Independence (50 page)

No one was happier than John Adams to learn of the American Prohibitory Act. He thought the legislation might more aptly be titled the “Act of Independency.” The “King, Lords and Commons have united in Sundering this Country, and I think forever. It is a compleat Dismemberment of the British Empire,” he rejoiced. He lamented that Congress was hamstrung awaiting the peace commissioners. “The Tories, and Timids … expect great Things from them,” though the majority anticipated only “Insults and Affronts.” But for the sake of unity the majority had to wait for the minority’s inescapable disillusionment. Even so, Adams was not despondent. Less than three weeks after learning that Britain hoped to strangle the colonists’ trade, Congress threw open every American port to trade from all nations. Parliament’s age-old restrictions on American trade—to which the First Congress had been willing to adhere—had been repudiated. This prompted Adams to ask: If “This is not Independency … What is?”
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The wrathful atmosphere created by word of the American Prohibitory Act also enabled John Adams and his faction to enact a measure they had unsuccessfully sought for months. Within days of learning of Parliament’s sanction of a total American blockade, Congress legalized privateering, acting on a motion by Samuel Chase, who only a couple of months earlier had opposed the creation of a navy. Privateering was common in the warfare of the day and had long been an American practice during Great Britain’s wars with France and Spain. Entrepreneurs invested in armed vessels and seamen signed on, all hoping to strike it rich. The prizes that were taken—that is, the enemy ships that were captured intact—were brought to port and the vessel and cargo were sold. The booty was then divided between the financiers and the armed ship’s officers and crew. Since America lacked a navy, merchants and rebel leaders in New England had sought to have Congress make privateering lawful almost the minute that the war began. Their hope, of course, was that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of American privateers would sail, intercepting shipments from Great Britain to its army. But many in congress were opposed, largely from fear that North’s government would retaliate by attempting to halt the commerce of all the colonies. Now that North’s government had done just that, congressional inhibitions instantly collapsed.
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The American Prohibitory Act, especially as it followed hard on the heels of the debacle in Canada, drove Congress to take another step. Three days after learning of Parliament’s legislation, Congress agreed to send Silas Deane to Paris to explore the depth of France’s friendship for the American cause. Deane, a lawyer-merchant who had served in the Connecticut delegation from the beginning until January 1776, was chosen because he knew the mind of Congress and, as a former colleague observed, he had been “really Very Usefull here & much esteemed in Congress.”
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This first-ever American envoy was to meet with private citizens whose names were supplied by Benjamin Franklin. Congress hoped that through these intermediaries Deane would be given access to Foreign Minister Vergennes. In his talks with the French, Deane was to attempt to establish commercial ties, but his first priority was to secure clothing and “Quantities of Arms & Ammunition,” including one hundred pieces of field artillery, for an army of twenty-five thousand men. Revealingly too Deane’s instructions—written by Franklin and four reconciliationist congressmen, including Dickinson and Morris—also stipulated that he was to determine “whether, if the Colonies should form themselves into an Independent State, France would … acknowledge them as such” and enter into an alliance “for Commerce, or defence, or both.”
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After word of the disaster in Canada, Congress yearned for good news from the military front. It got it before winter ended. When General Washington took command of the Continental army, he inherited the siege of Boston, which had begun on the day after Lexington and Concord. It had been successfully conducted for some seventy-five days before Washington arrived, and he maintained it for the next eight months. The operation succeeded in part because, save for the brief recruiting crisis late in 1775, the Americans were always numerically superior. The Continentals usually outnumbered General Howe’s redcoats by nearly two to one, and if Yankee militiamen were to be summoned in an emergency, the British army would be confronted by an adversary that was several times its size. Even so, the British had total naval superiority, and Howe might have attempted to break the siege had he thought it worth the trouble. But he saw no sense in running the risk. From the moment he assumed command, Howe planned to withdraw from Boston and launch a campaign to take New York and the Hudson River. Unbeknownst to Washington, Howe remained in Boston through the fall and winter only because the troop transports that would take his army from the besieged city had not arrived.
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All the while, Washington was eager for action. Vigorous and enterprising, the American commander was temperamentally ill-suited to passive behavior. Besides, he knew that some in Congress and many in New England wanted him to do something, and he also may have chafed under the realization that Artemas Ward—whom he had supplanted—had scored what was seen by all as a daring and magnificent victory at Bunker Hill. Washington also wished to act before British reinforcements arrived. In a September council of war he had raised the possibility of attacking Boston, but his officers nearly unanimously rejected such a course. They thought it too likely to result in an American defeat as great as the one the enemy had suffered at Bunker Hill.
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Washington was frustrated—he privately complained of the “backwardness” of his officers—but he did not abandon his thoughts of an attack. When the first of autumn’s inclement weather arrived in November, making a British attack highly unlikely, Washington sent Henry Knox, the twenty-five-year-old commander of the Continental army’s artillery regiment, to Fort Ticonderoga to fetch the British ordnance that Benedict Arnold and Ethan Allen had captured in May. Knox performed brilliantly. Early in February 1776 he and his party reached Boston after an epic trek through the steep, ice-cloaked Berkshire Mountains. Knox presented to Washington thirty-nine field pieces—about four times the number previously available to the siege army—as well as two howitzers and fourteen mortars.
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Washington wasted no time summoning his generals to another council of war. He presented them with three options: send the army across the frozen Charles River to attack Boston; attack the British on Bunker Hill and reclaim that site overlooking Boston Harbor; or occupy Dorchester Heights, which overlooked the harbor from south of the city. Taking either Bunker Hill or Dorchester Heights, said Washington, would compel Howe either to attack or to abandon Boston, for with adequate artillery the Continentals would be in a position to close Boston Harbor, the British army’s lifeline to the home islands. Washington implied that he leaned toward an assault on the besieged British army in Boston. A “Stroke well aim’d … might put a final end to the War,” he said. His officers wanted no part of the first two options, thinking that offensive operations were too risky for an untrained army. However, they approved of taking Dorchester Heights by stealth and inviting Howe to attack the entrenched Continentals.
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Washington worked out the final plan for the operation in frequent meetings with his officers. It called for a steady bombardment of Boston during the nights of March 2 through March 4. On the last evening, while the redcoats were distracted by still another thunderous artillery barrage, two thousand Continentals were to steal up Dorchester Heights and under cover of darkness prepare the army’s defensive installations. Just before dawn, they were to be replaced by three thousand fresh troops under General Ward. These men were to await Howe’s expected assault.
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The operation could hardly have gone more smoothly. A low-lying fog blanketed Boston on the evening of March 4, hiding the heights in Dorchester from the British army. But the crest of the ridgeline in Dorchester was above the fog, and the Yankee soldiers worked under a brilliant moon and starry sky. The men were mostly heavily muscled farmers accustomed to physical labor. They did their work briskly, despite having to excavate earth that was frozen to a depth of eighteen inches. Dragging the artillery to the peak of the heights was the most difficult task. Most of the night was needed to complete that mission, and long before the job was done, great, muddy ruts defaced what only hours earlier had been the grassy, sloping hillside. Well before dawn, Dorchester Heights bristled with a breastwork constructed of felled trees, fascines (bundles of long stakes), chandeliers (wooden shells tightly packed with dirt-stuffed baskets called “gabions”), and thick, wide bales of nearly impenetrable hay.

As the dense fog burned off under the day’s sun, the British discovered that an American force was entrenched on Dorchester Heights with its artillery trained on Boston Harbor. What most amazed the British was how quickly the Americans had carried out the undertaking. Howe allegedly exclaimed, “[T]hese fellows have done more work in one night than I could make my Army do in three months.” Later, he supposedly said that Washington must have employed ten thousand workers. The chief engineer in the British army estimated that twenty thousand Continentals had been put to work.
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Howe, who had been leisurely biding his time until he could leave Boston, suddenly faced a difficult decision. Some troop transports had arrived, and he knew that others would soon reach Boston, affording him the option of abandoning Boston within a few days if he chose to do so and his adversary would permit him to leave. Howe knew full well that there were compelling reasons for departing without a fight. Considering the Continentals’ newfound firepower, to storm Dorchester Heights would almost certainly bring on a battle more bloody than Bunker Hill. In addition, as one of his officers had long before remarked, the British army was “so small that we cannot afford a victory, if attended with any loss of men.”
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Howe may also have thought that it made no sense to ask men to die for the sake of holding a city that was slated to be relinquished. Besides, it would be best to preserve his soldiers for the looming battle in New York, a contest that would probably determine the fate of the American rebellion.

On the other hand, to quit Boston without a fight would be seen by many as a sign of weakness. Some of Howe’s officers urged him to fight. The redcoats should kill every rebel they could find, after which they must put Boston to the torch and leave behind the smoldering ashes, advised General James Grant. If the army sowed terror, Grant reasoned, “the American Bubble must soon burst.”
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He may have been on to something. The razing of Boston would have had a profound impact on opinion in Philadelphia, New York, Charleston, and other colonial cities, and it might have halted Congress’s steady progress toward declaring independence. But Howe spurned such a ghastly course. He and his brother were peace commissioners, and he continued to believe that they might succeed in negotiating a happy reconciliation between the mother country and its colonies. Howe feared that should his army engage in a deliberate policy of annihilation, the colonists would be lost forever.

On March 7, forty-eight hours after he had learned that the rebels had occupied Dorchester Heights, Howe offered Washington a deal. If the rebels permitted the redcoats to board their troop transports unmolested, the British army would depart, leaving Boston intact. Now it was Washington who faced a painful decision. He could attempt to capture or destroy Howe’s army, virtually the entire British army then in America. If Washington succeeded, not only would London’s plans for the campaign of 1776 be dealt a severe blow, but also yet another staggering military loss might bring down North’s ministry and shatter Britain’s implacable hostility toward reconciliation on America’s terms. On the other hand, if Washington failed, the utter destruction of Boston would follow, and that might stanch the momentum for declaring independence. It might even destroy the will to continue the war in some colonies.

Washington appears to have longed for American independence since 1774, if not much earlier, and he knew that public opinion and perhaps a majority of congressmen were inching toward a final break with Great Britain. Better than any American, Washington also knew that declaring independence was crucial for waging a long war. He accepted Howe’s offer. On March 17 the British army sailed away for Nova Scotia, to await reinforcements for the invasion of New York. As the last British soldier left, an American regiment, with Generals Ward and Putnam riding before it, marched in to reclaim possession of Boston.
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Ecstasy swept Congress. For some, this was fresh proof that the British army was hardly “invincible.” For others, it seemed likely that Britain’s latest “Disgrace” would encourage France and Spain to offer the colonists trade and military assistance, if only America declared independence. America’s victory was widely celebrated, and in Boston people poured into the streets. It was said that the British army had “disgracefully quitted” the city and “took refuge on board their ships.” One newspaper declared that it hoped the Bostonians never again had to breathe “air … contaminated by the stinking breath of toryism.” Harvard College awarded Washington an honorary degree, and Congress ordered a gold medallion struck for its triumphant commander. Lady Liberty and an image of the departing British fleet—“all their Sterns toward the Town”—adorned the medal.
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