American Spring

by Walter R. Borneman

  As early as 1771, after abolitionists had introduced an antislavery bill into the Massachusetts legislature, James Warren told John Adams that if it was passed, “it should have a bad effect on the union of the colonies.” How could Warren and the Adams cousins court Virginia and South Carolina to their cause against Great Britain, Warren asked, if they allowed slavery to become “a disruptive side issue?”19 Their answer was to ignore it, even as men of color and servitude, including Prince Estabrook and Peter Salem, were regularly drilling with their militia units. (At some point, it appears, both Estabrook and Salem were granted their freedom in return for their military service.)

  Looking for ways to bolster their fledgling provincial forces, the Massachusetts committee of safety drew a distinction between free men of color and slaves. The discussion was less about race than about the members’ underlying concept of freedom—however misguided in retrospect. Since the colonies were fighting Great Britain over their “liberties and privileges,” committee members considered the recruitment of slaves “into the army now raising” to be “inconsistent with the principals that are to be supported, and [would] reflect dishonor on this colony.” Consequently, they agreed “that no slaves be admitted into this army upon any consideration whatever.”20 Nothing was said about free men of color.

  This is not to say that abolition was not a topic of discussion in both the northern and southern colonies. In the northern provinces, particularly among the Quaker enclaves of Philadelphia, rural New Jersey, and coastal Rhode Island, some took the matter into their own hands and quietly emancipated their slaves by ones, twos, or threes. Other owners simply refused to purchase replacement slaves or to break up family units with further trading. Rarely, others, such as the Quaker merchant Joshua Fisher, embarked on quests to track down slaves he had previously sold, repurchase them, and grant them their freedom.21

  Even in Virginia, where Lord Dunmore was threatening to employ the slave population against the rebels, there had been some discussion of limiting slavery. Thomas Jefferson, who arrived in Philadelphia to take Peyton Randolph’s seat in the Second Continental Congress the same day that George Washington departed for Boston, was on record as asserting that “the abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in those colonies where it was unhappily introduced in their infant state.” Jefferson wrote this in 1774 in the context of an example of George III’s heavy-handedness—in this case his government’s refusal to pass laws banning the slave trade despite the wishes of some colonies. Jefferson’s prohibition against the importation of new slaves—“No person hereafter coming into this country shall be held in slavery under any pretext whatever”—survived into the early drafts of Virginia’s 1776 constitution, though it would be dropped from the final version.22

  As noble talk about freedom and individual rights trickled down and spread among New England domestics and Carolina field hands, those slaves who understood came to take the words even more personally than whites did. But short of individual efforts, such as those of Prince Estabrook and Peter Salem, or a mass insurrection of slaves on behalf of the British Crown, slaves lacked enough political allies to effect a change in their status. Women, on the other hand, had earned some measure of political influence by their aggressive support of the nonimportation and nonconsumption measures that traced their roots to the original boycotts of the mid-1760 s.

  This emerging influence may have encouraged Abigail Adams and Mercy Otis Warren to participate in political debates—even if only with other women or within family circles—but it did not begin to grant them the independent equality so fervently sought by their husbands. John Adams was particularly adamant on that point. The most documented and pointed exchange between John and Abigail on the subject would not occur until the spring of 1776, but there is no reason to suspect that the feelings they each expressed then had not been ingrained in John or bubbling in Abigail years before.

  How real was the “passion for Liberty” among those who kept fellow humans enslaved? Abigail wondered. Then she turned her attention to the predicament of her own sex. Noting that she assumed John was at work on a legal code in the congress, Abigail beseeched him to “remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors.” As if to underscore the seriousness of her charge, Abigail, only partially in jest, went on to assert: “If perticular care and attention is not paid to the Laidies, we are determined to foment a Rebelion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice or Representation.”23 Her words intentionally echoed those her husband and his rebel friends had been spouting for years.

  “I cannot but laugh,” John Adams told her in reply. Then, alluding to potential unrest among children, workers, Indians, and slaves, John went on to say that Abigail’s letter was his first intimation “that another Tribe more numerous and powerfull than all the rest were grown discontented.” This was “rather too coarse a Compliment,” he told her, “but you are so saucy, I wont blot it out.”24 Abigail’s response was to withhold her normal reply to John for longer than usual and vent her frustrations in a letter to Mercy Otis Warren instead.

  As for John, he was adamant in cautioning James Sullivan, a Massachusetts lawyer, that no good could come from enfranchising more Americans no matter what the category. “Depend upon it, sir,” Adams told Sullivan. “It is dangerous to open So fruitfull a Source of Controversy and Altercation, as would be opened by attempting to alter the Qualifications of Voters. There will be no End to it. New Claims will arise. Women will demand a Vote. Lads from 12 to 21 will think their Rights not enough attended to, and every Man, who has not a Farthing, will demand an equal Voice with any other, in all Acts of State. It tends to confound and destroy all Distinctions, and prostrate all Ranks to one common Levell.”25 It remained to be seen if the rebel cause would be successful, but even if it was, the fruits of liberty were to be heavily restricted.

  MEANWHILE, MANY LOYALISTS IN BOSTON remained focused on just one goal: to get out of town as quickly as possible. Some believed they would soon return and “left friends or relatives behind to guard their abandoned homes or businesses.” Others were certain that a chapter of their lives—perhaps an entire volume—was closing. In Boston, acrimony among former neighbors and friends divided by political loyalties reached as high a level as anywhere in the colonies. As loyalists continued to depart, one rebel ditty ran: “The Tories with their brats and wives, have fled to save their wretched lives.”26

  Where they would go was another matter. Increasingly, throughout the late spring and summer of 1775, Halifax, Nova Scotia, became the first port of refuge. It was convenient and more a matter of expedience than of choice. In time, some fleeing loyalists would stay there or make their way farther into Canada, to England, or to other parts of the British Empire. For most, their lives would never be the same. Anglican clergy, who were almost all loyalists, did not find a warm welcome in the greater Church of England. The Reverend Henry Caner, the seventy-six-year-old rector of King’s Chapel, was among the loyalists to leave Boston. He recalled that upon his arrival in England, he heard considerable expressions of compassion from the archbishop of Canterbury and bishop of London but received no offer of an appointment to an English parish. “We can’t think of your residing here,” Caner was told. “We want such men as you in America.”27 America, of course, had thrown them out.

  The exodus of loyalists was not confined to Boston, and those who felt forced to leave their homes and hometowns did so with a decided taste of bitterness. Thomas and Mary Robie of Marblehead didn’t want to go, but being closely allied with former governor Hutchinson and as such in the decided minority in pro-rebel Marblehead, they had little choice. Sailing first for Nova Scotia, they would eventually end up in England. As they were rowed from the dock in Marblehead to their ship anchored in the harbor, they were jeered by loud catcalls from an assembled group of rebels. Far from being cowed, Mary Robie looked shoreward from the rowboat and shouted back: “I hop
e that I shall live to return, find this wicked Rebellion crushed, and see the streets of Marblehead run with Rebel blood.”28

  IN THE SHORT TERM, PERHAPS the most consequential discussions of what course to take occurred between General Gage and his newly arrived triumvirate of reputation. On the grand scale, General Howe advocated a plan to reduce Boston to a mere garrison and move the principal thrust of British military operations to New York and the Hudson River Valley. No doubt swayed by his oldest brother’s colonial experience as well as his own, Howe recognized the strategic importance of the New York–Champlain corridor. Boston was New England’s major seaport, but it led nowhere and had become a vortex sucking in resources. The Hudson River corridor led to Canada and could sever radical New England from the other colonies.

  Howe speculated that such an effort would require nineteen thousand troops in addition to a strong force of Canadians and Indians. (It is interesting that both sides anticipated an outpouring of men and assistance from Canada that never materialized.) Such large numbers—roughly three times the number of troops that Gage now had in Boston after reinforcements had arrived—appalled Lord North’s government, but Howe presciently advised, “With a Less Force than I have mentioned, I apprehend this war may be spun out untill England shall be heartily sick of it.”29

  England’s dismay would indeed come to pass, but Howe’s cohorts, Clinton and Burgoyne, were preoccupied with more immediate concerns. The initial shock that had gripped the survivors of Lord Percy’s retreat from Lexington was ebbing. Bolstered by reinforcements, there was a renewed sense of confidence among the regulars that a lesson must and could be taught to these upstart rebels. Clinton and Burgoyne agreed and urged General Gage to undertake operations that would secure some of Burgoyne’s desired “elbow room.” Given the largely unsuccessful forays at Grape and Noddle’s Islands, they recommended seizing the heights across the Charles River at Charlestown and those adjacent to Roxbury at Dorchester. The question that must be asked, however, is why General Gage hadn’t done something about these heights long before this.

  According to the memoirs of Admiral Samuel Graves, on the evening of April 19 or shortly thereafter, as Lord Percy’s beleaguered column hunkered down in Charlestown and began its evacuation across the Charles River, Graves went to General Gage and proposed a plan that in retrospect seems quite out of character with the normally disinclined admiral. Graves “advised the burning of Charlestown and Roxbury, and the seizing of the Heights of Roxbury and Bunkers Hill.”30

  Doing so would have left the rebels—short of an amphibious assault, for which they were not readily equipped—only two narrow and heavily defended routes against Boston had they opted to make such an attack. But Admiral Graves was certainly not thinking about the safety of Boston and General Gage’s army. The admiral was chiefly concerned about his fleet. Rebel cannons placed either above Charlestown or near Roxbury would be within range of his ships.

  According to Graves, General Gage replied that his forces were far too weak for such ventures, even after the admiral’s offer of marine reinforcements from the fleet. That was possibly true about an advance south from Boston Neck to Roxbury and Dorchester Heights, given the openness of the terrain there. But on the Charlestown peninsula, the geography was reversed, and Charlestown Neck afforded a defensive strongpoint against rebels attacking from the mainland. In fact, fearing just such an assault against the retreating British column on the evening of April 19, Captain John Montresor of the engineers had begun work on fortifications on Bunker Hill that faced away from Boston and commanded the approaches across Charlestown Neck.

  Even if Gage was correct in his fear of spreading his forces too thin at Roxbury—at that point he had yet to broker the agreement with the Boston citizens in his midst to turn in their arms—the Charlestown situation was entirely different. British troops already controlled that ground; the populace was preparing to abandon the town, and there was little concern for a successful rebel attack from Cambridge, particularly given Admiral Graves’s warships at anchor in the Charles River. But Gage said no. He dismissed the admiral’s plans as “too rash and sanguinary” and proceeded to complete the Charlestown evacuation and hunker his troops down in Boston proper—which was, of course, the condition Howe, Clinton, and Burgoyne found upon their arrival.31

  In the meantime, however, Admiral Graves remained worried about the safety of his fleet—in part because the larger ships of his line could only maneuver easily at high tide. He was particularly concerned about the seventy-gun Somerset, which Paul Revere had rowed past on the evening of April 18 and which still stood guard near the Charlestown ferry crossing. Consequently, on April 23, Graves received permission from Gage to place a battery of twenty-four-pound cannons from his ships atop Copp’s Hill in the North End, almost in the shadow of the Old North Church. This battery looked out across the Charles River at Charlestown and was about the same height as the hills above the town. It provided a stout backup to the Somerset and other vessels and was under the navy’s direct control.

  Army officers made an immediate joke about the effort, and even Admiral Graves recounted their reaction with humor. “The erection of this battery by the Commander at Sea afforded much pleasantry to the Garrison,” Graves acknowledged—“particularly among those who did not readily perceive the intent; it was christened soon by the name of the Admiral’s battery and always spoke of with a smile.”32

  As it turned out, Admiral Graves almost got to unlimber those guns a few days before Howe, Clinton, and Burgoyne sailed into town. There were commanders on the rebel side just as anxious for action as Clinton and Burgoyne, and one of them was that old Connecticut firebrand Israel Putnam. The man couldn’t be idle, and he didn’t expect his troops to be, either. Idleness was an enemy. Putnam may have been the original proponent of the old army saw that it was “better to dig a ditch every morning and fill it up at evening than to have the men idle.”33

  One May afternoon Putnam apparently took it upon himself to lead a ramble from Cambridge to Charlestown. With fifes blaring and drums beating, a column of some 2,200 men followed Putnam across Charlestown Neck, over the heights behind the town, and then down to the waterfront at the ferry landing. They did so, according to one Connecticut volunteer, “to Shoe themselves to the Regulars.”34 They were certainly seen, but it provoked no response.

  Lieutenant John Barker of the Fourth Regiment heard the rebels give a war whoop opposite the anchored Somerset and expected them to fire on the ship. When they didn’t, Barker wished that they had, because the Somerset “had everything ready for Action, and must have destroyed great numbers of them besides putting the Town in Ashes.”35

  The admiral’s battery on Copp’s Hill would have likely joined in the cannonade, but no commands to fire were given on either side. Putnam was only making a demonstration, and those in command on the Somerset and atop Copp’s Hill evidently lacked the authority to engage unless fired upon. If nothing else, the absence of an exchange shows that there was still some tentativeness to this entire drama on both sides.

  Putnam returned his men to Cambridge without firing a shot, but he had caused quite a stir among loyalists in Boston. “This movement,” James Warren wrote Mercy, “produced a Terror in Boston hardly to be described.”36

  Such terror aside, the heights above Charlestown and at Dorchester remained unoccupied when Howe, Clinton, and Burgoyne sat down with General Gage to devise a course of action to seize them. “Why a situation, from which the town of Boston was so liable to be annoyed, was so long neglected,” British historian Charles Stedman wrote critically a few years later, “it is not easy to assign a reason.” But at that point, according to Burgoyne, “my two colleagues and myself… never differed in one jot of military sentiment” and formed the plan “in concert with General Gage.” They proposed to begin with the Dorchester front because, with the support of Admiral Graves’s fleet, “it would evidently be effected without any considerable loss.”37

  Ho
we, as the senior man of the trio, would lead the assault. On June 12—by coincidence the very day that Gage’s proclamation was nailing shut the last door of local reconciliation—Howe wrote his brother Richard, the admiral, the broad outline of the plan. Under the guns of the Royal Navy, Howe’s troops would make an amphibious landing on Dorchester Neck and secure the heights. Then, pivoting to the west and joining forces with more troops, who would emerge from Boston via Boston Neck, they would sweep through the rebel lines at Roxbury and be poised to advance upon Cambridge from the south.

  Once the Dorchester attack was assured of success, Clinton would lead a similar assault “with all we can muster” to take the heights above Charlestown. From there, Clinton would “either attack the Rebels at Cambridge” directly or encircle that post, perhaps linking up with Howe in a great pincerlike movement. “In either case,” Howe wrote his brother, “I suppose the Rebels will move from Cambridge, And that we shall take, and keep possession of it.”38

  The opening assault was planned against Dorchester on the morning of June 18—once again a Sunday. Given Howe’s confidence in the matter, no one on the British side seems to have been terribly concerned about what the rebels might be doing in the interim. Much would later be made of various reports that reached Cambridge about the British plan. One came in a roundabout way from the New Hampshire committee of safety. It forwarded a warning from “a gentleman of undoubted veracity” who had left Boston even before Gage and his generals drafted their plan. After reinforcements arrived, the informant reported, Gage was expected to “secure some advantageous posts near Boston, viz: Dorchester and Charlestown.” The friendly New Hampshire missive went on to say: “We are unacquainted with the importance of those posts, but if this hint should be in any degree useful, it will give us pleasure.”39