Desperate Sons Read online

  Though what ensued has become the stuff of every American schoolchild’s catechism, Revere’s part in history went largely unknown for the better part of the ensuing century. In the immediate aftermath of subsequent events, the silversmith was called to provide a deposition of his actions for the town assembly, and in the late 1790s Revere provided a lengthy account in a well-written letter to a friend. But it would fall to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, with a poem published in 1861, to make a rather unassuming workingman into an icon: “Listen, my children, and you shall hear / Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.” Thus did a Boston silversmith become a hero of a revolution.

  At about ten o’clock on Tuesday night, April 18, Revere was summoned from his home by Dr. Warren and informed that a significant number of troops had been observed marching from the common. They were on their way to boats deployed on the banks of the Charles, and Revere should ride at once to Lexington with the news. He would not be the only rider, moreover, for Warren had already dispatched another man, William Dawes, along the overland route. “Two lanthorns” would be hoisted in the North Episcopal steeple, Warren assured Revere, but meantime he was to be on his way.

  Friends rowed the silversmith across the river, where he picked up “a very good horse” and was also told that ten well-armed British officers had been spotted just after sunset preceding him up the Lexington road. If that fact concerned him, Revere made no mention of it. He thanked the safety man who’d provided the information and set out quickly for Lexington.

  By then it was eleven o’clock on a clear and pleasant night, with enough moonlight to show Revere his way. He was not far past Charlestown Common when he saw two men on horseback waiting beside the road under a tree. Revere was almost upon the pair when he realized that they were part of the British detail that the safety man had warned him about. One of the officers spurred his mount forward, cutting off Revere’s path, and the other came straight for him.

  Revere, who knew the terrain well, cut abruptly from the road and through the countryside, with the second officer in close pursuit. As Revere skirted a bog on his way toward the northbound Medford road ahead, he heard a shout and a curse from behind him. The second officer had guided his horse straight into the clay pond Revere knew about and was now hopelessly mired in it.

  Revere rode on without further interference to Medford, about midway to Lexington, where he roused the captain of the local Minutemen and advised him that troops were marching out from Boston, then headed on to Lexington, shouting out warnings at every settlement along the way. At Lexington, Revere made his way to Reverend Clarke’s house, where he found Adams and Hancock and shared word of the detachment on its way. It was all news to the officers—Dawes, the first rider who’d been sent out, had not yet arrived.

  While Revere was readying himself to ride on to Concord to help secure the stores, Dawes finally arrived and the two set out together, along with a third rider, Dr. Samuel Prescott, whom Revere described as a “High Son of Liberty.” Revere warned his companions of the likelihood that they might be intercepted by others of the detail of officers, and hardly had he spoken of it than they topped a rise to find four men on horses blocking the road. All were armed with pistols and swords, Revere saw, and he guided his two companions off the road into a nearby pasture at a gallop.

  Dr. Prescott veered off, jumping his horse over a stone wall. As he disappeared into the night, headed in the direction of Concord, Revere urged his own mount toward a woods up ahead. If he made it to that cover, he might lose their pursuers, he was thinking, when suddenly six horsemen burst from the trees and surrounded him, ordering him to dismount.

  One of the officers leveled his pistol at Revere’s forehead, demanding to know his name and his business. He’d blow the silversmith’s brains out, he said, unless he got straight answers. Revere made no secret of what he’d been doing. The troops out of Boston had run aground in the middle of the Charles River, though, he told the officer, and there were five hundred Minutemen on their way to Concord as they spoke.

  The officer ordered Revere searched, then had him placed back on his horse. They were riding back to Lexington, Revere was told, and if he attempted to escape, he’d be shot. About a mile outside Lexington, the mount of one of the grenadiers began to tire, and the commanding officer ordered the procession to a halt. “Take that man’s horse,” the captain said, pointing at Revere, who had little choice but to dismount.

  He waited until the soldiers were gone, then hurried off across the fields to Reverend Clarke’s house to alert Adams and Hancock, who hastily talked things over. Perhaps the troops were set on apprehending them and perhaps they weren’t, but it seemed that a retreat to the nearby town of Woburn, about four miles to the east, was the wisest course.

  Revere accompanied the pair to the home of a fellow Liberty Boy in Woburn and made sure the two were settled, then set back out with a man named Lowell for the Lexington Meeting House, where Hancock had left a trunk full of the Provincial Congress’s papers. By the time Revere and Lowell reached the Lexington Tavern, it was almost dawn. He and Lowell went up to Hancock’s chambers to retrieve the papers, when they heard a great commotion outside and glanced out the windows to see six companies of British troops, more than seven hundred men, marching toward the common.

  Revere and Lowell hurried out of the tavern with the trunk, weaving their way through the ranks of local Minutemen who were rushing to draw a line of defense at Lexington Common. Revere and Lowell were scarcely a hundred yards from the tavern, on their way to hide the congress’s papers at the home of Reverend Clarke, when they paused to survey the scene behind them. “British Troops appeard on both Sides of the Meeting-House,” Revere said. “In their Front was an Officer on Horse back. They made a Short Halt; when I saw, and heard, a Gun fired, which appeared to be a Pistol. Then I could distinguish two Guns, and then a Continual roar of Musquetry.”

  Thereupon, they made off with the trunk.

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  The Conqueror Silent Sleeps

  What Revere overheard that dawn so many years ago was in fact “the shot heard round the world” later immortalized by Ralph Waldo Emerson in his “Concord Hymn,” a poem written in 1836 for the dedication of a monument to the Sons of Liberty who had died in Lexington and Concord on that day in 1775. And the ensuing “roar of musquetry” that Revere described would continue for six and a half years, until October 17, 1781, when General Charles Cornwallis surrendered his troops at Yorktown, signaling that a new nation, indivisible, would at last be formed.

  The record of the more than two hundred battles that ensued and the significant political events that punctuated them, including the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the adoption of the Articles of Confederation, have filled hundreds, perhaps thousands, of books large and small, and the books continue to come despite the observations mentioned at the outset of this one. Even the briefest summary of all that would transpire in the half-dozen years following Lexington and Concord is not only far beyond the scope of this book but outside its intention as well.

  The intent from the outset has been to record the efforts of a group of men who avowed in their 1766 Constitution “to persevere to the last in the vindication of our dear bought Rights and Privileges” and to follow the inextricable sequence of events propelled by these patriots from the chill January night when a Dutch placeman was “corrected,” through the struggles as diverse as those in New York City, Boston, Providence, and Charleston, up until the night one of the most dedicated Sons of all risked his life to ride out and warn the men whose mission he treasured above all else.

  As it turned out, and despite the authorization that Lord Dartmouth provided for the capture of those “obnoxious leaders,” Gage held no designs upon John Hancock or Samuel Adams when he sent his troops out from Boston under cover of darkness. His orders to Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith, commander of His Majesty’s 10th Regiment of foot soldiers, were explicit in their focus:

  Sir:


  Having received intelligence, that a quantity of ammunition, provision, artillery, tents and small arms, have been collected at Concord, for the avowed purpose of raising and supporting a rebellion against his majesty, you will march with the corps of grenadiers and light infantry, put under your command, with the utmost expedition and secrecy to Concord, where you will seize arms, and all military stores whatever. But you will take care that the soldiers do not plunder the inhabitants, or hurt private property.

  Your most obedient humble servant

  Thomas Gage

  Accordingly, the troops went out of Boston on the evening of April 18, preceded by an advance party of Royal Marines under the command of Major John Pitcairn. As that contingent neared Lexington, Pitcairn was met by the officers who had earlier arrested and interrogated Paul Revere. There were five hundred armed militiamen waiting in Lexington, he was advised, and more were on the way.

  As Pitcairn considered his strategy, two of his scouts galloped back to the place where the column was halted. They had just encountered a colonist near Lexington, they said, and the man had raised his musket to fire at them. The weapon had misfired, and neither of the scouts had been injured, but the intent of the enemy was clear.

  At that Pitcairn ordered his men to load their own weapons and fix their bayonets. The order did not signify an intent to attack, but it would have been more than imprudent of Pitcairn to do otherwise. By the time that his troops were readied, Colonel Smith and his men had caught up with them. Pitcairn advised his superior of the situation in Lexington and finally turned to order his own troops forward. On no account was any man to fire unless given the order to do so, he called out, and then his men were on the move.

  As the British troops readied their final approach to Lexington, a colonial scout galloped into the town to spread the alarm. The redcoats were only minutes away, he advised John Parker, the captain of the local militia. Parker nodded, then turned to issue orders for his men to fall in on the common. After ten years of escalating tensions, it seemed, the time to fight had arrived.

  When Pitcairn rode into Lexington at dawn, accompanied by a small group of cavalrymen, he would have been heartened at what he saw. Instead of five hundred Minutemen, there were perhaps a hundred arrayed upon the green and before the tavern, clearly no match for his party should it come to fighting. He brought the mounted group to a halt at the west side of the field, waiting while the foot soldiers approached the tavern and green from the east.

  As the marching column quickly reassembled itself into the familiar line-of-battle formation favored by British tacticians, Pitcairn called out to the Minutemen, “Lay down your arms.”

  According to most accounts, a number of Minutemen took a look at the British troops, who vastly outnumbered them, and complied, some quickly, some after a moment of hesitation. Others, however, held their ground and their weapons. What happened from that point on varies, according to what side the reports come from.

  Captain Parker, in his report, stated that he called the militia to Lexington common at about one in the morning of April 19 to discuss reports that British troops were on their way. Parker said that the agreement of all the men was to “not meddle or make with said Regular Troops unless they should insult us.”

  When the troops did arrive in Lexington, Parker said, “upon their sudden approach, I immediately ordered our Militia to disperse and not to fire.” According to Parker, his advice was of no avail: “Immediately Said Troops made their appearance and rushed furiously, [and] fired . . . without receiving any provocation therefore from us.” There were a number of other depositions offered by townsmen, all agreeing that it was not a militiaman who had fired the first shot and a number insisting that it had come from the pistol of a British officer.

  It will come as no surprise that Major Pitcairn saw things somewhat differently. In his report to Gage, he says that once he was advised that several hundred men were gathered in Lexington to prevent his party’s march to Concord and that his advance scouts had been fired on, he readied his troops but ordered them “on no account to fire, or even attempt it without orders.”

  When he approached within a hundred yards or so of the rebels, he said, he noticed a number of those who had ignored his order to lay down their arms running to take cover behind a set of stone walls on his formation’s right flank. “I instantly called to the soldiers not to fire, but surround and disarm them,” Pitcairn said, adding that he repeated his orders several times, to no avail. “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 . . . and at the same time several shots were fired from a Meeting House on our left.”

  It was the beginning of the roar that would send Paul Revere and his man Lowell dashing for cover at the good reverend’s. “Upon this without any order or regularity,” Pitcairn said, “the Light Infantry began a scattered fire, and continued in that situation for some little time, contrary to the repeated orders of both me and other officers that were present.” Most of the other accounts from British soldiers present agree with Pitcairn’s rendition, differing primarily in terms of the degree of carnage that resulted.

  Following Pitcairn’s repeated orders to disperse, said Jeremy Lister, one of the foot soldiers, “they gave us a fire then ran off to get behind a wall. We had one man wounded of our Company in the leg. . . . Major Pitcairn’s horse was shot in the flank. We returned their salute, and before we proceed on our march from Lexington, I believe we kill’d and wounded either seven or eight men.”

  Another solder of the 10th Regiment, Henry de Berniere, said that he heard Pitcairn issue his order to the militiamen to lay down their weapons and disperse at least two times: “But to no purpose, upon which he ordered our light infantry to advance and disarm them, which they were doing when one of the rebels fired a shot, our soldiers returned the fire and killed about fourteen of them, there was only one man of the Tenth light infantry received a shot through the leg. Some of them got into a church and fired from it, but were soon drove out.”

  Though the fighting was brief it was intense, and it was deadly. Ten Minutemen lay dead on Lexington Common and nine more were injured. They were the first official casualties of the Revolutionary War.

  As Private Lister’s report suggests, with the Lexington militia routed, Pitcairn and his men were soon on their way to Concord, which had been the object of their march all along. They were joined there by reinforcements that had marched across Boston Neck under Lord Percy, and raiding parties were soon formed to scour homes and nearby farms for munitions and stores of foods, a task that proved largely futile. One party found a pair of small cannon, which they quickly disabled, but for the most part, the reputed stores seemed to have vanished.

  The search took time, however, and word of the outrage in Lexington spread about the countryside as swiftly as any ever had. Before long, a force of Minutemen that the British estimated at more than 1,000 ringed the hills above Concord. Though about half of the British troops who were garrisoned in Boston—1,800 or so—had by now arrived in Concord, it was clear that serious resistance was at hand.

  As a British force guarding the north bridge entrance to Concord began a withdrawal to the center of the town, American forces moved upon them, opening a withering fire. Four British officers and three infantrymen were killed, and five wounded. It was the beginning of a panicked retreat of the exhausted British forces along the unfamiliar, dusty roads back to Boston, a movement that was marked by intense fighting on both sides and led to the deaths of any number of unsuspecting civilians caught in the cross fire between snipers and regulars or suffering the frustrations of enraged British soldiers.

  One account tells of William Marcy, the village idiot of Cambridge, sitting happily on a stone wall along the road to Boston and wishing the sullen retreating troops a good day. In the next instant there was a muzzle flash from within the ranks and Marcy toppled off his p
erch with a musket ball between his eyes.

  As one soldier wrote of the experience, “I never broke my fast for forty-eight hours, for we carried no provisions. I had my hat shot off my head three times. Two balls went through my coat, and carried away my bayonet from my side.”

  All in all it was a deadly day, with some fifty Americans killed and forty-one wounded. As for the British, what had begun propitiously in Lexington turned disastrous by the time the troops dragged themselves back to the banks of the Charles, desperate to regain the safety of their fort. Seventy-three were dead and some two hundred more were wounded.

  George Washington would later write that had the British not rushed back to Boston so fearfully that day, they would have been cut off by other Minutemen and the entire force would probably have surrendered. And, indeed, had the British lost a tenth of the entire fighting force stationed in the colonies on the first day of military engagement, perhaps the six and a half years of fighting that ensued and the thousands of lives lost might have been saved.

  But as it was, and as bad as it was, April 19 was only the beginning. Soon Boston was surrounded, and the siege of the city would last for nearly a year, until March 17, 1776, when British Commander William Howe, after a long stalemate with the newly constituted Continental Army commanded by George Washington, finally withdrew his troops to Nova Scotia. The war that had so many times been foreshadowed was at last under way.

  In a letter from Philadelphia of June 28 to his wife, Betsy, in Boston, Samuel Adams wrote of an engagement that had been described to him between troops and the “Rebel Army” in the Boston suburb of Charlestown. “I cannot but be greatly rejoycd at the tried Valor of our Countrymen, who by all Accounts behavd with an Intrepiditry becoming those who fought for their Liberities against the mercenary Soldiers of a Tyrant,” he told her.