1775 (42 page)

On the Patriot side, the Massachusetts Committee of Safety, acting for the Provincial Congress, called out the colony’s entire militia; and on the twenty-third, the congress itself, meeting in Watertown, resolved that a 30,000-man New England volunteer army should be raised. Massachusetts would furnish 13,600, and Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island were asked to provide the remainder.
¹³
This resembled the four-colony “Army of Observation” that had been under discussion
before
the shots fired on Lexington Green.
¹⁴

In short, little was truly accidental about Lexington and Concord. Back in October 1774, the king’s order in council, issued to stop munitions exports to the colonies, had been a logical twofold escalation: first, in response to the “economic treason” developing at the Continental Congress, and second, in reply to the Yankee search for gunpowder and ordnance already being reported by British embassies, officers, and agents across Europe and the West Indies. A few months later rebels in Virginia and South Carolina had begun vying with royal governors over control of local gunpowder magazines and arms—the April events in Charleston and Williamsburg—
before
any news arrived of fighting in Massachusetts. All four vanguard colonies were well in motion.

But let us return to New England. By late April, all four colonies had soldiers among the more or less 20,000 militia surrounding Boston. At various points, at least 4,000 to 6,000 men went home, and the actual strength of the besieging “army” may have dipped as low as 10,000 to 12,000 militiamen, plus lingering minutemen. Hardly any non–New Englanders were present. The force was Yankee and remained so until the arrival of George Washington and some 600 Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania riflemen in July.
¹⁵

New England: The Hub of Early Congressional Decision Making

With New England as the principal subject of discussion, the period between April 20 and July 6, 1775—a mere ten calendar weeks—was arguably
more essential to the unfolding of the American Revolution than the same but much more hullabalooed time frame a year later. If the military commitment undertaken by the New England colonies in late April and early May was unsurprising, the convening of the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia on May 10 greatly increased the stakes. This was the period during which the Second Congress cooperated in turning a New England–based insurgency into the American Revolution.

Following up on nonimportation and nonexportation plans was the agenda for the new Congress, but the May 10 date set was fortunate. With fighting already under way, additional weeks or months of delay could have been dangerous. As things were, a delegate from Williamsburg, Virginia, say, would not have heard of the fighting in Massachusetts by the time he had to depart. Taverns and delegate receptions along the way to Philadelphia must have hummed with further news and gossip. New Englanders, though, would have had many hours for discussion and political calculation before setting out on what was usually a five-to-eight-day trip. Plans to seize Ticonderoga were already being hatched in Connecticut and Massachusetts by April 30.

Of the four colonies motivated to choose their delegates to the Second Congress before 1774 ended, three were in New England: Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. Their sense of what would be at stake was fulfilled. As of early May, more than half of the major decisions shaping up in Philadelphia principally involved New England and the New England army besieging Boston.

In the meantime, events were already drawing in the non-Yankee provinces to the south and west. Delegates arriving in Philadelphia were hearing about the powder magazine altercations in Virginia and South Carolina. Furthermore, when news had reached Britain between February and April of how Virginia, South Carolina, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania endorsed the Association, the Cabinet and Parliament, further aroused, orchestrated a second Restraining Act in early April to include those five colonies. As word of this extension arrived in May, the effect was to broaden congressional support for New England. Britain was clearly not backing down.

One pivot was whether Congress would adopt—as in “assume responsibility for”—the not-very-organized militia and minutemen besieging Boston. The First Congress had promised its support of Massachusetts if the British fired first, but exactly what that support would entail was not spelled
out. However, Congress spent its opening days after May 10 both awaiting late-arriving delegates and preparing an elaborate statement, including some twenty sworn eyewitness depositions, to be sent to London as proof of British responsibility.
¹⁶

That documentation was also expected to reassure those delegates in Philadelphia who remained ambivalent. On the other hand, the soldiers bottling up General Gage were virtually all New Englanders, and their commanders were mostly from Massachusetts and Connecticut. This also concerned some middle-colony and southern delegates.

Question two was related: Would Congress be willing, Massachusetts leaders asked, to give advice on how to reconstitute that province’s government in the aftermath of the Coercive Acts and the clash at Lexington and Concord? Some Bay Colony Patriots thought it would be politic to constitute a broadly acceptable new civil government able to supervise the troops doing siege duty, whose numbers and loose organization recalled the historic perils of a “standing army.” With Gage excluded, Massachusetts had no executive authority. Would Congress advise?

A third decision had to do with the de facto economic declaration of war issued through the Continental Association, together with its bristling political calendar of nonimportation and nonexportation. This experiment in economic coercion is discussed in the
next chapter
. For the moment, suffice it to say that an outraged Parliament was already counterattacking. As we have seen, retaliation began with the four New England colonies. Under the New England Restraining Act, finalized in March and effective in July, the New England colonies were prohibited from any commerce that was not with Britain or the West Indies, and were also barred from the North Atlantic fisheries. In April, as we have seen, five other colonies were added. But four more, still being courted by London, remained exempt. This was a touchy question.

Procedurally, we must remember that Congress had reassembled because the British government had rejected the Association and offered no redress. These developments now required the delegates in Philadelphia to revisit a whole range of trade-related issues—what changes to make in nonexportation schedules, how to deal with the four colonies still treated benignly by Britain, and how to cope with the punitive enforcement role the Royal Navy would assume in July under the Restraining Acts.

The fourth challenge, first apparent a week after Congress convened, would come in dealing with Canada and the seizure by New Englanders of
Forts Ticonderoga and Crown Point on May 10 and 11. News of the two captures did not arrive in Philadelphia until May 17, but both erstwhile citadels sat on territory belonging to New York, the most equivocal of provinces. Many moderate New Yorkers still favored reconciliation. New England, however, badly needed the hundreds of cannon that the forts held. Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire authorities quickly instructed their delegates to argue against giving up the two fortresses or returning the cannon. By late June, Congress had agreed to keep both and was edging toward an incursion into Canada.

In fairness to New Yorkers and others loath to take any bold measures, both General Gage and Admiral Graves remained cautious through most of May.
¹⁷
Until Bunker Hill in June, the largest military engagement involved the May 27 fighting on Noddle’s Island in Boston Harbor, an American victory in which roughly a thousand New England troops took part and a British schooner was burned and two redcoats killed.

Another issue, this one not specific to New England, was the financial question: How would Congress and the provinces pay for the bold enterprises now being launched—with what emissions of paper money and with what economic relationships between Congress and individual colonies?

To some historians, the decisions made in June and July tilted enough in the direction of independence that elements of a countertrend became apparent in the autumn of 1775.
¹⁸
In London, the Crown’s legal officers saw the same early-summer indications, and George III declared the thirteen colonies in rebellion on August 23, several weeks after word had come of Bunker Hill but only days after the arrival of the
Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms.
Its message meant war, even if many American leaders lived in a cloud of rose-colored illusion in which firmness—proving that angry colonists would fight—had been embraced as the only way to make Britain back down.

Five Patriot Governments in New England

In each New England province, rebel governments either held power in April 1775 or quickly took over, confirming Patriot control of both the military and the local purse strings. Where reorganization of the militia was unfinished, it was completed, sometimes brusquely. Tories were purged from office, disarmed, or in some instances, jailed.

Connecticut, continuing under its cherished charter, with “rebel” governor Jonathan Trumbull and the Patriot Assembly and Council, had to make very few changes. So, too, for the other charter colony, Rhode Island—at least from an
institutional
standpoint. Although Governor Joseph Wanton had been reelected in April, when fighting broke out, he was deemed too pro-British to remain in office, and Assembly leaders refused to administer the oath of office. Nicholas Cooke, a strong Patriot, became deputy governor and then governor.
¹⁹

New Hampshire, by contrast, had for 30 years been administered by royal governors from the influential and native-born Wentworth family. However. since 1774, power had begun to shift to a Patriot-convened Provincial Congress. In April and May 1775 the Third and Fourth Provincial Congresses ordered an army of 2,000 under the auspices of a Committee of Safety and a Committee of Supplies. All males between 16 and 50 were required to serve in an expanded militia.
²⁰
In June, Governor John Wentworth fled to harborside Fort William and Mary and later to a nearby British frigate.

Next door in the old Hampshire Grants, which King George III had ruled to be New York territory in 1764, the future Vermont was a legal and political battleground. De facto control lay with rough-hewn rebels against New York (and British) authority—Ethan Allen’s Green Mountain Boys, almost all of them New England born. Less than two weeks after Lexington and Concord, Allen sat down in Bennington’s Catamount Tavern with representatives from Massachusetts and Connecticut. All were anxious to seize nearby Fort Ticonderoga, only 60 miles away but clearly within New York territory. Once it was taken, Allen set up a Council of War, hoping that with backing from Connecticut and Massachusetts, the Green Mountain Boys could dispel New York objections and Congress would approve a Patriot-faction government. That was a pipe dream. Although the Boys kept local control, Congress withheld recognition from Vermont because of New York’s opposition and continuing territorial claim.

As we have seen, April 19 had left Massachusetts in a governmental quandary. General Gage, although powerless beyond Boston, had officially dissolved the provincial House of Representatives. Outside the occupied city, British authority had collapsed. The only governing body in existence was extralegal: the Provincial Congress, now in its third incarnation since October. Patriots in New Hampshire might be content operating under
nothing more than a provincial congress, but Massachusetts had a much greater role and notoriety—and its manner of governance could expect wider and deeper scrutiny.

To lawyers like John Adams, Massachusetts in 1775 was in breach of its own prior charters—those of 1629 and 1691—by not having either an executive or a legislative branch. Like Connecticut and Rhode Island, the Bay Colony took its erstwhile charters seriously. Now it had within its borders a massive, mixed-colony force besieging British-occupied Boston. So Massachusetts proposed to rebuild its government to conform to the accepted framework of the 1691 Charter. Would that do the trick? Could the Continental Congress decide? After all, its call for local committees of inspection back in late 1774 had been widely accepted as having the force of law.

And Congress, in a momentous commitment, did advise: on June 9, just seven weeks after Lexington and Concord, it recommended that Massachusetts elect representatives to an assembly, which in turn should name council members. The two houses were to “exercise the powers of government” until the king might name a governor who agreed to act under the 1691 charter.
²¹
That might never happen, but the mention was politic.

The new Revolutionary regimes in New England also reflected changed cultural and religious alignments. One powerful sentiment was to replace Anglican “court-party” elites. A second was to relocate government inland—away from the old milieu, but also beyond the range of a British frigate’s cannon or raiding redcoats. The two motivations overlapped in New Hampshire, where the Provincial Congress relocated the capital from coastal Portsmouth, the seat of former royal government. The new site was Exeter, slightly inland and historically Congregational and Puritan. In Rhode Island, the existing seat of government, Newport, saw political influence migrate to rival Providence—farther from the coast, more Baptist and Congregationalist, and less influenced by Newport’s Anglican and Quaker commercial elite. Besides which, Newport was unmistakably at the mercy of the Royal Navy; its occupation by British forces from late 1776 to 1779, in which Loyalists collaborated, added to its political fall.

In Connecticut, the towns of New Haven and Hartford had split the role of capital, with Hartford dominating. Convenience and wartime safety led to a new “capital” in Lebanon, the eastern Connecticut home of longtime governor Jonathan Trumbull. Known as the rebel governor, and by autumn a relied-upon confidant of George Washington, Trumbull enjoyed
extraordinary support from Connecticut’s Assembly and Council. In May they essentially delegated control of the colony’s military activity to a War Council headed by Trumbull and operating from a “War Office” next to his home. This new Council’s usual attendees all hailed from the province’s nearby radical eastern counties. No other province allowed a governor so much personal control.