American Rebels

by Nina Sankovitch

  Two days later, they returned and, surveying Hancock’s stables, poked around in the grass and hay and knocked on the doors and walls of the building. When Hancock approached them, they told him they were “seeing if his stables would do for barracks.”14 Hancock told them to leave immediately, and they replied that soon enough all the land and the buildings on it would be under their control.

  Hancock lodged a formal complaint with Governor Gage, and his fence was promptly repaired and the soldiers disciplined. He nevertheless feared another assault could come at any time and be of much more serious consequence. The repeated calls for his assassination, in flyers posted around town and letters left at his doorstep, were less easy to shrug off now that tensions in the town were so high and the work he was doing so potentially treasonous.

  As he wrote to Dolly’s father, Edmund, who was considering leaving to go stay with his daughter Sarah in Lancaster, “I am not at liberty to say what I know … but pray … remove immediately from Boston.… Things will very soon be serious.”15

  Aunt Lydia met with Edmund and arranged for Dolly to be evacuated from Boston with her; the two women would travel together to Lexington, where they would stay at the old parsonage while Hancock continued his work with the Provincial Congress. All agreed that the wedding between John and Dolly would take place as soon as possible; Aunt Lydia hoped for June, but John Hancock, apprised daily of the military preparations being mounted by Governor Gage, dared not set a date for fear of tempting fate against them both.

  Dolly settled into the Clarke parsonage with little trouble. Lexington reminded her of her hometown, Braintree, and the parsonage was as nice a home as the former Quincy home had been. Thomas Hancock built the parsonage for his father, the bishop of Lexington, in 1738, and it was spacious and airy, with plenty of room for the exiles of Boston currently taking refuge there. Although far inland, and thus with none of the sea views Dolly associated with Braintree, the village’s lively green, easily viewed from the front windows of the parsonage, was familiar to her.

  She heard from her father; he told her he was still in Boston but promised her that soon both he and Katy would leave, bound for Lancaster. A letter from her cousin Helena Bayard offered a contrary view, that neither Katy nor Edmund seemed in a hurry to leave. As for Helena herself, she had been assured by British officers that she would be well taken care of in Boston; scornful of the promises, she wrote to Dolly, “I am, you will say, wicked, but I wish the small pox would spread” and take all these British away.16

  Hancock left Boston just in time. On April 16, from his monitor in Braintree, Josiah Quincy Sr. spotted the British warship Falcon and then, two days later, the Nautilus, arrive in Boston Harbor. Josiah descended the stairs as rapidly as he could and set out for the home of Norton Quincy, the house of the selectman being the first stop in spreading the news to all of Braintree. John Adams, recently reelected to the town meeting and now in charge of encouraging local men to sign up for the militia, would be visited next. Soon the whole town would know. Warships had arrived; could war be far behind?

  The Nautilus and the Falcon carried identical messages for Governor Gage, the orders coming directly from Lord Dartmouth. Gage was to delay no longer in arresting “the principal actors and abettors in the Provincial Congress.” Dartmouth also ordered Gage to protect those colonists who were loyal to the Crown; as for those colonists who rose up against the royal government in Massachusetts, “Force should be repelled by Force.”

  General William Howe arrived within days to help Gage carry out the orders from England. The rebels of Massachusetts were deemed to be in rebellion; pursuant to the Massachusetts Charter, Governor Gage was empowered to use “martial law,” and all that such tactics and measures implied, to fight the rebellion.17

  Gage understood what he was being told to do: to start a war against the rebelling colonists while protecting the Loyalists and preserving the royal government in the colony. He had no desire to start a war but agreed that loyal colonists must be protected, the Provincial Congress must be shut down, and the military stores of the rebels confiscated. The first order of business was to arrest Hancock and Sam Adams and secure the arms and ammunition that had been hidden away by the Massachusetts militia under Hancock’s command.

  Through a network of spies, Gage learned that he could take care of both tasks with one focused blow. John Hancock and Sam Adams were staying in Lexington, just down the road from a hidden depot of ammunition, cannons, and food supplies in Concord. Gage reasoned that he could take a small but formidable force of troops out to Lexington, capture the rebel leaders, then continue to Concord and capture the supplies. He knew that Hancock had been restricted by the Provincial Congress to call up his militiamen only if Gage was seen marching out of Boston fully geared for battle (“artillery and baggage”).18 Gage decided he would send troops without either and try to disguise the planned military maneuver as a simple training drill.

  But the colonial leaders had their spies as well. They realized that Concord’s stockpile of arms and supplies would be a target, especially given its proximity to the Provincial Congress meeting place. They quickly transferred most of the weaponry, including cannons and powder, out of its hiding place in Concord and moved it to safekeeping elsewhere.

  Colonial lookouts, on duty every minute of the day, reported back to Joseph Warren, still in Boston, news of the first patrol that Gage sent out early on the morning of April 18. The patrol was small but their movements were suspect. Warren sent messages to the Provincial Congress, and to John Hancock in particular: Be on your guard.

  By the evening of April 18, it was clear that Governor Gage was intending a military operation outside of Boston, most likely to be directed at the Provincial Congress and its leaders, including Hancock. But when such attack would take place was still unclear. As night fell, eight armed men from the Lexington militia were posted outside the parsonage in Lexington, charged with protecting Hancock, Sam Adams, Aunt Lydia, and Dolly, along with the Clarke family. Thirty more Lexington minutemen convened at Buckman’s Tavern down the road, preparing to stay up all night in anticipation of whatever might be coming down the road from Boston.

  It was just after midnight, the earliest hours of April 19, 1775, when Paul Revere came galloping up the turnpike to Lexington from the direction of Charlestown. The guards posted at the parsonage of Reverend Clarke came forward to greet him as he dismounted from his horse, but they didn’t know who he was and were uncertain whether he was enemy or friend.

  William Munroe of the Lexington guard took charge, admonishing Revere to keep down the noise or he would wake the people sleeping within.

  “Noise!” spluttered Revere. “You’ll have noise soon enough before long. The regulars are coming out.”19

  He was right: Redcoats were on the march, eight hundred in all, armed and ready. They’d rowed from Boston to Lechmere’s Point in Cambridge in the dead of night, but they’d been spotted by colonial watchmen and Revere had been alerted. One if by land, two if by sea. They came by sea and now were heading to Lexington.

  Hancock’s head suddenly stuck out of an upper-floor window. “Come in, Revere,” he said, adding, in order to set Munroe and the militiamen at ease, “We are not afraid of you.”20 After a few moments, the front door opened and Paul Revere went inside.

  27

  Lexington and Concord

  We are determined that, wheresoever,

  whensoever, or howsoever

  we shall be to make our exit,

  we will die freemen.

  —JOSIAH QUINCY JR.

  Dolly would later recount the events of April 19 without much show of emotion—she was very good at both self-effacement and understatement—but from the moment that Paul Revere had come into the parsonage the night before, she had felt the charge in the air all around her: change was coming. When Hancock heard from Revere that British troops were on their way, he “gave the alarm and the Lexington bell was rung all night.”1

>   Then, as Dolly looked on, Hancock “was all night cleaning his gun and sword … determined to go out to the plain by the meeting house to fight.”2 He told Dolly of his concerns for the men gathering in the rising daylight on the green; he knew they had the heart to fight but worried that they were “but partially provided with arms and those they had were in most miserable order.”3

  Hancock wanted to join the countrymen on the field of battle. If he had his musket, he declared, he would lay waste to the Englishmen now coming over the rise into town.4 But Sam Adams refused to let him go. Adams reminded Hancock of their duties to the colony; taking up arms against the Redcoats “is not our business. We belong to the Cabinet.”5 Rather than fight, Sam persuaded John that they had to flee Lexington and get to someplace where they would be safe from arrest—or worse. Aunt Lydia and Dolly would stay with Jonas Clarke and his family and join them later when all danger was gone and the coast was clear.

  Dolly didn’t mind being left behind; she knew she was far safer in the care of a minister than in the company of a rebel wanted for treason. Aunt Lydia was less sanguine about the matter; as Clarke’s daughter, Elizabeth, told the story, “Aunt [Lydia was] crying and wringing her hands … [while] Dolly [was] going round with father to hide money, watches, and anything down in the potatoes or up in the garret.”6

  Just after dawn, British troops appeared at the far end of the Lexington green. Dolly could see their uniforms, bright red against the lightening skies behind them. She drew back from the window, suddenly frightened. Huddled close to Clarke’s daughter, and with her arm around old Aunt Lydia, Dolly listened intently to the sounds coming from outside. She heard drums, feet shuffling, a rumble of jumbled voices. Then she heard a voice calling out, ordering the militiamen to withdraw: “Lay down your arms, you damned rebels, and disperse.”7

  All was quiet and then a shot rang out. Dolly rushed to look out the window as the fighting began. For how long she stood there, she couldn’t say; shouts, drums, musket shots, and cries of pain were the background to gray smoke against a vivid blue sky; black boots on green grass; and wounds that dripped red blood from a torn brown coat.

  Dolly stood back as two wounded men were brought into the parsonage. She bent down to see what she could do for them. Suddenly, one of the “British bullets whizzed by old Mrs. Hancock’s head as she was looking out the door. ‘What is that?’ she cried out [and we] told her it was a bullet and she must take care of herself.”8 Rising to her feet, Dolly took Aunt Lydia’s arm and led her to a back room, away from the windows and the danger of an errant bullet, away from the sight of the wounded men bleeding on the floor of the parsonage.

  * * *

  In Boston that morning of April 19, John Lovell, schoolmaster of the Boston Latin School in Boston where John Hancock and the Quincy brothers had been students, stood on the steps of his schoolhouse, located on the south side of the Boston Common. From there he had a good view of Lord Percy leading his brigade of a thousand footguards down to Orange Street, which led to the Neck and out of Boston. The rumors circulating since morning were true; he saw the proof himself now as line after line of armed Redcoats marched on their way out of Boston. He returned to the classroom and announced that his students were dismissed and the school was now closed. “War’s begun and school’s done,” he declared, then added in Latin, “Deponite libros.”9 Put down your books. Boys grabbed their bags and ran for the doors, and home.

  * * *

  Early in the afternoon of the same day, Abigail Phillips Quincy gathered her son, Josiah, in her arms. For the past two weeks both of her children had been ill. On April 13, little Abigail died and was buried in the Granary Burying Ground, with only a small stone and a fading stand of daffodils to mark her grave. Josiah was feeling better but he was still too weak to walk more than a few steps, so Abigail carried him from the Quincy home on Marlborough Street to her father’s house on Beacon Street. A carriage waited for them there, along with Abigail’s two sisters, Mary and Hannah.

  William Phillips, patriarch of the family, looked tired, but when Abigail insisted that he flee Boston with them, he shook his head. Patriots like him and Joseph Warren had to stay in town as long as possible, to protect those Bostonians who had neither the means nor the will to leave their hometown. He would join them in Connecticut as soon as he could, he promised. Abigail’s brother, William Phillips Jr., was already in Norwich, waiting for his sisters. The family would be safe there.

  The carriage made its way through the crowded streets to the Boston Neck. There they were stopped by a sentry of British troops. As Josiah Quincy III remembered it many years later—it was his first memory, that of a child just three years old—everyone in the carriage was “made to descend and enter the sentry-box successively. On each side of the box was a small platform, round which each of [us] … was compelled to walk, and remain until our clothes were thoroughly fumigated with the fumes of brimstone cast upon a body of coals in the centre of the box.” With smallpox loose in Boston, “This operation was required to prevent infection.”10

  Thoroughly fumigated, the party was allowed to travel on, to leave Boston and get as far away in one day’s travel as they could. In a few days they would be in Norwich, settled in the large and stately childhood home of Benedict Arnold.11 William Phillips promised Abigail he would send any letters from Josiah Jr. as soon as they arrived; she in turn promised to let Josiah Sr. know where she had gone with his grandchild. He would understand why she had left Boston: she had to keep what remained of his family safe for her husband, Josiah.

  But where was her husband? Was he still in London, she wondered, or was he finally on his way home to her?

  * * *

  The British soldiers who stumbled back into Boston late in the afternoon of April 19 were exhausted and disheartened by the day’s battles. Almost half of Gage’s troops had been either injured or killed. The whole day had been a terrible awakening as to the capabilities of the Americans. Thousands upon thousands of colonists had shown up to fight, and they appeared to be disciplined, determined, and fearless. As reported by Lord Percy, “The Rebels attacked us in a very scattered, irregular manner, but with perseverance & resolution.… Whoever looks upon them as an irregular mob, will find himself much mistaken.”12

  The next morning, the troops and their commanders woke up to find that the Cambridge coastline facing Boston was lined with over fifteen thousand American militiamen. They had come from all over Massachusetts, as well as Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Maine. Struggling to get past the crowds of militiamen were streams of Loyalists, eager to get away from the mainland and into Boston; on the other side of the Boston Neck, Bostonian rebels lined up to leave the town, fearful of what the British troops might do to anyone who failed to vow allegiance to the king.

  Meeting with the remaining selectmen of Boston, Gage worked out an arrangement whereby anyone seeking to leave Boston would be allowed to do so, as long as they carried no weapons or ammunition on their person or in their baggage. Loyalists who wished to enter Boston were allowed in; they settled in homes abandoned by departing rebels and hoped for the best. The siege of Boston had begun.

  Who had fired the shot that started the battle at Lexington? No one could be sure, but both sides were quick to blame the other. Edmund Quincy, who had been nowhere near the scene, was nevertheless certain the shot had come from “a Number of Tory villains, some Irish and some others … [hiding] in a blind” who had fired upon the Americans as they were retreating; he condemned such “unheard of Villainy and Baseness!”13

  John Adams was determined to saddle up his horse and ride to Lexington to see for himself what had happened there. Every day more and more refugees from Boston passed through Braintree, seeking shelter, food, and some direction as to where they should go now. They brought with them such a variety of reports of the battles of April 19 that John couldn’t make sense of what had happened. When Abigail asked, he agreed that she should open their home to refugees
they knew. Then he rode away, leaving his wife alone at the doorway.

  Over the coming days, Abigail Adams would take in a number of friends and family; Josiah Quincy Sr. was forced three times to evacuate his mansion overlooking the sea when British man-of-war ships came close to his shoreline, frightening the entire family and sending them running for safety.

  In the coming weeks, Abigail would also take in strangers; her home was open to anyone fleeing the British and their horrors. “What a scene has opened upon us … a scene as we never before Experienced.… If we look back we are amazed at what is past, if we look forward we must shudder at the view,” Abigail wrote in a letter to Mercy Otis Warren in early May; “O Britain Britain how is thy glory vanished—how are thy Annals stained with the Blood of thy children.”14

  The Provincial Congress met on April 20 and ordered that depositions be taken from as many witnesses as possible as to the day’s events. The depositions were then collected in a pamphlet and also printed in the Essex Gazette.15 The newspaper account and the depositions were sent to England on the Quero, the fastest ship the colonists could find, in order to ensure that the Americans’ version of events would be the first news Englishmen received of the battle.

  In the summary of the depositions provided, the Provincial Congress asserted that while “The inhabitants of Lexington and the other towns were about one hundred, some with and some without fire arms … [and were] far from being disposed to commit hostilities against the troops of their sovereign,” the British troops, “seeming to thirst for BLOOD, wantonly rushed on, and first began the hostile scene by firing on this small party, in which they killed eight men on the spot and wounded several others before any guns were fired upon the troops by our men.”16