First of Men

by Ferling, John;

  Thus, while Washington was gathered with his officers at that council of war he once again proposed an American assault on Boston, and this time his arguments prevailed. His officers consented, but only on two conditions: such an attack was expedient, they said, only if the army obtained both more manpower and more firepower. The leaders could facilitate the acquisition of troops, and, in fact, the field officers urged Washington to call up thirteen regiments of New England militia for sixty days’ service, commencing February I. The firepower that the officers desired was additional artillery, and they knew it was on the way. The previous fall Washington had dispatched Colonel Henry Knox, his head artilleryman, to Fort Ticonderoga in quest of additional cannon and ammunition. Three days before Washington convened the council of war he learned that Knox was on the way and that he possessed substantial ordnance.7

  The tempo of the commander’s work load increased immediately. His mood soared too. At last something was happening. All brigade officers down through the rank of major were summoned to headquarters for instructions. Washington accelerated the construction of barracks, a ruse to convince Howe that he was content to sit on the outskirts of Boston. He dispatched couriers to Philadelphia in a desperate attempt to procure enough powder so that Knox’s efforts would not have been in vain, and he immersed himself in the most minute details of recruitment and the arming of his men. Quickly inundated by his suddenly enlarged responsibilities, he wrote Reed on two occasions, almost pleading with him to return to Cambridge.8

  If Reed did not immediately return to Massachusetts, Colonel Knox did. He arrived with a greater cache of weaponry than Washington had dared to expect. Looking for upwards of fifty cannon altogether, the commander was pleasantly surprised to learn that Knox had secured sixty-six pieces: fifty-two cannon of various sizes and fourteen mortars. The Continental army’s park of artillery had more than doubled, and with it Washington’s confidence in his ability to intuitively judge men must also have swelled, for the mission he had assigned Knox was as difficult as any he ever ordered. For nearly two months Knox had grappled with execrable weather and forbidding terrain, first dodging treacherous ice floes on the Mohawk River, then transferring the ordnance to sleighs to assail the Berkshires.9

  By mid-February everything was in place. The artillery, which had been disassembled for its arduous trek, had been reconstructed; in addition, Washington had sixteen thousand men at hand, slightly more than half of them enlistees in the Continental army. But before he moved he called his officers together again to consider the various alternatives. The commander perceived four options. First, he could do nothing—beyond maintaining the siege. That, he said, was no longer acceptable. Or he could attack Bunker Hill, hoping to dislodge the British. Such a triumph would be “highly animating,” he allowed, but to succeed the assault would have to be a carefully coordinated surprise. It would be a risky operation, he continued, and a defeat—or inordinately high casualties in a victory—could be devastating for morale. He did not recommend this tack. A third choice was to endeavor to lure Howe out of Boston, possibly by securing high ground in the Dorchester area southeast of the city, or by installing his artillery either at Lechmere Point or on Noodles Island. He rejected this option too, on the grounds that he lacked the powder and ammunition for a protracted bombardment. That left only one choice, and Washington took it: a direct assault on Boston, commencing with a one-half-mile charge across the frozen Charles River. He knew the objections to such a tactic. Such an assault was certain to result in “considerable loss.” Moreover, the fate of Montgomery and his men demonstrated the folly of sending green soldiers against entrenched regulars, and even Washington was compelled to admit that his men were not likely to “march boldly up to a work, nor stand exposed in a plain.” Incredibly, however, this was what he suggested should be done. Perhaps he wished only to display his bravado to his subordinates, knowing that he could count on them to reject such an idea, though such an explanation is not likely. He had too much pride and too much political sense to engage in such foolishness. It is more probable that this was a straightforward recommendation, prompted by the audacious side of Washington, the bold, almost incautious man who was willing “to run all risques.”10

  Washington’s officers would not hear of such strategy. General Gates, for instance, made two crucial points: the redcoats bottled up in Boston were doing no harm; moreover, if the colonists waited long enough, Howe would be forced to attack or to abandon Boston. Why not wait and fight on the defensive? Or perhaps not have to fight at all? Regarding the chances for success in Washington’s plan to be “excedingly doubtful,” the generals voted not to attack Boston. But Washington prodded them to do something, and this time his officers recommended that the army invest the heights at Dorchester or some similarly suitable point. Washington demurred, then he acquiesced in their counsel. Later, however, he shot off a letter to Reed in which he aired his irritation with these men, and still later he dispatched a softer missive to Congress, one in which he explained his position. But Reed’s response echoed Washington’s thinking. Some “members of your council never will concur in any measure which leads to danger,” he replied, and he predicted that “you will make less and less use of them every day you are with them.” Congress heard Washington with a judicious silence.11

  Despite the intense cold, the commander immediately set the army to fortifying Lechmere’s Point. Meanwhile, he and his staff prepared plans for the occupation of Dorchester Heights, an operation targeted for early March. A thousand details required his attention. Endless conferences sapped his energy. At last facing imminent battle—his first in nearly twenty years—he began to feel the strain of command. If worse came to worse, he resolved, he would flee to his lands in the Ohio Country. That was not the face his soldiers saw, however. On the eve of the operation he exhorted them to act with resolution and vigor, and he issued a blunt warning: “if any Man in action shall presume to skulk, hide himself, or retreat from the enemy . . . he will be instantly shot down, as an example of cowardice.”12

  Washington’s plans called for two, possibly three, steps. The operation would commence with three nights of bombardment by Knox’s ordnance at Lechmere’s Point. On the third night, while the redcoats were preoccupied with the shelling, the main force of the Continental army would steal to the ridges at Dorchester. If Howe emerged for a fight, a third act would follow: a force of four thousand under Putnam, which was to be secreted along the Charles River in Cambridge, would be rowed across to Boston where it would try to enter the west side of the city while the principal British force was fighting in Dorchester to the southeast.13

  As always, the long wait before the operation began was the most stressful aspect of the campaign. Curiously, however, Washington seemed to grow more composed as zero hour approached. Just before the operation was to begin he took to his desk to write Reed, drafting a chatty letter in which he discoursed on horses and the sort of conveyance that he desired. Then the wait was over. In the early hours of March 2, a sharp, dark night, the evening’s tranquility was shattered by the sudden thunderous whomp of a colonial cannon. Rounds were fired intermittently for several hours, then according to plan the shelling ceased. The next evening a similar pattern was followed. But on March 4, about an hour after sunset, Knox’s batteries once again sprang into action, this time spewing forth ten times as many rounds as on the previous nights. Simultaneously, the men moved out for Dorchester.

  Infantry and riflemen led the way, taking up positions along the waterfront. If the British discovered the American strategy and responded quickly, these men would have to protect the colonial workers-soldiers on the hill. General Thomas, with three thousand troops and about three hundred hired teamsters, came next. They proceeded up the hill, their barricades in tow.

  Expecting the earth to be too frozen to yield to a shovel, these men had spent the past two weeks constructing fascines and chandeliers and parapets fashioned from bundles of hay. At preassigned points these
fortifications were deployed; some men, meanwhile, were set to work felling trees from which ramparts would be made, while still other soldiers, finding the night to be felicitously mild (though the earth was frozen to a depth of eighteen inches) were ordered to dig earthworks after all. About 3:00 A.M. this stage of the operation was completed. In about seven hours six separate fortifications had been built; if nothing else it was a stupendous engineering feat. Those bone-tired troops then were evacuated, replaced by three thousand fresh, anxious men who could only await the sunrise, wondering what it would bring, aware, but not much impressed by the knowledge, that this day, March 5, was the sixth anniversary of the Boston Massacre.14

  Washington was certain that daylight would mean a British attack. They would have to attack. It was unthinkable that an honorable British general would withdraw without a fight. Certainly he would attack were roles reversed.15

  When General Howe learned of the colonists’ accomplishment his first inclination was precisely as Washington had imagined it would be. He ordered an attack. But the prospect he faced was not a happy one. So extensive were the colonists’ fortifications that the British presumed that Washington had more than twenty thousand men on the heights. Nevertheless, Howe was coming. He made his preparations, painstakingly, meticulously putting everything into place, moving slowly. Hour after hour crept past. The only real British action was a brief, ineffectual bombardment, all their missiles falling well short of the continentals’ installations. It is not clear whether Howe planned to debouch his men that night or at flood tide the next day. Whatever the plan, they never came. By late afternoon scudding wintry clouds appeared, and before nightfall they took on a menacing black cast. That night a late winter storm hit, unleashing howling, whirling winds that churned Boston Harbor and pelted the region with a cold, drenching rain. Powder and flints temporarily were useless, all naval craft were rendered inoperative. Given time to reconsider his initial decision, Howe opted not to attack, a decision acquiesced in by a council of war that he summoned the next morning.16 More than Washington yet realized, this was the likely choice for a man who bore a terrible remembrance of Bunker Hill. It was a wise decision, too, for an onslaught against these two fortified ridges across Dorchester Neck likely would have replicated the horror of Bunker Hill. Yet, while it was to his honor that he cancelled what surely would have been an inexpedient sortie, his immediate predicament was due largely to his own lethargy. He had had nine months to appropriate these heights. Instead, he contrived one excuse after another for inaction, leaving the prize to his more dauntless, spirited adversary.

  Washington did not know of Howe’s decision until late on the fourth day of the operation. In the meantime work had continued on the Dorchester installations, and by the time he discovered that Howe was not coming he was so confident of success that he already had dismissed some of his militia personnel. On March 8 word of the British intentions was communicated by a committee of Boston selectmen: Howe wished to abandon Boston, and if Washington permitted him to depart unmolested—that is, if he did not use the cannon atop Dorchester Heights to blow the British fleet out of the water—he would not harm the city; otherwise, Howe pledged to raze Boston. Washington was uncertain. Was the note official? It was signed and sent by men who had elected to remain in occupied Boston, men who might be in league with the enemy. Moreover, if the letter was genuine, was the exchange of the inviolacy of Boston for the maintenance of the redcoat army a fair bargain? The general resolved the second question first. It would be an acceptable compromise. The destruction of Boston not only would establish a frightful precedent, it was bound to strain morale in other urban centers, and this on the eve of an almost certain struggle for New York City; besides, Washington was confident that Britain would have to see Howe’s evacuation as a defeat, yet with the redcoat army intact sufficient dignity might be left to the ministry that it would end hostilities. As to the veracity of the note, Washington could only take precautions, and wait.17

  The next few days dragged slowly by. Evidence mounted that Howe did indeed plan to abandon Boston, although a week elapsed before Washington told Congress that he no longer doubted the departure of the British army. But that made the wait for the redcoats’ exodus no less discomforting. March 14, then another day, and yet another, came and went. The British still were in Boston. In the more relaxed atmosphere the Continentals’ discipline waned; the army was losing its fighting edge. Yet the army might have to move quickly. No one knew where the British were going. Was it to Halifax? Or to New York? To the end Washington thought it was the latter, an eventuality that would require the hasty redeployment of his army several hundred miles to the south.13

  Shortly after sunrise on Sunday, March 17, came the sight the colonial army had awaited. The men on watch atop the highest parapets saw it first. Squinting into the low-lying, radiant sunlight, they could see British contingents in formation at the city docks; soon other British troops were spotted abandoning their posts on Bunker Hill and within the defensive perimeter about the city. After almost nine years in Boston the British exit was imminent. Once the men began to file aboard ships the operation proceeded with extraordinary speed. Before noon the fleet had begun to move, gliding slowly and gracefully away from this city that had witnessed so many Anglo-American triumphs and tragedies over the past century and a half. Twenty-four hours later General Washington laconically told Congress what it had waited long to hear: “It is with the greatest pleasure I inform you that ... the Ministerial Army evacuated the Town of Boston, and that the Forces of the United Colonies are now in actual Possession thereof.”19

  When the last ship had weighed anchor Washington dispatched a force of five hundred men (each of whom had to verify his immunity to smallpox) under General Putnam for a look at Boston. The forward troops reached the statehouse before noon, just minutes after the last British vessel had begun to drift noiselessly toward the sea. Indeed, the British were gone, Putnam reported; moreover, the city was in better shape than anyone had dared to hope. The next day the commander crossed over from Cambridge, the first time he had set foot in Boston since he had come to implore William Shirley to secure him rank in the British army. He discovered that Howe had left behind thirty cannon and a couple of mortars, some munitions, several baggage wagons, and nearly £30,000 worth of porcelain, carpets, blankets, coal, and provender. He had not left many Loyalists, however; dozens of frightened citizens who wished to remain loyal to the British Empire had sailed off with the army. Washington prowled about for a short time, mostly inspecting the fortifications that Howe had built. Then, after only a few hours in this city that had occupied his thoughts for so many months, he was gone, hardly pausing to savor the heady delights of his bloodless conquest.20

  Whatever ecstacy the general felt at his prize, it was balanced by his concern for Howe’s destination. Most of the fleet had sailed out of sight on the 17th. Some ships had stopped at Castle William, two miles out, first to sequester its contents, then to demolish the ancient fortress. The Boston lighthouse also was razed. Other ships in the fleet endeavored to obstruct the harbor. For more than a week the flotilla sat there, stretched over nine miles, from the harbor into Nantasket Road, out beyond the clearance stations. Washington did not worry about their return; in fact, during the week after his entrance into Boston he dispatched six regiments to New York. But where would the British go? “The enemy have the best knack at puzzling people I ever met with in my life,” he told Reed in exasperation on March 25.21

  Two days later, March 27, came the word he had waited. Three weeks and a day after he sent his men up Dorchester Heights a messenger arrived with the news: the British at last were going, they were “standing out for sea,” as Washington reported. The British departure from New England heralded a new phase in this war. The struggle now was about to shift to another theater. The next morning General Washington ordered contingents of the Continental army to move out for New York.22

  The humble George Washington who h
ad assumed command in Boston in 1775 had not been at all certain that he was equal to his task. The triumphant Washington who took leave of Boston in the spring of 1776 was less diffident. “I resolved to take possession of Dorchester” and soon “the Flower of the British Army” withdrew “in a shameful and precipitate manner out of a place the strongest by Nature on this Continent,” he trumpted to his brother shortly after his success. His victory, he added, had been accomplished against enormous odds; indeed, he went on, “I believe I may . . . affirm, that no Man perhaps since the first Institution of Armys ever commanded under more difficult circumstances.” More than ever Washington now was certain that military victory was possible. Divisiveness was his greatest foe, he reckoned, although he did acknowledge that the unexceptional quality of some high officers made him uneasy. He had entirely lost confidence in Ward and Wooster; Lee and Gates were the most reliable, he still thought, but as for the others he was mostly impressed by what he regarded as their overwariness.23