by Oliver North
“No, sir. But I would gladly shoot the person who killed my brother.”
He stared as me for a moment and asked, “How old are you, son?”
“I will be seventeen in August, sir.”
He nodded again and said, almost to himself, “Not much older than I was when I arrived here.” Then, “If you march with me you will likely see action by your birthday. Is that what you want to do?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you have any duties here other than the work you do at Casselman’s ferry over the Shenandoah?”
“No, sir. My father’s indentured tenants, Pieter Van Buren and his wife, Lotte, live behind our house. They have a key to our home and will tend to the livestock and crops.”
“Do you trust them?”
“Yes, sir, my family trusts them. They have been with us for over a year. They are Dutch and they hate the British.”
“What crime did they commit to become indentured?”
“I do not know all the facts, sir, but it is my understanding they are both bound by a seven-year sentence that began in December 1774. I believe Pieter and his wife, Lotte, were accused and convicted of importing Dutch East India Company tea into Virginia in violation of the 1773 Tea Act. Father purchased their sentences from the Royal Customs and Revenue Court in Norfolk.”
When Captain Morgan smiled, the scar on his cheek wrinkled. It did so now, “They must be good people. The usual sentence for that crime is three years. If the Van Burens got seven years, they must have slipped a fair amount of good Dutch East Indian tea under His Majesty’s big nose.”
Rev. Thruston added, “Since he was caught here in Virginia, we likely enjoyed some of that tea ourselves and may well be judged to be their co-conspirators.”
Both men laughed for a moment but Captain Morgan suddenly became serious and turned toward the rector, “Ahhh, you’re right, Charles. The Crown will certainly accuse us of crimes. But if we fail in what we’re about to do, the British won’t sentence us to seven years of servitude. They will hang us all.”
He turned to me, stared for a long moment, then said, “Nathanael, if you are willing, you shall be my Adjutant, with the rank of ensign. The Adjutant keeps the muster roll and pay roster, maintains our equipment list, keeps an accurate journal of all we do, records all the orders our company receives and issues, and has the account book of what we purchase and spend. Can you do all that—and fight when we must?”
“Yes, sir. But I must have my father’s permission.”
“Your father is in Williamsburg. He and your brother will likely be with Colonel Patrick Henry’s Hanover Militia unit until they recover the powder, shot, and arms Governor Dunmore has stolen. You will need to write your father a letter.”
At that he nodded to Rev. Thruston. The rector reached into the leather pouch slung over his shoulder, pulled out a sheet of paper, an envelope, a small “traveler’s inkwell,” and a quill. Smiling, he handed it all to me and said, “This is why I need those turkey feathers.”
While he and Captain Morgan spoke quietly, I wrote my father a brief message:
At Allason’s Store, Winchester
24th, April, 1775
Dear Father,
Captain Morgan has offered me the opportunity to serve as Adjutant for his Rifle Company.
Though it is uncertain when we shall be called to service, I ask for your permission to accept this appointment.
Please keep me in your prayers, as you and Paul shall be in mine.
Most respectfully, your son,
Nathanael
I blotted the note with the sleeve of my hunting shirt and handed it to the captain. He read it, nodded, and gave it back to me with instructions: “Address the envelope to ‘Captain James H. Newman, care of Col. Patrick Henry,’ and give it to Rev. Thruston.”
As the rector packed my letter and the writing tools in his pouch, Captain Morgan explained, “Rev. Thruston is the Chairman and Secretary for the Frederick County Committee of Correspondence and responsible for our Trusted Courier service. He has a messenger riding to Williamsburg this afternoon. Your father should have your letter tomorrow. Hopefully, you will have his answer before Friday when we hold our Rifle Company selection at the Tavern in Battletown.
“Unless your father objects to your appointment as my Adjutant, you should arrive at the Battletown Tavern by dawn. Rev. Thruston will meet you there with our Rifle Company supply wagon. He will bring with him several leather-bound journal books, a small travel desk, a supply of ink, quills, and waxed oilcloth to protect the records of our Company.
“He will also have a supply of candles, field lanterns, and oil. You will need these since much of your work as my Adjutant will be done at night. During daylight we will march and fight. Do you have any questions?”
By this point my heart was racing and I had so many questions I didn’t know where to begin so I said, “Yes, sir. But it might be best if I wrote them down and we spoke after Rev. Thruston and I meet Friday morning at the Battletown Tavern.”
Rising, the captain said, “Very well. Before you leave here today, I suggest you speak with Mr. Casselman. I saw him and his wife outside. You should inform him I have need of your services and for the time being you will no longer be available to help him at his ferry on the Shenandoah.”
It was the second time he mentioned the Casselmans and I wondered how my new commander knew so much about the menial occupation of a very young person in our county, so I blurted out, “If I may inquire, sir, how is it that you know about my work at the ferry?”
Captain Morgan put his hand on my shoulder and said, “It is my responsibility to know many such things. These are dangerous times and they are about to become much worse than most people understand. Not everyone who claims to be a ‘Patriot’ can be trusted. Those who are not with us are against us. It is good to know friends from enemies—and deal with them accordingly.”
As I had a few moments before when he spoke of being hanged, I felt a sudden chill—as if one of my brothers shoved a handful of snow down the back of my shirt during a winter snowball fight. Only this time, nobody was laughing.
As my mother taught me, I said, “Please excuse me, gentlemen. I must speak with Mr. Casselman.” I grabbed my Henry rifle, told Casey to “Heel!” and went outside to find my former employer.
I found them as they were preparing to depart in their carriage. Mr. and Mrs. Casselman were in the seat and David, Jr. was hunched glumly in the bed of the tram.
“Mr. Casselman, sir. A brief word with you if I may?”
“Yes, Nathanael,” he replied, gently pulling on the reins to halt the two spirited horses.
After the warning I just heard about “friends and enemies,” I was unsure how to describe my new duties so I said, “Sir, I won’t be able to work with David on the ferry for the near future as Captain Morgan has asked me to be of service to him for an uncertain duration.”
Mrs. Casselman suddenly wailed, “Oh no!” She leapt from the carriage, rushed around the rear of the transport, and put her arms around me. With tears streaming down her face, she implored her husband, “David, tell him he cannot do this! I won’t hear of it.”
Mr. Casselman said nothing and simply stared at his horses. In the back, David, Jr. drew up his legs and rested his head on his knees, his face turned away.
She looked up at me, grabbed my elbows at her arms’ length and said, her voice choked with emotion, “Nathanael, you must not do this. Your mother was one of my closest friends. She is gone. Now you have just lost your brother, Joshua. Your father is not here. You are too young. You must have your father’s permission for such a decision. Taking up arms to avenge your brother’s death is wrong!”
At this, her husband finally spoke. With great distress evident in his countenance, he said quietly, with formality, as though I was not even present, “Mrs.
Casselman, young Nathanael is not a Quaker. You have had your way with our son, but Nathanael is not your responsibility. Please take your place beside me. We must be off.”
She released her grip on my arms, reached up, pulled my face down to hers, kissed me on the forehead, and said barely above a whisper, “May Almighty God protect you.”
Without another word spoken, I walked her around the tram and helped her into her seat. When she was situated, Mr. Casselman gently slapped the reins and they headed off through the meadow toward the road. As they pulled away, David Jr. glanced up for a moment and I could see tears streaming down his face.
Endnotes
1.In the days immediately after Lexington and Concord, Morgan and most members of the Colonial Secret Committees throughout the Colonies had only the information they received from Trusted Couriers dispatched from New England. Many of these reports varied widely as to the number of casualties and what had actually happened in the engagements.
To this day, the true number of combatants and the totals of killed, wounded, and missing on both sides in the 19 April 1775 engagements in Lexington and Concord and during the British retreat back to Boston remain in dispute. While Morgan erred in numbers, there is no doubt about the outcome of which he spoke at the Shenandoah Store on Monday 24 April 1775.
We now have available copies of the official “after action” reports submitted to Royal Governor-General Thomas Gage and the Parliament in London by British Brigadier General Hugh Percy, his subordinate officers, Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith, commanding the 10th Regiment of Foot [infantry], and Major John Pitcairn commanding the Royal Marine Detachment.
Colonial Militia leaders and militiamen present during the engagements of 19 April 1775 also provided contemporaneous depositions to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress. British and American accounts differ as to numbers involved and the question of who fired the first “shot heard ’round the world.”
The American narratives credit the secret “Alarm and Muster Network,” in which Paul Revere, William Dawes, and Samuel Prescott served to be crucial in alerting local militiamen to the British expedition. The courage and tenacity of these messengers on the night of 18–19 April saved John Hancock and Samuel Adams from capture and resulted in nearly 4,000 armed militiamen and “Minutemen” rushing to Lexington, Concord, and engaging the British Regulars on their retreat to Boston.
A review of the surviving records yields a “best estimate” of these events as follows:
Only seventy-seven militiamen were assembled on the green in Lexington when the lead elements of 700 British Regulars and Marines arrived at the town just after sunrise on 19 April 1775. After a brief skirmish, during which eight of the militiamen were killed and a dozen were wounded, the outnumbered Patriots dispersed and 400 British troops [Regulars and Marines] proceeded to Concord with the mission of seizing colonial munitions—weapons, powder, and shot—and capturing John Hancock and Samuel Adams.
In Concord, and at the two bridges north and south of town, 375–400 militiamen initially engaged the British Regulars and Marines with minor effect. But as the day progressed, nearly 4,000 Patriot militiamen and Minutemen reinforcements arrived to fight the British during their retreat.
British search parties found small quantities of gunpowder, lead shot, a few muskets, two heavy siege cannons, and gun carriages in Concord and the surrounding farms. The Regulars set fire to most of this “war material” and battered the trunnions off the cannons with sledgehammers, rendering the artillery pieces unusable.
Shortly after noon, the King’s troops, exhausted from marching through the previous night and the skirmishes in Lexington and Concord, set out on the seventeen-mile return hike to Boston. For the British, it was an unmitigated disaster.
From Cambridge, Brigadier General Percy sent forward another 1,000 Regulars as reinforcements but the British were still outnumbered by more than two to one and constantly fired upon from their flanks and rear throughout the retreat to Boston. By the time the British finally reached Charlestown on the outskirts of Boston at dawn on 20 April, seventy-three British Regulars were dead [including twenty-eight officers], 175 were wounded, and fifty-three were MIA.
Among the 3,971 Patriot Militia and Minutemen engaged in the fight, forty-nine were killed, forty-one wounded, and four were MIA. By noon on 20 April 1775, the siege of Boston was underway and the American Revolution had begun.
Seven days after the Lexington and Concord engagements, Major Pitcairn, Commanding Officer of the Royal Marines during the expedition submitted the following “After Action Report”:
April 26th, 1775, Boston Camp
To: General Thomas Gage
Sir,
As you are anxious to know the particulars that happened near and at Lexington in the 19th Inst agreeable to your desire, I will in as concise a manner as possible state the facts, for my time at present is so much employed, as to prevent a more particular narrative of the occurrences of that day.
Six companies of Light Infantry were detached by Lt Colo Smith to take possession of two bridges on the other side of Concord, near three in the Morning, when we were advanced within about two miles of Lexington, intelligence was received that about 500 men in arms were assembled, determined to oppose the King’s troops, and retard them in their march. On this intelligence, I mounted my horse, and galloped up to the six Light Companies. When I arrived at the head of the advance Company, two officers came and informed me, that a man of the rebels advanced from those that were assembled, had presented his musket and attempted to shoot them, but the piece flashed in the pan. On this I gave directions to the troops to move forward, but on no account to fire, or even attempt it without orders; when I arrived at the end of the Village, I observed drawn up upon a Green near 200 rebels; when I came within about 100 yards of them, they began to file off towards some stone walls on our right flank. The Light Infantry, observing this, ran after them. I instantly called to the soldiers not to fire, but surround and disarm them, and after several repetitions of those positive orders to the men, not to fire, etc. some of the rebels who had jumped over the wall fired four or five shots at the soldiers, which wounded a man of the Tenth and my horse was wounded in two places, from some quarter or other, and at the same time several shots were fired from a meeting house on our left. Upon this, without any order or regularity, the Light Infantry began a scattered fire, and continued in that situation for some little time, contrary to the repeated orders both of me and the officers that were present. It will be needless to mention what happened after, as I suppose Colo Smith hath given a particular account of it.
I am, Sir, Your Most Obedt Humble Servant
John Pitcairn, Major of Royal Marines
2.Loyalists in Boston convinced General Thomas Gage that John Hancock and Samuel Adams should be arrested, charged with treason, and sent to London for trial. Days before the British Regulars were dispatched into the countryside on the night of 18 April 1775, the pair slipped out of Boston to Lexington. Early on the morning of the 19th, Revere and Hawes alerted them of the approaching Redcoats. Well before the first shots were fired on Lexington Common, the Patriot pair reached Concord. From there they took flight to Bedford and finally to Burlington.
3.Huzzah: archaic word to describe cheering. Same as “hooray!” in modern English.
4.In the 1700s the most accepted monetary instrument in the Western world was the Spanish dollar, specified as “a coin containing 387 grains of pure silver.” By the time hostilities commenced in the American colonies in 1775, only “Loyalists” or “Tories” would take payment for goods or services in British pounds sterling. Until the 2nd Continental Congress directed the formation of a Continental Army on 14 June 1775, each colony—including Virginia—set rates of pay for their soldiers—often using the Spanish dollar as a standard.
In today’s money, a private in Morgan’s Company of Riflemen “signed on�
� for less than $30 per year. But when it came time to be paid, the troops rarely received coins. Instead, they were usually given “Promissory Notes” issued by their respective colonies—and eventually by the new U.S. Congress.
5.Thomas, Baron Cameron, the sixth Lord Fairfax, [b. Oct 22, 1693; d. Dec 7, 1781] was the only member of the British aristocracy to take up permanent residence in the American Colonies. By 1774 he had claims to more than five million acres of land and was known to be a close friend of one of his former surveyors, George Washington.
The proffer of a “50 Acre Bounty” to those who volunteered for a term of service in “Dunmore’s War” [May–October, 1774] was never consummated because “The American Rebellion” intervened. There is no written record of Lord Fairfax offering such an incentive to those who served in the Rifle Companies and militia units being raised by Capt. Morgan and Major McDonald who was later promoted to Lieutenant Colonel in the Virginia Militia. Whether they had such an assurance, written or verbal, is unknown. What is certain is that Lord Fairfax remained close to Washington, corresponded regularly with him throughout the revolution, and resided unchallenged in his Shenandoah Valley home until he died shortly after the American victory at Yorktown in 1781.
6.Circumferentor: archaic term for a brass-encased magnetic surveying compass with perpendicular sights. It can be hand-held or mounted on a “Jacob’s staff” or tripod for determining bearings for boundary lines, estimating elevation, and locating structural foundations.
CHAPTER SIX
SELECTING THE BEST RIFLEMEN
Major Charles Smith’s Crossroads Tavern
Battletown, Virginia
Friday and Saturday, April 28th and 29th, 1775
In the days since Captain Morgan’s “recruitment” at Allason’s Shenandoah Store, I have been far busier than any time I recall since my mother died. When I returned home on Monday evening, I immediately began preparing for what little I knew of my duties as Adjutant for a Rifle Company and the possibility of an imminent departure for parts unknown.