Characters Mentioned
Adams, Samuel – Continental Congress delegate. Leader of the rebel patriots of Massachusetts
Gage, General Thomas – military governor and commanding general of British forces stationed in Boston
Hancock, John – rich Boston merchant. Continental Congress delegate
Mackenzie, Colonel John – Marine friend in England of John Pitcairn
Montagu, John – 4th Earl of Sandwich, British First Lord of the Admiralty during the American Revolution
Percy, Lieutenant Colonel Hugh – commander of the 1st Brigade, commander of the relief column that rescued Colonel Smith’s forces
Pitcairn, Major John – commander of the Marines. Second in command of the forces sent to Concord
Quincy, Dolly – daughter of Judge Edmund Qunicy of Boston and future wife of John Hancock
Reveley, Henry – English friend of Hugh Percy
Revere, Paul – Boston silversmith and express rider
Shaw, Francis – Fiercely anti-British Boston tailor. Forced to house British officers including John Pitcairn
Warren, Dr. Joseph – second to Samuel Adams in the Sons of Liberty leadership
Wragg, Lieutenant – billeted in Francis Shaw’s house with John Pitcairn
Chapter 6, “Acute Hostility,” Section 2
Late on the Saturday afternoon of April 15 a dark-complexioned, stocky man knocked on the door of the fashionable Hanover Street residence of Dr. Joseph Warren. The responding intern did not address the man until he had entered the doctor's study. “Sir, Doctor Warren is attending a patient. I shall tell him you’ve arrived.”
Paul Revere had known Joseph Warren fourteen years. They had met soon after Warren had graduated from Harvard. They had become friends while Warren had served his indenture to Dr. James Lloyd: mixing medicines, tying up minor wounds, reading Latin books, attending meetings of the radical Whig Party. Warren was taller, slender and rather handsome. Revere lacked Warren's eloquence and easy charm. Revere, six years older, was forty. He was a mechanic with a limited education and a large family. Rarely did men of Revere’s station establish close relationships with well-born professionals.
Dr. Warren was highly esteemed. He had made his name as one of two physicians who had inoculated nearly 5,000 people during the small pox epidemic of 1763. He was accessible to any person that sought his care.
Warren served the radical Whigs as a strategist, organizer, writer, and speaker. He had become Samuel Adams’s closest associate. Indefatigable express rider, effective propagandizer, tireless street activist, Revere’s contributions had likewise been substantial. Each man believed that his arrest was imminent. Each had refused to leave the city. Essential work required their presence.
“Revere!” exclaimed Warren, entering the room, drying his hands on a towel. “I had expected to see you later at the Dragon. Assuming my young interns would have permitted it!” Motioning toward a pair of upholstered, high-back chairs, he invited Revere to sit. Their having done so, Warren patted the artisan's left knee.
“More threats, Joseph?”
“Nothing tangible. Nothing directed at me as was the matter with the three British officers near the Province House.” Out of habit, he straightened the left sleeve of his silver-threaded waistcoat. “But, you see, my medical students are alarmists. I must show them the pistols I carry before they sanction any departure!”
Revere laughed. Warren's eyes glinted with humor.
“In truth, the good General could dispose of us most expeditiously: by military escort to prison, thence by ship to London to be presented as trophies to the King. The longer Gage waits, the greater we profit. I, thanks to you, have had my teeth fixed!” Warren exhibited a toothy grin.
How easy he relates, Revere thought. With Hancock, with Adams, with Tories, with everybody.
He recalled Warren’s speech a month ago, commemorating the fifth anniversary of the Boston Massacre. Warren had addressed a crowded church of agitated citizens. At least a dozen sour-faced British officers -- including Revere’s neighbor, Major John Pitcairn -- had sat in the first pew. Employing courtesy, discretion, and common sense, Warren had both delivered his message and defused hostility.
By being courtly, buoyant, Warren maintained his equilibrium. Revere’s way was single-minded absorption of the immediate task, be it a day long express ride to Portsmouth or a night patrol of the waterfront and Common.
“I, Paul, as well as any man, appreciate your skill with metal. But I am amazed at how well you fashioned these two ivory teeth. I do not eat with them, mind, but they look white, and I don't whistle when I speak.”
Revere grinned. His friend’s good cheer was a welcomed boost.
He had arrived at Warren’s house irritated that he would probably have to ride into the country early the next morning. He had spent the previous night shivering on patrol. He’d been hollow-limbed, muscle and tendon tired the entire day. He had rejected the thought of napping an hour or two in his shop because what he needed was uninterrupted sleep, which he might just get if he retired early, assuming he didn’t hear the usual street noises, if his children stayed in their beds, if …
“Paul.”
He started.
“You were out again all night, weren’t you? You have that particular look. Tell me what you have to say, before my talking puts you to sleep.”
He looked at his shoes. He pressed together opposite fingertips. “Confirmation, Joseph. Confirmation.”
Warren rose. He lifted the white towel off his chair’s left armrest. Revere watched him fold it in half. “Go on.”
“Gage has released his grenadier and light infantry companies from regular guard duty. My mechanics believe that the General is ready to launch his rowboats. At present, they are moored under the stern of one of his frigates.”
“Which he will use to carry soldiers across the Back Bay to Cambridge, from whence they will proceed to Concord.”
Revere nodded.
“With a detour at Lexington to seize Samuel and John.” Placing the folded towel on the armrest, Warren grimaced, afterward sat. His left hand bracing his chin, he bit his lower lip. “You should know that the Provincial Congress adjourned this morning. And Sam and John intend to remain in Lexington an additional month.”
Given the location of the stored munitions, Concord, Adams and Hancock’s continued residence in Lexington seemed to Revere foolish. Indeed, stupid. As had been his and Warren’s decision, according to some, not to leave the city. Revere studied his pensive friend, seated stiffly on the edge of his cushion. How much longer would Warren delay? Revere had prepared for a sudden departure; he suspected that Warren had not. “So, we fight,” Revere said, stating the obvious. That night, or the next, he could have his friend transported to Cambridge, where he could more safely direct the Province’s business. But would Warren be willing to leave his patients? “Their soldiers will invade the interior and we will fight,” he reiterated.
Warren stood. Hands clasped behind his back, he paced. Stopping beside Revere's chair, eyes glinting, he declared, “I am so weary of their conceited slurs! That we won't stand and fight, that we'll run when we sniff powder!”
“I know. They’re wrong.”
“Flouncing their queues, they fancy themselves paragons, indomitable Visigoths!”
Indeed, Revere thought, not understanding Warren’s allusion. “They’ll find out. Soon enough.”
His knuckles pressed against the small of his back, Warren stared out his latticed window. Revere waited, knowing Warren’s sudden temper would quickly abate.
Warren turned. “You will have to warn Adams and Hancock. At once.”
Revere recrossed his legs, stared.
“And the Concord militia. Although your ride to warn them a week ago has given them immediate cause to remove their stores.”
“I'd thought to leave tomorrow, early.”
“But not through the gate!” Warren shook his head. “They know you rode to Portsmouth! Their spy has told them. I am certain!”
“I have a boat ready.” Rising, Revere felt his left thigh cramp. It had cramped earlier, when he had risen from his bed after a brief rest. A bother, painful, but less annoying, he thought, than his friend’s presumption that he needed to be told what was dangerous. “I have a horse waiting across the River.”
“Ah. Very good.” Warren stared at him. “May God accompany you. He knows I depend on you.”
“Joseph, be ready, at a moment’s notice, to leave this house!” There, he had said it!
Warren grasped Revere’s shoulders.
“You have been talking to my interns, haven’t you?” Warren stared. “No? Well, in two or three days’ time we shall know.” Looking past Revere, he said, “Old friend, we have shared much danger. We shall not be deterred!”
3
A heavy mist lay upon Boston Common. Hugh, Earl Percy had been watching his soldiers perform their daily, except for Sunday, early morning close-order drills. Once the refuse of the streets of London and the ports of the Channel, rigorously disciplined, provided continuity, they had become good soldiers, many, he believed, good men.
He was cognizant of the acute discontent rampant in other brigades, evidenced by the recent spate in attempted desertions. His own men were likewise weary of the banality of barracks life, of the repetition of incessant drill. They, too, had suffered the provocative insults of the town’s populace. Their generalized discontent notwithstanding, they had maintained their allegiance to him. Long ago, looking after their collective needs, he had won their fidelity.
Months before they had come to Boston, Percy had given each man a new blanket and a golden guinea. Laying out 700 pounds, he had chartered a ship to transport to Boston their wives and children. Before coming to Boston and here as recently as three weeks ago, to inculcate fortitude Percy, a thin, bony man suffering from hereditary gout, had on long training exercises disdained the use of his horse.
Percy’s officers revered him. He had honored their allegiance with frequent invitations to his table, at the mansion at the corner of Tremont and Winter Streets, formerly the residence of the royal governor, a fine wooden house surrounded by wide lawns.
Without connivance, without deliberate forethought, he had fashioned a loyalty that other brigade commanders envied. An intelligent, attentive, generous aristocrat in His Majesty’s service, Hugh, Earl Percy was an anomaly.
A member of Parliament, a young nobleman who one day would become the Duke of Northumberland, Percy, like his father, had opposed Parliament's tax measures that had led ultimately to the destruction of tea in Boston Harbor. Lord North's Tory government knew well Percy's liberal, Whig viewpoint; but they knew as well his soldierly allegiance to English law and king.
He had arrived off Boston July 4 of the previous year, a month and three days after the closure of the Port. He had initially approved of General Gage's restrained enforcement of Parliament's punitive expectation that Boston recant its destructive act. The General’s policy had approximated Percy's accustomed mode of social interaction: respect people as human beings, mollify discontent, seek reasoned compromise, in specific instances help the indigent.
The immediate assistance he had given the Boston family made homeless by a fire had been done without calculation. The compliments he had sent to a merchant's wife on the excellence of her landscape drawings had been sincere. He very much enjoyed the respectable people of Boston. He had entertained many of the town's gentlemen. Often, after the early morning drills had been completed, he had walked across the Common to the house of John Hancock to have breakfast with the acknowledged rebel leader, his Aunt Lydia, and, occasionally, Hancock's rumored fiancée, the spirited Dolly Quincy, who, if gossip was truth, “fancied” him.
In matters great and small the nobleman was percipient.
He had entertained the thought that the king's ministers had sent him to Boston to serve by example. If his presence reduced somewhat the hostility that much of the citizenry directed toward British officers, perhaps in time, with other officers emulating his conduct, reasonable Bostonians might modify their adversarial judgments. Like rainwater percolating to the roots of parched trees, their altered perception of British superintendence might, then, permeate the minds of the less rational.
Thus, initially, his superiors may have hypothesized. If he had mollified to any extent the hostility of even a handful of righteous provincials, recent events had rendered moot that accomplishment. At the recent gathering of officers attended by the young soldier turned improbable spy General Gage had defined succinctly the futility of his benign policy. The chivalrous general had altered his viewpoint. Percy had done so months ago. It had been solely for military reasons, not for any positive regard he had for the rebel provincial, that Percy had praised the General for not having invaded the countryside “willy-nilly.”
During the past six months Percy had written letters criticizing the General’s high-mindedness. “The general’s great lenity and moderation serve only to make them more daring and insolent,” he had written his friend, Henry Reveley, in England, after 400 New Hampshire militiamen had seized royal powder and cannon from Portsmouth’s dilapidated fortress.
Charitable as he had been to individual inhabitants, his opinion of them as a group, upon immediate exposure to them, had swiftly hardened. He had been appalled at the nastiness of the Boston mob. They and the people that incited them were bullies, cowards. “Like all other cowards, they are cruel and tyrannical,” he had informed Reveley. The Congregational clergy’s practice of denying Loyalists admittance to their churches was abhorrent. These rebels are “the most designing artful villains in the world,” he had written to his father. Selfish and strident in the pursuit of their objectives, they were incapable of disciplined, cooperative accomplishment. Town meetings were never-ending debates. Their town militias -- independent, jealous, wrangling entities -- talked much but accomplished little. The best he had to say about his nine months amongst the people of Boston was that his tenure had been instructive.
The morning mist emblematic of attitudes contrary to his nature, he stared a good half minute at the drab river.
Questions.
Which day this week would General Gage order the seizure of Concord’s stores?
What measures would the General take to forestall armed resistance?
What exigencies should the commander of the expedition strive to anticipate?
Would he, Percy, be that commander?
The day had remained cold, dreary. It will rain during the night, John Pitcairn predicted.
He stood, as he often did, at the top of Boston Common, facing the River and its complement of ships. Across the River lay Cambridge. Beyond it were the towns of Menotomy and Lexington. He suspected that within the week he would be directing regulars through those villages to seize and destroy munitions stockpiled in Concord.
The inactivity of his long stay in Boston had made him testy. He was a man that craved action. Little about his life, save his rank, had changed since he had fought the French. Notwithstanding his need for stimulation, he adhered to the belief that whom a soldier waged war against mattered. This particular day his divided perception of the present conflict had caused him, standing high and far above the river, to try to formulate a practical resolution.
Folly! Beyond all help!
He stepped off aggressively toward his lodging.
North Square was a block inland from the wharves and bustle of the North End waterfront. Its produce wagons rattled across its beach pebble-cobbled streets, open to the brisk sea air. Triangular in shape, the square was rimmed by neat, small houses, many adjoined. Here a military man could enjoy the sight of trees, well maintained fences, windowpanes shining in the sun, gleaming brass, and doorsteps well scrubbed.
He and several of his lieutenants were billeted in the house of Francis Shaw, a tailor and staunch Whig. Many North Square residents were artisans and mechanics, most, like his “host,” antagonistic toward British authority. Most notable of this group was Shaw’s neighbor down the street, the notorious silversmith/propagandist/express rider, Paul Revere.
John Pitcairn was a decisive man. In conduct and speech he did not equivocate. Negligent soldiers by the hundreds had suffered his infamous wrath. Yet his longevity of service and his consequent exposure to a wide gamut of people had been instructive. Over the years he had developed a certain tolerance toward courteous, honorable gentlemen that happened to espouse wrong-headed beliefs. He was not boisterous or waggish in their company as he often was with fellow officers. Instead, he was polite, even congenial. Being quartered amidst the plain-speaking, hard-working craftsmen of North Square hadn’t been a hardship. He had felt at ease with them. They, in turn, had been civil.
The son of a minister, he attended weekly the services at Christ Church. Walking about North Square, he acknowledged always the presence of those individuals with whom he was acquainted. Occasionally, he engaged in good-natured, restrained banter. He never argued. Honorable men, not of the same mind, valued restraint.
He knew what most believed. The basis of their entire quarrel with Parliament was that they were denied the rights of Englishmen. In that august body they had no representation. Thus Parliament inflicted injury upon them. So went their argument. He could have pointed out that the war against France on the Continent and here in America had been costly and that the colonies had benefited. They would continue to benefit. Why then should they be exempt from paying their share? Tough-minded, aggressive people they were. Englishmen in that respect. Interacting with them at a personal level had allowed him to feel on occasion a degree of kinship. Their generalized conduct, however, -- especially their contempt for the uniform -- ignited frequently his temper.
To his Marine friend in England, Colonel John Mackenzie, he had written in December: “I have so despicable an opinion of the people of this country that I would not hesitate to march with the Marines I have with me to any part of the country, and do whatever I was inclined.” To Lord Sandwich, the First Lord of the Admiralty, he had declared that stern measures must be taken. “One active campaign, a smart action, and burning two or three of their towns, will set everything to rights. Nothing now, I am afraid, but this will ever convince those foolish bad people that England is in earnest.”
Tough words. To re-establish English law, to reaffirm Royal and Parliamentary authority, he would indeed slay his colonial brethren. But his personal contact with individual Northenders had given him cause, during quiet moments, to temporize, comportment in a major in the King’s service not to be countenanced!
Anticipating strife, he passed reluctantly through the front doorway of Francis Shaw’s house. Most probably Lieutenant Wragg would again antagonize at the family table the old tailor’s son, Samuel. Pitcairn would be forced to intercede, dousing temporarily the acute hostility that Parliament had created and Wragg stoked, volatile enmity perpetuated by colonial rabble-rousers and obnoxious junior and senior officers of the King.
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