by Jim Noles
Daniel Chester French, who, like Emerson, called Concord home, sculpted the statue. Until he was commissioned to create the work in 1873, the talented twenty-two-year-old had never sculpted a bronze statue, much less a life-size one. Nevertheless, French set about sculpting a likeness of Captain Isaac Davis, one of the minutemen killed on the North Bridge. In French’s eyes, Davis was the logical choice to symbolize the approximately fifty colonists who lost their lives in the fighting at Lexington and Concord.
Somewhat ironically, however, Davis was not from Concord. Rather, he commanded a company of minutemen from nearby Acton. Nor was he an “embattled farmer.” Instead, Davis was a gunsmith by trade, a fortunate choice of profession that contributed significantly to his ability to outfit his company of minutemen with well-crafted muskets.
The existence of such minutemen and their stores of armaments were, by the spring of 1775, increasingly disconcerting to Great Britain. By April, King George III and his ministers had had enough. They ordered the royal governor of Massachusetts, Major General Sir Thomas Gage, to seize the colonists’ growing caches of weapons and ammunition.
Gage wasted little time in acting. On the evening of April 18, 1775, a force of between 700 and 800 British troops—infantry, grenadiers, and marines—mustered on Boston Common. Under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith, their mission was to destroy the collection of military stores gathered in Concord, twenty miles west of Boston. By 10:00 PM, the redcoats were boarding boats to be ferried across the Charles River to begin what they hoped would be a surprise raid.
Surprise, however, proved impossible to achieve. The colonists, forewarned by unusual British mounted patrols outside of Boston and perhaps even by Gage’s American-born wife, Margaret, had already surmised that military action was imminent. But it was the “midnight ride” of Paul Revere, William Dawes, and, later, Samuel Prescott, that helped spread immediate word of the coming excursion into the surrounding countryside.
Meanwhile, the redcoats disembarked in waist-deep water, waded ashore at Cambridge, and regrouped in the unfriendly darkness. Then, burdened with heavy packs and sodden boots, they began their march at 2:00 AM. Sensing trouble with his slow-moving column, Smith pushed forward a force of ten light companies under the command of John Pitcairn, a major in the Royal Marines.
On the village green at Lexington, Pitcairn’s vanguard found a company of seventy-five militiamen, under the command of John Parker, assembled to meet their force’s advance. Parker, a veteran of the French and Indian War, was battling the tuberculosis that would claim his life a few months later. Nevertheless, he arrayed his small militia company in a single file across the village green. Parker did not actually block the redcoats’ advance, but his collection of armed militiamen presented a clear threat to the British line of communications.
“Stand your ground,” Parker exhorted his men as the first British companies marched into Lexington. “Don’t fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.” His words may be apocryphal, but they became legendary nevertheless.
“Disperse, you rebels; damn you, throw down your arms and disperse!” Pitcairn shouted in reply. From there, the tense confrontation unfolded with tragic effect. Someone—his identity, Briton or colonist, has never been ascertained—fired his weapon, even as Parker’s company began to slowly disperse. Responding instinctively, the redcoats unleashed a ferocious volley and then charged with the bayonet. As the smoke cleared from the small battlefield, it revealed that eight dead and ten wounded Americans lay on the ground.
Undeterred, the British pressed on for Concord. Local companies of minutemen and militia, loosely under the command of James Barrett, gathered initially at Concord, but in the face of the advancing columns of redcoats, they ceded the village to the British. The Americans’ numbers included Davis’s company from Acton, and for a time, they simply observed the British occupy Concord from afar. For their part, the British began searching the village, burning gun carriages, and dispatching smaller raiding parties into the surrounding countryside.
As the morning wore on, the colonial militia and minutemen spotted smoke curling into the sky above Concord. Spurred to action, Barrett ordered his 500 troops forward. Arrayed in a pair of files, they advanced toward the Old North Bridge and the Concord River. Two outnumbered companies of redcoats withdrew in good order, retreated over the Old North Bridge, and fell in with their comrades to hold the crossing.
The Americans, however, moved ever closer. Pressing forward toward the bridge, they were met with a crashing volley of musket fire. Captain Isaac Davis fell dead, his company’s wounded fifer falling alongside him. Undeterred, Davis’s comrades continued their advance to within fifty yards of the British position and, firing over the bridge’s span, unleashed an even deadlier volley. Their gunfire killed four of the British officers; the demoralized redcoats beat a hasty retreat from the charging colonists.
Worried, Smith consolidated his dispersed force and moved back into Concord; by noon, they began the long march back to Boston. At this point, an estimated 1,000 militia had taken the field and, for the redcoats who had already marched twenty miles that morning, the road home was a much harder one to travel. Mile by mile, they battled through one skirmish and ambush after another. Even Smith fell wounded, shot in the thigh. At this point, the British situation was becoming increasingly precarious and, at times, threatened to deteriorate into a rout. And as if the defiant militia companies were not bad enough, individual snipers began to take their toll on the redcoats as well.
By 2:30 that afternoon, Smith’s troops—exhausted, thirsty, and running low on ammunition—were approaching not only Lexington but also the end of their physical and emotional endurance. Even the officer in the vanguard of the retreat was considering surrender when, to his front, he heard cheering. A thousand British soldiers and marines, supported by artillery, had marched out to rescue Smith’s raid. Leaving Boston, their musicians had mockingly played “Yankee Doodle” to taunt their opponents. Now, their long-range cannon fire dispersed Smith’s pursuers and allowed the British to reorganize their battered ranks.
Even then, however, the beleaguered British were still a long way from the safety of Boston. Several more hard hours of fighting followed before the exhausted redcoats limped into Charlestown under the covering guns of the Royal Navy’s ships. For the British, it was an inauspicious beginning to six years of conflict that would, in turn, lead to the loss of its American colonies and the creation of an independent United States. In the more immediate term, the raid on Concord had netted Gage little more than 273 casualties, including seventy-three killed. In turn, approximately fifty colonists lost their lives.
For his part, Daniel French enjoyed a far happier experience with Concord. The success of “The Minuteman” propelled him to a long and successful career. He studied abroad in Italy, opened a studio in Washington, D.C., and again returned to Europe. More ambitious projects followed, including a statue of Ohioan Lewis Cass for the U.S. Capitol’s National Statuary Hall. By the turn of the century, French was one of America’s foremost sculptors, and in 1922, he completed perhaps his most memorable work—the statue of Abraham Lincoln seated in the Lincoln Memorial. French died in 1931 and, fittingly, is buried in Concord.
French’s legacy, however—and that of Captain Isaac Davis and his fellow minutemen—survives in more than bronze statuary or Emerson’s prose. Rather, it can be found on the almost 1.164 billion quarters that commemorate the Bay State, largely because of the efforts of a seventh-grader from Belmont Day School and a sixth-grader from St. Bernard’s Elementary. The pair were just two of over 100 elementary students who entered a statewide contest, submitting design concepts to Governor Paul Cellucci and a ten-person advisory council. Besting the competition, the pair’s design graced the coins released into circulation on January 3, 2000—the first state quarters of the new millennium.
7
MARYLAND
The Oldest Lin
e in the Book
Maryland’s design for its state quarter easily claims the title of the most symmetrical of the state quarters. On the quarter’s reverse, the distinctive narrow cupola of Maryland’s state capitol juts sharply upward, bisecting the coin, while neatly flanked by a pair of white oak branches, Maryland’s state tree.
“In our view, the statehouse best favors Maryland’s rich history, and the unique role the state has played in our nation’s history,” explained Governor Parris Glendening, speaking of the design submitted by Bill Krawczewicz. The seventeen-member Maryland Commemorative Coin Committee had evaluated design submissions submitted from across the state that included such iconic images as Fort McHenry and the pair of ships—the Ark and the Dove—that brought Maryland’s first colonists to its shores. The committee narrowed Glendening’s options down to five selections, and in the end, the statehouse design prevailed.
Seemingly in keeping with the geometric theme, the quarter proclaims Maryland as “The Old Line State.” Although the cupola is readily identifiable, the origin of the nickname “The Old Line State” is less obvious. Nor was its path to the quarter particularly clear.
Krawczewicz’s original vision for the quarter relied simply on the image of the state capitol. But the winning concept was too stark for Tom Rogers, an engraver with the U.S. Mint tasked with implementing the chosen design. Accordingly, he added the clusters of white oak and the words “The Old Line State.”
Later, when questioned by the Washington Post regarding the origin of the phrase, Rogers reportedly explained that he “pulled it out of a book or off the Internet someplace . . . I know I got it somewhere official.” But when the U.S. Mint unveiled the new quarter in Annapolis in the very same building depicted on its reverse, many a Marylander wanted a more definite answer.
“It’s one of the oldest monikers we’ve ever had,” Maryland state archivist Edward C. Papenfuse told the Post. He proceeded to trace it to the Revolutionary War, when the steadfast performance of Maryland’s troops earned the sobriquet “the old line” from none other than General George Washington. The American commander, Papenfuse explained, could always count on his reliable men from Maryland. The earning of that nickname, however, came at a stiff price.
In the early days of the American Revolution, the cities of Baltimore and Annapolis raised and outfitted an infantry battalion of militia. Reflecting on the volunteers he commanded, Mordecai Gist described his company as “composed of gentlemen of honor, family, and fortune and, though of different countries, animated by a zeal and reverence for the rights of humanity.” Gist’s gentlemen rankers poetically committed themselves to the revolutionary cause with “sacred ties of honor and love and justice.”
The so-called Maryland Battalion’s nine well-equipped companies quickly earned a well-deserved reputation as one of the best-trained, best-disciplined units fielded by any of the colonies. Bedecked in gold-buttoned scarlet coats trimmed in buff, and armed to the teeth with muskets, cutlasses, and braces of pistols, the battalion contrasted handsomely with the levies of enthusiastic but unorganized volunteers that so many of the other colonies were providing the Continental Army.
On July 17, 1776, the battalion, 1,000 strong and under the command of William Smallwood, marched to join what Washington was already calling the “American continental army.” As they arrived in Philadelphia, they were, according to one observer, “distinguished by the most fashionably cut coat[s], the most macaroni cocked hat[s], and the hottest blood in the union.”
The well-heeled Marylanders, however, were more than simply elegant parade-ground soldiers, and Washington wasted little time in dispatching them to join the Continental Army’s defense of New York City. That defense relied on a partially fortified cordon that stretched across Long Island’s rugged and thickly wooded Brooklyn Heights. Washington assigned his newly arrived Marylanders to William Stirling’s brigade. They filed into position on the Continental Army’s right flank on the Gowanus Road. Intent on the deadly business at hand, they traded their handsome scarlet coats for hunting shirts and prepared for battle.
That battle was not long in coming. After landing on Long Island on August 22, the British and their Hessian allies moved against the Continental forces five days later. At 3:00 AM on August 27, British redcoats pushed their way into the Gowanus Pass, driving panicked militiamen before them.
Rallying, the militiamen forced the advancing British column to deploy into a battle line. In doing so, they gave Stirling the precious opportunity to bring his brigade, including the Maryland Battalion and equally disciplined soldiers from Delaware, into position to square off against the British regulars. With Smallwood on court-martial duty in New York City, the Marylanders were under Gist’s command.
Lined up in neat rows 200 yards apart, the Continentals and the British coolly traded vicious volleys. Outnumbered, Stirling’s men withdrew in good order for a few hundred yards until reinforced by the stiffening presence of a battalion of Pennsylvania troops. Then, for the next hour, the American troops held their ground, twice beating back the charges of the enemy infantry. For a time, it seemed that the Continental Army was holding its own against the vaunted British opponents.
Tragically, that success was deceptive. A stealthy night march by the British slipped through the undefended Jamaica Pass on Washington’s far left flank. By midmorning, the hard-marching British were behind the American lines, threatening to cut off their retreat back into the city. As soon as the Americans realized their predicament, their defenses along the Brooklyn Heights crumbled like a house of cards. Panicked soldiers fled pell-mell, desperate to reach the comparative safety of Brooklyn’s fortified defenses.
Nevertheless, on the far right flank, the Maryland Battalion and their stalwart comrades from Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Delaware stood their ground. Outnumbered by nearly six to one, they fought on until 11:00 AM, when another British frontal assault coincided with a charge of Hessians sweeping in from the right. The unexpected appearance of the Hessians convinced Stirling that the day was lost. Nevertheless, he had bought hundreds of his fellow Continentals the time to beat a safe retreat.
Disengaging his brigade from the fight, Stirling retreated down the Gowanus Road. He soon realized, however, that a British division under Lord Cornwallis blocked his escape route to Brooklyn. Now, the only escape route was along the coast, through a tidal marsh and a muddy creek, and the British were moving forward to cut off that route as well.
Determined to buy the men time to negotiate the marsh, Stirling, Gist, and a band of 250 Marylanders hurled themselves repeatedly at Cornwallis’s superior force. Five times, a blaze of musket fire drove them back. But each time, Stirling and Gist rallied their troops and struck again and again, fighting with a remarkable fury.
“Good God, what brave fellows I must this day lose,” Washington exclaimed as he watched the Maryland Battalion’s ferocious charges. Later, looking back on the battalion’s stubborn delaying action, he described it as an “hour more precious to American liberty than any other.” Few of the Marylanders survived to learn of such praise. By one account, only Gist and nine others managed to make it back to the American lines the next day.
As 1776 passed into 1777, Washington’s staff reorganized the battle-scarred remnants of the Maryland Battalion, complemented by new recruits, into what became known as the First Maryland Regiment. In Washington’s mind, though, the unit that had saved his army on Long Island was “the old line”—in the military jargon of the day, regiments were often referred to as “lines.” The American commander often referred to it as such throughout his correspondence with the Maryland General Assembly, General William Smallwood, Governor Thomas Johnson, and others. He also complimented Maryland for providing more than the state’s quota of soldiers for the Continental Army.
By 1780, another reorganization occurred, and the “old Maryland line” became the First and Second Maryland Regiments. It also became the backbone of Nathaniel Greene’s southe
rn army operating in the Carolinas. At the Battle of Cowpens, the Second Maryland once again held the line—this time in furtherance of an American victory rather than a desperate retreat. In all, the Old Line saw hard fighting at such battles as Trenton, Princeton, White Plains, Brandywine, Germantown, Monmouth, Camden, and Guilford Courthouse.
After the war, the young republic entered an uneasy adolescence, threatened by partisan politics and divisive growing pains. Looking hopefully for unifying images of a triumphant past, Americans found one in the form of the “Old Line.” And even as the revolutionary generation and veterans of the Old Line passed from the scene, all Marylanders could declare themselves to be citizens of the Old Line State—as Maryland’s state quarter reminded them all once again on March 13, 2000, when the first of the almost 1.235 billion coins was issued.
8
SOUTH CAROLINA
Palmetto Proud
South Carolina is another state that, like Pennsylvania, relied on an amalgamation of symbols for its quarter design—and created a difficult task for an author left to craft a chapter about a bird, a flower, and a palm tree. Fortunately, however, one can, with a little bit of research, find an amazing story behind that simple palm.
The tree in question is a palmetto palm (also known as the common palmetto, the Carolina palmetto, or, scientifically, Sabal palmetto). Another name is cabbage palm, called that because of its edible bud, which reportedly tastes somewhat like cabbage whether eaten raw or cooked. These palms are the most northerly and abundant of America’s native palm trees. They are widespread across Florida (where it is the state tree) but can also be found along the coasts of Georgia and the Carolinas—particularly on such coastal islands as Sullivan’s Island.
For its part, Sullivan’s Island, named for its late-seventeenth-century lighthouse keeper, Captain Florence O’Sullivan, stands at the entrance of Charleston Harbor. Accordingly, the navigational relevance of that island goes hand in hand with its military significance. Control Sullivan’s Island and you controlled the way into— and out of—Charleston. Defend Sullivan’s Island, and you defended Charleston.