Bunker Hill: A City, A Siege, A Revolution Part 19

Nor were the duties of a friend and sire

Neglected midst those busy scenes of life:

Speak, speak thou spark of bright immortal fire,

Who claimed on Earth the tender name of wife?

A conjecture haunted Mercy Scollay for the rest of her life, and still has import today: What if Joseph Warren had survived the Battle of Bunker Hill? Would the course of American history have been any different? One person, at least, believed he knew the answer to that question. If Joseph Warren had lived, the loyalist Peter Oliver maintained in 1782, Washington would have been "an obscurity."

Siege warfare dates back to before 3000 BC, by which time settlements in the Middle East had begun to defend themselves from attack by building large stone walls, ditches, towers, and other protective structures. Sieges were conducted by the ancient Chinese, Greeks, and Romans; in the Middle Ages, siege warfare led to the construction of castles throughout Europe and beyond. Although the development of heavy artillery rendered these once impregnable structures obsolete, engineering advances in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries led to the creation of a new breed of fortifications that proved surprisingly durable even in the face of severe cannon fire. Despite all these technological advances, the basics of a siege were the same in 1775 as they'd been at the Battle of Jericho: an army surrounds a city with the intent of conquering its inhabitants through a combination of attrition, intimidation, and, if necessary, force.

By the fall, Washington's army had succeeded in creating what was known as a line of contravallation: a ring of earthworks that encircled Boston. But there was a fatal flaw. As long as the British maintained control of the harbor, their supply ships from Canada and England could provide the regulars with food. Gage's army could no longer get any fresh provisions from the country, but as long as their warships succeeded in keeping the entrance to Boston Harbor open, they were not going to starve.

Washington had to somehow force the issue, either by an outright a.s.sault on the city or, as had occurred at Breed's Hill, by luring the British soldiers out from behind their defensive walls and engaging them in a pitched battle. But here too Washington was stymied by a lack of gunpowder and artillery. As a consequence, he could do little to displace the more than eight thousand British troops who remained in Boston.

Occasional bursts of activity broke the monotony-when, for example, New Hampshire's General John Sullivan advanced the American lines to Plowed Hill near Charlestown Neck in an operation that had all of the discipline and rigor that had been missing from the Battle of Bunker Hill. For the most part, however, the summer and fall of 1775 settled into a militarily listless stalemate. The Continental forces would launch an annoying jab at the British that was inevitably answered by a cannonade. "At one time a horse would be knocked in the head, and at another time a man would be killed," a loyalist wrote; "it seemed to be rather in jest than in earnest. At some times, a sh.e.l.l would play in the air like a sky rocket, rather in diversion, and there burst without damage; and now and then, another would fall in the town, and there burst to the terror or breaking of a few panes of gla.s.s... . Little else was done but keeping both armies out of the way of idleness, or rather the whole scene was an idle business." According to a British officer stationed on Bunker Hill, "The regulars and the provincials squint at one another like wild cats across a gutter."

By September Washington's frustrations had reached the point that he had decided he must launch an a.s.sault on Boston. He didn't have much gunpowder, but his already meager supplies were dwindling every day. If he didn't attack soon, he might lose forever the chance to engage the enemy. As was quickly becoming apparent, maintaining an army of this size was extraordinarily expensive. The Continental Congress was issuing paper currency, but who knew how much longer the people would be willing to pay for a war-especially if it did not yield significant results. And besides, by the new year, Washington might not have an army to command when the soldiers' terms of enlistment came up in December.

He also had to consider the British army, which continued to grow with the arrival of each new transport full of troops. Perhaps Gage had been waiting all this time, gathering steam before launching one last, furious a.s.sault. Washington did not have enough soldiers to cover almost ten miles of fortifications; those that he did have were still so poorly equipped that spears-spears!-had been provided in the event of another British sortie. If Gage managed to find one of the many weak points in the Continental lines, his regulars might send the American army reeling. Better to attack now, before the British had a chance to break out of Boston.

But perhaps Washington was most powerfully motivated by the expectations that had surrounded his arrival in early July. He had inherited an army that had a fighting reputation, a reputation, he was convinced, it did not deserve. And yet so far he had done nothing that could compare to the achievements of Bunker Hill and Lexington and Concord. Ready or not, he must act.

But he could not act alone. The Continental Congress had insisted that he must consult his council of war, made up of Generals Ward, Lee, Gates, Putnam, Thomas, Heath, Sullivan, and Greene. On September 8 he proposed "to make a successful attack upon the troops in Boston, by means of boats, cooperated by an attempt upon their lines at Roxbury." They would use the small boats that had been a.s.sembled in Cambridge to launch an amphibious a.s.sault on Boston. Given Washington's reservations about the fighting capabilities of his army and the lack of arms and ammunition, it was an extraordinarily imprudent proposal. These New Englanders were reliable enough when fighting from behind a wall; to expect them to a.s.sault the many entrenchments surrounding Boston was another matter altogether. Even if they did somehow manage to make it past the entrenchments, the a.s.sault would transform Boston's crooked streets into a horrifying labyrinth of house-to-house fighting. By attacking now, Washington stood a good chance of destroying his own army and handing the British yet another undeserved victory. Three days later, the council of war, which met at Washington's headquarters in Cambridge, unanimously decided that "it was not expedient to make the attempt at present, at least."

On October 18, in antic.i.p.ation of the arrival of a committee of three delegates from the Continental Congress, which included Benjamin Franklin, Washington once again proposed that they attack. Once again the council voted unanimously against the proposal, but this time there were some qualifications. Nathanael Greene said it might work "if 10,000 men could be landed at Boston." John Sullivan said that "winter gives a more favorable opportunity," while Charles Lee claimed that he was "not sufficiently acquainted with the men to judge-therefore thinks it too great a risk."

At the end of October, after a nearly week-long summit with the congressional committee, during which guidelines were drawn up for creating a more "regular" continental army (one of which required that even free African Americans be excluded), Washington formally asked for guidance on the all-important issue of attacking Boston: "The general wishes to know how far it may be deemed proper and advisable to avail himself of the season to destroy the troops who propose to winter in Boston by a bombardment, when the harbor is blocked up, or in other words whether the loss of the town and the property therein are to be so considered."

Franklin and the other committee members decided that this was "a matter of too much consequence to be determined by them" and that they must first "refer it to the Honorable Congress." For now, Washington would have to wait.

In the meantime, his predecessor General Artemas Ward was of the opinion that instead of attacking Boston, Washington should be more concerned with the strategic importance of Dorchester Heights. As early as August 25, Ward advised, "We ... ought carefully to consider what steps may be taken, consistent with prudence and safety should an enemy in part gain such an ascendency... . I beg Your Excellency to give me some instructions relative to my duty in that case." It was a theme Ward would return to in the months ahead.

By the end of October, Washington was facing a new and completely unexpected crisis. Evidence had come forward that Benjamin Church, the controversial head of the army's medical corps, was a British spy. In September, Church's mistress confessed that the coded letter she had unsuccessfully attempted to deliver to British authorities in Newport, Rhode Island, had been auth.o.r.ed by Church. The letter, written in cipher, had been quickly decoded. It was hardly the kind of doc.u.ment one would have expected from a spy. Instead of revealing any secrets, it overstated the strength of Washington's army in a way that seemed helpful to the Continental cause. According to Church, he had written the letter "to impress the enemy with a strong idea of our strength and situation ... and in hopes of effecting some speedy accommodation of the present dispute." He wasn't a traitor, he insisted; instead, he was using his loyalist family connections (the letter had been addressed to his brother-in-law in Boston) to bring about peace.

A court-martial found him guilty "of holding a criminal correspondence with the enemy." Unfortunately, the Continental Congress had not yet contemplated the possibility of treason, and the worst punishment a court-martial could inflict was a whipping and expulsion from the service-hardly a sufficient sentence, given the nature of the crime. But was Church truly guilty of treason? According to Ma.s.sachusetts law, treason was defined as a crime against the king, and no one claimed that anything Church had done had been intended to undermine George III. Ma.s.sachusetts might be in a state of armed rebellion, but even the most ardent patriots still claimed loyalty to their sovereign; that's why Washington referred to his adversaries as the "ministerial" (as opposed to king's) troops. To find Church guilty of treason was, in effect, to declare independence. And no one, at this point, was willing to do that. This meant that there was no legitimate way to punish Church for his crime. Indeed, under the law as currently written, Church, the spy, was the most loyal patriot of them all.

He spent the following weeks confined to his quarters in a house on Tory Row (where he carved "B. Church, Jr." in a closet door). Finally, on October 27, he was brought before the House of Representatives in Watertown. "The galleries being opened upon the occasion," he wrote in his own account of the proceedings, "were thronged with a numerous collection of people of all ranks, to attend so novel and important a trial."

For years Church had been at the forefront of the patriot movement. To think that a man of his standing and obvious abilities (even Washington admitted that Church had already done much to overhaul the army's hospitals) was capable of betraying everything that he claimed to stand for was difficult to comprehend. In Philadelphia, John Adams responded, "Good G.o.d! What shall we say of human nature? What shall we say of American patriots?" Many tried to attribute Church's betrayal to a personal failing. If a man had been unfaithful to his wife, it was natural then that he would be unfaithful to his country. At least that's how Abigail Adams and Mercy Otis Warren saw it. But as became clear, most of Church's male compatriots had long since known about his infidelities. And Church was by no means the first noted patriot to be guilty of moral turpitude. One of England's most cherished friends of America, John Wilkes, an outspoken member of Parliament and the current mayor of London, made no secret of his s.e.xual profligacy, and he was still looked to as an inspiration by almost all New Englanders.

Church was at his audacious best before the House of Representatives on October 27. So far, he explained, he had been denied the benefit of counsel. He hadn't learned that he was going to appear before the House until that morning. How could a people who claimed to be fighting for liberty and freedom deny him due process?

It has been frequently objected to us by our adversaries, [he pointed out,] that we were struggling to establish a tyranny much more intolerable than that we meant to oppose. Shall we justify the prediction of our enemies ... ? Am I impertinent in claiming the rights of Magna Carta, and bill of rights; have I no t.i.tle to a trial by jurors, or the benefit of the Habeas Corpus act ... ? Why are the rules and articles framed by the Continental Congress for the government of the army violated in every letter to acc.u.mulate distress on me?

On November 11 the House voted that Church be "utterly expelled," even though he had long since offered his resignation. Neither the Ma.s.sachusetts General Court nor the Continental Congress wanted anything to do with the case, and Church was eventually transported to Norwich, Connecticut, where he was placed under the custody of Governor Trumbull, who had been a cla.s.smate of Church's father at Harvard. There Church would remain for the rest of the siege, a troubling reminder that when it came to the question of loyalty all of them were, in a sense, guilty.

On September 26, Thomas Gage learned that he had been recalled to London. Margaret had preceded him by a month and a half, leaving Boston on August 21 in a ship loaded with 170 sick and wounded survivors of the Battle of Bunker Hill. When the Charming Nancy stopped briefly at Plymouth before continuing on to London, the locals were horrified by the handful of officers and men who came ash.o.r.e, "some without legs and others without arms and their clothes hanging on them like a loose morning gown." Back in Boston, Gage was no doubt relieved to learn that it was William Howe's turn to, in words Gage had used to the ministry, "take the bull by the horns," and on October 11 Gage departed on the Pallas, accompanied by Lucy Knox's father, Secretary Thomas Flucker.

In November, Howe received orders to evacuate the troops from Boston before the arrival of winter. He regretted to inform the ministry that there were not enough ships in Boston Harbor to handle all his army, as well as the artillery and "stores of all denominations, [and] the well-disposed [i.e., loyalist] inhabitants with their effects and such merchandise as it may be thought prudent to remove." They must wait until spring. But not to worry. "We are not under the least apprehension of an attack upon this place ... ," he a.s.sured Lord Dartmouth; "on the contrary it were to be wished that they would attempt so rash a step and quit those strong entrenchments to which alone they may attribute their present security."

A poisonous languor settled upon the British army in Boston. With no military objective left to achieve other than simple survival, the officers and their men settled in for a long, futile winter. Dysentery and smallpox ravaged soldiers and civilians alike, to the point that twenty to thirty people were reported to be dying a day. Howe's confidence in his army's security was apparently not shared by his own officers. "Boston ... may very justly be termed the grave of England," one of them wrote, "and the slaughterhouse of America... . If we hear a gun fired upon the Neck, we are all under arms in a moment and tremble least the provincials should force their way into the town and put us all to the sword for our cruelty at Lexington and setting fire to the large, ancient and flourishing town of Charlestown ... But the glorious expedition we are upon is approved of by an all-wise, all-merciful ministry; and therefore all must be right." Wrote another, "Our barracks are all hospitals and so offensive is the stench of the wounds that the very air is infected with the smell. What, in G.o.d's name are ye all about in England? Have you forgot us?"

And in fact, many back in Britain had done exactly that. The boycott of British goods that the colonials hoped would bring the mother country to her knees was having no visible effect. After the conclusion of the Russo-Turkish War in 1774, Great Britain enjoyed what Edmund Burke described as the "most astonishing market." "The poor are industrious," one observer wrote from London, "and the manufacturers have full employment... . And were it not for the newspapers, the people at large would hardly know there was a civil war in America." By the fall, the ministry had decided to do what Gage had proposed the year before and mount an army of twenty thousand British soldiers and mercenaries for the war in America. These military preparations also helped to stimulate the economy. "War, indeed," Burke wrote, "is become a sort of subst.i.tute for commerce."

But while Britain prospered, her army in Boston was in danger of freezing to death. Howe ordered that the city's older structures be torn down and used as fuel. In the months ahead, the Old North Meetinghouse and the parsonage of the Old South Meetinghouse, which had been built in the seventeenth century by Governor John Winthrop, were demolished, along with dozens of other buildings. Boston was, in fact, being burned by the British, one historic structure at a time.

Back in August some regulars had cut down that revered patriot icon, the Liberty Tree. In October the Old South Meetinghouse was taken over by the British light dragoons and converted into a riding school. The soldiers ripped out the pulpit, pews, and seats (one particularly finely carved pew was turned into a hog sty) and laid down a layer of tanbark cloth and manure. The sacred place where patriots such as Josiah Quincy Jr. and Joseph Warren had once spoken before crowds of thousands had become an echoing barn full of horses.

At the direction of Ma.s.sachusetts lieutenant governor Thomas Oliver, the Green Dragon Tavern, yet another patriot shrine, was turned into a hospital. But perhaps the ultimate indignity came when Faneuil Hall, Boston's hallowed seat of town government, was turned into a theater-an inst.i.tution that proper Bostonians had shunned as immoral since the town's founding.

Gage was gone, but his counterpart in the British navy, Admiral Graves, remained, despite the fact that no one seemed to have anything good to say about him. Indeed, if there was anyone who embodied the venality and corruption of the British Empire, it was Graves. During the summer, when all of Boston's inhabitants-civilians and regulars alike-were desperate for fresh foodstuffs, Graves added to their miseries by refusing to grant fishing permits unless his secretary was paid "a dollar for each boat." "You may guess what execrations were poured forth," an officer wrote. That summer, Graves refused to grant customs commissioner Benjamin Hallowell permission to harvest his own hay from Gallup's Island. During the Battle of Bunker Hill, Hallowell had suggested that Graves place his ships where they could have done some good on the Mystic River; the admiral angrily refused and "from thence sprang a dislike." "Are we not sufficiently oppressed by the enemies without," Hallowell wrote Graves on July 20, "but must suffer by those who are sent for our protection?" In August Hallowell confronted Graves in the streets of Boston; Graves drew his sword on the unarmed commissioner, who proceeded to snap the blade in half and pummel the admiral until his face was black and blue. Graves responded by sending one of his young nephews after Hallowell, who was blindsided by a bludgeon as he walked on Cornhill near School Street. The nephew was eventually court-martialed and found guilty of nothing more than "an error in judgment."

Throughout the summer and fall, Graves suffered humiliation after humiliation as packs of provincial whaleboats managed to elude his many warships stationed throughout Boston Harbor. A fleet of thirty boats led by Major Benjamin Tupper attacked and burned the Boston lighthouse on Little Brewster Island not once but twice. Finally, in response to a hint from Lord Sandwich that "you may be blamed for doing too little but can never be censured for doing too much," Graves was moved to act. In October he gave Captain Henry Mowat of the Canceaux orders to put towns up and down the New England coast to the torch as a demonstration of the fearsome might of the British navy. After determining that the houses in Gloucester were spread too far apart to allow him to burn the settlement, Mowat settled on Falmouth (modern Portland, Maine), whose patriots had a few months before briefly kidnapped him. At first, the town's inhabitants did not appear to take the British captain's threats seriously, and they were thrown into a panic when he finally began to bombard the town. It took a while for Mowat's two fourteen-gun vessels to lay the town to waste, but by 6:00 p.m. of October 18, about two thirds of the town-almost all of its waterfront-was "one flame."

The burning of this particular town at the edge of the Ma.s.sachusetts wilderness did more to unite the opposition than it did to support the king's cause. The British were experiencing the dilemma that afflicts any empire-ancient or modern-that is reduced to attacking an essentially defenseless civilian population. Even the successes are viewed as moral failures.

But Admiral Graves's ultimate indignity was yet to come. By the end of November, Washington's nascent navy of armed schooners was beginning to have an impact on British attempts to supply the troops in Boston. "We are now almost as much blocked up by the sea," one officer complained, "as we have been for these eight months by the land."

John Manley of Marblehead had received his commission directly from Washington and was captain of a schooner that had been recently renamed the Lee in honor of General Charles Lee. On November 29, Manley and his crew, pretending to be a Boston pilot boat, captured the British ordnance ship Nancy. Stored inside the Nancy's hold was a virtual armory of artillery and munitions. "There was on board," William Heath enthused in his diary, "one 13-inch bra.s.s mortar, 2,000 stand of arms, 100,000 flints, 32 tons of leaden ball, etc. A fortunate capture for the Americans!" Washington's army had been provided with exactly what it needed if it were to have any hope of successfully attacking Boston.

Within a few days, word of the Nancy's capture had reached the British in Boston. "There is nothing to prevent the rebels taking every vessel bound for this port," an officer lamented. "For though there are near twenty pendants flying in this harbor, I cannot find that there is one vessel cruising the bay. Surely our admiral cannot be allowed to remain here much longer [as] a curse upon the garrison."

But Graves was not entirely to blame for the ineffectiveness of his squadron. The British government had failed to provide him with enough sailors to operate his ships, given the inevitable effects of disease and desertion. One naval officer estimated that if you took all the sailors in all the ships presently stationed in Boston Harbor, there wouldn't be enough to "man one half of the ships, which are likewise in want of all sorts of stores and necessaries." The Admiralty, under the incompetent leadership of Lord Sandwich, was the real source of the problem, this officer insisted. "You may depend on it," he wrote, "the remissness complained of did not arise from the admiral, who frequently left his own ship in too defenseless a state (in my opinion) in order to keep his cruisers at sea... . [He] has been cruelly used."

At the end of December, with the arrival of the fifty-gun Chatham, Graves learned that, like Gage before him, he had been recalled and that Admiral Molyneux Shuldham was the new commander of the British navy in Boston.

Washington spent much of December peering at Boston through his spygla.s.s, as often as not from the heights of Prospect Hill overlooking the Charlestown peninsula, the Mystic River, the harbor, and Boston itself. He could see the British soldiers preparing for the winter ahead, building barracks both in the town and on the Charlestown peninsula. The British appeared to be there to stay. But when Washington ordered successful advances at Cobble Hill and then Cambridge's Lechmere Point, Howe's army barely responded. Washington was dumbfounded. "[I am] unable," he wrote, "upon any principle whatever to account for their silence, unless it be to lull us into a fatal security."

Rather than playing a complex game of psychological warfare, William Howe had simply lost the will to fight. His experience at Bunker Hill had certainly stunned him, but there were other factors contributing to his la.s.situde. In Europe, winter was a time for armies to rest and recoup. This was not the case, however, in New England, where the ice and snow actually increased an army's mobility. A hundred years before during King Philip's War, an intercolonial army had marched across the frozen wetlands of Rhode Island and surprised a huge village of Narragansett Indians in what became known as the Great Swamp Fight. Washington was hopeful of using the ice around Boston to facilitate an attack later that winter. But for Howe the coming cold provided an opportunity to attend plays at Faneuil Hall and gamble with his officers, often attended by the beautiful blond wife of Joshua Loring, a loyalist who'd been appointed the town's sheriff, at his side.

Some have blamed the distractions provided by Howe's affair with Elizabeth Loring for his lack of initiative during the winter of 177576. But perhaps the real reason Howe could not bring himself to venture out of Boston was that, like Gage before him, he did not know how to proceed against an enemy composed of British subjects, many of them from a colony that had built a memorial in Westminster Abbey to his beloved older brother. Howe's ambivalence is revealed in the letter he sent Lord Dartmouth in January. Washington's army was not "by any means to be despised," he wrote, "having in it many European soldiers, and all or most of the young men of spirit in the country." Rather than launching a full-scale attack, might it not be "better policy," he continued, "to withdraw entirely from the delinquent provinces, and leave the colonists to war with each other for sovereignty." That Howe was probably correct in his a.s.sessment does not change the fact that this was a general who had little interest in a war.

Washington tried to be philosophical about the approaching reenlistment crisis, rea.s.suring both a fellow general and himself that "order and subordination in time will take place of confusion, and command be rendered more agreeable." He knew that many of the soldiers were unhappy about the changes he had put in place for the new Continental Army. As former militiamen, they were used to serving with soldiers from their own colony, but that was not how it necessarily was going to be in the future. "Connecticut wants no Ma.s.sachusetts man in their corps," Washington wrote; "Ma.s.sachusetts thinks there is no necessity for a Rhode-Islander to be introduced amongst them; and New Hampshire says, it's very hard, that her valuable and experienced officers ... should be discarded because her own regiments under the new establishment, cannot provide for them."

Some of the regiments from Connecticut had decided that they were technically free to depart as early as December 1, and that day the excitable and blasphemous General Lee ordered them to form into what Simeon Lyman described as "a hollow square." Lee, no doubt followed by his black Pomeranian dog Spado, stepped into the square's center. "He flung and curst and swore at us," Lyman wrote, "and said if we would not stay he would order us to go on Bunker Hill and if we would not go he would order the rifleman to fire at us." Lee's tantrum did little to change the soldiers' minds. On December 10, Nathanael Greene reported that the "Connecticut men are going home in shoals this day." As anyone from Ma.s.sachusetts, New Hampshire, or Connecticut knew, this was the way the region's militia had worked for more than a century. "'Tis the cast of the New Englanders to enlist for a certain time," Reverend William Gordon wrote, "and when the time is expired to quit the service and return home, let the call for their continuance be ever so urgent."

Nathanael Greene understood the phenomenon but could not help but share in his commander's frustration and anger. "If neither the love of liberty nor dread of slavery will rouse them from the present stupid state they are in," he wrote, "and they obstinately persist in quitting the service, they will deserve the curses of the present and future generations to the latest ages... . What can equal such an infamous desertion ... ? We that have boasted so loud of our private virtue and public spirit, do not have the very vital principles of liberty."

Greene admitted, however, that Washington bore part of the blame for the reenlistment crisis by expecting too much of the army he had inherited. "His Excellency has been taught to believe the people here a superior race of mortals and finding them of the same temper and disposition ... of the common people of other governments, they sink in his esteem." As Greene rightly pointed out, "you cannot expect [to make] veterans [from] a raw militia [after] only a few months' service."

Not surprisingly, the army's first commander in chief, Artemas Ward, was even more critical of Washington and his lack of appreciation for the soldiers from New England. At one point, Ward wrote of his