19
“IF THEY WANT TO HAVE A WAR . . .”
As we began to delve into the events of the War for Independence, looking for examples of God’s intervention, we found ourselves up against the generally accepted modern view: that the British, weary of the prolonged drainage of money and lives, had decided to cut their losses and pull out of the American segment of their empire. This popular assessment refuses to consider the possibility that God had anything to do with the war.
Yet if it was God’s will for America to break forcibly from her mother country, there should be ample evidence of His hand in it—not only supporting her endeavors but miraculously intervening on her behalf as dramatically and conclusively as He had in the Old Testament. For the Bible teaches that God honors obedience with His blessing and does not honor disobedience.
We did find this evidence—in such abundance that the word coincidence seemed laughably inapplicable. We found that even the British began to rue the fact that Divine Providence appeared to be favoring the American cause. But we will let the evidence speak for itself. (There is, ironically, even one episode in which America played the part of the invading aggressor—and God seemed to act on behalf of the British.)
Sergeant William Munroe of the Lexington militia pulled his cloak tighter about him against the chill breeze of the night. At least the rain had stopped, he thought, glancing at the now-clear sky. There could be worse nights for his twelve-man squad to stand guard duty. Behind him, the house for which he and his men were responsible—the home of Lexington’s minister, Jonas Clark—was dark and silent, all its occupants asleep.1
There was good reason for the militia to be there. Thanks to their Tory* friends, the British were well acquainted with Clark. They knew that he preached independence, and they were aware that he had not only moderated the town’s debates on the issue but had also written position papers on it. Patriots throughout eastern Massachusetts were on the alert to expect word at any time that the Redcoats had left Boston and begun marching northwest to Concord to confiscate the weapons, gunpowder, and military supplies stored in the armory. The quickest road went right through Lexington, and that meant Clark’s house was directly in their path.
This night the Patriots had additional cause for concern. Clark’s home was a frequent meeting place for Patriot leaders, because John Hancock, a distant cousin of Clark’s wife, often visited them and sometimes brought other Patriot leaders with him. In fact, he had been staying with the Clarks for the past twelve days, and Samuel Adams had joined him a week ago. The British would like nothing better than to capture Adams and Hancock engaged in treasonable activity.
Shortly after midnight on April 19, Sergeant Munroe and his comrades heard the hoofbeats of a rider coming fast up the Bedford road from the town green, called the common. In a few moments, Paul Revere reined in his foam-specked and panting horse, whose flanks were bleeding from the cuts of Revere’s old-fashioned silver spurs.
“The Regulars are coming out,” he yelled at Clark’s house.
Sergeant Munroe did not know Revere and tried to shut him up, admonishing him that he was waking everyone up.
“You’ll have noise soon enough,” retorted Revere, brushing past the sergeant. “The Regulars are on their way.”
He banged loudly on the front door of the parsonage. Instantly, window sashes flew up all over the house, as Jonas Clark, many of his twelve children, and both Adams and Hancock stuck their heads out to see what was happening.
Hancock instantly recognized the alarm rider. “Come in, Revere, we’re not afraid of you!”
Revere relayed all the information he had, and shortly afterward alarm rider William Dawes, who had come by another route, arrived at the house. Urgently the men discussed the situation, one of them asking Clark if the men of Lexington would fight if they were fired upon. The minister responded: “I have trained them for this very hour.”
Several hours later they all walked down to Buckman Tavern on the common to confer with members of the militia, some of whom had been spending the night there. It was decided that Revere and Dawes, weary as they were, should ride the seven miles over to Concord in order to alert the town of the British plans.
As Adams, Hancock, and Clark returned to the parsonage, the tolling of Lexington’s church bell summoned the rest of the militia to muster on the common. Hancock sat at the Clarks’ table, sharpening his sword and insisting that he was going to join the town’s militia to fight the British. After Clark, Adams, and Revere (who had returned after being detained by a British patrol) argued at length with Hancock that he was of more use to the Patriot cause as a leader than a soldier, they finally convinced him. He, Adams, and Revere piled into Hancock’s carriage and rode off toward Woburn shortly before the Redcoats arrived.2
“Stand your ground!” Captain John Parker called out to the seventy-odd members of the militia* who were hastily forming a line on the Lexington common. “Don’t fire, unless fired upon. But if they want to have a war, let it begin here!”3
A few men must have cheered, but probably most did not look up from their preparations. They were tamping down powder charges with wadding, rolling musket balls down the three-foot-long barrels of their muskets, and securing them with more wadding. With the exception of the church bell that was still sounding the alarm and the drummer boy who was beating “to arms,” it was strangely quiet. They were too busy to talk.
Jonas Parker, the Captain’s first cousin, took his position. With deliberation he put his tricornered hat on the ground in front of him and filled it with musket balls and flints. He had told his friends that he was resolved “never to run from before the British troops,” and he was about to prove it. On his left, Isaac Muzzey was topping up his powder horn from the open keg that was being brought down the line. On his right, Jonathan Harrington was trying to look relaxed, conscious that his young wife was watching him from the upstairs window of their house by the common.
The light of early dawn played through the limbs of shade trees just beginning to bud, their red-tipped branches throwing thin shadows across the green toward the men. It was starting off to be a chilly but beautiful day, with a clear sky and somewhat blustery winds.
“Here they come!” cried someone, and all eyes turned to the east corner of the triangular common. Coming up the road in the distance could be seen the first ranks of a column of British Regulars—marching in double time directly toward them. There were far more than Captain Parker had anticipated—seven hundred, in fact, outnumbering them at least ten to one. From his experience in the French and Indian Wars, he knew what they had to do. “Disperse, you men!” he commanded up and down the line. “Do not fire. Disperse!”
To make a stand now in the face of such overwhelming odds would be nothing but a stupid, pointless waste. Instead, they would fall back, melt away into the countryside, and beat the British to Concord. Revere and the other alarm riders would have already roused all the towns within three hours’ march, and by the time they got to Concord, there would be enough Minutemen and militia to make a fight of it.
So Captain Parker and most of his band turned away from the oncoming British and started to leave the common.
But now bloodlust swept through the British forces. Months of bitter frustration, combined with supreme arrogance, exploded at the sight of these rebel bumpkins daring to oppose them. Venting their rage in long battle shouts and huzzahs, the Redcoats broke ranks and charged onto the green, redoubling their efforts as they saw most of the Americans turning away, apparently full of fear.
Major John Pitcairn, the British officer in command, sensed that he was losing control of his troops. Spurring his horse forward, he yelled out to them: “Soldiers, don’t fire! Keep your ranks. Form and surround them.” Then to the militia, he shouted, “Throw down your arms, and you’ll come to no harm.”
But other, younger British officers were caught up in the same excitement that gripped their troops. A pistol shot rang out and then another (the only pistols on the green that day were carried by British officers). Two or three nervous shots followed, mixed with confused cries of “Fire” and “Hold your fire.”
Finally, a junior officer in the vanguard of the charge yelled, “Fire, fire, damn you, fire!” and waving his sword in a sweeping circle around his head to signal a volley, he pointed it at the militia.
A volley crashed across the common, and everyone stopped. It was as if both sides were startled by this development, and each looked at the other to see what had happened. None of the men of Lexington were hit, which was not surprising, considering that the British had not stopped to take aim. And the Redcoats themselves were obscured behind a cloud of powder smoke. The British regulars, composed of light infantry and grenadiers, the fastest and strongest of Gage’s expeditionary force, were seasoned professionals. They were the first to come to their senses, and now they quickly formed into crisp, even lines and reloaded.
“Throw down your arms, damn you!” A British officer on horseback called out to the militia. “Why won’t you rebels lay down your arms?”
As if in answer, several militia fired then, and the officer, standing in his stirrups, swung his sword and shouted to his men, “Fire, by God, fire!”
A second volley, this one well aimed, tore into the militia. Jonas Parker, who had stood his ground, fell. Badly wounded and unable to get up, he struggled to reload his musket where he lay. On his left, Isaac Muzzey was killed instantly; on his right, Jonathan Harrington was hit in the chest. He stumbled away toward his house, fell, got up, and fell again. He crawled the rest of the way, gushing blood from the hole in his chest. His horrified wife ran downstairs to help him in. As she opened the door, he reached out to her and died at her feet. Behind him, Jonas Parker was run through with a bayonet as he tried to raise his musket.
The only Patriots left on the common were the dead and the wounded. Some of the light infantry, out of control, were chasing fleeing members of the militia. The main body of British, however, gave three triumphant huzzahs to celebrate their victory and then marched down the road toward Concord. As the sound of their fifes and drums receded in the distance, quiet returned to the common, broken only by the muffled sound of women weeping.
The Battle of Lexington had lasted less than a quarter of an hour. But for the British, a long day—the first of an eight-year ordeal—was just beginning.
Down the country lanes pounded the alarm riders, urging their horses onward. And in the fields, farmers would stop their plowing and listen to the approaching hoofbeats. Then the rider, covered with dust, his horse lathered, would appear. “To arms, to arms! The war’s begun. They’re heading for Concord,” was all he had time to shout as he passed. Farmers to the north and east for miles around left their plows in mid-furrow, grabbed their muskets and powder horns, filled their pockets with musket balls, and raced down the road to their assembly points.
Less than an hour after the British fired on the Lexington militia, word reached Concord, where the town’s militia was already mustered. William Emerson, Concord’s minister, turned out on the common in his black robe to stand with the militia. While the men nervously awaited the arrival of the British troops, the townspeople hastily hid the stores of the armory in basements, fields, and attics. Emerson noticed that one of his flock, an eighteen-year-old named Harry Gould, was trembling. In clear tones he reassured him: “Stand your ground, Harry! Your cause is just, and God will bless you.”4 Thus encouraged, Gould went on to distinguish himself in the actions of the day.
The seven hundred British Regulars had been moving fast, covering the seventeen miles from Cambridge to Concord in seven hours—including the action at Lexington. Soon thereafter, the town militia decided to pull back across North Bridge, next to Emerson’s home. Reaching Concord an hour before noon, the main body of Redcoats stayed in the town, while search parties went off in different directions looking for the contents of the armory. But, except for finding some gun carriages, they were unsuccessful.
The largest British contingent continued on up the road toward North Bridge, where they left a hundred men behind and went on. Scarcely were they out of sight than the Patriot column that had been shadowing them from across Concord River now filed down toward the bridge. Hastily pulling back across the bridge toward the town, a few of the British panicked and fired, and the officer in charge ordered a volley. This cut down several of the militia, who finally fired a volley of their own, dropping four Redcoats.
The British soldiers were shocked. These farmers had not scurried away at the first volley, as those at Lexington had seemed to. Here they stood their ground and calmly returned fire. And they could shoot.
As the first British squad knelt to reload, the second took aim behind them. At that instant the second squad became aware that there was no third squad behind them. The third squad had run. Immediately the second and first squads ran after them, including a number of men who had led the charge across Lexington green. Panic now gripped them as strongly as excitement had at the beginning of the day. Their officers tried to rally them, but it was no use; their withdrawal soon became a footrace to see who could get back to Concord the fastest.
William Emerson had accompanied the militia as far as his home when they crossed North Bridge, but there he had stopped to assist his wife in sheltering and feeding women and children who were fleeing from the town. After the exchange of musket fire at the bridge, he intervened to keep a wounded British soldier from being bayoneted. (Emerson’s actions that day so inspired one of the Concord militiamen that he would later name his two sons William and Emerson).
When the British squads rejoined the main body of their troops in Concord, the officers decided to get everyone back to Charlestown as fast as they could, hoping that the reinforcements, requested after the resistance they had encountered at Lexington, had been dispatched. From that point on, they were running the bloodiest gauntlet that British troops had ever experienced—or would experience, until the Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaklava. All along the way the militia and Minutemen kept up a steady fire on both their flanks from well-concealed positions behind stone walls, hedges, and screening woods. The increasingly frustrated British hardly ever saw more than a dozen in one body.
The well-trained Minutemen operated in small units, taking cover ahead of the British, aiming carefully and firing, reloading while lying down, and then running ahead to set up another ambush. The British were forced to send out large bodies of flankers to sweep the woods and fields on either side of the road. Now the Minutemen and militia began to take casualties, too. But the flankers, who had to push through underbrush and ford creeks, quickly tired and had difficulty keeping up with the column.
Exhaustion was also taking its toll in the ranks. The British had gotten no sleep the night before and had been making a forced march all day—twenty miles to Concord, and thus far, nine miles back. With their canteens long since empty, they had been running the gauntlet of hot musket fire for the last three hours. Redcoats were now dropping by the wayside, knowing that the rebels were scooping up stragglers but unable to take another step.
The most critical concern of the British officers was that the troops were no longer responding to orders that did not suit them. And more ominous, they were starting to abandon their wounded. As they approached Lexington, where nine long hours earlier they had raised their shouts of triumph, the harassing fire became so intense that the column slowed almost to a halt. Maddened by a foe they could not see, with their ammunition nearly expended, the British regulars were close to the “every-man-for-himself” stage. If that happened, their senior officers knew that the retreat would become a rout.
The officers were all on foot now, their horses having been been shot out from under them. In desperation, they ran to the front of the column and threatened the troops with sword and pistol to keep them from breaking and scattering. If they could be held, they would at least block the way of the others. Just beyond the Lexington green, under the heaviest fire of the day, the troops sullenly began to form into a line of defense, letting the remainder of the column pass through. Among them, they had perhaps three volleys left.
And then, the faint skirl of bagpipes reached them over the musket fire.
“It’s the first brigade,” came the shout from the rear. “We’re saved!”
All heads turned, and there, coming up the road from Cambridge was the relief column with Brigadier General Percy at the head of a thousand men. Stunned by the conditions that he found, Percy ordered the two field-pieces he had brought with him to the head of the column, where they were immediately discharged into the thickening Minutemen and militia.
This stopped their pursuers, who had never faced cannon before. Percy took the opportunity to form a defensive square, in the middle of which the exhausted light infantry and grenadiers lay on the ground, panting and trying to get their breath back. Percy gave them forty minutes and then ordered the column back to Charlestown, where they would have the cover of the British warships in the harbor. The harassing fire continued, stinging like hornets. But the fresh troops were now sent out as flankers, and the cannon kept the rebels at bay.
The fiercest fighting of the retreat was at Menotomy, where about two thousand Minutemen and militia awaited the staggering British column—more than they had seen all day. The road through the town was a mile long, with houses lining both sides. Percy was not about to lead his men into this death trap without clearing out the houses, so the British forced every house. In many of the houses, the combat was hand to hand.
The hero of the day was eighty-year-old Sam Whittemore, who was not at all cowed by some fifteen hundred Redcoats. When he was informed that the British were coming through the town, he prepared his own private arsenal: two pistols, a musket, and his old cavalry saber. Telling his wife that he was going to fight the British, he positioned himself behind a stone wall about 150 yards off the road and waited for the enemy. When the column approached, Sam opened fire with such accuracy that they sent a large unit to find him. Sam stayed hidden until they were almost upon him, and then he jumped up and dropped a Redcoat with his musket. Then firing both pistols, he killed two more. He was drawing his saber when a musket ball hit him in the face and knocked him down.
The British proceeded to bayonet Sam Whittemore over and over until they were satisfied they had killed him.
Only they hadn’t.
With half his face shot away and at least thirteen bayonet wounds in him, Sam lived to be ninety-eight years old, and he vowed that if he ever had the chance, he would do it all over again.5
It was well after dark before the British finally reached Bunker Hill and safety. That day over 250 of their men had been killed or wounded. (And in those days, a wound by a three-quarter-inch musket ball often proved fatal.) Minutemen and militia had suffered nearly a hundred casualties themselves, but the victory was clearly and gloriously theirs.
The last word on the day proved to be prophetic. The Reverend Jonas Clark declared: “From this day shall be dated in future history the liberty or slavery of the American world.”6
The effect of Lexington and Concord on the Americans was to send their confidence soaring. They had stood up to the best British troops and had given them a fearful drubbing. Of its roughly 400,000 population, Massachusetts estimated that, counting every man from sixteen to sixty, they should be able to field 120,000. In which case, the war would be over in time to get the crops in! And as express riders fanned out through the colonies, the rest of America joined Massachusetts in her exuberance.
No sooner did word reach New Haven than a young, aggressive, and ambitious captain of militia named Benedict Arnold assembled his troops and headed for Concord, the seat of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress. He had a daring plan: the taking of Fort Ticonderoga, which controlled Lake George and Lake Champlain. The fort’s brass cannon would provide the American forces around Boston with the one vital ingredient they lacked, and Massachusetts warmly welcomed him and his men. They made Arnold a colonel, and authorizing him to recruit up to four hundred men, they dispatched him immediately.
At the same time, however, other leaders in Connecticut had also decided to take Fort Ticonderoga, to block a possible thrust down Lake Champlain by British General Guy Carleton in Canada. Captain Edward Mott and his band of militia were sent from Hartford to commission Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys—foresters and roustabouts roaming the New Hampshire Grants—to take the fort.
By the time Colonel Arnold had caught up with Colonel Allen on May 9, the latter was already leading a force of some 240 men. Arnold insisted that he should have sole command, but Allen ignored him. Finally they reluctantly agreed to share the command. At the shore of Lake Champlain, boats were assembled and carried some eighty-three men over in the first crossing, including both colonels. Allen decided not to risk losing the advantage of surprise by waiting for the rest. As they crept forward through the gray fog of early morning, to their astonishment they saw that the wicket gate of the fort was open. In rushed Allen and Arnold, side by side, the rest following as fast as they could. A startled sentry raised his musket, aimed it at Allen at point-blank range, and pulled the trigger, but the gun did not fire.
A few Redcoats appeared and were quickly overwhelmed, while Allen stormed up the stairs that led to the quarters of the fort’s commander, Captain Delaplace. He thumped on the door, and (according to a British witness) bellowed a stream of backwoods profanity at the fellow he heard moving about inside. Eventually Delaplace opened the door, to look up at a six-foot-four giant who roared at him: “Deliver this fort instantly!”
“By what authority?” Delaplace pluckily replied.
“In the name of the great Jehovah and the Continental Congress,” Allen thundered, and he raised his sword over Delaplace’s head. The captain ordered his forty-man garrison to lay down their arms, and the gateway to New York was now securely in American possession.7
The reader at this point may well wonder where God’s hand was in all this. It was there—in the fort’s main gate being inexplicably left open and the sentry’s weapon misfiring, so the fort was taken without the loss of a single life.
But the wine of victory is sweet—and heady. Under its influence, nothing is easier to forget than God. And the next glass would prove to be the headiest of all.
Whenever His people begin to take pride in their own strength or accomplishments, God will move heaven and earth to call them back to Himself before their hearts harden. As He has since the dawn of recorded history, He usually does this through concerned believers—the prophets of old and some of the most outspoken (and therefore least popular) Christian leaders.
In 1775 no one was more concerned than the committed clergy. For all their patriotic enthusiasm, the most mature among them never lost sight of the importance of submitting to God’s will and giving Him all the thanks and all the glory. As long as Americans remained in that attitude, they were safe; God would continue to surprise them with His blessings and protection.
A large number of the rank and file also knew this. For example, Amos Farnsworth, a Yankee farmer turned militiaman, would write in his journal about an exchange with the British on one of the islands in Boston harbor:
About fifteen of us squatted down in a ditch on the marsh and stood our ground. And there came a company of regulars on the other side of the river. . . . we had hot fire, until the regulars retreated. But notwithstanding the bullets flew very thick, there was not a man of us killed. Surely God has a favor towards us. . . . thanks be unto God that so little hurt was done us, when the balls sung like bees round our heads.8
On May 31, three weeks after the taking of Fort Ticonderoga, the Reverend Samuel Langdon, President of Harvard College, was invited to address the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts on election day. Knowing that his sermon would be printed and read throughout America, Langdon framed his text carefully. No matter how unpopular his message might be, he was determined to say what he felt God was impressing upon him:
We have rebelled against God. We have lost the true spirit of Christianity, though we retain the outward profession and form of it. We have neglected and set light by the glorious Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ and His holy commands and institutions. The worship of many is but mere compliment to the Deity, while their hearts are far from Him. By many the Gospel is corrupted into a superficial system of moral philosophy, little better than ancient Platonism.
What Langdon was specifically aiming at was the drift toward Deism, which was undermining the bedrock of a Trinitarian understanding of Christianity. This trend would ultimately lead to Unitarianism, a watered-down belief in God as an impersonal higher being who was the God of nature, which denies the deity of Christ, let alone the necessity of His atoning sacrifice on the Cross.
Now Langdon turned his attention to the war.
Wherefore is all this evil upon us? Is it not because we have forsaken the Lord? Can we say we are innocent of crimes against God? No, surely it becomes us to humble ourselves under His mighty hand, that He may exalt us in due time. . . . My brethren, let us repent and implore the divine mercy. Let us amend our ways and our doings, reform everything that has been provoking the Most High, and thus endeavor to obtain the gracious interpositions of providence for our deliverance. . . .
If God be for us, who can be against us? The enemy has reproached us for calling on His name and professing our trust in Him. They have made a mock of our solemn fasts and every appearance of serious Christianity in the land. . . . May our land be purged from all its sins! Then the Lord will be our refuge and our strength, a very present help in trouble, and we will have no reason to be afraid, though thousands of enemies set themselves against us round about.
May the Lord hear us in this day of trouble . . . we will rejoice in His salvation, and in the name of our God, we will set up our banners.9
*The term refers to the one-third of the American population who remained loyal to the British Crown.
*Minutemen were special units of highly trained militia, usually under twenty-five years of age, in good physical shape, and excellent marksmen. In Lexington, however, none of the militia had been formed into Minuteman units.