This was a big step, and the Continental Congress did what legislative bodies have always done with thorny issues: they referred it to a committee—in this case the entire congress sitting as a committee of the whole—for due consideration. But events were overtaking any semblance of measured debate. Rebels in New York sent the congress a missive similar to Warren’s and asked what their response should be to the arrival of the fresh regiments of British troops that were expected any day in New York City. The congress encouraged New York to act only on the defensive, as long as they could do so “consistent with their safety and security.” The British troops should be allowed to take up quarters in barracks “so long as they behave peaceably and quietly… [but] if they commit hostilities or invade private property, the inhabitants should defend themselves and their property and repel force by force.”13
This defensive posture was similar to the position that Massachusetts maintained it had taken at Lexington and Concord—the vicious attacks on Percy’s retreating column notwithstanding. But then came news via John Brown of Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold’s capture of Fort Ticonderoga. This act could hardly be considered “defensive,” no matter how the Green Mountain Boys chose to portray it.
The Continental Congress vacillated and dispatched its wishy-washy response—advising the rebels to store captured property until it could be returned to the king—that so infuriated both Allen and Arnold. Benjamin Franklin at this point still seems to have been in his phase of brooding observation. Having recognized the threats from beyond the northern frontier and called for common defense as early as 1754, in his Albany Plan of Union, Franklin should have been a force who urged a concerted offensive. But Franklin wasn’t quite ready to lead his fellow delegates off a cliff that could only end in independence or destruction.
Barely had the Continental Congress sent its Ticonderoga response north, however, than it addressed the situation in New York with more military vigor and passed resolutions concerning fortifications along the Hudson River and the arming and training of troops. Next came a letter to “the oppressed Inhabitants of Canada” drafted by New York’s John Jay. It expressed hope that the recent forays around Ticonderoga had given Canadians “no uneasiness” and assured these northern neighbors, “We yet entertain hopes of your uniting with us in the defence of our common liberty.” The missive was translated into French, and one thousand copies were printed and “sent to Canada, and dispersed among the Inhabitants there.”14
Meanwhile, all this talk about armies was stirring the martial spirit in almost every delegate assembled, save perhaps Benjamin Franklin and Samuel Adams. Franklin had never held strong military ambitions, and Samuel Adams had long recognized that his place was among the plotters in legislative halls and not upon battlefields. But his cousin John couldn’t help but be caught up in the glory of it. “Oh that I was a Soldier!” John Adams wrote Abigail. “I will be.—I am reading military Books.—Every Body must and will, and shall be a soldier.”15
One of those who most wished for a military command was John Hancock. When Peyton Randolph, after only two weeks as the congress’s president, decided that he must return immediately to Virginia, Hancock saw his opportunity to move to the forefront. He turned to both John Adams and George Washington for assistance. These two men had begun to form close ties with each other that went well beyond their respective provincial boundaries. They were discussing the broader ramifications of continental union as opposed to mere independence. On May 24 with their support, Hancock was unanimously elected to succeed Randolph as president of the Continental Congress.16 (Randolph was also speaker of the Virginia House of Burgesses, and Governor Dunmore had unexpectedly called it into emergency session. By midsummer, a young Thomas Jefferson would arrive in Philadelphia to replace Randolph as a member of the Virginia delegation.)
For the moment, Hancock’s role was that of a civilian leader. Joseph Warren was adamant about the supremacy of civilian control of any military forces—“otherwise,” as he wrote to Samuel Adams, “our soldiery will lose the ideas of right and wrong, and will plunder, instead of protecting the inhabitants.”17 But President Hancock clearly expected military lightning to strike him when the time was right. What Hancock apparently did not grasp was that when that time came, one of the brokers of his election as president of the congress would be his rival. George Washington had been wearing his resplendent colonial uniform to the sessions, and at forty-three it gave him an air of a battle-tested hero. Three days after Hancock’s election as president, Washington was appointed to chair a committee of seven, which included Samuel Adams, to consider “ways and means to supply these colonies with Ammunition and military stores.”18
The floodgates that had been holding back concerted military action were opening. It hadn’t taken very long. On May 31, the congress received Benedict Arnold’s warning that a force of four hundred British regulars—almost surely an inflated number—were gathering at St. John’s and along with “a number of Indians” were expected to sail up Lake Champlain “with a design of retaking Crown-point and Ticonderogo.” The congress quickly reversed its mild-mannered approach of only two weeks before and requested that Governor Trumbull of Connecticut send a strong reinforcement to garrison both forts and keep “so many of the cannon and other stores… as may be necessary for the immediate defence of those posts.” New York was asked to furnish those troops with provisions and other necessary stores and also provide a sufficient number of bateaux for use on the lake.19
How to pay for all this was another matter. This was to be a leap of faith. During a Saturday session on June 3, the congress took the first step and resolved to empower the Pennsylvania delegation to borrow six thousand pounds, “the repayment of which with interest, the Congress will make full and ample provision.” The intent was that the locals would knock on the doors of Philadelphia banks, obtain loans, and then apply the funds toward “the purchase of gunpowder for the use of the Continental Army.”20 Technically, there was not yet a Continental Army, but a strong plea to create one was on the table.
The day before, Dr. Benjamin Church had arrived in town and delivered the petition of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, which had been entrusted to his special care and personal delivery. Church had been a very busy person—signing Benedict Arnold’s original commission, dispatching the committee to investigate Arnold’s leadership, and attending to myriad details for the committee of safety among the troops gathering about Cambridge. But in that critical month of May, with so much in flux on all sides, it is hard to imagine a more important or delicate assignment for Church than to convey to the Continental Congress the Massachusetts plea that it create a national army. “As the Army now collecting from different colonies is for the general defence of the right of America,” the petition concluded, “we wd beg leave to suggest to yr consideration the propriety of yr taking the regulation and general direction of it, that the operations may more effectually answer the purposes designed.”21
The words, signed by Joseph Warren as president of the Provincial Congress, were one thing, but Dr. Church was also counted on to lend a persuasive personal touch and credibility to the Massachusetts delegates and help them convince the other delegates of the exigencies of the moment. In the end, however, that diplomatic duty would fall to John Hancock and Samuel Adams, because deep down in his soul Benjamin Church was a very conflicted man.
On May 24, the day before he left Cambridge for Philadelphia—he may or may not have previously made another clandestine visit to Boston—Church had written a lengthy letter to someone who appears to have been a frequent recipient of his communications. “May I never see the day when I shall not dare to call myself a British American,” Church confessed before getting to the nub of the matter: “I am appointed to my vexation to carry the dispatches to Philadelphia, & must set out tomorrow wh will prevent my writing for some time, unless an opportunity should be found thence by water.”22
One hundred and fifty years later,
this letter—along with Rachel Revere’s undelivered note to her husband—would be found among the papers of Thomas Gage. When it was, it would become damning evidence that for at least two years, Dr. Benjamin Church, the insider’s insider of the Massachusetts committee of safety, had been passing rebel information to General Gage.
But for the moment, Dr. Church was above suspicion. As he left Philadelphia about a week later to carry resolutions from the Continental Congress back to Massachusetts, no one among the rebel hierarchy doubted his allegiance to their cause. Only Church and General Gage knew the depth of his treachery. For Gage, it was simply a matter of military intelligence bought and paid for. As for Church, he had gladly taken the pieces of silver, but at a cost to himself that was much greater. “Oh for Peace & honor once more,” Church lamented, but it was not to be.23 Meanwhile, Benjamin Franklin, the man whose own loyalty some had questioned, was appointed to a committee charged with drafting yet one more last-ditch petition of reconciliation to George III.24
Chapter 20
Lexington of the Seas
While the Continental Congress and provincial congresses of the various colonies debated courses of action, the rebel noose around Boston grew tighter and tighter. With a cork in the bottle of Boston Neck, the only ingress and egress to and from Boston was via the surrounding waters of greater Boston Harbor. It was inevitable that watery conflicts would arise, and with the news of Lexington and Concord fresh on their minds, rebels did not hesitate to contest the power of the Royal Navy.
On May 11, 1775, HMS Falcon, the same fourteen-gun sloop that the month before had delivered the original copies of Lord Dartmouth’s action orders to General Gage, was anchored in a cove off northern Martha’s Vineyard, about seventy air miles south of Boston on the far side of the Cape Cod peninsula. Since its departure from England the previous February, the Falcon had been under the command of thirty-two-year-old John Linzee, an experienced master with somewhat of an aggressive reputation. Falcon’s assignment was to interdict ships attempting to circumvent the closures mandated by the Boston Port Act and land cargoes elsewhere in Massachusetts. About 6:00 p.m., Linzee sent the Falcon’s barge out to intercept a sloop returning from Nantucket Island on the pretense that it lacked proper clearance.
The suspect sloop was the property of Simeon Wing of Sandwich, sailing under the command of his son Thomas. For some years, the Wings had made regular trips to Nantucket with cargoes of wood, returning in ballast and squaring up with customs officials on an annual basis. Thomas Wing was brought aboard the Falcon, and Commander Linzee informed him that he and his ship would be released only if he provided information on nearby vessels recently arrived from the West Indies.
Wing initially pleaded ignorance, but one of his crew offered that a ship owned by Jesse Barlow was somewhere on the far side of Buzzards Bay near Fairhaven, offloading a cargo just arrived from the West Indies. Apparently its stay would be short, as Barlow was eager for it to return to the Indies and continue what appeared to be regular voyages. Thomas Wing may have finally confessed to this as well, but he paid for his earlier loyalty. Commander Linzee seized Wing’s ship, armed it with fourteen of his crew under the command of midshipman Richard Lucas, and then ordered Lucas to sail Wing’s sloop in search of Barlow’s West India trader. Reports differ as to whether Wing went along with Lucas or was detained on the Falcon as a hostage, but subsequent events suggest the former.
Midshipman Lucas and Wing’s sloop found Jesse Barlow’s West India trader in a cove on the west side of Buzzard’s Bay, where it had already landed its cargo. Lucas seized the Barlow sloop, and although he must have been getting short on men, he put a prize crew aboard it and started both ships back toward Martha’s Vineyard. Lucas was feeling rather smug, but Jesse Barlow was furious and determined to strike back.
In the port of Fairhaven, on the western coast of Buzzards Bay, Barlow commandeered a forty-ton sloop—named, appropriately enough, Success—and appealed to the local militia to lend him officers and a crew of some thirty men. With militia captain Daniel Egery in command and Barlow footing half the cost of the outfitting, the Success stood out of Fairhaven Harbor in the early evening of May 13 in search of what one newspaper report called “these royal pirates.” The Success was only armed with two swivel guns, and it was clearly no match for the Falcon’s fourteen six-pounders should it come across Linzee’s sloop. Encountering dense fog and light winds, the Success didn’t get very far in its pursuit that evening, but those same conditions meant that Midshipman Lucas had been unable to return his two prizes to the protection of the Falcon, which Commander Linzee had rather nonchalantly kept anchored off Martha’s Vineyard.
The result was that sunrise on May 14 found the Success in sight of one of the sloops, which was taken without firing a shot. While this vessel was sailed into Fairhaven, the Success located Lucas’s second sloop trying to raise sail and get under way. This capture was to be more difficult, and the resulting gunfire gave rise to the claim that this action in Buzzards Bay was the Lexington of the Seas. As Success closed with the second sloop, “the pirates fired upon them; the fire was immediately returned, by which three of the pirates were wounded, among whom was the commanding officer.” Once subdued, this sloop was also sailed into Fairhaven, and the rebels detained Midshipman Lucas and his original prize crew as prisoners. Commander Linzee, aboard the Falcon, was particularly irate when he heard the news.
Jesse Barlow and Thomas Wing, on the other hand, should have rejoiced and been pleased to have their vessels back, but it wasn’t that simple. The townspeople in nearby Dartmouth told them that their ships would be released if Wing paid an eight-dollar fee; Barlow was assessed ten dollars. The two paid the fees, but then locals decided that they best refer the entire matter to the Provincial Congress, with the result that the ships remained tied to the wharf. Notwithstanding this referral, the price of freedom was now announced to be forty-five dollars more for both ships.
Wing and Barlow were also required to sign bonds to indemnify the locals. What they were indemnifying them from is not entirely clear. Perhaps the townspeople were merely looking for a ready source of income or covering themselves should Commander Linzee and the Falcon glide into their harbor looking for revenge. In any event, the two captured sloops, even though owned and manned originally by Barlow and Wing, who by all accounts manifested rebel leanings, were branded “British sloops.” In 1927, the New Bedford chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution erected a marker at Fort Phoenix, off Fairhaven, that read: “On the waters of Buzzards Bay within sight of this spot the first naval battle of the Revolutionary War was fought on May 14, 1775. Twenty-five days after the battle of Concord and Lexington, a gallant force of Fairhaven men… in the sloop Success, captured two British sloops and their crews.”1
AS THE NOOSE TIGHTENED AROUND Boston, fresh provisions for its soldiers and citizens, as well as fodder for its livestock, became increasingly scarce. General Gage turned his attention to the many islands that dotted the broader reaches of Boston Harbor. One of those was Grape Island, a rather innocuous dot roughly fifty acres in area. It rose to about seventy feet above sea level almost ten miles southeast of Boston, off Upper Neck Point and the towns of Weymouth and Hingham. Today, Grape Island is part of the Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area. In 1775, it was a lush haven of livestock and hay owned by Elisha Leavitt of nearby Hingham. By all accounts, Leavitt was a dedicated loyalist who had either sold or donated hay and livestock to the British in the past. General Gage was determined that the remainder of Leavitt’s provisions be secured to the benefit of his forces.
Accordingly, on May 21, a Sunday morning—Gage could not seem to resist mounting such forays on the Sabbath—the Royal Navy dispatched three sloops and an armed schooner (the latter may have been the newly purchased HMS Diana) to procure cargoes of hay. About thirty regulars from the Forty-Third Regiment, under the command of Lieutenant Thomas Innis, went along to ensure their success. But as this little flee
t of shoppers dropped anchor off Grape Island, rumors flew along the shore that their real target was nearby Weymouth and that the town was to be burned to the ground. The alarm spread to Braintree, where Abigail Adams, upon hearing the alarm guns, was immediately concerned for the safety of her children. “People, women, children… came flocking down this way,” Abigail wrote John in Philadelphia, “every woman and child driven off from below my father’s; my father’s family flying.”2
As the alarm spread, several thousand militiamen began to gather. They arrived with haste equal to that of the fleeing civilians. “The alarm flew like lightning,” Abigail told John, and soon three companies were dispatched to the shore as an advance guard against a possible British landing. Their orders were merely to observe, but gathering close to the island they soon began to fire at the regulars across the water despite the fact that they were beyond range. One of the sloops fired a few rounds from its swivel guns in return, but the balls flew over the heads of the rebels. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Innis’s men continued to load hay on board the ships.
By now it was late morning, and as the tide came in it floated several lighters that had been grounded near shore. Dozens of rebel militia swarmed on board and began to row for Grape Island. By the time this little force reached the island, on the point nearest the mainland, the regulars were hastily embarking for their ships from the opposite end. As the British vessels paraded past en route back to Boston, the sloops and schooner let loose some cannons, and the rebels replied with muskets. Meanwhile, the rebels burned whatever hay the British had not taken, set fire to Leavitt’s barn, and removed the balance of his livestock. Casualties for the entire fray were but three British regulars wounded.3
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