American Rebels

by Nina Sankovitch

  What would their present times look like if on March 5, 1770, no young rascal had taunted Hugh White on his officer’s failure to pay a wig bill? The escalation of events from that point—had it been unstoppable or inevitable? For Abigail, her resolution for independence from England had started with the Battles of Lexington and Concord, when she feared that any colonist could be next in the line of fire.

  And then the siege of Boston, with all the pestilence that such an occupation released: the misery of being held hostage, of being separated from fellow colonists; the lack of food and supplies, the starvation; the illnesses that multiplied in crowded, miserable conditions; the constant vigilance against an uncertain threat; and the oppression of spirit that came from having an enemy in line of sight, just across the water.

  The enemy held Boston, and Boston was a symbol to the colonists. The city on a hill, where those escaping oppression came to be both free in spirit and certain of their duty. Now they were again oppressed—and by the same tyrant, England—and their duty was more certain than ever. And so, once again, they would escape the tyranny of the mother country, but this time, they had to do it for good. As Abigail wrote to John, “may justice and righteousness be the Stability of our times, and order arise out of confusion. Great difficulties may be surmounted, by patience and perseverance.”15

  Abigail Adams in her home by the sea, Josiah Quincy Sr. in his rooftop guard post, Edmund Quincy in Lancaster: they anticipated the roll and thunder of cannon fire any day now, and the sight of flames and smoke rising over the city on a hill.

  “I expect soon to hear the Bombardment and Cannonading of poor Boston!”16 Edmund wrote as the winter dragged on. Across the colony, he was not alone.

  * * *

  At the end of January, John Hancock met with Benjamin Franklin after a long day of congressional committee meetings. Franklin had joined his Pennsylvania delegation the summer before and was proving to be a trusted ally to Massachusetts. He had long discarded hopes for reconciliation with England and was now fully committed to the path laid out by his former mentee, Josiah Quincy Jr.: the path to independence. In the summer of 1775, he had made his feelings clear when he declared, in a widely shared letter, that England, having “begun to burn our towns and murder our people,” was the “enemy.” The enemy to be fought against, and separated from, forever.17

  Neither Franklin’s commitment to the cause of independence nor his enthusiasm could be dampened by the recent bad news of defeat and losses in Canada. In fact, as British incursions increased over the coming months, his resolve did as well: “Forces have been sent out and towns have been burnt. We cannot now expect happiness under the domination of Great Britain. All former attachments have been obliterated.”18

  And yet John Hancock knew that the report he had received that day from Lord Stirling in New Jersey might very well cloud the countenance of the old diplomat. Stirling had good news, that the Tories in New Jersey had been subdued. But as part of the measures taken against New Jersey Loyalists, Governor William Franklin was put under armed guard and held prisoner in his home. It would be up to Hancock to tell Benjamin Franklin of his son’s fate.

  Franklin took the news stoically and agreed with Hancock that the best place for his son would be far from New Jersey, thereby preventing him from associating with Loyalist friends and family. Franklin had tried to convince William in December to come over to the cause of liberty, but he had failed. Benjamin Franklin wouldn’t see his son again for almost a decade, and left nothing to him in his will when he died.

  * * *

  The winter in Philadelphia was so much milder than what those in New England were suffering through, and yet John Hancock’s gout returned; it was less dependent on the weather than on the amount of stress under which he labored—and those stresses were steady. Every meeting of Congress had to be presided over by Hancock; every document issued by Congress had to be signed by Hancock; every colony had to be persuaded to contribute men, supplies, and money by Hancock; and every visitor to Congress had to be greeted, listened to, and sent on their way—by Hancock.

  Edmund Quincy wrote to Dolly that all the ailments of Hancock were to be pitied but “especially that it should affect … his eyes since the Clearest Sight of every American Patriot is [so] critical … and more so [for Hancock] than any other member of the most important political Council now existing on the Globe.”19 With such expectations upon him, no wonder John Hancock felt such strain and such pressure.

  * * *

  Henry Knox and his nineteen-year-old brother made it back to Massachusetts from Fort Ticonderoga in mid-February. With the help of the dozens of volunteers who came out of small towns and villages all along the way, the two brothers dragged, carried, rowed, pushed, and pulled forty-two sledges and wagons carrying fifty-eight howitzers, mortars, and cannons across three hundred miles. The weaponry weighed close to sixty tons, the journey took more than fifty days, and the weather the brothers endured included rain, ice, snow, and hail. It was an awesome feat and a signal to Washington of the heart and resolve of his New England troops.

  Washington now had the guns he needed. But what he would do with them would surprise many. As he confided in a letter to John Hancock, he admitted that the plan to attack Boston was perhaps more hazardous “than was consistent with prudence.”20 Having been counseled by his war generals “to take possession of Dorchester Hill, with a view of drawing out the Enemy,” he now found himself agreeing to a different plan of warfare.21

  While the new plan was seen by some as a bizarre engineering stunt, Washington was convinced that the idea of building in one night an entire fort out of hay and sticks might be just the trick to intimidate the British and allow the Americans to appear stronger than they actually were. The plan had been conceived by Rufus Putnam, a self-taught engineer, after he happened upon the idea in a book about military maneuvers.

  The fort—or two forts, as it turned out—would be built on Dorchester Heights, a no-man’s-land that looked out over Boston from a great height. Putnam oversaw the engineering of premade frames of light wood and twisted hay bales, which could then be dragged uphill and quickly arranged into a wall of what would appear to be a solid fort. To distract any British soldiers who might be watching, Knox’s cannons would be placed at Cambridge and Roxbury, from which points they would launch balls and fire at Boston, raising all kinds of hell.

  The night chosen for building the fort was March 4. For the two nights before, the Americans shot cannon at Boston, but the attacks were moderate and largely harmless. Then, on the evening of March 4, as the true cannonade began, three thousand American soldiers began carrying their prefab forts of sticks and straw up the hill.

  The next morning, on the sixth anniversary of the Boston Massacre, the British were amazed to see towering atop Dorchester Heights two brand-new forts, as if magically conjured. One faced Castle Island, and the other faced out over Boston. The misty morning added to the sense of unreality, but at the same time, General Howe was very sure of what he was seeing. “Howe was seen to scratch his head and heard to say by those that were around him, that he did not know what he should do,” a local minister reported, “that the provincials … had done more work in one night than his whole army would have done in six months.”22

  The forts were so high up that it was impossible for British guns to reach them, although the British tried, again and again, with a barrage of fire and shot. Meanwhile, the cannonade from Cambridge and Roxbury continued to rain down upon the town. The long-awaited battle for Boston had begun but in a way no one had anticipated.

  Abigail in Braintree wrote nonstop to John in Philadelphia, as she heard the cannon roar and as rumors flew, and with no certainty as to what was happening, who was winning, or what the outcome would be. She had no idea if her letters would get through to John but she had to write, to share with him the terror of the ensuing battle.

  Already on March 2, the night of the first barrage, she wrote, “hark! the Hous
e this instant shakes with the roar of Cannon. I have been to the door and find tis a cannonade from our Army.… No Sleep for me to Night.” She laid blame on the English for the carnage she was sure was about to ensue: “the miserable wretches who have been the procurers of this Dreadful Scene and those who are to be the actors, lie down with the load of Guilt upon their Souls.”23

  All night long, her “Heart Beat pace with” the cannon fire; “what tomorrow will bring forth God only knows.” She left the house at dawn and made her way, along with almost the entire village, to Penn’s Hill, from where they could look out over Boston. A haze lay over the water, and smoke still rose in columns, obscuring the hills of Dorchester and the town beyond. That afternoon, she returned to Penn’s Hill and stayed until once again she heard “the amazing roar of cannon.… The sound I think is one of the Grandest in Nature.”24

  But as she began her walk down the hill toward home, the cannon, “now an incessant Roar,” seemed less grand and more a terrible harbinger of things to come: “O the fatal Ideas which are connected with the sound. How many of our dear country men must fall?”25

  That night, the night of March 4, Abigail put her children to bed, unaware of the thousands of men now working their way up the slopes of Dorchester to build their fort out of hay, sticks, and hope. Her home was her own again, the many refugees having moved on, and she paced the silent rooms, unable to rest; “I could no more sleep than if I had been in the engagement,” she wrote to John.

  Once again, a bombardment had started: “The rattling of the windows, the jar of the house and the continual roar of 24 pounders, the Bursting of shells.”26 She went again and again to the windows of her farmhouse, looking out into a dark night. The moon was full, but its light obscured by the fog rising off the sea.

  On March 5, Abigail, groggy with little sleep yet still anxious and nervous for news, again found herself walking out to Penn’s Hill. It had become the meeting ground for all the neighbors, the new village green where news was shared and fears exchanged. The haze over Boston was thicker than ever, the sun rising to the east, just a dim light wrapped in fog and smoke. A heavy mist rolled off the sea, enveloping all of Braintree in a damp and salty gloom.

  Then shouts echoed from down below, and the sharp report of hoofbeats was heard coming down the Plymouth Road. A messenger had arrived from Cambridge to deliver in a staccato of short sentences an account of all that had happened between the Americans and the British. He returned to his saddle, refusing even a draught of cider, and sped again on his way, to continue south to the chain of towns waiting for news.

  Abigail returned home, shaken by the news; certainly, it was good that “we got possession of Dorchester Hill Last Night. 4000 men upon it to day—lost but one Man. The Ships are all drawn round the Town.”

  But still she had no idea what would happen next. Her only certainty was that the battle for Boston was not over. “Tonight we shall realize a more terrible scene still. I sometimes think I cannot stand it—I wish myself with you,” she wrote to John. Even more, she wished she could write that the battle was finished and that victory belonged to the Americans: “I hope to give you joy of Boston, even if it is in ruins.”27

  For two days more, shots and cannon continued to be lobbed back and forth between Boston and Cambridge. Abigail despaired that all the days of bombardment had resulted in so little: “from all the Muster and Stir I hoped and expected more important and decisive Scenes; I would not have suffered all I have for two such Hills.”

  And still it continued. On March 10, Abigail wrote to John that all of Braintree was “assaulted with the roar of Cannon.… My Hand and heart will tremble, at this domestic fury, and fierce civil Strife, which encumber all our parts.… I feel for the unhappy wretches who know not where to fly for safety. I feel still more for my Bleeding Country men who are hazarding their lives and their Limbs.”28

  Abigail did not know that two days earlier, on March 8, the British forces holding Boston had offered George Washington a truce: if they were allowed to evacuate the town, taking what time they needed to gather their supplies, load their vessels, and also accommodate all the Loyalists who wished to evacuate with them, the British promised they would not burn Boston to the ground before leaving. Washington agreed to the terms of their departure.

  Over eleven thousand people were to be loaded up on one hundred British ships, including close to nine thousand troops and over a thousand Loyalists. Howe had arranged passage not only for Loyalists wishing to leave Boston but also for his American prisoners; John Lovell, Loyalist schoolmaster of the Boston Latin School, took a berth, but it is not known whether he went in search of his son James, a prisoner of the British since winter and now confined in the cargo hold of one of the British ships leaving Boston.29

  Josiah Quincy Sr., sitting in his monitor, saw for himself the British ships loading up with passengers, barrels and crates of supplies, horses, trunks, and chests and then moving out of the harbor toward Castle Island, where more people and bundles were picked up. Then finally, the ships set sail, pitching forward into the welcoming swells of the Atlantic and leaving Massachusetts behind.

  Overwhelmed with gratitude and writing with “a trembling hand,” Josiah Sr. wrote to George Washington in Cambridge, expressing his “compliments of Congratulation, which are due to you from every friend to liberty and the rights of mankind, upon your triumphant and almost bloodless victory, in forcing the British … to a precipitate flight from the capital of these colonies.”30

  “The more I think of our Enemies quitting Boston, the more amazed I am,” Abigail Adams wrote to John. “Shurely it is the Lord’s doings and it is Marvelous in our Eyes.”31 Their son Charles, age five, had a different take on the departure; he called the British “cowards for they have stood it but one year, and we would have stood it three.”32 John celebrated the “Joy of Boston and Charlestown, once more the Habitations of Americans.”33

  Safe but uneasy in Norwich, Abigail Quincy was grateful for the minimal lives lost in securing the British surrender of Boston; but mixed in with her solemn gratitude was her fervent desire, the “energetic principle beating in [her] heart,” of seeing independence from England declared.34 Edmund Quincy had the same idea; while he praised the “Glorious defensive Struggles we have made under the Severe attacks of the British wicked Ministry,” he also prayed, “May we deserve a Continuance of the Protections of Heaven and may there soon be an Accommodation of Separation.”35

  At the end of March, Abigail Adams, accompanied by Mercy Otis Warren and her husband, James, climbed once again to the top of Penn’s Hill to watch “the last division of the British fleet” sail away from Boston: “about sixty or seventy sail.… What their destination is we are not able to ascertain.”36

  Mercy wrote to Dolly Hancock of the “dead silence” that now surrounded Boston—and then assured Dolly that the Hancock mansion was safe; “your own delightful residence … to the surprise of everyone has escaped the outrages of the enemy.”37

  John Hancock had already heard from George Washington of the generally good state of his mansion (“no damage worth mentioning … the family pictures are all left entire and untouched”).38 From his steward Hancock heard that his wine cellars were emptied and his backgammon table was missing, but everything else seemed in order. However, the engraving of his name at the foot of Brattle Square Church had been chiseled away from the stone. No great loss: what had been broken away could be chiseled again into the stone.

  Despite the months of occupation and the days of incessant shelling, Boston was not in as bad shape as everyone had anticipated, but still, destruction was everywhere in evidence. North Meeting Church was gone, torn down for firewood, and the Old South Meeting House had been damaged by its use as a riding ring. A number of houses lay in ruins, destroyed by looters, including Samuel Quincy’s mansion on Hanover Street.

  Abigail Adams had little pity for Samuel’s loss, his house having fallen victim to his “own merciless part
y.” Apparently even the Redcoats felt “a Reverential awe for Virtue and patriotism, whilst they Detest the paricide and traitor,”39 she wrote to John, referring not only to Quincy’s destroyed home but Hancock’s preserved one.

  John Adams felt as little remorse for the fate of Samuel Quincy as Abigail did. “Let Us take Warning and give it to our Children. Whenever Vanity, and Gaiety, a Love of Pomp and Dress, Furniture, Equipage, Buildings, great Company, expensive Diversions, and elegant Entertainments get the better of the Principles and Judgments of Men or Women there is no knowing where they will stop, nor into what Evils, natural, moral, or political, they will lead us,” he lectured to Abigail.

  But he prefaced his lecture against Samuel Quincy with mercy for his family: “I pity his pretty Children, I pity his Father, and his sisters.”40

  Both John and Abigail were grateful for the survival of the small building they’d called home on Queen Street, which was intact (although “very dirty”). “I look upon it as a new acquisition of property,” Abigail wrote, “which one month ago I did not value at a single Shilling, and could with pleasure have seen it in flames.”41

  The worst destruction to Boston’s buildings and furnishings, according to John Rowe, who had remained in town through the entire siege, had occurred in the final days when British soldiers rampaged through the streets and along the wharves, “taking all things … never asking who is the owner or whose property, making havoc in every house.… There never was such destruction and outrage.”42

  The greatest desolation seemed to be to the people of Boston themselves, who greeted their liberators with a weary joy; skinny and malnourished, unkempt in well-worn clothing and leather shoes bound together by twine, the survivors of the siege welcomed the gifts of fish, bread, meat, cider, and beer to feast on, and warm clothes and wood for their fireplaces. Even John Rowe, who had spent the entire siege in Boston in relative comfort, welcomed the gifts offered by returning friends, having lost all provisions and most of his warehoused goods in the ransacking of the final days.