By Murray Rothbard
Despite the mounting tension in the South, the main focus of
potential revolutionary conflict was still Massachusetts. The British
authorities, ever more attracted to a hard line, were becoming
increasingly disenchanted with the timorousness and caution of General
Gage, who had actually asked for heavy reinforcements when everyone knew
that the scurvy Americans could be routed by a mere show of force from
the superb British army. Four hundred Royal Marines and several new
regiments were sent to Gage, but the king, one of the leaders of
coercion sentiment, seriously considered removing Gage from command.
There were a few voices of reason in the British government, but they
were not listened to. The Whiggish secretary of war, Lord Barrington,
urged reliance on the cheap and efficient method of naval blockade
rather than on a land war in the large expanse and forests of America.
And General Edward Harvey warned of any attempt to conquer America by a
land army. But the cabinet was convinced that ten thousand British
regulars, assisted by American Tories, could crush any conceivable
American resistance. Underlying this conviction—and consequent British
eagerness to wield armed force—was a chauvinist and quasi-racist
contempt for the Americans. Thus, General James Grant sneered at the
“skulking peasants” who dared to resist the Crown. Major John Pitcairn,
stationed at Boston, was sure that “if he drew his sword but half out of
the scabbard, the whole banditti of Massachusetts Bay would flee before
him.” Particularly important was the speech in Parliament of the
powerful Bedfordite, the Earl of Sandwich, first lord of the Admiralty,
who sneeringly asked: “Suppose the colonies do abound in men, what does
that signify? They are raw, undisciplined, cowardly men. I wish instead
of... fifty thousand of these brave fellows, they would produce in the
field at least two hundred thousand; the more the better; the easier
would be the conquest... the very sound of a cannon would carry them
off... as fast as their feet could carry them.”
There was another reason, it should be noted, for Sandwich’s
reluctance to use the fleet rather than the army against the enemy.
While the army was to dispatch the Americans, Sandwich wished to use the
fleet against France, with which he hoped and expected to be soon at
war.
Accordingly, the Crown sent secret orders to Gage, reaching him on
April 14. The Earl of Dartmouth rebuked Gage for being too moderate. The
decision had been made; since the people of New England were clearly
committed to “open rebellion” and independence of Britain, maximum and
decisive force must be slammed down hard upon the Americans—immediately.
While reinforcements were under way, it was important for the British
troops to launch a preventive strike, by moving hard before an American
revolution could be organized. Therefore, Gage decided to arrest the
leaders of the Massachusetts provincial congress, especially Hancock and
Sam Adams. As in so many other “preventive” first strikes in history,
Great Britain itself precipitated the one thing it wished most to avoid:
a successful revolution. Interestingly enough, the Massachusetts
radicals were at the same time rejecting hotheaded plans for a first
strike by rebel forces, who would thus be throwing away the hard-forged
unity of the American colonists.
Adams and Hancock were out of town and out of reach, near Concord; so
Gage decided to kill two birds with one stone by sending a military
expedition to Concord to seize the large stores of rebel military
supplies and to arrest the radical leaders. Gage determined to send out
the force secretly, to catch the Americans by surprise; that way if
armed conflict broke out, the onus for initiating the fray could be laid
on the Americans. Gage also used a traitor high up in radical ranks.
Dr. Benjamin Church, of Boston, whom the British supplied with funds to
maintain an expensive mistress, informed on the location of the supplies
and the rebel leaders. (Church’s perfidy remained undetected for many
more months.) Gage learned from Church, furthermore, that the provincial
congress, under the prodding of the frightened Joseph Hawley, had
resolved on March 30 not to fight any armed British expedition unless it
should also bring artillery. By not sending out artillery, Gage figured
that the Americans would not resist the expedition.[1]
Gage, however, immediately encountered what would prove a major
difficulty in fighting a counterinsurgency war by a minority ruling army
against insurgent forces backed by the vast majority of the people. He
found that, surrounded by a sullen and hostile people, he could not keep
any of his troop or fleet movements hidden. The rebels would quickly
discover these movements and spread the news.
On April 15, the day after receiving his orders, Gage relieved his
best troops of duty, gathered his boats, and on the night of April 18
shipped 700 under Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith to the mainland, from
which they began to march northwest to Lexington and Concord. But the
Americans quickly discovered what was happening. Someone, perhaps Dr.
Joseph Warren, sent Paul Revere to Lexington to warn Adams and Hancock.
Hancock, emotional, wanted to join the minutemen, springing to arms; but
the sober intelligence of Sam Adams reminded Hancock of his
revolutionary duty as a top leader of the American forces, and they both
fled to safety. Revere was soon captured, but Dr. Samuel Prescott was
able to speed to Concord and bring the news that the British were
coming.
As news of the British march reached the Americans, the Lexington
minutemen gathered under the command of Captain John Parker. Rather
absurdly, Parker drew up his handful of seventy men in open formation
across the British path. When Major Pitcairn, in charge of six companies
of the British advance guard, came up to confront the militia, Pitcairn
brusquely ordered the Americans to lay down their arms and disperse.
Parker, seeing his error, was more than willing to disperse but not to
disarm. In the midst of this tense confrontation, shots rang out. No one
knows who fired first; the important thing is that the British, despite
Pitcairn’s orders to stop, fired far longer and more heavily than
necessary, mercilessly shooting at the fleeing Americans so long as they
remained within range. Eight Americans were killed in the massacre
(including the brave but foolish Parker who refused to flee), and eight
wounded, whereas only one British soldier was slightly wounded. The
exuberant and trigger-happy British troops cheered their victory; but
the victory at Lexington would prove Pyrrhic indeed. The blood shed at
Lexington made the restraining resolution of Joseph Hawley obsolete. The
Revolutionary War had begun! Sam Adams, upon hearing the shooting from
some distance away, at once realized that the fact of the open clash was
more significant than who would win the skirmish. Aware that the
showdown had at last arrived, Adams exclaimed, “Oh! What a glorious
morning is this!”
The British troops marched happily on to Concord. This time the
Americans did not try any foolhardy open confrontation with the British
forces. Instead, an infinitely wiser strategy was employed. In the first
place, part of the military stores were carried off by the Americans.
Second, no resistance was offered to the British entry into Concord,
thus lulling the troops into a further sense of security. While the
British were destroying the remaining stores, three to four hundred
militiamen gathered at the bridge into Concord and advanced upon the
British rear guard. The British shot first, but were forced to retreat
across the bridge, having suffered three killed and nine wounded. The
despised Americans were beginning to make up for the massacre at
Lexington.
Heedless of the ominous signs of the gathering storm, Colonel Smith, commanding the
expedition, kept his men around Concord for hours before beginning to
march back to Boston. That march was to become one of the most famous in
the annals of America. Along the way, beginning a mile out of Concord,
at Meriam’s Corner, the embattled and neighboring farmers and militiamen
employed the tactics of guerrilla warfare to devastating effect.
Knowing their home terrain intimately, these undisciplined and
individualistic Americans subjected the proud British troops to a
continuous withering and overpowering fire from behind trees, walls, and
houses. The march back soon became a nightmare of destruction for the
buoyant British; their intended victory march, a headlong flight through
a gauntlet. Colonel Smith was wounded and Pitcairn unhorsed. The
British were saved from decimation only by a relief brigade of twelve
hundred men under Earl Percy that reached them at Lexington. Still,
Americans continued to join the fray and fire at the troops, despite
heavy losses imposed by British flanking parties.
Despite the British reinforcements, the Americans might have
slaughtered and conquered the British force if (a) they had not suffered
from shortages of ammunition, (b) the British had not swerved into
Charlestown and embarked for Boston under the protecting guns of the
British fleet, and (c) excessive caution had not held the Americans back
from a final blow at the troops on the road to Charlestown. Even so,
the deadly march back to Boston was a glorious victory, physically and
psychologically, for the Americans. Of some fifteen to eighteen hundred
redcoats, ninety-nine were killed and missing, and 174 wounded. The
exultant Americans, who numbered about four thousand irregular
individuals that day, suffered ninety-three casualties. Insofar as these
individuals were led that day, it was by Dr. Joseph Warren and William
Heath, appointed a general by the Massachusetts provincial congress.
Events could not have gone better for the American cause: initial
aggression and massacre by the arrogant redcoats, then turned to utter
rout by the aroused and angry people of Massachusetts. It was truly a
tale for song and story. As Willard Wallace writes, “Even now, the
significance of Lexington and Concord awakens a response in Americans
that goes far beyond the details of the day or the identity of the foe.
An unmilitary people, at first overrun by trained might, had eventually
risen in their wrath and won a hard but splendid triumph.”[2]
Above all, as Sam Adams was quick to realize, the stirring events of
April 19, 1775, touched off a general armed conflict: the American
Revolution. In the immortal lines of Emerson, penned for the fiftieth
anniversary of that day:
By the rude bridge that arched the flood
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world.
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world.
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