Chapter 5

“Fire, If You Have the Courage”

General Thomas Gage was certainly no stranger to North America. In fact, he had spent the better part of twenty years there. In the spring of 1775, Gage was fifty-five or fifty-six years old, the exact date of his birth being of some question. His father was the first Viscount Gage and for a time a member of Parliament. As the second son in the family, Thomas went into the military while his older brother, William, inherited the peerage. William used his contacts with Thomas Pelham-Holles, the first Duke of Newcastle, to further his younger brother’s military career. By 1751, Thomas had fought without apparent distinction at Fontenoy in Flanders (1745) and Culloden in Scotland (1746) and was a lieutenant colonel with the Forty-Fourth Regiment of Foot.¹

When the Duke of Newcastle, as de facto prime minister, decided to counter French expansion in the Ohio River valley, the Forty-Fourth Foot was ordered to North America late in 1754 to serve under Major General Edward Braddock. The following spring, with an expedition that included George Washington as the general’s aide-de-camp, Braddock attempted to drive the French from Fort Duquesne (modern-day Pittsburgh).

Gage’s military acumen now came under harsh criticism. On the morning of July 9, 1755, Braddock’s column forded the low waters of the Monongahela River just below Turtle Creek. Gage was in the lead, commanding an advance guard of some three hundred regulars. When French troops and their Indian allies appeared across his line of march and began to encircle his force, Gage ordered a retreat back toward Braddock’s main column of about one thousand men.

Hearing the sounds of this initial action, Braddock, instead of standing firm with his main force until the full extent of Gage’s contact with the enemy could be determined, elected to advance in column along the narrow path. The result was that Gage’s retreating troops and Braddock’s advancing forces telescoped inward upon one another in a tangle of confusion. The French and Indians quickly seized a hilltop to the right of the British advance that Gage had failed to secure and poured deadly fire into the massed British troops. Gage abandoned two six-pound cannons in his hasty retreat, and the French turned them against the head of the British column. More than five hundred men from Braddock’s command, including the general himself, were killed. Gage was slightly wounded.

Three years later, Gage was to have an even worse combat experience on the shores of Lake Champlain. In the wake of the Monongahela disaster, he received permission to organize a regiment of light infantry. Critics said the new regiment was an easy way for Gage to obtain a full colonelcy, but Braddock’s defeat clearly argued for more agile tactics. Light infantry was designed to be more mobile and more rapidly deployed than regular British units and was an answer to the tactics being employed successfully by colonial frontiersman Robert Rogers. Indeed, it was Rogers’ Rangers and the colonials’ favorite general, Lord George Howe, who led an advance guard that included Gage’s regiment during Lord Abercromby’s attack against Fort Carillon, later renamed Ticonderoga.

When Abercromby inexplicably ordered Rogers’ Rangers, who knew the ground better than anyone, to detour some distance away from the main force, Howe and Gage continued the advance and met with initial French resistance. This time, the British advance guard prevailed, but not before the likable Lord Howe lay dead with a bullet through his chest. Suddenly Colonel Gage was Abercromby’s second in command.

Two days later, Abercromby ordered Gage to lead a massive frontal assault against a maze of fortifications spread across the slopes below Fort Carillon. The result was as predictable as it was catastrophic and proved to be the French and Indian War version of the Charge of the Light Brigade. By nightfall, the British had suffered almost two thousand casualties in front of a French force they outnumbered four to one, though Gage himself survived.²

Gage’s star remained undimmed—both personally and professionally. On December 8, 1758, he married the quite eligible Margaret Kemble in an Anglican ceremony in New Brunswick, New Jersey. She was twenty-four and, if a later portrait is any indication, quite a beauty, with thick dark hair and pensive, some might even say moody, brown eyes. Margaret’s father, Peter Kemble, was well settled in New Jersey and had been appointed to the governor’s council of the province by George II in 1745. Her brother Stephen was a young infantry officer who first served under Gage at Ticonderoga and may have arranged Gage’s introduction to his sister. About fifteen years older than Margaret, Thomas Gage was a good catch. Along with his high forehead, long, angular nose, and rounded chin, his drooping brown eyes conveyed stability if not daring, comfort if not dash. Together they would have nine children.³

At the beginning of 1759, the commander in chief in North America, Jeffery Amherst, gave Gage command of the western outposts on the Great Lakes, and a year later Gage led a force down the Saint Lawrence River to complement Amherst’s attack on Montreal. His reward was a promotion to major general and the military governorship of Montreal. Amherst, worn out from five years of war, finally returned to England in 1763, when peace was signed with France, and Thomas Gage succeeded him as commander in chief of British forces in North America with headquarters in New York City.

In the wake of the French and Indian War, Gage was initially concerned with maintaining security along the western frontier. Despite the prohibitions of the Proclamation of 1763, which drew colonial borders along the crest of the Appalachians, continuing cross-Appalachian trade and limited settlement demanded his attention. But in 1768, ministers in London ordered Gage to withdraw British troops from most western forts and post them instead along the Eastern Seaboard, in part to garrison key cities where opposition was growing to Parliament’s various taxing schemes.

When Massachusetts royal governor Francis Bernard—quite unpopular in the aftermath of the Stamp Act crisis—asked Gage to post troops in Boston, Gage declined to do so on his own authority. He was quite willing to follow orders from London, but if Gage took such a step on his own, he wisely foresaw that he would become a lightning rod for criticism, both in America and among Whigs in England.⁴

There are also indications that Gage found himself torn—or at the very least disturbed—by the notion that he should be using troops to suppress rights that he took for granted as an Englishman. Gage was a loyal soldier of the king, but he was not a royalist. His concept of English government and what it meant to Englishmen was more in keeping with the Whig tradition of a government of Parliament and men.

Still, in letters to his superior, secretary of war Lord Barrington, Gage held to the party line. When Boston protested the garrisoning of two regiments at Castle William in Boston Harbor, Gage called it “very disagreeable News” and told Barrington, “The People there grow worse and worse, and if any thing is Rebellion in America, they seem to me in an actual State of Rebellion.” Gage was also quite derogatory in his statement that the colonials would never take decisive action—an attitude he would carry with him until the end. “I am very much of the Opinion,” Gage told Barrington in the midst of the Stamp Act crisis, “they will shrink on the Day of Trial… They are a People, who have ever been very bold in Council, but never remarkable for their Feats in Action.”⁵

Despite minor outbursts of colonial frustration, tensions in Massachusetts eased for a time, and in the spring of 1773, for the first time in eighteen years, Gage was granted leave to return to England. Margaret, who had never been out of North America, went with him. One of those who attended General Gage’s farewell dinner in New York was an old comrade from the days of the French and Indian War, a Virginian named George Washington, who happened to be in town enrolling his stepson at King’s College.⁶

From what is known, Thomas and Margaret Gage enjoyed the better part of a year in and around London, although one of Margaret’s first acts upon arriving that summer was to give birth to their seventh child, a daughter named Charlotte Margaret. Three of their children had accompanied them on the Atlantic crossing, while the three oldest offspring were already in England attending school. With all the family together and no sign that Thomas’s brother, Viscount Gage, would produce a viable heir (his seven children all died in infancy), there were strong familial and economic reasons to remain in England. Indeed, their stay might well have become permanent.

But in Gage’s absence, tea was dumped into Boston Harbor, and royal governor Thomas Hutchinson was finally driven out of office by the relentless campaign of Samuel Adams and his followers. Soon after news of the Tea Party reached London, Gage had a command audience with George III. The precise timing is uncertain, but given that Gage had been in England seven months without such a summons, it was likely made in response to the tea news. The king was livid over the action, and Gage may have overplayed his hand in asserting his readiness “to return at a day’s notice” should the conduct of the colonies warrant it. George III was impressed with Gage and soon decreed not only that Gage return to North America but also that he assume the dual role of military chieftain and royal governor of the errant province of Massachusetts.

By the time he was informed of this decision by Lord Dartmouth, Gage was likely having second thoughts. Parliament passed the punitive Boston Port Act, which he would have to enforce, shortly before his appointment as governor was formally signed on April 7, 1774. Given what Gage knew from almost twenty years of experience in North America, he found no reason to rejoice in either the bill or his appointment. In his mid-fifties, he may well have reveled in the idea of remaining in England. After a successful career, there was little in the way of fame or honor that he could hope to achieve, even if he should be successful in taming the rebel faction, and there was a high probability that if things went badly he would be seen in London as the principal scapegoat. As both the political and military leader in Massachusetts, there would be no one else to blame.

But loyal soldier that he was, Thomas Gage sailed for Boston without open complaint and, after a particularly speedy crossing on HMS Lively, arrived in Boston Harbor on Friday, May 13, 1774. Margaret Gage left England three weeks after the general’s departure and, with her brother Stephen and all but two of her children, landed first in New York to visit friends and relatives then joined her husband in Boston in mid-September. Little did she know how tumultuous her stay would be.⁷

BECAUSE THE BOSTON PORT ACT made Salem the new Massachusetts capital as part of Boston’s punishment, General Gage spent some of the summer of 1774 there before returning to Boston just prior to Margaret’s arrival. In late September, he sent two dispatches to Lord Dartmouth that gave a gloomy outlook for the province, highlighting the illegal convening of both the Continental Congress and the county convention that passed the Suffolk Resolves. Gage offered Dartmouth “no Prospect” of enforcing the Intolerable Acts unless “by first making a Conquest of the New-England Provinces.” The movement that the general characterized as a “Disease” was not confined to Boston, “but now it’s so universal there is no knowing where to apply a Remedy.”⁸

Before he heard back from Dartmouth, there was more bad news for Gage to report. “The Proceedings of the Continental Congress astonish and terrify all considerate Men,” Gage acknowledged. As for the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, Gage assured Dartmouth that he had published a proclamation condemning its latest proceedings at Cambridge. Then, in what might be described as wishful thinking, Gage suggested to Dartmouth, “People are cooler than they were, and grow Apprehensive of Consequences. The Congresses have gone greater Lengths than was expected.”⁹ Greater lengths than perhaps Gage expected, but Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and others had little regard for such conservative thought.

Then came the seizure by rebels of the king’s stores at Portsmouth. Ironically, Gage had almost forecast the outcome by telling Dartmouth a few days before: “Your Lordship’s Idea of disarming certain Provinces would doubtless be consistent with Prudence and Safety, but it neither is nor has been practicable without having Recourse to Force, and being Masters of the Country.”¹⁰

Given the pace of events in North America, the delay in cross-Atlantic communications between Gage and his superiors must have been maddening. Even in the fastest of circumstances, it took at least two months, and sometimes three, from the time Gage wrote a letter to London until he received a reply. A lot could happen during that interval, and Gage knew well that at a local level he was on his own. But in the broadest sense, he was also well aware that only Parliament and the king could resolve the status between mother country and colonies and either announce a reconciliation or tighten the screws of control.

“The Eyes of all are turned upon Great Britain, waiting for her Determination,” Gage told Dartmouth three weeks into the new year. He might well have stopped there, but, characteristically, he went on to say what so many from the king on down wanted to hear: “It’s the opinion of most People, if a respectable Force is seen in the Field, the most obnoxious of the Leaders seized, and a Pardon proclaimed for all other’s, that Government will come off Victorious, and with less Opposition than was expected a few Months ago.”¹¹

It would take some months for Dartmouth’s response and his instructions in the matter to reach Gage in Boston. In the meantime, all Thomas Gage could do was suffer through an uncomfortable winter. Not until February 6, 1775, did he receive a reply to his admonitions of late September. “The state of the Province as represented in those Dispatches,” Dartmouth told Gage, “is now under consideration.” Dartmouth hoped that it would “not be many days” before he could direct a course of action in response. Waiting “with Impatience” for further letters from Gage, Dartmouth “ardently” wished for “a better prospect of the restoration of public tranquility than is held forth in those which I have already received.”¹²

WHILE HE WAITED FOR FURTHER instructions from London, General Gage pressed to undertake two important missions, both cloaked in secrecy. On February 22, the general gave instructions to two officers, Captain John Brown of the Fifty-Second Regiment of Foot and Ensign Henry De Berniere of the Tenth Regiment of Foot, to make a clandestine reconnaissance of rural towns west of Boston. These officers were instructed to make a sketch of the country they passed and note in particular the heights, passes, rivers, and fords as well as “advantageous spots to take post in, and capable of being made defencible.” As evidence that Gage was anticipating more than a day or two in the field, they were also instructed to record what provisions might be had off the land and from local farms, including “Forage, Straw, &c., the number of Cattle, Horses, &c., in the several Townships.”¹³

To travel as inconspicuously as possible through the Massachusetts countryside, these two proper British officers attempted to disguise themselves as farmers, donning “brown Clothes and reddish handkerchiefs” around their necks. Such attire was questionable, but what made the pair really stand out was that Captain Brown chose to take his servant along. When a sentry from the Fifty-Second Regiment recognized Brown as the trio was leaving Boston, the servant “bid him not to take any notice,” and they “passed unknown to Charlestown,” thinking their disguise secure.

Commenting favorably on the brick buildings of Harvard College, the “farmers” passed through Cambridge and reached Watertown, about six miles to the west. De Berniere thought their real identities “were not suspected,” but a lunch stop at Brewer’s Tavern proved otherwise. Brewer was a Whig, and while the black woman who brought their food was at first very civil, she soon excused herself to report her suspicions to her employer. When she returned, Brown tried to engage her in conversation about what “very fine country” this was, which she acknowledged, but then she warned, “And we have got brave fellows to defend it, and if you go up any higher [into the hills] you will find it is so.”

With some trepidation, the two officers and their “man” walked west toward Worcester, seeking out loyalists who could provide them with food and shelter and doing their best to avoid rebels who frequently shadowed or fell in with them. Even if they did not know the political persuasions of their hosts with certainty, the proffered choice of drink usually told them what they needed to know. If they were presented with only coffee, it raised an alarm that the house was observing the tea boycott, but if they were freely given a choice of coffee or tea, they were among loyalist friends.

Having reconnoitered Worcester—where a substantial cache of rebel arms and ammunition was stored—and the roads leading to it, they arrived on the fifth night of their journey at Buckminster’s Tavern in Framingham. To their surprise, the local militia was drilling on the village green. About an hour after Brown, De Berniere, and their servant retired to their room, the militia drew near the tavern and drilled right under their window. Whether this was meant as bluster, so that the officers might report back on the readiness of the militia, or whether it was merely a convenient spot to practice before all were dismissed to enter the tavern for rounds of drinks is debatable. In any event, the thinly disguised British officers slept there all night, and De Berniere’s report that “nobody in the house suspected us” is almost certainly not true.

From Framingham, they doubled back on a different road to sketch the lay of the land toward Sudbury and Marlborough, a long day’s walk of thirty-two miles through snow and muddy roads. Once again, their identities and purpose seemed well known as rebels made one excuse or another to follow them or bump into them. By the time they returned to Boston after seven nights on the road, about the only person who failed to recognize them for what they were was General Gage, who happened to be walking on Boston Neck as they came into town.¹⁴

BEFORE BROWN AND DE BERNIERE returned, and before receiving any additional instructions from London, General Gage nonetheless dispatched a second mission of even greater importance, continuing his attempts to seize powder and arms from the rebels. To date, he had not been very successful. Though his troops had reclaimed two field pieces in nearby Cambridge the previous September, his attempts to secure the king’s stores at Newport, Rhode Island, and Portsmouth, New Hampshire, had failed. Now, in the last week of February 1775, Gage focused on nearby Salem, Massachusetts, and a cache of cannon barrels that rebels were in the process of mounting on gun carriages for use on land as field guns.

The cannons were twelve-pounders thought to have originally belonged to the French in Nova Scotia during the French and Indian War. David Mason, a colonel in the local militia, reportedly purchased at least twelve and perhaps as many as seventeen of the pieces from Salem merchant and seafarer Richard Derby. Mason’s wife and daughters were busy sewing flannel cartridges to hold gunpowder.

Gage ordered Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Leslie and about 240 men of the Sixty-Fourth Regiment of Foot to sail the fifteen miles from Boston to Marblehead and then march on nearby Salem. Well aware that the rebels’ intelligence network in Boston might detect such a movement and again send Paul Revere galloping to spread an alarm, Gage used troops that were quartered at Castle William in Boston Harbor and not in the town proper. They could be embarked more stealthily, and two hours after sunset on Saturday, February 25, they were.

About noon the following day—a Sunday, when the pious of New England could be expected to be focused on church—a transport, “apparently manned as usual,” according to the Essex Gazette, arrived at Marblehead, about four miles south of Salem. Somewhere between two and three o’clock that afternoon, as soon as most people had gone back to afternoon church services, the decks of the transport were suddenly covered with soldiers, “who having loaded and fixed their Bayonets, landed with great Dispatch; and instantly marched off.”¹⁵

Certain men with sharp eyes who were not in church suspected Leslie’s destination and sped word to Salem in advance of his column. A youngster named William Gavett later remembered, “My father came home from church rather sooner than usual, which attracted my notice, and said to my mother, ‘The reg’lars are come and are marching as fast as they can towards the Northfields bridge.’ ” Telling his wife to keep the children indoors, Jonathan Gavett then stepped into his front yard in time to see Leslie’s troops march past. His minister from the nearby First Meeting House, Thomas Barnard, soon joined Gavett, and together they followed the force through town. Meanwhile, David Mason, the colonel of the militia, had also received word of Leslie’s approach and burst into the North Meeting House to interrupt the service with a similar shout: “The reg’lars are coming after the guns and are now near Malloon’s Mills!”¹⁶

There is some evidence, however, that Colonel Leslie was not yet sure of the location of the cache of cannon barrels. Coming into Salem from the south, his line of march crossed the inlet of the South River at Malloon’s Mills via a drawbridge and reached the courthouse square. His advance guard turned eastward, toward the town’s long wharf—perhaps as a diversion, perhaps to seek information—while Leslie paused in front of the courthouse and sought a local informant.

John Sargent, a well-known Tory and half brother of the local mandamus councilor, appeared and “was very soon whispering in the Colonel’s Ear.” When they parted, Leslie led his troops onward through town and past the North Meeting House to another bridge, this one spanning the inlet of the North River that led to the North Fields section of town. The column boldly started across the long bridge only to discover that the drawbridge portion was in the raised position, exposing a deep, watery chasm of some forty feet. The bridge was clearly under the control of a group of townspeople on the opposite (northern) shore who had raised the span to stop the troops in their march. Some people on that side even climbed to the top of the raised span with the help of the chains that held it. As many as could fit defiantly perched there like hens at roost.

The Essex Gazette initially reported that Leslie “ordered an Officer to face his Company to the Body of Men standing on a Wharf on the other Side of the Draw-Bridge, and fire.” A Salem man, by some accounts the Reverend Barnard and by other accounts a militia captain named John Felt, immediately intervened and told Leslie he had no right to fire without further orders, “and if you do fire (said he) you will be all dead Men.”¹⁷

A week later, the Gazette noted there was some question as to whether or not Leslie had given a specific order to face and fire or been prevented from doing so by locals. “There was no Intention to detract from Col. Leslie’s Courage, Honour or Prudence,” the newspaper’s proprietors wrote in response, but the end result was still the same: “The Company neither fired or faced.”¹⁸

Meanwhile, locals scuttled three large gondolas on the riverbank that might have been used to ferry troops across. While Joseph Whicher, the foreman of the nearby Sprague’s Distillery, was directing the sinking of the distillery’s own gondola, a party of some twenty soldiers swarmed aboard it and ordered Whicher to cease and desist at the points of their bayonets. Whicher reportedly opened his shirt in defiance and “dared them to strike,” which one did, with a gentle jab that nonetheless drew some blood. Whicher bragged about it the rest of his life.¹⁹

Seeing the squabble in the sinking gondola, Leslie withdrew to the center of his command and held a brief council with his officers. Whether he cautioned them against an unauthorized errant shot is unknown but likely. Most of the townspeople for the moment appeared unarmed, and Leslie did not want another Boston Massacre incident on his hands. Instead, the colonel advanced again to the open span and made one more appeal to the crowd. “I am determined to pass over this bridge before I return to Boston,” Leslie declared—“[even] if I remain here until next autumn.” That was an empty enough threat, but then Leslie announced that he would seize barracks for his troops in two nearby stores until the bridge was lowered. Most in Salem did not want such permanent company.

Captain Felt of the local militia, to whom this remark was particularly addressed, answered that “nobody would care for that,” upon which Colonel Leslie, “nettled no doubt by this expression of contempt,” replied, “By God I will not be defeated.” To which Felt coolly responded, “You must acknowledge that you have been already baffled.”²⁰

By another recollection, in the midst of this standoff, Colonel Leslie pompously exclaimed that he was upon the King’s Highway and would not be deterred from crossing over the drawbridge. That wasn’t so, replied a gutsy old man named James Barr. “It is not the King’s highway, it is a road built by the owners of the lots on the other side, and no king, country or town has anything to do with it.”

“There may be two words to that,” Leslie replied.

“Egad,” Mr. Barr responded. “I think that will be the best way for you to conclude the King has nothing to do with it.”²¹

What seems to have become clear, however, is that most of the British column stood shivering in the cold in the fading afternoon light of a wintry day. They might have been better served if they had brought their overcoats instead of fife and drums. Numbed by the cold, they endured the taunts of a growing group of townspeople: “Soldiers, red-jackets, lobster-coats, cowards, damnation to your government!” In addition, members of militia from neighboring towns were beginning to appear and could be seen taking up positions behind nearby buildings. Many more militiamen were on the way, and to Leslie’s rear, the hardened Marblehead fishermen were preparing to block his line of retreat.

Leslie was in a box, and he knew it. Had he pushed the issue, leveled arms, and fired, he might well have put Salem—instead of the green at Lexington—on the map as the tinderbox of the American Revolution. In desperation, he proposed a win-win. If the Salem folk would lower the bridge, Leslie promised to march his troops across it no more than about five hundred feet and not disturb anything or anyone. He would then turn them about and march them back again, à la the Duke of York in a certain nursery rhyme.

The objects of Leslie’s quest had likely been stored in Robert Foster’s blacksmith shop on the northern shore, but the delay at the drawbridge of “about an Hour and an Half” had given locals time to have “every Thing… secured.” By one account, a Quaker named David Boyce lent his team of horses to the effort, and the cannons were moved farther out of town. With the cannons thus secure, David Mason, sitting atop the open drawbridge, gave the decisive order. His men on the northern shore lowered the drawbridge, and Leslie ordered his freezing troops to march across.²²

But there was to be one more moment of tension—at least it was remembered as tense in hindsight. As Leslie’s regulars reached their promised turnabout point, Sarah Tarrant, a woman of about thirty, stuck her head out of an open window and shouted at them, “Go home and tell your master he has sent you on a fool’s errand and broken the peace of our Sabbath.” By one account, one of the soldiers aimed his firearm at her, but that only made her more defiant. “Fire, if you have the courage,” Tarrant shouted. “But I doubt it.”²³

The tale of Sarah Tarrant aside, Leslie led his men back over the drawbridge to the waiting ship at Marblehead and returned to Boston. There he was able to report to General Gage that he had indeed marched the length of Salem but found no arms. Gage may have taken the entire Salem incident as proof that he could send troops into the countryside with impunity. But had Leslie’s troops opened fire at the drawbridge, there is little doubt that their retreat would have been met with considerable return fire—if not immediately then upon their homeward trek.

The lesson of the Salem raid to the rebels was that their local militias could quickly be warned, assembled, and dispatched to the point of a contest. One company of armed men arrived in Salem from Danvers, about five miles away, just as Colonel Leslie’s force was departing. Had a stand-down message not been circulated on the heels of the initial warnings, the Essex Gazette estimated that “not less than 12 or 15,000 men would have been assembled in this town within 24 hours after the alarm.” As it was, Salem “immediately dispatched Messengers to the neighbouring Towns to save them the Trouble of coming in; but the Alarm flew like Lightening so that great Numbers were in Arms, and some on the March, before our [recall] Messengers arrived.”²⁴

Just how General Gage and the British learned about the cache of Salem cannons in the first place was a matter of great debate. In Salem, as in every town in America, all were not on the same side. But when fingers were pointed, at least one suspect just as quickly took it upon himself to deny any involvement. “As it is reported about this Town, much to my Injury,” Andrew Dalgleish professed in an advertisement two days after Leslie’s raid, “that I gave Information of certain Pieces of Artillery, which was the Occasion of a Regiment’s marching to this Place Yesterday;—I take this public Method of acquainting the good People, that the Character of an Informer, is of all Characters the most odious to me; that I was in no Way instrumental in bringing Troops hither, and shall be ready to satisfy any one, who will call upon me, of my intire Innocence.”²⁵

“Col. Leslie’s ridiculous expedition,” as the Essex Gazette termed it, was given mention in John Trumbull’s epic poem of the Revolution, M’Fingal.

Thro’ Salem straight without delay,

The bold battalion took its way,

March’d o’er a bridge, in open sight

Of sev’ral Yankees arm’d for fight,

Then, without loss of time, or men,

Veer’d round for Boston back again;

And found so well their projects thrive,

That ev’ry soul got home alive.²⁶

By yet another anecdotal account, fifers in Leslie’s column supposedly played “The World Turned Upside Down” as they returned to their ship off Marblehead.²⁷ The irony, of course, is that if the story is true, this is the same tune that the British would play after the surrender of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown at the end of the American Revolution. But as it was, the British raid on Salem was not even the beginning, much less the end.