The Battle of Boston

Battle of Boston (1775-1776)



Background


From the establishment of the first British colony in North America in 1607, the government in London had engaged in the practice of salutary neglect. The colonies, which numbered thirteen by 1735, were primarily seen in London as a convenient place to send malcontents and criminals. The colonies over time developed their own society and political views with little input or interest from the mother country. That began to change in 1754. When colonial and French forces clashed near Fort Duquesne (modern Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), the impetus began for a series of events that culminated in an armed conflict between En-gland and her allies in both North America and Europe against France and her allies in the same locations. The war, denoted variously as the French and Indian War, Great War for Empire, or Seven Years War, brought about the first serious cooperation between England and her long-ignored colonies.

After early setbacks, English troops aided by colonial militia gained control of Canada by 1760. The end of the fighting in Europe in 1763 led to the signing of the Treaty of Paris. France was expelled from Canada and England was awarded all her lands east of the Mississippi River and north of the Great Lakes. The successful joint venture between mother and colonies led to the view in London that North America, far from being simply a dumping ground for undesirables, was both a profitable possession and a potential source of tax revenue to relieve the overwhelming debt incurred by the war. The colonists soon came to regret the reestablished relationship.

Although on the surface England and the colonies should have had much in common, 150 years of isolation had brought about in North America a radically different set of economic, political, and religious views. Although the laws passed by Parliament were in reality none too burdensome, any rules at all (especially without any direct input in the decision making) were too many for the colonists. Through the 1760s increased English legislation concerning North America became more and more bothersome to the local population. Economic pressure exerted through colonial embargoes riled Parliament, while violent incidents like the “Boston Massacre” inflamed colonial passions. When, in December 1773, insurgents floated 45 tons of tea in Boston harbor, Parliament had had enough. The Coercive Acts, passed in the spring of 1774 to punish the hotheads in Massachusetts, were deemed intolerable by the colonists.

In September 1774, representatives from twelve colonies met in Philadelphia. They began yet another embargo, but more important they directly challenged the English government. In the Suffolk Resolutions, the Continental Congress defied the Coercive Acts and promised to kidnap British officers if any colonists were arrested for violating the acts. They also vowed military action would be taken if the garrison of redcoats in Boston made any threatening moves. King George III had no choice but to send more troops, for then as now no government can negotiate with terrorists. On 19 April 1775 a force of British soldiers marched out of Boston to destroy stockpiles of rebel arms some 16 miles away in the town of Concord. Their quick disposal of a small force of “Minutemen” militia at Lexington aroused the countryside, and the 450-man force (which found nothing in Concord) found itself harassed by hundreds of angry farmers on the long march back to their base. The relief force of 1,200 men became but a larger target to the colonists, who inflicted almost 300 casualties on the British by nightfall. Within days 20,000 angry farmers had Boston surrounded.









The Battle


Command of this motley crew fell to Massachusetts militia Major General Artemus Ward, who exercised direct control over the northern half of the men surrounding the city while detailing John Thomas to command the southern half. Units from Connecticut and New Hampshire quickly reinforced the Massachusetts farmers, and even colonies as far away as South Carolina raised units and money. There was little organization and even less supplies, but at first there was no shortage of spirit.

In Boston, Thomas Gage did little. His 4,000 men remained relatively idle while waiting for reinforcements. The government in London did not see the same emergency that Gage did and so sent but 1,700 more soldiers and three more generals: William Howe, Henry Clinton, and John Burgoyne.

If the colonists were to make this siege work, they needed artillery. A Connecticut captain named Benedict Arnold suggested a raid on Fort Ticonderoga at the lower end of Lake Champlain. Arnold caught up to a force of backwoodsmen from Vermont under the command of Ethan Allen, who had conceived of the same idea. Together, they stole into the sleepy fort at dawn on 10 May and took the garrison without a shot. Some 100 cannon and howitzers were now at their disposal, if they could be transported out of the mountains to Boston, 150 miles away.

The Continental Congress reconvened on 10 May. After a hollow gesture of peace toward Parliament they appointed George Washington to command the American forces. He had served in the French and Indian War, was wealthy, and was a southerner, from Virginia.

The greatest anger was in the northern colonies; restrictions on freedoms had aroused some southerners but most remained loyal. The Congress hoped that appointing a southerner to command would motivate southern colonies to greater involvement. It was for the most part a futile dream.

Before Washington arrived, 1,200 Connecticut troops under the leadership of Israel Putnam and William Prescott seized Breed’s Hill on the Charlestown peninsula just across the harbor from Boston. In the darkness they erected a strong earthwork that defied cannon shot from the British warship Lively on the morning of 17 June. Rather than challenge the weak siege lines around the city and cut off the rebel force at the neck of the peninsula, Gage ordered William Howe across the harbor to assault the hill with 2,200 men. An afternoon’s fighting resulted in an American withdrawal, but at a cost to Howe’s force of almost 1,100 casualties. Although the colonists lost about 400 men, their withdrawal owed more to a lack of ammunition than British action.

Washington took command at Boston on 2 July. In spite of the moral victory of Breed’s Hill (better known—erroneously—as Bunker Hill), discipline was almost nonexistent and spirits were beginning to flag. Washington’s job was to transform a collection of colonial militias into a single Continental Army, and he set about with great firmness. Eight men he deemed to have been cowardly at Breed’s Hill were brought before a court-martial and convicted. “He sought permission from the Continental Congress to hang deserters; and issued a succession of orders intended to bring cleanliness and order to the camps and subdue all manner of breaches of discipline, from drunkenness to lewdness” (Hibbert, Redcoats and Rebels, p. 68). This show of order offended many independent-minded militiamen, who decided to go home short of their promised tour of duty, which was to end on 31 December. Still, Washington managed to transform the units into a force of some 17,000 men under a single command. Gage, then Howe (who took command in October), did nothing to interfere with the strengthening of the colonial effort, in spite of the fact that British forces grew to almost 11,000 by November.

While Washington was whipping his army into shape, former Boston bookseller Henry Knox was sent to Ticonderoga to fetch the artillery. A self-taught artillerist and engineer, Knox oversaw the dismantling and transport of the guns through extremely difficult terrain down to Boston. When the first guns arrived in December, the hills on the Charlestown peninsula that the redcoats had bought at such an expensive price had been abandoned. All the troops had been brought into Boston for winter quarters, and the high ground all around the city was free for the taking. Washington spent the first two months of 1776 gathering his artillery and placing it along his extended lines. On the night of 4–5 March a battery was hauled up Dorchester Heights to the south of Boston and dug in. Its sudden appearance looming over the British forces on the morning of the 5th spelled the garrison’s doom.

Howe prepared an assault on Dorchester, but a well-timed storm dispersed most of his boats and he canceled it. Through the winter his force had suffered dwindling food supplies and much more intense cold than they were used to experiencing. Although the harbor was open, few supply ships visited and those that did sold their goods dearly. Discipline eroded through inactivity, which Howe refused to alter. He never attacked the colonial forces: “in the unlikely event of this being successful, it would have served no purpose, since he had no transport to allow him to take advantage of it by pursuing a defeated enemy. He decided that he had no choice, therefore, but to wait for the ships to take his men and equipment away” (Hibbert, Redcoats and Rebels, p. 73). Seeing the guns threatening his position, Howe sent word to the rebels that if he and his men were allowed to sail away unmolested, they would not destroy the city on their way out. Thus, the entire command along with perhaps 1,000 loyal Bostonians boarded what ships wer available and sailed for Halifax, Nova Scotia, on 17 March.


Outcome


The British should never have lost Boston. Any serious attempt to keep the garrison supplied would have made the defense too strong for Washington ever to have successfully assaulted. Conversely, the besieging force (although large in number) was poorly organized and trained. Although Washington did wonders once he took command, any time before that point a vigorous British sortie would probably have collapsed the entire colonial effort. Gage, whose twenty years’ residence in the colonies had softened him to effective action, was succeeded by Howe, whose shocking experience on the slopes of Breed’s Hill ruined him for any future aggressive action. Their inactivity was made worse by their snobbery. Many Bostonians remained loyal to the Crown and volunteered to fight, but as would happen so many times throughout the American Revolution the British officers sneered at colonial assistance. In Boston, as in so many other regions throughout the war, the British succeeded in making enemies out of friends.

By capturing Boston, most of the British forces in North America were expelled. This was the cause of much rejoicing on the part of the rebels, and was fatefully timed. In January 1776, Thomas Paine published Common Sense, a widely read work that argued the advantages of a republic over a monarchy. As it meshed with the political views of most colonists, who had been electing their own leaders locally almost from the beginning, it was wildly successful: some 100,000 copies were sold in 1776 in a population throughout the colonies of 2.5 million. A similar sales figure in the United States today would be roughly 11 million copies. The intellectual argument Paine made, on top of the success Washington achieved, convinced many heretofore reluctant colonists that more was needed than merely a recognition of rights as British subjects. On 2 July 1776 the Continental Congress voted to declare independence from Great Britain; a Declaration of Independence expounding on the rationale for that action was adopted two days later.

Although independence was declared, it was seven more years before Britain agreed in 1783. In the shorter term, 4 July 1776 had a much more negative outlook, for it marked the return of British troops to the colonies: Howe’s invasion of New York City marked the beginning of a dark time in the Revolution.