Patriots (39 page)

That mark of British disfavor enhanced Hancock’s standing among the most militant delegates. And it did not estrange the Southerners who found Samuel Adams somewhat underbred but appreciated Hancock’s congenial style. They knew that Hancock, like themselves, had something substantial to risk.

Peyton Randolph had been reelected president of the Congress but was called back to Virginia to preside over the Burgesses. Thomas Jefferson had ridden to Philadelphia to take Randolph’s place in the Virginia delegation, but that still left the president’s chair open. On May 24, 1775, both factions in the Congress tried to win over Henry Middleton of South Carolina by electing him to the position. Middleton declined because of ill-health, and in a mild assertion of their independent spirit the delegates chose John Hancock. Conducting Hancock to the president’s chair, Benjamin Harrison of Virginia told him,
“We will show Britain how much we value her proscriptions.”

—

Samuel Adams knew the difference between supplying an Ebenezer Mackintosh with epaulets and creating a real army for America. He confessed that he knew nothing of military matters and had strong misgivings about any standing army. He much preferred fighting England with militia drawn from the various colonies. That way, no ambitious general could impose a military dictatorship on America.

But by early June he recognized that concerted military action was inevitable. Dr. Benjamin Church came to Philadelphia with petitions from Joseph Warren and the Massachusetts Provincial
Congress for guidance in setting up a civil government there. The colony was acknowledging the authority of the Continental Congress and forcing its delegates to exercise a power they had been shrinking from. The petitions also urged the Congress to take command of the army, which was now almost six weeks old and still camping out around Cambridge.

With time, several aspects of John Adams’ earlier plan had become outdated. General Gage was now letting anyone who chose to leave Boston to do so, which meant that no British hostages were required. The Pennsylvanians had prevailed, and a conciliatory resolution had been sent to London. Congress was waiting for a response. But the army at Cambridge remained a stubborn reality that the delegates in Philadelphia could no longer ignore. On June 7, 1775, the Congress advised Massachusetts to set up a temporary government. John Adams wanted to follow that unmistakable sign of separation from Britain by naming a commander for the troops at Cambridge. There were now three parties at the Congress—the patriots, the halfway patriots and a group of Southerners who would resent the selection of a New England general as commander in chief. They appeared to be committed to Colonel George Washington.

John Adams consulted with his cousin, but Samuel Adams seemed undecided about what to do. They both knew that John Hancock badly wanted to be asked to be commander in chief, but they weren’t entirely sure why. Perhaps Hancock only wanted to be offered the honor and then would decline it. But what if he accepted? Beyond drilling his cadets on Boston Common, Hancock had no military experience.

John Adams had been sounding out other delegates, hoping to find a unanimous choice, but they had been reluctant to commit themselves. Early on June 14, John Adams invited Samuel Adams to walk with him in the State House yard for a little fresh air before the session began. He again laid out the troubling pieces to the puzzle. Samuel Adams agreed with his analysis but said only, “What shall we do?”

John Adams decided to force a showdown. He said he would move that morning that Congress adopt the army at Cambridge and appoint Colonel Washington as its commander. Samuel Adams had been protecting John Hancock’s vanity for a decade. He listened to what his cousin was proposing but said nothing.

When the session convened, John Adams took the floor and reminded the Congress of the dangers in further delay. At any moment, the British Army might take advantage of the disarray in Cambridge and march out of Boston, spreading havoc across the countryside. Adams faced the president’s chair as he spoke, and he saw John Hancock’s pleasure at his preamble. Adams concluded with a motion that the Congress adopt the army at Cambridge and appoint a general for it. This was not the proper time to nominate that commander, Adams continued, since it might be a difficult choice. But he wouldn’t hesitate to declare that he had one gentleman in mind for that vital position.

He was a gentleman from Virginia, John Adams said, and he watched with pleasure as John Hancock’s expression began to change—first to mortification, then to bitter resentment. It was the triumph of Braintree over Beacon Hill. George Washington had been sitting near the door. At the hint that he might be the nominee, he made a quick exit to the library.

John Adams went on with his nominating speech: A gentleman whose skill and experience as an officer, whose independent fortune, great talents and excellent reputation would be approved by all America and unite the colonies better than any other person in the country.

Samuel Adams knew the consequences but rose to second the nomination. John Adams thought that President Hancock gave him a hard look.

In the debate that followed, no one denied that Colonel Washington possessed every virtue that John Adams claimed for him. But the entire army came from New England, and they seemed satisfied with General Artemas Ward. Wouldn’t they resent a Southerner? Since the Congress wanted its army only to keep the British shut up in Boston, there seemed to be no urgency to the decision, and the subject was postponed to the following day.

But in Cambridge the army’s leaders didn’t know their mission was so limited. As John Adams went from delegate to delegate securing votes for George Washington, America’s soldiers were preparing an ambitious surprise for the British and their king.

Boston and the battle of Bunker Hill

THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

M
AJOR
G
ENERAL
Henry Clinton was out reconnoitering for the British on the night of June 16, 1775, when he heard stirring on a hill overlooking Boston. Short and plump, somewhat fussy but well regarded in the king’s army, Clinton was one of three major generals who had arrived less than three weeks earlier to shore up General Gage’s command. Their orders had been signed long before Lexington, and the three—Clinton, William Howe and John Burgoyne—landed in America full of contempt for Gage’s performance. When General Burgoyne was told that there were about five thousand British soldiers stationed in Boston, he had made a joke that circulated widely among both the loyalists and the patriots.

“What!” Burgoyne had jeered. “Ten thousand peasants keep five thousand king’s troops shut up? Well, let
us
get in, and we’ll
soon find elbow room!”

The logical place to make that room was on the three crucial hills around Boston—Dorchester Heights, Bunker Hill and Breed’s Hill, which looked down upon Charlestown’s peninsula. The Americans could entrench themselves there and then fire down on the ships in the harbor or on the town itself. General Gage had been advised to secure one or all of the hills but had chosen instead to keep his men in Boston. With some accuracy, Lord Chatham had described Gage and his men to Parliament as
“an impotent general and a dishonored army, trusting solely to the pickaxe and the spade for security against the just indignation of an injured and insulted people.”

On this night, General Clinton heard the sound of pickaxes and spades from one of the hills above Charlestown and knew they didn’t come from the British. Clinton rushed back to headquarters and urged Gage to land two divisions on the hills at daybreak. William Howe was also present and instantly agreed, although he was as torn as Gage in his allegiances. A large and florid man of forty-six, Howe had recently stood for Parliament as a Whig and had assured his constituents that he would never fight against the Americans. But when the king ordered him to Boston, Howe couldn’t refuse. He had another incentive: as a dedicated gambler, he needed active-duty pay to clear his debts.

Howe and Clinton pressed Gage to take action, but he overruled them. Who could be sure what the Americans were up to? It was better to delay any decision until dawn.

When the sun came up, a lookout aboard the frigate
Lively
docked in the harbor spotted on Breed’s Hill unmistakable signs of earthen walls that had been thrown up overnight. He sent word at once to his captain, and in the half-light the
Lively
opened fire. The battle of Breed’s Hill had begun.

—

It had been intended as the battle of Bunker Hill. Early in June, a patriot visiting Boston had heard that the British planned to attack the Americans on June 18 at Roxbury and perhaps at Cambridge itself. Returning home to New Hampshire, the man passed his information to the Committee of Safety in Exeter, and its members had sent an express rider to warn Joseph Warren and the Massachusetts Provincial Congress.

Meanwhile, John Burgoyne had drafted a proclamation for
General Gage’s signature ridiculing the rebels’ claim of holding the British Army under siege in Boston. At fifty-three, Burgoyne was the eldest of the three generals sent to reinforce Gage, but also the most junior. He had spent much of his twenties and early thirties out of the Army. When he rejoined, he had made his reputation a dozen years earlier in the Portugal campaign when his cavalry took Valencia de Alcántara. Burgoyne always treated his soldiers well, and they responded by calling him “Gentleman Johnny.” Like William Howe, Burgoyne had been elected to Parliament, but he had a greater distinction: shortly before he came to America, Burgoyne’s play
Maid of the Oaks
was staged in London by David Garrick. Since he was too significant for his low rank under Gage, the king had agreed that Burgoyne either would receive a more appropriate command within six months or could return to London. The proclamation Burgoyne wrote for Gage showed a newcomer’s ignorance of the political realities and a dramatist’s partiality for fine language. It concluded by placing Boston under martial law.

Alarmed that Gage might be stirring at last, the Committee of Safety in Cambridge authorized the American Army to take control of Bunker Hill above Charlestown, along with the hills above Dorchester. The decision pleased Israel Putnam, who had been urging that a fort be built on Bunker Hill. One day he had attempted to provoke the British to fight by marching two thousand Connecticut troops up both Bunker and Breed’s Hills. But Artemas Ward had believed that the new army, which was less than a month old, wasn’t ready for a showdown and ordered Putnam to march his men down. They were allowed one war whoop, which the British ignored. Joseph Warren told Old Put that he admired his spirit, respected General Ward’s prudence, needed them both and had to temper one with the other. Now Warren considered the Americans ready. On June 16 they would climb again to Bunker Hill and not march down.

The committee chose Colonel William Prescott to lead the operation. A popular veteran of the French wars, Prescott had showed such promise as a soldier that the British had offered him a military commission before he was twenty. Instead, he had spent the last thirty years farming until the Minute Men recruited him. When night fell, Colonel Prescott ordered his men to light their lanterns. With eight hundred and fifty men and about forty artillery
gunners and their weapons, he marched down the Charlestown road toward Bunker Hill.

Along the route, Prescott’s men passed Harvard College, where students had turned over Stoughton, Harvard and Massachusetts Halls as barracks for the makeshift army. To avoid damage, the college library had been moved to the town of Andover. The mild evening favored the expedition. Once past the college, the men marched beside orchards and farmland, kicking up billows of dust as they went. They crossed the stretch of clay and scrub that Paul Revere often traveled and went by the gibbet with the skeleton of Mark the slave.

A narrow bridge linked the Charlestown peninsula to the mainland. Beyond it, Bunker Hill rose abruptly from the marsh. Colonel Prescott called a halt and conferred with his officers. After a brief debate, Prescott marched his troops past Bunker Hill to the lower rise, Breed’s Hill.

Prescott had made an aggressive choice. An American fort on Bunker Hill could have harassed Boston only slightly, and its position would have been largely defensive. Breed’s Hill commanded the northern section of the town. But it also brought the Americans nearer the firepower of the British fleet.

With the delays and a need for stealth, it was nearly midnight before the soldiers reached a meadow on the top of Breed’s Hill. For weeks the neighboring farmers hadn’t dared send livestock to graze in such an exposed position, nor had they ventured up to mow the pastureland. Prescott’s men moved through grass damp with dew and growing almost to their waists. Another veteran, Colonel Richard Gridley, inspected the land by starlight and staked out a redoubt. Prescott’s men began digging. He ordered them not to speak and to muffle the sound of their shovels as best they could.