Paul Revere's Ride

by David Hackett Fischer

  Parliament was not ready for such strong measures when this advice was written. But three years later, the Boston Tea Party convinced the rulers of the Empire that General Gage had been correct.

  At that critical moment Gage happened to be in London. He had returned on leave to England in June 1773. It was his first visit home since he had sailed to America with the Braddock expedition nearly twenty years earlier. He wrote to a friend that London seemed as strange to him as Constantinople, or “any other city I had never seen.” He was appalled by its corruption, and by the incompetence of the government. “This is a strange place,” he wrote, “I have much business with many people and can never find them. Many have business with me, and are hunting me whilst I am seeking others, so that it is a perpetual hunt.” 37

  He was still in England, rusticating at his childhood home of Highmeadow in Gloucestershire, when news of the Boston Tea Party arrived in February 1774. King George III summoned him to an audience, and was much impressed by Gage’s forthright suggestions. The King instructed his ministers to “hear his ideas as to the mode of compelling Boston to submit to whatever may be thought necessary.” 38

  The King’s chief minister, Lord North, did as he was told. In 1774, Parliament enacted a set of Coercive Acts that were modeled on General Gage’s ideas. The port of Boston was closed. The structure of government of Massachusetts was modified much as Gage requested. Most town meetings were curtailed. Trials for political offences were transferred from the colonies to England. To enforce this new policy, Gage himself was ordered back to America as commander in chief and governor of Massachusetts. 39

  When Gage arrived in Boston, the town received him politely, and even gave him a public dinner in Fanueil Hall. “They are making a good deal of ceremony with me,” he wrote, “much less ceremony and more obedience to the laws would please me better.” 40 But when he began to enforce the Coercive Acts (which Americans called the Intolerable Acts), relations rapidly cooled. In 1774, Gage published a proclamation forbidding most town meetings except by permission, and sent troops to stop a town meeting in Salem. The stubborn Salemites responded by barring the doors of their town house and going on with their meeting. The Regulars, under orders not to use force, retreated in bewilderment. 41

  Gage himself tried to suspend town meetings in Boston, with no better success. He summoned the selectmen before him and forbade them to convene a town meeting that had just been announced. The Boston leaders solemnly explained to him that they had “called no meeting,” but that “a former meeting had only adjourned themselves.” As always, Gage was scrupulous to act within the law. He was baffled by the legalistic arguments of the Boston leaders. Tory Lieutenant-Governor Andrew Oliver wrote that Gage was “a gentleman of an amiable character, and of an open honest mind; too honest to deal with men who from their cradles had been educated in the wily arts of chicane.” Town meetings continued in Boston. 42

  Some of his subordinates were less scrupulous about their methods, with explosive results. In 1774, a Yankee sailor named Samuel Dyer was caught trying to persuade soldiers of the King’s Own to desert. The regimental commander, Lt. Col. George Maddison, asked Admiral John Montagu to impress Dyer into the Royal Navy and “carry him to England.” This was done, but Dyer gained his liberty in England. He returned to America a free man, full of rage against his persecutors. In Boston, he went looking for Colonel Maddison, found two other British officers in the street, and instantly attacked, attempting to assassinate one of them with his own sword. New England Whigs were appalled by Dyer’s violence, which threatened the moral standing of their cause. They arranged his capture, and a Massachusetts court ordered him confined as a lunatic. But the people of New England were deeply shocked that Colonel Maddison and Admiral Montagu had ordered a man to be pressed and deprived of his freedom for a political act. It confirmed their worst suspicions of Imperial power. 43

  Under the terms of the Coercive Acts, Gage nominated Royal judges to the Massachusetts bench—a major break with precedent. He chose men mostly for strong Loyalist principles. So hostile was the population that juries refused to serve, and many of the new judges refused to sit on the bench, in fear of their lives. A member of one of the first juries to defy him was Paul Revere. 44

  As governor, Gage also tried to restrain the Congregational clergy of New England. The ministers asked him to proclaim a day of Fasting and Prayer, an old New England custom in troubled times. Gage refused, explaining candidly, “I saw no cause for an extraordinary day of humiliation, which was only to give an opportunity for sedition to flow from the Pulpits.” The clergy went ahead without him, and another bond of union was broken. 45

  In the face of growing anger throughout New England, Gage advised his superiors to stand firm and yield nothing. He told them that the time for “conciliating, moderation, reasoning is over. Nothing can be done but by forcible means.” But still he hoped to avoid bloodshed. “I mean my Lord,” he wrote home to London, “to avoid any bloody crisis as long as possible, unless forced into it by themselves, which may happen.” 46

  Gage did not believe that the troubles in Massachusetts would spread throughout America. He knew about Paul Revere’s rides to New York and Philadelphia, and was well informed about meetings of the Continental Congress. 47 But the British general regarded Congress as a “motley crew,” and did not imagine that it could ever act together. He had no fear that the contagion of revolution would seriously infect the southern plantations or the western backcountry. These colonies might “talk very high,” he assured London, “but they can do nothing. Their numerous slaves in the bowels of their country, and the Indians at their backs, will always keep them quiet.” 48

  This soldier who hated war did not wish to use force against the Americans, except as the last resort. His purpose was to remove from Yankee hands the means of violent resistance until a time when cooler heads would prevail. To that end, General Gage proposed to disarm New England by a series of small surgical operations—meticulously planned, secretly mounted, and carried forward with careful economy of force. His object was not to provoke a war but to prevent one. 49

  New England’s Whig leaders were vulnerable to such a strategy. Many weapons were in the hands of the people, but not enough for long struggle against the King’s troops, and there was no easy source of resupply. Few firearms were manufactured in New England; gunpowder had to be imported from abroad. This gave General Gage his opportunity. While still in his summer house at Danvers, he began to plan a series of missions against the arsenals and powderhouses of New England, designed to remove as many munitions as possible—enough to make it impossible for the people of that region to make a determined stand against him. 50

  The plan had one major weakness. It could only succeed by surprise. The people of New England were jealous of their liberties, including their liberty to keep and bear arms. If they learned in advance of General Gage’s intentions, his strategy for stopping the movement toward war could start one instead. The British commander knew that the Whigs of Boston had been organizing against him, and were attempting to penetrate his designs. Prominent among them was a leader whose incessant activities were particularly dangerous to their scheme—the busy Boston silversmith named Paul Revere.

  FIRST STROKES

  Thomas Gage, Paul Revere, and the Powder Alarms

  A check anywhere wou’d be fatal, and the first stroke will decide a great deal.”

  —Thomas Gage, Sept. 2, 1774 1

  EARLY IN THE MORNING of September 1, 1774, General Gage set his plan in motion. His first step was to seize the largest stock of gunpowder in New England. It was stored in a magazine called the Provincial Powder House, high on a remote hill, six miles northwest of Boston. Many towns kept their munitions there, as did the Province of Massachusetts itself.

  During the summer of 1774, the towns had quietly withdrawn their supplies from the Powder House, leaving only the provincial reserve. Loyalists called this supply the King’s powder. Most p
eople in Massachusetts believed that it belonged to them.

  General Gage was told of the withdrawals by William Brattle, a much-hated Cambridge Tory. The British commander resolved to remove the remaining gunpowder before it disappeared into the countryside. As governor of Massachusetts he had the authority to take that step. He kept carefully within the letter of the law. 2

  The mission was planned in high secrecy. To lead it, Gage selected one of his most able officers, Lieutenant-Colonel George Maddison, commander of the 4th (King’s Own) Foot. Maddison was given 260 picked men, “draughted from the several regiments” in the garrison. For quick surprise and ease of transport, Gage availed himself of the Royal Navy’s command of coastal waters, and decided to strike suddenly from the sea, using longboats borrowed from ships in Boston harbor.

  At 4:30 in the morning of September 1, 1774, while the unsuspecting town was still asleep, Colonel Maddison’s men crept out of their quarters and marched quietly to Long Wharf, where the navy was waiting with a flotilla of thirteen longboats, bobbing gently on the morning tide. The soldiers climbed awkwardly into the boats, and within minutes the coxswains pushed off, rowing across Boston harbor to the Mystic River. 3

  The soldiers came ashore at a landing place called Temple’s Farm, and marched quickly to the Powder House on Quarry Hill about a mile away. The sheriff of Middlesex County, Colonel David Phips, gave them the keys to the building, a windowless stone tower with one of Benjamin Franklin’s new lightning rods rising from the center of its shingled roof. No lanterns could be lighted in the building for fear of explosion, and the morning was still very dark. The soldiers waited for the light to improve, then brought out the gunpowder. All 250 half-barrels were carried to the boats and delivered to Boston. As the sun rose over Quarry Hill, a small detachment marched on to Cambridge, and brought away two brass field pieces that belonged to the Province. By noon the munitions were deposited in Castle William, and the men were back in their barracks. 4

  The Massachusetts Provincial Powder House still stands today at Powder-house Square, Somerville, Massachusetts. The removal of munitions by the 64th Foot on Sept. 1, 1774, triggered the great New England Powder Alarm. (James Hunnewell, History of Charlestown (Boston, 1888))

  General Gage was very pleased. His staff had planned the mission perfectly, and Colonel Maddison had executed it without a hitch. The largest supply of gunpowder in Massachusetts had been secured at a stroke, without a shot fired. It was a model operation in all respects, save one. The British commander had completely misunderstood the temper of New England.

  The people were caught entirely by surprise. Through the day, reports began to fly across the countryside. It was rumored that the Province had been “robbed of its powder,” that the Regulars were marching, that war had begun, that six people were killed, that the King’s ships were bombarding Boston. None of this was true, but many people gave way to a wild panic that would long be remembered in New England as the Powder Alarm. 5

  All that day church bells tolled in the towns. At dusk great fire-beacons that had warned of war against the French were set alight, burning brightly across the open countryside. As far away as Connecticut, the militia began to march toward Boston. That night, a young traveler named McNeil happened to be on the road from the Connecticut Valley to Boston. He stopped at a tavern in Shrewsbury, about halfway in between. About midnight he was awakened by loud voices and a violent knocking at the door. He heard someone tell the landlord that “the powder was taken.” Within fifteen minutes, fifty men had gathered at the tavern, “equipping themselves and sending off posts to the neighboring towns.” He remembered that “the men set off as fast as they were equipped.”

  Early the next morning, September 2, 1774, McNeil set out for Boston. Afterward he wrote that “he never saw such a scene before. All along [the road] were armed men rushing forward— some on foot, some on horseback. At every house women and children [were] making cartridges, running bullets, making wallets [pouches of food], baking biscuits, crying and bemoaning and at the same time animating their husbands and sons to fight for their liberties, though not knowing whether they should ever see them again. … They left scarcely half a dozen men in a town, unless old and decrepit, and in one town the landlord told him that himself was the only man left.” 6

  Ezra Stiles, a Congregationalist clergyman with a passion for statistics, estimated that “perhaps more than one third the effective men in all New England took arms and were on actual march for Boston.” Another observer reported that 20,000 men marched from the Connecticut Valley alone, “in one body armed and equipped,” and were halfway to Boston before they were called back. 7

  William Brattle’s letter to General Gage somehow fell into Whig hands and was given to the newspapers. When the people of New England discovered what had happened, anxiety and fear gave way to unbridled fury. The rage of an entire region fell on a few Tories who happened to be within reach. Whig leaders who had been trying to awaken a spirit of resistance suddenly found themselves trying, in Joseph Warren’s words, “to prevent the people from coming to immediate acts of violence.” 8

  On the morning of September 2, a huge crowd of 4,000 angry men gathered on Cambridge Common, mostly farmers from the towns between Sudbury and Boston. Whig leaders persuaded them to leave their firearms in Watertown. Armed only with wooden cudgels, they marched to “Tory Row” in Cambridge, and gathered around William Brattle’s mansion. This elegant house had been his family’s seat through four generations. Its gardens and private mall extended all the way to the Charles River. The property itself was protected by Whig leaders, but Brattle was forced to flee for his life, and took refuge at Castle William in Boston harbor. He sent a pathetic letter to the newspapers: “My banishment from my house, the place of my nativity,” he wrote, “my house being searched though I am informed it was without damage, grieves me deeply … I am extremely sorry for what has taken place; I hope I may be forgiven.” But he was not forgiven. William Brattle was never allowed to go home again. He was a fugitive for the rest of his days.

  The mob went on to visit Colonel David Phips, the Tory sheriff who had delivered the keys of the powderhouse, and compelled him to swear in writing that he would never enforce the Coercive Acts and would recall every writ issued “under the new establishment.” Another inhabitant of Tory Row, Thomas Oliver, was made to resign his seat on Gage’s new Royal Council. He wrote on a slip of paper, “My house at Cambridge being surrounded by about four thousand people, in compliance with their command I sign my name.” 9

  It was a fiercely hot day, and tempers rose with the thermometer. The crowd moved to the house of Tory barrister Jonathan Sewall, and things got out of hand. Someone inside the Sewall mansion fired a pistol. An unruly mob of boys and servants smashed the windows and threatened to pull down the entire building. While Whig leaders held the crowd at bay, Jonathan Sewall fled to Boston. A few months later he left the country, never to return. Printed papers were nailed to the doors of Sewall’s fellow lawyers, threatening death to any member of the Bar who appeared in the new courts created by the Coercive Acts. 10

  Some of the mob, who were mounted, came upon Customs Commissioner Benjamin Hallowell in his opulent “post-chaise,” escorted by a servant in livery. A countryman came up to him and cried, “Damn you, how do you like us now, you Tory son of a bitch?” Hallowell took his servant’s horse and galloped toward Boston with a pistol in his hand, pursued by a howling mob of infuriated Yankees, said to number 160 mounted men and horses. Behind the thundering mob galloped three frantic Whig leaders, hoping to prevent bloodshed. As Hallowell approached the British sentries at Boston Neck, his horse collapsed. With the mob in full cry close behind him he sprinted to the safety of the British lines.

  When the danger of violence passed, Boston Whigs rejoiced in the dramatic turn of events and spread the news to other colonies. Paul Revere, unable to travel himself, dispatched riders bearing his personal letters to leaders in other colonies. To his good fr
iend John Lamb, a leading Whig in New York, Revere wrote triumphantly,

  Dear Sir,

  I embrace this oppertunity to inform you, that we are in Spirits, tho’ in a garrison; the Spirit of Liberty never was higher than at present, the troops have the horrors amazingly. By reason of some late movements of our friends in the Country, our new fangled Councellors are resigning their places every day; our Justices of the courts, who now hold their commissions during the pleasure of his Majesty, or the Governor, cannot git a jury to act with them, in short the Tories are giving way everywhere in our Province. 11

  It is interesting to observe that Paul Revere’s thinking centered on “the Spirit of Liberty,” at a time when Thomas Gage thought mainly about material aspects of the problem. While Imperial leaders were laboring to remove the physical means of resistance, New England Whigs were promoting the spiritual will to resist. The two parties to this great conflict were not merely thinking different things; they were thinking differently.

  General Gage was amazed by the rising of the countryside against him, and astounded by the anger he had awakened in New England. Instantly his mood changed, and suddenly he turned very cautious. His staff had already been planning another mission to seize munitions in Worcester, forty miles inland. This second strike was postponed, and later abandoned altogether.

  The British commander began to think defensively. He ordered the town of Boston to be closed and fortified. Heavy cannon were emplaced on Roxbury Neck, in fear that the “country people” might storm the town. The inhabitants were ordered to surrender their weapons, lest they rise against the garrison. Stocks of powder and arms in the possession of merchants were forcibly purchased by the Crown. 12