Stephenson M. Patriot Battles. How the War of Independence Was Fought

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the “proper subjects of our resentment” 199

As General Nathanael Greene wrote on 4 January 1776, “Heaven hath

decreed that Tottering Empire Britain to irretrievable ruin—thanks to

God since Providence hath so determined America must raise an Empire

of permanent duration.”

Joseph Brant ironically borrowed classic Whig

rhetoric when he exhorted an Indian gathering at Oquaga, near Niagara,

in December 1776 to “defend their Lands & Liberty against the Rebels,

who in a great measure began this Rebellion to be sole masters of this

Continent.”

Chief Cornstalk of the Maquachake Shawnee perhaps

lacked Brant’s Europeanized sophistication (Brant had been educated

by missionaries, spent time in England, helped translate the Gospels into

Mohawk, was an Anglican and Freemason, and the subject of one of the

greatest portrait paintings of the period, by Gilbert Stuart), but he put the

case with brutal clarity when on 7 November 1776 he sent this address to

Congress via the patriots’ Indian agent, George Morgan.

Now we & they [the Shawnee] see your people seated on our

Lands which all Nations esteem as their & our heart—all our

Lands are covered by the white people, & we are jealous that you

still intend to make larger strides—We never sold you our Lands

which you now possess on the Ohio between the Great Kenhawa

& the Cherokee & which you are settling without ever asking our

leave, or obtaining our consent . . . We live by Hunting & cannot

subsist in any other way—That was our hunting Country & you

have taken it from us . . . Now I stretch my Arm to you my wise

Brethren of the United States . . . I open my hand & pour into your

heart the cause of our discontent.

Thomas Jefferson did not mince his words when it came to Indians

and American imperial ambition: “Nothing will reduce these wretches

so soon as pushing the war into the heart of their country. I would never

cease pursuing them while one of them remained on this side of the

Mississippi.”

This sentiment would be heartily endorsed by the newly

installed president, George Washington: “The gradual extension of our

settlements will as certainly cause the Savage as the Wolf to retire; both

being beasts of prey tho’ they differ in shape.”

In the American mind

patriot battles 200

Indians had been transformed into animals, almost a kind of vermin—a

convenient justification for the ethnic cleansing that was to follow. And

when the inflatus of patriotic rhetoric began to drift away, like smoke

from the battlefield, the bare bones of self-interest were revealed. James

Duane, chairman of Indian affairs, declared that if Indian lands were

not seized as the spoils of war, “this Revolution in my Eyes will have lost

more than half its’ [sic] Value.”

With the Peace of Paris that concluded the war in 1783, Britain

completely abandoned its native allies, whose lands “as far west as the

Mississippi” were ceded to the United States. Shelburne, the new prime

minister, wrapped the cynicism in rhetorical packaging: “The Indian

nations were not abandoned to their enemies; they were remitted to the

care of neighbours.”

It would be the tender care the wolf lavishes on

the lamb.

PART TWO

THE GREAT BATTLES



The War in the North

Ambush

LEXINGTON AND CONCORD,

19 APRIL 1775

t 2:00 am on Wednesday, 19 April 1775, 700 men under

the command of Francis Smith, lieutenant colonel of His

Britannic Majesty’s 10th Regiment of Foot, a portly fifty-two-

year-old with thirty-four years of solid if uninspired service under his

ample belt, set off from Boston on the twenty-mile hike to Concord,

Massachusetts. Smith’s strike force was a mixture of twenty-one light

infantry and grenadier companies of several regiments,

unsupported by

artillery in order to move swiftly.

It had been ferried over from Boston

around 10:00 pm on the eighteenth in what its commander in chief, Sir

Thomas Gage, had hoped would be an operation wrapped in deepest

secrecy. Smith’s mission was to locate and destroy the military stores

that Gage’s network of spies had told him lay in and around Concord.

It was, in fact, a ridiculously optimistic notion that in a city teeming

with patriots 700 men could be gathered, boarded on long boats, rowed

across the Back Bay, and landed at Lechmere without raising suspicion.

Notwithstanding Paul Revere’s legendary “one-if-by-land, two-if-by-

sea” warning lantern, it is hard to imagine that Smith’s sizable force

could have ever gotten off undetected. In addition, Gage’s own security

was as leaky as a colander.

patriot battles 204

The light companies of the 4th and 10th Foot led the way under

the command of Royal Marine major John Pitcairn, a Scot with twenty

years of service who was a year older than Smith. Ahead of them

two young officers, Lieutenants William Sutherland and Jesse Adair,

scouted on foot. Behind came the column of grenadiers under Smith,

and a small contingent of Royal Artillery that had been sent out the

previous afternoon with light chaises loaded with equipment to spike

the cannon they anticipated finding at Concord. Various locals unlucky

enough to blunder into the column were detained, but the word had

already been quite effectively spread by Revere and other messengers.

The redcoats were headed into a world of trouble.

When Pitcairn and the advance guard arrived at Lexington

Green at about 4:30 am, they were confronted by 130 or so armed

patriots under the local militia commander, Captain John Parker.

What happened next can only be surmised. There are plenty of

possible reasons that one side or the other would have opened fire,

and it matters little which did so first. This was an exchange waiting

to happen, and had it not been here, it would have been elsewhere.

John Pitcairn is usually portrayed as a levelheaded, humane, and

diplomatic soldier, much revered by his regiment and certainly not

one to ignite the tinder with a careless shot. But there was another side

to him that may have some bearing on the showdown at Lexington.

Pitcairn was a hard-liner when it came to suppressing the rebellion. A

month before the confrontation at Lexington he had written to the earl

of Sandwich, “I am satisfied that one active campaign, a smart action,

and burning two or three of their towns, will set everything to rights.”

Some historians have argued that Pitcairn would have had nothing to

gain from killing patriots on Lexington Green, but it could also be

argued that he had nothing to lose. A whiff of musketry, “a smart

action,” a crack of the whip, as he might have expressed it, may have

had something to recommend it. Certainly he must have known even

before the exchange of gunfire on the green that the game was up and

all hope of surprise long gone. There was zero chance in those early

hours that he and Smith would be able to hit Concord unannounced,

destroy the patriot stores, and get off back to Boston unmolested. (In

ambush 205

fact, Dr. Samuel Prescott had raised the alarm at Concord at about

1:30 am.) Even before the opening shots, Smith, reacting to patriot

alarm guns, had sent back to Boston for reinforcements.

Leaving eight patriot dead and nine wounded, the column, screened

by elements of the light companies deployed on the flanks, pushed on

to Concord six miles away. At around 7:00 am the British approached

Concord from the east, and the flankers chased off militiamen stationed

on a ridge on the column’s right. As Smith and Pitcairn entered the

outskirts of the town, they were met on the road by a militia force under

Colonel James Barrett, which, prudently, about-faced and marched

back into the town, crossed the North Bridge, and took up position on

Punkatasset Hill, which overlooked the bridge. Smith now secured his

position by sending three light companies under Captain Pole to the

South Bridge and seven companies under Captain Lawrence Parsons

to the North Bridge. The grenadiers were kept in the town to search

out military stores.

When Parsons arrived at the North Bridge, he left three companies

(about 100 men) under Captain Walter Laurie and took the rest over the

bridge to head off for Colonel Barrett’s farm, which Gage’s spies had

identified as the main cache of patriot weapons and ammunition. Laurie

sent two of his companies under the command of Lieutenant Waldron Kelly

across the river and positioned them on the lower slopes of Punkatasset,

keeping the remaining company on the town side of the bridge. Tactically

it all seemed perfectly reasonable: a cordon defense that could retreat back

over the bridge and create a “plug” that would defy any attacking militia.

But tactics are only as good as the training and experience of the men who

have to carry them out. Things were about to unravel.

Barrett, on Punkatasset Hill, was alarmed by what seemed to be

the British busily setting fire to the town (in fact this was not the case),

and started to descend from his perch en route to the North Bridge. By

now his numbers had swelled to about 400 by militia reinforcements

from surrounding towns like Acton, Carlisle, Chelmsford, Westfield,

and Littleton. The two British companies across the river tried to funnel

back across the bridge and, as they awkwardly backpedaled, were fired

at and two redcoats were killed on the far side of the bridge.

Lexington and Concord

The British Retreat

19 April 1775

British withdrawal route

Second militia position

Initial militia

position on

ridge

Smith goes to

British column

ambushed

American

reinforcements

come down the

Old Bedford

Road

First ambush of

Continuing militia attacks

British route on

return from Concord

positions

returns from

Corner

North Bridge

Concord

Lexington

Concord

Punkatasset

Hill

Laurie’s position

Laurie’s aid

Smith’s column

Smith’s initial

Parson’s command

Barrett’s Farm

Merriam’s

Lord Percy’s relief force

Continuing militia attacks

Menotomy

(Arlington)

Percy decides

on Charlestown

route

Medford

Cambridge

Great Bridge

American

British

American movements

British movements

MILES 1 2 3 4 5

Mystic River

BedfordT o

patriot battles 208

Laurie now tried to execute a complicated maneuver called

“street fighting,” whereby he would draw his companies into columns

of twelve lines of eight men each. The theory was that the first line

would fire and then peel off to each side and move to the rear, leaving

the second rank to fire, peel off, and so on down the length of the

column, exposing the patriots to continuous volley fire. It was an

evolution that had been developed in Britain when the army acted

as “police” putting down civil unrest. It may have worked effectively

against unarmed strikers and rioters, but the realities of battle are

not always sympathetic to complicated maneuvers carried out by

frightened and inexperienced men. Under fire, the discipline of the

redcoat front ranks collapsed, blocking the line of fire of the men

stacked up behind them. Laurie’s force was pushed back 400 yards

until it collided with units of the grenadiers Smith had sent up in

support. A bayonet charge by the grenadiers drove off the patriots,

who withdrew back across the bridge and partway up Punkatasset

Hill. Surprisingly, Parsons returned from his foray to Barrett’s farm

and recrossed the North Bridge without being molested by the militia

on Punkatasset and the whole British force reassembled in preparation

for their long march back to Boston. It was now close to noon.

Smith, sensibly, had flankers out on both sides of his column,

where, recorded Lieutenant Sutherland, “a vast number of armed men

drawn out in battalia order, I dare say near a thousand were approaching

through the trees” on the column’s right and “a much larger body drawn

up to my left,”

but as the column approached a small bridge over Tan-

ner’s Brook at Merriam’s Corner, the flankers were forced back down

to the road in order to cross with the main force, and this afforded the

militia, now massed on both sides of the road, the opportunity to close

and fire on the redcoat units as they were funneling over the bridge.

British casualties started to mount. They had gone only one mile, but it

was the prelude to a bloody running of the gauntlet that would continue

all the way back to Lexington, where a relief force of about 1,400 under

Lord Percy was waiting for them. Panicked, dehydrated, burdened with

wounded, and almost out of ammunition, the Smith force ran and stum

bled into Percy’s protective cordon at 2:30 pm.