Patriots (33 page)

The fact that Gage had prepared the boats suggested he would exercise his better option. Boston had enjoyed its mildest winter in memory; the Charles River had not frozen over, and now April was balmy. The general could ferry his troops across the Charles, land in East Cambridge and march almost directly to Menotomy and then to Lexington. Going by land would mean a march of twenty-one miles; taking the river route could cut off five of them.

By keeping watch in Boston, Paul Revere could know within minutes which route Gage had chosen. But how would he get that information to Concord? The British had posted a guard on Boston Neck, and slipping across the Charles in a boat on a night of such tight security might be difficult. Revere told William Conant that he or an ally would go to Christ’s Church in Boston and flash a message to the patriots in Charlestown. If no one could get out of Boston, Conant’s men would be able to forward the alarm to Concord. They should watch the steeple across the Charles. One lantern would mean that Gage’s troops were coming by land, two that they were being rowed across the water.

As he prepared for his most ambitious foray out of Boston, Gage was determined to preserve absolute secrecy. He was ready to commit twenty-one companies of his tallest and best-armed grenadiers and infantrymen. Since companies averaged twenty-eight men, the general would be sending out nearly six hundred soldiers. That should be enough, since the rebels wouldn’t dare take up arms against His Majesty’s troops. He confided his battle plan to only two persons, his wife and Hugh, Earl Percy. Young and charming Lord Percy had been camping out on the Common near John Hancock’s house. Because he was an earl and attractive, he had often been invited in for dinner, and Dorothy Quincy had been especially taken with Percy’s commanding voice as he drilled his men each daybreak. Gage ordered Percy and his Fifth Regiment to be ready in the unlikely event that reserves should be needed.

Gage was entrusting the mission itself to Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith, a heavy young officer who, ten days earlier on another spying expedition, had encountered the same black serving woman who had recognized Captain Brown. At Watertown, wearing his civilian disguise, Smith had tried to disarm her by asking where he and his companion could find employment.

The woman had looked him over. “Smith, you will find employment enough for you and all Gage’s men in a few months.”

Since D’Bernicre and Brown hadn’t mentioned their own humiliation, Colonel Smith was not prepared for that answer. He complained to the landlord about the woman’s sauciness and then sent his private to continue the mission while he stumbled through the bushes back to camp. Smith had vowed that if he ever returned with his regiment, he would kill the wench.

On Tuesday evening, April 18, Gage’s select British companies were ordered to gather at a rendezvous point, walking there in small numbers to avoid arousing suspicion. If challenged about their purpose, they were to
answer, “Patrol.” Colonel Smith still had not been officially informed of the destination, but if he had not guessed it he was the only person in Boston who hadn’t. One Boston matron employed the wife of a British soldier as her maid, and when his sergeant couldn’t locate the soldier he came to the woman in confidence. Should she see him, would she please tell him to report at eight o’clock that evening at the bottom of the
Common, equipped for an expedition? As soon as the sergeant left, the woman relayed his message to Dr. Benjamin Church. Around the town’s stables, British officers readied their horses and talked about tomorrow and the hell there would be to pay. Hearing them, a stableboy ran to Paul Revere, who said,
“You are the third person who has brought me the same information.”

Hugh Percy had come to Boston a principled Whig, but despite John Hancock’s hospitality he soon found himself loathing these colonials who showed him every courtesy while plotting to betray him.
“The people here are a set of sly, artful, hypocritical rascals, cruel and cowardly,” Percy wrote home after two months in America. “I must own that I cannot but despise them completely.”

As dusk fell on the night of the operation, Lord Percy walked undetected among the townfolk as they watched the soldiers lining up on the Common. A man at his elbow said, “The British troops will miss their aim.”

“What aim?” Percy asked.

“Why,” said the man, “the cannon at Concord.”

Percy hurried back to tell Gage their target had been discovered. But by that time the operation had already begun. The general could only hope to bottle up the news by forbidding anyone to leave Boston.

As the troops climbed into boats to be ferried across the Charles, Joseph Warren asked Paul Revere to leave at once for Lexington and warn Hancock and Samuel Adams that they were about to be arrested. Revere should try to get out of Boston on the river. Dr. Warren had already sent another messenger, William Dawes, to attempt to reach the parsonage by the overland route.

Before he set out, Revere went to the house of
Robert Newman across the street from Christ’s Church. Newman, the church’s twenty-three-year-old sexton, had agreed to hang the one or two lanterns in the steeple. But there was a complication. Newman’s mother rented rooms, and his house was filled with British soldiers. Newman had pretended to go to bed early, slipped out an upper window, dropped to the street and waited for Paul Revere at the church. With a vestryman standing guard outside, Newman took two lanterns from a closet and climbed to the highest window in the belfry.

He lighted his lanterns and hung them only long enough for the watchman in Charlestown to catch a glimpse. He didn’t want to alert any British officers at the harbor. The
Somerset
, a man-of-war with sixty-four guns, had moved to the mouth of the Charles to protect the British soldiers as they were rowed across. After extinguishing the lanterns, Newman lowered himself out a back window of the church, climbed to the roof of his mother’s house and went back to bed.

The first signal had been sent. Now Paul Revere had to reach Lexington—even Concord, if he could—with the details he and Warren had been collecting. He went to his own house in North Square to put on his heavy riding boots. He had made dozens of rides in the patriot cause but never one as dangerous as this. In his excitement, he forgot two necessities—his spurs and the cloth he normally used to muffle the sound of the oars if he was able to launch his rowboat.

Two men were waiting at the riverside to row Revere across the Charles in a boat he had been hiding throughout the winter. When they discovered that Revere had forgotten the cloth, one led them to his sweetheart’s house and gave a whistle. The girl came to the window. When she heard their problem, she stripped off her petticoat and threw it down. The flannel was still warm when it was passed to Paul Revere.

Since the
Somerset
was guarding the river’s mouth, the men had to row east to reach the old Battery at Charlestown. From there Revere was to go on alone. Conant and his men had spotted the signal from the steeple, but they said that the road to Concord was now filled with British officers, who were acting casually, as though they were not on patrol. But one had already asked a patriot for directions to Clark’s tavern. Apparently their information was faulty and they didn’t know that Jonas Clark was a clergyman. The question was more evidence, though, that Gage’s men intended to seize Adams and Hancock.

Revere thought he might be able to slip past the patrol. He asked for a horse, and one of Charlestown’s wealthiest merchants, John Larkin, volunteered his best animal. Getting from Joseph Warren’s house to Larkin’s stable had taken one hour. Lexington was twelve miles to the north and west. At 11
P.M.
Paul Revere set off to warn Massachusetts’ two most notorious rebels that the redcoats were coming after them.

William Dawes, the messenger who had already set out overland, was a twenty-three-year-old shoemaker who had won Joseph Warren’s respect by smuggling out two of Boston’s cannon from under General Gage’s nose. For Billy Dawes the blockade of Boston was a lark, and he enjoyed seeing how often he could slip past the British guard at Boston Neck. His allegiance to the patriots was personal; he had once knocked down a British soldier for insulting his wife. After that, Dawes had moved his family to Worcester, and although General Gage had prohibited gold from leaving the town, Dawes had devised a way to smuggle out his reserves. He began to wear cloth-covered buttons on his waistcoat instead of brass ones. When the British guards had tired of joking about his eccentricity, Dawes began sliding gold coins inside the cloth.

By now he knew most of the guards at the Neck. Sometimes he played drunk, which usually got him past the checkpoint. This night, he hung about and waited until a squad of soldiers marched to the gate on a routine patrol. The guard was a friend, and when the soldiers passed out of Boston, Dawes trailed after them and headed for Lexington. He had started earlier than Paul Revere, but his route was five miles longer and he faced the same British patrols assigned to keep any patriot from getting through to sound the alarm.

—

Like Boston, Charlestown was surrounded by water—the harbor to the east, the Charles River to the south and west. Paul Revere rode through town, past Breed’s Hill and Bunker Hill, and across another slender neck of land that General Gage had not attempted to close off. Revere passed over it and onto a stretch of marsh and scrub brush. He intended to head west for the same direct route Billy Dawes was taking. The alternative was a swerving river road to Menotomy. There the two roads joined and, except for one bend near the Munroe Tavern, led directly to Lexington.

Revere’s ride took him past a spot along the road where a slave named Mark had been hanged twenty years earlier for poisoning his owner with arsenic. Still in chains, the rotted skeleton had been left as a warning to other slaves, and to Paul Revere it
had become a marker on the way to Lexington. The moon was shining brightly. Revere was almost past the desolate moor when he spotted two British officers on horseback in the shadow of a tree. By the time he saw them, he was close enough to make out their holsters. One started toward Revere, the other rode farther up the road to cut him off. Instead, Revere wheeled his horse smartly and went at full gallop for the narrower Mistick road. John Larkin’s horse was quicker and surer than the officer’s heavy parade horse, and when Revere had gone three hundred yards he was sure he could stay ahead. The British horse got mired down in clay, and Revere was alone and heading for Lexington.

He rode without stopping until he reached the town of Mistick, where he woke up the captain of the Minute Men. All of the towns had drummers trained to beat an alarm and men to ring the steeple bells. In Mistick, a cry went up, “The regulars are out!” The Minute Men grabbed their muskets and sent their wives and children with any money or jewels to hide in the swamp. From Mistick on, Revere began to shout an alarm in front of each house along the road to Lexington.

By Arlington, he was back on the main road and galloping along easily. Even with the detour, the trip from Charlestown had taken just under an hour, and it was a little before midnight when Revere reined in his horse at Jonas Clark’s neat two-story parsonage. Sergeant William Munroe, who owned the tavern down the road, was considered the militia’s most alert noncommissioned man, and he had taken charge of the seven-member guard at the house.

Paul Revere told him that he must go inside.

Sergeant Munroe replied that the family and their guests had retired for the night. If he let Revere in, the noise would disturb them.

“Noise!” Paul Revere said. “You’ll have noise enough before long! The regulars are coming out!”

He rapped loudly on the door.

The Reverend Clark opened an upstairs window and demanded to know what was going on.

Revere said he must see John Hancock.

In the dark the clergyman didn’t recognize him and said he couldn’t let strangers into his house. But John Hancock, in bed but not asleep, recognized Paul Revere’s voice. Opening his window,
he called cheerfully, “Come in, Revere! We are not afraid of
you
.”

—

The British troops had waded ashore and were huddling, chilled and wet, at Phipps’s farm on the western bank of the Charles as they waited for their marching orders from Colonel Smith. In the dark, their boots and trouser legs soaked and muddy, the men tried to puzzle out the reason they hadn’t moved for an hour.

Even when dry,
British uniforms had been designed for splendor, not comfort. Under the bright-scarlet coats heavy with linings and piping and brass buttons, other garments also constricted the troops—tight white or red waistcoats above knee breeches cut close enough to chafe. Wide belts cinching in at the waist. Stiff collars rubbing against the neck. Cumbersome hats jammed down on temples they had greased and powdered white. When they passed in review, the effect could be magnificent. But on a march the British soldier was trussed and bound. With provisions and arms, he lugged about one hundred and twenty-five pounds on his back.

A little before 1
A.M.
—almost two hours from the time they had landed—food for the day’s march was brought ashore and passed out. Most of the men had packed their own provisions, and they threw the army rations away.

—

The Minute Men at Lexington had been storing gunpowder and musket balls all winter for a morning like this. The town had also bought a drum, and veterans of the French and Indian War had taught a boy of sixteen named William Diamond to beat out battle calls. As their captain the Minute Men had elected John Parker, who had once fought against the French as a ranger and was now a big-boned forty-five-year-old farmer with seven small children. He had alerted his men the previous afternoon when he got the first report of unusual British patrols along the Lexington road. Most of the militia had spent the evening at Buckman’s Tavern near the town’s green, awaiting Parker’s orders. After Paul Revere confirmed that British regulars were on their way, Captain Parker told his men to fall in on the green. It was about 1
A.M.