The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910

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The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910 Page 41

by Julian Hawthorne


  The colonists everywhere were collecting arms and ammunition, storing powder, and diligently drilling. Whatever the leaders might say, or refrain from saying, the mass of the people believed in the immediate probability of war with England. In every village you could see the farmers shouldering arms and marching to and fro on the green, while an old man played the fife and a boy beat the drum. They did not concern themselves about "regimentals" or any of the pomp and glory of battle; but they knew how to cast bullets, and how to shoot them into the bull's-eye.

  In their homespun small-clothes, home-knit stockings, home-made shirts and cowhide shoes, they could march to the cannon's mouth as well as in the finest scarlet broadcloth and gold epaulets. Their intelligence, their good cause, their sore extremity, made them learn to be soldiers more quickly than seemed possible to English officers who knew the sturdy stupidity of the English peasant of whom the British regiments were composed. And while the Yankees (as they began to be called) were learning how to march and countermarch, and do whatever else the system of the British regulars called for, they also knew, by inheritance, if not by actual experience, the tactics of the Indians; they could make a fortress of a rock or a tree or a rail fence, and could shoot and vanish, or fall, as it seemed, from the empty air into the midst of the unsuspecting foe.

  They were effective not only in bodies, but individually; and in the heart of each, as he faced the foe, would be not only the resolve to conquer, but the holy thought of wife and children, and of liberty. They were as fit to be led by Washington as was he to lead them. Professing to despise them, Gage nevertheless protested against taking the field with less than twenty thousand men; upon which David Hume scornfully observed, "If fifty thousand men and twenty millions of money were intrusted to such a lukewarm coward, they never could produce any effect." It was resolved to supersede him.

  The men of Portsmouth had seized a quantity of powder and arms, which belonged to them, but had been sequestered in the fort. The British, as a set-off, marched to Salem to capture some stores there; they did not find them, and proceeded toward Danvers. A river, spanned by a drawbridge, intervened, and when they arrived, the draw was up. There stood Colonel Timothy Pickering, with forty provincials, asking what Captain Leslie with his two hundred red-coated regulars wanted. The captain blustered and threatened; but the draw remained up, and the provincials all had guns in their hands, and looked able and willing to use them, if occasion demanded. But the captain did not think it best to give the signal for combat, and meanwhile time was passing, and no soothsayer was needed to reveal that the stores were being removed to a place of safety. After an hour or so, Colonel Pickering relented so far as to permit the captain and his regulars to cross the bridge and advance thirty yards beyond it; after which he must face about and return to Boston. This he did; and thus ended the first collision between the colonies and England. Nobody was hurt; but in less than two months blood was to be shed on both sides. "The two characteristics of this people, religion and humanity, are strongly marked in all their proceedings," John Adams had said. "Resistance by arms against usurpation and lawless violence is not rebellion by the law of God or the land. If there is no possible medium between absolute independence and subjection to the authority of Parliament, all North America are convinced of their independence, and determined to defend it at all hazards." The British answer to utterances like these was to seize a farmer from the country, who had come to town to buy a firelock, tar and feather him, stick a placard on his back, "American liberty, or a specimen of democracy," and conduct him through the streets amid a mob of soldiers and officers, to the strains of "Yankee Doodle."

  As the last moments before the irrevocable outbreak passed away, there was both a strong yearning for peace, and a stern perception that peace must be impossible. "If Americans would be free, they must fight," said Patrick Henry in Virginia. One after another, with singular unanimity, the colonies fell in with this view. New York was regarded by the British as most likely to be loyal; New England, and especially Massachusetts, were expected to be the scene of the first hostilities. Sir William Howe, brother of the Howe who died bravely in the Old French War, was appointed commander-in-chief in place of Gage. The latter was directed to adopt the most rigorous and summary measures toward the Boston people, whose congress was pronounced by Thurlow and Wedderburn to be a treasonable body, deserving of condign punishment. Orders were given to raise regiments of French Papists in Canada; and the signal that should let loose the red men for their work of tomahawking women and children was in suspense. It was now the middle of April.

  The winter season had been exceptionally mild. In the country neighboring Boston the leaves were budding a month earlier than usual, and the grass was deep and green as in English meadows. The delicate and fragrant blossoms of the mayflower made the wooded hillsides sweet, and birds were singing and building their nests in the mild breezes, under the cloud-flecked sky. The farmers were sowing their fields and caring for their cattle; their wives were feeding their poultry and milking their cows; New England seemed to have put off her sternness, and to be wearing her most inviting and peaceful aspect. Innocence and love breathed in the air and murmured in the woods, and warbled in the liquid flowing of the brooks. In such a time and place, Adam and Eve might have begun the life of humanity on earth, and found in the loveliness and beauty of the world a fitting image of the tranquillity and tenderness that overflowed their guileless hearts.

  But Eden was far away from New England in the spring of 1775. Committees of Safety had been formed in all the towns, whose duty it was to provide for defense against what might happen; and two eminent leaders, Samuel Adams and John Hancock, had been to Lexington and Concord to oversee the dispositions, and to consult with the fathers of the colony who had met in the latter town. A small quantity of powder and some guns and muskets had been stored in both these places; for if trouble should occur with the British, it was most likely to begin in Boston, and the minute-men of the province would rendezvous most conveniently at these outlying settlements, which lay along the high road at distances of fourteen and twenty miles from the city. No offensive operations, of course, were contemplated, nor was it known what form British aggression would assume. Defense of their homes and liberties was all that the New England farmers and mechanics intended. They had no plan of campaign, and no military leaders who knew anything of the art of war. They could be killed by invaders, and perhaps kill some of them; they were sure of the holiness of their cause; but they were too simple and homely-minded to realize that God had intrusted to them the first irrevocable step in a movement which should change the destinies of the world.

  In Boston, during the 18th of April, there had been bustle and mysterious conferences among the British officers, and movements among the troops; which might mean anything or nothing. But there were patriots on the watch, and it was surmised that some hostile act might be meditated; and plans were made to give warning inland, should this prove to be the case.

  At the British Coffee House, that afternoon, the group of officers was gayer than usual, and there was much laughter and many toasts. "Here's to the Yankee minute-men!" said one: "the men who'll run the minute they see the enemy!" General Gage stalked about, solemn, important and monosyllabic. Lieutenant-colonel Smith was very busy, and held himself unusually erect; and Major Pitcairn, of the marines, was often seen in his company, as if the two had some secret in common. The plain citizens who walked the streets fancied that they were shouldered aside even more arrogantly than usual by the haughty redcoats; and that the insolent stare with which they afflicted the handsome wives and pretty maidens of Boston was grosser and more significant than common. But the evening fell with matters much as ordinary, to all appearance; and as the town was under martial law, most of the population was off the streets by nine o'clock.

  But soon after ten that night, a man was riding at a hand-gallop past Medford, heading west. He had been rowed across Charles River just at the beginning of
flood tide, and had landed on the Charlestown shore a few minutes before the order to let none pass had reached the sentry. Turning, with one foot in the stirrup, he had seen two lights from the North Church tower, and a moment afterward had been on his way. Half a mile beyond Charlestown Neck he had almost galloped into the arms of two British officers, but had avoided them by turning suddenly to the right. Now the old Boston road was smooth before him, and he threw off his three-cornered hat, bent forward in his saddle and spoke in his horse's ear. His was a good horse, and carried an important message. A house near the roadside showed up dark and silent against the starlit sky; the horseman rode to the door and struck the panels with his whip. A window was thrown open above: "Who's there?"--"Paul Revere: the British march to-night to Lexington and Concord: Warren, of the Committee of Safety, bids you hold your men in readiness."--"Right!"--The horseman turns, and is off along the road again before the captain of the Medford minute-men has shut the window.

  It is but a short fourteen miles to Lexington; but there are a dozen or twenty farmhouses along the way, and at each of them the horseman must pause and deliver his message; so that it is just midnight as he comes in sight of the outskirts of the humble village. There is a dim light burning in the window of yonder hip-roofed cottage beside the green; Adams and Hancock must be anticipating news; Adams, indeed, has the name of being a man who sleeps little and thinks much. The night-rider's summons is responded to at once; and then, at the open door, there is a brief conference, terse and to the point; the pale face of a woman looks from the window; a message has brought Dawes and Sam Prescott, ready mounted, to accompany Revere on his further journey. Young Jonas Parker, the best wrestler in Lexington, has drawn a bucket of water at the well-sweep and is holding it under the nose of Revere's horse. "Well, my lad," says Paul, "are you ready to fight to-morrow?"--"I won't run--I promise you that," replies the youth, with a smile. He was dead five hours later, with a bullet through his vigorous young body, and a British bayonet wound in his breast, having kept his word.

  Meanwhile the three horsemen are off, bearing now toward the left, for Lincoln; but there, as luck would have it, they encountered half a dozen English officers, who arrested Dawes and Revere and took them back to Lexington. Prescott, however, was too quick for them; in the flurry and darkness he had leaped his horse over the low stone wall, and was off across the meadows which he had known from a boy, to Concord. It was then between one and two o'clock; and the latter hour had hardly struck when the ride was over, and the bells of the meeting-house were pealing from the steeple. Two-o'clock-in-the-morning courage is the test of a man, as Napoleon said some years later; be that as it may, here are the Concord minute-men, Hosmer, Buttrick, Parson Emerson, Brown, Blanchard, and the rest; they are running toward the green, musket in hand, bullet-pouch on thigh, ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred and more; and there comes Barrett, their captain, with his sword; the men range out in a double rank, in the cool night air, and answer to their names; if the time has indeed come for action, they are ready to make good the bold words spoken at many a town meeting and private chat for weeks past. They have been comrades all their lives, and know each other; and yet now, perhaps, they gaze at one another curiously, conscious of an indefinable change that has come over them, now that death may be marching a few miles to the eastward.

  And in truth, while they were discussing what might happen, death was already at work at Lexington. Eight hundred grenadiers and light infantry, the best soldiers in America, had marched into the village shortly before dawn. For an hour or more, as they marched, they had heard the sound of bells and of muskets, now near, now far, telling that their movement had been discovered; and they hastened their steps; not as apprehending resistance from the Yankee cowards, but lest the stores they were after should be hidden before they could get at them. And now, here they were, advancing with the regular tramp of disciplined troops, muskets on their shoulders, bayonets fixed, and a slight dust rising from their serried footsteps. They looked as if they might march through a stone wall. But could it really be true that these men meant to kill American farmers in sight of their own homes? Were English soldiers really enemies of their own flesh and blood? As they approached the common--an irregular triangle of ground, with a meeting-house at the further end--the alarm-drum was beating, and muskets firing; and yonder are the minute-men sure enough, running together in the morning dusk, and marshaling themselves in scanty ranks under the orders of Captain Parker. Young men and old are there, in their well-worn shirts and breeches, cut and stitched by the faithful hands of their wives and daughters, and each with his loaded flint-lock in his hands. There are but fifty or sixty in all, against sixteen times as many of the flower of the British army. The vanguard of the latter has halted, and has received the order from Pitcairn to load; and you may hear the ring of the ramrods in unison, and then the click of the locks. And yonder comes the rest of the host, at double-quick, the hoarse commands of their officers sounding out of the gloom. What can less than threescore minute-men do against them? At all events, they can die; and history will never forget them, standing there in front of the little church where they had so often prayed; and their country will always honor their names and love them. They stood there, silent and motionless, protesting with their lives against the march of tyranny. How few they were--and what countless millions they represented!

  Out rides Pitcairn in front of the grenadiers. You can see the red of his tunic now in the gathering light, the sparkle of his accouterments, and the gleam of his sword as he swings it with a commanding gesture.

  "Disperse, ye villains!" he calls out in a harsh, peremptory voice: "Ye rebels--why don't you lay down your arms and disperse?"

  Would they obey?--No: for they were neither villains nor rebels; they had come there as a sacrifice, and they would not go thence until the crime had been committed, and their country had definitely learned, from them, whether oppression would proceed to the last extremity, or not. It was only a few harmless, heroic lives to lose; but so much must needs be done.

  It was not an easy thing to do; there was no one to teach them how to do it scenically and splendidly. They must simply stand there, in their own awkward way, shoulder to shoulder, motionless, gazing at the gallant major and the heavy masses of uniformed men beyond, waiting for what might come.

  The Lord of Hosts was on their side; but, as with our Saviour in the Garden of Gethsemane, He seemed remotest when most near. Their wives and children are there, looking on, straining their eyes through the obscurity, with what throbbings of agony in their hearts, with what prayers choking in their throats!

  The major snatches a pistol from his holster, levels and discharges it; and "Fire!" he shouts at the same moment, at the top of his lungs. He had omitted the "Ready--present!" and the soldiers did not all fire at once; first there were a few dropping shots; but then came the volley. The regulars shot to kill. Down came Jonas Parker to his knee, to be stabbed to death before he could reload; there fell old Munroe, the veteran of Louisburg; and Harrington, killed at his doorstep, and Muzzey, Hadley, and Brown. In all, before the stars had faded in the light of dawn, sixteen New Englanders lay dead or wounded on the village green. And the British troops had reformed, and huzzaed thrice, and marched on with drum and fife, before the sun of the 19th of April had looked upon their work. The Revolution had begun.

  It was seven o'clock when, with the sun on their backs, the British invaders came along the base of the low hill, crowned with pine and birch, that lies like a sleeping serpent to the east on the way to Concord. They were a trifle jaded now from their all-night march, and their gaiters and uniforms were a little dusty; but the barrels of their guns shone as bright as ever, and their spirits were good, after their glorious exploit six miles back. Glorious, of course: yet a trifle dull, all the same; there would be more fun shooting these bumpkins, if only they could summon heart to put up a bit of a fight in return. "Maybe we'll get a better chance at 'em out here, colonel--eh?" the major of
marines might have said, with his Scotch brogue, turning his horse to ride beside his superior officer for a mile or so. "I don't think it, sir," that great soldier would reply, puffing out his cheeks, and wiping his brow with his embroidered handkerchief. "The sight of his majesty's uniform, Major Pitcairn, is alone enough to put to flight every scurvy rebel in Massachusetts. If you want to get within range of 'em, sir, you must wear mufti."

  During the early morning hours, the minute-men standing under the liberty pole in front of Concord meeting-house had been gradually re-enforced by parties hastening in from Lincoln, Acton, and other outlying hamlets, until they numbered about two hundred men. But as the British drew near, eight hundred strong, the Americans withdrew down a meadow road northward, until they reached a hospitable edifice with a broad roof, pierced by gables, standing at the upper end of an avenue, and with its back toward the sluggish Muskataquid, or Concord River. A few rods to the left of the site of this manse was a wooden bridge, spanning the stream, known as the North Bridge. The manse was occupied by the Reverend William Emerson, the minister of the town, and from its western windows was an excellent view of the bridge. One of these windows was open, and the pastor himself, with his arms resting on the sill, was looking from this coign of vantage when the minute-men came up, crossed the bridge, and stationed themselves on the rising ground just beyond. He remained there, a deeply interested spectator, during the events which followed.

 

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