Knollenberg Bernhard. Growth of the American Revolution: 1766-1775
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Gage’s account of the expedition is given in a statement enclosed by
him in a letter of April , to Governor Jonathan Trumbull of Con-
necticut.¹¹ Gage wrote:
“On Tuesday the th of April, about half-past ten at night, Lieu-
tenant Colonel Smith, of the Tenth Regiment, embarked from the
Common, at Boston, with the Grenadiers and Light-Infantry of the
Troops there, and landed on the opposite side; from whence he began
his march towards Concord, where he was ordered to destroy a maga-
zine of military stores, deposited there for the use of an Army to be as-
sembled in order to act against His Majesty and his Government.
“The Colonel called his officers together, and gave orders that the
Troops should not fire unless fired upon; and after marching a few miles,
detached six Companies of Light-Infantry, under the command of Major
Pitcairn, to take possession of two bridges on the other side of Concord.
Soon after, they heard many signal guns, and the ringing of alarmbells
repeatedly, which convinced them that the country was rising to oppose
them, and that it was a preconcerted scheme to oppose the King’s
Troops, whenever there should be a favourable opportunity for it.
“About three o’clock the next morning, the Troops being advanced
within two miles of Lexington, intelligence was received that about five
hundred men in arms were assembled, and determined to oppose the
King’s Troops; and on Major Pitcairn’s galloping up to the head of the
advanced Companies, two officers informed him that a man (advanced
from those that were assembled) had presented his musket, and at-
tempted to shoot them, but the piece flashed in the pan. On this the
Major gave directions to the Troops to move forward, but on no ac-
count to fire, nor even to attempt it without orders.¹²
“When they arrived at the end of the village, they observed about
two hundred armed men¹³ drawn up on a green, and when the Troops
came within one hundred yards of them, they began to file off towards
some stone walls on their right flank; the Light-Infantry observing this,
ran after them. The Major instantly called to the soldiers not to fire, but
to surround and disarm them. Some of them who had jumped over a
wall, then fired four or five shot at the Troops, wounded a man of the
Tenth Regiment, and the Major’s horse in two places, and at the same
time several shots were fired from a meeting-house on the left. Upon
this, without any order or regularity, the Light-Infantry began a scat-
tered fire, and killed several of the country people, but were silenced as
soon as the authority of their officers could make them.
“After this, Colonel Smith marched up with the remainder of the
detachment, and the whole body proceeded to Concord, where they ar-
rived about nine o’clock, without any thing further happening; but vast
numbers of armed people were seen assembling on all the heights.
“While Colonel Smith, with the Grenadiers and part of the Light-
Infantry, remained at Concord to search for cannon, etc., there, he de-
tached Captain Parsons, with six light companies, to secure a bridge at
some distance from Concord, and to proceed from thence to certain
houses, where it was supposed there was cannon and ammunition.
Captain Parsons, in pursuance of these orders, posted three companies
at the bridge, and on some heights near it, under the command of Cap-
tain Laurie, of the Forty-Third Regiment, and with the remainder went
and destroyed some cannon-wheels, powder, and ball.
“The people still continued increasing on the heights, and in about
an hour after, a large body of them began to move towards the bridge.
The light companies of the Fourth and Tenth then descended and joined
Captain Laurie. The people continued to advance in great numbers,
and fired upon the King’s Troops; killed three men, wounded four offi-
cers, one sergeant, and four privates; upon which (after returning the
fire) Captain Laurie and his officers thought it prudent to retreat to-
wards the main body at Concord, and were soon joined by two compa-
nies of Grenadiers.¹⁴
“When Captain Parsons returned with the three Companies over
the bridge,¹⁵ they observed three soldiers on the ground, one of them
scalped, his head much mangled, and his ears cut off, though not quite
dead
—a sight which struck the soldiers with horrour. Captain Parsons
marched on and joined the main body, who were only waiting for his
coming up to march back to Boston.
“Colonel Smith had executed his orders, without opposition, by de-
stroying all the military stores he could find. Both the Colonel and Ma-
jor Pitcairn having taken all possible pains to convince the inhabitants
that no injury was intended them, and that if they opened their doors
when required to search for said stores, not the slightest mischief should
be done. Neither had any of the people the least occasion to complain;
but they were sulky, and one of them even struck Major Pitcairn.
“Except upon Captain Laurie at the bridge, no hostilities happened
from the affair at Lexington, until the Troops began their march back.
As soon as the Troops had got out of the Town of Concord, they re-
ceived a heavy fire on them from all sides
—from walls, fences, houses,
trees, barns, etc., which continued, without intermission, till they met
the First Brigade, with two field-pieces, near Lexington, ordered out
under the command of Lord Percy to support them. Upon the firing of
the field-pieces, the people’s fire was for a while silenced; but as they still
continued to increase greatly in numbers, they fired again, as before,
from all places where they could find cover, upon the whole body, and
continued so doing for the space of fifteen miles.
“Notwithstanding their numbers,¹⁶ they did not attack openly dur-
ing the whole day, but kept under cover on all occasions. The Troops
were very much fatigued; the greater part of them having been under
arms all night, and made a march of upwards of forty miles before they
arrived at Charlestown, from whence they ferried over to Boston.¹⁷
“The Troops had above fifty killed, and many more wounded; re-
ports are various about the loss sustained by the country people; some
make it very considerable, others not so much.”¹⁸
Gage’s account is supported by contemporary statements of Major
Pitcairn and other British officers, which are quoted and discussed in
the appendix to this chapter.
So far as is known, Gage made no comment on the provincials’
morale beyond writing to the Secretary at War, Lord Barrington, that
“The whole Country was Assembled in Arms with Surprising expedi-
tion.”¹⁹ But Lord Percy, whose previous contempt for the fighting quality
of the rebels was described in letters quoted in Chapter , now wrote:
“During the whole affair the Rebels attacked us in a very scattered
irregular manner, but with perseverance & resolution, nor did they ever
dare to form into any regular body. Indeed, they knew too well what was
proper, to do so. Whosoever looks upon them as an irregular mob, will
find himself much mistaken. They have men amongst them who know
very well what they are about, having been employed as Rangers against
the Indians & Canadians, & this country being much covered with
wood, and hilly, is very advantageous for their method of fighting.
“Nor are several of their men void of a spirit of enthusiasm, as we ex-
perienced yesterday, for many of them concealed themselves in houses,
& advanced within yards to fire at me & other officers, tho’ they were
morally certain of being put to death themselves in an instant.
“You may depend upon it, that, as the Rebels have now had time to
prepare, they are determined to go thro’ with it, nor will the insurrection
here turn out so despicable as it is perhaps imagined at home. For my
part, I never believed, I confess, that they would have attacked the King’s
troops, or have had the perseverance I found in them yesterday.”²⁰
As will be seen, the British and provincial versions of which side fired
first at Lexington and at Concord and of alleged atrocities are utterly
irreconcilable. The evidence bearing on the principal points in dispute
is analyzed in the appendix to this chapter. Suffice to say here, that the
provincials (as they called themselves) apparently believed and cer-
tainly were able to convince the majority of their fellow Americans that
the British fired first both at Lexington and Concord and were guilty of
hideous atrocities throughout the course of the day.
Many in the colonies tried to stem the tide of rebellion against British
rule that swept through the colonies following the day of Lexington and
Concord. But appeals to self-interest and to ties of a common English
heritage were unavailing to prevail against the force of passion aroused
by the shedding of American blood on the nineteenth of April. When
the Second Continental Congress assembled in Philadelphia a few
weeks later, the delegations from all twelve of the colonies at the Con-
gress (Georgia was not yet represented) united in preparations for war.
IRRITANTS BEFORE 1765
I Origin of the American Revolution, I described the following irritants con-
tributing to the violent colonial opposition to the Stamp Act in –.
First: In the Privy Council disallowed Virginia’s so-called Twopenny
Act of on the ground, among others, that a provincial law amending an
existing provincial law which had been allowed by the Crown must contain a
clause suspending operation of the amending law until it was passed upon by
the Crown. Later, the British Board of Trade advised the London Agents of
Massachusetts and South Carolina of its having recommended disallowance
of recent amending acts of these colonies on this same ground.
Since the laws of all the royal colonies (including Virginia, Massachusetts,
New York, New Hampshire, New Jersey, the Carolinas, and Georgia) were
subject to review and disallowance by the Crown, this action implied that in
the royal colonies no law which had been allowed by the Crown could be
amended without a clause in the amending law suspending its operation until
it was approved, perhaps after a delay of several years, by the Privy Council in
England.
Second: Encouraged by the Bishop of London, several members of the es-
tablished Church of England in Virginia brought suit for the difference be-
tween the salary payable under an earlier act and the salary payable under the
Twopenny Act on the ground that the latter was void from its inception be-
cause the Governor of Virginia, in approving it, had violated his instructions
from the Crown.
If successful, these suits would not only immediately be costly to Virginia
taxpayers, but (far more alarming) would establish the general principle that
all colonial laws, past or future, in conflict with Crown instructions previously
issued to the Governor of the colony were void.
Third: In , on application by British customs officers, the Superior
(Supreme) Court of Massachusetts granted them general writs of assistance.
These writs authorized the officers under certain conditions, to enter and, if
necessary, break into warehouses, stores, and homes to search for smuggled
goods, without their having presented to the court ground for suspecting pres-
ence of such goods in the place subjected to search.
Fourth: In , the Crown instructed the Governors of all the royal colonies
that commissions thereafter issued to judges must be revocable at the pleasure
of the Crown, thus providing for continued Crown control and influence over
the judges in these colonies.
Fifth: From to , Thomas Secker, Archbishop of Canterbury, mem-
ber of the Privy Council, and President of the London-based Church of En-
gland Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, took steps
alarming to New England Congregationalists. He secured or encouraged es-
tablishment of an Anglican Mission Church within a stone’s throw of Harvard
College, a center of education for New England’s Congregational ministry; par-
ticipated in securing disallowance by the Privy Council of a Massachusetts act
sponsored by Massachusetts Congregationalists that incorporated a society for
mission work among the North American Indians; and encouraged the revival
of a project for the establishment of an Anglican bishopric in the colonies.
Sixth: In , the Surveyor-General of the King’s Woods began vigorous
enforcement of hitherto laxly enforced British acts of and severely
restricting the cutting of white pine trees in the colonies.
Seventh: In , the British government began vigorous enforcement of the
wide range of British restrictions on colonial trade by stationing a fleet of Brit-
ish warships and armed sloops along the North American coast to assist the
regular customs officers in the enforcement of these restrictions.
Eighth: In , the King issued a proclamation forbidding settlement on
any land west of the Alleghenies.
Ninth: In , Parliament passed the American Act of , imposing ad-
ditional restrictions on colonial trade and levying duties for revenue on several
colonial imports. The act also gave jurisdiction to Crown-appointed admiralty
judges, sitting without jury, over all cases involving alleged violations of this and
earlier British acts levying duties in the colonies or restricting colonial trade.
Tenth: In , the Board of Trade instructed the Acting Governor of New
York to try to secure the annulment of title to an ancient Crown grant of land
in New York known as the Kayaderosseras patent, on grounds that would jeop-
ardize title to a large part of the privately owned land in the colony.
Several of these irritants ceased or were minimized after .
The demand for a suspending clause in laws of the royal colonies amend-
ing an existing law allowed by the Crown was not pursued.¹
The threat to give Crown instructions to Governors of the royal colonies
the force of law was removed by a decision of the Privy Council in , in
effect sustaining the validity of the Virginia Twopenny Act.²
The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts took no fur-
ther steps to establish mission churches in colonial communities already served
by other churches, and, so far as is known, Frederick Cornwallis, who suc-
ceeded Secker as Archbishop and President of the Society, in , held aloof
from the efforts of some colonial Anglican clergymen to revive the movement
for establishing a Church of England bishopric in the colonies.³
General writs of assistance issued to customs officers in Massachusetts con-
tinued to be an irritant in that colony; but friction over these was minimized
by the refusal of courts in colonies other than Massachusetts and New Hamp-
shire to grant general writs.⁴
The threat to annul the Kayaderosseras land grant was removed in by
a compromise effected in that year.⁵
The ban on settlement of land west of the Alleghenies was favorably mod-
ified in and , after treaties with the Indians, by permission from the
Crown to settle large areas beyond the Alleghenies south of the Ohio River.⁶
Nevertheless, several of the irritants continued in full force. The instruction
to Governors of the royal colonies to issue commissions to judges revocable at
the pleasure of the Crown was retained and observed.⁷ Enforcement of the
White Pine Acts was not abated.⁸ And, most important, the American Act of
continued to be a major source of colonial discontent.⁹
COLONIAL TORIES AND WHIGS
I any perfectly satisfactory definition of the terms Whig
and To r y as applied to the colonists in the period covered by this book. The least
unsatisfactory seems to be the one given in the Introduction, namely Whig to de-
scribe a colonist who favored stronger action than petitioning when petitioning
had failed to procure redress of colonial grievances, and To r y to describe a col-
onist who favored no protest or protest limited to petitioning.¹ Before the out-
break of the war, many, perhaps most of the colonists, from indifference or be-
cause they could not decide which side to take, were neither Whigs nor Tories.
I use the term To r y rather than loyalist, now much in vogue, not only be-
cause To r y was the word commonly used by colonial writers in the period of
this book,² but because calling the Tories loyalists tends to imply that the Whigs
were disloyal, whereas they, too, were loyal, though to a different concept.
Judging from the evidence of contemporary correspondence and diaries,
newspapers, pamphlets, almanacs, sermons,³ and records of the colonial As-
semblies⁴ before the war, the Whigs far outnumbered the Tories in all thirteen
colonies except possibly Georgia, Delaware, and New York.
But fear of British invincibility aroused by the easy British victories at
Brooklyn and New York City in August and September, , drew into the
Tory ranks many former Whigs and neutrals.⁵
This was noted in an important letter of October, , from Benjamin
Franklin and Robert Morris, members of the Secret Committee of the Second
Continental Congress, to Silas Deane, the Committee’s agent in France. They
wrote: “The Only Source of uneasiness amongst us arises from the Number of
Tories we find in every State; they are More Numerous than formerly & speak
more openly;...some are so from real attachment to Britain; some from inter-
ested Views; many, very many, from fear of British Force; some because they are
dissatisfied with the General Measures of Congress, more because they disap-
prove of the Men in power & the measures in their respective States;...if Amer-
ica falls it will be owing to such division more than the force of our Enemies.”⁶
Fortunately, those interested in the story of the Tories are no longer limited
to Eardley-Wilmot’s Historical View (); Sabine’s pioneer study, The American
Loyalists, published in , his later, superior, and better-known Biographical
Sketches of Loyalists of the American Revolution (), and other books and articles
concerning the Tories published before .⁷ Since then the admirable stud-
ies of Wright, Commager and Morris, Nelson, Paul H. Smith, Wallace Brown,
Callahan, and Benton⁸ have thrown much additional light on the subject, and
valuable studies of loyalism are currently appearing or reported in progress.⁹*
In general my findings as to what made men Tories in the period dealt with
in this book, that is, before the war, are the same as those of previous students.
One of the most important forces was sentimental attachment to the moth-
erland. This force was, of course, likely to be particularly strong in the case of
the many British-born residents of the colonies (notably Scottish merchants in
Virginia, Maryland, and the Carolinas) who were in America only temporar-
ily on business and the thousands of other native Britons who, though intend-
ing to remain in the colonies, had close ties with parents, brothers, and sisters,
or other near relatives still living in England or Scotland. But the tie of senti-
ment for the motherland, the Crown, or both, of many natives of the colonies
also must be taken into account.
Crown officers in the colonies, colonists having British government con-
tracts,¹⁰ and those seeking Crown appointment or British government con-
tracts naturally were particularly prone to take a stand that would be accept-
able to the British government. Anglican missionaries in the colonies who were
dependent for their livelihood on the London-based Society for the Propaga-
tion of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, also naturally took a stand that would meet
the approval of the Society.
The violence in Boston, New York, and other cities accompanying colonial
opposition to the Stamp Act and other British measures made many colonists,
particularly city residents of large property, fear that any opposition beyond
* Robert M. Calhoon, The Loyalists in Revolutionary America (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jo-
vanovich, ); Robert M. Calhoon, The Loyalist Perception and Other Essays (Columbia: University
of South Carolina Press, ); Robert M. Calhoon, Timothy M. Barnes, and George A. Rawlyk,
Loyalists and Community in North America (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, ); John E. Ferling,
The Loyalist Mind: Joseph Galloway and the American Revolution (University Park: Pennsylvania State
University Press, ). [B.W.S.]
petitioning would lead to renewed domestic violence. Merchants who had
suffered economically during the period of the non-importation agreements of
to were reluctant to participate in another commercial boycott, the
more so when it became evident in that many of the Whig leaders favored
agreements for non-exportation, as well as for non-importation. Quakers and
other pacifists were, of course, averse to any form of colonial opposition likely
to precipitate war.
Others, who were not city residents, merchants, or pacifists and were as
greatly concerned as anyone over the danger of recent British measures to co-
lonial liberty, were fearful that the British would almost certainly win the war,
or even if unsuccessful would devastate the regions overrun by their armed
forces. The latter fear was particularly keen among those living on the seacoast
or navigable rivers open to easy attack by British warships and expeditionary
forces based on them, or living on frontiers vulnerable to attack by Indians un-
der British influence.
Still others were fearful that separation from Great Britain threatened dan-
gers more serious than the danger of continued British rule on British terms—
danger that the colonies would fight among themselves, danger of attack by the
French. Others feared that elimination of the veto power of the Crown would
subject them to unfavorable legislation by their own provincial Legislatures.
This fear is particularly understandable in the case of members of minority re-
ligious bodies, including Anglicans in New England, where Congregationalists
were decidedly in the majority, and of members of the Quaker and other paci-
fist sects in Pennsylvania where non-pacifists greatly outnumbered them.
In pointing out the fears influencing the colonists toward Toryism, I do not
mean to imply that all of those subject to these fears were Tories; many of them,
despite their fears, were staunch Whigs.
Some of those I classify as Tories because they opposed going beyond peti-
tioning for repeal of existing British taxes for revenue on the colonies were as
convinced as the Whigs of the unconstitutionality of British taxation of the col-
onies. But they believed that there was some chance of securing relief from a
petition for redress by the Continental Congress and were opposed to jeop-
ardizing this supposed chance by antagonizing the British people, the Ministry,
and members of Parliament by a boycott of trade with Great Britain.¹¹
Though, as previously stated, my findings are in general the same as those
already published, I would lay greater stress on two points than most writers
on the colonial Tories have done: on local political factionalism, particularly
(as brought out later in this appendix and in the appendix to Chapter ) in
Massachusetts and New York, and on the influence of family connection upon