Imagine, therefore, his feelings when, one morning late in March in 1775, he was told that, within a month’s time, the Sixty-third, and other regiments, would embark at Cork for either Boston or New York!
There could not be a new French or Spanish invasion. As for the Indians, never again would 70 British regulars be sent against them. Was it, then, Harry’s own countrymen that his regiment was going to fight?
His comrades inferred the cause of his long face, and laughed. He would have no more fighting to do in America against the Americans than he had to do in Ireland against the Irish, or than an English officer in an English barrack town had to do against the English. The reinforcements were being sent only to overawe the lawless element. The mere sight of these reinforcements would obviate any occasion for their use. The regiment would merely do garrison duty in America instead of in Ireland or elsewhere.
He had none to advise or enlighten him. What was there for him to do but sail with his regiment, awaiting disclosures or occurrences to guide? What misgivings he had, he kept to himself, though once on the voyage, as he looked from the rocking transport towards the west, he confided to Lieutenant Dalrymple his opinion that ’twas damned bad luck sent his regiment to America, of all places.
When he landed in Boston, June 12th, he found, as he had expected, that the town was full of soldiers, encamped on the common and quartered elsewhere; but also, as he had not expected, that the troops were virtually confined to the town, which was fortified at the Neck; that the last 71 time they had marched into the country, through Lexington to Concord, they had marched back again at a much faster gait, and left many score dead and wounded on the way; and that a host of New Englanders in arms were surrounding Boston! The news of April 19th had not reached Europe until after Harry had sailed, nor had it met his regiment on the ocean. When he heard it now, he could only become more grave and uneasy. But the British officers were scornful of their clodhopper besiegers. In due time this rabble should be scattered like chaff. But was it a mere rabble? Certainly. Were not the best people in Boston loyal to the King’s government? Some of them, yes. But, as Harry went around with open eyes and ears, eager for information, he found that many of them were with the “rabble.” News was easy to be had. The citizens were allowed to pass the barrier on the Neck, if they did not carry arms or ammunition, and there was no strict discipline in the camp of New Englanders. Therefore Harry soon learned how Doctor Warren stood, and the Adamses, and Mr. John Hancock; and that a Congress, representing all the Colonies, was now sitting at Philadelphia, for the second time; and that in the Congress his own Virginia was served by such gentlemen as Mr. Richard Henry Lee, Mr. Patrick Henry, Mr. Thomas Jefferson, and Colonel Washington. 72 And the Virginians had shown as ready and firm a mind for revolt against the King’s measures as the New Englanders had. Here, for once, the sympathies of trading Puritan and fox-hunting Virginian were one. Moreover, a Yankee was a fellow American, and, after five years of contact with English self-esteem, Harry warmed at the sight of a New Englander as he never would have done before he had left Virginia.
But it did not conduce to peace of mind, in his case, to be convinced that the colonial remonstrance was neither local nor of the rabble. The more general and respectable it was, the more embarrassing was his own situation. Would it really come to war? With ill-concealed anxiety, he sought the opinion of this person and that.
On the fourth day after his arrival, he went into a tavern in King Street with Lieutenant Massay, of the Thirty-fifth, Ensign Charleton, of the Fifth, and another young officer, and, while they were drinking, heard a loyalist tell what one Parker, leader of the Lexington rebels, said to his men on Lexington Common, on the morning of April 19th, when the King’s troops came in sight.
“‘Stand your ground,’ says he. ‘Don’t fire till you’re fired on, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here!’”
“And it began there!” said Harry.