Patriots (34 page)

Lexington’s Minute Men were hardly formidable. Only seven hundred and fifty-five people, five of them slaves, lived in the town, along with four hundred cows. Since gunpowder was too expensive and scarce to waste on target practice, the men had been summoned to the green only once or twice before. The oldest of Parker’s men was sixty-three, but that was not odd, because, with the French and Indian War over for eleven years, all the men with military experience were older than the usual fighting age. Of the seventy-seven Minute Men who answered Captain Parker’s first call, fifty-five were more than thirty, and father-and-son teams were commonplace. At that first muster, six families had furnished twenty-nine of the men. One quarter of them were related to either Captain Parker or his wife.

When Parker told his men that Britain’s best-trained and best-equipped forces were on their way to Lexington, few greeted the news with bravado. The men voted to disband, go to their homes and lie low. They would do nothing to provoke the British soldiers.

Then, sometime during the next four hours, that obvious and sane decision was reversed.

—

At Jonas Clark’s parsonage, not far from the green, the household was awake and active. Billy Dawes had joined Paul Revere there, and after a brief rest they rode off to warn the Minute Men of Concord. John Hancock had dressed and was busy cleaning a sidearm. He knew that his proper place was out on the green with the
Lexington Minute Men. When the Reverend Clark couldn’t dissuade him, Samuel Adams reminded him that fighting was not their business. Why risk giving the British the triumph of capturing them? Adams’ message was underscored by a verse the British troops had adopted lately to keep cadence as they marched:

“As for their King, John Hancock

And Adams, if they’re taken
,

Their heads for signs shall hang up high

Upon
that hill called Beacon.”

With a show of reluctance, Hancock agreed that Adams was right and had his
chaise prepared for their escape. But before they
could get away, another dispute arose. Dorothy Quincy, who had left her father in Boston, announced that she would be returning to his side the next day.

“No, madam,” said Hancock. “You shall not return as long as there is a British bayonet left in Boston!”

Miss Quincy snapped, “Recollect, Mr. Hancock, I am not under your authority yet. I shall go to my father’s house tomorrow!”

Lydia Hancock reasoned with the young woman, and Dorothy agreed to remain outside Boston for the time.

—

Riding away from the parsonage, Paul Revere and Billy Dawes came upon Samuel Prescott, a young doctor from Concord, who was heading home after an evening with his Lexington sweetheart. When Prescott heard where they were going, he volunteered to go along. He said the people of Concord knew he was a devoted Son of Liberty, and they would take his warning more seriously than an alarm sounded by strangers.

The three men had ridden halfway down the five-mile road when Dawes and Prescott stopped at a house to wake its owner. As he cantered two hundred yards ahead, Paul Revere spotted British officers hiding under a tree, just like the two men who had almost intercepted him earlier. Revere called to his companions, but it was too late. Four officers descended on them with pistols drawn.

“God damn you, stop!” one said. “If you go an inch further, you are a dead man.”

Prescott turned sharply, and all three Americans tried to escape. But the officers kept them in their sights and shouted that they would blow their brains out if they didn’t turn off into a nearby pasture. Billy Dawes took advantage of the darkness to flap his leather breeches and yell, “Haloo, boys! I’ve got two of them!” His call confused everyone, and Dawes whipped his horse around and dashed down the road. A little farther, though, he pulled up short in his excitement and his horse threw him. Dawes’s ride was over for the night.

In the pasture, the British had prepared a makeshift jail. As they were forcing Revere into it, Samuel Prescott wheeled about, jumped his horse over a low stone wall and sped down the road to Concord. Revere spied a grove not far away and made for that.
Just as he reached it, six officers emerged from the shadows, seized his bridle, put pistols to his chest and ordered him to dismount. One of the officers asked what town Revere had come from and when he had left it. He seemed surprised by the answers. “Sir,” he said, “may I crave your name?”

“My name is Revere.”

“What? Paul Revere?”

“Yes.”

As more proof of his fame, the other soldiers began to curse him and his exploits as a messenger. But the officer told him not to be afraid. No one would hurt him.

Revere thought he saw a way of turning his capture to good use. He assured the soldiers that they weren’t going to achieve their goal that night.

The spokesman protested that they were only out looking for some deserters down the road.

Revere said he knew what they were after. But since he had already alarmed the countryside along their route, they would find five hundred men waiting in Concord. In fact, one man had told him there’d be fifteen hundred.

A major from the Fifth Regiment stepped forward, clapped a pistol to Revere’s head and said if he didn’t tell the truth, he’d blow his brains out.

When Revere repeated his story, the officers withdrew a few paces and murmured among themselves. When they returned, they ordered Revere to get back on his horse but they took away his reins. “God, sir,” said the major, “you are not to ride with reins, I assure you.” He passed them to an officer on Revere’s right.

The patrol had picked up four other men suspected of being messengers. The British formed a circle around them and started toward Lexington at a good pace.

“We are now going to your friends,” the major warned Revere, “and if you attempt to run, or we are insulted, we will blow your brains out.”

Revere said the major could do as he pleased.

As he rode, Revere was harassed. “Damned rebel,” the British called him and warned that he was in a critical situation. His reins were turned over to a sergeant with instructions that if Revere tried to run he should be killed. They were about half a mile from Lexington when a gun went off in the distance.

What was that for? the major asked Revere.

To alarm the country, Revere said.

The prisoners had become an impediment to the British. The major ordered the girths and the bridles cut on the horses of the other four suspects and told them they were free to walk home. Revere asked to be set loose with them. The major refused, but as they heard another round from the alarm guns in Lexington he admitted that if there was shooting ahead he couldn’t afford to be burdened with Revere.

He called a halt and asked a sergeant whether his small horse was tired. When the sergeant said it was, the major ordered Revere to alight and the sergeant mounted John Larkin’s fine animal. The British rode off, leaving Revere alone. To avoid being picked up again, he moved into a field. He was weighed down by his riding boots, but he began picking his way back to Lexington. Joseph Warren had directed him to warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams. Revere had accomplished that mission. If Concord was going to be alerted on this night, Samuel Prescott would have to do it.

—

With John Parker of the Lexington Minute Men facing the gravest decision of his life, the two most famous patriots in America were only steps away. Dorothy Quincy heard John Hancock slip away to consult with the militia on the green. Captain Parker never said afterward that either Hancock or Samuel Adams had persuaded him to reverse his decision to send his men home, and yet something changed his order, because at about 5
A.M.
William Diamond again beat on his drum, and the
Minute Men reassembled on Lexington Green. When they heard reports of the British advancing, some of them slipped away in the darkness. But others arrived to replace them. Captain Parker’s thirty-eight men were strung across the green in one thin line, with enough men left to start a second file behind them. When the British regulars approached, the Lexington Minute Men were to stand fast, not firing, but not cowering. That mild show of defiance could be taken as a compromise. Or a provocation.

—

Paul Revere reached the parsonage a second time just as John Hancock’s chaise was being loaded for his flight. He and Samuel Adams were leaving the women behind. Even if the British officers
recognized John Hancock’s aunt and Miss Quincy, they wouldn’t harm them. Adams and Hancock were taking shelter with a clergyman’s widow at Woburn. Revere was to join them, as well as Hancock’s clerk, John Lowell, and Sergeant Munroe from the Lexington militia. At the door Hancock protested once more. He assured his audience,
“If I had my musket, I would never turn my back on those troops.”

They had traveled about a mile when Hancock remembered that a trunk he had left behind in John Lowell’s room at Buckman’s Tavern was filled with papers that would incriminate other patriots. Lowell and Revere agreed to retrieve it. Once again, Revere rode across the green. Captain Parker now had about sixty Minute Men arrayed in front of him. But Dorothy Quincy, who was examining the formation from the parsonage, could see how badly armed they were.

Hancock’s trunk was on the tavern’s upper floor. From the window, Revere looked down the road and watched the British troops drawing near. Their commander was Major John Pitcairn of the Marines, who was known in Boston as an agreeable and honest man who went to church on Sundays and swore blue oaths the rest of the week. Close by was the major who had captured Revere. With Lowell’s help, Revere got the trunk downstairs and into a carriage. Pitcairn had brought his troops to a halt as he and his officers rode toward Captain Parker.

Riding past the scene, Revere heard Parker telling his Minute Men to let the troops march by and not molest them unless they acted first. Moving off the green, Revere headed for Woburn to deliver the trunk. He was facing away from the green when he heard a shot and turned his head. But he could see only smoke rising in front of the British soldiers. Then a great shout went up, and every British gun seemed to be firing.

—

The British major who had captured Paul Revere—his name was Mitchell—had raced back to report to Colonel Smith what Revere had told him on the Lexington road; the colonel had taken his information seriously. Revere had said there were at least five hundred men marshaling to meet the British, perhaps three times that number. Since it had been close to 4
A.M.
, Colonel Smith sent back to General Gage for the reinforcements he had been promised—Lord Percy leading eight hundred more men. Now Revere’s
threat was confirmed by the alarm guns Colonel Smith could hear across the countryside and by the bells pealing in every church steeple.

General Gage had specifically instructed Smith to secure, early on, the two bridges entering Concord. The colonel decided he must reach them before the rebels could surround them and stop him from crossing. That was why Major Pitcairn had ridden ahead with his six infantry companies at the moment Paul Revere was recovering John Hancock’s trunk.
Pitcairn had no intention of confronting Lexington’s militia. But to get to the bridges he had to march his troops directly across the town’s green, a two-acre triangular patch that divided the road into two branches.

As the British drew nearer, they heard William Diamond’s drumming, but Major Pitcairn was the first to see the small number of Minute Men on the green. He ordered his men not to fire. He intended simply to advance, surround Captain Parker’s few men and persuade them to throw down their arms. But Pitcairn was a Marine officer and only a volunteer on this operation. The light infantry marched in quick time toward the green, shouting curses.

Pitcairn approached the Minute Men and bawled,
“Disperse, ye villains, ye rebels! Disperse! Lay down your arms! Why don’t you lay down your arms and disperse?”

By that time, Captain Parker’s militia totaled seventy-seven. As Pitcairn appeared, Parker called to them to show restraint. Lexington’s Minute Men had made their statement. They had stood fast on the green and met the British Army. When Pitcairn came nearer, Parker called to his men to hold their fire and disband. Some began to amble off the green, carrying their muskets. They were not obeying Pitcairn’s command to throw down their arms, but they were breaking ranks and walking away. There were exceptions; Jonas Parker, the captain’s elderly cousin, threw his hat filled with musket balls on the ground between his feet and prepared to fight all by himself.

Otherwise, the crisis seemed to be passing. Major Pitcairn was now shouting to his own troops, “Soldiers, don’t fire. Keep your ranks.
Form and surround them.”

—

In his carriage headed for Woburn,
Samuel Adams heard the first sounds of gunfire. “Oh, what a glorious morning is this!” he exclaimed to John Hancock.

Adams knew from his answer that Hancock thought he was talking about the fair spring dawn, and he explained. “I mean,” he said, “what a
glorious morning for America.”

—

Old Jonas Parker, who had vowed never to run from British guns, fell from a musket ball. He tried to fire from the ground, but a British soldier ran him through with a bayonet. As Captain Parker’s men moved off the green, the British soldiers fired at them. A shot either from behind a stone wall or from a window at Buckman’s Tavern—in the confusion no one could be sure—had touched off the onslaught, and in an instant the British professionals were beyond any attempt by their officers to control them. At most a handful of Parker’s militia fired at the British, and that was only after the infantry was already pumping shot into the backs of fleeing Minute Men. When the smoke cleared, eight Americans lay dead on the green.

Most of the men the troops killed had not defended themselves. Now the British were breaking into houses along the green, looking for the Minute Men. When Colonel Smith caught up with his men, he was appalled. Turning to a lieutenant, Smith said,
“Do you know where a drummer is?” The officer found one, who began to beat the tattoo to lay down arms. Hearing it above the din triggered a response that no amount of shouting had achieved. The British troops stopped firing.