,2 but was soon detailed as surgeon ; and the commissioned officers became, Capt. David Noble, First Lieut. Jo- seph Welch of Richmond, Second Lieut. Josiah Wright of Pittsfield. In this form the company served for twenty-six weeks. Col. Pat-
1 Tradition, with its usual inaccuracy, makes this date the 20th, which is physi- cally impossible. Revere's alarm, starting from Boston in the evening preceding " the excursion of the king's troops," as the Provincials called the affair in quaint derision, could have barely reached Pittsfield on the noon of the 21st; and the rolls of the minute-men date their service from the 22d.
2 His father, of the same name, commanded the minute-men who at the same time set out from Deerfield.
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terson's regiment was then re-organized, a majority of the men enlisting for a term of eight months; Capt. Noble's company re- taining its officers. Dr. Childs was made regimental surgcon ; and Dr. Jonathan Lee, also of Pittsfield, and a brother-in-law of Rev. Mr. Allen, was associated with him as assistant, and afterwards succeeded him as full surgeon.
The Pittsfield Tories, although, after the passage of the regu- lating acts had unmasked the designs of the British Government, ceasing to be a power in town-meetings, continued to be a source of annoyance and aların. Rev. Mr. Allen, in a letter of May 4, 1775, to Col. Seth Pomeroy, characterized them as among "the worst in the Province:" an opinion which was, however, probably colored by the excitement of the hour. Other towns would, doubtless, in the vexation of their troubles, have put in a similar clain for their black sheep. Still, the position of the town upon the doubtful frontier of Columbia County (then King's Dis- triet), which was supposed to harbor several "nests of Tories," rendered it unsafe to tolerate any of their complexion in politics, and compelled the utmost rigor against them on the part of the committees.
As early as December, 1774, Woodbridge Little and Israel Stod- dard were charged with disaffection " to all the + measures into which the people in general were coming." It was proved that they had opposed, and refused to sign, " The League and Covenant," which alone was sufficient, under the resolutions of the Continental Congress, to stamp them "the enemies of American liberty ;" and they, further, confessed that they had advised a meeting of loyalists, who applied to them for counsel, to send their names to Gen. Gage, - to become " addressers," - in order to secure their property from confiscation in the anticipated hour of British and Tory vengeance. " As for themselves," they had declared, when giving this counsel, " no such precaution was necessary, as they were already well known to Gage as sufferers for Toryism." The not unnatural in- ference was, that they were in seeret communication with the governor, and constantly conveying information to him of the revo- Intionary movements in which their neighbors were engaged. The town, therefore, on the second of January, "passed in full the writing of complaint against Woodbridge Little, Esq., and Major Stoddard." The latter thereupon took refuge in the city of New York; and "on the same night the news came of the Lexington
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battle, the said Little took his flight to Kinderhook, the place of Tories, and thence to New York," where he joined his friend. The "hue and cry" was raised upon them; and Little, venturing to Albany, was recognized through the advertisement, and, after being imprisoned a while in the City Hall, was sent home. Here he was put under keepers until Stoddard returned, preferring to trust himself to the mercy of his townsmen, rather than endure further exile, and risk the confiscation of his estate. Having then been again brought before the committee, and convicted of being un- friendly to the common cause, "they humbly confessed their faults, asked forgiveness, and promised reformation." After this ex- perience, " they seemed awed from open acts of inimical conduct, but did not at all times satisfy the people that they were the true friends of the American cause ; but associated among themselves, and others of the town and elsewhere of the same kidney, and not with people in general." 1
Moses Graves and Elisha Jones, whose sympathies with the ene- mies of their country were more pronounced and practical than
1 Report of the committees to the General Court in 1776 (Mass. Ar. vol. Ivi. p. 193). Some of the evidence adduced against Major Stoddard in this report, we have not alluded to in the text, as it does not clearly appear to have been a part of the same upon which the verdict of 1775 was framed, or to have been necessary to its conclusions. Indeed, if the expressions reported by the witnesses to have been used by him had been believed by his townsmen to represent his genuine senti- ments, they would have found no room for forgiveness. They probably regarded the language which he was proved to have used as- what it doubtless was - the ebullition of a bitter partisan in a towering passion ; and, although it proved him a virulent Tory, by no means convicted him of cool approval of the atrocities threatened. The evidence is, however, a part of the picture of the times, and is essential to its truthfulness. As such we quote it :-
"The evidence of William Cady, of lawful age, and sober life and conversation : testi- fyeth, that, just before the Lexington battle, he saw Israel Stoddard Esq. ; heard him say that those minute-men would not fight; if they were called, they would not go, for they would not engage in so bad a cause; if they did go, that they would all be killed; that they had no courage; that there was a plan laid to have them all cut off; said that the enemy could cut off our people by spreading the small-pox; said there was nothing too bad for the Whigs; said Stoddard held up his hands, and thanked God he was not a Whig. Joseph Chamberlain testified that sometime since these troubles came upon us, he heard Israel Stoddard say, he knew where the regulars would strike upon ye countrie, for he heard from them every day. . . . Capt. Zebulon Norton had heard Stod- dard say, that the people would all be sorry they signed the covenant; that they would all lose their estates; that the regulars would come on our front, and the Indians in our rear, aud it would be easy to subdue us."
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were those of Little and Stoddard, were, in the latter part of April, committed to Northampton jail, where they remained until July, when Graves was released upon hollow professions of repentance, only to get himself into trouble again in 'December; being drummed out of the town of Westfield for loud-mouthed Toryism, and sent home to be disciplined in his own precinct. Jones was also released, joined the King's army, and suffered confiscation of his estate.
The annual town-meeting in March manifested the peculiarities of the times. It was voted, first, to take the Province law as the guide of the meeting, ignoring the regulating act. No money was appropriated for schools. The votes before noted, regarding taxes and the continued pay of the minute-men, were passed. Col. Williams, Deacon Wright, Matthew Barber, Aaron Baker, Jacob Ensign, and James D. Colt were chosen War- dens, and appointed "a committee to take care of disorderly persons."
Israel Dickinson, Josiah Wright, Wm. Francis, Col. Easton, and Capt. Goodrich were elected selectmen; and Capt. Dickinson was also made town-clerk and treasurer.
John Brown being employed on other service, Capt. Charles Goodrich was chosen delegate to the Provincial Congress to be held at Concord, March 22.
In the mean time, Rev. Mr. Allen was active in advocating Whig doctrines in King's District ; speaking at Canaan, Kinderhook, Claverack, and elsewhere, to the delight of the radical patriots and the vehement displeasure of their opponents, against whom he advised the strongest measures, including a confiscation of debts due them to the Continental treasury.
With regard to his own movements, and the general state of affairs in his vicinity, he wrote to Gen. Pomeroy on the 9th as follows : -
" Our militia this way, sir, are vigorously preparing for actual readiness. Adjacent towns and this town are buying arms and ammunition. As yet, there are plenty of arms to be sold at Albany ; but we hear, that, by order of the Major, etc., no powder is to be sold there for the present. The spirit of liberty runs high at Albany, as you have doubtless heard by their own post to our headquarters. I have exerted myself to spread the same spirit in King's District; which has, of late, taken a surprising effect. The poor
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Tories at Kinderhook are mortified and grieved, are wheeling about, and begin to take the quick-step. New-York Government begins to be alive in the glorious cause, and to act with great vigor."
Thus determined, self-sacrificing, and indefatigable, were the patriots of Pittsfield in that era of preparation for the Revolu- tionary struggle.
CHAPTER XII. PITTSFIELD IN ETHAN ALLEN'S TICONDEROGA CAPTURE,
[DECEMBER - JUNE, 1775.]
John Brown in the Provincial Congress. - On the Canada Committee. - Selected to go to Canada. - Perilous Journey. - Report of his Mission. - Recommends the early Capture of Ticonderoga. - Arranges it with Ethan Allen. - Connec- ticut plans the Capture. - Connection of the two Schemes. - The Commis- sioners visit Pittsfield: - John Brown and Col. Easton join the Party. - Its Plans modified on their Suggestion. - Col. Easton raises Men for the Expedi- tion. - Councils of War in Vermont. - Rank of the Officers fixed. - Ethan Allen. - Benedict Arnold claims the Command, and is resisted. - Important Letter from Arnold. - Allen captures the Fort. - Easton and Brown announce the Victory to the Continental and Provincial Congresses. - Reports of Col. Allen and Capt. Mott. - The great Services of the Pittsfield Officers officially acknowledged .- Malignant Course of Arnold. - He receives Troops, captures a King's Sloop, and sets up a rival Command. - Is placed under Col. Hinman of Connecticut by the Provincial Congress, and resigns. - Col. Easton ap- pointed to fill the Vacancy. - John Brown commissioned Major. - Arnold embezzles the Pay of Capt. James Noble's Pittsfield Company.
N the 6th of December, 1774, the Provincial Congress appointed, as a committee to open a correspondence with Canada, and obtain frequent intelligence of movements there, Major Hawley, Col. Seth Pomeroy, John Brown, Sam. Adams, Dr. Warren, and Dr. Church:1 The selection of so many eminent men showed the magnitude which Congress attributed to the business assigned them ; and the committee also recognized it by intrusting to one of its own members the difficult and dangerous task of personally sounding the disposition of the Canadians, instituting a revolutionary party among them, and organizing a
1 Jour. Prov. Cong., p. 59.
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system of secret communication with its leaders. John Brown's selection for this mission was dne not less to his admirable diplomatie qualities, and the cool daring which in no emergency left them at fault, than to that adventurous ardor which continually led him to seek the most dashing and dangerous - not necessarily the most conspicuous - fields of patriotic service.
Immediately upon receiving his appointment, he returned to Pittsfield, resigned his seat in the Provincial Congress, made preparation for his journey, and, as soon as the pamphlets and papers intended for use in Canada reached him, set out for Albany. There he learned that Lakes George and Champlain were impassable; but after waiting a fortnight, although their condition was not improved, he set out, accompanied by two experienced guides, and, after fourteen days of "inconceivable hardships," reached St. John's-on-the-Sorel.
The perils as well as the hardships of this journey were extreme. Lake Champlain, swollen by an extraordinary freshet, flooded a great portion of the country for a space of twenty miles on each side, and especially towards Canada. The rivers and streams were lost in the overflow, and the guides missed their accustomed landmarks; and, still worse, the broadened surface, partly open, was in part covered with dangerous ice, a field of which, miles in extent, breaking loose, caught the frail craft of our daring voyagers, and drove them against an island, where they remained, frozen in, two days, and " were then glad to foot it on shore." 1
At Montreal, Mr. Brown was cordially welcomed by the Com- mittee of Correspondence, already organized, and obtained from them and from other sources a thorough comprehension of Cana- dian character and politics, and also of the movements of the military ; all which he communicated to the Committee at Boston, together with an outline of Gov. Carleton and his policy, drawn with striking truthfulness in a few rapid sentences.
At Montreal, he met a delegation of the Quebec Committee, and consequently did not visit that city ; but he travelled throngh a considerable portion of the interior, in order to disseminate patriotie sentiments, and personally observe the disposition of the people.
The guides who had crossed the lakes with Mr. Brown were
1 Letter to Adams and Warren, Mass. Ar., vol. cxciii. p. 40.
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from " the New-Hampshire Grants," 1- one of them an old hunter familiar with the St. François Indians and their language ; the other had once been a captive among the Caughnawagas. These men he sent to those tribes respectively, and obtained positive evidence (hostilities having then not commenced) that the royal commanders were intriguing to bring the savages upon the colonists. They also obtained from the chiefs assurances of neu- trality, which, although they were afterwards violated, were probably as sincere as an Indian's pledges ever are.
Mr. Brown reported that there was no prospect that Canada would send a delegate to the Continental Congress, and gave no hope of any uprising there, independent of the presence of a colonial army. The rivalry of races, and the character of the Canadian French, whom the British Government were assiduously courting, forbade both.
But he closed his letter of March 292 with these words : -
"One thing I must mention as a profound secret. The Fort at Ticonderoga must be seized as soon as possible, should hostilities be committed by the king's troops. The people on New-Hampshire Grants have engaged to do this business, and, in my opinion, are the most proper persons for the job. This will effectually curb this Province, and all the troops which may be sent here."
This was the whole gist of the plans which resulted in the capture of Ticonderoga; and it was undoubtedly written after consultation with Ethan Allen, who had lands on Grand Isle, and upon Shelburne Point, now Colchester and Burlington, which juts into Lake Champlain directly across the route pursued by the Canadian envoy. Allen, a cousin of the Pittsfield minister, was probably known to Brown, and, as the commander of the Green-Mountain Boys, was clearly the only person competent, in their behalf, to undertake the very serious "job " of surprising the great fortress of the lakes.
As Mr. Brown was writing the postscript to this letter,8 the messenger was impatiently waiting to be gone with it; and it reached Boston, at the latest, by the middle of April.
1 Vermont.
2 This letter, of which I have made free use in the foregoing pages, was ad- dressed to " Samuel Adams and Dr. Joseph Warren, of the Committee of Corre- spondence, Boston." It is preserved in the Mass. Ar., vol. cxciii. pp. 40-44.
3 This postscript announced Gov. Carleton's prohibition of the export of wheat from the St. Lawrence.
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Plans for the capture of Ticonderoga were at once rife in the secret councils, not only of Massachusetts, but of Connecticut. And to the latter belongs the honor of initiating and organizing the expedition which successfully executed the plans concocted by Brown and Allen, of furnishing for it the requisite funds, and of entrusting it to a commission which wisely represented its sover- eignty, sagaciously avoiding the perils which beset an undertaking authorized by one colony, to be carried out in another, by troops collected from a third and fourth.1
The Connecticut expedition was "projected and undertaken " by Col. Samuel H. Parsons and five other gentlemen, who, on the 27th, sent forward Messrs. Phelps and Romans, procuring for them £300 from the colonial treasury, upon their personal responsibility for its judicious use. Capt. Mott arrived the next day at Hartford, and, having recently been at Cambridge, was questioned as to the best method of obtaining a supply of artillery for the siege of the British army in Boston. He at once proposed the surprise of Ticonderoga, which he pronounced perfectly feasible : upon which he was informed of what was on foot, and consented to assume the lead of the party which had gone on, adding to it five or six trusty volunteers.
The project had been suggested to Col. Parsons by a conversation with Benedict Arnold, who had, or pretended to have, an exact ac- count of the cannon at Ticonderoga, and the condition of defences there. It is possible that both his proposition and that of Mott might have been traced to rumors of recommendations contained in Mr. Brown's letter to Adams and Warren. Capt. Mott's recent return from the camp where those leaders were the moving spirits favors the supposition, but I am aware of no evidence which proves it correct. The immediate object of the Connecticut expedition - to supply the pressing demand for siege-artillery -
1 This commission consisted of Edward Mott, Noah Phelps, and Bernard Romans, the latter of whom appears not to have contributed his full share to the good sense of the management. Capt. Mott, although not appointed until the others had set off, acted as the head of the commission, and has left two accounts of the expedition, -one in his diary recently published in the Transactions of the Connecticut Hist. Soc .; the other in a letter to the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts, in whose journals it is printed with other papers relating to the surprise of Ticonderoga. Upon these two collections, two letters from Rev. Mr. Allen to Gen. Pomeroy, and a few isolated papers, named when referred to, we have founded our account of the capture of Ticonderoga and events connected with it.
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was certainly original with its projectors; and the entire indepen- dence of their scheme, in its inception, of that proposed by Mr. Brown, may be conceded without at all diminishing the honor due to his connection with the exploit. That his was the first proposi- tion for the seizure of the post is unquestioned ; and it is proof of his political and military sagacity, that he so early perceived that for one campaign, if no more, Great Britain would operate against her ancient colonies from the new possessions which they had helped her to win from France; that the old antagonistic military bases of North America were to be restored ; that the old war-path must be trod anew ; and that the utmost advantage would accrue to the party which should first secure the great fortress, that, for half a century, had been familiar to New England as the key of Canada. It was by recommending action founded upon these observations ; by discerning at a glance the method in which, and the soldiery by whom, that action could be successfully taken ; by enlisting the fittest commander for the enterprise; and by the aid which he rendered personally in executing the scheme which he had planned, - that he connected his fame with the patriotic measures of Connecticut and the memorable exploit of Ethan Allen.
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