Howe kept up the unavailing bombardment through the day, preparing to make a desperate night-attack upon the works, with a strong detachment of infantry and grenadiers. In the evening twenty-five hundred men were embarked in transports. But God did not favor the heavy battalions. A violent easterly storm arose, rolling such surges upon the shore that the boats could not land. It was necessary to postpone the attack until the next day. But still the storm continued to rage, with floods of rain. It was the best ally the Americans could have. It held the British in abeyance until the Americans had time to render their works impregnable.
The fleet and the town were at the mercy of Washington. Howe, intensely humiliated, called a council of war. It was decided that Boston must immediately be evacuated. Howe conferred with the “select men” of Boston, and offered to leave, without inflicting any harm upon the place, if permitted to do so unmolested. Otherwise the town would be committed to the flames, and the troops would escape as best they could. The reply of Washington was, in brief:
“If you will evacuate the city without plundering, or doing any harm, I will not open fire upon you. But if you make any attempt to plunder, or if the torch is applied to a single building, I will open upon you the most deadly bombardment.”
The correspondence in reference to the evacuation continued for several days. General Howe behaved like a silly boy. His fancied dignity, as an officer of the crown, would not allow him to recognize any military rank on the part of the Americans. He therefore indulged in the childishness of sending an officer, with memoranda written upon pieces of paper, addressed to nobody, and signed by nobody.[118]
The exasperated British soldiers committed many lawless acts of violence, which General Howe, in vain, endeavored to arrest. Houses were broken open and furniture destroyed. These depredations imperilled the life of the army. Washington, if provoked to do so, could sink their ships. General Howe issued an order that every soldier, found plundering, should be hanged on the spot. An officer was ordered to perambulate the streets, with a band of soldiers and a hangman, and immediately, without farther trial, to hang every man he should find plundering.
At four o’clock in the morning of the 17th of March, 1776, the embarkation began, in great hurry and confusion. There were seventy-eight ships and transports in the harbor, and about twelve thousand, including refugees, to be embarked in them. These refugees were the friends of British despotism, the enemies of free America. As they had manifested more malignity against the American patriots than the British themselves, they did not dare to remain behind. Washington wrote, respecting them:
“By all accounts there never existed a more miserable set of beings than those wretched creatures now are. Taught to believe that the power of Great Britain was superior to all opposition, and that foreign aid was at hand, they were even higher and more insulting in their opposition than the regulars. When the order was issued, therefore, for embarking the troops in Boston, no electric shock, no sudden clap of thunder, in a word, the last trump, could not have struck them with greater consternation. They were at their wits’ end, and chose to commit themselves, in the manner I have above described, to the mercy of the waves, at a tempestuous season, rather than meet their offended countrymen.”[119]
Again he wrote, as he entered the town and beheld the ruin around him: ordnance with trunnions knocked off, guns spiked and cannons thrown from the wharves:[120]
“General Howe’s retreat was precipitate beyond anything I could have conceived. The destruction of the stores at Dunbar’s camp, after Braddock’s defeat, was but a faint image of what was to be seen in Boston. Artillery carts cut to pieces in one place, gun-carriages in another, shells broke here, shots buried there, and everything carrying with it the face of disorder and confusion, as also of distress.”[121]
While the British were thus hurriedly embarking, the Americans stood by the side of their guns, gazing upon the wondrous spectacle with unutterable joy, and yet not firing a shot. A British officer afterward wrote: