ABOUT THE AUTHOR
WALTER R. BORNEMAN is the author of eight works of nonfiction, including The Admirals, 1812, The French and Indian War, and Polk. He lives in Colorado.
ALSO BY WALTER R. BORNEMAN
The Admirals: Nimitz, Halsey, Leahy, and King—The Five-Star Admirals Who Won the War at Sea
Iron Horses: America’s Race to Bring the Railroads West
Polk: The Man Who Transformed the Presidency and America
The French and Indian War: Deciding the Fate of North America
14,000 Feet: A Celebration of Colorado’s Highest Mountains (with Todd Caudle)
1812: The War That Forged a Nation
Alaska: Saga of a Bold Land
A Climbing Guide to Colorado’s Fourteeners (with Lyndon J. Lampert)
Praise for Walter R. Borneman’s
AMERICAN SPRING
“Likely to be one of the enduring accounts of the opening of the American Revolution.… Loaded with intriguing details, sort of historical nonpareil candies sprinkled throughout the account.… A pleasing marriage of scholarly research and approachable language.”
—David Shribman, Boston Globe
“Walter Borneman has written an engaging and illuminating account of some of the most critical weeks in American history. Here is how it all began.”
—Jon Meacham, author of Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power
“Borneman delivers a gripping, almost moment-by-moment account of the nasty exchanges and bloody retreat of British troops followed by hundreds and then thousands of militia who camped around Boston and laid siege.… A first-rate contribution.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“An exceptionally detailed account of the first six months of 1775.… A balanced and thorough narrative.”
—Douglas King, Library Journal
“Borneman’s approach gives the reader not just a comprehensive understanding of the rebels’ motives, obstacles, and overall tensions, but also makes the setting of the colonies during the spring of 1775 vivid and real to a twenty-first-century audience.… An enjoyable and accessible read.”
—Publishers Weekly
“An excellent history of the origins of the American Revolution.”
—Army magazine
“Walter R. Borneman’s superb American Spring: Lexington, Concord, and the Road to Revolution tells the story of that period in significant detail with descriptions of military engagements and legislative actions, but never loses sight of the personalities at all levels. To a great extent, Borneman relies on the original affidavits, correspondence, and memories of the participants and views events from their perspective—before they knew what the outcome would be—giving us a remarkably fresh look at this transformative period.… Borneman’s authoritative, carefully structured, and very well-written account often seems to place readers in the moment with events that changed the course of history.”
—Roger Bishop, BookPage
NOTES
Prologue: Tuesday, December 13 , 1774
1. “From a gentleman in Boston, to Mr. Rivington, in New York, December 20, 1774,” AA4 1:1053–54. There was some precedent for the seizure by colonials. On December 5, 1774, a little over a week before, the assembly of Rhode Island ordered that the powder and shot in Fort George, off Newport, be confiscated. The weather for Revere’s ride is from the meteorological register in the New-Hampshire Gazette, January 6, 1775.
2. Wentworth to Gage, December 14, 1774, AA4,1:1041–42.
3. Enlistment order, December 15, 1774, Documents and Records Relating to the Province of New-Hampshire from 1764 to 1776 (Nashua, N.H.: Green C. Moore, State Printer, 1873), 7:421.
4. Gentleman in Boston to Rivington, December 20, 1774, AA4, 1:1054.
Chapter 1 — New Year’s Day 1775
1. During 1774, Boston recorded 590 burials, of which 540 were listed as “whites” and fifty as “blacks.” Recorded baptisms totaled 521. Boston News-Letter, January 5, 1775. Town population estimates from John A. Garraty, The American Nation (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), 48.
2. Boston Evening-Post, January 2, 1775.
3. Boston Gazette and Country Journal (hereinafter Boston Gazette), January 2, 1775.
4. Boston Gazette, January 2, 1775.
5. Boston News-Letter, January 5, 1775.
6. Boston Post-Boy, January 2, 1775.
7. Boston Evening-Post, January 2, 1775.
8. Andrews to Barrell, January 1, 1775, “Letters of John Andrews, Esq. of Boston, 1772–1776,” Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings 8 (1864–65), 392.
9. Nancy Rubin Stuart, The Muse of the Revolution: The Secret Pen of Mercy Otis Warren and the Founding of a Nation (Boston: Beacon Press, 2008), 68–69.
10. Diary of Jemima Condict Harrison, October 1774, North American Women’s Letters and Diaries: Colonial to 1950 (subscription only), http://solomon.nwld.alexanderstreet.com/cgi-bin/asp/philo/nwld/getdoc.pl!S34-Do25, accessed January 3, 2012, hereinafter “Jemima Condict Diary.” This has also been published as Jemima Condict: Her Book, Being a Transcript of the Diary of an Essex County Maid during the Revolutionary War (Newark, N.J.: Carteret Book Club, 1930).
11. “several of whom,” Boston Evening-Post, January 2, 1775; “Nothing remarkable,” Elizabeth Ellery Dana, ed., The British in Boston: Being the Diary of Lieutenant John Barker of the King’s Own Regiment from November 15, 1774 to May 31, 1776; with Notes (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1924), 18, entry dated January 1, 1775.
12. For early Massachusettensis letters, see, for example, Boston Post-Boy, December 19, 1774, and January 2, 1775.
13. Alice M. Hinkle, Prince Estabrook: Slave and Soldier (Lexington, Mass.: Pleasant Mountain Press, 2001), 14, 25–29, 75. Benjamin Estabrook was born December 21, 1729; additional Estabrook information at http://nationalheritagemuseum.typepad.com/learning/, accessed August 22, 2012.
14. Boston Gazette, January 2, 1775.
15. New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury, January 2, 1775.
16. New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury, January 9, 1775.
17. Washington to McMickan, January 7, 1775, Jared Sparks, ed., The Writings of George Washington (Boston: Charles Tappan, 1846), 3:256.
18. Washington to Cleveland, January 10, 1775, Writings of Washington, 3:256.
19. Boston News-Letter, January 5, 1775.
20. Franklin to William Franklin, May 7, 1774, Franklin Papers.
21. William Franklin to Franklin, December 24, 1774, Franklin Papers.
22. “Journal of Negotiations in London,” Franklin to William Franklin, March 22, 1775, Franklin Papers.
23. “to cement,” “Franklin’s Proposals to Lord Howe for Resolving Crisis,” December 28–31, 1774, Franklin Papers; “threatens to be attended,” Lord Howe to Caroline Howe, January 2, 1775, Franklin Papers.
Chapter 2 — Drumbeats of Dissension
1. Francis Bernard, Select Letters on the Trade and Government of America (London: Bowyer and Nichols, 1774), 9.
2. Henry Mayer, A Son of Thunder: Patrick Henry and the American Republic (New York: Grove Press, 1991), 85–87, 485n86. Mayer considers it very unlikely that Henry ever uttered this phrase, particularly that early in his career.
3. Thomas Fleming, Liberty! The American Revolution (New York: Viking, 1997), 61.
4. L. H. Butterfield, ed., Diary & Autobiography of John Adams (New York: Atheneum, 1964), 1:284, entry dated January 1, 1766.
5. Edward Sears Morgan and Helen M. Morgan, The Stamp Act Crisis: Prologue to Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 93.
6. John C. Miller, Origins of the American Revolution (Boston: Little, Brown, 1943), 339.
7. Robert Middlekauff, The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763–1789 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 222–23.
8. Boston Evening-Post, October 25, 1773.
9. John Hancock oration, March 5, 1774, in H[ezekiah]. Niles, ed., Principles and Acts of the Revo
lution in America (Baltimore: W. O. Niles, 1822), 16.
10. “there was nothing,” Middlekauff, Glorious Cause, 226; for Hancock’s and Samuel Adams’s personal involvement, see, for example, Miller, Origins, 348; “This destruction,” Diary & Autobiography of John Adams 2:86, entry dated December 17, 1773.
11. “blocking up,” Farmington Resolves, May 19, 1774, AA4, 1:336; “unconstitutional; oppressive,” Niles, Principles and Acts of the Revolution, 179.
12. “Resolution of the House of Burgesses Designating a Day of Fasting and Prayer,” May 24, 1774, Barbara B. Oberg and J. Jefferson Looney, eds., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson Digital Edition (subscription only) (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Rotunda, 2008), main ser., 1:105, accessed December 16, 2012, http://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/founders/TSJN-01-01-02-0082; “For my own part,” Washington to Fairfax, August 24, 1774, Jared Sparks, ed., The Writings of George Washington (Boston: Charles Tappan, 1846), 3:242.
13. Adams to Warren, June 25, 1774, Works of John Adams, 9:339.
14. Page Smith, A New Age Now Begins: A People’s History of the American Revolution (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976), 431.
15. Miller, Origins, 382–83.
16. JCC, 1:32 (September 17, 1774).
17. Miller, Origins, 374.
18. Lord North comments, May 17, 1775, The Parliamentary History of England from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803 (London: T. C. Hansard, 1813), 18:681.
19. JCC, 1:39 (September 17, 1774).
20. Diary & Autobiography of John Adams, 2:134 (September 17, 1774).
21. Diary & Autobiography of John Adams, 2:136 (September 22, 1774).
22. Miller, Origins, 385–86.
23. Clarence H. Vance, ed., “Letters of a Westchester Farmer (1774–1775),” Publications of the Westchester County Historical Society 8 (1930), 61–62.
24. Linda K. Kerber, Toward an Intellectual History of Women (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 76.
25. JCC, 1:67–68 (October 14, 1774).
26. “I expect no redress,” Miller, Origins, 392; “We must fight,” Hawley to Adams, undated, Papers of John Adams 9, app. A (“Broken Hints, to Be Communicated to the Committee of Congress for Massachusetts”); “By God,” Mayer, Son of Thunder, 229.
27. “if these Resolves,” Peter Orlando Hutchinson, ed., The Diary and Letters of His Excellency Thomas Hutchinson, Esq (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1883), 284; “actual Revolt,” Dartmouth to Gage, January 27, 1775, Clarence Edwin Carter, ed., The Correspondence of General Thomas Gage with the Secretaries of State, and with the War Office and the Treasury, 1763–1775 (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1969), 2:180.
28. George III to Lord North, November 18, 1774, W. Bodham Donne, ed., The Correspondence of King George the Third with Lord North, 1768 to 1783 (London: John Murray, 1867), 1:214–15.
Chapter 3 — Who Would Be True Patriots?
1. Works of John Adams, 4: 6–8.
2. Josiah Quincy, Memoir of the Life of Josiah Quincy Jun. (Boston: Cummings, Hilliard, 1825), 5–7, 160.
3. Abigail Adams to John Adams, September 16, 1774, Charles Francis Adams, ed., Letters of Mrs. Adams, the Wife of John Adams (Boston: Wilkins, Carter, 1848), 17.
4. Massachusetts Gazette and the Boston Post-Boy and Advertiser, February 7, 1774.
5. Connecticut Journal, January 4, 1775.
6. “Extract of a letter from Boston to a Gentleman in New York, January 26, 1775,” AA4, 1:1178.
7. New-York Gazetteer, February 9, 1775.
8. New-York Gazetteer, February 9, 1775.
9. Gage to Dartmouth, January 27, 1775, Clarence Edwin Carter, ed., The Correspondence of General Thomas Gage with the Secretaries of State, and with the War Office and the Treasury, 1763–1775 (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1969), 1:391.
10. Selectmen to Gage, February 7, 1775, AA4, 1:1218–19.
11. Marshfield town meeting, February 20, 1775, AA4, 1:1249–50.
12. Massachusetts Provincial Congress, February 15, 1775, AA4, 1:1341; County of Plymouth delegate list at p. 1326.
13. AA4, 1:1262–63.
14. AA4, 1:1263.
15. AA4, 1:1263.
16. For biographies of John Hancock, see William M. Fowler, Jr., The Baron of Beacon Hill: A Biography of John Hancock (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980), and Harlow Giles Unger, John Hancock: Merchant King and American Patriot (New York: John Wiley, 2000).
17. Adams to Tudor, June 1, 1817, Works of John Adams, 10:259.
18. Unger, John Hancock, 48.
19. Unger, John Hancock, 59, quoting J. Hancock to T. Hancock, January 14, 1761.
20. Fowler, Baron of Beacon Hill, 46.
21. Unger, John Hancock, 66–68.
22. A particularly insightful look at Samuel Adams and his character remains Pauline Maier, “Coming to Terms with Samuel Adams,” American Historical Review 81, no. 1 (February 1976), 12–37.
23. William M. Fowler, Jr., Samuel Adams: Radical Puritan (New York: Longman, 1997), 21–24 ; Unger, John Hancock, 84.
24. Adams diary, June 27, 1770, Works of John Adams, 2:238.
25. Unger, John Hancock, 89–90.
26. Unger, John Hancock, 91.
27. Adams to Tudor, February 9, 1819, Works of John Adams, 10:364.
28. Ira Stoll, Samuel Adams: A Life (New York: Free Press, 2008), 87. There is at least some evidence that Hancock either gave or loaned Adams a portion of the funds to square Adams’s tax collector debts.
29. Unger, John Hancock, 100.
30. Adams to Tudor, June 1, 1817, Works of John Adams, 10:260.
31. Pennsylvania Gazette, February 27, 1766.
32. “I fancy the merchants,” Washington to Dandridge, September 20, 1767, Jared Sparks, ed., The Writings of George Washington (Boston: Charles Tappan, 1846), 2:344; “that not a man,” Unger, John Hancock, 99.
33. W. T. Baxter, The House of Hancock: Business in Boston, 1724–1775 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1945), 260.
34. Adams to Tudor, June 1, 1817, Works of John Adams, 10:260.
35. Boston Post-Boy and Advertiser, May 26, 1766.
36. Adams diary, September 1, 1774, Works of John Adams, 2:361.
Chapter 4 — Volleys of Words
1. [Harrison Gray], A Few Remarks upon Some of the Votes and Resolutions of the Continental Congress Held at Philadelphia in September and the Provincial Congress Held at Cambridge in November 1774 (Boston, 1775), 8–9.
2. Boston Gazette, January 30, 1775.
3. Works of John Adams, 4:9.
4. Carol Berkin, “Leonard, Daniel,” American National Biography Online (subscription only), February 2000, accessed January 23, 2012, http://www.anb.org/articles/0101-00513.html.
5. Eric Burns, Infamous Scribblers: The Founding Fathers and the Rowdy Beginnings of American Journalism (New York: Public Affairs, 2006), 166–67.
6. Massachusetts Gazette and the Boston Post-Boy and Advertiser, December 5, 1774. Beginning on April 26, 1773, the masthead of the Gazette gave inclusive dates—e.g., “From Monday, December 5, to Monday, December 12, 1774.” The first date of publication is used throughout.
7. Massachusetts Gazette and the Boston Post-Boy and Advertiser, December 5, 1774.
8. Massachusetts Gazette and the Boston Post-Boy and Advertiser, December 28, 1774.
9. Massachusetts Gazette and the Boston Post-Boy and Advertiser, January 9, 1775.
10. Boston Gazette, January 23, 1775.
11. Massachusetts Gazette and the Boston Post-Boy and Advertiser, January 23, 1775.
12. Boston Gazette, February 6, 1775.
13. Boston Gazette, January 23, 1775.
14. Nancy Rubin Stuart, The Muse of the Revolution: The Secret Pen of Mercy Otis Warren and the Founding of a Nation (Boston: Beacon Press, 2008), 6–19.
15. Stuart, Muse of the Revolution, 20.
16. Abigail Adams to Mercy Warren, December 5, 1773, H. C. Lodge, et al., eds., Warren-Adams Letters, Being Chi
efly a Correspondence among John Adams, Samuel Adams, and James Warren (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1917), 18–19.
17. Stuart, Muse of the Revolution, 66.
18. Warren to Macaulay, December 29, 1774, in Elizabeth F. Ellet, Women of the American Revolution (New York: Baker & Scribner, 1849), 79.
19. Massachusetts Spy, March 26, 1772; Stuart, Muse of the Revolution, 48–49.
20. Boston Gazette, May 24, 1773; Stuart, Muse of the Revolution, 51.
21. Warren to Adams, February 27, 1774, L. H. Butterfield, et al., eds., Adams Family Correspondence, vol. 1, December 1761–May 1776 (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1963), 99; Boston Gazette, March 21, 1774.
22. Warren to Adams, August 9, 1774, Adams Family Correspondence, 1:139.
23. Boston Gazette, January 23, 1775.
24. Stuart, Muse of the Revolution, 67–68.
25. Bernard Bailyn, ed., Pamphlets of the American Revolution, 1750–1776, vol. 1, 1750–1765 (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1965), 420.
26. Stuart, Muse of the Revolution, 67; Boston Gazette, January 23, 1775; the first two acts also appeared in the Massachusetts Spy, January 26, 1775.
27. Essex Journal and Merimack Packet, August 17, 1774.
28. Abigail Adams to John Adams, September 22, 1774, Charles Francis Adams, ed., Letters of Mrs. Adams, the Wife of John Adams (Boston: Wilkins, Carter, 1848), 24.
Chapter 5 — “Fire, If You Have the Courage”
1. The standard biography of Gage remains John Richard Alden, General Gage in America: Being Principally a History of His Role in the American Revolution (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1948).
2. Walter R. Borneman, The French and Indian War: Deciding the Fate of North America (New York: HarperCollins, 2006), 50–55, 131–36.
American Spring Page 41