“Lt. Coll. Walcott now excuses it”

As I’ve been discussing, a British army court-martial ordered Lt. Col. William Walcott to be reprimanded on the Common in front of the second brigade of British troops in Boston on 17 Apr 1775.

Part of that ceremonial punishment might have been for Ens. Robert Patrick, the young officer Walcott had yelled at and struck, to draw his hand across the regimental commander’s face, thus making things even.

Though a couple of other young officers, Lt. John Barker and Lt. Frederick Mackenzie, wrote the long court-martial verdict into their diaries, neither man described seeing that embarrassing punishment. And Mackenzie was in the second brigade, so he would have been on the Common.

Perhaps that detail was too small to mention. Or maybe it never happened, and the sources from the early 1800s are wrong.

We do know there was another wrinkle in Lt. Col. Walcott’s penalty. He was supposed to be “Suspended for the Space of three Months.” However, Gen. Thomas Gage’s orders for 18 April state:

The Commander in Chief is pleas’d to take off the Suspension ordered upon Lt. Coll. Walcott from this Day inclusive; It having Appeared thro’ the course of the tryal, that Ens. Patrick did behave disrespectfull to his Commanding Officer, but it not being inserted in the Crime, the Court did not proceed upon it, & Lt. Coll. Walcott now excuses it, And will not bring it to a Tryal; but the Commander in Chief thinks proper to Warn Ensign Patrick to behave with more respect for the future to his Commanding Officer.

Thus, although the court martial acquitted Ens. Patrick of “Quarrelling,” “giving a blow,” and “giving…a Challange to fight,” he could still have been brought up on charges of being “disrespectfull.”

But Lt. Col. Walcott decided to let that charge lie. Maybe the family relationship between the two men reported by Lt. Mackenzie was a factor. Maybe this forbearance let Walcott show he was behaving as a proper officer again.

As for Gen. Gage, he was about to send 700 or so soldiers to Concord that evening, with another 1,200 to follow them a few hours later. He needed all his regiments working as efficiently as possible, and that meant keeping Lt. Col. Walcott on the job.

The 5th Regiment took casualties on 19 April, and more at Bunker Hill. Ens. Patrick was promoted to lieutenant on 22 November. He was still at that rank in the 1778 Army List.

Lt. Col. Walcott continued to command the regiment as its official colonel, Earl Percy, handled higher responsibilities. In January 1777 Gen. Sir William Howe gave him responsibility for negotiating exchanges of prisoners of war with Gen. George Washington’s military secretary, Robert Hanson Harrison. In October, Walcott was wounded at the Battle of Germantown, and he died on 16 November.

“It means exactly what it says, it’s a declaration”

Back in early March, following reports that Donald Trump was demanding a Declaration of Independence to hang in the Oval Office, I wrote:

Donald Trump doesn’t want the Declaration in his office to honor that text or its values. He wants a rare, beloved national asset brought to him to glorify himself.

Eventually Trump did get a printed Declaration behind a curtain in his heavily guarded workspace, an odd way for it to be “shared and put on display,” as a White House publicist had claimed.

This past week the television journalist Terry Moran visited the Oval Office and asked Trump what the Declaration meant to him. Trump confirmed my reading of his character by offering this ignorant blather:

Well, it means exactly what it says, it’s a declaration, it’s a declaration of unity and love and respect and it means a lot and it’s something very special to our country.

Trump couldn’t explain the meaning of the Declaration, its historical significance, or its relevance to today. His comments reveal his desperation to believe that a rare copy’s presence in his office shows the country feels “unity and love and respect” for him.

Last month the White House issued a proclamation on the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Lexington and Concord, as a Boston 1775 commenter alerted me. This document was obviously not written by Trump since it was focused on the historical event, coherent, and grammatical.

Much of that proclamation landed within the realm of common accuracy. In other words, it made the usual mistakes: that Paul Revere rode to Concord, that the “shot heard ’round the world” happened at Lexington, and so on. But a lot of other cursorily researched descriptions of the 19th of April make those same mistakes.

This White House document, however, made some mistakes all its own. It described the opening skirmish as “The British ambush at Lexington.” It said that at the North Bridge “the startled British opened fire, killing 49 Americans.” The correct number is 2. (The number 49 refers to the total number of provincial dead over the whole day.) Obviously the team drawing public salaries to prepare that proclamation for signature didn’t value fact-checking.

Incidents like these show how hollow the Trump administration’s claim to value American history really is. Behind the rhetorical trumpery, the White House is trying to defund our national parks, museums, libraries, universities, humanities research, public schools, and public television. The only forms of history its occupant shows any sign of valuing are statuary and birthday parades.

“Commitments to equality and democracy and an aversion to aristocratic rule”

Earlier this spring the History News Network published Eran Zelnik’s essay “The Dangerous Afterlives of Lexington and Concord.”

The article states:

According to legend, the Revolutionary War started suddenly, when an aggressive and conceited British regime based in Boston sent soldiers to seize arms stored in Concord. In response, roughhewn American farmers heeded the call to defend their homes and hearths from British tyranny. Miraculously, the underdogs succeeded. The tenacity and will of virile American farmers, it turned out, could vanquish a well-trained army of British Regulars, foreshadowing the ultimate success of the American Revolution as a monumental event in world history.

This mythology, however, is inaccurate. In reality, the Americans were initially overwhelmed by extensive British forces at Lexington.

The redcoats’ overwhelming attack on the Lexington militia companies has been a vital part of the story from the beginning, never denied by “mythology.” Patriot propagandists even played up that violence, insisting the British attack was unprovoked.

In the 1800s local chroniclers added some face-saving details of counterattacks, like some of the Lexington company firing back and Capt. John Parker leading his men to ambush the British as they came back into town in the afternoon. But no one ever claimed that Lexington was where American farmers “succeeded” in stopping the regulars.

Zelnik’s command of detail goes down from there:

But the larger force of fighters that engaged the Redcoats further along the road in the Battle of Concord led the British to retreat to Boston, so as not to be stranded so far from reinforcements.

The British plan was always to search Concord and then return as quickly as possible, meeting reinforcements on the way. The exchange of fire at Concord’s North Bridge alarmed the British commanders, but it didn’t really hurry them.

It was on the road back to Boston — not in Lexington and Concord — where most of the fighting took place, and that counterassault was largely led not by militia members, but rather by minutemen. These highly trained units, composed of thousands of the region’s hardiest gun-owning fighters, were accustomed to irregular guerilla warfare. During the Seven Years’ War (1754-63) many New Englanders had served in provincial regiments that proved crucial for turning the tide of war in favor of the British.

The minute companies were part of the militia system. Generally those men had more equipment and training than average, but how much more varied from town to town. Zelnik implies the minutemen were drawn from veterans of the war that had ended twelve years before. In fact, they were usually the younger militia members, less likely to have seen combat. (And few British officers in the Seven Years’ War would have agreed that the provincial troops were their crucial edge.)

Moreover, since the British had sent several expeditions into rural Massachusetts over previous months that turned out to be dry runs for April 19, the minutemen were already drilled and ready when the actual fighting began.

The minute companies started to form in the fall of 1774. There was only one British expedition after that season—to Marblehead and Salem, large coastal towns, in February 1775. The regulars also made a handful of practice marches that provoked militia alarms, but those went no farther than two towns outside of Boston. Few of the militiamen who marched on 19 April had seen redcoats in any numbers.

These misconceptions are a shame because Zelnik’s hypothesis is sound: “more than any other moment in the nation’s collective memory of the war, the myth of Lexington and Concord has for generations represented commitments to equality and democracy and an aversion to aristocratic rule.”

Furthermore, he’s right in warning that that national myth’s “commitments to equality and democracy” have at many times been hijacked by people who want “equality and democracy” only for part of American society—which isn’t equality and democracy at all.

Panel on “Lexington and Concord” in D.C., 29 Apr.

On Tuesday, 29 April, the American Revolution Institute in Washington, D.C., will host a panel discussion on “The Battles of Lexington and Concord.”

This is the first of the institute’s planned eight years of “250th anniversary celebrations of the American Revolution.”

The institute has announced:

Historians on the panel include J. L. Bell discussing the prelude of the two events of April 19, 1775; Alexander Cain discussing the engagements through the perspectives of the battles’ participants and civilian eyewitnesses; and Jarrad Fuoss of Minute Man National Historical Park discussing recent archaeological studies and findings and how they have enhanced the interpretation of the battles.

Because of increased government restrictions on employee travel, Jarrad Fuoss will be speaking through a video hookup. Alex Cain and I will be roughing it inside Anderson House, the Society of the Cincinnati’s headquarters and research library in Washington.

Through this webpage, people can register to attend in person or online. The panel will be recorded for posting on the institute’s YouTube page.

The discussion is scheduled to start at 6:30 P.M. and run for an hour, though I’m sure the folks involved would be happy to keep talking about the start of the Revolutionary War as long as we can. 

“A daughter of liberty, unequally yoked in point of politics”?

In his 1788 history of the American Revolution, the Rev. William Gordon shared this anecdote about what led up to the British army march on Concord:

A daughter of liberty, unequally yoked in point of politics, sent word, by a trusty hand, to Mr. Samuel Adams, residing in company with Mr. [John] Hancock at Lexington, about thirteen miles from Charlestown, that the troops were coming out in a few days.

Gordon was close to Adams, as other stories in his book indicate. Adams clearly knew the identity of this “daughter of liberty,” and Gordon might have known as well, but the book kept her name secret. Presumably she was still expected to appear loyal to a husband whose politics she didn’t share.

Some authors have taken this early statement as evidence that Margaret Gage might have leaked her husband’s plan for the march on Concord to Dr. Joseph Warren just before he dispatched William Dawes to Lexington. I don’t think that holds up to scrutiny, from several angles.

First, this “daughter of liberty” provided information to Adams, not Warren, and “a few days” before the march, not the evening it began. There’s no reason to believe those two informants were the same person—nor any indication that Warren’s source was a woman. (Once again, I think the doctor got the dope from William Jasper.)

Second, this “daughter of liberty” was worried that Hancock and Adams would be arrested, as was Warren, but someone truly privy to Gen. Thomas Gage’s plan would have known he was focused on the military supplies in Concord.

Third, while Margaret Gage expressed sadness at the prospect of war between Britain and the American colonies, she never showed any affinity for the Patriot cause. In fact, there doesn’t appear to be any evidence she ever even met Patriot leaders.

I think there are many stronger candidates to be this “daughter of liberty, unequally yoked in point of politics.” (Gordon took that phrase “unequally yoked” from Paul’s second epistle to the Corinthians.)

In my talk to the Colonial Society of Massachusetts last week, now viewable online, I shared my current idea of the most likely candidate.

TOMORROW: Gosh, this is suspenseful, isn’t it?

Yesterday’s Posts

I’m home from Battle Road 250, at which I watched the Parker’s Revenge tactical demonstration, said hello to several excellent local reenactors, heard a fine talk by Matthew Keagle of Fort Ticonderoga, and chatted with the Emerging Revolutionary War crew.

I capped that off with dinner with Lee Wright of The Pursuit of History, discussing different possible future projects, including upcoming weekend events.

During the day I was gratified to see two big newspapers air two of my pet theories about the start of the Revolutionary War.

The Washington Post published David Kindy’s article “Who really fired the shot that started the American Revolution?” in its Retropolis section. That delves into the mysterious first shot at Lexington.

(I suspect Kindy’s editor was responsible for the subhead referring to that as “the shot heard round the world,” which was Ralph Waldo Emerson’s term for the first return fire at Concord.)

Following up on a tip from me, Kindy focused on young Lexington militia man Solomon Brown.

“It’s not that I think he is definitely the man who fired first,” states historian and author J.L. Bell, who writes the daily blog Boston 1775 about the American Revolution. “But if I could go back in time, he’s the first person on my list that I would want to interrogate.”

The previous day, the same Washington Post section ran “Was a woman the informant who helped launch the American Revolution?” by Petula Dvorak. That article went over the theory advanced in the newspaper’s editorial a century ago (and circulating at least sixty years before that): that Margaret Gage leaked her husband’s plans for the Concord march to Patriot leaders.

That article prompted Dana Kennedy to write “Inside one of the biggest conspiracy theories of the American Revolution: That a woman may have kick-started the whole thing” for the New York Post.

Kennedy gave me a chance to spout off on weak points in the theory:

“I don’t think anybody actually leaked it,” Bell, who also runs the blog Boston 1775, told The Post. He believes that Joseph Warren and others had been gleaning information about British troop movements from a variety of sources and events.

“For one thing, Gage’s plan was to send troops to Concord, but Warren told them to just go to Lexington. Revere and Dawes went on to Concord on their own accord.”

If anything, Bell thinks the spy might have well been a pragmatic British-born knifemaker named William Jasper. He was renting a room to a British sergeant who may have unwittingly trusted him with the army’s plans.

“Unfortunately, that story is a lot less sexy and about a person we’ve never heard of,” Bell said.

Kennedy also quotes Alexander Cain of Historical Nerdery and Emily Murphy of the Salem Maritime National Historical Site. Sensible people who, of course, are on the same side of the debate as me.

[The photo above shows a British army reenacting unit in the Lexington town parade and comes from the Pursuit of History Twitter feed.]

Counterfactual 4: If No One Had Died at Lexington or Concord

Building on my counterfactual of what might have happened if Paul Revere and William Dawes had never brought their warning to Lexington, I reached the moment when the militiamen of Concord saw smoke rising above their town.

Under the scenario so far, the lack of urgent alerts out of Boston had no effect on the safety of John Hancock and Samuel Adams (who were never in great danger, despite their worries) or the quantity of military supplies the redcoats found (since James Barrett and his crew had already moved most of that stuff).

But that counterfactual situation would have delayed the response from towns around Concord, meaning fewer militia companies would have joined the local men on the hill overlooking the North Bridge.

We know those men were of two minds about confronting the regulars. They stayed on that hill for about two hours, marching down only after thinking other soldiers had set fire to the center of town. Then, after a fatal exchange of fire had chased the company from the bridge, they pulled back for another couple of hours.

Given those real-life details, I posited yesterday that the militia men would have been more wary about marching down on the bridge if there had been fewer of them. And eventually the smoke from town would have stopped, lessening the urgency.

In real life, after the shooting the militia companies moved around the north side of Concord and then massed east of the town. At Meriam’s Corner, once the regulars had left the most populated area, the provincials started to shoot at the column. Would that have happened the same way in this what-if scenario?

The very big difference in this counterfactual is that no one has yet been killed. There was no shooting in Lexington or at the North Bridge. Neither side had seen deaths to avenge. As long as the two groups of armed men remained at a distance, neither would have felt themselves to be under imminent threat.

In that case, the afternoon might have proceeded like the end of Lt. Col. Alexander Leslie’s raid on Salem in February: with the regulars marching in order back to where they came from while the local militia regiments watched sullenly to be sure they left. Lt. Col. Francis Smith’s men would have met Col. Percy’s reinforcement column somewhere in west Cambridge, and they would all have returned to Boston.

As it happened in April 1775, the bloodshed along the Battle Road motivated a militia siege of Boston. The committee of safety and its generals didn’t have to choose that policy; it came about naturally as militia companies massed off the peninsulas of Boston and Charlestown. Without deaths, the provincials wouldn’t have felt so much fervency, so the situation might have remained as it was: no military siege, but the countryside beyond Boston outside of royal control.

In the ensuing days, the Patriot press would have made the most of the army incursion into people’s homes while also trumpeting how the raid had found so little. The newspapers would have celebrated the escape of Hancock and Adams. They would have lauded the strong unified response of the Massachusetts militia.

As for Gen. Thomas Gage, he would have been pleased not to lose any men but frustrated at not capturing all the artillery pieces and other weapons he wanted to destroy. And how would he explain the mission to his superiors in London after they’d advised him to do something else?

Of course, that scenario doesn’t include any of the near-random events that can ignite violence, like the first shot at Lexington. What if British troops and Massachusetts militia did bump into each other somewhere? What if military patrols stopping Revere or Dawes before they got to Lexington meant that one of those popular Bostonians had wound up dead?

And even if the 18–19 April expedition did end without bloodshed, the conflict and tensions in Massachusetts would have remained unresolved. Gen. Gage’s next mission could have started the war instead, just a few weeks later.

Counterfactual 3: If Prescott Hadn’t Alerted Concord

Continuing my speculation about what might have happened if Paul Revere and William Dawes hadn’t alerted Lexington about the regulars coming out, I’m now going to look at Concord.

This post was prompted by the suggestion in Kostya Kennedy’s book The Ride that if Revere hadn’t ridden out on 18 April “the munitions at Concord could have been seized.”

That’s mistaken because militia colonel James Barrett, his helpers, and his family had started moving the most valuable military supplies out of town days before the British army march. In part because Revere had brought a warning from Boston on an earlier ride. 

On 6 April, James Warren was in Concord for a meeting of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, and he wrote to his wife Mercy: “This Town is full of Cannon, ammunition, stores, etc., and the Army long for them and they want nothing but strength to Induce an attempt on them.”

But when the redcoats arrived, Ens. Henry DeBerniere said, they “did not find so much as we expected.” Specifically, he reported:

Capt. [Mundy] Pole of 10th regiment…knock’d the trunnions off three iron 24 pound cannon and burnt their carriages; they also destroyed a quantity of flour, and some barrels of trenchers and spoons of wood for their camp.

At Barrett’s farm the soldiers burned some more carriage wheels. But the town was obviously no longer “full” of military stores. And that change had taken days, not a few hours.

If the British expedition hadn’t paused in Lexington but marched straight through, as I posited yesterday, the vanguard would probably have arrived in Concord less than half an hour earlier. Some of the local militia might have been on alert, but without Dr. Samuel Prescott’s warning, it probably wouldn’t have been at full force.

But would that have mattered at first? When the regulars approached the town, the Concord militia marched away and took a position on a hill west of the North Bridge. Other men and then other town companies joined them there while the redcoats searched both the town and Barrett’s farm.

Without the earlier alerts from Revere riding west from Medford to Lincoln and the Prescott brothers riding out of Concord, those militia companies from other towns wouldn’t have joined the Concord companies as quickly as they did. It’s thus possible there would have been significantly fewer men on that hill when smoke began to rise from the center of town, where redcoats were burning carriage wheels (and, briefly, the town house).

The Concord men might have been just as upset by the sight of that smoke, but might not have felt their numbers were strong enough to do anything about it. And eventually the smoke would have dissipated as people in town succeeded in dousing the fire. So the provincials might never have made their fatal march down to the bridge, with the Acton company in the lead.

TOMORROW: The battle that never was.

Revisiting the Spies of 1775

I recently spoke in the Acton 250 series of talks on the start of the Revolutionary War.

My topic was “The Spies of 1775,” reeling off stories of disparate people drawn into intelligence-gathering efforts on both sides of the siege lines around Boston.

Since I didn’t want to go back over the spies at the center of The Road to Concord, I talked about:

• Henry Knox
• William Jasper
• Dr. Benjamin Church, Jr.
• Benjamin Thompson
• Julien-Alexandre Achard de Bonvouloir et Loyauté
• Rev. John Carnes
• Thomas Machin
• Mary Wenwood
• John Skey Eustace

The Acton Exchange just reported on the event:

Speaking to a capacity audience in the Francis Falkner Hearing Room on March 31, author and historian John L. Bell related a fascinating story of the spies used by the commanders on both sides of the conflict. While many informants chose to provide information due to loyalty to their cause, others were primarily driven by money, property, revenge, or self-promotion.

Acton 250 television has now posted its video recording of the event, neatly edited to remove evidence of some technical difficulties.

And here’s a postscript to that evening. On Friday I participated in the conference “1775: A Society on the Brink of War and Revolution” hosted by the Concord Museum and organized by the David Center for the American Revolution at the American Philosophical Society and and the Massachusetts Historical Society.

That program included Iris de Rode from the University of Virginia presenting on “French Observers of Early American Unrest: How Lexington and Concord Shaped France’s Entry into the American Revolution.” Among other people she discussed Bonvouloir, one of the spies I’d described in Acton, so I gossiped with her afterwards.

Bonvouloir and his companion, the Chevalier d’Amboise, were in London in the late summer of 1775. A British government agent pumped them for information. The Frenchmen described witnessing “the Affair of Lexington, and the Affair of the 17th [Bunker Hill].” They claimed to have met “Putnam and Ward.”

But Dr. de Rode said that there’s no evidence of similar reports in French government sources. Even though Bonvouloir lobbied to become his government’s agent to the American rebels, which would make his experience with the war relevant, he doesn’t appear to have told those stories to the French ambassador to pass on to the Foreign Ministry. So she thinks he was just talking through his no doubt fashionable hat.

The British intelligence service was definitely shadowing Bonvouloir in London, and he was definitely involved in a secret mission to Philadelphia at the end of 1775. So he fits into a talk on spies. But whether he was in New England in 1775 is in question. I must consider the possibility that in London he engaged in a disinformation campaign—not to help the Americans or the French but to make himself look more important.

Making Plans for Battle Road 250

If you hope to visit the reenactments on Lexington common or Minute Man National Historical Park on Saturday, 19 April, it’s not too early to make plans about how to get there.

Between the local parades and the out-of-town crowds, moving around will be a challenge.

Here are three overlapping websites with transport information:

• Lexington 250
• Minute Man Park
• Concord 250

Basically, unless you live nearby or drive in well before dawn, you should expect to park at a distance from the events and then catch one of the many shuttle buses to within walking distance of the action you want to see.

The M.B.T.A. will run extra commuter trains on the Boston-Fitchburg line, but it won’t let passengers bring bicycles on board. 

There’s no food service inside Minute Man National Historical Park, and for security reasons visitors shouldn’t bring coolers. There are drinking fountains at the visitor centers, Hartwell Tavern, and the Nathan Meriam House. In addition to those sites’ usual restrooms, there will be portable toilets at Lexington’s satellite parking lots.

I recommend choosing which events you want to enjoy, heading for those, and enjoying the details rather than trying to see everything everywhere. The Battle Road 250 event inside Minute Man Park promises to be the largest, most accurate historical portrayal yet! And of course, we should hope for good weather.

Afternoon Talks in Lexington and Boston

Next week I have two afternoon speaking engagements that will also be available online to people in the know.

Monday, 14 April, 1:15 P.M.
Secrets on the Road to Concord
Lexington Veterans Association

In April 1775, British general Thomas Gage drew up plans for his troops to march nineteen miles into unfriendly territory. The Massachusetts Patriots, meanwhile, prepared to thwart the general’s mission. There was one goal Gage and his enemies shared: for different reasons, they all wanted to keep secret just what those troops would look for in Concord.

This will be the latest variation of my talk on Gen. Gage’s fateful mission. I continue to investigate that event, particularly the identity of the spy in Concord who sent him very good intelligence in very bad French. Alas, I don’t have any new discoveries to debut here.

The Zoom link for this talk is on this page. Other speakers in this series appear here.

Thursday, 17 April, 3 P.M.
The Mystery of Joseph Warren’s Informants
Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 87 Mount Vernon Street, Boston

According to one early source, as the last step before sending William Dawes and Paul Revere off to Lexington, Dr. Joseph Warren consulted with one crucial informant. Was that Margaret Gage? William Jasper? Another individual? Or is that story simply unreliable?

I’ll retrace my thinking on those questions and discuss the historiography around that issue. When did historians begin to investigate that person? How did the campaign for women’s suffrage color the discussion? And what does it mean that Dr. Warren’s intelligence was wrong?

This talk can be watched online by following the instructions at the bottom of this page.

Why Did Gage “order their muzzles to be beat in”?

When I spoke to the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati in February, a descendant of artillerist William Burbeck asked me a provocative question about The Road to Concord.

After the Boston militia train’s four brass cannon after they disappeared in September 1774, Gen. Thomas Gage expended a lot of effort on locating them. In February 1775 he may have sent Capt. William Browne and Ens. Henry DeBerniere to Worcester to hunt for them.

Gage definitely sent Lt. Col. Alexander Leslie and his troops to Salem to seize them. He sent Browne and DeBerniere to Concord to confirm they were in that town, and then he organized the fatal expedition on 18–19 April to grab them.

Gage’s final orders for the commander of that April expedition, Lt. Col. Francis Smith, said: “If you meet any Brass Artillery, you will order their muzzles to be beat in so as to render them useless.”

After all that hunting, why didn’t Gage order those guns to be returned to Boston?

Here’s my analysis of the general’s thinking and why he’d have been happy to hear that those four cannon were destroyed. (As it happened, Patriots had already moved them beyond Concord, perhaps to Stow, by the time the redcoats arrived at James Barrett’s farm.)

First of all, those four cannon didn’t pose a big military threat. They were two- and three-pounders, fine for training on but not the biggest force in battle. The Royal Artillery had many more and bigger weapons. Furthermore, intelligence suggested that the Patriots hadn’t succeeded in mounting them well.

Rather, I posit, those field-pieces posed a bigger threat to Gage’s standing with his superiors in London. He had put sentries in front of the armories, patrols on the Boston streets, and guards at the town’s only gate—and yet those four guns had disappeared. Gage had reasons to suspect they had also been slipped past Leslie’s reach in Salem before being moved to Concord. (In fact, they arrived in Concord from Dorchester, but he didn’t know that.) In sum, those four brass cannon made him look utterly incompetent.

The general never reported the disappearance of those guns to Lord Dartmouth, Secretary of State, or Lord Barrington, Secretary of War. In fact, in describing the Salem mission, he suggested that he had intelligence about cannon being smuggled in from Dutch territory; there’s no such report in his file. As each month ticked by, Gage may have felt more pressure to resolve this problem before his bosses learned about it.

Thus, Gen. Gage’s top goal for the Concord expedition wasn’t to recover those guns—it was to make their potential to embarrass him go away. Turning the four cannon into useless hunks of bronze out in the countryside looked like the most efficient way to do that. Then he could report to London that his men had succeeded in destroying all the artillery they found without raising many questions.

In contrast, carting those field-pieces back to Boston would have prompted questions about where they had come from. Country folk would have seen them, as would the soldiers themselves. Boston militia leaders might have demanded them back (playing dumb about who stole them). The ministers in London may have become curious. All that would have made it harder to keep the embarrassing story of the cannon thefts quiet.

Gage was also concerned for his soldiers. Hauling several hundred pounds of metal along the road to Boston would have required a wagon and horses, plus men guarding that transport, all moving more slowly than soldiers on the march. The general didn’t send Lt. Col. Smith out with wagons because he wanted the troops to move fast—expeditiously, in fact. Even if they had confiscated a wagon and draft horses in Concord, their return trip would be slower if they brought the cannon along.

Gage actually gave orders for the regulars not to weigh themselves down too much:

You will order a Trunion to be knocked off each Gun, but if its found impracticable on any, they must be spiked, and the Carriages destroyed. The Powder and flower must be shook out of the Barrels into the River, the Tents burnt, Pork or Beef destroyed in the best way you can devise. And the Men may put Balls of lead in their pockets, throwing them by degrees into Ponds, Ditches &c., but no Quantity together, so that they may be recovered afterwards.

The goal was to destroy the provincials’ military supplies as quickly as possible and then get back to safety. He hoped Smith’s men would be able to meet up with Col. Earl Percy’s relief column before the rebels organized a military response. That didn’t happen. But the situation would probably have been even worse if the troops were withdrawing from Concord at wagon speed.

Planning for the Sestercentennial of Battle of Lexington and Concord

As the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Lexington and Concord approaches, I’ve gotten requests for information about where the commemorations will happen.

The answer is that they’ll happen all over because that battle didn’t take place on one field, but spread out over twenty miles.

Furthermore, we New Englanders like our traditions. Many towns and organizations have their own time-honored ways of celebrating the anniversary: local parades, marches, pancake breakfasts, and the like. We’re not going to cancel those just because this anniversary ends in 50.

That said, because of the Sestercentennial many of our commemorations this year will be much bigger than usual: more participants, more spectators, more traffic. And that’s not counting the potential complications from the weather and from Washington, D.C.

Therefore, my only recommendation is to choose a couple of events to enjoy from the many on the schedule. But don’t assume that when I say “schedule,” there is one master schedule. Oh, no, that’s not how we operate here. Here are multiple sources to consult, and I don’t claim this list is exhaustive.

Battleroad.org is a venerable website [check out that coding!] which is updated each year with the latest details about events in Middlesex County. These include celebrations on the weekend before the big anniversary, such as Bedford’s pole-capping and Lincoln’s Paul Revere Capture ceremony. More events in early April appear on Minute Man National Historical Park’s page.

On Friday, 18 April, the National Parks of Boston, the Paul Revere House, and the Old North Church all have events linked to the start of Paul Revere’s ride to Lexington. Those three links go to overlapping lists of offerings, which include a reading of the play Revolution’s Edge, a reenactment of Revere’s movements, the lighting of two lanterns in the steeple, a talk by Prof. Heather Cox Richardson, and a talk by me. It’s impossible to see all those since the whole point is that they’re on opposite sides of the Charles River.

Saturday, 19 April, will start with the confrontation on Lexington common; see the Lexington 250 events calendar. Then the action moves into Minute Man Park for the clash at Concord’s North Bridge, followed by what promises to be the largest, most authentic reenactment ever of the fighting along the Battle Road. The best information on those happenings and how to enjoy them safely comes from the park.

This year the reenacting continues on Sunday afternoon with the Battle of Menotomy along Massachusetts Avenue in Arlington. The setting looks modern, but it’s the actual ground of the bloodiest fighting in April 1775.

Monday is of course Patriots’ Day, the state holiday best known for the Boston Marathon. And the celebrations aren’t over yet. It looks like the Lincoln Salute for fife and drum corps has been pushed to 27 April, for example. So choose your fighters.

“Secrets on the Road to Concord” in Scituate, 15 May

On Saturday I attended the “Spies Among Us” event in Concord, described back here.

Top highlights:

• Seeing the Wright Tavern sprucing up as it prepares to reopen to the public next month, including the Pursuit of History weekend on “The Outbreak of War” that I’m helping to organize there (a couple of seats may still be available).
• Enjoying all the special touches the National Park Service staff and volunteers brought to this event, including a full-size replica of Ens. Henry DeBerniere’s map from the Library of Congress and a Concord role-playing game.
• Hearing details about what brought the British troops to Concord and remembering back during the 2000 commemoration when many of those were still little beads I was trying to string together into a narrative that became The Road to Concord.

So I’m eager to keep spreading the word at my upcoming speaking engagement for the Scituate Historical Society. [This event was originally scheduled for March and postponed.]

Thursday, 15 May, 7–8:30 P.M.
Secrets on the Road to Concord
G.A.R. Hall, 353 Country Way, Scituate

Early in the spring of 1775, British army spies located four brass cannon belonging to Boston’s colonial militia that had gone missing months before. British general Thomas Gage devised plans to regain the cannon. Massachusetts Patriots prepared to thwart the general’s hopes. Each side wanted control of those weapons, but each also had reasons to keep their existence a secret. That conflict would end with blood on the road to Concord.

Admission is $15, or $10 for society members. Reservations are recommended, but payment will be accepted at the door.

I look forward to meeting more folks in shoreside Plymouth County.

(The picture above is a page from one of Scituate Historical Society’s artifacts of the 1770s: Caleb Litchfield’s notebook from when he was a teenager studying mathematics and navigation. Litchfield served in the Continental forces on land and sea during the war. After a brief time as a merchant ship’s master, he retired inland to Milton and then Weathersfield, Vermont.)

Abraham Fuller and “the exact records of the military stores”

Yesterday I quoted a description of the Rev. Jonathan Homer of Newton late in life, by the poet and doctor Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Homer’s writings include a “Description and History of Newton, in the County of Middlesex,” published in the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1798. And that article includes an anecdote related to the British army expedition to Concord 250 years ago next month.

In writing about the local politician Abraham Fuller (1720–1794), Homer said:

To him, as principal of a committee of the Provincial Congress at Concord, were committed the papers containing the exact records of the military stores in Massachusetts at the beginning of 1775. Upon the recess of the Congress, he first lodged these papers in a cabinet of the room which the committee occupied.

But thinking afterwards, that the British troops might attempt to seize Concord in the absence of the Congress, and that these papers, discovering the public deficiency in every article of military apparatus, might fall into their hands, he withdrew them, and brought them to his house at Newton.

That foresight and judgment, for which he was ever distinguished, and which he displayed in the present instance, was extremely fortunate for the country. The cabinet was broken open by a British officer on the day of the entrance of the troops into Concord, April 19, 1775, and great disappointment expressed at missing its expected contents.

Had they fallen into their hands, it was his opinion, that the knowledge of the public deficiency might have encouraged the enemy, at this early period, to have made such a use of their military force, as could not have been resisted by the small stock of powder and other articles of war which the province then contained. He considered the impulse upon his mind to secure these papers, as one among many providential interpositions for the support of the American cause.

Fuller was indeed a member of a Massachusetts Provincial Congress committee appointed on 22 Mar 1775 “to receive the returns of the several officers of militia, of their numbers and equipments,” plus inventories of the towns’ “stock of ammunition.”

He wasn’t the senior member, named first and thus by tradition the chair. All the others—Timothy Danielson of Brimfield; Joseph Henshaw of Leicester, Spencer, and Paxton; James Prescott of Groton; and Michael Farley of Ipswich—were colonels in the Massachusetts militia while Fuller was still a major. But he lived the closest to Concord, so it makes sense he felt responsible for securing the committee’s sensitive records.

(I should note that at this time, the congress included both Abraham Fuller from Newton and Archelaus Fuller from Middleton, and that spring both men held the militia rank of major. Sometimes clerk Benjamin Lincoln remembered to identify which “Major Fuller” the congress meant, and sometimes not. In this case, the official record dovetails with Homer’s story.)

Another version of this anecdote appears in the family genealogy Records of Some of the Descendants of John Fuller, Newton, 1644–1698, published in 1869 by Samuel C. Clarke:

Judge Fuller was a very earnest patriot before the Revolution, and it is told that previous to the fight at Concord, fearing that the British might destroy the County Records at that place, he rode over from Newton the day before the fight, and carried away the most valuable of the papers in his saddlebags to his house in Newton.

Interestingly, in a footnote Clarke quoted Homer’s text, which says Fuller hid sensitive records for the whole province, making his action more important. Yet Clarke stuck to what seems to be the family’s idea that those were only “County Records.” In a way they were, since the militia regiments were organized at the county level.

Clarke’s version also said that Fuller wanted to prevent the British regulars from destroying those records rather then to prevent those soldiers from reading them. That seems more in keeping with the Patriot mindset in early April 1775. They thought they were preparing well for war, not woefully deficient, and feared the army might destroy their means of self-governance.

All that said, I’ve never come across evidence that the British troops in Concord were looking for Provincial Congress records. Gen. Thomas Gage didn’t gather any intelligence about where those documents were kept or put them on his list of what the regulars should look for. No British officers on the march described such a search.

I therefore think that everything Homer wrote about “a British officer” breaking into the cabinet because he “expected” to find records inside is probably imaginary.

Fuller took care to keep those papers away from the army, just as Paul Revere and John Lowell took care to move John Hancock’s trunk into the woods at Lexington, and just as Azor Orne, Elbridge Gerry, and Jeremiah Lee took care to hide from the troops passing by their tavern in west Cambridge. But that doesn’t mean those careful actions thwarted the British mission in any way. We like to think our actions have an effect on the world.

(The photo above, courtesy of Find a Grave, shows the Fuller family tomb in Newton’s east burying-ground. It’s about half a mile from my house.)

“Spies Among Us” in Concord, 22 Mar.

On Saturday, 22 March, Minute Man National Historical Park and local partners will present a day of presentations and activities on the topic “‘Spies Among Us’: Intelligence Gathering by the British Army and Provincial Congress.”

This event will take place at the Wright Tavern in the center of Concord, a building that Massachusetts Provincial Congress committees and Lt. Col. Francis Smith both used at different times in April 1775.

National Park Service Rangers and volunteer living historians are preparing to welcome visitors to an open house from 10 A.M. to 4 P.M., when they can see the newly refurbished tavern interior and learn about life in Middlesex County as the spring of 1775 began.

According to the current schedule, at 11 A.M. and 2 P.M. former Ranger Thompson Dasher will speak on “‘For the Information of Gen. Gage’: The British Spy Mission to Concord.” This interactive program will put visitors in the position of Concord citizens in March 1775 when Capt. William Brown and Ens. Henry DeBerniere of the British army came to town in disguise, gathering intelligence about hidden weapons.

Plans for this event had to be changed last month when the White House fired one Minute Man Park interpretive ranger, among several hundred more “probationary” employees across the agency—mainly public servants who had been in their current jobs for less than a year. For a short time it appeared that “Spies Among Us” would even be canceled.

Congress just funded the federal government through the end of its fiscal year in September, providing a little more stability. However, the executive branch continues to hold back legally authorized funds and initiatives, acting like a developer stiffing contractors after they’ve finished their work. It continues to break contracts and policies. Therefore, I doubt we’ve seen the end of trouble for public servants doing the jobs they were hired to do.

Five weeks from now, on Saturday, 19 April, Minute Man Park will host the Battle Road Tactical Demonstration—the largest, most authentic Revolutionary War reenactment yet planned. That event depends on on the expertise, authority, and coordination of the Park Service. It would be a damn shame if it’s made more difficult by monarchical impulses out of Washington.

N.P.S. personnel have been told to assure the public all is well. Propublica reported, “If asked about limited offerings, one park’s rangers were instructed to say ‘we are not able to address park or program-level impacts at this time.’” So we can only hope for the best.

On a less galling note, the Wright Tavern is also the home base for the Pursuit of History weekend on “The Outbreak of War,” scheduled for 3–6 April. We’ve planned that event to include visits to historic sites both in Minute Man Park and outside, and we have contingency plans for different situations. I understand a couple of slots have opened up, so it’s still possible to join us in exploring the start of the Revolutionary War.

“1775: A Society on the Brink” Conference in Concord, 11–12 Apr.

On 10–11 April, the Concord Museum will host a conference, organized with the David Center for the American Revolution at the American Philosophical Society and the Massachusetts Historical Society, on the topic “1775: A Society on the Brink of War and Revolution.”

The full schedule is available here.

The conference will start with a reception on Thursday evening, followed by a keynote discussion at 7 P.M.:

From Boycotts to Bullets: Was the Outbreak of the American Revolution Inevitable?

• Serena Zabin, Carleton College
• Robert A. Gross, University of Connecticut, Emeritus
• Katherine Grandjean, Wellesley College

On Friday, 11 April, the day will be devoted to five paper sessions, each seventy-five minutes long and featuring three papers by scholars ranging from graduate school to emeritus rank. A panel moderator will offer commentary and coordinate questions from the floor. One of those panels stands out for me—I’m sure you’ll see why.

9 A.M.: Faith and Ideas

10:30 A.M.: Communities in Crisis

• Donald Johnson, North Dakota State University, “From Observers to Generals: The Transformation of Local Committees at the Outset of the Revolutionary War”
• Sarah Pearlman Shapiro, Brown University, “Care Work Vulnerabilities and Sexual Assault in 1775 Boston”
• Kevin M. Sweeney, Amherst College, Emeritus, “The Guns of April: Kinds and Quantities of Firearms Kept and Borne in 1775”
• Comment: J. L. Bell, Boston1775.net

1:30 P.M.: The Coming of War

3:00 P.M.: Myth, Material, and Memory

4:15 P.M.: Concluding Remarks

The conference registration is only $20 and includes the Thursday evening reception and a boxed lunch on Friday. All attendees must register in advance. I hope to see some of you there!

Chatting with Some Revolutionary Figures

Here are a couple of first-person interpretations of Revolutionary figures to enjoy next week.

Wednesday, 19 March, 7 to 8 P.M.
Affectionate Friends and Humble Servants: Martha Washington and Mercy Otis Warren in Conversation
Concord Museum

Set in the late 18th century, this forum presents a fictional dialogue featuring Martha Washington (portrayed by Sandy Spector), the First Lady, and Mercy Otis Warren (portrayed by Michele Gabrielson), a prominent playwright and activist. In a cozy parlor setting, they discuss their friendship, their respective roles during the revolutionary era, and the challenges they encountered.

Through a mix of dialogue and historical anecdotes, their conversation highlights their personal reflections and the broader political context, emphasizing the bond that contributed to their influence on the emerging nation.

Admission is $10, or free to museum members. This event will not be livestreamed. Click here to reserve seats.

Thursday, 20 March, 6 to 8 P.M.
Fireside Chat with Paul Revere
Wayside Inn, Sudbury

Join Paul Revere by the fireside at this historic tavern for a spirited review of the notoriously inaccurate Longfellow poem that immortalized his “Midnight Ride.” Heavy hors d’oeuvres included with the price of a ticket, and drinks will be available for purchase at the bar. For the last thirty minutes of this event, interpreter Michael Lepage will step out of character to answer questions about the work that goes into representing historical figures.

Tickets are $20 for members of the Wayside Inn Foundation or the Paul Revere House, $25 for nonmembers. Phone 978-443-1776×1 to reserve tickets at the member price. For general-admission tickets without the member discount, click here.

Upcoming Events from American Ancestors

American Ancestors (née the New England Historic Genealogical Society) is offering two free online presentations this week about the Revolution.

Thursday, 13 March, 3 to 4 P.M.
Friend or Foe: Researching Colonial Ancestors During the American Revolution
David Allen Lambert

Nearly 250 years ago, America declared its independence from the British Empire, changing the course of history. While many took up the cause and supported revolution, others remained loyal to the British government—turning friends into foes and pitting neighbor against neighbor. In this online lecture, Chief Genealogist Lambert will discuss how to research your colonial ancestors and determine if—and how—they may have served the cause of the American Revolution.

Sign up here.

Friday, 15 March, 4 to 5:15 P.M.
Eyewitness to Revolution
David Wood

This illustrated talk will focus on the stories told by objects in the Concord Museum collection about the lead-up to April 19, 1775, and the epochal day itself. In the aggregate, these stories contribute forcefully to an understanding that the Revolution, the great turn from a monarchy to a republic, was already over well before the day the Revolutionary War began.

Wood, Curator of the Concord Museum, has served at the Museum since 1985 and provides deep knowledge of the collection and Concord history. He has overseen the development of over 40 temporary exhibitions and galleries.

Sign up here.

Next month, American Ancestors has some more events on its schedule.

Wednesdays in April, 6 P.M.
Revolutionary War Research: Tracing Patriot and Loyalist Ancestors
Sheilagh Doerfler, David Allen Lambert, Melanie McComb

This is a more advanced online course in researching different types of genealogical records. The tuition is $125. For more information, look here.

Finally, after a multi-year renovation project, American Ancestors is reopening its headquarters with expanded space at 97 Newbury Street on Thursday, 24 April. Congratulations to all!

Zannieri and Martello on Paul Revere in Concord, 25 Feb.

On Tuesday, 25 February, the Concord Museum will host a lecture on “Paul Revere: The Man, the Myth, the Legacy.”

This presentation will be delivered jointly by:

• Nina Zannieri, Executive Director of the Paul Revere Memorial Association, which operates the Paul Revere House in the North End of Boston.
• Robert Martello, Professor of the History of Science and Technology at Olin College of Engineering and author of Midnight Ride, Industrial Dawn: Paul Revere and the Growth of American Enterprise.

Revere is, of course, best known for his ride on 18–19 Apr 1775, spreading word of the British army march. He did indeed do that, but his prominence in American culture derives from Henry W. Longfellow turning him into a legend in 1861. The Paul Revere House has to help visitors sort out the history from the myth.

Because the history is even more interesting, if not as poetic. Before the war Revere was a political activist, among the most prominent from the mechanics class. Afterwards, he was a leader in Massachusetts’s business community and an early factory owner, the portion of his life that Prof. Martello studies.

This situation produces a paradox: Revere deserves to be remembered and studied in American history. But he’s a household name for actions that he did only part of, and which may not have been that crucial in history.

For an example on a smaller scale, generations of American schoolchildren have heard Longfellow’s lines:

It was two by the village clock,
When he came to the bridge in Concord town.

But Revere never made it to Concord on 19 April, much less to the North Bridge. He did, however, visit the town in the preceding week, carrying news that helped James Barrett decide to move the cannon and other ordnance on his farm farther away from Boston, and that stymied the British operation.

This event is scheduled to start at 7 P.M. It is free for Concord Museum members (though those seats might be sold out) and $10 for others. But it’s free to anyone who wants to tune in online.