The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 (69 page)

An assault rather than a siege had to be made. Arnold's soldiers from New England would not remain in the army after the end of the year when their enlistments expired. Even had they been willing, they could not have sustained a siege for long because in the spring, when the ice melted in the St. Lawrence, transports carrying British soldiers would undoubtedly come up the river to relieve the city.

After a false start on December 27, the assault was made early in the morning of December 31 during a blizzard with the wind screaming and the temperature well below freezing. Getting the troops into place took about three hours. About two in the morning they began to move, Arnold's 600 against the northern side of Lower Town and Montgomery's 300 against the southern side. The British lay waiting -- they had slept in their clothes for a week, and they had fortified Lower Town at precisely the points where the attack would be delivered.

About 5:00 A.M. the Americans struck. Arnold's troops broke through the first barrier the British had set up, but were stopped at the second. Arnold himself received a bullet in the leg and was carried, badly bleeding,

out of danger. Montgomery fell dead almost immediately with a bullet in his head. Despite the gallantry of Daniel Morgan, who took charge of the van of Arnold's force, the attack on the north failed. Montgomery's disintegrated even more rapidly. Within a couple of hours both were finished with over 400 Americans captured, trapped by snow and ice and skillful British deployments, and some fifty or sixty others dead or wounded.

Arnold pulled back a mile from Quebec. Over the next few months he received small numbers of reinforcements. When spring came, still suffering from his wound, he gave up his command and slowly rode to Montreal.

The soldiers he left behind under Major General David Wooster may have hoped that they would spend the summer of 1776 inside the walls of Quebec. Bravery and spirit had carried the Americans to Quebec in 1775 on one of the great marches of the eighteenth century. Such men and those who joined them in Canada could not help but hope that they would finally capture the city. They had earned the right to hope.

As American efforts in Canada unwound, to the south in Boston the end of the siege came with surprising suddenness. The American army forced its end by action which gave the British a choice of attacking to relieve the siege or evacuating Boston and thereby ending their misery. Howe chose to evacuate the town.

The beginning of the end came with extraordinarily cold weather in February. The cold made Washington hot for an attack; he had been quietly burning for action since the autumn. Now with temperatures well below freezing, ice thick enough to support the weight of troops formed between Cambridge and Boston. Washington convened a council of war and urged that it agree to send the troops across in an assault. He reported that he had 16,000 men -- around 7000 militia and almost 9000 Continentals -- and he had more than fifty pieces of heavy artillery recently transported from Ticonderoga and Crown Point by young Henry Knox, colonel of artillery.
⁴⁹

Henry Knox resembled nothing so much as one of his heavy mortars: he was tall, thickset -- his weight at this time was nearly 280 pounds -his voice boomed; he was gay, friendly, a vastly attractive man.
He

____________________

also knew his craft, and he possessed the drive that allowed him to practice it in spite of great disadvantages. The first of these was probably the greatest: he had few or no guns. But in November 1775, Washington sent him to Ticonderoga to remove the captured artillery there. What followed was one of the most impressive examples of perseverance and ingenuity in the war.
⁵⁰
Despite the absence of roads and wagons, Knox managed to transport to Albany forty-four guns, fourteen mortars, and a howitzer. He first moved down Lake George on flat-bottomed scows, then across the snow and ice on heavy sledges constructed for the job, and crossed the Hudson four times on the journey. From Albany, stopping only to pull a heavy gun out of the water where it had broken through the ice, he pushed over the Berkshires, the guns and artillery in a train pulled by horses and oxen. By late January, Knox was at Framingham, and early in February the artillery was being emplaced and readied for action.

Despite the artillery and the renewed forces, the council of war refused to accept Washington's plans for an attack. It recommended instead that Dorchester Heights, still ignored by both sides, be occupied in the hope that Howe would repeat the blunders of Bunker Hill. Artillery on the Heights would make Boston untenable; Howe would have to respond somehow or sit there and watch his command pounded to pieces.

Washington took the rejection of his proposal gracefully and accepted the council's suggestion that Dorchester Heights be seized. There were difficulties in this proposal: Boston harbor was frozen and so was the ground around it, including the hills on Dorchester peninsula. The immediate question was how to fortify them quickly, in one night, as Breed's Hill had been. Digging-in was not possible, at least not in one night, for the ground was too hard. But anything less would bring a British attack which probably could not be repulsed by the untested Americans unless they were entrenched. Colonel Rufus Putnam worked out the answer: fortifications of earth set upon the ground, not dug out of it. Accordingly, late in February the troops near Dorchester were put to making chandeliers, large frames from timber in which gabions, fascines, and bales of hay would be placed once the chandeliers were hauled up into place on the hills. The gabions were to be filled with earth and the hay would be covered with as much dirt as could be dug up. Putnam also recommended that an abatis from nearby orchards should ring the

____________________

fortifications and that barrels filled with earth should be placed outside the parapets, where they would appear to give cover but would in reality stand ready to be rolled down upon troops assaulting the hills.
⁵¹

While the soldiers near Dorchester hammered and sawed and dug up the earth to fill gabions and barrels, Washington prepared troops in Cambridge for an assault across Back Bay against Boston. "Old Put," the formidable Israel Putnam, was given command of this operation, and John Sullivan and Nathanael Greene were to lead the crossing. Though never made, this attack was intended to answer any British attempt to dislodge the Americans from Dorchester Heights. By March 1, all was ready.

To mask his intentions Washington ordered a light bombardment of Boston by American batteries on Lechmere Point, Cobble Hill, and Roxbury on the night of March 2. Only a few shots were fired and to no effect, except on American pride when "Old Sow," one of the heavy mortars, ruptured. The shelling resumed the next night, answered as on the night before by the British. On the night of March 4 the artillery on both sides opened up without restraint, and around 7:00 P.M. in darkness General Thomas took an expedition up the Dorchester Heights, a 1200-man working party to set up the breastworks and a force of 800 infantrymen to give cover. Over 300 oxcarts and wagons carried the chandeliers, gabions, fascines, and entrenching tools. The working party laid out the redoubts while the infantry took up temporary positions on Nook's Hill, which was not to be permanently held, and on the point looking out on Castle William. Early in the morning fresh workers went up the hills to relieve those already there, and by daybreak two redoubts were virtually complete.

Howe was astonished by what he saw the morning of the fifth. There were the Americans, well protected behind heavy fortifications, looking down his throat. His naval counterpart, Rear Admiral Molyneaux Shuldham, who had taken over after Graves's recall in December, gave him the next piece of nasty news: the navy could not remain in the harbor if the enemy mounted heavy guns in the hills.
⁵²

Several weeks earlier Howe had decided to evacuate Boston -- he hated the place, he felt trapped there as Gage had. His orders from Britain permitted such discretion. But now he would have to pull out before he was ready, or drive the Americans from the Heights in order to

____________________

give himself some time. He first decided to attack. Ships and barges began to gather; the troops were mustered; ammunition and food were issued; and plans were laid for a landing on the peninsula that night to be followed, presumably, by an assault the next morning. Before these preparations were complete, doubts, inspired by memories of Bunker Hill, ate at his resolve and caused him to cancel the attack in favor of evacuation of Boston. High winds and heavy rains the night of the fifth saved Howe's face, as ships and boats were scattered by heavy waves, a situation which made an attack impossible.
⁵³

While Washington, ever suspicious, watched uneasily, the British navy sent its transports to the wharves of Boston, where over the next two weeks they were stowed with arms, stores, equipment, and finally troops. Embarkation had not been carefully planned and the lading was done badly. And inevitably much was left behind, including the horses of the artillery and the dragoons. Still, despite their baste the British found time to plunder houses and stores, thereby earning more ill will for themselves. By March 17, the last of the ships were loaded and pulled away, leaving Boston to Washington's army. They did not leave the outer harbor for another ten days, however. The loading had been so sloppily done that time was required to shift cargoes in preparation for sailing on the open sea. But on March 27, 1776, they dropped down the harbor, and Boston saw the last of the British.

Almost a year of fighting was over, and if it had not been what John Adams called it at the time -- "half a war" -- neither had it been a fullscale effort on the American side. The attempt to take Canada refuted Adams's contention that the colonies had been satisfied by acting "upon the line of defense," fighting a defensive war in other words, but Adams's disappointment was understandable.
⁵⁴
He wanted more than a siege of Boston and an expedition to the north: he wanted America to declare its independence. In March 1776 such a declaration was closer than Adams thought. He would scarcely have been satisfied had it come the day after the British sailed from Boston. John Adams never showed much patience; yet he was an astute and sometimes a wise man. In 1776 his countrymen were more patient than he -- and perhaps had greater wisdom.

____________________

While the British army was ending its long ordeal in Boston, the second Continental Congress was in the midst of deliberations that would end with the Declaration of Independence. The second Congress began its sessions on May 10, 1775, a day midway in the period marked out by the battles of Lexington and Bunker Hill. From the outset, the Congress suffered its own ordeal -- a tortuous questioning of whether America could better protect its liberties inside or outside of the British empire. And while the delegates asked themselves what the purposes of American action should be, they knew they had to act.

The need to do something was urgent. The two enemies, still bleeding from their encounter on Lexington Road, faced one another around Boston. The proposal made soon after the delegates gathered thus seemed almost inevitable: the Congress should raise an army. Over the next six weeks Congress began to do just that, and in the process took the direction of the war into its own hands. Yet while it was making generals, calling out troops, and spending money that it did not have, the Congress also worriedly discussed how it should seek to defend American rights.