Through the long ten years of unrest preceding the Revolution, these Tories, as they were called, had suffered at the hands of mobs, and now, when Gage was powerless outside of Boston, an active persecution of them began.[81] Millers refused to grind their corn, labor would not serve them, and they could neither buy nor sell. Men refused to worship in the same church with them. They were denounced as “infamous betrayers of their country.” Committees published their names, “sending them down to posterity with the infamy they deserve.” After the siege of Boston had begun, those who were even suspected of Toryism, as their support of the king was called, were regarded as enemies in the camp. The Massachusetts committees compelled them to sign recantations or confined them in jails for refusal. If they escaped they were pursued with hue and cry.
Some fled to other colonies, but found that, “like Cain, they had some discouraging mark upon them.” In exile they learned that the patriot wrath visited their property: their private coaches were burned or pulled in pieces. A rich importer’s goods were destroyed or stolen, and his effigy was hung up in sight of his house during the day and burned at night. Beautiful estates, where was “every beauty of art or nature, every elegance, which it cost years of care and toil in bringing to perfection,” were laid waste. Looking upon this work of ruin, a despairing loyalist cried that the Americans were “as blind and mad as Samson, bent upon pulling the edifice down upon their heads to perish in the ruins.”
The violence of the patriots’ attack upon the loyalists seemed for a time to eliminate the latter from the struggle. The friends of royal power in America expected too much, and while the king’s enemies were organizing they waited for him to crush the rising rebellion. They looked on with wonder as the signal flew from one local committee to another over thirteen colonies, who now needed only a glowing fact like Lexington to fuse them into one defensive whole. The news reached Putnam’s Connecticut farm in a day; Arnold, at New Haven, had it the next day, and in four days it had reached New York.[82] Unknown messengers carried it through Philadelphia, past the Chesapeake, on to Charleston, and within twenty days the news in many garbled forms was evoking a common spirit of patriotism from Maine to Georgia. It was commonly believed that America must be saved from “abject slavery” by the bands of patriots encompassing Boston.
The farmers and mechanics who had hurried from their work to drive the British from Concord into Boston were not an army. They settled down in a great half-circle around the port with a common purpose of compelling Gage to take to his ships, but with no definite plan. Confusion was everywhere. Men were coming and going, and there were no regular enlistments.[83] A few natural leaders were doing wonders in holding them together.[84] Among them the brave and courteous Joseph Warren, the warm friend of Samuel Adams and zealous comrade in the recent work of agitation, was conquering insubordination by the manly modesty and gentleness of his character. Others who were old campaigners of the French and Indian wars worked ceaselessly to bring order out of chaos.
Yet not even the fanatic zeal of the siege could banish provincial jealousies. There were as many leaders as there were colonies represented. New Hampshire men were led by John Stark, a hero of the French war; Connecticut men were under Israel Putnam, more picturesque as a wolf-slayer than able as a leader. Nathanael Greene, the philosophic and literary blacksmith, commanded the Rhode Island militia.[85] It was with difficulty that “the grand American army,” as the Massachusetts congress called it, finally intrusted the chief command to General Artemas Ward, who, in turn, was controlled by the Massachusetts committee of safety.
Even with some organization and a leader there was little outward semblance of an army. In the irregular dress, brown and green hues were the rule. Uniforms like those of the British regulars, the hunting-shirt of the backwoodsman, and even the blankets of savages were seen side by side in the ranks of the first patriot armies. There was little distinction between officer and private.[86] Each company chose its own officers out of the ranks,[87] and the private could not understand why he should salute his erstwhile friend and neighbor or ask his permission to go home. The principle of social democracy was carried into military life to the great detriment of the service. Difference in rank was ignored by the officers themselves, who in some cases did menial work about camp to curry favor with their men.
Fortunately, there was in this raw militia a good leaven of soldiers seasoned and trained in the war with France. These men led expeditions to the islands of Boston Harbor in the effort to get the stock before it should be seized by the British.[88] Numerous slight engagements resulted, turning favorably, as a rule, for the patriots, and the new recruits gained courage with experience. Thus nearly two months passed away, and an elated patriot wrote that “danger and war are become pleasing, and injured virtue is now aroused to avenge herself.”
The only way to drive Gage out of Boston was to seize one of the commanding hill-tops either in Dorchester or Charlestown, whence they might open a cannonade on the city. Gage saw this danger, and with the arrival of reinforcements under Howe, Clinton, and Burgoyne a plan was made to get control of the dangerous hill-tops. With ten thousand well-equipped soldiers to pit against an ill-trained and poorly commanded multitude of farmers the task seemed easy. After trying to terrify the rebels by threatening with the gallows all who should be taken with arms, and offering to pardon those who would lay them down, Gage prepared to execute this plan. The patriots forestalled him by sending twelve hundred men under the veteran Colonel Prescott to seize Bunker Hill, in Charlestown.