Where Was Pvt. John Bateman?

Back when I quoted the April 1775 deposition of Pvt. John Bateman about the shooting at Lexington, I said I was more interested in analyzing the circumstances of that document than its content.

But Don Hagist, chief editor of the Journal of the American Revolution, noticed something about the content that’s worth considering. So I asked to run his message as a “guest blogger” posting.

We’ll start with a reminder of Bateman’s testimony:

I, John Bateman, belonging to the fifty second regiment, commanded by Colonel [Valentine] Jones, on Wednesday morning, on the nineteenth day of April instant, was in the party marching to Concord. Being at Lexington, in the county of Middlesex, being nigh the meeting-house in said Lexington, there was a small party of men gathered together in that place, when our said troops marched by; and I testify and declare, that I heard the word of command given to the troops to fire, and some of said troops did fire, and I saw one of said small party lie dead on the ground nigh said meeting-house; and I testify, that I never heard any of the inhabitants so much as fire one gun on said troops.

And here’s Don:

Reading the testimony of Pvt. John Bateman of the 52nd Regiment, I realized something that calls the veracity of his testimony into question. Bateman was a grenadier. As such, he was probably pretty far away from the first shot on Lexington green, not in good position to know who fired it.

There is no disputing that the light infantry got to Lexington first, and that the companies of the 4th and 10th Regiments went onto the green first. This accords well with typical British formations that put the most senior units on the flanks when in line. A number of period maps show that grenadier and light infantry battalions formed in the same way. Formed in a line by seniority, the light infantry companies on April 19, 1775, would be arranged with the 4th on the right, the 5th on the left, the 10th next on the right, 23rd, next on the left, and so forth working inwards. Marching by column from the right puts the 4th and 10th as the first two companies, making them first on Lexington green.

With this formation, Bateman's company from the 52nd Regiment would be near the middle of the grenadier battalion, in column behind the light infantry. Only if they had proceeded partway past the green by the time the first shot was fired would Bateman have been in a position to see who fired it.

This assumes that Bateman was with his company and not with an advanced party. Lt. William Sutherland of the 38th Regiment wrote that, before arriving at Lexington, the column halted “in order to make a Disposition, by advancing men in front & on the flanks to prevent a surprise.” He himself was not a grenadier or light infantry officer, and “went on with the front party which consisted of a serjeant & 6 or 8 men” who could have been chosen from any company in the column. And Lt. Jesse Adair of the Marines said that he was at the head of the column, even though the Marines were between the 38th and 43rd in seniority, and so should have been in the middle of the column.

We don’t know where John Bateman was when the shooting started on April 19, but it doesn’t seem likely that he was in a good position to see who fired the first shot.

Thanks, Don!

I agree with this analysis and think it also reflects the reality of what Bateman said. He claimed to have heard the command to fire, but he didn’t describe seeing those shots or their immediate aftermath. He saw only one dead body, and we know that several men died on Lexington green. Because, most likely, Bateman marched by the scene after the shooting was over.

TOMORROW: But you know who was in a position to see the first shots at Lexington?

[The image above shows a detail from the muster roll of the 52nd Regiment, supplied by Don. It shows how Bateman’s commanders gave him up as dead as of 21 April—two days before his deposition and probably two weeks or more before he died.] 

“He began scattering the crowfeet about”

Lt. Jesse Adair of the British Marines was one of the officers who was on the march out to Concord on 18-19 Apr 1775, stopping provincial horsemen along the way.

He was also one of the last British military officers to leave Boston during the evacuation on 17 Mar 1776, as Martin Hunter (then a lieutenant, later a general) described in his memoir:

Lieutenant Adair of the Marines, an acting engineer, was ordered to strew crow-feet in front of the lines to impeded the march of the enemy, as it was supposed they should attack our rear. Being an Irishman, he began scattering the crowfeet about from the gate towards the enemy, and, of course, had to walk over them on his return, which detained him so long that he was nearly taken prisoner.

The photograph above from Britain’s National Army Museum shows a crow’s foot or caltrop from the seventeenth century. They were developed to stop cavalry charges as well as slow down infantry. Minuteman Treasures shows another type.

I don’t think any American source describes Continental soldiers trying to capture Lt. Adair, so I suspect that part of Hunter’s story is jocular exaggeration. After all, what’s an ethnic joke without wild exaggeration?

“Ordered to March in the Midst of the Body”

On the 18-19 Apr 1775 expedition to Concord, Lt. William Sutherland of the 38th Regiment volunteered to ride out ahead of the British army column and scout for trouble. In a 26 April report for Lt. Col. Francis Smith, he wrote that he heard:

Lieut. [Jesse] Adair of the Marines who was a little before me in front Call out, here are 2 fellows galloping express to Alarm the Country, on which I immediately rode up to them, Seized one of them & our guide [Samuel Murray?] the other, dismounted them & by Major [John] Pitcairns directions gave them in charge to the men,

A little after we were joined by Lieut. [William] Grant of the Royal Artillery who told us the Country, he was afraid was alarmed, of which we had little reason to doubt as he heared several shot being then between 3 & 4 in the morning (a very unusual hour for firing) when we were joined by Major [Edward] Mitchell, Capt. [Charles] Cochrane, Capt. [Charles] Lumm & several other Gentlemen who told us the whole Country was Alarm’d & had Gallopped for their lives, or words to that purpose, that they had taken Paul Revierre but was obliged to lett him go after having cutt his girths & Stirrups.

In his edition of Sutherland’s manuscript, Harold Murdock suggested that those “2 fellows galloping express to Alarm the Country” were Asahel Porter and Josiah Richardson. Sutherland and the other British officers whose accounts I’ve read don’t describe capturing any other pair of men together, so that seems likely.

Murdock tended to lean toward the British, and he suggested Porter and Richardson had actually “been sent out from Lexington as scouts.” But the two farmers might truly have been traveling on business, as they claimed, and tried to gallop away only after they spotted the officers. It’s notable that in the 1820s and later men from Lexington acknowledged that some of them were scouting the roads that night, but they never said Porter and Richardson were doing so.

The regulars took Porter and Richardson’s horses and farm goods, made sure they were unarmed, and ordered them to walk in the middle of the ranks. As the column got closer to Lexington, the mounted officers spotted another young man on horseback.

On 25 April that man, Simon Winship, signed a deposition describing how the officers treating him:

on the 19th April instant, about four o’clock in the morning, as he was passing the public road in said Lexington, peaceably and unarmed, about two miles and a half distant from the meeting-house in said Lexington, he was met by a body of the king’s regular troops, and being stopped by some officers of said troops, was commanded to dismount.

Upon asking why he must dismount, he was obliged by force to quit his horse, and ordered to march in the midst of the body; and, being examined whether he had been warning the minutemen, he answered, “No, but had been out, and was then returning to his father’s.”

Again, the British officers were suspicious of Winship’s story. And even if he hadn’t been trying to spread the alarm at 4:00 A.M., he almost certainly would do so if they let him go.

So the British column moved on toward Lexington, with Porter, Richardson, and Winship in the vanguard as prisoners surrounded by soldiers.

TOMORROW: Asahel Porter released.