Chapter 15

What Have We Done?

As both sides struggled to determine what each had done, on the rebel side the events of the day raised the broader question of why had they acted—not merely why they had fired on the king’s troops, no matter which side shot first, but why they were pursuing a determined, armed resistance against the established government. There was no one answer, and whatever answers were given varied with the retelling of events and were influenced by the context of the times in which they were told. With that caveat, it is nonetheless instructive to recount the oft-told tale of Levi Preston of Danvers.

Preston was a young man of eighteen that spring, and his title of captain would come later. He was one of the Danvers militia who rushed headlong into the fight at Menotomy. Sixty-seven long years after that fight, when Preston was approaching ninety, Mellen Chamberlain, then a young man of about the same age as Preston had been in 1775, interviewed the old warrior.

“Capt[ain] Preston,” Chamberlain asked, “what made you go to the Concord fight?”

The old man straightened in his chair and repeated the question. “What did I go for?”

“Yes,” Chamberlain answered. “My histories all tell me you men of the Revolution took up arms against intolerable oppression. What was it?”

According to Chamberlain, Preston launched into disavowals that it hadn’t been about stamps or tea or taxes or high-minded writings about the principles of liberty. “Well, then,” queried Chamberlain again, “what was the matter?”

“Young man,” bristled Captain Preston in reply, “what we meant in fighting the British was this: We always had been free and we meant to be free always!”¹

It makes a patriotic story. It may well have been tempered by Preston’s age and Chamberlain’s retelling, but in almost two and a half centuries since that day on Lexington Green and in the fields and hills from Concord to Menotomy, Preston’s reply became the most basic and cherished answer to the question, why did they do it?

ON THE MORNING OF APRIL 20, 1775, Boston and the towns of Charlestown and Cambridge, across the river, were scenes of chaos. Those British troops who had staggered home from Concord saw to their wounded and pondered what had happened to several trained regiments of one of the world’s better armies. Loyalists were aghast at the rebels’ determined show of force. And while a few rebels celebrated, most were as stunned by the violence as their loyalist neighbors were.

If, when he heard the first musket fire from Lexington Green, Samuel Adams indeed chortled and said to John Hancock that it was a great day for America, even Adams must have been horrified—or at the very least surprised—by the ferociousness of the fighting. The pent-up frustrations of a decade had exploded on both sides.

“You will easily conceive,” Lord Percy wrote to an officer friend in England, “that in such a retreat, harassed as we were on all sides, it was impossible not to lose a good many men.”² Reports of British casualties varied, but Ensign De Berniere recorded seventy-three dead, 174 wounded, and twenty-six missing. Of these, there were eighteen officers, including Lieutenant Edward Hull of the Forty-Third, mortally wounded at the North Bridge; the mercurial Lieutenant William Sutherland of the Thirty-Eighth, wounded slightly at the North Bridge; and Lieutenant Edward Gould of the Fourth, who was wounded and listed as missing after his capture outside Menotomy.

In his official report to General Gage, Percy speculated that the British casualties were much less than the number “I have reason to believe were killed of the Rebels.” But the rebels actually fared considerably better. A total of fifty were killed or mortally wounded. Fewer rebels were wounded—thirty-nine compared to 174 for the British—because the protective cover of rocks, trees, fences, and buildings had shielded many of them. These rebel casualty counts did not include civilians, such as Jason Russell of Menotomy, but, significantly, they were spread over minuteman and militia units from twenty-three towns—stark evidence that Lexington and Concord’s neighbors had rushed to their aid and that the Massachusetts alarm system was highly effective. Despite the carnage at Menotomy, the town of Lexington bore the highest number of rebel casualties for the day—ten killed and ten wounded.³

Among those rebels and regulars most critical of the expedition was Lieutenant John Barker of the Fourth “King’s Own” Regiment. “Thus ended this Expedition,” Barker wrote of his regiment’s return to Boston, “which from beginning to end was as ill plan’d and ill executed as it was possible to be.” The litany of failure in Barker’s eyes was long: the three hours slogging around the Cambridge marsh, the consequent late arrivals in Lexington and Concord—all delays that gave rebel militia time to converge on Menotomy from as far as twenty miles away. And what had the British accomplished? “Thus for a few trifling stores,” Barker wrote, summing up their bounty, “the Grenrs. And Lt. Infantry had a march of about 50 Miles (going and returning) through an Enemy’s Country, and in all human probability must every Man have been cut off if the Brigade had not fortunately come to their Assistance.”⁴

Lord Percy was in no position to be so critical, but he could certainly express his surprise about the rebel resistance. “For my part,” Percy wrote, “I never believed, I confess, that they wd have attacked the King’s troops, or have had the perseverance I found in them yesterday.” Gone was a great deal of Percy’s smugness about British superiority and his disdain for the perceived lack of rebel command and control. “Whoever looks upon them as an irregular mob,” Percy continued, “will find himself much mistaken. They have men amongst them who know very well what they are about.”⁵

Other British officers found the rebel tactics of shooting from behind cover quite despicable and hardly worthy of His Majesty’s troops. Captain W. G. Evelyn commanded a regular infantry company in the King’s Own and marched with Percy to the rescue. Evelyn reported in a letter to his father back in Ireland that the “bickerings and heartburnings” with the rebels had come to blows “between us and the Yankey scoundrels.” He found the rebels “the most absolute cowards on the face of the earth” because they would not fight in open fields by rank and file. But despite their lowly tactics, Evelyn worried that “they are just now worked up to such a degree of enthusiasm and madness that they are easily persuaded the Lord is to assist them in whatever they undertake.”⁶

General Gage waited three days to receive full reports from Lord Percy and Colonel Smith before writing his own reports to his superiors in London. To Lord Dartmouth, Secretary of State for the Colonies, Gage first noted the receipt of Dartmouth’s letters up to the one dated February 22, including the secretary’s lengthy missive concluding that the time had come when His Majesty’s government “must act with firmness and decision.”⁷ The originals of these dispatches had arrived on board the Falcon on April 16, and Gage evidently sought to assure Dartmouth that he had acted upon them promptly. Unfortunately for Gage, the result had been to no one’s liking. In recounting the events of April 19, the only good news Gage imparted was that “too much Praise cannot be given Lord Percy for his remarkable Activity and Conduct” and his speculation that “the Loss sustained by those who attacked is said to be great.”⁸

To Lord Barrington, the longtime secretary of war, Gage bookended the news about Lexington and Concord with mundane acknowledgments of promotions and recommendations for further promotions. He eased into the most important news with what in retrospect seems a decided understatement: “I have now nothing to trouble your Lordship with, but of an Affair that happened here on the 19th.” To both Dartmouth and Barrington, Gage concluded with the obvious: “The whole Country was Assembled in Arms with Surprising expedition, and Several Thousand are now Assembled about this Town, threatening an Attack, and getting up Artillery; and we are very busy in making preparations to Oppose them.”⁹

Then, either out of lackadaisical indifference or an outright attempt to downplay the importance of this news, Gage—or, more accurately, probably his secretary, Samuel Kemble, the younger brother of his wife, Margaret—affixed seals and entrusted both letters to the two-hundred-ton merchantman Sukey instead of to a faster dispatch ship of the Royal Navy. The Sukey cleared Boston Harbor and set sail for England on April 24.

GENERAL GAGE WAS CORRECT: THERE were many people flocking to Boston and its environs, but not all were rebels. There was also a rush of loyalists in the same direction. Their aim was to get into Boston and under General Gage’s protection—however tenuous—before rebel siege lines rendered access difficult if not impossible. In the weeks ahead, these lines would expand to encircle Boston, with the goal of keeping General Gage and his troops penned up there.

Josiah Sturtevant, the local doctor in the town of Halifax, near Plymouth, who had long espoused “the cause of the king,” galloped north in fear for his life as soon as word came of the fighting at Lexington and Concord. By one report, Dr. Sturtevant rode in such haste that he lost his saddlebags. General Gage rewarded him for both his effort and his loyalty. The doctor was commissioned a captain in the British army, and Gage gave him responsibility for the army hospital. But things didn’t work out so well for Dr. Sturtevant. He became infected with smallpox and died four months later. His wife, Lois, was particularly bitter, writing upon his death, “My dear husband departed this life at Boston in his fifty-fifth year where he was driven by a mad and deluded mob for no other offence but his loyalty to his sovereign.”¹⁰

Abijah Willard arrived in Boston to receive a similar reward with a better ending. Willard was a veteran of the French and Indian War and one of the wealthiest landowners in Lancaster, some fifty miles northwest of Boston. As one of the hated mandamus councilors, Willard endured several beatings and confinements. Although he then disavowed his royal appointment, his true allegiance remained uncertain—perhaps even to himself. On the morning of April 19, Willard was riding toward his farm with saddlebags filled with seeds for his fields when he encountered rebel militia marching toward Lexington and Concord. It was decision time. Willard might have joined them, but he turned instead in the opposite direction and rode for Boston. There he reported to General Gage and was promptly commissioned a captain in the Loyal American Association, a paramilitary union of loyalists.¹¹

Truth be told, however, Boston quickly became an unpleasant place to be for anyone save perhaps those with an ample larder hidden away as rebel troops stopped deliveries of fresh produce from the countryside. “In the course of two days,” recorded Ensign De Berniere after returning from Smith’s Concord foray, “from a plentiful town, we were reduced to the disagreeable necessity of living on salt provisions, and fairly blocked up in Boston.”¹² Most local farmers and dairymen were supporters of the rebel cause and all too glad to find new customers among the large numbers of rebel militia gathering in and around Cambridge.

But not everyone who wanted to leave Boston could. Sometimes, the issue caused marital strife. Sarah Winslow Deming acknowledged to her nephew in England that those British troops who had wintered in Boston “had not given us much molestation, but an additional strength [more troops] I dreaded and determined if possible to get out of their reach, and to take with me as much of my little life interest as I could. Your uncle Deming was very far from being of my mind from which has proceeded those difficulties which peculiarly related to myself.

“Many a time,” Sarah Deming continued, “have I thought that could I be out of Boston together with my family and friends, I could be content with the meanest fare and slenderest accommodation. Out of Boston, out of Boston at almost any rate—away as far as possible from the infection of smallpox & martial musick as it is called and horrors of war—but my distress is not to be described.”¹³

There were others—including merchant John Andrews, who had wished in the New Year hoping for any sign of moderation from the Crown—who were now forced to choose sides. On what he called “this fatal day,” Andrews wrote his brother-in-law, William Barrell: “When I reflect and consider that the fight [at Lexington] was between those whose parents but a few generations ago were brothers, I shudder at the thought, and there’s no knowing where our calamities will end.”¹⁴

With an army of rebels surrounding Boston, General Gage feared insurrection from armed inhabitants inside the city. It was impossible to know which side some residents were on. After a series of tense town meetings that took the unprecedented step of continuing through a Sunday—April 23—it was agreed that all Bostonians, whatever their political leanings, would deliver up their arms to the town selectmen, and in exchange General Gage would open the avenues and docks to permit those who wanted to leave town to do so. “If I can escape with the skin of my teeth,” John Andrews told his brother-in-law, “[I] shall be glad as I don’t expect to be able to take more than a change of apparel with me, as Sam. [possibly Andrews’s nephew] and his wife with myself and Ruthy [Andrews’s wife] intend for Nova Scotia.”

But even with this accommodation for those who wished to depart, Gage could not be certain that rebel forces would not attempt to take Boston by force. “I expect to become a beggar ere long,” Andrews continued, “as our own countrymen have not compassion, but persist in threatening the town with storming it, which pray God avert before I depart.”¹⁵

ON THE REBEL SIDE, THERE was equal anxiety over what had just occurred and equal uncertainty as to the future. General Gage’s nervousness aside, there was no immediate plan to push into Boston. Chaos reigned. Even Samuel Adams and John Hancock seemed out of the loop. Following their belated departure from the Clarke parsonage on the early morning of April 19, they momentarily took refuge in Woburn, to the northeast of Lexington, and then moved westward to Billerica, where they were rejoined by Hancock’s aunt Lydia and his fiancée, Dorothy Quincy. Despite Dorothy’s professed determination to return to Boston and see to the safety of her father, she and John finally agreed that given John’s imminent departure for the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, the safest place for Dorothy and Aunt Lydia would be in Fairfield, Connecticut, at the home of Thaddeus Burr, an old family friend and Hancock’s ally in both business and politics.¹⁶

Over the course of the next several days, Samuel Adams and the Hancock entourage worked their way westward to Worcester, Massachusetts, there to await the arrival of the other Massachusetts delegates—John Adams, Thomas Cushing, and Robert Treat Paine—and to travel on to Philadelphia together. From Worcester, on the evening of Monday, April 24, Hancock wrote a spirited though somewhat disjointed letter full of questions to the Provincial Congress then meeting in Watertown. “Gentlemen,” began Hancock, “Mr. S. Adams and myself, just arrived here, find no intelligence from you and no guard.” A passing express from the south had conveyed word of four more British regiments arriving in New York, and Hancock wondered, “How are we to proceed? Where are our brethren?”

Knowing little about the military situation in and around Boston, Hancock nevertheless urged, “Boston must be entered; the [British] troops must be sent away.” Then, speaking more as a businessman than as a patriot, he complained: “I have an interest in that town; what can be the enjoyment of that to me, if I am obliged to hold it at the will of general Gage, or any one else?”¹⁷

Meanwhile, Samuel’s cousin John had taken it upon himself to get a firsthand look at the carnage along what would come to be called Battle Road. John Adams’s usually verbose diary is silent—or missing—after his return from the First Continental Congress, in November of 1774, until April 30, 1775. During much of that time, he was consumed by his responses to Massachusettensis. Only in his autobiography did Adams fill in his whereabouts for the ten days immediately following the events of April 19, which, he claimed, “changed the Instruments of Warfare from the Penn to the Sword.”

A few days after the battle, Adams left his home in Braintree and rode to Cambridge, where he saw generals Artemas Ward and William Heath and what he called “the New England Army”—really still only those regiments of militia gathering there in the wake of the Concord fight. The scene was one of “great Confusion and much distress: Artillery, Arms, Cloathing were wanting and a sufficient Supply of Provisions not easily obtained.” Nonetheless, Adams found that neither the officers nor their men were lacking in spirit or resolve.

From Cambridge, Adams rode on to Lexington “along the Scene of Action for many miles” and quizzed the locals about the circumstances of that day. What he heard in return did not diminish his enthusiasm for the cause in which he had been laboring and “on the Contrary convinced me that the Die was cast, the Rubicon Passed, and… if We did not defend ourselves they would kill us.”¹⁸

John returned home to Abigail in Braintree with a fever and “alarming Symptoms.” He was still feeling poorly when he was forced to depart Braintree again about April 26 in order to reach Philadelphia for the Continental Congress. Abigail was not pleased. “I feared much for your health, when you went away,” she later wrote him. “I must entreat you to be as careful as you can consistently with the duty you owe your country. That consideration alone, prevailed with me to consent to your departure, in a time so perilous and so hazardous to your family, and with a body so infirm as to require the tenderest care and nursing.”¹⁹

The portly Adams had been planning to ride horseback, but being indisposed, he hired two horses, a sulky, and a servant and set off to rendezvous with his cousin Samuel, John Hancock, and the other Massachusetts delegates. Because of his delays, they had proceeded without him beyond Worcester, and he caught up with them in Hartford, Connecticut.²⁰

AS THE MASSACHUSETTS DELEGATES GATHERED in preparation for their journey to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts found plenty to occupy its sessions. Meeting briefly at Concord on the morning of Saturday, April 22, the congress adjourned so that it could reconvene at 4:00 p.m. in Watertown, which was closer to the action in Cambridge. Many of its members were involved with the rush of military activities. The congress’s committee of safety had been meeting almost nonstop since the afternoon of April 19, and the full congress had previously granted it powers as a de facto executive committee to oversee the defense of the province—and now, in light of events, to orchestrate what was quickly becoming a siege of Boston.

Reconvening in Watertown, the congress summoned the committee of safety to attend “with whatever plans they may have in readiness for us” and also requested absent members of the congress then in Cambridge to provide “their punctual attendance.” The principal matter of business for the remainder of that evening was to appoint a committee of nine members, headed by Elbridge Gerry, to take sworn depositions from participants in and eyewitnesses to the April 19 actions and send the depositions to moderates in “England by the first ship from Salem.”²¹ This was no small matter. Each side was eager to cast blame on the other and spread its version of events.

Meeting on Sunday, April 23—the exigencies of the moment having temporarily overshadowed established customs against conducting business on the Sabbath—the congress resolved “that 13,600 men be raised immediately by this province” to join a Continental Army of at least thirty thousand men; they also elected Joseph Warren president in place of the absent John Hancock. Then the members turned their attention again to the matter of public relations.

Having already ordered depositions taken, the congress appointed Elbridge Gerry and Thomas Cushing—the latter about to depart for Philadelphia—to work with a third member of the congress, who was not on the depositions committee, “to draw up a narrative of the massacre on Wednesday last.”²² By use of the word massacre, there was not much doubt as to how the rebel media would portray these events. The third member was the highly esteemed Dr. Benjamin Church Jr.

Born in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1734, Church was raised in Boston, where his father was an auctioneer and respected deacon in the congregation of the senior Mather Byles. Young Church graduated from Harvard in 1754 and went to London to study the medical profession, eventually returning to Boston with both medical training and an English-born wife. The doctor’s talents included gifts for writing and speaking, and by the 1770s Church was an intimate member of Boston’s rebel circle. His position was so respected that Samuel Adams tapped him to deliver the 1773 oration for the anniversary of the Boston Massacre. Church was a member of the committee of safety, and when it came to secrets and plotting, it could be argued that only Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and Joseph Warren were more involved than he. It seemed quite logical that Dr. Church would be asked to use his talents to spread the rebel position.²³

But not everyone thought highly of Dr. Church. For example, Paul Revere, after he lugged John Hancock’s trunk away from Buckman’s Tavern in the nick of time on the morning of April 19, may have lingered on the sidelines about Lexington or possibly have been dispatched by Hancock on some other errand as they parted. By the following day, however, Revere was at Cambridge with the rapidly assembling rebel army. There he met Dr. Church, who showed Revere “some blood on his stocking, which he said spirted on him from a Man who was killed near him, as he was urging the Militia on.” Revere had never been enamored of Dr. Church, despite their years together as members of the Sons of Liberty. Revere, in fact, doubted very much whether Church “was a real Whig.” Nevertheless, Revere came away from this encounter persuaded that “if a Man will risque his life in a Cause, he must be a Friend to that cause.”²⁴

That same day, Revere met up with Dr. Joseph Warren, who had sped him on his mission out of Boston two nights before. Warren now asked Revere to perform messenger duties for the committee of safety as it met at the Hastings house in Cambridge prior to the call to join the entire Provincial Congress in Watertown. In this role, Revere was in and out of the committee’s meetings. After sunset on Friday, April 21, as things were winding down for the day, Dr. Church suddenly rose from the conference and declared his intention to go into Boston the next day. The other committee members and Dr. Warren in particular were aghast. “Are you serious, Dr. Church?” Warren inquired. “They will Hang you if they catch you in Boston.” Indeed, after the events of that week, hanging quite likely would have been the fate of any of the committee members should they have been so bold as to venture into the city.

Church replied that he was in fact very serious and determined to go no matter the objections. After considerable pleading, to which Church turned a deaf ear, Warren suggested that Church concoct a cover story that he was traveling in search of medical supplies to aid both rebel and British wounded officers. Church agreed and left early the next morning with seemingly no cares about his safety.

Indeed, by Sunday evening, April 23, Church was back in Cambridge no worse for the wear. Revere took him aside and asked how things had gone. Church reported that he had been made a prisoner as soon as he crossed over the lines at Boston Neck, taken before General Gage, and questioned by him. He was further detained in a barracks and only allowed one brief, supervised visit to his home. Revere nodded sympathetically. It all seemed quite plausible that Church would then have been released to return with the medical supplies that were part of his cover story.

But Dr. Church had also had two encounters while in Boston that he chose not to reveal to Revere or anyone else. Caleb Davis was a newly appointed deacon of the Hollis Street Church and a member of Boston’s committee of correspondence. Davis was also a shopkeeper who had recently ordered a special buckle at the request of General Gage. On Saturday morning, April 22, Davis called on the general to deliver the buckle and was told that Gage was in private conversation and could not be disturbed. Davis chose to wait, and about half an hour later, the general emerged from his office in the company of Dr. Church. Far from appearing a prisoner, the good doctor was conversing with Gage “like persons who had been long acquainted.” Although they were not intimates, Church and Davis immediately recognized each other, and Church “appeared to be quite surprised at seeing Deacon Davis.”²⁵

Circumstantial evidence suggests that Dr. Church also either called directly upon Rachel Revere, the widowed Revere’s second wife, or somehow took receipt of a letter from her to be delivered to Paul. Rachel was not yet trying to get out of Boston—she had six stepchildren and a young son, Joshua, to look after—but she was definitely concerned for Paul’s well-being, particularly in light of reports that he was “missing, supposed to be Waylaid and slain.”²⁶

Church probably told Rachel that Revere was safe in Cambridge, and she trusted Church, as an insider, to cross paths with him. If Church, upon his return to Cambridge, mentioned this meeting or the letter in his conversation with Paul, the latter did not include it in his recollection of Church’s activities during those two days. More likely, Church himself never mentioned Rachel Revere’s letter because Church never delivered it.

“My Dear by Doctr Church,” Rachel had written, “I send a hundred & twenty five pounds and beg you will take the best care of yourself and not atempt coming into this town again and if I have an opportunity of coming or sending out anything or any of the Children I shall do it.” Asking Paul to keep up his spirits and trust in “the hands of a good God,” Rachel signed herself, “Love from your affectionate R. Revere.”

But if Paul Revere did not receive this via Dr. Church or any other means, what did Church do with the letter and the referenced “hundred & twenty five pounds,” a sum with a substantial value (approximately twenty thousand dollars by 2010 valuations)? In fact, this was such a considerable sum that Rachel’s words may not have referred to money at all. Revere family letters from this period reveal that Paul and Rachel managed to exchange several letters discussing how to procure a pass that would allow Rachel, their children, and as many of their household goods and furnishings as possible to be taken across the Charlestown ferry to a house Paul would find for them in Cambridge. (Paul’s oldest son, fifteen-year-old Paul junior, was to stay in Boston and mind the silversmith shop.)

In one letter, Paul advises Rachel, “If you send the things to the ferry send enough to fill a cart, them that are the most wanted.”²⁷ It seems unlikely that Church would have taken Revere household goods with him, but would Rachel have had the modern-day equivalent of twenty thousand dollars accessible? This, too, seems unlikely, considering that in their exchange of letters, she apparently refers to having been unable to collect a debt of three pounds due them. Would she have worried about three pounds if she were able to send 125 pounds to Paul?

All of this—convoluted and filled with conjecture though it may be—would not be very germane to this story save for the fact that the letter from Rachel to Paul “by Doctr Church” was found 150 years later among the papers of General Thomas Gage.

There are no clear answers, but plenty of innuendo: Did Church deliver the letter to Gage instead of Revere? What happened to the money, if there was any?

It is not known how quickly Caleb Davis told others of his encounter with Dr. Church outside General Gage’s private office. Nor, it appears, was there much contemporary scrutiny of the reliability of the doctor as a Revere family messenger. After his return to Cambridge, the Provincial Congress tasked Church with numerous committee assignments. He was at the center of everything.

Finally, Benjamin Church was given the ultimate mission: he was dispatched to Philadelphia as the Provincial Congress’s most trusted and articulate spokesman to convey to that body Massachusetts’s urgent request that the Continental Congress assume responsibility for the organizing of a continental army. The question that would soon be asked was, did Dr. Church make another visit to Boston before departing for Philadelphia—and to what purpose?²⁸