Paul Revere's Ride

by David Hackett Fischer

  36. Hodgman, History of the Town of Westford, 106.

  37. The confusion was compounded by another problem. The drill for street firing was not familiar to all the units at the bridge. It had not been included in the 18 evolutions required in the King’s Regulations of 1765. Laurie’s regiment appears to have practiced it, but not the 4th, where it was “not even understood by the officers who thought that by some mistake the companies had got one behind the other.” L. I. Cowper, The King’s Own; The Story of a Royal Regiment (Oxford, 1939), 239; Barker, The British in Boston, 34.

  38. Testimony was mixed, but Captain Laurie himself deposed that “I imagine myself that a man of my company (afterwards killed) did first fire his piece.” Most historians have accepted Laurie’s testimony. Blood recalled that “at that time an officer rode up and a gun was fired. I saw where the ball threw up the water about the middle of the river, then a second and a third shot.” Some have surmised that the first shot may have been fired as a warning; a more likely explanation is an accidental discharge. Cf. Laurie to Gage, April 26, 1775; Blood, “Statement on the Battle of April 19,” CFPL.

  39. Ibid.; Baker, Deposition; French, Concord and Lexington, 198.

  40. The bodies of Davis and Hosmer were exhumed in 1851 for reburial at a monument on Acton Common, and opened for anyone to view the remains. People were able to see where the ball entered Hosmer’s cheek below the left eye and exited at the back of the neck. The remains of Captain Isaac Davis were “remarkably well preserved.” Castle et al. (eds.), The Minute Men, 30

  41. Amos Barrett recalled in his idiosyncratic spelling which is not altered here, “We marched two deep it was a long being round by the river. Captain Davis had got I be leave within 15 rods of the B[ridge] when they fired three guns one after the other. I see the balls strike in the river to the right of me.” Blood’s memory was generally the same, but differed in one respect: “An officer rode up and a gun was fired. I saw where the ball threw up the water, about the middle of the river, then a second and a third shot.” One wonders if this officer might have been Sutherland, the only one at the North Bridge who was known to be mounted. Sutherland was also in that position on Lexington Green. By comparison with his brother officers, Sutherland’s letters were exceptionally aggressive and hostile to the Americans, and much more insistent that they fired first, even at Concord, where many other witnesses on both sides contradicted him. One wonders if he might have been an instigator on both fields. There is, however, no firm evidence beyond this suspicious pattern. Cf. Amos Barrett, Narrative, in Journal of Letters of Henry True, 11-14; Blood, “Statement on the Battle of April 19,” CFPL.

  42. Some accounts suggest that every American had a clear shot. Many did, but not all. Blood wrote, “We then was all ordered to fire that could fire and not kill our own men.”

  43. This estimate of casualties follows the report from Captain Walter Laurie, the senior British officer at the bridge: killed, three privates; wounded, four officers, a sergeant and four other ranks. Several scholars have suggested that the toll might have been smaller, but I see no reason to doubt the accuracy of Laurie’s report (allowing that one of his killed may have been mortally wounded. If anything the toll was more likely to have been higher, as British units in the 18th century did not normally report minor wounds but only those that were incapacitating. See Captain Walter Laurie to Gage, April 26,1775, Gage Papers, WCL; published in French, General Gage’s Informers, 95—98; also Wroth et al. (eds.), Province in Rebellion, doc. 721, pp. 2023-24; on the scarlet coats at Bunker Hill, Richard M. Ketchum, Decisive Day: The Battle for Bunker Hill (1962, new edition, New York, 1974, 1991), 191.

  44. Visual evidence appears in Ralph Earl’s sketch of the action, which he carefully drew after interviewing participants in the weeks immediately following the battle. Earl showed most of the New England men firing simultaneously, nearly all of them with clear shots at the British troops across the bridge. Only the front ranks of the Regulars could fire hack. In terms of naval tactics, the American militia had “crossed the T,” a rare event in land warfare.

  45. Lister, Narrative, in French (ed.), Concord Fight.

  46. Blood, “Statement on the Battle of April 19,” CFPL.

  47. Nathan Barrett III, Reminiscences, ms., CFPL.

  48. Ibid.; this version is closest to the event; the same story has also been told of Jonas Brown and his mother, of Luther Blanchard and Mrs. Humphrey Barrett, and of Luther Blanchard and Mrs. Nathan Barrett; cf. Castle et al. (eds.), The Minute Men, 221; Gross, The Minutemen and Their World, 221; Shattuck, History of Concord, 114.

  49. For many years the town of Concord threw a shroud of silence round this event. Nathaniel Hawthorne, an outsider, suggested that the atrocity was committed by a “loutish boy” who was hired as a wood-chopper by William Emerson; the Emersons insisted that no such person existed. Others have suggested that the deed was done by the Emersons’ African slave Frank, but the Emersons insisted that Frank was with them, and could not possibly have done it.

  Many people in Concord believed that the perpetrator was Ammi White, aged 20 or 21, a private in Captain Brown’s militia company. Ruth Wheeler reported this tradition in print, and it is accepted by many historians. It is the most probable identity.

  Nearly sixty years later, Mrs. Peter Barrett attempted to justify the act, telling an interviewer that the wounded soldier was “lying in a puddle of water in so much distress that he was trying to drown himself and begged someone to kill him.” There is no evidence to support her, and nobody at the time offered this justification. See Emerson, Diaries and Letters, 74; Shattuck, Historical Notes, NEHGS; Gross, Minutemen, 127; Wheeler, Concord, Climate for Freedom, 228; Hawthorne, Mosses from an Old Manse, preface; Sabin, “April 19, 1775,” III, 58.

  50. Barrett, Narrative.

  51. Ibid.

  52. Blood, “Statement.”

  53. Emerson, Diaries and Letters, 75 (April 19, 1775).

  54. “Corpl Gordon, Thos Lugg, Wm. Lewis, Charles Carrier and Richd Grimshaw in the presence of Captn Battier of the 5th light company do solemnly declare, when they were returning to Join the grenadiers they saw a man belonging to the Light Company of the 4th regiment with the Skin over his Eye’s cut and also the top part of his ears cut off. This declaration made in the presence of me, John G. Battier, Capt. LI 5th foot.”

  55. Emerson, Diaries and Letters, 72. Smith is often condemned for being fatally slow. Trevelyan (I, 286) wrote that he “delayed till noon; and those two hours were his ruin.” But he was waiting for his four companies to return from Colonel Barrett’s mill, which he had explicit orders to search.

  56. The chaises were taken from John Beaton and Reuben Brown.

  57. Two streams along the Battle Road bore the same name of Elm Brook. The first was this one, a few yards east of Meriam’s Corner. The second was at the Concord-Lincoln line, by the houses of Joshua Brooks and Job Brooks, and in 1775 also called Tanner’s Brook, after a slaughterhouse and tanning mill that stood beside it. Cf. Malcolm, The Scene of the Battle, 1775, map III.

  58. Private Thomas Ditson appears on the muster roll of Captain Jonathan Stickney’s company of minutemen; Coburn, Battle of April 19, 1775, expanded edition, appendix, p. 16.

  59. The best account of the engagement at Meriam’s Corner is Sabin, “April 19, 1775,” IV, 1-13. For units engaging, see Coburn, Battle . . . , 97, an incomplete list which omits the Tewksbury companies and others; their presence is documented in Chase, Beginnings of the American Revolution, II, 64.

  60. This version of Captain Trull’s remark follows Chase, Beginnings of the American Revolution, II, 63; a different version, four generations removed, is in Hurd, Middlesex County, II, 294. The presence of regimental officers at Meriam’s Corner was missed by Coburn, French, Tourtellot, and most other historians who stressed the spontaneity and individuality of the American response. Though the role of these commanders was documented in primary evidence, and in town histories, it was omitted from
most general accounts until Galvin, Minute Men, 171.

  61. Many cinematic versions of the battle, and some written accounts as well, represent the American militia as fighting behind stone walls directly beside the road. Thomas Edison’s first film of the battle showed the muzzles of American muskets projecting halfway across the highway. A Hollywood version of Howard Fast’s novel April Morning (1988) was similar, with Americans kneeling at the edge of the road behind massive walls that appeared to have been constructed from Tennessee limestone by Italian masons, or lurking behind roadside trees which miraculously had sprouted their Summer foliage in early Spring.

  This common image of the battle is not correct. At Meriam’s Corner, and throughout the day, experienced American officers deliberately held their units well back from the road at maximum effective musket range, approximately 100 yards. A British officer observed that “a soldier’s musket, if not exceedingly ill-bored (as many of them are), will strike the figure of a man at eighty yards; it may even at 100, but a soldier must be very unfortunate who shall be wounded by a common musket at 150 yards, provided his antagonist aims at him; and as to firing at a man at 200 yards with a common musket, you may just as well fire at the moon” (quoted in Galvin, Minute Men, 77).

  Sometimes, as we shall see, green troops and a few inexperienced but highly aggressive American officers tried to fight at shorter range. When they did so, the British Regulars closed quickly or attacked with flanking parties, with results that were frequently fatal to the Americans.

  At greater distances, the New England militia took a steady toll of the British column, and suffered few casualties in return. Several historians (French, Murdock, and others) have noted the very high ratio of ammunition fired to men hit as evidence of American incompetence. The opposite was the case—heavy expenditure of shot and powder at long range was part of a highly effective solution to the difficult tactical problem of fighting Regular infantry with militia. Murdock and French also failed to note that the ratio of rounds fired to men hit was even higher on the British side than the American.

  62. At Meriam’s Corner once again the first shot is a subject of controversy. The balance of testimony by Lister, Sutherland, and also by the American Major Brooks indicates that New England men fired first. Edmund Foster, a reliable witness, thought that the first shot came from the Regulars. But the weight of evidence is on the other side.

  63. Individual accounts varied. Blood remembered that “there was a heavy fire but the distance was so great, that little injury was done on either side; at least, I saw but one killed. Number wounded I know not” (Blood, “Statement”). Lister wrote that the “rebels begun a brisk fire but at so great a distance it was without effect, but as they kept marching nearer when the Grenadiers found them they returned their fire. Just about that time I received a shot through my right elbow joint which effectually disabled my arm” (Lister, Narrative, Concord Fight, 29).

  Brooks recalled that nine British soldiers were left “hors de combat” near the bridge. Sutherland believed that two Americans were killed, but they have not been identified. The interpretative balance lies between Blood and Lister on one side, and Brooks and Barrett on the other.

  64. French, Day of Concord and Lexington, 8—9, 152—55, 219.

  65. For “Lincoln Woods,” see Temple, Framingham, 274.

  66. Brooks Hill came to be called Hardy’s Hill in the 19th century and Smith’s Hill in the 20th. Galvin, and the staff of the Minute Man National Historical Park inaccurately refer to it by its 19th-century name. The U.S. Geological Survey identifies it on topographical maps by its early 20th-century name.

  67. “Battalia” in the 18th-century English military usage did not mean a unit of battalion strength, as modern students of the battle have mistakenly believed. It was used to indicate “a large body of men in battle array.” Sutherland was reporting that here again, as at Meetinghouse Hill, Punkatasset Hill, North Bridge, the ridge east of the bridge, and Meriam’s Corner, the American militia formed up in close order, in regimental strength. Cf. Oxford English Dictionary, “battalia,” 1,2. Sutherland to Clinton, April 26, 1775; Allen French believed that Sutherland was describing Meriam’s Corner in this passage, but Douglas Sabin observes that it is “more appropriate to Hardy’s Hill.” French is mistaken; Sabin is correct. Cf. Sabin, “April 19, 1775,” V, 3.

  68. Galvin, Minute Men, 176-77.

  69. At Brooks Hill in 1775, the south of the road (from west to east) included a 10 acre tract (A) described as woodland, tillage, and pasture in 1769, then a tract of pasture and orchard (B), and then just east of Brooks Road another tract for which no data exist (C). Woodland lay behind these tracts on high ground about 500 yards from the highway. North of the highway were three close-built houses and houselots, probably with small patches of orchard and tillage close by; then two small tracts of poor land called “upland” in the deeds (D), and a large 20 acre “houselot” that was probably mixed pasture and tillage (E).

  The fight on Brooks Hill was probably begun by Americans in woodland south of the road on tract A and in the woods behind it. This was sharply rising ground, with good cover and excellent fields of fire. The fighting probably continued through Tracts B and C. North of the road, were the upland tracts and the 20-acre houselot, the west end of which may have been wood pasture with mature trees in the pasture land, and tree lines at field boundaries, where the Chelmsford men fought. There are strong traditions that the Chelmsford men were heavily engaged at Hardy’s Hill and Sergeant Ford’s gallantry was specially noted in the same place. (Sabin, “April 19, 1775,” V, 3; Frederic Hudson, “The Concord Fight,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 50 (1875): 801). The large formation of 1000 men that Sutherland saw was, I believe, the militia from Framingham and Sudbury. Here again there is a strong town tradition that Captain Nathaniel Cudworth’s Sudbury Company were heavily engaged on Brooks Hill (Hudson, Sudbury, 380). Sabin concludes that “it is also possible that other units from Sudbury’s six companies joined the ambush at Hardy’s [i.e., Brooks] Hill,” and that “the Sudbury forces enjoyed the support of men from Framingham’s three companies at Hardy’s Hill” (V, 1, 4). These nine companies included 500 men. Others from adjacent Middlesex towns could easily have made Sutherland’s 1000.

  70. Hudson, Sudbury, 365; citing Stearns Collection, [Sudbury Papers], MHS, now lost.

  71. Hurd, History of Middlesex County, II, 830; other accounts differ in detail on the place of Captain Wilson’s death.

  72. Samuel Adams Drake, History of Middlesex County (Boston, 1880), I, 375; Sabin, “April 19, 1775,” V, 3; Chase, Beginnings of the American Revolution, II, 64.

  73. Baldwin’s reference to Tanner’s Brook places his ambush position at the first bend, where the highway turned sharply north into what was called the Old Bedford Road. His men were in a “young growth of wood” on land that is now in the roadbed of modern Route 2A. A conflict of evidence appears here, between the early terrain studies and the eyewitness accounts of the battle. In this case, the latter may help us to refine the former. Terrain studies identified this tract as orchard, but this is from a deed that describes it as “young orchard” in 1791. In 1775 it must have been something else, probably an abandoned field or pasture that had gone to second growth timber, hence Foster’s description as a “young growth of wood” on the south side of the road. The land on the northwest side was called “pasture” in 1791, but much 18th-century pasture was rough ground, interspersed with mature trees that had been browsed up to a height of four or six feet, the “large trees” of Foster’s narrative. The terrain rises steeply from Tanner’s Brook to Baldwin’s “young growth” of wood. It would have been a perfect ambush site, with cover, elevation, and an enfilade position. Extracts from Loammi Baldwin’s diary are published in Hurd, Middlesex County, II, 445—47.

  74. Edmund Foster to Col. Daniel Shattuck, March 10, 1825, Kehoe, “We Were There!” I, 253-54. Most historians believe that this passage in Foster’s letter refers to th
e Bloody Curve (Sabin, “April 19, 1775,” V, 7). Galvin places it on Hardy’s [Brooks] Hill, but recent research tends to support Sabin’s reading (cf. Galvin, Minute Men, 178).

  75. The Rev. Edmund Foster to Lemuel Shattuck, March 10, 1825; Galvin, Minute Men, 176, and Coburn, Battle…, 101, are correct; French’s account (in Concord and Lexington, 220—21) is inaccurate in regard to American movements. Malcolm, maps III and IV, also appears to be mistaken in her identification of the terrain, missing the “young growth” of wood that Foster described, and woodlands that appear in other accounts. Sabin cautions that “the historical record concerning the action on Hardy’s Hill [Brooks Hill] is clouded.” Particular problems appear in estimates of casualties. Cf. Sabin, “April 19, 1775,” V, 4.

  76. This is not correctly called the Bloody Angle, an error term introduced after the Civil War that is both inaccurate and anachronistic. It has been used uncritically by many historians of the battle and is perpetuated by the National Park Service. The name was borrowed from another war to which it properly belongs; it also does not describe the terrain, which consisted of a series of bends along the curving road—not merely one. Changes in modern road construction have compounded the confusion here. The older and more correct name of Bloody Curve was recorded in Wheeler, Concord: Climate of Freedom, 127. The second ambush was near the intersection of the Woburn Road, the Old Bedford Road, and the Virginia Road. The peach orchard identified here in some terrain studies appears to have been planted later. The “woodpasture” lay to the south, with a “parcel” to the west that may have been a combination of rough pasture and woodland.

  77. Again the best accounts are Galvin, Coburn, Hurd, and Sabin.

  78. This was the place where Foster wrote, fifty years afterward, that there was “little or no discipline or order, on the part of the Americans during the remainder of that day. Each sought his own place and opportunity to attack and annoy the enemy from behind trees, rocks, fences and buildings, as seemed most convenient.” This memory appears to be correct in what happened after the engagement began at the Bloody Curve, but it is certainly incorrect for the “rest of the day.” As we shall see, attacks were mounted in company and even regimental strength later in the morning, and Percy noted that the British column was closely pursued by a large body of American troops in close formation.