The first great challenge was at Boston. With all the earthworks filling in the bay to enlarge the city these days, it is easy to forget that Boston was then a peninsula, only connected to the mainland by a thin gated neck. The Massachusetts militia was guarding this point to keep the British bottled up within the city.
We arrived in Cambridge on July 2, 1775, and moved into the home of the Harvard president, whom we stuck in a bedroom. That only seemed appropriate for the president of a university with so many loyalist faculty. There was much pressure to immediately attack General Gage’s forces in the city. Congress had decreed that there be twenty-three thousand troops, but when you counted those who actually were sent by the states—generally for one-year terms instead of the whole war as the General had requested—minus those who deserted or were too sick to fight, the number was not even twelve thousand. Still, this number was perhaps equal to the better-trained and -armed British troops in Boston and was as close as we would come to numerical parity until Yorktown.
Many in the New England militia were eager to fight. The General took a different view after seeing our undisciplined companies shooting at each other’s sentries; the lack of food and sanitation; and, most importantly, the shortage of powder—there were only three cartridges for every soldier. While the General may not have been impressed with the unruly troops, he merely commented that “their spirit exceeds their strength,” leaving me with the impression that he had encountered similar challenges twenty years earlier. He did remark to me, “This supply situation is lamentable but no worse than in the last war.” He closed his eyes, then said in a quieter voice, “Though we didn’t have to buy the flintlocks of departing soldiers then just to stay armed.”
After watching the New England troops in several skirmishes, the General opined hopefully (in a letter I sent to his cousin Lund) that they could be dirty and nasty but fought well when led by good officers. The newly arrived Virginian riflemen—carrying rifles, not muskets—were more skilled and proud of their marksmanship, claiming that they could hit a point on a target at three hundred yards. When I passed on this claim, the General chuckled in disbelief but said, “It won’t hurt if the British hear such boasts and believe them.”
The General set out to establish more sanitary camps and institute training. The stench was overwhelming, and simple bathing and waste disposal practices had to be started. Overall, the men and officers responded well to the General’s efforts to create discipline. The General used court-martials and punishment to enforce discipline over both enlisted men and officers, but I noticed that he blended punishment with persuasion. When Lady Washington arrived in early December of 1775, she arranged dinners for scores of officers so the General could inculcate the new standards of discipline and the officers, in turn, could set the example among their men.
In response to his requests, Massachusetts, New York, and Rhode Island sent more troops, and New Jersey sent a secret arms shipment—secret because of fears that the local citizenry along the way would steal the powder. Governor Trumbull of Connecticut sent both troops and 1,391 barrels of flour. Along with the flour was a note saying, “May the God of the Armies of Israel shower down the blessings of his Divine Providence on you as He did on Moses and Joshua.”
It was the first of many missives I opened comparing Americans to the ancient Israelites, King George to Pharaoh, the newly formed states to Egypt, and the General to Moses. It occurred to me then and later that Moses was not just a general but the ruler of his people. The General sent a note thanking the governor for the flour, but he did not mention Moses. Nor did he directly respond when others made the comparison. I always thought, however, that these constant comparisons must have had some effect on the General, and especially so during that week in Newburgh when he must have contemplated becoming our new country’s ruler.
Meanwhile, although we surrounded Boston, the British navy controlled the seas. Several Massachusetts and Maine coastal towns appealed to the General to divide his forces and give them protection against British raids. The General’s replies, which I drafted, said no in the most diplomatic way possible and encouraged the towns to raise militia for their own defense. Pressure grew as the British ships that October burned Falmouth to the ground.
I suppose the British felt that such violence and terror would break the will of Americans—they even had a German name for this approach, Schrecklichkeit—but it had the opposite effect. The General made clear to me that he was not going to divide and weaken his forces, so as to let the British break the siege of Boston.
Why the British, with their superior firepower and training, did not try to break out of the siege is puzzling. Perhaps this was because the General had letters sent to patriots in Boston exaggerating our strength. I did not know at the time why he did this, but now I believe he knew the letters would be intercepted by the British and would deter them from trying to break through our surrounding forces.
With pressure building for us to attack, the General convened councils of war with his commanders. Here I first encountered a routine I would see again and again throughout the war: the General advocating the launching of a major offensive and his officers talking him into waiting and preparing further (which I believed was his intention all along).
The congressional committees—I can’t remember how many—came and visited. Their main message was one of impatience for action. Being from other states, they seemed little concerned about the destruction of Boston and the killing of its inhabitants that would ensue. Not so the General. But I wondered what he would do. Yes, the health and training and even the supply of powder had increased. The General’s exaggerations of our strength may have discouraged the British from breaking the siege, but it also encouraged the congressmen to believe that victory was imminent—if only the General would stop being so cautious and attack. Congress was of two minds: wait and see if the British would yield to petitions, and move to attack at once.