Conceived in Liberty (214 page)

By this time, Lee’s old friend and fellow radical Horatio Gates, also forcibly retired from British army service after the Seven Years’ War, had also emigrated to America and retired to a plantation in Virginia’s Shenadoah Valley. Both men were clearly ready to take up arms for the American cause. Lee wrote to Gates that it was “incumbent on every man... to contribute his mite to the cause of mankind and of liberty, which is now attacked in her last and only asylum....” And Gates, known as early as 1770 as a “red-hot republican,” replied that he was “ready to risk my life to preserve the liberty of the western world.”

When the First Continental Congress met at Philadelphia in September 1774, Lee was there, charming nearly everyone and, remarkably, writing the appeal which Congress sent to the Canadians for support in America’s struggle. He also began in secret to draw up a plan for the organization of American battalions, a plan completed by the following February and which impressed many American leaders. Visiting Maryland in the fall of 1774, he induced the Maryland Provincial Congress to adopt his plan for organizing its battalions and even stayed to drill some of the troops. This plan of Lee’s impressed Washington, who persuaded Fairfax County to urge a similar plan for Virginia militia and prevailed upon Patrick Henry to get the plan adopted by Virginia the following spring.

Lee published several essays on behalf of American freedom that winter, one of which pointed to King George’s tyranny being exercised in Ireland and Minorca and warned of its advent in America. In an uncompleted
essay, he praised the republican governments of Europe, citing contemporary policies of Geneva, Venice, and Switzerland, and in his letters, he began to advocate armed revolution.

Lee’s most significant work, however, was one that called forth his military as well as his ideological abilities. The Tory Rev. Dr. Myles Cooper, Anglican president of King’s College in New York City, had greatly disheartened the Americans with his pamphlet,
Friendly Address to All Reasonable Americans.
Cooper had counselled that resistance was useless against the mighty and thoroughly disciplined British regulars, who would be aided by large numbers of American Tories and German mercenaries. How could the undisciplined and untrained Americans even dream of opposing the British victors of the French and Indian War?

No one was more qualified to rebut Cooper’s charge than Lee. He had seen the highly disciplined Prussian battalions—the envied model of all the regular armies of the day—at first hand, and was creative and individualistic enough to be unimpressed. Lee leapt into the fray, publishing his
Strictures Upon a “Friendly Address to All Reasonable Americans”
in Philadelphia in November 1774. He pointedly deprecated the British regulars. Their showy and much admired massed formation parade-ground tactics were of no military importance, and the British only won the French and Indian War after discarding this pattern. Moreover, he argued, the highly touted victories of Frederick the Great were largely won by the Prussian
militia
rather than by the formally trained regulars. The Americans had numbers, zeal, and knowledge of the terrain on their side—and did not the amateur militias of the parliamentary armies defeat the professionals of Charles I during the English Civil War?

Lee’s pamphlet proved to be by far his most popular work; as the radical
Salem Essex Gazette
declared, it removed the terror the people had had of the British troops, and gave them the heart to resist.
Strictures
was reprinted five times during the winter of 1774–75—in Boston, New York, New London, and Newport—and was also republished in American newspapers. Alden has concluded that “the
Strictures
was probably one of the most influential pieces of propaganda in the revolutionary period.”
*

After selecting Washington over Lee and Ward as commander-in-chief, the Second Continental Congress had to select the other generals of the Continental Army. The next step was to choose the major general who would be second in command, and the battle was rather naturally between Lee and Ward. Thomas Mifflin of Pennsylvania enthusiastically backed Lee, but he was bitterly opposed by Thomas Johnson of Maryland and by almost all the highly conservative New York delegation. As New England’s
candidate, however, Ward was the inevitable choice for “first major general”; after Ward was chosen, the New England radicals, especially Sam Adams, fought ardently for Lee as second major general. Though Hancock and the more conservative delegates from Massachusetts opposed Lee, the backing of Washington, who had been impressed by Lee’s military genius, carried the day. All in all Congress selected four major generals (the others were Philip Schuyler of New York’s landed gentry and the veteran Israel Putnam of Connecticut) and eight brigadier generals, seven of whom were New Englanders. The preponderance of New England officers was natural, since the bulk of the troops then in the field came from that region. Chosen adjutant general, with the rank of brigadier, was Horatio Gates.

*
On the bias of historians against Lee, see John W. Shy, “Charles Lee; the Soldier as Radical,” in Billias, ed.,
George Washington’s Generals,
p. 23. The major event in the emerging historical rehabilitation of Lee is the work of John R. Alden,
Charles Lee: Traitor or Patriot?
(Baton Rouge, La.: Louisiana State University Press, 1951), the first sympathetic biography of Lee since the mid-nineteenth century. The Alden volume is indispensable. A growing appreciation of the value of guerrilla warfare has greatly aided in this reevaluation of Lee. See Shy,
op. cit.
and Don Higginbotham, “American Historians and the Military History of the American Revolution,”
American Historical Review
(October, 1964), p. 32.

*
Alden,
Charles Lee,
p. 62.

While the Congress was in process of choosing the heads of the Continental Army, a pitched battle was being fought at Boston. The famous Battle of Bunker Hill, later touted as a great American victory, was neither a victory, nor did it take place at Bunker Hill.

At the end of May, the crown had sent a triumvirate of eminent generals to assist, and implicitly to pave the way for superseding, General Gage. These prestigious arrivals were Gen. Sir William Howe, an ardent Whig, who as a candidate for Parliament had pledged never to accept a command against the Americans; young Gen. Sir Henry Clinton; and the dashing Gen. John Burgoyne. Ordered by the crown to proclaim martial law in Massachusetts, General Gage allowed General Burgoyne to write the inflamantory proclamation, which, on June 12, denounced the Americans as rebels and traitors and offered pardon to all laying down their arms, except for the irredeemable Sam Adams and John Hancock. Stunned by the proclamation, the Americans yearned to retaliate; but this yearning grew far stronger when they learned the following day that the British had decided to seize and fortify unoccupied Dorchester Heights, a peninsula south of Boston.

The city of Boston was confronted on two sides by peninsulas with heights commanding the town: on the north, Charlestown Peninsula, on the south, Dorchester Heights. Sensing the folly of battling the British directly for the heights, the Massachusetts Committee of Safety, on June 15, urged the occupation and fortification of Bunker Hill on Charlestown Peninsula. The American council of war was split on the issue: the two best generals, Artemas Ward and Joseph Warren (who had been made a general
by the provincial congress), had long counselled against fortifying Bunker Hill, for the narrow neck of the peninsula endangered the entire force, especially should their scanty ammunition give out. Besides, without artillery the Americans could not use the position against Boston. However, the widely beloved though incompetent Gen. Israel Putnam, seconded by Gen. Seth Pomeroy and Col. William Prescott, carried the day for rashness over caution. Colonel Prescott was sent out on the night of June 16 to occupy the peninsula with 1,200 of the 10,000 available Americans.

Despite the agreed-upon plan, Prescott and Putnam decided to place their main entrenchments on Breed’s Hill rather than on Bunker. This was a fateful decision. Bunker Hill was close to Charlestown Neck and guarded the only escape route off the peninsula. Breed’s was much further out on the peninsula and in a dangerously exposed position.

It was inevitable that when the British saw what had happened they would attack the fortifications overlooking Boston. Quickly grasping the situation, General Clinton urged a swift and immediate landing behind the American lines at Charlestown Neck, cutting off the Americans from the rear and seizing the entire force with ease. But Gage would not accept such a sneaky and “unmilitary” tactic. General Howe, he insisted, would mount a frontal assault against the strongest American position; the rebels would panic and run at the sight of the advancing British regulars! Such a display of force would restore the British honor tarnished at Concord.

This typical contempt of the British military for the Americans led them into a disastrous blunder. Even the advantage of speed was scorned as the British made their leisurely way to the tip of the peninsula, allowing the Americans to complete their emplacements. A series of frontal assaults up Breed’s Hill allowed the Americans to fight in their best manner: in quasi-guerrilla fashion, employing rifle fire from behind emplacements. The Americans were only partially at an advantage, however, for their precious mobility had been surrendered in favor of fixed positions. In addition, they were in short supply of amunition and far from an escape route. As a result, repeated frontal assaults by the British finally succeeded. Breed’s Hill was overrun and the Americans were routed out of the peninsula. Losses were enormous on both sides, the Americans suffering over four hundred casualties and the British over a thousand, amounting to over 40 percent of Howe’s forces. Indeed, the “Battle of Bunker Hill” (actually of Breed’s Hill, and sensibly known to contemporaries as the Battle of Charlestown) was the bloodiest single conflict on the American continent until 1815. The gravest single loss to the Americans was General Warren, who died in the rout. As for the British, perhaps the most fitting casualty at Bunker Hill was the killing of Maj. John Pitcairn by a Negro rebel, the same Pitcairn who had been sure that “if [he] drew [his]
sword but half out of the scabbard, the whole banditti of Massachusetts Bay would flee” before him. Now the banditti had cut him down.
*

The American defeat would have been yet far more severe if the advice of General Clinton had not once again been ignored. He urged swiftly seizing advantage of the rout by pressing forward to destroy the demoralized American forces and capture Cambridge. Had General Howe agreed, Clinton might have dealt the Revolution a devastating blow, which was precisely what the astute General Ward now feared. But Howe, beginning the rapid development of an unerring talent for making the wrong decision, chose instead to stop, dig in, and fortify Bunker Hill.

Thus the victory went to the British in that they had conquered the Charlestown Peninsula, but their preposterous tactics, born of overconfidence, had decimated their army. As in so many military engagements in history, the battle was a tragicomedy of errors on both sides, with Britain’s technical victory bought at an enormous price. For their part, contemporary Americans did not have the temerity to claim the battle as a mighty victory, and the entire operation was rightly denounced as rash and unfortunate.

*
On the role of British contempt in their performance in the war of the Revolution, see Eric Robson,
The American Revolution in Its Political and Military Aspects. 1763–1783
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1955), pp. 127ff.

Washington’s first task was to assume direct command of the Continental Army before Boston, which he did upon reaching his Cambridge headquarters on July 2. Although he took up his tasks energetically, Washington accomplished nothing militarily for the remainder of the year and more, nor did he try. His only campaign in 1775 was internal rather than external; it was directed against the
American army
as he found it, and was designed to extirpate the spirit of liberty pervading this unusually individualistic and democratic army of militiamen. In short, Washington set out to transform a people’s army, uniquely suited for a libertarian revolution, into another orthodox and despotically ruled statist force after the familiar European model.

His primary aim was to crush the individualistic and democratic spirit of the American forces. For one thing, the officers of the militia were elected by their own men, and the discipline of repeated elections kept the officers from forming an aristocratic ruling caste typical of European armies of the period. The officers often drew little more pay than their men, and there were no hierarchical distinctions of rank imposed between officers and men. As a consequence, officers could not enforce their wills coercively on the soldiery. This New England equality horrified Washington’s conservative and highly aristocratic soul.

To introduce a hierarchy of ruling caste, Washington insisted on distinctive decorations of dress in accordance with minute gradations of rank. As one observer phrased it: “New lords, new laws.... The strictest government is taking place, and great distinction is made between officers and
soldier. Everyone is made to know his place and keep it.” Despite the great expense involved, he also tried to stamp out individuality in the army by forcing uniforms upon them; but the scarcity of cloth made this plan unfeasible.

At least as important as distinctions in decoration was the introduction of extensive inequality in pay. Led by Washington and the other aristocratic southern delegates, and over the objections of Massachusetts, the Congress insisted on fixing a pay scale for generals and other officers considerably higher than that of the rank and file.