3. “The Kemble Papers,” Collections of the New-York Historical Society for the Year 1883 (New York: New-York Historical Society, 1884), 2:xiv–xviii.
4. Alden, General Gage in America, 159.
5. Gage to Barrington, September 26, 1768, 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), 2:488.
6. Donald Jackson and Dorothy Twohig, eds., The Diaries of George Washington, vol. 3, 1771–75 ; 1780–81 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1978), 182, entry dated May 27, 1773.
7. Alden, General Gage in America, 10, 194–95, 200–204.
8. Gage to Dartmouth, September 25, 1774, Correspondence of Gage, 1:377.
9. Gage to Dartmouth, November 15, 1774, Correspondence of Gage, 1:384; proclamation of November 10, 1774, in AA4, 1:973–74.
10. Gage to Dartmouth, December 15, 1774, Correspondence of Gage, 1:387.
11. Gage to Dartmouth, January 18, 1775, Correspondence of Gage, 1:390.
12. Dartmouth to Gage, December 10, 1774, Correspondence of Gage, 2:178.
13. Gage to Brown and De Berniere, February 22, 1775, AA4, 1:1263.
14. “Narrative of Ensign De Berniere,” AA4, 1:1263–67.
15. Essex Gazette, February 28, 1775.
16. “Mr. William Gavett’s Account,” Proceedings of the Essex Institute, vol. 1, 1848–1856 (Salem, Mass.: Ives and Pease, 1856), 126. See also pages 104–35 for other accounts of the Salem raid.
17. Essex Gazette, February 28, 1775.
18. Essex Gazette, March 7, 1775.
19. “Gavett’s Account,” Proceedings, 127.
20. Proceedings, 115.
21. “Gavett’s Account,” Proceedings, 128.
22. Essex Gazette, February 28, 1775.
23. “Gavett’s Account,” Proceedings, 128. This episode was not reported in the Essex Gazette and was embellished over time. It carries a ring of Barbara Fritchie’s stand in the face of Stonewall Jackson’s troops in Frederick, Maryland, during the Civil War.
24. “not less than,” Essex Gazette, March 7, 1775; “immediately dispatched,” Essex Gazette, February 28, 1775.
25. Essex Gazette, February 28, 1775.
26. John Trumbull, M’Fingal: An Epic Poem (New York: American Book Exchange, 1881), 65.
27. “Mrs. Story’s Account,” Proceedings, 135.
Chapter 6 — Boston in the Bull’s-Eye
1. For differing contemporary accounts, see the loyalist Massachusetts Gazette and the Boston Post-Boy and Advertiser and the rebel Boston Gazette, both March 12, 1770. On May 4, 1970, at the height of protest over the Vietnam War and, specifically, an incursion into Cambodia, Ohio National Guard troops fired on protesting Kent State University students, killing four and wounding nine.
2. Gage to Hillsborough, April 10, 1770, 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), 1:250.
3. Boston Gazette, March 12, 1770.
4. Adams diary, March 5, 1773, Works of John Adams, 2:317.
5. Boston Gazette, September 10, 1764.
6. Adams to Lee, March 4, 1775, Harry Alonzo Cushing, ed., The Writings of Samuel Adams (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1907), 3:196.
7. Massachusetts Spy, March 17, 1775.
8. Massachusetts Spy, March 17, 1775.
9. Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer, March 23, 1775.
10. Massachusetts Spy, March 17, 1775.
11. Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer, March 23, 1775.
12. Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer, March 16, 1775.
13. Barker diary, March 6, 1775, 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), 26.
14. Viator [pseud.], The Thoughts of a Traveller upon our American Disputes (London: J. Ridley, 1774), 19–20. This quote was a paraphrase of the oft-quoted original in Plutarch’s Lives.
15. Adams to Lee, March 4, 1775, Writings of Samuel Adams, 3:197; number of regiments in David Hackett Fischer, Paul Revere’s Ride (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 309.
16. Adams to Lee, March 4, 1775, Writings of Samuel Adams, 3:198.
17. Page Smith, A New Age Now Begins: A People’s History of the American Revolution (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976), 462.
18. Debate in House of Lords, March 16, 1775, AA4, 1:1681–83.
19. Pitcairn to Sandwich, February 14, 1775, G. R. Barnes and J. H. Owen, eds., The Private Papers of John, Earl of Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty, 1771–1782 (London: Naval Records Society, 1932), 1:58.
20. Pitcairn to Sandwich, March 4, 1775, Earl of Sandwich Papers, 1:60–61.
21. Adams to Archer, et al., February 1, 1775, Writings of Samuel Adams, 3:174.
22. Adams to Randolph, February 1, 1775, Writings of Samuel Adams, 3:175–76.
23. A. W. Farmer [Samuel Seabury], The Congress Canvassed: Or, an Examination into the Conduct of the Delegates, at the Grand Convention Held in Philadelphia, Sept. 1, 1774 (London: Richardson and Urquhart, 1775), 33.
24. Adams to Black, March 2, 1775, Writings of Samuel Adams, 3:192–93.
25. Boston Gazette, March 27, 1775.
26. Adams to Lee, March 4, 1775, Writings of Samuel Adams, 3:195–97.
27. Percy to Duke of Northumberland, July 27, 1774, Charles Knowles Bolton, ed., Letters of Hugh Earl Percy from Boston and New York, 1774–1776 (Boston: Charles E. Goodspeed, 1902), 29–30.
28. Percy to Reveley, August 8, 1774, Letters of Percy, 30–31.
29. Percy to Duke of Northumberland, September 12, 1774, Letters of Percy, 37–38, 47.
30. Boston Gazette, January 30, 1775.
31. Percy to Harvey, February 9, 1775, Letters of Percy, 47–48.
32. Percy to Duke of Northumberland, January 25, 1775, Letters of Percy, 47.
Chapter 7 — Independence or Reconciliation?
1. Boston Gazette, March 6, 1775.
2. Provincial Congress resolution, March 24, 1775, published in Boston Gazette, March 27, 1775.
3. Washington to John Washington, March 25, 1775, Jared Sparks, ed., The Writings of George Washington (Boston: Charles Tappan, 1846), 2:404–5. On March 17, 1775, the independent company of Richmond County, Virginia, unanimously chose Washington as its commander. He had already been chosen to command the Prince William independent company and later was chosen to command the Fairfax, Albemarle, and Spotsylvania companies.
4. Henry Mayer, A Son of Thunder: Patrick Henry and the American Republic (New York: Grove Press, 1991), 244–45 ; “American Continental Congress” reported in AA4, 2:167.
5. Debate on Bill for Administration of the Government of Massachusett’s Bay, May 2, 1774, The Parliamentary History of England from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803 (London: T. C. Hansard, 1813), 17:1314.
6. Parliamentary History, 17:1315–16.
7. Adams to Lee, March 4, 1775, Harry Alonzo Cushing, ed., The Writings of Samuel Adams (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1907), 3:196.
8. Parliamentary History, 18:149, 151, 153–54, 156.
9. Parliamentary History, 18:499.
10. Parliamentary History, 18:505.
11. Parliamentary History, 18:535–36.
12. Parliamentary History,18:540.
13. Boston Gazette, April 3, 1775.
14. Farmar to Halroyd, February 17, 1775, in “Letters of Eliza Farmar to Her Nephew,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 40, no. 2 (1916), 202.
15. Diary of Jemima Condict Harrison, February 1775, North American Women’s Letters and Diaries: Colonial to 1950 (subscription only), accessed January 3, 2012, http://solomon.nwld.alexanderstreet.com/cgi-bin/asp/philo/nwld/getdoc.pl!S34-Do25.
16. Diary of Jemima Con
dict Harrison, February 1775.
17. Ricord, Frederick W., and William Nelson, eds., Documents Relating to the Colonial History of the State of New Jersey, vol. 10, Administration of Governor William Franklin, 1767–1776 (Newark, N.J.: Daily Advertiser Printing House, 1886), 504.
18. Franklin to Galloway, February 25, 1775, William B. Willcox, et al., eds., The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, vol. 21, January 1, 1774, through March 22, 1775 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), 509.
19. “The People,” Page Smith, A New Age Now Begins: A People’s History of the American Revolution (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976), 470–71 ; “the conflict,” Henry Steele Commager and Richard B. Morris, eds., The Spirit of ’Seventy-Six: The Story of the American Revolution as Told by Participants (New York: Harper & Row, 1958), 733.
20. Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy and Advertiser, March 27, 1775.
21. Boston Evening-Post, April 10, 1775.
22. James Warren to Mercy Warren, April 6, 1775, H. C. Lodge, et al., eds., Warren-Adams Letters, Being Chiefly a Correspondence among John Adams, Samuel Adams, and James Warren (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1917), 44.
23. Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy and Advertiser, April 10, 1775. The same issue of the Boston Gazette announced the publication in pamphlet form of Mercy Warren’s latest literary satire: “This Day Published, And Sold by the Printers hereof: (Price Nine Coppers) The GROUP” (Boston Gazette, April 10, 1775).
24. Massachusetts Spy, April 6, 1775. This was probably in reference to General Sir William Howe, younger brother of Lord Richard Howe, the admiral who had sought out Benjamin Franklin.
25. Lord Percy to Thomas Percy, April 8, 1775, Charles Knowles Bolton, ed., Letters of Hugh Earl Percy from Boston and New York, 1774–1776 (Boston: Charles E. Goodspeed, 1902), 48.
26. Given the uncertainty of cross-Atlantic travel, Lord Dartmouth routinely sent multiple copies of dispatches to General Gage and other royal governors in North America. There is some uncertainty as to whether Gage first learned of his January 27, 1775, orders from Dartmouth via Captain Oliver De Lancey arriving in Boston on board HMS Nautilus or from the Falcon. Likewise, there is some question of the exact dates of each vessel’s arrival during the second week of April, although Gage later reported to Dartmouth that the Nautilus arrived on April 14 and the Falcon on April 16 (Gage to Dartmouth, April 22, 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), 1:396).
Chapter 8 — The General’s Dilemma
1. Lord Percy to Thomas Percy, April 8, 1775, Charles Knowles Bolton, ed., Letters of Hugh Earl Percy from Boston and New York, 1774–1776 (Boston: Charles E. Goodspeed, 1902), 49; “the cruelest month” is from the opening line of T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” (1922).
2. Gage to Hillsborough, August 17, 1768, 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), 1:184.
3. Gage to Barrington, July 6, 1770, Correspondence of Gage, 2:547.
4. “On Conciliation with America,” March 22, 1775, W. M. Elofson and John A. Woods, eds., The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, vol. 3, Party, Parliament, and the American War, 1774–1780 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 130.
5. Dartmouth to Gage, January 27, 1775, Correspondence of Gage, 2:179–183.
6. Jerome Carter Hosmer, ed., The Narrative of General Gage’s Spies (Boston: Bostonian Society, 1912), 31–33.
7. Allen French, General Gage’s Informers: New Material upon Lexington & Concord (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1932), 17.
8. French, General Gage’s Informers, 22.
9. French, General Gage’s Informers, 25–26, 29.
10. French, General Gage’s Informers, 31–32.
11. David Hackett Fischer, Paul Revere’s Ride (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 87.
12. Richard Frothingham, History of the Siege of Boston, and of the Battles of Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1849), 56–57.
13. “Deposition of Elijah Sanderson” in Elias Phinney, History of the Battle at Lexington, on the Morning of the 19th April, 1775 (Boston: Phelps and Farnham, 1825), 31.
14. Frederick Mackenzie, Diary of Frederick Mackenzie (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1930), 1:18, entry dated April 18, 1775.
15. “I dare say,” Barker diary, April 15, 1775, 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), 29; French, General Gage’s Informers, 36n.
16. The full congress adjourned at Concord on April 15. The most recent biography of Joseph Warren, which engages in some speculation about Dr. Warren’s romantic pursuits, is Samuel A. Forman’s Dr. Joseph Warren: The Boston Tea Party, Bunker Hill, and the Birth of American Liberty (Gretna, La.: Pelican Publishing, 2011).
17. Fischer, Paul Revere’s Ride, 96.
18. Jeremy Belknap, “Journal of My Tour to the Camp and the Observations I Made There,” October 25, 1775, Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 4 (1860), 84–86.
19. C[harles]. Stedman, The History of the Origin, Progress, and Termination of the American War (London, 1794), 1:119.
20. Richard Frothingham, Life and Times of Joseph Warren (Boston: Little, Brown, 1865), 454–56.
21. William Gordon, The History of the Rise, Progress, and Establishment, of the Independence of the United States of America: Including an Account of the Late War; and of the Thirteen Colonies, from Their Origin to That Period (London, 1788), 476–77.
22. Peter Orlando Hutchinson, ed., The Diary and Letters of His Excellency Thomas Hutchinson, Esq (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1883), 497–98, entry dated July 27, 1775.
Chapter 9 — Two Lanterns
1. “putting their hands,” Jeremy Belknap, “Journal of My Tour to the Camp and the Observations I Made There,” October 25, 1775, Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 4 (1860), 85; “equip themselves,” Margaret Wheeler Willard, ed., Letters on the American Revolution, 1774–1776 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1925), 197; weather information in David Hackett Fischer, Paul Revere’s Ride (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 310–11.
2. Belknap, “Journal of My Tour,” 85.
3. Fischer, Paul Revere’s Ride, 114.
4. For a detailed analysis of units and troop strength, including varying estimates over the years, see Fischer, Paul Revere’s Ride, appendixes F and K, 309, 313–15.
5. Gordon to gentleman in England, May 17, 1775, AA4, 2:626.
6. Barker diary, April 19, 1775, 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), 31; for general confusion, see also Frederick Mackenzie, Diary of Frederick Mackenzie (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1930), 1:18.
7. Barker diary, April 19, 1775, The British in Boston, 31; Allen French, General Gage’s Informers: New Material upon Lexington & Concord (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1932), 35–36.
8. Fischer, Paul Revere’s Ride, 117–18.
9. Fischer, Paul Revere’s Ride, 121.
10. “were obliged to wade,” Diary of Frederick Mackenzie, 24; “at first through,” French, General Gage’s Informers, 40.
11. French, General Gage’s Informers, 40.
12. Paul Revere, Letter to Jeremy Belknap, circa 1798, p. 2, Massachusetts Historical Society, http://www.masshist.org/database/img-viewer.php?item_id=99&mode=small&img_step=2&tpc=&pid=#page2, accessed March 14, 2012. Given the British army’s penchant for putting almost everything in writing, it seems unlikely
that Gage repeated his orders to Smith verbally. Written orders to Major Mitchell apparently do not survive, but it seems most likely that if orders to capture the rebel leaders were given, they directed Mitchell’s more clandestine and smaller-scale operation to hold them until the arrival of Smith’s column.
13. Revere to Belknap, circa 1798, p. 2.
14. Revere to Belknap, circa 1798, p. 2.
15. William W. Wheildon, History of Paul Revere’s Signal Lanterns, April 18, 1775, in the Steeple of the North Church (Concord, Mass., 1878), 45n.
16. Pulling on enemies list, Fischer, Paul Revere’s Ride, 306.
17. Robert Newman Sheets, Robert Newman: The Life and Times of the Sexton Who April 18, 1775 Held Two Lanterns Aloft in Christ Church Steeple, Boston (Denver, Colo., 1975), 3–4 ; for moonlight see Fischer, Paul Revere’s Ride, appendix 1, 312; for an analysis of the likely parties involved, see Fischer, Paul Revere’s Ride, 100–101 and corresponding footnotes.
18. Fischer, Paul Revere’s Ride, 103–5.
19. Revere to Belknap, circa 1798, p. 1.
20. Sheets, Robert Newman, 6; “Events of April 18, 1775,” The Old North Church: Christ Church in the City of Boston (Old North Church website), http://www.oldnorth.com/history/april18.htm, accessed March 25, 2012. This window is now known as the Newman Window. Above it is a replica of Newman’s lanterns that was lit by President Gerald Ford on April 18, 1975, in celebration of the bicentennial.
21. Revere to Belknap, circa 1798, p. 2.
Chapter 10 — Lexington Green
1. Jonas Clarke, Opening of the War of the Revolution, 19th of April 1775, A Brief Narrative of the Principal Transactions of That Day (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Historical Society, 1901), 2. Today, the street running past the Hancock-Clarke house is called Hancock Street; what is now Bedford Street did not exist in 1775.
2. Elias Phinney, History of the Battle at Lexington, on the Morning of the 19th April, 1775 (Boston: Phelps and Farnham, 1825), 31, 33.
3. Richard Frothingham, History of the Siege of Boston, and of the Battles of Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1849), 57.
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