I avail myself of the last effort within the bounds of my duty to spare the effusion of blood, to offer, and I do hereby, in his majesty’s name, offer and promise his most gracious pardon to all persons who shall forthwith lay down their arms, and return to the duties of peaceable subjects: excepting only from the benefit of such pardon, Samuel Adams and John Hancock, who offences are of too flagitious a nature to admit of any other consideration than that of condign punishment.
And, to the end, that no person within the limits of this proffered mercy, may plead ignorance of the consequence of refusing it, I, by these presents, proclaim, not only the persons above named and excepted, but also all their adherents, associates and abettors; meaning to comprehend in these terms, all and every person, and persons, of what class, denomination, or description soever, who have appeared in arms against the king’s government, and shall not lay down the same as before mentioned; and likewise all such as shall so take arms after the date hereof, or shall, in any wise, protect or conceal such offenders, or assist them with money, provision, cattle, arms, ammunition, carriages, or any other necessary for subsistence, or offence; or shall hold secret correspondence with them, by letter, message, signal, or otherwise; to be rebels and traitors, and as such to be treated.94
An angry patriot shot back, “are you not ashamed to throw our such an insult upon human understanding, as to bid people disarm themselves till you and your butchers murder and plunder them at pleasure! We well know you have orders to disarm us, and what the disposition of the framers of these orders is, if we may judge from the past, can be no secret.”95 An American in a more humorous mood offered a widely published poem entitled “Tom Gage’s Proclamation,” which told how the general had sent an expedition “the men of Concord to disarm” and how he afterwards reflected:
Yet e’er I draw the vengeful sword
I have thought fit to send abroad
This present gracious Proclamation,
Of purpose mild the demonstration;
That whoseoe’er keeps gun or pistol,
I’ll spoil the motion of his systole;
Or, whip his breech, or cut his weason
As has the measure of his Treason:—
But every one that will lay down
His hanger bright, and musket brown,
Shall not be beat, nor bruis’d, nor bang’d,
Much less for past offences, hang’d,
But on surrendering his toledo,
Go to and fro unhurt as we do:—
But then I must, out of this plan, lock
Both SAMUEL ADAMS and JOHN HANCOCK;
For those vile traitors (like debentures)
Must be tuck’d up at all adventures;
As any proffer of a pardon,
Would only tend those rogues to harden:—
But every other mother’s son,
The instant he destroys his gun,
(For thus doth run the King’s command)
May, if he will, come kiss my hand. . . .
Meanwhile let all, and every one
Who loves his life, forsake his gun. . . .96
The references to several types of arms in the above poem, as well as those turned in to selectmen in Boston, warrant explanation. What types of arms did the colonists believe they had a right to keep and bear?
The arms the people of Boston surrendered to their selectmen, as discussed above, included “firearms” (muskets and other shoulder weapons), pistols, blunderbusses, and bayonets.97 The above poem mentions “gun or pistol” separately, for as stated in America’s first dictionary: “the smaller species [of guns] are called muskets, carbines, fowling pieces, &c. But one species of fire-arm, the pistol, is never called a gun.”98 The poem also refers to a “musket brown,” meaning a Brown Bess musket, which was used with a bayonet. This musket was the official British infantry weapon, a number of which Americans bought, captured, or otherwise obtained from Redcoats.99 The colonists imported other military muskets from France and made highly accurate, long-range Pennsylvania rifles (owned mostly by civilians) locally.100
The carbine is a short-barreled shoulder weapon designed to fire a single projectile. The blunderbuss is a short-barreled shotgun designed to fire multiple projectiles and was popular with civilians for defense against highwaymen or intruders attacking a house.101 Civilians in urban areas and travelers commonly carried pocket pistols, and larger pistols were widely used for military purposes.102
The poem mentions two types of swords: the hanger (a short military sword) and the Toledo, named after its place of production in Spain.103 The small sword was the popular civilian design in America.104
Such was the array of firearms and edged weapons that the colonists owned and believed they were entitled to keep and bear.105 Seizure of these arms from the peaceable citizens of Boston who were not even involved in hostilities sent a message to all of the colonies that fundamental rights were in grave danger.
The colonists’ skills in hunting and target shooting combined with their militia experience to create good marksmen. David Ramsay’s 1789 history of the American Revolution avers: “All their military regulations were carried on by their militia, and under the old established laws of the land. For the defence of the colonies, the inhabitants had been, from their early years, enrolled in companies, and taught the use of arms.”106 He added: “Europeans, from their being generally unacquainted with fire arms are less easily taught the use of them than Americans, who are from their youth familiar with these instruments of war . . . .” Of the battle of Bunker Hill, which took place on June 17, 1775, Ramsay wrote:
None of the provincials in this engagement were riflemen, but they were all good marksmen. The whole of their previous military knowledge had been derived from hunting, and the ordinary amusements of sportsmen. The dexterity which by long habit they had acquired in hitting beasts, birds, and marks, was fatally applied to the destruction of British officers.107
The day after Bunker Hill, John Hancock wrote to Joseph Warren—not knowing that he had been killed in the battle—that the Continental Congress had ordered ten companies of riflemen from Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia to join the army near Boston. “These are the finest Marksmen in the world. They do Execution with their Rifle Guns at an Amazing Distance.”108 Similarly, John Adams wrote to James Warren: “They are the most accurate Marksmen in the World; they kill with great Exactness at 200 yards Distance; they have Sworn certain death to the ministerial officers.”109
“Courage I know we have in abundance, conduct I hope we shall not want, but powder—where shall we get a sufficient supply?” asked Abigail Adams in a letter to her husband John.110 Due to the shortage of gunpowder, the Revolutionary leaders encouraged the colonists to confine their target shooting to human targets in red coats. While the New England militia previously engaged in regular target practice,111 Ramsey noted: “The public rulers in Massachusetts issued a recommendation to the inhabitants, not to fire a gun at beast, bird or mark, in order that they might husband their little stock for the more necessary purpose of shooting men.”112
In a letter to Dartmouth, Gage paid tribute to American marksmanship and martial discipline at Bunker Hill as follows:
The Number of the killed and wounded is greater than our Force can afford to lose, the Officers who were obliged to exert themselves have suffered very much, and we have lost some extraordinary good Officers. The Tryals we have had shew that the Rebels are not the despicable Rabble too many have supposed them to be, and I find it owing to a Military Spirit encouraged amongst them for a few years past, joined with an uncommon Degree of Zeal and Enthousiasm that they are otherwise. Wherever they find Cover they make a good Stand, and the Country, Naturaly Strong, affords it them, and they are taught to assisst it’s Natural Strength by Art, for they entrench and raise Batterys.
Your Lordship will perceive that the Conquest of this Country is not easy and can be effected only by Time and Perseverance, and Strong Armys attacking it in vari
ous Quarters; and dividing their Forces. Confining Your Operations on this Side only is attacking in the strongest part, and you have to cope with vast Numbers.113
Evidently, a certain American tradition of civil disobedience to firearms prohibitions was well entrenched in 1775. As noted above, General Gage issued a proclamation on June 19, 1775, two days after Bunker Hill, charging:
Whereas notwithstanding the repeated assurances of the selectmen and others, that all the inhabitants of the town of Boston had bona fide delivered their fire arms unto the persons appointed to receive them, though I had advices at the same time of the contrary, and whereas I have since had full proof that many had been perfidious in this respect, and have secreted great numbers: I have thought fit to issue this proclamation, to require of all persons who have yet fire arms in their possession immediately to surrender them at the court house, to such persons as shall be authorised to receive them; and hereby declare that all persons in whose possession any fire arms may hereafter be found, will be deemed enemies to his majesty’s government.114
This was yet another proclamation declaring firearm owners to be “enemies to his majesty’s government.” Of course, Gage’s allegations that arms were being clandestinely retained were true. The surrender of arms voluntarily would have been considered highly unpatriotic, not to mention indiscreet for a person wishing only to be armed for self-protection. Gage’s new decree illustrated the futility of issuing a second proclamation requiring that firearms be surrendered when the first proclamation did not work.
The patriots continued to brag about how well they could shoot British soldiers and did not meekly whisper how they should surrender their firearms. On the same day Gage issued his latest proclamation, James Madison wrote to William Bradford an encouraging note about Virginia’s sharpshooters:
The strength of this Colony will lie chiefly in the rifle-men of the Upland Counties, of whom we shall have great numbers. You would be astonished at the perfection this art is brought to. The most inexpert hands rec[k]on it an indifferent shot to miss the bigness of a man’s face at the distance of 100 Yards.
I am far from being among the best & should not often miss it on a fair trial at that distance. If we come into an engagement, I make no doubt but the officers of the enemy will fall at the distance before they get within 150 or 200 Yards. Indeed I believe we have men that would very often hit such a mark 250 Yds. Our greatest apprehensions proceed from the scarcity of powder but a little will go a great way with such as use rifles.115
That last remark of Madison reflected that the highly accurate rifles had a smaller bore and used less powder than the less accurate smooth-bore muskets of the day.
There were so many volunteers eager to join a rifle company in Virginia’s back country that the commander held a shooting match to determine who were the best shots. A witness described the scene:
He took a board of a foot square and with chalk drew the shape of a moderate nose in the center and nailed it up to a tree at one hundred and fifty yards distance, and those who came nighest the mark with a single ball was to go. But by the first forty or fifty that fired, the nose was all blown out of the board, and by the time his company was up, the board shared the same fate.116
“General Gage, take care of your nose,” joked the Virginia Gazette about this episode.117
Tales of the American riflemen found their way across the Atlantic. A Philadelphian wrote to a gentleman in London that the Americans were “determined to submit to no infringement on their constitutional rights” and so “have taken arms to oppose the despotick system of an infamous Administration.”118 The Continental Congress ordered the raising of “one thousand more marksmen, or, as we call them, Riflemen,” who were to be “divided in small parties, and scattered through the Army, for the purpose of removing the officers.” A party of them had recently “placed their balls in poles of seven inches diameter, fixed up for the purpose, at the distance of two hundred and fifty yards.” Even the Quakers had “taken arms.”119
Echoing similar sentiments, a London newspaper reported: “This province [Pennsylvania] has raised 100 rifle-men, the worst of whom will put a ball into a man’s head at a distance of 150 or 200 yards, therefore advise your officers who shall hereafter come out to America, to settle their affairs in England before their departure.”120
The Continental Congress itself adopted a petition to the king on July 8, 1775, averring that “your Ministers (equal Foes to British and American freedom) have added to their former Oppressions an Attempt to reduce us by the Sword to a base and abject submission,” with the following consequences:
On the Sword, therefore, we are compelled to rely for Protection. Should Victory declare in your Favour, yet Men trained to Arms from their Infancy, and animated by the Love of Liberty, will afford neither a cheap or easy Conquest. Of this at least we are assured, that our Struggle will be glorious, our Success certain; since even in Death we shall find that Freedom which in Life you forbid us to enjoy.121
Despite all of the above talk about Americans shooting General Gage’s nose in target form and British officers in human form, the ordinary Bostonians whose arms Gage would seize had expressed no rebellious sentiments. Attacking “the perfidious, the truce-breaking Thomas Gage,” an anonymous patriot harped back on the disarming of the inhabitants of Boston, seething:
But the single breach of the capitulation with them, after they had religiously fulfilled their part, must brand your name and memory with eternal infamy—the proposal came from you to the inhabitants by the medium of one of your officers, through the Selectmen, and was, that if the inhabitants would deposit their fire-arms in the hands of the Selectmen, to be returned to them after a reasonable time, you would give leave to the inhabitants to remove out of town with all their effects, without any lett or molestation. The town punctually complied, and you remain an infamous monument of perfidy, for which an Arab, a Wild Tartar or Savage would dispise [sic] you!!!122
The Continental Congress would adopt very similar, albeit less rustic, language in the Declaration of Causes of Taking Up Arms of July 6, 1775,123 which made clear that Gage’s disarming of the inhabitants was a justification for armed resistance. Drafted by Thomas Jefferson and John Dickinson, the Declaration protested in part about Gage’s seizure of the firearms of Boston’s inhabitants:
The inhabitants of Boston being confined within that town by the General their Governor, and having, in order to procure their dismission, entered into a treaty with him, it was stipulated that the said inhabitants having deposited their arms with their own magistrates, should have liberty to depart, taking with them their other effects. They accordingly delivered up their arms, but in open violation of honor, in defiance of the obligation of treaties, which even savage nations esteem sacred, the Governor ordered the arms deposited as aforesaid, that they might be preserved for their owners, to be seized by a body of soldiers; detained the greatest part of the inhabitants in the town, and compelled the few who were permitted to retire, to leave their most valuable effects behind.124
The language in the above that “the Governor ordered the arms deposited as aforesaid, that they might be preserved for their owners, to be seized by a body of soldiers,” appeared in John Dickinson’s draft of the Declaration.125 Jefferson’s earlier drafts stated that “their arms, deposited with their own magistrates to be preserved as their property, were immediately seized by a body of armed men under orders from the said General . . . .”126 Under both versions, it is clear that the arms being seized were the individual private property of the owners.
Gage informed Dartmouth about the Declaration, “Copys of which will no doubt be sent to England from Philadelphia. They pay little Regard to Facts, for the Contents of it is as replete with Deceit and Falsehood as most of their Publications.”127 Although the Declaration had accused Gage of a number of horrible acts, its claims about his treatment of the inhabitants of Boston insulted him the most, for it was the only specific allegation he m
entioned to Dartmouth:
Nor has the Continental Congress scrupled to publish to the World the most Notorious Falsehoods; amongst others that I had broke My Faith in not suffering the Inhabitants of Boston to depart the Town, that I had ordered a Detachment of Troops to seize their Arms when delivered up, contrary to Agreement, and that I had even Seized the Donations of the poor. These Assertions forged to delude and deceive on both sides the Atlantick can only Serve the Purpose of a Day, of their Forgery. I am to hope from the Affection I bear my Country that no Man in Great-Britain or Ireland will be longer deceived by false Professions and Declarations; but see through all the Disguise, that this is no sudden Insurrection of America, but a preconcerted Scheme of Rebellion, hatched years ago in the Massachusetts Bay, and brought to this perfection by the help of Adherents on both Sides the Atlantick.128
The Continental Congress adopted an address “To the People of Ireland” on July 28, 1775, which complained in part that “the citizens petitioned the General for permission to leave the town, and he promised, on surrendering their arms, to permit them to depart with their other effects; they accordingly surrender their arms, and the General violated his faith . . . .”129
Individual patriots were making their case internationally. John Zubly’s pamphlet Great Britain’s Right to Tax . . . By a Swiss, published in London and Philadelphia, indicted Gage for “detaining the inhabitants of Boston, after they had, in dependence on the General’s word of honour, given up their arms, to be starved and ruined . . . .”130 Zubly, a member of the Continental Congress from Georgia, noted that “in a strong sense of liberty, and the use of fire-arms almost from the cradle, the Americans have vastly the advantage over men of their rank almost every where else.” In fact, “every child unborn will be impressed with the notion: It is slavery to be bound at the will of another in all cases whatsoever,” and children were “shouldering the resemblance of a gun before they are well able to walk.”131 “The Americans will fight like men, who have everything at stake,” and their motto was “DEATH OR FREEDOM.”132
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