A Patriot's History of the United States: From Columbus's Great Discovery to the War on Terror (17 page)

Lexington, Concord, and War

Escalating the potential for conflict still further, the people of Massachusetts established a revolutionary government and raised an army of soldiers known as minutemen (able to fight on a minute’s notice). While
all
able-bodied males from sixteen to sixty, including Congregational ministers, came out for muster and drill, each militia company selected and paid additional money to a subgroup—20 to 25 percent of its number—to “hold themselves in readiness at a minute’s warning, complete with arms and ammunition; that is to say a good and sufficient firelock, bayonet, thirty rounds of powder and ball, pouch and knapsack.”
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About this they were resolute: citizens in Lexington taxed themselves a substantial amount “for the purpose of mounting the cannon, ammunition, and for carriage and harness for burying the dead.”
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It is noteworthy that the colonists had already levied money for burying the dead, revealing that they approached the coming conflict with stark realism.

The nearly universal ownership and use of firearms as a fact bears repetition here to address a recent stream of scholarship that purports to show that Americans did not widely possess or use firearms.
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Some critics of the so-called gun culture have attempted to show through probate records that few guns were listed among household belongings bequeathed to heirs; thus, guns were not numerous, nor hunting and gun ownership widespread. But in fact, guns were
so prevalent
that citizens did not need to list them specifically. On the eve of the Revolution, Massachusetts citizens were well armed, and not only with small weapons but, collectively, with artillery.
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General Thomas Gage, the commander of the British garrison in Boston, faced two equally unpleasant alternatives. He could follow the advice of younger officers, such as Major John Pitcairn, to confront the minutemen immediately, before their numbers grew. Or he could take a more conservative approach by awaiting reinforcements, while recognizing that the enemy itself would be reinforced and better equipped with each passing day.

Gage finally moved when he learned that the minutemen had a large store of munitions at Concord, a small village eighteen miles from Boston. He issued orders to arrest the political firebrands and rhetoricians Samuel Adams and John Hancock, who were reported in the Lexington area, and to secure the cannons from the colonists. Gage therefore sought to kill two birds with one stone when, on the night of April 18, 1775, he sent 1,000 soldiers from Boston to march up the road via Lexington to Concord. If he could surprise the colonials and could capture Adams, Hancock, and the supplies quietly, the situation might be defused. But the patriots learned of British intentions and signaled the British route with lanterns from the Old North Church, whereupon two riders, Paul Revere and William Dawes left Boston by different routes to rouse the minutemen. Calling, “To Arms! To Arms!” Revere and Dawes’s daring mission successfully alerted the patriots at Lexington, at no small cost to Revere, who fell from his horse after warning Hancock and Adams and was captured at one point, but then escaped.
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Dawes did not have the good fortune to appear in Longfellow’s famous poem, “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere,” and his contributions are less appreciated; but his mission was more narrowly defined. Once alerted, the minutemen drew up in skirmish lines on the Lexington town common when the British appeared. One of the British commanders shouted, “Disperse, you dam’d rebels! Damn you, disperse!”
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Both sides presented their arms; the “shot heard ’round the world” rang out—although historians still debate who fired first—and the British achieved their first victory of the war. Eight minutemen had been killed and ten wounded when the patriots yielded the field. Major Pitcairn’s force continued to Concord, where it destroyed the supplies and started to return to Boston.
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By that time, minutemen in the surrounding countryside had turned out, attacking the British in skirmishing positions along the road. Pitcairn sent for reinforcements, but he knew that his troops had to fight their way back to Boston on their own. A hail of colonial musket balls fell on the British, who deployed in battle formation, only to see their enemy fade into the trees and hills. Something of a myth arose that the American minuteman were sharpshooters, weaned on years of hunting. To the contrary, of the more than five thousand shots fired at the redcoats that day, fewer than three hundred hit their targets, leaving the British with just over 270 casualties.

Nevertheless, the perception by the British and colonists alike quickly spread that the most powerful army in the world had been routed by patriots lacking artillery, cavalry, or even a general. At the Centennial Celebration at Concord on April 19, 1875, Ralph Waldo Emerson described the skirmish as a “thunderbolt,” which “falls on an inch of ground, but the light of it fills the horizon.”
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News crackled like electricity throughout the American colonies, sparking patriotic fervor unseen up to that time. Thousands of armed American colonists traveled to Boston, where they surrounded Gage and pinned him in the town. Franklin worked under no illusions that the war would be quick. To an English acquaintance, he wrote, “You will have heard before this reaches you of the Commencement of a Civil War; the End of it perhaps neither myself, nor you, who are much younger, may live to see.”
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For the third time in less than a century, the opponents of these American militiamen had grossly underestimated them. Though slow to act, these New Englanders became “the most implacable of foes,” as David Fischer observed. “Their many enemies who lived by a warrior-ethic always underestimated them, as a long parade of Indian braves, French aristocrats, British Regulars, Southern planters, German fascists, Japanese militarists, Marxist ideologues, and Arab adventurers have invariably discovered to their heavy cost.”
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Resolutions endorsing war came from all quarters, with the most outspoken coming from North Carolina. They coincided with the meeting of the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia beginning on May 10, 1775. All the colonies sent representatives, most of whom had no sanction from the colonial governors, leaving their selection to the more radical elements in the colonies. Accordingly, men such as John Adams attended the convention with the intent of declaring independence from England. Some conservatives, such as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, struggled to avoid a complete break with the mother country, but ultimately the sentiments for independence had grown too strong. As the great American historian George Bancroft observed, “A new principle, far mightier than the church and state of the Middle Ages, was forcing itself into power…. It was the office of America to substitute for hereditary privilege the natural equality of man; for the irresponsible authority of a sovereign, a dependent government emanating from a concord of opinion.”
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Congress assumed authority over the ragtag army that opposed Gage, and appointed George Washington as the commander in chief. Washington accepted reluctantly, telling his wife, Martha, “I have used every endeavor in power to avoid [the command], not only from my unwillingness to part with you…but from a consciousness of its being a trust too great for my capacity.”
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Nor did Washington have the same intense desire for separation from England that burned within Samuel Adams or Patrick Henry: his officers still toasted the health of King George as late as January 1776.

The “Indispensable Man”

Washington earned respect in many quarters because he seldom beat his own drum. His modesty and self-deprecation were refreshing and commendable, and certainly he had real reasons for doubting his qualifications to lead the colonial forces (his defeat at Fort Necessity, for example). But in virtually all respects, Washington was the perfect selection for the job—the “indispensable man” of the Revolution, as biographer James Flexner called him. Towering by colonial standards at six feet four inches, Washington physically dominated a scene, with his stature enhanced by his background as a wealthy plantation owner of more than modest means and his reputation as the greatest horseman in Virginia. Capable of extracting immense loyalty, especially from most of his officers (though there were exceptions), Washington also inspired his soldiers with exceptional self-control, personal honor, and high morals. While appearing stiff or distant to strangers, Washington reserved his emotions for his intimate friends, comrades in arms, and his wife.

For such a popular general, however, Washington held his troops in low regard. He demanded clear distinctions in rank among his officers, and did not tolerate sloth or disobedience. Any soldier who went AWOL (absent without leave) faced one hundred to three hundred lashes, whereas a soldier deserting a post in combat was subject to the death penalty. He referred to Yankee recruits as “dirty and nasty people,” and derided the “dirty mercenary spirit” of his men.
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On occasion, Washington placed sharpshooters behind his army as a disincentive to break ranks. Despite his skill, Washington never won a single open-field battle with the British, suffering heartbreaking defeats on more than one occasion.

Nevertheless, in the face of such losses, of constant shortages of supplies and money, and of less than unified support from the colonists themselves, Washington kept his army together—ignoring some of the undisciplined antics of Daniel Morgan’s Virginians and the Pennsylvania riflemen—and skillfully avoided any single crushing military debacle that would have doomed the Revolution. What he lacked in tactics, he made up for in strategy, realizing that with each passing day the British positions became more untenable. Other colonial leaders were more intellectually astute, perhaps; and certainly many others exhibited flashier oratorical skills. But more than any other individual of the day, Washington combined a sound mind with practical soldier’s skills; a faith in the future melded with an impeccable character; and the ability to wield power effectively without aspiring to gain from it personally (he accepted no pay while commander in chief, although he kept track of expenses owed him). In all likelihood, no other single person possessed these essential qualities needed to hold the Revolutionary armies together.

He personified a spirit among militia and regular soldiers alike, that Americans possessed superior fighting capabilities to the British military. They “pressed their claim to native courage extravagantly because they went to war reluctantly.”
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Americans sincerely believed they had an innate courage that would offset British advantages in discipline: “Gunpowder and Lead shall be our Text and Sermon both,” exclaimed one colonial churchgoer.
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Led by Washington’s example, the interrelationship between the freeman and the soldier strengthened as the war went on.

“Give Me Liberty, or Give Me Death!”

Washington shuddered upon assuming command of the 30,000 troops surrounding Boston on July 3, 1775. He found fewer than fifty cannons and an ill-equipped “mixed multitude of people” comprising militia from New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts. (Franklin actually suggested arming the military with bows and arrows!)
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Although Washington theoretically commanded a total force of 300,000 scattered throughout the American colonies, in fact, he had a tiny actual combat force. Even the so-called regulars lacked discipline and equipment, despite bounties offered to attract soldiers and contributions from patriots to bolster the stores. Some willingly fought for what they saw as a righteous cause or for what they took as a threat to their homes and families, but others complained that they were “fed with promises” or clothed “with filthy rags.”
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Scarce materials drove up costs for the army and detracted from an efficient collection and distribution of goods, a malady that plagued the colonial armies until the end of the war. Prices paid for goods and labor in industry always exceeded those that the Continental Congress could offer—and beyond its ability to raise in taxation—making it especially difficult to obtain troops. Nevertheless, the regular units provided the only stable body under Washington’s command during the conflict—even as they came and went routinely because of the expiration of enlistment terms.

Against the ragtag force mustered by the colonies, Great Britain pitted a military machine that had recently defeated the French and Spanish armies, supplied and transported by the largest, best-trained, and most lavishly supplied navy on earth. Britain also benefited from numerous established forts and outposts; a colonial population that in part remained loyal; and the absence of immediate European rivals who could drain time, attention, or resources from the war in America. In addition, the British had an able war commander in the person of General William Howe and several experienced officers, such as Major General John Burgoyne and Lord Cornwallis.

Nevertheless, English forces faced a number of serious, if unapparent, obstacles when it came to conducting campaigns in America. First and foremost, the British had to operate almost exclusively in hostile territory. That had not encumbered them during the French and Indian War, so, many officers reasoned, it would not present a problem in this conflict. But in the French and Indian War, the British had the support of most of the local population; whereas now, English movements were usually reported by patriots to American forces, and militias could harass them at will on the march.

Second, command of the sea made little difference in the outcome of battles in interior areas. Worse, the vast barrier posed by the Atlantic made resupply and reinforcement by sea precarious, costly, and uncertain. Communications also hampered the British: submitting a question to the high command in England might entail a three-month turnaround time, contingent upon good weather.