Looking at “Leslie’s Retreat”

Today Salem commemorates “Leslie’s Retreat” on 26 Feb 1775, so I’m highlighting Donna Seger’s Streets of Salem posting about that event. She explores three points, to which I’ll add my thoughts.

“How many damn cannon(s) were there in Salem?”

Seger concludes that the most reliable number comes from Samuel Gray, as I quoted it here. Now I adore this account for preserving the forthright experience of a nine-year-old boy, but I don’t trust all the details. Young Samuel may not have been told accurate information, and he may not have remembered it exactly decades later.

I think the best source for the number of cannon involved in the incident at Salem is a small green notebook deposited at the Massachusetts Historical Society. David Mason used that notebook as he was gathering cannon for the Massachusetts Provincial Congress. Mason arranged for blacksmith Robert Foster to build carriages for the cannon tubes he collected from town fortifications, the Derby family, and other sources.

On one page of the notebook Mason totaled his own charges for the congress, including for “paint’g 17 Carridges Limbers &c.” On another page he wrote, “fosters acct. 17 field Pieces” [though that figure could also be read as 19]. So I think the most likely number of cannon in Foster’s smithy on the morning of 26 Feb 1775 was seventeen.

But the cannon Mason had collected in north Salem were only one part of what the Provincial Congress amassed in late 1774 and early 1775. That rebel government had artillery pieces in Worcester, Concord, and perhaps other towns. What’s more, some towns acquired cannon of their own. I wrote a whole book about Massachusetts’s effort to arm itself for war, and I still can’t say exactly how many damn cannon there were.

“Major Pedrick was a Tory!”

Quite definitely. According to many Salem historians, John Pedrick fooled Lt. Col. Alexander Leslie into letting him carry a warning about the redcoats marching in from Marblehead. But all contemporaneous sources show Pedrick favored the Crown.

Pedrick’s daughter Mehitable told stories about her family’s brave feats in the Revolution. Even some of her descendants didn’t believe those tales, but her daughter Elizabeth did, and she spread them to local historians. I discussed those family legends in the last chapter of The Road to Concord.

“‘Anniversary History’ was alive and well in 1775.”

Seger notes how newspaper reports of Leslie’s expedition appeared in New England newspapers alongside remarks about the anniversary of the Boston Massacre. With redcoats marching on the streets of Boston and Marshfield, and popping up on a Sunday in Marblehead and Salem, the threat of another confrontation ending in death was very real.

A year later, the date of the Massacre determined when the Continental Army moved soldiers and cannon onto Dorchester Heights. In the cannonade that provided cover for that operation, just a year and a few days after “Leslie’s Retreat,” David Mason was wounded by a bursting mortar.

A Boy’s View of “Leslie’s Retreat”

My favorite account of “Leslie’s Retreat” appeared in the first volume of the Proceedings of the Essex Institute in 1856. It consists of notes that Charles M. Endicott took when he interviewed Samuel Gray.

This wasn’t the Samuel Gray killed at the Boston Massacre, of course. This was a nine-year-old boy who lived on Peter Street in Salem. Here’s what he remembered about Sunday, 26 Feb 1775:

The family had all gone to meeting, except himself and grandmother. Was out in the yard—while there heard a drum and fife—went in and told the old lady of it—she thought he was mistaken—but he was convinced of it and took his cap and went in the direction of the music—

had reached the N. E. corner of Essex and Washington streets, when he saw the troops coming round the corner of School, now Washington street, from Mill street. They marched up to the Town House and halted a few minutes— . . . When the troops recommenced their march followed close to them, was near enough to touch Colonel [Alexander] Leslie most of the time.—The Colonel was a fine looking officer, rather stout with agreeable features; followed them through Lynde street to the North Bridge; should think the platoons about twelve deep, and when they halted at the draw of the bridge, they reached from there to Colonel [Joseph] Sprague’s distillery; should think there could not have been less than 300 men.

When they came to order they formed a line on the west side of the street facing to the eastward. Saw that the Colonel was quite disconcerted to find the draw of the bridge up; noticed his impassioned manner, but…don’t know that he heard any words he uttered.

Saw his minister, Mr [Thomas] Barnard, in the crowd, and saw him speak with Colonel Leslie;…was afterwards told, that when Mr Barnard heard the Colonel say that he would pass the bridge, that he addressed him in these words: “I desire you would not fire on those innocent people;” (meaning those collected on the north side of the bridge,)

at this Colonel Leslie turned short round and said to him “Who are you, sir?”

Mr. Barnard replied, “I am Thomas Barnard, a minister of the gospel, and my mission is peace.”

Saw three gondolas laying aground; saw the people jump into them for the purpose of scuttling them; recognized Frank Benson and Jonathan Felt—saw Frank Benson open his breast to the soldiers. . . . knew Capt. Robert Foster, and recognized him conspicuous among the crowd on the north side of the bridge.

Colonel Leslie had given some orders, and the soldiers were doing something to their muskets; cannot say what; but being a small boy it frightened him, and he with two or three others about his age, ran off and lay down under the fish flakes which covered almost the whole southern bank of the river from north bridge to what is now Conant street; did not return; it was a very cold day, and he was almost frozen, while laying down upon the ground under the flakes; did not see the troops leave town.

Fish flakes were the wooden shelves where fishermen laid their salted cod to dry. They used to be common in New England ports. The photograph of flakes above comes from the Penobscot Marine Museum.

The next day, Samuel went to the “barn of Capt. Foster” himself—and unlike Leslie, he was able to get in. He found a cannon lying on the ground. And being a nine-year-old boy, he climbed onto it and started asking questions:

asked why they did not carry it away;

was told it was injured—looked round and saw a crack in the breech;

asked how many guns there had been in all,

was told twelve; understood they were French pieces, and came from Nova Scotia after the late French war; were guns taken from the French; does not know to whom they belonged previous to being fitted up on this occasion.

Heard they were distributed in various directions—some to Cole’s hole, in what is now called Paradise; others towards Orne’s point, &c.; were not all carried to one place, for fear if they were discovered by the troops they would all be lost.

The troops hadn’t discovered any of those guns, of course. But to be sage, on the night of 3 March, the Essex Gazette reported, perhaps with some exaggeration, “Twenty seven Pieces of Cannon were removed out of this Town, in order to be out of the Way of Robbers.”

TOMORROW: Where those cannon went.

Making the “Salem Connection,” 7 Apr.

On Friday, 7 April, I’ll speak at the Salem Athenaeum about “The Salem Connection: A Crucial Part of Massachusetts’s Secret Drive to Collect Artillery Before the Revolutionary War.”

This event is part of Salem’s commemoration of “Leslie’s Retreat,” the confrontation on 26 Feb 1775 when a Patriot crowd prevented Lt. Col. Alexander Leslie from searching a smithy near the North River for weapons.

As I describe in The Road to Concord, there actually were weapons in that forge—at least when Leslie and his soldiers arrived in town. But blacksmith Robert Foster had hastily moved them away while David Mason, the man who had collected those guns, blocked Leslie’s approach at a drawbridge. Those cannon were part of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress’s drive to build an army.

Salem was also the site of other significant actions resisting the royal government in the preceding year:

• the Massachusetts General Court’s vote on 17 June 1774 to send delegates to the First Continental Congress, which prompted Gen. Thomas Gage to dissolve that legislature.
• the Salem town meeting’s vote on 24 August 1774 to send delegates to an Essex County convention, which Gage tried to stop by detaining local activists and summoning troops; that didn’t work, so he gave up on Essex County and moved back to Boston.
• the first meeting of the Provincial Congress on 7 October 1774.

I’ll speak about how all those events tie together as part of a province-wide resistance to the Crown.

My talk is scheduled to start at 7:00 P.M. Admission is $10 for Salem Athenaeum members, $15 for others, free for students with identification, with the proceeds benefiting the host institution.

“Retreat and Resistance” in Salem, 26 Feb.

On Sunday, 26 February, Salem will have a “fun and informal reenactment” of the confrontation between Patriots and redcoats across the town’s North River on that date in 1775.

Lt. Col. Alexander Leslie had orders to lead his men from the 64th Regiment of Foot across the river and search Robert Foster’s smithy. But locals, led by David Mason, had raised the drawbridge over the river, blocking the redcoats.

A crowd gathered around the soldiers. Militia units mustered in nearby towns. There was some tussling, some swinging of hatchets, some poking with bayonets. A soldier pricked Joseph Whicher’s chest—enough that Salem historians have claimed the first blood of the Revolutionary War was spilled that day.

Eventually the town’s civilian leaders and Lt. Col. Leslie found a compromise, brokered by Anglican [nearby meetinghouse] minister Thomas Barnard. Mason lowered the drawbridge. Leslie marched his men across it, far enough that he could say he had fulfilled his orders, and then they turned around and went back to the ship awaiting them in Marblehead.

During the stalemate at the bridge, Mason’s confederates had moved all the cannon he had collected for the Massachusetts Provincial Congress out of Foster’s workshop and into a nearby woods. Those cannon were being mounted on carriages for battlefield use. Within a week, they were moved on to Concord, where a larger British force came looking for them in April.

The commemoration on Sunday starts with two gatherings:

• 10:30 A.M.: The First Church of Salem Unitarian-Universalist welcomes everyone for a service that will end with a warning that the redcoats are coming, just as happened in 1775. That will be about 11:30, when folks can also arrive at the church yard to join the congregants in heading to the bridge.
• 11:00 A.M.: Folks representing the British army will meet at Hamilton Hall with fifes, recorders, and slide whistles. They will walk up to a mile (weather depending) to recreate the soldiers’ approach from Marblehead.
• 11:45 A.M.: At the corner of Federal and North Streets (Murphy’s Funeral Home), Lt. Col. Leslie and militia captain John Felt will dispute whether the bridge must come down and what the soldiers must do. People are invited to observe and shout surly comments.
• 12:00 noon: At the end of the reenactment, everyone will be invited into the First Church for an hour of warmth and refreshment.

The 26 Feb 1775 confrontation was part of the larger competition for artillery pieces described in The Road to Concord. On Friday, 7 April, I’ll speak at the Salem Athenaeum about that town’s many crucial connections to the Massachusetts arms race. General admission will be $15, for members $10, and for students with ID free.

Folks in the region are organizing other talks and events in the coming weeks about Leslie’s Retreat and the surrounding conflict. I’ll share more news of those as they come near.