Yes, that was a fairly accurate reading of the story, although Dartmouth rushed on to gild the outcome: “I have the Satisfaction to tell you that the Affair being considered in that light… has had no other effect here than to raise that just Indignation which every honest Man must feel at the rebellious Conduct of the New England Colonies.” All of this was just whistling in the dark, of course, and Dartmouth could not refrain from tweaking Gage just a little: “It is very much to be lamented,” he told the general, “that We have not some account from you of this Transaction.”29
Throughout the first week of June, there were rumors that Gage’s report had finally reached England, but these proved unfounded. In the meantime, it only served to strain the public’s nerves when other ships docked in England from North America with bits and pieces of information. Thomas Hutchinson caught the mood of many who remained optimistic. “Lord Gage called,” Hutchison noted in his diary, in reference to the general’s older brother, “who professes to believe nothing that is unfavourable, but appears very anxious notwithstanding.”30
Finally, on June 9, a full thirteen days after the Quero’s arrival, the Sukey docked, apparently at Portsmouth, and a Royal Navy lieutenant hurried to Dartmouth’s office in London by noon the next day with General Gage’s belated dispatches. Hutchinson, ever the smug observer, noted he had “assured many gentlemen who would give no credit to Darby’s [sic] account that it would prove near the truth,” and it did. Indeed, Hutchinson could find that the only material difference between Derby’s dispatches and Gage’s account was Colonel Smith’s assertion in the latter that the rebels had fired first.31
As the news spread in London and throughout England, the populace who had waited, as Dartmouth had advised, for the other side of the story were shocked and in “great grief.” They had wished, one London newspaper reported, “that the fatal tale related by Captain Derby might prove altogether fictitious… [but] this is not the case.” It was clear that Derby’s mission to publicize the Massachusetts version had been successful. “The Americans,” the newspaper noted wryly, “have given their narrative of the massacre; the favourite official servants have given a Scotch [meager] account of the skirmish.”32
Only weeks later did Lord Dartmouth extend General Gage a rebuke over his speed of communication. Noting the obvious, Dartmouth told Gage that he had received his dispatches only after the general public had “received Intelligence by a Schooner, to all Appearances sent by the Enemies of Govt on purpose to make an Impression… in a light most favorable to their own Views.” Their “Industry on this Occasion” in speedily dispatching Captain Derby had had its effect, Dartmouth complained, and he mentioned it to Gage “with a Hope that, in any future Event of Importance, it will be thought proper, both by yourself and the Admiral [Samuel Graves], to send your Dispatches by one of the light Vessels of the Fleet.”33
And what of Captain Derby? He stole out of London unmolested and made his way by public postal chaise to Falmouth, on the western tip of Cornwall. The expense statement he later submitted to the Provincial Congress reported that he went by way of Portsmouth and covered 294 miles at a cost of eleven pounds, eight shillings. At Falmouth, the elusive Quero was waiting. Derby had shrewdly ordered the vessel to wait for him there, out of the hubbub of Southampton. Still carrying only ballast, the Quero slipped its moorings and sped west, back toward America.34
Meanwhile, there continued to be many reactions to the news of Lexington and Concord on both sides of the Atlantic, but perhaps the most succinct and prescient appraisal of the future came from the normally verbose pen of Edmund Burke. “The sluice is opend,” Burke wrote to a friend. “Where, when, or how it will be stopped God only knows.”35
PART III
DECISIVE DAYS
May–June 1775
The Day—perhaps, the decisive day—is come, on which the fate of America depends.
—Abigail Adams to John Adams, June 18, 1775
Chapter 17
Must We Stand Alone?
As initial reports of the confrontations at Lexington and Concord spread, the question arose in the minds of loyalists and rebels alike: Was this to be simply more evidence of Massachusetts’s characteristic defiance or a call to arms to which rebels throughout the thirteen colonies would respond? In a few short weeks, the question would be no less perplexing in Charleston, South Carolina, than it was in Charlestown, Massachusetts, and it would divide neighbor from neighbor and even family from family.
FROM PHILADELPHIA, THE LEXINGTON ALARM continued south to Baltimore, where rebels promptly seized fifteen hundred stands of arms from the provincial armory. On Saturday, April 29, ten days after the Lexington fight, the news reached Williamsburg, Virginia. There it threatened to light a powder keg under a situation that was already volatile because of recent actions taken by Lord Dunmore, the royal governor.
In a mission quite similar to those General Gage had been attempting in Massachusetts, Lord Dunmore had ordered royal marines to confiscate a large quantity of gunpowder from the provincial magazine in Williamsburg in the dead of night and move it on board a Royal Navy ship. The following morning, Friday, April 21, as news of Lexington was making its way through Connecticut, an angry crowd of rebels confronted the Virginia governor and demanded the return of the powder. Dunmore muttered something about protecting the powder from a possible slave uprising, and the crowd dispersed at the urging of its leaders.
But news of what Dunmore had done—and a call for reinforcements to retake the powder—spread from Williamsburg just as the alarm had spread from Lexington. By Monday, April 24, it had reached as far north as Fredericksburg, one hundred miles distant, and relays of riders were carrying it onward to George Washington’s plantation in Fairfax County. “This first publick insult is not to be tamely submitted to,” a Fredericksburg committee told Washington, a colonel of the militia, as it asked permission to join those “willing to appear in support of the honor of Virginia, as well as to secure the military stores yet remaining in the Magazine.”1
Throughout Virginia, citizens bristled at Dunmore’s overt act and then became inflamed all the more after Dunmore vented his own anger at their initial defiance. If so much as a grain of powder was touched off against his authority, the governor vowed to turn slaves loose against the protesters and burn Williamsburg to the ground.2 By Lord Dunmore’s standards, General Gage looked quite moderate.
Peyton Randolph, about to set off from Williamsburg for the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, pleaded for some measure of Virginia moderation. If the gathering militias marched, Randolph warned, “violent measures may produce effects, which God only knows the consequences of.”3 But by the time Randolph’s message of restraint reached Fredericksburg on April 28, more than one thousand men from fourteen militia companies had assembled and were brimming with confidence that they could set matters straight.
Then came the news about Lexington and Concord. Even among the saber rattlers in Fredericksburg, it had a sobering effect. It also put Randolph’s plea for restraint in a new light. Bluster and verve was one thing, but here was direct evidence that considerable bloodshed might be the consequence. The Fredericksburg companies decided to disperse temporarily but hold themselves in readiness to reassemble “at a moment’s warning.” Significantly, the Fredericksburg resolution noted that they would do so “to defend the laws, the liberty, and rights of this, or any sister colony, from unjust and wicked invasion.”4
But in Patrick Henry’s Hanover County, north of Richmond, there was to be no temporary stand-down. Firebrand Henry had cheered Dunmore’s seizure of the powder just as Samuel Adams cheered Gage’s thrust at Concord. According to his biographer, Henry thought “it would rally the apathetic and rout the cautious.”5 This news from Massachusetts only hardened his resolve.
In the early dawn of May 3, Henry led a contingent of about one hundred men from Hanover County toward Williamsburg and that evening camped on the grounds of Duncastle’s Tavern, about twelve m
iles from the capital. Now began a game of chicken. Henry lacked the troops to seize the gunpowder outright, but Governor Dunmore could not risk taking the field to dislodge him. Giving up the gunpowder was out of the question for Dunmore, but Henry needed something for his efforts.
A deal was finally brokered whereby the king’s receiver general—essentially the collector of rents on royal lands in the province—produced 330 pounds in bills of exchange endorsed to Henry’s satisfaction “as a compensation for the gunpowder lately taken out of the public magazine.” Henry promised to deliver the bills of exchange to the next provincial assembly so that they could be used to purchase replacement gunpowder.6
Upon their return to Hanover County, Henry and his men were cheered as heroes. Governor Dunmore took a different view and promptly denounced Henry and his “deluded Followers” as rebels.7 Arresting Henry, however, was well beyond Dunmore’s capabilities, and, besides, Henry was soon on the road north to Philadelphia to take his own seat in the Continental Congress alongside Virginia’s other delegates. There was some question whether those delegates, including George Washington and Richard Henry Lee, approved of Henry’s boldness in the gunpowder episode, but according to James Madison, it gained Henry “great honor in the most spirited parts of the Country.” Madison fretted, however, that the landed gentry in the Tidewater region of Virginia, whose property would be more exposed in the event of war, “were extremely alarmed lest Government should be provoked to make reprisals.”8
MEANWHILE, THINGS IN BOSTON GREW worse under the tightening rebel siege. “Three days have now passed without communication with the country,” a Royal Navy officer on board the transport Empress of Russia wrote from Boston on April 23; “three more will reduce this town to a most unpleasant situation.” The town had been dependent on the surrounding countryside for daily provisions of eggs, milk, vegetables, and anything fresh. “That ceasing,” the officer told his correspondent, “you may conceive the consequences. Preparations are now making on both sides [of] the Neck for attacking and defending.”9
On April 30, the Provincial Congress, still meeting in Watertown, ratified the deal that had been brokered with General Gage. Those Boston residents who chose to leave town were permitted to do so with their personal effects, “excepting their fire arms and ammunition,” and make their way into the country. Inhabitants of the province elsewhere were guaranteed safe passage in the opposite direction should they be inclined “to go into the town of Boston.”10 About the only people taking the latter route were loyalists who hoped to book quick passage out of Boston by ship.
But that was much easier said than done. John Andrews, who had earnestly told his brother-in-law of his desire to quit town as soon as possible, was still there. “You’ll observe by this that I’m yet in Boston,” Andrews glumly wrote on May 6, “and here like to remain.” Merchant Andrews had tried to charter a ship for Halifax and load up a substantial quantity of his merchandise, but General Gage, despite his accommodation for personal effects, “absolutely” forbade any merchandise to leave town. Given that choice, Andrews determined to stay and safeguard his property. “Of consequence,” Andrews continued, “our eyes have not been bless’d with either vegetables or fresh provisions, how long we shall continue in this wretched state—God only knows.”11
For the moment, Mather Byles Jr. was also remaining in Boston. A committee of vestrymen had terminated his position as rector of Christ Church (the Old North Church) the very day two lanterns were hung in the church’s steeple. His loyalist politics aside, it appears that Byles was paid his outstanding salary despite his termination. His father was another matter. The Reverend Mather Byles Sr. was one of New England’s best-known clergymen. At present he occupied the pulpit of the Hollis Street Church, a Congregational parish in the South End. Despite his son’s Episcopal ordination and loyalist choices, Mather Byles Sr. professed rebel sympathies and refused to leave his post even as his son eventually sailed away to Halifax.12
Split allegiances also continued to beset the Josiah Quincy family. Young Josiah Jr. had gone to England the previous fall to argue the rebel cause but died of tuberculosis within sight of the Massachusetts shore upon his return, just after the battle of Lexington. Conversely, his older brother Samuel stood fast by his king and left Boston for London on May 25. Samuel never returned, and for all practical purposes it was the end of his marriage. Hannah Hill Quincy, who had long goaded Samuel to get on what she perceived to be the right side, stayed behind in Boston and never saw him again.13
In the Massachusetts towns surrounding Boston, there were more tender good-byes when husband and wife were staunchly on the same side, but that did not make them less anguished. Mercy Warren had accompanied her husband, James, on horseback as he rode from Plymouth to Providence, Rhode Island, to spread the alarm and coordinate the march of Rhode Island militia to Cambridge. Along the way, they found a safe house in Taunton where Mercy and their boys might take refuge should the British strike at Plymouth.
Returning to Plymouth, James “made the best provision I could for the security of our Family” and then rode alone to take his place once again at the Provincial Congress in Watertown. Like Abigail Adams at John’s departure for the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, Mercy Warren was most apprehensive as James left home, but they had talked the talk of freedom together for so long that his riding to effect it was a duty she could not question. This did not keep her, however, from suffering a severe bout of migraines that seemed to surface during periods of high stress.14
James wrote Mercy almost every day during these pivotal weeks of May, and mail between Watertown and Plymouth was usually a matter of next-day delivery. “What a Letter every day!” he scrawled in jest. “Was ever a Woman doom’d to such drudgery before to be obliged to read half a Sheet, and sometimes a whole one, full of Impertinence before dinner.” But James presumed, quite rightly, that Mercy’s “Love for reading, or affection for her Husband will secure a welcome to his Scribbles.”15
FAR TO THE SOUTH, THE news of Lexington and Concord was finally reaching Charleston, South Carolina. In many respects, South Carolina appeared to have less reason to challenge Great Britain and more to lose if it did so than any of the other colonies. South Carolina’s capital, Charleston, was a glittering hub of southern society and wealth. It had strong commercial ties throughout the British Empire. Rice, indigo, and other crops raised largely with slave labor left the docks of Charleston and made fortunes for their planters and shipping merchants alike. But here, too, just as in Massachusetts and other provinces, many citizens held a decided interest in self-government—an inclination to manage the colony’s internal affairs without edicts from Parliament as to taxes, tariffs, and regulations.
After the royal governor dissolved the South Carolina legislature in January of 1775, most representatives of the lower house met again in a provincial congress similar to that organized in Massachusetts. By April, this body had become the de facto governing arm of the province. Its members were well aware—having received correspondence from Boston as well as news carried on board ships originating in England—that parliamentary debates brooked little chance of reconciliation.
Consequently, on April 17, two days before the Lexington action, a five-man committee of the South Carolina Provincial Congress took the unprecedented step of intercepting royal dispatches, intended for the acting royal governor, delivered from England on the packet Swallow. These documents made clear that the same force that General Gage had been directed to use against insurgents in Massachusetts was to be applied just as aggressively against rebels in South Carolina. In response, on the evening of April 21, rebels seized arms, ammunition, and gunpowder from three arsenals and magazines in and around Charleston, much as their New England brethren had already done in Portsmouth, Salem, and Concord.16
Any royal response to these seizures in South Carolina was muted both by the lack of sufficient force to confront the rebels and by the pending arrival of a new royal gover
nor. It would not do to start something drastic before he arrived. Thus on May 3, much of rebel Charleston gathered festively on the docks to wish Godspeed to the colony’s five delegates to the Continental Congress as they sailed for Philadelphia on the outbound packet.17
A few days later, Charleston learned the news of Lexington and Concord not from postal riders, who were still making their way south through the Carolinas, but from a copy of the Essex Gazette when it arrived in town on May 8 on board the brigantine Industry. This was the issue of April 25, which went to great lengths to characterize the cruel and savage atrocities of the British regulars and cast the Massachusetts response in the best possible light.18
Not only did these one-sided descriptions ring true to southern readers—as they did throughout the colonies—they also gave white South Carolinians particular pause as they confronted an ugly rumor that had been making the rounds. There appeared to be growing concerns about a British-inspired slave uprising throughout South Carolina of the kind Governor Dunmore had threatened in Virginia.
On the very day the South Carolina delegation sailed for the Continental Congress, a ship inbound to Charleston brought a letter from colonial agent Arthur Lee in London to Henry Laurens, one of the province’s leading rebels. In it, Lee claimed to know of a plan hatched by Lord North’s government “for instigating the slaves to insurrection.” This was certainly not a new fear. Lee had written his brother Richard Henry Lee in Virginia about “a proposal for emancipating your Negroes by royal Proclamation & arming them against you” some six months before.19
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