American Spring

by Walter R. Borneman

  21. Draft of Percy’s report to Gage, April 20, 1775, Letters of Percy, 51.

  22. Barker diary, April 19, 1775, The British in Boston, 36.

  23. Allen French, The Day of Concord and Lexington: The Nineteenth of April, 1775 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1925), 261–64 ; Octavius Pickering and Charles W. Upham, The Life of Timothy Pickering (Boston: Little, Brown, 1867), 1:69–72 ; Heath, Memoirs, 8–9 ; Mercy [Otis] Warren, History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution (Boston: E. Larkin, 1805), 1:187–88.

  24. Heath, Memoirs, 9; Henry De Berniere, “Narrative of Occurrences, 1775,” Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 2nd ser., 4 (1816), 218; Richard Frothingham, History of the Siege of Boston, and of the Battles of Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1849), 372.

  25. Robert Middlekauff, The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763–1789 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 273.

  Chapter 15 — What Have We Done?

  1. Mellen Chamberlain, “Why Capt. Levi Preston Fought,” The Historical Collections of the Danvers Historical Society 8 (1920), 69–70. Chamberlain also told a different version of this story, ending with Preston’s assertion “that their religious liberties were indissolubly connected with their civil liberties, and, therefore, that it was a religious duty to resist aggressions on their civil rights; that a man could not be a good Christian who was not a true patriot.”

  2. Percy to Harvey, April 20, 1775, Charles Knowles Bolton, ed., Letters of Hugh Earl Percy from Boston and New York, 1774–1776 (Boston: Charles E. Goodspeed, 1902), 52.

  3. Percy to Gage, April 20, 1775, Letters of Percy, 50; Henry De Berniere, “Narrative of Occurrences, 1775,” Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 2nd ser., 4 (1816), 218–19 ; David Hackett Fischer, Paul Revere’s Ride (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 320–21.

  4. Barker diary, April 19, 1775, Elizabeth Ellery Dana, ed., The British in Boston: Being the Diary of Lieutenant John Barker of the King’s Own Regiment from November 15, 1774 to May 31, 1776; with Notes (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1924), 37.

  5. Percy to Harvey, April 20, 1775, Letters of Percy, 52–53.

  6. G[ideon]. D[elaplaine]. Scull, ed., Memoir and Letters of Captain W. Glanville Evelyn, of the 4th Regiment, (“King’s Own,”), from North America, 1774–1776 (Oxford: James Parker, 1879), 53.

  7. Dartmouth to Gage, January 27, 1775, Edwin Carter, ed., The Correspondence of General Thomas Gage with the Secretaries of State, and with the War Office and the Treasury, 1763–1775 (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1969), 2:183.

  8. Gage to Dartmouth, April 22, 1775, Correspondence of Gage, 1:396.

  9. Gage to Barrington, April 22, 1775, Correspondence of Gage, 2:673–74.

  10. Thomas Weston, History of the Town of Middleboro, Massachusetts (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1906), 239.

  11. Thomas B. Allen, Tories: Fighting for the King in America’s First Civil War (New York: Harper, 2010), 67, 72.

  12. De Berniere, “Narrative of Occurrences,” 218.

  13. Deming to Coverley, April 1775, “Journal of Sarah Winslow Deming,” American Monthly Magazine 4 (January–July 1894), 46.

  14. Andrews to Barrell, April 19, 1775, “Letters of John Andrews, Esq. of Boston, 1772–1776,” Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings 8 (1864–65), 405.

  15. Andrews to Barrell, April 24, 1775, “Letters of John Andrews,” 405.

  16. Harrow Giles Unger, John Hancock: Merchant King and American Patriot (New York: John Wiley, 2000), 199.

  17. Hancock to Provincial Congress, April 24, 1775, Journals of the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts in 1774 and 1775, and of the Committee of Safety, with an Appendix (Boston: Dutton and Wentworth, 1838), 170.

  18. L. H. Butterfield, ed., Diary & Autobiography of John Adams (New York: Atheneum, 1964), 3:314.

  19. Abigail Adams to John Adams, June 15, 1775, Charles Francis Adams, Letters of Mrs. Adams, the Wife of John Adams (Boston: Wilkins, Carter, 1848), 36.

  20. Butterfield, Diary & Autobiography, 2:161.

  21. Journals of the Provincial Congress, April 22, 1775, 147–48.

  22. Journals of the Provincial Congress, April 23, 1775, 148–50.

  23. Allen French, General Gage’s Informers: New Material upon Lexington & Concord (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1932), 147–49.

  24. Paul Revere, Letter to Jeremy Belknap, circa 1798, p. 6, Massachusetts Historical Society, http://www.masshist.org/database/viewer.php?item_id=99&mode=large&img_step=6#page6, accessed March 14, 2012.

  25. Revere to Belknap, circa 1798, pp. 7–8.

  26. New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury, May 1, 1775.

  27. Paul Revere to Rachel Revere, undated, Elbridge Henry Goss, The Life of Colonel Paul Revere (Boston: Howard W. Spurr, 1906), 262–63.

  28. French, General Gage’s Informers, 170–71 ; see Journals of the Provincial Congress, May 16, 1775, p. 229, for Church’s instructions to Philadelphia.

  Chapter 16 — Spreading the News

  1. There are many versions of this dispatch, but this copy is from Henry Steele Commager and Richard B. Morris, eds., The Spirit of ’Seventy-Six: The Story of the American Revolution as Told by Participants (New York: Harper & Row, 1958), 90–91.

  2. For a thorough analysis of the Bissell story in legend and fact, see Lion G. Miles, “The True Story of Bissell’s Ride in 1775,” iBerkshires.com, July 21, 2004, http://www.iberkshires.com/printerFriendly.php?story_id=15001, and Robert L. Berthelson, “An Alarm from Lexington,” at the Connecticut Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, http://www.connecticutsar.org/articles/lexington_alarm.htm, accessed August 14, 2012; see also J. L. Bell’s Boston 1775 blogs pertaining to Bissell: http://boston1775.blogspot.com/2010/05/legend-of-israel-bissell.html; http://boston1775.blogspot.com/2010/05/true-story-of-isaac-bissell.html; http://boston1775.blogspot.com/2010/05/comparing-bissell-and-revere.html; http://boston1775.blogspot.com/2010/05/to-alarm-country-quite-to-connecticut.html, all accessed August 14, 2012. To add further confusion to the Bissell story, there was an Israel Bissell, who was born in East Windsor, Connecticut, in 1752, and who lies buried in Hinsdale, Massachusetts. He is frequently celebrated in error as the post rider.

  3. William Farrand Livingston, Israel Putnam, Pioneer, Ranger, and Major-General, 1718–1790 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1901), 193.

  4. New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury, April 24, 1775.

  5. Thomas Jones, History of New York During the Revolutionary War (New York: New-York Historical Society, 1879), 39–40.

  6. Elias Boudinot, Journal of Events in the Revolution (Trenton, N.J.: Traver, 1899), 1.

  7. Diary of Jemima Condict Harrison, April 1775, North American Women’s Letters and Diaries: Colonial to 1950 (subscription only), http://solomon.nwld.alexanderstreet.com/cgi-bin/asp/philo/nwld/getdoc.pl!S34-Do25, accessed January 3, 2012.

  8. One might imagine that General Gage would have done his best to impede the spread of this news via what was ostensibly still a royal postal system. In truth, the network of postal riders had been heavily tied to rebel committees of correspondence and associated groups for years. The conversion from the king’s system to a wholly colonial one took place with almost lightning speed. “We have the Pleasure to acquaint the Public,” the Connecticut Courant reported as early as May 8, “that a constitutional Post-Office is now rising on the Ruins of the parliamentary One, which is just expiring in Convulsions.” In just one example of this, Connecticut officials, encouraged by the Friends of Liberty at New York, “engaged a faithful Rider to proceed… with the Eastern Mails for Philadelphia and Colonies Southward” (Connecticut Courant, May 8, 1775).

  9. Boston News-Letter, April 20, 1775.

  10. Boston News-Letter, April 20, 1775.

  11. Essex Gazette, April 25, 1775.

  12. Boston Evening-Post, April 24, 1775.

  13. Mary Farwell Ayer, Check-List of Bosto
n Newspapers, 1704–1780, vol. 9 of Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts (Boston, 1907), 11, 433.

  14. Ayer, Check-List of Boston Newspapers, 449.

  15. An American to Inhabitants of New York, April 28, 1775, AA4, 2:428.

  16. An American to Inhabitants of New York, April 28, 1775, AA4, 2:428.

  17. Committee of Safety to Several Towns of Massachusetts, April 28, 1775, AA4, 2:433.

  18. This count of depositions and deponents (some of whom signed more than one affidavit) is from Journals of the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts in 1774 and 1775, and of the Committee of Safety, with an Appendix (Boston: Dutton and Wentworth, 1838), 661ff.

  19. Committee of Safety to Derby, April 27, 1775, Journals of the Provincial Congress, 159.

  20. Robert S. Rantoul, “The Cruise of the Quero,” Essex Institute Historical Collections 36 (1900), 18–19 ; for confirmation of HMS Lively being on station, see also Essex Gazette, April 25, 1775.

  21. Provincial Congress to Inhabitants of Great Britain, April 26, 1775, Journals of the Provincial Congress, 154–55.

  22. Arthur B. Tourtellot, Lexington and Concord: The Beginning of the War of the American Revolution (New York: Norton, 1959), 232. This story became more gory and incredulous the further it spread. By the time Mercy Warren passed it on to Sarah Bowen, the wife of a Rhode Island rebel, Warren had it thirdhand from “a gentleman who conversed with the brother of a woman cut in pieces in her bed with her new born infant by her side.” Taking the report at face value, Warren asked Bowen, “Are these the deeds of rationals?” See Nancy Rubin Stuart, The Muse of the Revolution: The Secret Pen of Mercy Otis Warren and the Founding of a Nation (Boston: Beacon Press, 2008), 74.

  23. Provincial Congress to Franklin, April 26, 1775, Journals of the Provincial Congress, 153–54.

  24. Peter Orlando Hutchinson, ed., The Diary and Letters of His Excellency Thomas Hutchinson, Esq (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1883), 455, entry dated May 29, 1775.

  25. Rantoul, “Cruise of the Quero,” 4.

  26. Rantoul, “Cruise of the Quero,” 6–7.

  27. Hutchinson, Diary and Letters of Thomas Hutchinson, 464 (June 3 and 4, 1775).

  28. Hutchinson to Gage, May 31, 1775, Hutchinson, Diary and Letters of Thomas Hutchinson, 456.

  29. Dartmouth to Gage, June 1, 1775, Edwin Carter, ed., The Correspondence of General Thomas Gage with the Secretaries of State, and with the War Office and the Treasury, 1763–1775 (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1969), 2:198.

  30. Hutchinson, Diary and Letters of Thomas Hutchinson, 465, entry dated June 8, 1775.

  31. Hutchinson, Diary and Letters of Thomas Hutchinson, 466, entry dated June 10, 1775.

  32. Rantoul, “Cruise of the Quero,” 13.

  33. Dartmouth to Gage, July 1, 1775, Correspondence of Gage, 2:199–200.

  34. Rantoul, “Cruise of the Quero,” 23.

  35. Burke to O’Hara, circa May 28, 1775, George H. Guttridge, The Correspondence of Edmund Burke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961), 3:160.

  Chapter 17 — Must We Stand Alone?

  1. Mercer et al. to Washington, April 25, 1775, AA4, 2:387.

  2. John Pendleton Kennedy, ed., Journals of the House of Burgesses of Virginia, 1773–1776 (Richmond, Va., 1905), 231.

  3. Randolph to Page, Willis, and Grymes, April 27, 1775, Robert L. Scribner, ed., Revolutionary Virginia: The Road to Independence, vol. 3, The Breaking Storm and the Third Convention, 1775: A Documentary Record (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1977), 63–64.

  4. Fredericksburg Committee Pledge, April 29, 1775, Revolutionary Virginia, 70–71.

  5. Henry Mayer, A Son of Thunder: Patrick Henry and the American Republic (New York: Grove, 1991), 252.

  6. Henry to Corbin, May 4, 1775, Revolutionary Virginia, 87–88 ; Mayer, A Son of Thunder, 254–57.

  7. Dunmore proclamation, May 6, 1775, Revolutionary Virginia, 100–101.

  8. Madison to Bradford, May 9, 1775, J. C. A. Stagg, ed., The Papers of James Madison Digital Edition (subscription only), Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Rotunda, 2010, congressional ser., 1, 144–45, http://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/founders/JSMN-01-01-02-0044, accessed December 16, 2012.

  9. Crozier to Rogers, April 23, 1775, Henry Steele Commager and Richard B. Morris, eds., The Spirit of ’Seventy-Six: The Story of the American Revolution as Told by Participants (New York: Harper & Row, 1958), 77–78.

  10. Journals of the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts in 1774 and 1775, and of the Committee of Safety, with an Appendix (Boston: Dutton and Wentworth, 1838), 172–73, entry dated April 30, 1775.

  11. Andrews to Barrell, May 6, 1775, “Letters of John Andrews, Esq. of Boston, 1772–1776,” Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings 8 (1864–65), 405–6. See, for example, the Boston News-Letter of May 19, 1775, reporting, “The Inhabitants of this Town continue daily to move out with their Effects, Merchandize, Ammunition and Provision excepted.” Despite his attempts to escape Boston, John Andrews never succeeded in leaving. He was still in town when the British evacuated the city in March of 1776. Given that his motives were always more economic than political, he managed subsequently to embrace the rebel cause and was among those welcoming General George Washington.

  12. For the Byles family, see Arthur Wentworth Hamilton Eaton, The Famous Mather Byles (Boston: W. A. Butterfield, 1914).

  13. James H. Stark, “Samuel Quincy, Solicitor General,” 8n, The Loyalists of Massachusetts (1910), http://www.robertsewell.ca/loyalmass.htm#_ftn8.accessed August 30, 2012.

  14. “made the best provision,” Warren to Adams, May 7, 1775, H. C. Lodge, et al., eds., Warren-Adams Letters, Being Chiefly a Correspondence among John Adams, Samuel Adams, and James Warren (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1917), 46; for Providence ride and migraines, see Nancy Rubin Stuart, The Muse of the Revolution: The Secret Pen of Mercy Otis Warren and the Founding of a Nation (Boston: Beacon Press, 2008), 73–74, 77.

  15. J. Warren to M. Warren, May 18, 1775, Warren-Adams Letters, 49.

  16. John W. Gordon, South Carolina and the American Revolution: A Battlefield History (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2003), 19–20.

  17. South-Carolina and American General Gazette, May 5, 1775.

  18. South-Carolina and American General Gazette, May 12, 1775, quoting Essex Gazette of April 25, 1775.

  19. J. William Harris, The Hanging of Thomas Jeremiah: A Free Black Man’s Encounter with Liberty (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2009), 84, 184n.

  20. Harris, Hanging of Thomas Jeremiah, 86–87.

  21. Harris, Hanging of Thomas Jeremiah, 84–86.

  22. Harris, Hanging of Thomas Jeremiah, 93–94, 186n; South-Carolina Gazette, February 13, 1755, and May 7, 1756. The other recent biography of Jeremiah is William R. Ryan’s The World of Thomas Jeremiah: Charles Town on the Eve of the American Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).

  23. Harris, Hanging of Thomas Jeremiah, 96.

  24. Harris, Hanging of Thomas Jeremiah, 88.

  25. Harris, Hanging of Thomas Jeremiah, 131, 134, 144.

  26. Ryan, The World of Thomas Jeremiah, 157.

  27. John Richard Alden, General Gage in America: Being Principally a History of His Role in the American Revolution (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1948), 228.

  28. Gage to Caldwell, March 4, 1775, Alden, General Gage in America, 228.

  29. Gage to Carleton, April 21, 1775, Allen French, The First Year of the American Revolution (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1934), 407.

  Chapter 18 — “In the Name of the Great Jehovah…”

  1. Boston Gazette, February 13, 1775.

  2. Edward P. Hamilton, Fort Ticonderoga: Key to a Continent (Boston: Little, Brown, 1964), 103; Gage to Delaplace, March 8, 1775, in John Richard Alden, General Gage in America: Being Principally a History of His Role in the American Revolution (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1948), 228
.

  3. Adams to Lee, March 4, 1775, Harry Alonzo Cushing, ed., The Writings of Samuel Adams (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1907), 3:197; the committee’s letter to Quebec, “begging you would be assured that we have our mutual Safety and Prosperity at heart,” is at p. 182.

  4. Archibald M. Howe, Colonel John Brown, of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, The Brave Accuser of Benedict Arnold (Boston: W. B. Clarke, 1908), 5–6.

  5. Brown to Adams, March 29, 1775, at Fort Ticonderoga website, http://www.fortticonderoga.org/learn/re-enactors/1775-capture/re-enactor/brown, accessed June 7, 2012.

  6. Willard Sterne Randall, Ethan Allen: His Life and Times (New York: Norton, 2011), 28.

  7. Charles S. Hall, Life and Letters of Samuel Holden Parsons (Binghamton, N.Y.: Otseningo, 1905), 6, 8, 13, 19–21.

  8. Parsons to Trumbull, April 26, 1775, in Hall, Parsons, 24.

  9. “could not hold out,” Arnold to committee of safety, April 30, 1775, AA4, 2:450; “first undertook,” Hall, Parsons, 24.

  10. Warren to McDougall, April 30, 1775, AA4, 2:450.

  11. Hamilton, Fort Ticonderoga, 105.

  12. For various versions of the crossing and the Arnold-Allen feud, see Hamilton, Fort Ticonderoga, 110–11 ; Willard Sterne Randall, Benedict Arnold: Patriot and Traitor (New York: William Morrow, 1990), 90–94 ; Randall, Allen, 306–9 ; and Page Smith, A New Age Now Begins: A People’s History of the American Revolution (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976), 588. Whether there was one scow or two and whether there was one or two crossings are matters of some dispute.

  13. Ethan Allen, A Narrative of Colonel Ethan Allen’s Captivity (Burlington, Vt.: H. Johnson, 1838), 17; Feltham to Gage, June 11, 1775, Henry Steele Commager and Richard B. Morris, eds., The Spirit of ’Seventy-Six: The Story of the American Revolution as Told by Participants (New York: Harper & Row, 1958), 101.

  14. Allen to Massachusetts Congress, May 11, 1775, AA4, 2:556.

  15. Arnold to Massachusetts Congress, May 11, 1775, AA4, 2:557.