The Schoolmaster's Daughter Read Free Page B

weaponry away from a discontented people on the brink of revolt, but ultimately the plan only succeeded in exacerbating the situation. In September, he sent the first of several military expeditions out from the city. There were only two ways off the Boston peninsula, and before daylight a Lieutenant-Colonel Maddison led his men out Long Wharf, where they boarded some dozen longboats, which were then rowed across the harbor and up the Mystic River. They landed at a place called Temple’s Farm and marched about a mile to the Quarry Hill powder house. This stone tower, which housed several hundred barrels of gunpowder, belonged to the towns in the province (one of Benjamin Franklin’s new lightning rods rose up from its conical, shingled roof). It was a tidy operation, the mission carried off without any mishaps, and nary a shot fired; by midday the soldiers returned to Boston with the largest supply of gunpowder in the region, plus two brass field pieces.
    But Gage was forever underestimating what he often called the “Country People.” Early on the day of the raid, they were caught unawares by the British deployment, but soon church bells tolled, and an elaborate system of alarm went into effect, riders sprinting on horseback deep into the countryside to give warning. After the British soldiers marched back into Boston, rumors rolled through the province like ocean swells in a nor’easter. There was talk of shootings, of people wounded and killed; the British men-of-war in the harbor were bombarding Boston (which was not true). War had finally, inevitably broken out. Within hours, thousands of men collected in villages and towns throughout New England and, armed with muskets and cartridge boxes and provisioned with hastily prepared wallets of food, marched toward Boston.
    By the following day, several thousand country people were collected on Cambridge Common, their anger fueled by newspapers which printed a letter (always, the letters) from William Brattle to General Gage, suggesting the raid upon the provincial powder house on Quarry Hill. William Brattle was one of the wealthiest, most flagrant Tories in Massachusetts. Four generations of Brattles had resided in a mansion with mall and garden which ran down to the banks of the Charles River. It was a brutally hot day and Whig leaders, such as Dr. Joseph Warren, persuaded most of those gathered on the Common to lay down their arms, so the mob was primarily equipt with stones and cudgels when they marched on Brattle’s house. Brattle fled, taking refuge on Castle Island in Boston Harbor. (Though he subsequently wrote a letter of apology, which was published in the newspapers, he had yet to dare return to his house.) The crowd then swarmed the residence of a Tory barrister, Jonathan Sewall, where windows were broken and the house ransacked. They weren’t through. Benjamin Hallowell, Customs Commissioner, was accosted, escaping Cambridge on horseback, pistol in hand. Hundreds chased him all the way to Boston Neck, where his horse collapsed and died of exhaustion. Hallowell barely made it behind the safety of the British sentries who stood guard at the gates to the city.
    Throughout the winter, the rift only became more pronounced as both sides awaited the inevitable moment when the smoldering tensions would be sparked to violence. The judicial system was rendered ineffectual; juries could not be sequestered and hastily printed handbills were nailed to the doors of attorneys, threatening death to anyone who attempted to conduct business in a court of law.
    General Gage attempted several subsequent raids in search of gunpowder and weaponry—north to Salem and Portsmouth, New Hampshire—but they failed to quiet the colonials. The alarm system worked, and with each attempt it proved even more efficient. Through the winter months it was not uncommon to hear stories of men and women working over fires, in barns, in stables, or even in the open air