On the other side, Whig leaders in New England were preparing too. Forewarned by friends in London, they knew that the British army was about to move against them, but not precisely where or when. They were prepared to fight for their freedom, but they could not start the fight without forfeiting the moral advantage of their cause. These New England Whigs believed that if shots had to be fired, it was urgently important that a British soldier must be the one to fire first. Only then would America stand united. Samuel Adams was very clear about that. On March 21, 1775, this canny politician reminded his fellow Whigs, “Put your enemy in the wrong, and keep him so, is a wise maxim in politics, as well as in war.” 1
New England leaders resolved not to move until Gage committed his forces. Once he had done so, their intention was to react quickly, and muster their full strength against him with all the force at their command. Everything depended on careful preparation, timely warning, and rapid mobilization.
Each side recognized the critical importance of intelligence, and both went busily about that vital task. But they did so in different ways. The British system was created and controlled from the top down. It centered very much on General Gage himself. The gathering of information commonly began with questions from the commander in chief. The lines of inquiry reached outward like tentacles from his headquarters in Province House. This structure proved a source of strength in some respects, and weakness in others. The considerable resources of the Royal government could be concentrated on a single problem. But when the commander in chief asked all the questions, he was often told the answers that he wished to hear. Worse, the questions that he did not think to ask were never answered at all.
The American system of intelligence was organized in the opposite way, from the bottom up. Self-appointed groups such as Paul Revere’s voluntary association of Boston mechanics gathered information on their own initiative. Other individuals in many towns did the same. These efforts were coordinated through an open, disorderly network of congresses and committees, but no central authority controlled this activity in Massachusetts—not the Provincial Congress or Committee of Safety, not the Boston Committee of Correspondence or any small junto of powerful leaders; not Sam Adams or John Hancock, not even the indefatigable Doctor Warren, and certainly not Paul Revere. The revolutionary movement in New England had many leaders, but no commander. Nobody was truly in charge. This was a source of weakness in some ways. The system was highly inefficient. Its efforts were scattered and diffuse. Individuals demanded a reason for acting, before they acted at all. They wrangled incessantly in congresses, conventions, committees and town meetings. But by those clumsy processes, many autonomous New England minds were enlisted in a common effort—a source of energy, initiative, and intellectual strength for this popular movement.
In the beginning, General Gage held the initiative. He organized a formal intelligence staff that consisted largely of his kinsmen—mostly relatives by marriage whom he felt that he could trust. His deputy adjutant-general for intelligence was his American brother-in-law, Major Stephen Kemble, an officer in the British army. His confidential secretary was Samuel Kemble, another brother-in-law. His aide-de-camp for confidential matters was his wife’s cousin, Captain Oliver De Lancey.
Young Captain De Lancey was typical of the American Loyalists who joined this new transatlantic Imperial elite. He came from a rich and powerful New York family which owned a large part of Manhattan Island and Westchester County. His uncles included the acting governor of New York and the chief justice of that colony. De Lancey had been sent to school at Eton, and a commission had been bought for him in a crack British cavalry regiment. He joined Gage’s headquarters in 1775. 2
In the winter and spring of 1774—75, two months before Gage’s secret orders arrived, his staff began to collect information about eastern Massachusetts. Every officer in the garrison with knowledge of the countryside was ordered to report to headquarters. Loyalist agents were actively recruited. They began to send a steady flow of information on provincial politics and military affairs. 3
As General Gage studied the reports that came across his desk, his first thought was to revive an earlier plan, and strike at the shire town of Worcester, forty miles west of Boston. That village had become a major center of the revolutionary movement. Various provincial bodies had met there. A large supply of munitions was stored in its houses and barns, and the tools of war were manufactured in its mills. Agents reported that fifteen tons of gunpowder were on hand, and thirteen cannon were parked in front of the Congregational meetinghouse. For many months the inhabitants of Worcester had been outspoken in support of the Whig cause, and had spurned all compromise. 4 As early as the summer of 1774, Gage had written to Dartmouth, “In Worcester they keep no terms, openly threaten resistance by arms, have been purchasing arms, preparing them, casting ball, and providing powder, and threaten to attack any troops who dare to oppose them.” He concluded: “I apprehend I shall soon be obliged to march a body of troops into that township.” 5
General Gage decided to postpone that plan after the Powder Alarm in September 1774; but through the fall and winter, Worcester continued to be on his mind. In the last week of February 1775, Gage summoned two enterprising young officers, Captain John Brown and Ensign Henry De Berniere of the 10th Foot. He asked them to go out on a confidential mission. They were to dress in plain country clothing and walk from Boston to Worcester, and to return with a sketch of the countryside and a report on the roads. In particular, they were to look for dangerous ambush sites along the way. The need for secrecy was strongly impressed upon them. If anyone asked their business, the British officers were to pretend to be surveyors. 6
De Berniere and Brown were bored by garrison life and leaped at the assignment. The result was yet another bizarre cultural collision between Britain’s Imperial elite and the folkways of New England. The mission began as low comedy, and nearly ended in calamity for the young British officers. They set off on foot, “disguised like countrymen, in brown cloaths and reddish handkerchiefs round our necks.” They were delighted to discover that General Gage himself was unable to recognize them. But when they left town by the Charlestown ferry, a British sentry saluted briskly and nearly gave the game away. 7
They walked west through Cambridge, and by mid-day reached a Whig tavern in Watertown, where they decided to stop for something to eat. The officers had insisted upon traveling with a batman whom they called “our man John.” 8 When they entered the tavern, these young British gentlemen banished their servant to a separate table, and “called for dinner” in what seemed to them an ordinary tone of voice. To their surprise, they noticed that the black serving maid began to “eye us very attentively,” as they wrote in their report.
“It is a fine country,” the officers said in their most agreeable manner, forgetting that they were supposed to be countrymen themselves.
“So it is,” answered the maid with a knowing look, “and we have got brave fellows to defend it, and if you go up any higher you will find it so.” 9
The officers were stunned by her reply. “This disconcerted us a good deal,” they reported, “and we resolved not to sleep there that night.” They called for the bill, and betrayed themselves again by trying to settle in British sterling an account that had been reckoned in the mysterious complexity of Massachusetts “Old Tenor” currency. While they struggled with the rate of exchange, the black waitress approached their batman again and delivered another gratuitous warning: “She said she knew our errand was to take a plan of the country,” and “advised him to tell us not to go any higher, for if we did we should meet with very bad usage.”
Brown and De Berniere held a quick “council,” and decided that they could not return to Boston without dishonor, an act unthinkable for a British officer. They resolved to push on, but agreed that in deference to the customs of this strange country, their batman would be promoted to a condition of temporary equality with themselves—even at dinner. They wrote in their
report, “We always treated him as our companion, since our adventure with the black woman.” At least one human relationship was briefly transformed by the American Revolution, even as it had barely begun.
In wintry weather, the three men continued west on the Old Boston Post Road to the Golden Ball Tavern, which still stands today in the suburban town of Weston. This was a Tory inn. They were treated well, but warned once again not to go higher into the country. Still, they gamely insisted on pressing on. Their Tory host in Weston sent them to a Loyalist tavernkeeper in Marlborough, and from there to another Tory inn in Worcester which they reached on Saturday night. Here again they were treated courteously, and even offered the symbolic dish of tea that proclaimed the politics of the establishment.
The strict New England Sabbath began at sundown on Saturday. The British officers were warned that movement was impossible for them until sunset on Sunday. They explained to their superiors, “We could not think of travelling, as it is contrary to the custom of the country, nor dare we stir out until the evening because of meeting, and nobody is allowed to walk the streets during the divine service, without being taken up and examined.”
When the Sabbath ended on Sunday evening, they left the Tory tavern and mapped the hills and roads around Worcester. Then they started back toward Boston, crisscrossing the country lanes of Middlesex County. They spent their nights in Tory taverns, and took their lunches in the woods, dining on a bit of bread and “a little snow to wash it down.” Even so, their movements were quickly discovered and carefully observed. Groups of silent country folk gathered in the villages, watching ominously as they walked through. Horsemen rode up to them on the road, studied their appearance without saying a word, then wheeled and galloped away.
The Golden Ball Tavern still stands on the Old Boston Post Road in Weston, Massachusetts. It was one of a network of Tory safe houses used by General Gage’s spies, Captain Brown and Ensign De Berniere, on their reconnaissance missions in 1775. Innkeeper Isaac Jones, a Loyalist "friend to government," guided them on part of their journey. This early photograph, circa 1868, shows the tavern in winter as it was seen by the British officers. (Courtesy Golden Ball Tavern)
They were saved from further attentions by a late snowstorm that covered their tracks and kept the “country people” indoors. Increasingly fearful for their lives, the British officers pressed on through the storm, heading back toward Boston. In one horrific day they plodded thirty-two miles in ankle-deep snow, finally arriving exhausted and half frozen at the Golden Ball Tavern in Weston. The next morning, while parties of Whigs scoured the countryside, the landlord guided them through back roads to the safety of Boston. 10
General Gage was pleased with the thoroughness of their report, but not happy at the thought of sending a force to Worcester. The distance was so great that surprise could not be assured. The roads were difficult, and a dangerous river crossing through the broad marshes at Sudbury could turn into a deadly trap. The commander in chief returned to his map of New England and searched for another target. His eyes fell on the half-shire town of Concord. 11 This village had also become an arsenal of revolution. The Provincial Congress had been meeting there. It was barely twenty miles from Boston—half as far as Worcester. With hard marching on dry roads, Gage reckoned that his troops could be there and back again in a long day.
In mid-March, he summoned Captain Brown and Lieutenant De Berniere to Province House, and asked them to go out again on another secret mission, this time to explore the roads to Concord. On March 20, they left Boston by way of Roxbury and Brookline, and walked through Weston on what was called the Concord Road, at that time the most direct route from Boston Neck to their destination. They found it very dangerous for a marching army, and reported that it was “woody in most places and commanded by hills,” as it remains today.
When they reached Concord, the town appeared to them like an armed camp, with sentries posted at its approaches, and vast quantities of munitions on hand. The British officers met a woman in the road and asked directions to the house of Daniel Bliss, a Loyalist lawyer and one of Concord’s leading citizens. She showed them the way. Bliss welcomed the two officers, and offered them dinner. A little later the woman suddenly returned, weeping with fear. She explained between her tears that several Whigs had stopped her and “swore they would tar and feather her for directing Tories.”
A moment later a message arrived for lawyer Bliss himself, threatening death if he did not leave town. The British officers, who were carrying arms, gallantly offered to escort him back to Boston, and protect him with their lives. The three men set out for Boston. Bliss showed them another route that ran further to the north, through Lexington and the village of Menotomy (now Arlington). It was longer than the roads through Weston, but the countryside was more open, and ambuscades were less to be feared. The British officers returned to Boston and made their report, strongly recommending the northern route through Lexington as the best approach. 12
Gage had found the target for his next mission, and a satisfactory way of getting there. It would be Concord, by the Lexington Road. Now his intelligence efforts began to center on the town itself. He had secret agents there, Loyalists who have never been identified, but lived in or near the town and were exceptionally well informed. One of them wrote regularly to Gage in bad French, describing in detail the munitions stored throughout the town, and the temper of the inhabitants.
Among these reports was a detailed inventory, house by house and barn by barn, of munitions stored throughout the entire community. One building alone was thought to hold seven tons of gunpowder. 13 General Gage ordered a map of Concord to be prepared, showing the location of every building known to harbor military stores. He was also told that John Hancock and Sam Adams were staying in the town of Lexington, a smaller community of scattered dairy farms five miles east of Concord center.
In early April, General Gage began to organize his marching force. In strictest secrecy he drafted its orders in his own hand. To command the expedition he selected Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith of the 10th Foot. Smith was a senior officer, very near retirement. Another officer described him as a “heavy man,” inactive, overweight, unfit for arduous service. 14 But he was known to be an officer of prudence, moderation, and maturity. His choice betrayed Gage’s own caution and restraint. So also did his orders. Smith was instructed to march “with utmost expedition and secrecy to Concord, where you will seize and destroy all the Artillery, Ammunition, Provisions, Tents, Small Arms, and all Military stores whatever.”
Nothing was mentioned in writing about the arrest of Whig leaders. Gage seems not to have been happy with that part of his instructions. He understood better than men in London the structure of the revolutionary movement. He knew that nobody was really in command of it. If one leader were arrested, ten more would be ready to take his place.
Further, Gage believed in the rule of law. Throughout these turbulent events, even when he was furiously angry with the Whig leaders, he rejected a policy of arbitrary arrest. His written orders for the expedition said nothing about seizing Whig leaders, despite explicit instructions from London for their apprehension. Colonel Smith was given strict orders to keep carefully within the law. “You will take care,” Gage told him, “that the soldiers do not plunder the inhabitants, or hurt private property.” 15
Gage believed that the expedition might be resisted by armed force, and urged many precautions. Smith was ordered to march to Concord by the Lexington Road that offered the least danger of ambush, and he was told to secure the bridges of Concord “as soon as possible” when he reached the town.
With startling prescience, Gage understood the form that resistance would probably take. On March 4, 1775, he wrote to Dartmouth in London, “The most natural and eligible mode of attack on the part of the people is that of detached parties of bushmen who from their adroitness in the habitual use of the firelock suppose themselves sure of their mark at a distance of 200 rods [he surely meant
yards]. Should hostilities unhappily commence, the first opposition would be irregular, impetuous, and incessant from the numerous bodies that would swarm to the place of action, and all actuated by an enthusiasm wild and ungovernable.” 16
Even if the worst happened, Gage believed that a strong force of Regular troops under experienced professional officers had little to fear from these “bushmen.” He wrote that he was “firmly persuaded that there is not a man amongst [them] capable of taking command or directing the motions of an army,” It was his only error in a remarkably trenchant analysis—but one error would be more than enough. His mistake in judgment was not about the probability of resistance, or the motives, tactics, and fighting skills of the New England militia, but about the quality of leadership among them. 17
In Boston, the British regiments were ordered to repair their tents, mend their camp kettles, and break out their field equipment. They were sent out on short marches through the country west of Boston, partly to toughen the men, partly to accustom the people of Massachusetts to their movements out of town. Two regiments, the 38th and 52nd Foot, were ordered to march as far as Watertown, and did not return until 5 o’clock at night. Mackenzie noted, “As Watertown is farther than the Regiments have usually gone, and they remained out longer, the country was a good deal alarmed on the occasion.” 18 No explanations were given, but Lieutenant Mackenzie surmised that “it is supposed the general has some object in view, and means to familiarize the people of the Country with the appearance of troops among them for a longer time than usual without creating an alarm.” 19
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