So April came, with the rattle of the musket still unheard. On the second day two vessels arrived at Marblehead, bringing tidings that Parliament had pledged its support to the king and his ministers, and that more troops were coming. On the 8th a committee reported to the provincial congress on an armed alliance of the New England colonies, and messengers were sent to the adjacent governments.[359] Connecticut responded with equipping six regiments; New Hampshire organized her forces as a part "of the New England army", and Rhode Island voted to equip fifteen hundred men. In Virginia it looked for a while as if the appeal to arms would not be long delayed, for Dunmore fulminated against their convention; and he even threatened to turn the slaves against their masters, and he did seize the powder at Williamsburg, of which the province had small store at best. Calmer counsels prevailed, and the armed men who had gathered at Fredericksburg dispersed to reassemble at call.
The contest meanwhile had been precipitated in Massachusetts. The rumor had already gone to England that it was close at hand. Hutchinson, in London, on the 10th, when writing to his son in Boston, had said: "Before this reaches you it will be determined;" and while tidings of the actual conflict was on the way, Hutchinson learned in London that Pownall had been prepared by letters from Boston for something startling.[360] The circle of sympathizers with America were in this suspense while Franklin was on the ocean, hither bound, and, if we may believe Strahan, he had left England in a rancorous state of mind, causing men to wonder what he intended on arriving, whether to turn general and fight, or to bolster in other ways the spirits of the rebels.[361] When he arrived the fight had begun.
On the 15th of April the provincial congress had adjourned. On the 16th, Isaiah Thomas spirited his press out of Boston and took it to Worcester, where, in a little more than a fortnight, the Massachusetts Spy reappeared.[362] Families, impressed with the forebodings of the sky, were moving out of town. Samuel Adams and Hancock had been persuaded to retire to Lexington,[363] to be beyond the grasp of Gage, who was shortly expected to order the arrest of the patriots, for which he had had instructions since March 18th.[364] The Boston committee of observation was watchful. It had noticed that on the 14th the "Somerset" frigate had changed her moorings to a position intermediate between Boston and Charlestown, and on the 15th the transports were hauled near the men-of-war. Notice of these signs was sent to Hancock and Adams, and preparations were begun for removing a part of the stores at Concord. When, during the afternoon of the 18th, some of the precious cannon were trundled into Groton, her minute-men gathered for a night march to Concord. During that same day Gage sent out from Boston some officers to patrol the roads towards Concord, and intercept the patriot messengers, and to discover, if possible, the lurking-place of Adams and Hancock. In the evening it was observed in Boston that troops were marching across the Common to the inner bay. William Dawes was at once dispatched to Concord by way of Roxbury, for the patriot watch had not been without information before the troops actually moved. Gordon tells us that they got a warning from a "daughter of liberty unequally yoked in point of politics", and as Gage's wife was a daughter of Peter Kemble, of New Jersey, it has been surmised that the informer may have been one very near to headquarters.[365] Paul Revere immediately caused the preconcerted signal-light to be set in a church-tower at the north end of Boston, and crossing the river in a boat, he mounted a horse on the Charlestown side and started on his famous midnight ride. It was none too soon. At eleven o'clock eight hundred men, under Lieutenant-Colonel Smith, were passing over the back bay in boats to Lechmere Point. Here they landed at half past two in the morning, and the moon at this hour was well up. They marched quietly and rapidly, but not unobserved, and when they approached Lexington Green they found drawn up there a company of minute-men. Smith had become alarmed when, as he was advancing, he found the country aroused in every direction, and sent back for reinforcements. Earl Percy, with the succor, was by some stupidity[366] delayed, and did not get off from Boston till between nine and ten the next morning, and he then took the circuitous route by Roxbury and Cambridge.
The critical moment on Lexington Green had then long passed. Major Pitcairn, who commanded Smith's advance-guard, would not or could not prevent that fatal volley in the early morning light, by which several of the small body of provincials were killed before they broke, while, by a scattering return fire, one or two of the British were wounded.[367] Smith, without being aware that Hancock and Adams were at the moment within sound of his musketry, and just then being conducted farther from his reach, waited while his troops gave three cheers, and then resumed his march, passing on towards Concord. The provincials gathered their dead and wounded, and managed as the British passed on to pick up a few stragglers, the first prisoners of the war.[368]
On the redcoats went as the day broadened.[369] They followed the road much as it runs to-day, though in places steeps and impediments are now avoided by a better grade. Their march went by the spots which the genius of Hawthorne and Emerson have converted into shrines. In the centre of Concord they halted, while the gathering provincials, who had retired before them, watched the smoke of devastation. Smith had detailed two detachments to find and destroy stores. One of these, sent to Colonel Barrett's, beyond the North Bridge, had some success, and while it was absent the provincials, now increased in numbers from the neighboring towns, approached a guard which had been left at the bridge. Here the British fired at the Americans across the stream, and the volley being returned, a few were killed on both sides, before the British guard retreated upon the main body, whither they were soon followed by the other detachment which was out. Smith took two hours to gather wagons for his wounded and make preparations for his retreat, which had now become imperative, for the militia were seen swarming on the hills.[370] When Smith started he threw out a flanking party on his left, which followed a ridge running parallel to his march; but when the sloping of the land compelled the flankers to descend to the level of the road, the British lost the advantage which the ridge gave them, and the minute-men, who now began to strike the British line of march at every angle, waylaid them at cross-roads, and dropped an incessant fire upon them from copse, hill, and stone wall, until the retreating troops, impeded with their wounded, and leaving many of their dying and dead, huddled along the road like sheep beset by dogs. Just on the easterly outskirts of Lexington they met Percy, whose ranks opened and received the fugitives; and Stedman, the British historian who was with Percy, tells us how the weary men hung out their tongues as they cumbered the ground during their halt. It was near two o'clock, and Percy planted his cannon to keep his assailants at bay, while his troops, now about eighteen hundred in number, rested and refreshed themselves. Before this, his baggage train, which had been delayed in crossing the bridge from Brighton to Cambridge so as to fall far behind his hastening column, had been captured, with its guard, by a crowd of old men some distance below, at Menotomy.[371] When Percy limbered his pieces and his troops fell again into column, the hovering militia renewed the assault. As pursuer and pursued crossed West Cambridge plain the action was sharp. Percy did not dare attempt to turn towards the boats which Smith had left at Lechmere Point, and any intention he may have had of halting at Cambridge and fortifying was long vanished. So he pursued the road which led towards Charlestown Neck. Several hundred militiamen, who had come up from Essex County,[372] were nearly in time at Winter Hill to cut the British off in their precipitate retreat, and "God knows", said Washington, when he learned the facts, "it could not have been more so." Percy, however, slipped by, and as darkness was coming on, the fire of the pursuers began to slacken as they approached Bunker Hill. Here, with the royal ships covering their flanks, the British halted, and, facing about, formed a line and prepared to make a stand. General Heath, who during the latter part of the day had been on the ground, drew off his militia, and at the foot of Prospect Hill held the first council of war of the now actual hostilities. Warren, early in the day hastening from Boston across the river, had galloped towards the scene of conflict. When he encountered Percy's column on its way out, he seems to have evaded it and joined General Heath, then taking cross-roads to intercept the pursuing militia. Heath took the command of the provincials soon after Percy resumed his march. From this time Warren, as chairman of the committee in Boston, kept near Heath, for counsel if need be, and Heath says that on the West Cambridge plain a musket-ball struck a pin from Warren's earlock.
No one could tell what would happen next, after this suddenly improvised army had begun to rendezvous that night in Cambridge. As the straggling parties, in bivouac and in what shelter they could find, compared experiences and counted the missing, messengers were hurrying in every direction with the tidings of the war at last begun![373]
On the 20th of April there was much to do beside picking up the dead that may have been left over night along the road from Concord. The Committee of Safety[374] were summoning all the towns to send their armed men to Cambridge.[375] Warren was writing to Gage to beg better facilities for getting the women and children, with family effects, out of Boston.[376] These were busy days for that ardent patriot. The militia were beginning to pour in, and Warren must do the chief work in reducing the mob to order. Congress comes to Watertown, and Warren, in the absence of Hancock, must preside. He bids God-speed to Samuel Adams and John Hancock[377] as they start for the Continental Congress. He hears with a sinking heart of the vessel which arrived at Gloucester on the 26th, bringing the body of Josiah Quincy, so lately warm that, when the tidings reached Cambridge of his death, Warren supposed he had lived to get ashore.[378]
HEATH'S ACCOUNT OF THE FIGHT AT MENOTOMY.