Independence (44 page)

Washington wasted no time summoning his generals to another council of war. He presented them with three options: send the army across the frozen Charles River to attack Boston; attack the British on Bunker Hill and reclaim that site overlooking Boston Harbor; or occupy Dorchester Heights, which overlooked the harbor from south of the city. Taking either Bunker Hill or Dorchester Heights, said Washington, would compel Howe either to attack or to abandon Boston, for with adequate artillery the Continentals would be in a position to close Boston Harbor, the British army's lifeline to the home islands. Washington implied that he leaned toward an assault on the besieged British army in Boston. A “Stroke well aim'd … might put a final end to the War,” he said. His officers wanted no part of the first two options, thinking that offensive operations were too risky for an untrained army. However, they approved of taking Dorchester Heights by stealth and inviting Howe to attack the entrenched Continentals.
16

Washington worked out the final plan for the operation in frequent meetings with his officers. It called for a steady bombardment of Boston during the nights of March 2 through March 4. On the last evening, while the redcoats were distracted by still another thunderous artillery barrage, two thousand Continentals were to steal up Dorchester Heights and under cover of darkness prepare the army's defensive installations. Just before dawn, they were to be replaced by three thousand fresh troops under General Ward. These men were to await Howe's expected assault.
17

The operation could hardly have gone more smoothly. A low-lying fog blanketed Boston on the evening of March 4, hiding the heights in Dorchester from the British army. But the crest of the ridgeline in Dorchester was above the fog, and the Yankee soldiers worked under a brilliant moon and starry sky. The men were mostly heavily muscled farmers accustomed to physical labor. They did their work briskly, despite having to excavate earth that was frozen to a depth of eighteen inches. Dragging the artillery to the peak of the heights was the most difficult task. Most of the night was needed to complete that mission, and long before the job was done, great, muddy ruts defaced what only hours earlier had been the grassy, sloping hillside. Well before dawn, Dorchester Heights bristled with a breastwork constructed of felled trees, fascines (bundles of long stakes), chandeliers (wooden shells tightly packed with dirt-stuffed baskets called “gabions”), and thick, wide bales of nearly impenetrable hay.

As the dense fog burned off under the day's sun, the British discovered that an American force was entrenched on Dorchester Heights with its artillery trained on Boston Harbor. What most amazed the British was how quickly the Americans had carried out the undertaking. Howe allegedly exclaimed, “[T]hese fellows have done more work in one night than I could make my Army do in three months.” Later, he supposedly said that Washington must have employed ten thousand workers. The chief engineer in the British army estimated that twenty thousand Continentals had been put to work.
18

Howe, who had been leisurely biding his time until he could leave Boston, suddenly faced a difficult decision. Some troop transports had arrived, and he knew that others would soon reach Boston, affording him the option of abandoning Boston within a few days if he chose to do so and his adversary would permit him to leave. Howe knew full well that there were compelling reasons for departing without a fight. Considering the Continentals' newfound firepower, to storm Dorchester Heights would almost certainly bring on a battle more bloody than Bunker Hill. In addition, as one of his officers had long before remarked, the British army was “so small that we cannot afford a victory, if attended with any loss of men.”
19
Howe may also have thought that it made no sense to ask men to die for the sake of holding a city that was slated to be relinquished. Besides, it would be best to preserve his soldiers for the looming battle in New York, a contest that would probably determine the fate of the American rebellion.

On the other hand, to quit Boston without a fight would be seen by many as a sign of weakness. Some of Howe's officers urged him to fight. The redcoats should kill every rebel they could find, after which they must put Boston to the torch and leave behind the smoldering ashes, advised General James Grant. If the army sowed terror, Grant reasoned, “the American Bubble must soon burst.”
20
He may have been on to something. The razing of Boston would have had a profound impact on opinion in Philadelphia, New York, Charleston, and other colonial cities, and it might have halted Congress's steady progress toward declaring independence. But Howe spurned such a ghastly course. He and his brother were peace commissioners, and he continued to believe that they might succeed in negotiating a happy reconciliation between the mother country and its colonies. Howe feared that should his army engage in a deliberate policy of annihilation, the colonists would be lost forever.

On March 7, forty-eight hours after he had learned that the rebels had occupied Dorchester Heights, Howe offered Washington a deal. If the rebels permitted the redcoats to board their troop transports unmolested, the British army would depart, leaving Boston intact. Now it was Washington who faced a painful decision. He could attempt to capture or destroy Howe's army, virtually the entire British army then in America. If Washington succeeded, not only would London's plans for the campaign of 1776 be dealt a severe blow, but also yet another staggering military loss might bring down North's ministry and shatter Britain's implacable hostility toward reconciliation on America's terms. On the other hand, if Washington failed, the utter destruction of Boston would follow, and that might stanch the momentum for declaring independence. It might even destroy the will to continue the war in some colonies.

Washington appears to have longed for American independence since 1774, if not much earlier, and he knew that public opinion and perhaps a majority of congressmen were inching toward a final break with Great Britain. Better than any American, Washington also knew that declaring independence was crucial for waging a long war. He accepted Howe's offer. On March 17 the British army sailed away for Nova Scotia, to await reinforcements for the invasion of New York. As the last British soldier left, an American regiment, with Generals Ward and Putnam riding before it, marched in to reclaim possession of Boston.
21

Ecstasy swept Congress. For some, this was fresh proof that the British army was hardly “invincible.” For others, it seemed likely that Britain's latest “Disgrace” would encourage France and Spain to offer the colonists trade and military assistance, if only America declared independence. America's victory was widely celebrated, and in Boston people poured into the streets. It was said that the British army had “disgracefully quitted” the city and “took refuge on board their ships.” One newspaper declared that it hoped the Bostonians never again had to breathe “air … contaminated by the stinking breath of toryism.” Harvard College awarded Washington an honorary degree, and Congress ordered a gold medallion struck for its triumphant commander. Lady Liberty and an image of the departing British fleet—“all their Sterns toward the Town”—adorned the medal.
22

When asked in the spring by a constituent whether a declaration of independence was imminent, a Virginian responded that “it is probable” Congress “will wait till the people brings it before them.”
23
By April the delegates knew that a sea change in popular opinion was occurring.

In the first months of war a colonist who had dared to publicly urge independence could have found himself in a world of trouble with American authorities. In the autumn of 1775, for instance, Thomas Anderson of Hanover County, Virginia, was forced by the local committee of safety to publicly recant his statement “declaring that this Country was in a state of rebellion, and aimed at a state of independence, more than opposition to parliamentary taxation.” Nearly simultaneously the Chester County, Pennsylvania, Committee of Safety—chaired by Anthony Wayne, who shortly was to become a general officer in the Continental army—was appalled when the local militia battalion trumpeted that its men had taken up arms “to overturn the Constitution, by declaring an independency.” The committee condemned “an idea so pernicious in its nature” and compelled the officers to recant and publicly swear that they and their men soldiered to secure “a happy and speedy reconciliation” with Great Britain.
24

Wars often reshape thinking, and this one was part of a rebellion that had been refashioning thought since 1765. By early 1776 the Anglo-American conflict, little more than nine months old, was causing the colonists to see both their mother country and themselves in a different light. Dunmore's proclamation, the razing of Falmouth, and battlefields steeped in blood had hardened feelings toward the mother country. Even the most conservative congressmen found their loyalty to Great Britain shaken to the core by knowledge that “the sword of ministerial vengeance … has been drawn,” causing “innocent blood [to have] been shed,” as New York's James Duane exclaimed.
25
Whatever love had once existed for the parent state vanished entirely when a son, father, or brother died fighting against British soldiers. A New Hampshire farmer who lost a son in the Canadian campaign wrote in his diary that his child had died “defending the just Rights of America” against the “wicked Tyranical Brute (nea worse than Brute) of Great Britain.”
26
Some towns experienced a staggering death toll during 1775. On the first day of the war, four men from Lynn, five from Needham, six from Cambridge, seven from Danvers, ten from Lexington, and a dozen from Menotomy (now Arlington) had perished.
27
That was only the beginning. Others from those villages, and dozens of additional towns, fell in action or from camp diseases in the ensuing months. Enmity toward Great Britain rose in step with the increasing casualty rate, until by the spring of 1776 Franklin spoke of “a rooted Hatred” for England throughout America.
28

Concurrently, the idea gathered force that the inhabitants of America were Americans, not British. Many colonists were third- or fourth-generation Americans. In addition, Americanism was nourished by the training received by thousands of soldiers who had to be readied for fighting British regulars. General Washington, for instance, frequently sent messages to his troops telling them that this was not a war to resolve the problems of Massachusetts or New England. All Americans, he said, were confronted by “a diabolical Ministry” bent on “Inslav[ing] this great Continent.” The “great Cause we are engaged in” is one of protecting “Life, Liberty, & Property” from the ravages of “a brutal, savage enemy,” a foe that threatened “every thing we hold dear,” that had laid “our towns … in ashes” and driven “innocent Women & Children … from their peaceful habitations.”
29

In the three years since the tea ships had set sail for colonial ports during the warm summer of 1773, America had become a far different place. The offices of the king's chief executives, solicitors, and customs officials had been shuttered and the officials who had once occupied them were only a dim memory from a rapidly receding past. In nearly every colony, sovereign authority was wielded by a revolutionary assembly, often called the “provincial congress” or “provincial convention.” Many who sat in these bodies were new to such lofty power, having been thrust by the rebellion, and especially the war, into their elevated position. A notch lower, in the counties and towns, committees of safety—sometimes called the committee of inspection or observation—enforced the boycott of trade with the mother country instituted by the First Congress, managed the war effort, and maintained security on the home front. Many, perhaps most, who sat on these committees had never before occupied a civil office. Nor would they have much hope of ever wielding power again if royal authority was reestablished.
30

While the overwhelming majority of colonists supported the war, those whose behavior violated the laws of Congress or was judged harmful to the conduct of the war faced the possibility of harsh treatment from the committees of safety. Men who refused to sign an oath to abide by the Continental Association, and especially those caught violating the non-importation, non-exportation, and non-consumption laws, might be placed under surveillance or have their names published as “enemies of the country,” a clarion call for patriots to cruelly ostracize them.
31
Incidents of open infidelity were relatively uncommon, although in January 1776 some four hundred inhabitants of Queens County, New York, were made to publicly apologize for having failed to establish a committee to enforce the Association.
32
Those caught selling goods to the British army suffered harsher punishments. Some were briefly jailed, after which they were compelled to pay the costs incurred in their confinement.
33
One Edward Parry was exiled from his coastal Massachusetts village and ordered to “be immediately sent to some inland Town, which shall be more than seventy miles distant from the seaports in this Colony.”
34
Maryland's rebel assembly removed from local office a violator of the Association.
35
When the local committees could not get their hands on Tory authors of newspaper essays or pamphlets, they did the next best thing: They publicly burned the offending tract. Freehold, New Jersey's committee even condemned one pamphlet to “a suit of tar and turkey-buzzard's feathers.”
36

Many men also got into trouble because of things they said. Citizens were jailed or fined for disloyal pronouncements. Some were made to recant utterances such as “the English would be an overmatch for the
Americans
” or “damn … the honourable Continental Congress.” Men were punished for having publicly defended “British taxation,” “scandalously aspersed the characters” of American leaders, engaged as “a retailer of falsehoods,” denounced the “rascally Rebels,” spoke “injuriously of the distressed people of … Boston,” and maintained they would rather “be under a tyrannical King as a tyrannical Commonwealth.” Action was taken against those who through their “wicked and mischievous striving [had attempted] to bring destruction and ruin on … [this] bleeding country.”
37
Those who recanted often had to pledge to henceforth “conduct myself as a true friend to
America
,” acknowledge “being too backward … with regard to the liberties of my country,” vow to hereafter “sacrifice my interest and venture my life in the defence of my Country,” or “beg forgiveness of God, and all friends to
American
liberty.”
38
During the first months of 1776 there were fewer and fewer openly unpatriotic acts that cried out for punishment. What is more, punitive actions against those who openly called for American independence appear to have ceased altogether.