[71] Andrews Letters.
[72] "Memorial History of Boston," iii, 102.
CHAPTER IX
BOSTON BELEAGUERED
Gage and his army were at first surrounded by a mere collection of militia companies. As the pursuit ceased on the evening of the 19th the baffled Americans withdrew from the range of the guns of the fleet. As well as they could they gathered into their organizations and made some kind of a camp, sleeping either out of doors, or in convenient houses. A watch was set at Charlestown Neck, and at Roxbury Prescott of Pepperell and his men stood on guard against a sortie. The circuit between these points, comprising the whole sweep of the Charles River and the Back Bay, was likewise occupied. Headquarters were at Cambridge. On the following days men from the more distant towns came in, until before long the minute men and militia from the adjoining provinces, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, were upon the ground.
Some of the records are striking. The men of Nottingham, New Hampshire, gathered by noon of the 20th and, after being joined by men of the neighboring towns, set out at two o'clock. "At dusk," says Bancroft, "they reached Haverhill Ferry, a distance of twenty-seven miles, having run rather than marched; they halted in Andover only for refreshments, and, traversing fifty-five miles in less than twenty hours, by sunrise of the twenty-first paraded on Cambridge common."[73]
Israel Putnam, working on his farm in Brooklyn, Connecticut, received the news the morning after the fight at Concord. He left his work at once, and, mounting a horse, started out to rouse the militia, who, upon mustering, chose him leader. As his idea of a leader was one who went in front, he set out at once for Boston, ordering them to follow. He arrived in Cambridge at the time when the Nottingham men are reported as parading, "having ridden the same horse a hundred miles in eighteen hours."[74]
Others followed in similar haste. Among them, Benedict Arnold first began to attract to himself public notice. Sabine says of him, "I am inclined to believe, that he was a finished scoundrel from early manhood to his grave." Nevertheless, his fiery nature kept him for a time with the Americans, and at the very outset he showed his independent spirit, having characteristically refused to "wait for proper orders." From New Hampshire came Stark, the hero of the frontier wars. And from all the towns came the militia leaders, who, gathering their companies into regiments, began the loose organization and crude subordination which should make of the crowd an army.