The glorious cause, p.39
The Glorious Cause, page 39
The remainder of the march was even more difficult, so difficult in fact that the expedition almost collapsed. From the Great Carrying Place, the troops entered the Dead River. Perhaps no stream in America was so badly named. The Dead River was alive with a ferocious current and snags of sunken logs and brush that slowed and sometimes stopped all progress. The men had spent so much time in the water—and under it—while going up the Kennebec that Arnold likened them to “amphibious animals.” Now they were constantly wet, especially after October 19 when a heavy rain which lasted for three days sent the river over its banks. Still they dragged themselves along, often with little or nothing to eat.
Near the end of October most of the expedition had covered the thirty miles of the Dead River to the Height of Land—the watershed between the Kennebec and Chaudiere rivers. By this time many of the men were sick. They had been half-frozen for days—snow had fallen—and they were in need of food, clothing, and shoes. And they still had to cross Lake Megantic and from there sail down the Chaudiere River to the St. Lawrence. On November 9, these desperately tired men made it to the St. Lawrence River. By this time they numbered 675; some 300 had turned back, others had been left sick or dead along the way.
The expedition found itself four miles from Quebec and of course across the river from it. A heavy storm stopped them from crossing until November 13; almost nothing else could have delayed Arnold, for after the misery of the march he craved battle. He did not get it until the end of December.
Quebec boasted no formidable garrison, but it could not be taken by the sick and badly equipped force Arnold commanded. The city sat on a high point of land cut out by the St. Lawrence and its tributary the St. Charles River. This point—it actually resembles a swollen thumb or several fingers pressed tightly together—looks to the northeast. On the southeastern side, Cape Diamond rises more than 300 feet above the St. Lawrence River. Along the St. Charles, to the northwest, the land slopes downward. Slightly to the northeast of Cape Diamond, Lower Town huddled along the narrow band of land on the water’s edge. At its southern side fortifications had been built, two rough palisades and a blockhouse. There was also a wall at the northern part of the Lower Town and outside it small clusters of suburbs.
The main part of the city, Upper Town, stood astride the high ground, protected by its height, the steep cliffs on three sides, and to the west by a wall thirty feet high which extended from river to river. The wall looked toward the plains of Abraham, where Wolfe and Montcalm had fought and died. There were six strong points along the wall and three gates. Quebec’s defenders concentrated their artillery at the six strong places. Within Upper Town the British assembled about 1800 troops, a strange mixture of militia, Scottish soldiers, a handful of marines, and large numbers of sailors drawn from ships in the harbor.
Arnold’s force made a brave show in front of the wall for a few days and then pulled back twenty miles to Pointe aux Trembles. There early in December, Richard Montgomery, Schuyler’s second-in-command in western New York, joined them. Montgomery, an attractive man in every respect, as handsome and brave as the most splendid heroes of eighteenth-century romances, had fought his way to Montreal which fell to his forces in November. He had then led his soldiers, some 300 in all, carrying provisions, heavy winter clothing, cannon, and ammunition to where Arnold’s men lay suffering. Arnold greeted Montgomery with joy, and in about three weeks the two were prepared to assault Quebec.
An assault rather than a siege had to be made. Arnold’s soldiers from New England would not remain in the army after the end of the year when their enlistments expired. Even had they been willing, they could not have sustained a siege for long because in the spring, when the ice melted in the St. Lawrence, transports carrying British soldiers would undoubtedly come up the river to relieve the city.
After a false start on December 27, the assault was made early in the morning of December 31 during a blizzard with the wind screaming and the temperature well below freezing. Getting the troops into place took about three hours. About two in the morning they began to move, Arnold’s 600 against the northern side of Lower Town and Montgomery’s 300 against the southern side. The British lay waiting—they had slept in their clothes for a week, and they had fortified Lower Town at precisely the points where the attack would be delivered.
About 5:00 A.M. the Americans struck. Arnold’s troops broke through the first barrier the British had set up, but were stopped at the second. Arnold himself received a bullet in the leg and was carried, badly bleeding, out of danger. Montgomery fell dead almost immediately with a bullet in his head. Despite the gallantry of Daniel Morgan, who took charge of the van of Arnold’s force, the attack on the north failed. Montgomery’s disintegrated even more rapidly. Within a couple of hours both were finished with over 400 Americans captured, trapped by snow and ice and skillful British deployments, and some fifty or sixty others dead or wounded.
Arnold pulled back a mile from Quebec. Over the next few months he received small numbers of reinforcements. When spring came, still suffering from his wound, he gave up his command and slowly rode to Montreal.
The soldiers he left behind under Major General David Wooster may have hoped that they would spend the summer of 1776 inside the walls of Quebec. Bravery and spirit had carried the Americans to Quebec in 1775 on one of the great marches of the eighteenth century. Such men and those who joined them in Canada could not help but hope that they would finally capture the city. They had earned the right to hope.
IX
As American efforts in Canada unwound, to the south in Boston the end of the siege came with surprising suddenness. The American army forced its end by action which gave the British a choice of attacking to relieve the siege or evacuating Boston and thereby ending their misery. Howe chose to evacuate the town.
The beginning of the end came with extraordinarily cold weather in February. The cold made Washington hot for an attack; he had been quietly burning for action since the autumn. Now with temperatures well below freezing, ice thick enough to support the weight of troops formed between Cambridge and Boston. Washington convened a council of war and urged that it agree to send the troops across in an assault. He reported that he had 16,000 men—around 7000 militia and almost 9000 Continentals—and he had more than fifty pieces of heavy artillery recently transported from Ticonderoga and Crown Point by young Henry Knox, colonel of artillery.49
Henry Knox resembled nothing so much as one of his heavy mortars: he was tall, thickset—his weight at this time was nearly 280 pounds—his voice boomed; he was gay, friendly, a vastly attractive man. He also knew his craft, and he possessed the drive that allowed him to practice it in spite of great disadvantages. The first of these was probably the greatest: he had few or no guns. But in November 1775, Washington sent him to Ticonderoga to remove the captured artillery there. What followed was one of the most impressive examples of perseverance and ingenuity in the war.50 Despite the absence of roads and wagons, Knox managed to transport to Albany forty-four guns, fourteen mortars, and a howitzer. He first moved down Lake George on flat-bottomed scows, then across the snow and ice on heavy sledges constructed for the job, and crossed the Hudson four times on the journey. From Albany, stopping only to pull a heavy gun out of the water where it had broken through the ice, he pushed over the Berkshires, the guns and artillery in a train pulled by horses and oxen. By late January, Knox was at Framingham, and early in February the artillery was being emplaced and readied for action.
Despite the artillery and the renewed forces, the council of war refused to accept Washington’s plans for an attack. It recommended instead that Dorchester Heights, still ignored by both sides, be occupied in the hope that Howe would repeat the blunders of Bunker Hill. Artillery on the Heights would make Boston untenable; Howe would have to respond somehow or sit there and watch his command pounded to pieces.
Washington took the rejection of his proposal gracefully and accepted the council’s suggestion that Dorchester Heights be seized. There were difficulties in this proposal: Boston harbor was frozen and so was the ground around it, including the hills on Dorchester peninsula. The immediate question was how to fortify them quickly, in one night, as Breed’s Hill had been. Digging-in was not possible, at least not in one night, for the ground was too hard. But anything less would bring a British attack which probably could not be repulsed by the untested Americans unless they were entrenched. Colonel Rufus Putnam worked out the answer: fortifications of earth set upon the ground, not dug out of it. Accordingly, late in February the troops near Dorchester were put to making chandeliers, large frames from timber in which gabions, fascines, and bales of hay would be placed once the chandeliers were hauled up into place on the hills. The gabions were to be filled with earth and the hay would be covered with as much dirt as could be dug up. Putnam also recommended that an abatis from nearby orchards should ring the fortifications and that barrels filled with earth should be placed outside the parapets, where they would appear to give cover but would in reality stand ready to be rolled down upon troops assaulting the hills.51
While the soldiers near Dorchester hammered and sawed and dug up the earth to fill gabions and barrels, Washington prepared troops in Cambridge for an assault across Back Bay against Boston. “Old Put,” the formidable Israel Putnam, was given command of this operation, and John Sullivan and Nathanael Greene were to lead the crossing. Though never made, this attack was intended to answer any British attempt to dislodge the Americans from Dorchester Heights. By March 1, all was ready.
To mask his intentions Washington ordered a light bombardment of Boston by American batteries on Lechmere Point, Cobble Hill, and Roxbury on the night of March 2. Only a few shots were fired and to no effect, except on American pride when “Old Sow,” one of the heavy mortars, ruptured. The shelling resumed the next night, answered as on the night before by the British. On the night of March 4 the artillery on both sides opened up without restraint, and around 7:00 P.M. in darkness General Thomas took an expedition up the Dorchester Heights, a 1200-man working party to set up the breastworks and a force of 800 infantrymen to give cover. Over 300 oxcarts and wagons carried the chandeliers, gabions, fascines, and entrenching tools. The working party laid out the redoubts while the infantry took up temporary positions on Nook’s Hill, which was not to be permanently held, and on the point looking out on Castle William. Early in the morning fresh workers went up the hills to relieve those already there, and by daybreak two redoubts were virtually complete.
Howe was astonished by what he saw the morning of the fifth. There were the Americans, well protected behind heavy fortifications, looking down his throat. His naval counterpart, Rear Admiral Molyneaux Shuldham, who had taken over after Graves’s recall in December, gave him the next piece of nasty news: the navy could not remain in the harbor if the enemy mounted heavy guns in the hills.52
Several weeks earlier Howe had decided to evacuate Boston—he hated the place, he felt trapped there as Gage had. His orders from Britain permitted such discretion. But now he would have to pull out before he was ready, or drive the Americans from the Heights in order to give himself some time. He first decided to attack. Ships and barges began to gather; the troops were mustered; ammunition and food were issued; and plans were laid for a landing on the peninsula that night to be followed, presumably, by an assault the next morning. Before these preparations were complete, doubts, inspired by memories of Bunker Hill, ate at his resolve and caused him to cancel the attack in favor of evacuation of Boston. High winds and heavy rains the night of the fifth saved Howe’s face, as ships and boats were scattered by heavy waves, a situation which made an attack impossible.53
While Washington, ever suspicious, watched uneasily, the British navy sent its transports to the wharves of Boston, where over the next two weeks they were stowed with arms, stores, equipment, and finally troops. Embarkation had not been carefully planned and the lading was done badly. And inevitably much was left behind, including the horses of the artillery and the dragoons. Still, despite their haste the British found time to plunder houses and stores, thereby earning more ill will for themselves. By March 17, the last of the ships were loaded and pulled away, leaving Boston to Washington’s army. They did not leave the outer harbor for another ten days, however. The loading had been so sloppily done that time was required to shift cargoes in preparation for sailing on the open sea. But on March 27, 1776, they dropped down the harbor, and Boston saw the last of the British.
Almost a year of fighting was over, and if it had not been what John Adams called it at the time—”half a war”—neither had it been a full-scale effort on the American side. The attempt to take Canada refuted Adams’s contention that the colonies had been satisfied by acting “upon the line of defense,” fighting a defensive war in other words, but Adams’s disappointment was understandable.54 He wanted more than a siege of Boston and an expedition to the north: he wanted America to declare its independence. In March 1776 such a declaration was closer than Adams thought. He would scarcely have been satisfied had it come the day after the British sailed from Boston. John Adams never showed much patience; yet he was an astute and sometimes wise man. In 1776 his countrymen were more patient than he—and perhaps had greater wisdom.
14
Independence
While the British army was ending its long ordeal in Boston, the second Continental Congress was in the midst of deliberations that would end with the Declaration of Independence. The second Congress began its sessions on May 10, 1775, a day midway in the period marked out by the battles of Lexington and Bunker Hill. From the outset, the Congress suffered its own ordeal—a tortuous questioning of whether America could better protect its liberties inside or outside of the British empire. And while the delegates asked themselves what the purposes of American action should be, they knew they had to act.
The need to do something was urgent. The two enemies, still bleeding from their encounter on Lexington Road, faced one another around Boston. The proposal made soon after the delegates gathered thus seemed almost inevitable: the Congress should raise an army. Over the next six weeks Congress began to do just that, and in the process took the direction of the war into its own hands. Yet while it was making generals, calling out troops, and spending money that it did not have, the Congress also worriedly discussed how it should seek to defend American rights.
Few delegates in the spring of 1775 advocated independence and of those few none advocated a declaration of independence. Rather they seem to have believed that though a try at reconciliation would fail, it must be made, if for no other reason than that most Americans preferred reconciliation.1
John Adams preferred a separation from Britain though, as he said of himself, he was “as fond of reconciliation, if we could reasonably entertain Hopes of it upon a constitutional Basis, as any man.” But Adams did not believe that such hopes were reasonable because the king, Parliament, the administration, and the electorate “have been now for many years gradually trained and disciplined by Corruption” in their oppressive ways. The conclusion seemed clear that “the Cancer [of official corruption] is too deeply rooted, and too far spread to be cured by anything short of cutting it out entire.”2
To have any chance of success, political surgery required that the people support it. But the American people seem to have been divided just as the delegates were, with most probably opposing such drastic action. Adams likened the people to a “vast unwieldy machine”; they could not be forced and must be allowed to run on in their own ways in the expectation that eventually they would recognize the best means of protecting their liberties.3
In any case neither Adams nor anyone else suggested independence in May. Adams told the delegates that an imperial connection might be maintained through the king. Parliament, however, should play no part in governing America. John Dickinson disagreed and advocated concessions. Let us pay for the tea destroyed at Boston, he proposed, and let us concede Parliament’s right to regulate our trade, and let us petition the king once more for a redress of grievances.4
The weeks that followed saw these differences imperfectly reconciled in the actions of Congress. The Congress authorized the raising of an army a couple of days before the battle of Bunker Hill, and almost immediately afterward George Washington set off from Philadelphia to assume its command. John Dickinson and the moderates around him did not oppose the creation of the army; nor did they attempt to substitute one of their number for Washington, who was known to be skeptical of peaceful approaches to Britain. Early in July they persuaded Congress of the wisdom of another petition to the king, the so-called Olive Branch petition, in effect asking him to find a way out of the conflict.
John Adams despised the weakness he detected in the petition but was resigned to oscillations in congressional policy. Though Adams’s spirit was rarely calm, it could find some ease in the fact that the number of delegates favoring firmness was growing. One, Thomas Jefferson, arrived in Philadelphia just about the time that news came from Bunker Hill. And delegates already there were finding it increasingly difficult to advocate reconciliation as British responses became known.5
John Dickinson felt more divided than most: at the time he wrote the second petition to the king he was working with Jefferson on the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity for Taking Up Arms. Jefferson wrote the first version, which Dickinson, obviously feeling compelled after Bunker Hill to show that he was as fierce for liberty as anyone else, made tougher. The declaration, which indicted Parliament for having “attempted to effect their cruel and impolitic Purpose of enslaving these Colonies by Violence, and have thereby rendered it necessary for us to close with their last Appeal from Reason to Arms,” was approved on July 6. Two days later Congress agreed on the second petition to the king, and at the end of the month it rejected North’s so-called Conciliatory Proposal.6
