Letter from John DeWitt, Esq., Delegate from Duchess County, New York, to James Terryton, dated August 14, 1788.
"My Dear Friend James,
I sincerely hope that this letter finds you in well recovered Health; and that all vestiges of your late Affliction are, by now, completely eradicated. News of your recovery was greeted with great joy amongst your many friends, and we all agreed that you should be made aware of the most recent events. Indeed, much has occurred in which we feel sure you will be keenly interested. Before proceeding further, allow me to forward the heartiest best wishes of our mutual friends: the Honorable Governor Clinton and the Honorable Metacom Smith. These both wish you a happy and expedient recovery, as, of course, do I myself. Please forward to your esteemed Wife, Rachel, greetings of the highest regard from my dear Abigail and myself, who are both, by the grace of God, prospering in the best of Health.
Without further ado, allow me to proceed to the matters of import. As you are aware, a meeting was called by certain members of the government to reconsider the Articles of Confederation. The weakness of this document was apparent to all; some stronger measures needed to be put in place. I journeyed myself to Philadelphia along with Mr. Metacom Smith, to watch and follow the proceedings as closely as possible. (In passing, I must tell you that the little mare of your Father’s stock is as good a piece of horseflesh as I’ve ever ridden. I thoroughly tried out her paces on the trip down, and she rides as smoothly as a Narragansett, and could outpace Smith’s gelding in the blink of an eye.)
When we arrived in Philadelphia, the whole city seemed to be in a state of excitement, even the lowest and rudest aware that important happenings were afoot. Although Smith and I weren’t delegates, and so could not vote, Smith made very well sure that the delegates were aware of his opinion. Indeed, I enjoyed watching our energetic friend as he worked his way behind the scenes. As you know James, and as we were all in previous agreement, we believed that the States should maintain power over the centralized government. These Federalists seem not to understand the danger of overly powerful central government, despite recent events. In any case, there was a great deal of dissension in the Convention, and all plans put forth were debated rigorously. One particularly appalling plan was put forth by that sly fox, Alexander Hamilton. I have had a low opinion of that man for many years, as you well know, but now I have even less regard for him. Indeed, that he should claim to represent our fair State is insulting in the extreme! Hamilton’s plan was odious to many of the delegates, so much so that it was defeated out of hand.
One issue of great importance and debate was the power of the Executive (by this I mean a President - a role similar to the old Roman consuls, if you remember your Livy). The plan settled upon has only one executive, however, called a President. I doubt seriously the wisdom of having only one executive officer; I think perhaps two or even three would have been wiser. The idea of a single man in the executive feels too much like the monarchy we have so recently left. The mode for electing this President is a rather round about process involving Electors; but the details of this, my dear James, you must ask Smith, for I did not follow the debate, being in opposition of the single executive altogether. Also, I had by this time grown weary of the arduous debating and the hot, dirty city. You know I’ve always been one to prefer the country life, James, and the thought of the cool lake breezes drew me home. Smith stayed on however; while I dropped into our local tavern (you remember Sam’s New York, of course, James?) to get the news. The rest of the events I outline to you are as reported by Smith.
To continue with the Convention: another great issue debated was the question of representation regarding slaves in the Southern States. These States wanted to count slaves as persons to be represented, which is in my estimation, ridiculous. The slaves are most certainly not represented in Congress by any number of Representatives; the whole idea is farcical. In the end, it was decided to continue the absurd practice of three-fifths of the slave population counted for representation. Smith agreed with me that this is indeed absurd; but ’twas the only compromise that could be reached.
The next issue of importance (although indeed there were many more, and to write them all would be the work of an epic) was the Bill of Rights question, an issue very close to my heart, and I know, Friend James, to yours also. As such, I was disappointed; for Smith said the delegates at the Convention were afraid to touch the issue; fearing a disintegration of the Convention completely. The Convention did close without afixing a Bill of Rights, or indeed any enumeration of the Rights of the Citizen. As such, most of us here in New York were opposed to ratification. However, we were assured by Mr. Madison of Virginia that a Bill of Rights would be the first work of the new Government. Still, however, we hesitated; as you can imagine, James, we did not want to sign over power to any new Government that did not assure the Rights of Man that we have so recently, and so dearly, fought to assure. The debate was intense, and I grieve to say, rancorous at times. Old insults and family scandals were dredged up with such vindictiveness as to be truly shocking. Our tavern, Sam’s, was an exceedingly contentious place for a time, and only grew more so as many other States ratified the new Constitution.
Thus, it came to such a pass that the new Constitution was soon to have enough States to ratify, and our State would have been left out in a peculiar state of limbo. The specter of this prospect was enough to spur us all into action, especially our friend, Smith. He decided that we had to ratify, or be left out in the cold; and so he went around to the Delegates and convinced them. A Bill of Rights being promised helped to assuage our fears and doubts, and Smith almost single-handedly turned the tide of opinion. (In passing, I might add that in so doing, Smith accomplished in a week what Alexander Hamilton had been attempting for months).
Thus, my dear James, our State of New York ratified the new Constitution on July 26th, the year of our Lord 1788, at Convention in Poughkeepsie. In our declaration of ratification, we included our own enumeration of the Rights of Man. I was myself a signer for Duchess County. I admit that I have doubts about our new Government, such as I have expressed here; however, I am content to sit back for a time and see what develops. The first election went off quite smoothly, and the outcome was quite obvious from the start. General George Washington, the Virginian, has been elected President. I believe him to be a good man, James, and I think the Government will do reasonably well in his hands. I fear, however, that the men who seek this office in the future may not be such - but we shall see.
Well, James, that closes my story up to this point, and now you know what events have occurred and where they stand presently. I hope this letter has fulfilled its other object: that it has given you some pleasant reading and mental diversion as you plod the sometimes weary road to recovery. I hope, and indeed, I am sure that soon we will meet again, hale and hearty as of old, and discuss all our topics of mutual interest. I look forward to that day, and until then, my dear Friend, I remain
Your Sincerest Friend,
John DeWitt
"
Monday, December 6, 2010
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
The Judge, the Sheriff, and the Advocate
Iowa Case Demonstrates the Difference Between Oath-Takers and Oath-Keepers
Paul Dorr, a citizen in Osceola County, Iowa, has some views that other people might find offensive. He is an anti-abortion advocate who home-schools his eleven children. He writes letters to the editor and protests outside of abortion clinics for the rights of the unborn.
But when Dorr was denied a concealed carry permit by Osceola County Sheriff Douglas Weber, Dorr filed a protest for his own rights. On Dorr’s CCW application, submitted in July 2007, Weber wrote: “Concern for Public. Don’t trust him.” The application was denied. In 2008, Dorr’s son Alexander applied for a CCW permit that was also refused. Sheriff Weber then informed Dorr that he would likewise deny any future applications.
Testimony before the court revealed why Dorr was refused the CCW permit: because the Sheriff thought Dorr was “weird.” Sheriff Weber testified that after Dorr protested some actions of the county government, Dorr wasn’t popular in certain circles. “People started talking about it saying things like, ‘Oh, that guy’s a nut job. Oh, that guy’s whacko,’” Weber said.
In this testimony, Sheriff Weber demonstrated his complete lack of education about the Constitutional rights guaranteed to every citizen by the Bill of Rights. The United States is a Republic because the rights of the minority - perhaps even an unpopular minority - are protected. If only the rights of the majority are protected, then dissenting voices will not be heard, or even raised. Sheriff Weber has apparently forgotten his Oath to the Constitution.
Thankfully, Judge Mark W. Bennett upheld his Oath and ruled in Mr. Dorr’s favor, saying that Dorr’s rights had been grossly violated by Sheriff Weber. “The court finds a tsunami, a maelstrom, an avalanche, of direct, uncontroverted evidence in Sheriff Weber’s own testimony to conclude beyond all doubt that he unquestionably violated the First Amendment rights of … Paul Dorr,” wrote U.S. District Court Judge Mark W. Bennett of the Northern District of Iowa. “Dorr was denied a permit precisely because Sheriff Weber believed that his free speech rights offended the majority of voters in Osceola County,” Bennett wrote.
In his ruling, Judge Bennett ordered the Osceola County Sheriff’s office to immediately issue Paul Dorr a CCW permit. Additionally, the Judge ordered Sheriff Weber to successfully complete a court-approved educational course about the Constitution and the First Amendment.
The judge continued: “This is a great reminder that the First Amendment protects the sole individual who may be a gadfly, kook, weirdo, nut job, whacko, and spook, with the same force of protection as folks with more majoritarian and popular views.”
“In denying (Dorr) a concealed weapons permit, Sheriff Weber single-handedly hijacked the First Amendment and nullified its freedoms and protections,” Bennett wrote.
Perhaps the mandatory Constitutional education for Sheriff Weber will bring this message home. Perhaps it will inspire him to emulate Judge Bennett’s respect and understanding of the U.S. Constitution. Perhaps he will become an Oath Keeper, not simply an oath-taker.
But when Dorr was denied a concealed carry permit by Osceola County Sheriff Douglas Weber, Dorr filed a protest for his own rights. On Dorr’s CCW application, submitted in July 2007, Weber wrote: “Concern for Public. Don’t trust him.” The application was denied. In 2008, Dorr’s son Alexander applied for a CCW permit that was also refused. Sheriff Weber then informed Dorr that he would likewise deny any future applications.
Testimony before the court revealed why Dorr was refused the CCW permit: because the Sheriff thought Dorr was “weird.” Sheriff Weber testified that after Dorr protested some actions of the county government, Dorr wasn’t popular in certain circles. “People started talking about it saying things like, ‘Oh, that guy’s a nut job. Oh, that guy’s whacko,’” Weber said.
In this testimony, Sheriff Weber demonstrated his complete lack of education about the Constitutional rights guaranteed to every citizen by the Bill of Rights. The United States is a Republic because the rights of the minority - perhaps even an unpopular minority - are protected. If only the rights of the majority are protected, then dissenting voices will not be heard, or even raised. Sheriff Weber has apparently forgotten his Oath to the Constitution.
Thankfully, Judge Mark W. Bennett upheld his Oath and ruled in Mr. Dorr’s favor, saying that Dorr’s rights had been grossly violated by Sheriff Weber. “The court finds a tsunami, a maelstrom, an avalanche, of direct, uncontroverted evidence in Sheriff Weber’s own testimony to conclude beyond all doubt that he unquestionably violated the First Amendment rights of … Paul Dorr,” wrote U.S. District Court Judge Mark W. Bennett of the Northern District of Iowa. “Dorr was denied a permit precisely because Sheriff Weber believed that his free speech rights offended the majority of voters in Osceola County,” Bennett wrote.
In his ruling, Judge Bennett ordered the Osceola County Sheriff’s office to immediately issue Paul Dorr a CCW permit. Additionally, the Judge ordered Sheriff Weber to successfully complete a court-approved educational course about the Constitution and the First Amendment.
The judge continued: “This is a great reminder that the First Amendment protects the sole individual who may be a gadfly, kook, weirdo, nut job, whacko, and spook, with the same force of protection as folks with more majoritarian and popular views.”
“In denying (Dorr) a concealed weapons permit, Sheriff Weber single-handedly hijacked the First Amendment and nullified its freedoms and protections,” Bennett wrote.
Perhaps the mandatory Constitutional education for Sheriff Weber will bring this message home. Perhaps it will inspire him to emulate Judge Bennett’s respect and understanding of the U.S. Constitution. Perhaps he will become an Oath Keeper, not simply an oath-taker.
Link to story:
http://www.theoathkeepernews.com/news/2010/07/17/judge-blasts-iowa-sheriff-for-denying-gun-permit-to-man-considered-‘weird’/
Saturday, July 3, 2010
The Battle of Monmouth: June 28, 1778
General Charles Lee was standing alone on the morning of June 28th, 1778. The air, even before dawn, was humid and hot. Summer had come early to Pennsylvania that year, and the armies struggling against each other in the American colonies had a vicious, unseen enemy in the oppressive, moist heat. In their thick uniforms, carrying heavy loads, the soldiers were miserable.
The Americans were in pursuit of a supply train of British General Sir Henry Clinton’s. The British wagons and supplies were strung out over twelve miles of sandy road, as they moved their headquarters from Philadelphia to New York. General Washington had wanted to attack the supply train outright, but his generals urged caution. Washington compromised by sending five thousand soldiers out to the attack, and keeping the main body of troops behind in reserve. General Lee, a vocal critic of his commanding officer, had at first refused to lead the attack; but when he saw the number of troops committed by Washington, he changed his mind and demanded to be the commander of the expedition.
As Lee stood on the hill that morning in June, his head bowed in thought and his hands clasped behind him, his officers wondered uneasily what he was thinking. Lee was a man with a strange past. He was Irish-born, and had served in the British army since he was twelve years old. He had fought as a soldier of fortune on numerous battlefields of Europe. After coming to the colonies, he married the daughter of a Seneca chief, and earned the name “Boiling Water” from the Seneca tribe, in recognition of his hot temper. By all reports he was a vain, vulgar, unlikeable man, slovenly in his dress, coarse and rude in speech, with a very high opinion of himself.
Lee felt that he should have been given the position of Commander-In-Chief when war broke out in the colonies. But when the position was given to George Washington instead, who was nearly the complete opposite of Lee in every conceivable way, Lee was bitter. He and Washington had numerous disagreements, and Lee was well known to have contempt for his superior officer. However, Lee did not have any great battlefield glory to cover his other shortcomings; on the contrary, he had been ignominiously captured by the British in 1776 at a public house, where he had been sleeping off a night’s carouse.
The army was rife with rumors, and some of those rumors questioned Lee’s dedication to the cause of American freedom. Everyone knew he wasn’t really an American. Everyone knew that he had only settled in Virginia after King George refused to give him the promotion he wanted. That he was contemptuous of Washington was an unspoken, but well-known fact. Rumor had it that he had drawn up an attack on the American forces when he was captured by the British, and that he had been well-treated as a result. Some men thought he should never had been given another command after he was swapped back to the Americans in a prisoner exchange.
The command given to him at Monmouth was Lee’s big chance. He could prove all his doubters wrong and set the rumors to rest. He had a chance to distinguish himself, and show the world that he should have been given command of the Continental Army. Or perhaps he could punish the side that had not shown him the respect he felt he deserved... as Charles Lee lifted his head to see the first gleams of dawn on that sweltering June morning, his face was set in an ugly scowl. Surrounded, as always, by a pack of hunting hounds, he yelled at an orderly for his horse. The time for thought was over. The day that would settle Charles Lee’s destiny had begun.
Marquis de Lafayette was worried. The young, idealistic Frenchman, who had already proved his prowess on the battlefield at Brandywine, pulled the reins on his horse and looked around him. What he saw made the frown deepen on his face. The attack on the British supply train had been mismanaged from the start. General Lee had not properly reconnoitered before the attack; his orders were sporadic or non-existent, and confusion among the troops had lost the Americans the element of surprise. The crack troops under command of General Cornwallis had pressed their advantage. The American commanding officers, including Lafayette, had not been given any plan of attack by General Lee; instead they were told to await orders.
But Lafayette realized that things were not going well. The day had become blistering hot, and the battlefield was dim from smoke from the artillery and muskets. The Americans and British were exchanging fire steadily, but even as Lafayette wiped the sweat from his eyes and reached for his water bottle, the American line began crumbling before his eyes. The most advanced troops were in retreat. Lafayette dropped his water bottle and spurred his horse forward towards the men of his command. But the retreat that had begun as a few men had turned into a flood of soldiers turning and running in panic. The American discipline had seemingly evaporated into thin air, and the British troops could see it. They pushed forward even harder, the officers urging the dirty men, dripping with sweat and grimy with smoke and dust, to fire more rapidly, and to advance.
Suddenly, from the woods dim with smoke behind the American lines, a magnificent white horse cantered into view. In the saddle was General George Washington, his uniform impeccable as always, but his face showing increasing distress as he realized the situation. His jaw set hard and his usually calm blue eyes kindled as he saw American soldiers running from the enemy. He reigned up next to General Lee and tersely demanded:
“Why are the troops in retreat, sir? Why?”
Lee’s face turned red. He felt insulted. “Sir! Is this question in order, indeed, I...”
Washington’s face was hard. “I repeat, sir, why are the troops in retreat? What is the situation?”
“I - well - my orders were not followed, sir!” Lee shouted back, his ever-ready temper gaining control of him. “You know these men don’t know how to follow orders! These men-” he gestured furiously around him - “they aren’t able to stand and fight against the British!”
Washington looked at Lee with a fury on his face that none of the men had seen before. “Sir, they are able,” he growled at Lee, “and by God, they shall do it!”
He wheeled his horse about and left Lee gaping after him. Washington rode to the rear and began issuing orders to take up defensive positions. He rode back to the front lines, shouting orders and seeing they were followed, heedless of cannon fire and the ceaseless small arms sniping from the British. He ordered fresh troops up to the front and ordered the exhausted men to the rear, to rest. Urging his horse mercilessly, he set up a strong defensive line facing the British.
The retreat seemed to have stopped as suddenly as it started. The Continental army, that had almost dissolved into a panicked rabble, was once again a fighting force, returning fire and holding the line. They held the line through the rest of the hot, miserable day. The battle ended in a draw. At dusk, the armies were still facing each other and the Americans were still firing from the positions ordered by General Washington. As darkness fell, the British abandoned the field and their wounded, and stole silently through the woods to the forgotten supply train.
The Battle of Monmouth did not decide the victors of the war, but it did show that the Americans could indeed stand and fight against the British, as Washington believed they could. General Lee was later court-martialed and removed from command. To this day, it is not clear if his actions during the Battle of Monmouth were the result of incompetence or treachery. As his rival, George Washington, went on to be the first president of the new Republic, Charles Lee died in poverty in a saloon in 1782.
The Americans were in pursuit of a supply train of British General Sir Henry Clinton’s. The British wagons and supplies were strung out over twelve miles of sandy road, as they moved their headquarters from Philadelphia to New York. General Washington had wanted to attack the supply train outright, but his generals urged caution. Washington compromised by sending five thousand soldiers out to the attack, and keeping the main body of troops behind in reserve. General Lee, a vocal critic of his commanding officer, had at first refused to lead the attack; but when he saw the number of troops committed by Washington, he changed his mind and demanded to be the commander of the expedition.
As Lee stood on the hill that morning in June, his head bowed in thought and his hands clasped behind him, his officers wondered uneasily what he was thinking. Lee was a man with a strange past. He was Irish-born, and had served in the British army since he was twelve years old. He had fought as a soldier of fortune on numerous battlefields of Europe. After coming to the colonies, he married the daughter of a Seneca chief, and earned the name “Boiling Water” from the Seneca tribe, in recognition of his hot temper. By all reports he was a vain, vulgar, unlikeable man, slovenly in his dress, coarse and rude in speech, with a very high opinion of himself.
Lee felt that he should have been given the position of Commander-In-Chief when war broke out in the colonies. But when the position was given to George Washington instead, who was nearly the complete opposite of Lee in every conceivable way, Lee was bitter. He and Washington had numerous disagreements, and Lee was well known to have contempt for his superior officer. However, Lee did not have any great battlefield glory to cover his other shortcomings; on the contrary, he had been ignominiously captured by the British in 1776 at a public house, where he had been sleeping off a night’s carouse.
The army was rife with rumors, and some of those rumors questioned Lee’s dedication to the cause of American freedom. Everyone knew he wasn’t really an American. Everyone knew that he had only settled in Virginia after King George refused to give him the promotion he wanted. That he was contemptuous of Washington was an unspoken, but well-known fact. Rumor had it that he had drawn up an attack on the American forces when he was captured by the British, and that he had been well-treated as a result. Some men thought he should never had been given another command after he was swapped back to the Americans in a prisoner exchange.
The command given to him at Monmouth was Lee’s big chance. He could prove all his doubters wrong and set the rumors to rest. He had a chance to distinguish himself, and show the world that he should have been given command of the Continental Army. Or perhaps he could punish the side that had not shown him the respect he felt he deserved... as Charles Lee lifted his head to see the first gleams of dawn on that sweltering June morning, his face was set in an ugly scowl. Surrounded, as always, by a pack of hunting hounds, he yelled at an orderly for his horse. The time for thought was over. The day that would settle Charles Lee’s destiny had begun.
. . . . . . . . . .
Marquis de Lafayette was worried. The young, idealistic Frenchman, who had already proved his prowess on the battlefield at Brandywine, pulled the reins on his horse and looked around him. What he saw made the frown deepen on his face. The attack on the British supply train had been mismanaged from the start. General Lee had not properly reconnoitered before the attack; his orders were sporadic or non-existent, and confusion among the troops had lost the Americans the element of surprise. The crack troops under command of General Cornwallis had pressed their advantage. The American commanding officers, including Lafayette, had not been given any plan of attack by General Lee; instead they were told to await orders.
But Lafayette realized that things were not going well. The day had become blistering hot, and the battlefield was dim from smoke from the artillery and muskets. The Americans and British were exchanging fire steadily, but even as Lafayette wiped the sweat from his eyes and reached for his water bottle, the American line began crumbling before his eyes. The most advanced troops were in retreat. Lafayette dropped his water bottle and spurred his horse forward towards the men of his command. But the retreat that had begun as a few men had turned into a flood of soldiers turning and running in panic. The American discipline had seemingly evaporated into thin air, and the British troops could see it. They pushed forward even harder, the officers urging the dirty men, dripping with sweat and grimy with smoke and dust, to fire more rapidly, and to advance.
Suddenly, from the woods dim with smoke behind the American lines, a magnificent white horse cantered into view. In the saddle was General George Washington, his uniform impeccable as always, but his face showing increasing distress as he realized the situation. His jaw set hard and his usually calm blue eyes kindled as he saw American soldiers running from the enemy. He reigned up next to General Lee and tersely demanded:
“Why are the troops in retreat, sir? Why?”
Lee’s face turned red. He felt insulted. “Sir! Is this question in order, indeed, I...”
Washington’s face was hard. “I repeat, sir, why are the troops in retreat? What is the situation?”
“I - well - my orders were not followed, sir!” Lee shouted back, his ever-ready temper gaining control of him. “You know these men don’t know how to follow orders! These men-” he gestured furiously around him - “they aren’t able to stand and fight against the British!”
Washington looked at Lee with a fury on his face that none of the men had seen before. “Sir, they are able,” he growled at Lee, “and by God, they shall do it!”
He wheeled his horse about and left Lee gaping after him. Washington rode to the rear and began issuing orders to take up defensive positions. He rode back to the front lines, shouting orders and seeing they were followed, heedless of cannon fire and the ceaseless small arms sniping from the British. He ordered fresh troops up to the front and ordered the exhausted men to the rear, to rest. Urging his horse mercilessly, he set up a strong defensive line facing the British.
The retreat seemed to have stopped as suddenly as it started. The Continental army, that had almost dissolved into a panicked rabble, was once again a fighting force, returning fire and holding the line. They held the line through the rest of the hot, miserable day. The battle ended in a draw. At dusk, the armies were still facing each other and the Americans were still firing from the positions ordered by General Washington. As darkness fell, the British abandoned the field and their wounded, and stole silently through the woods to the forgotten supply train.
. . . . . . . . .
The Battle of Monmouth did not decide the victors of the war, but it did show that the Americans could indeed stand and fight against the British, as Washington believed they could. General Lee was later court-martialed and removed from command. To this day, it is not clear if his actions during the Battle of Monmouth were the result of incompetence or treachery. As his rival, George Washington, went on to be the first president of the new Republic, Charles Lee died in poverty in a saloon in 1782.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Lexington and Concord: April 19, 1775
The British regulars were having a rough morning. They had been roused out of bed late last night - the night of April 18th - and had spent hours standing in formation along the narrow streets of Boston. Then they had been piled onto shallow barges so overloaded that there wasn’t room to sit down. The barges ferried them across the water from Boston near to Cambridge, where they disembarked into chilly waist-deep water. It was barely midnight when the first wet, grumbling troops waded ashore, early on the morning of April 19th, 1775.
The British desperately wanted to surprise the Americans and capture the weapons that were stockpiled in the town of Concord, and this late-night troop movement was a key part of their strategy. Under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith, there were over seven hundred regular troops ferried out of Boston that morning. The regular troops were supported by about a thousand grenadiers, flankers, and reconnaissance troops. On their way to Concord, the British also planned to stop in at Lexington and arrest John Hancock and Sam Adams, two key leaders of the American revolt who had recently moved out of Boston for safety.
But the British did not know that word of their approach was spreading through the Massachusetts countryside before they had even crossed the water. Paul Revere, one of the few patriot leaders still in Boston, had rowed across the Charles River under the guns of the HMS Somerset late on the 18th. Once ashore in Charlestown, he mounted a waiting horse and rode off to warn the communities north of Boston of the British approach. Behind him, glowing in the steeple of the Old North Church, was Revere’s back-up plan: two lanterns were glimmering through the still, silent night, a signal to Charlestown that the British were coming by sea. Paul Revere was not the only man who braved the teeth of the British to spread the alarm that night. Billy Dawes, disguised as a drunken farmer, had fooled the British guards blockading the only road out of Boston, and headed south to spread the alarm.
Revere stopped at Lexington to make sure that Hancock and Adams had got the warning. They had, and were already on their way out of town, but the anxious men spoke late into the night with the militia leaders from Lexington and surrounding towns. There were too many British troops on the march to be only intent on arresting two men. The weapons at Concord had to be the main aim of this attack. The word was sent out around the countryside, and the system of “alarm and muster”, used in the colonies since before the French and Indian war, came to life. Cannons boomed, bells rang, bonfires were lit and trumpets were blown to spread the alarm. Express riders headed off in all directions to rouse the militia. British officers, still struggling to get all their men ashore through the soggy marshes, heard the commotion and realized that the element of surprise had been lost.
From across the countryside, men began to answer the alarm. The militia of Lexington, commanded by Captain John Parker, had gathered before the sun was up. No British had arrived yet, so the men were told to wait but be ready at a moment’s notice.
It was a beautiful spring morning that day in Massachusetts. The grass on the sloping countryside was fresh and green, the fruit trees were covered in snowy white blossoms, and the birds were madly trilling and singing in the tree-tops. The air was cool and damp, seasoned with the unmistakable salty tang of the Atlantic. And in the pretty little town of Lexington, in the faint half-light before dawn, a few dozen men were milling around the green, waiting. They were farmers, most of them. Most held muskets; some held blunderbusses or hunting rifles. Their faces were drawn and anxious as they waited. Suddenly, word came. “They’re coming! They’re coming!” The whispers turned into yells as townspeople rushed around in near panic. Women bundled their children inside. Doors and windows were slammed shut and bolted. Others stood as spectators along the road and lines of houses, wondering what was going to happen.
And on the green, the men under command of Captain Parker lined up, their weapons gripped firm and ready. And they waited. Just as the first rays of dawn rose out of the sea to the east and spread their rosy light across the green of Lexington, the measured tramp of marching boots could be heard. The British rounded a corner, and suddenly the town seemed filled with troops in scarlet uniforms. The advance force of British, led by Major Pitcairn, numbered about three hundred men, with over a thousand more behind them. Parker immediately realized that his forces were overwhelmingly outnumbered, but still the Americans held their ground. The British had momentarily paused when they saw the Americans waiting for them, but now they suddenly surged forward. Major Pitcairn rode ahead on his charger. “Disperse ye rebels!” he shouted at the colonists. “Disperse and lay down your arms!”
Captain Parker realized that his troops stood no chance against such a large force. He ordered his men to disperse. The colonists began to move off the common slowly, and none of them laid down their arms. Suddenly, a shot rang out, ripping through the air. The British troops immediately fired a volley into the thin ranks of the colonists. Confusion filled the air as more shots were fired, British officers yelled at their troops, Americans yelled at the British, more shots were fired and the air filled with gun smoke. The Americans got off a few shots in response, but most of the militia headed for the safety of the woods. The British continued to fire, and then followed up their volleys with a bayonet charge. Captain Parker saw his cousin Jonas run through as he stood on Lexington Green.
It was all over very quickly. The militia had disappeared. The ten wounded and eight dead Americans were quickly dragged off the Green. The British officers marshaled their troops into formation and fired a victory volley before marching out of the town, continuing on their way to Concord. Behind them, the morning in Lexington seemed no longer beautiful. The birds had stopped singing and the bitter smell of gun smoke hung heavy in the air. The sky seemed to have darkened although the sun was still shining. In the houses of the town, the wounded were being tended and a woman’s weeping could already be heard.
News of the skirmish at Lexington spread rapidly to the surrounding villages. Many Americans were shocked that the British had fired on Americans, shocked that people had died, shocked that the war so long in coming had finally begun.
Six miles away at Concord, the militia leaders were getting confused reports. Colonel James Barrett heard that the British at Lexington had fired only with powder, while other reports said numerous Americans had been killed. Some said there were five hundred British, others said three thousand. So Colonel Barrett and his men waited to see what developed as more minutemen arrived, armed and ready.
They didn’t have too long to wait. When Colonel Barrett saw the size of the British force marching towards Concord, he decided to pull his three hundred men back across the Concord River. He knew what the British did not: that most of the weapons had already been removed from Concord and safely hidden away in other towns. As the militia pulled back, the British arrived at Concord and began their house-to-house search for weapons. About one hundred British grenadiers under the command of Captain Walter Laurie were stationed by the North Bridge, the bridge that separated the British and the now-occupied town of Concord from the militia that was growing in size by the minute.
The British found three massive twenty-four pounder cannons buried by Ephraim Jones’s tavern, as well as gun carriages and stored supplies. They smashed the gun trunnions, burned the gun carriages, and dumped nearly a hundred barrels of food and 550 pounds of musket balls into the mill pond. The fire that had been set to the gun carriages spread to a local meetinghouse, and a bucket brigade was hastily arranged.
Colonel Barrett and his forces saw the smoke and became increasingly anxious. The reports from Lexington were ominous; and realizing that his force of four hundred well outnumbered the British guarding the bridge, he decided to march into Concord. The militia was organized into a line two deep on the highway down to bridge. After further consultations with other militia leaders, the order was given to march down to Concord. The men’s weapons were loaded but they were ordered to not fire unless fired upon.
When the British saw the militia advancing, they began to take up defensive positions on the town side of the bridge. The British ranks were in confusion as their inexperienced commander gave poor orders and other officers tried to correct his mistake. The Minutemen marched steadily down the hill, and someone in the British ranks fired. Two more men fired and then an advance squadron let off a ragged volley, irregular pop-pop-pops that shattered the cool morning air.
The Americans had not yet fired a shot, although two men had been killed and four wounded in that opening volley. Finally an officer, Major Buttrick, gave the order. “Fire!” he yelled. “Fellow soldiers, fire!” The line of Americans pulled up and let loose a solid volley of shots that felled three British regulars and wounded a dozen more. The British fell back and the Americans rushed on across the bridge. The British, outnumbered, demoralized, and lacking effective leadership, fled into the safety of the town.
The situation turned into a standoff, with the Americans maintaining defensive positions around the town but not advancing any further, well aware of the much larger force occupying Concord. The British left Concord at about noon, ready for the sixteen mile march back to Charlestown. But they did not realize that as they dallied in Concord, the militia force was growing by the minute, waiting for the British to leave the safety of the town. The British were waiting for reinforcements from Earl Percy, but they were still miles away. Finally, around noon, the British decided to start the march back towards Boston. The minutemen watched in silence as the British troops formed up and began marching east. Soon all the militia had melted into the surrounding countryside, and the warm day seemed peaceful again under the sunshine.
But suddenly, the sound of a musket shot shattered the short-lived silence and a British regular dropped wounded in the ranks. More shots were fired and more British soldiers dropped where they stood. The British were furious. They were not used to warfare where they could not see their enemy. Indeed, they considered it a dishonorable way to fight. In European battles, the contending armies stood facing each other’s ranks and exchanged fire. However, the American militia leaders had no intention of subjecting their forces to the withering volleys the British could deal to their enemies. Instead, the Americans encircled the British in a “ring of fire”, keeping themselves hidden as much as possible while inflicting maximum damage on the British.
It was a new kind of warfare that the British were destined to learn all about during that long tramp back to Boston. Throughout the entire sixteen miles, the British were harried at every step by an enemy they could rarely see.
About five hundred militia men from Chelmsford had formed up in the woods and sniped at the British from Brooks Hill. More men from Bedford and Lincoln ambushed the British at a curve in the road that was surrounded by woods. About thirty British soldiers were killed and the British broke into a trot to escape.
Militia forces had risen to about two thousand by this time, and the long running battles between the British and the militiamen who seemed to be behind every tree were draining the British of ammunition. They were also becoming exhausted. The American forces were being constantly reinforced by new arrivals and different companies as the battle moved into new counties and townships. The situation for the British was growing desperate.
But fortunately for them, British reinforcements had arrived at Lexington, led by Earl Percy. Percy and his men were shocked to see their fellow British soldiers rushing to the safety of the town, looking anxiously over their shoulders and dragging their wounded. Percy’s reinforcements had arrived in the nick of time. He organized the retreat from there to Charlestown, keeping the American militia at bay as much as possible with cannon fire. All through that long afternoon, the battle continued with skirmishing along the road. When the British finally arrived at Charlestown, it was almost evening. They sent the wounded back across the water to Boston. Seventy British soldiers were killed that day, and almost two hundred were wounded. Over fifty were reported missing. For the colonials, about fifty were killed and forty wounded. As the British retreated into Boston to lick their wounds, the militia forces were close behind them. By the next morning, twenty thousand minutemen had surrounded the city, and the siege of Boston had started.
But something even bigger had started that day. The first shots of the American Revolution had been fired. The next eight years would be filled with bloodshed and turmoil throughout the British colonies in North America - colonies that, a little over a year after the revolution began, declared themselves to be the free and independent states of America. That beautiful spring day in Massachusetts had turned into a day that would be remembered for centuries to come, in the nation that was born out of that struggle for freedom.
Sources:
“The American Revolution- The Battles of Lexington and Concord” http://www.theamericanrevolution.org/battledetail.aspx?battle=1
“Department of Military Science- Battle of Lexington and Concord” http://www.wpi.edu/Academics/Depts/MilSci/Resources/lexcon.html
The British desperately wanted to surprise the Americans and capture the weapons that were stockpiled in the town of Concord, and this late-night troop movement was a key part of their strategy. Under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith, there were over seven hundred regular troops ferried out of Boston that morning. The regular troops were supported by about a thousand grenadiers, flankers, and reconnaissance troops. On their way to Concord, the British also planned to stop in at Lexington and arrest John Hancock and Sam Adams, two key leaders of the American revolt who had recently moved out of Boston for safety.
But the British did not know that word of their approach was spreading through the Massachusetts countryside before they had even crossed the water. Paul Revere, one of the few patriot leaders still in Boston, had rowed across the Charles River under the guns of the HMS Somerset late on the 18th. Once ashore in Charlestown, he mounted a waiting horse and rode off to warn the communities north of Boston of the British approach. Behind him, glowing in the steeple of the Old North Church, was Revere’s back-up plan: two lanterns were glimmering through the still, silent night, a signal to Charlestown that the British were coming by sea. Paul Revere was not the only man who braved the teeth of the British to spread the alarm that night. Billy Dawes, disguised as a drunken farmer, had fooled the British guards blockading the only road out of Boston, and headed south to spread the alarm.
Revere stopped at Lexington to make sure that Hancock and Adams had got the warning. They had, and were already on their way out of town, but the anxious men spoke late into the night with the militia leaders from Lexington and surrounding towns. There were too many British troops on the march to be only intent on arresting two men. The weapons at Concord had to be the main aim of this attack. The word was sent out around the countryside, and the system of “alarm and muster”, used in the colonies since before the French and Indian war, came to life. Cannons boomed, bells rang, bonfires were lit and trumpets were blown to spread the alarm. Express riders headed off in all directions to rouse the militia. British officers, still struggling to get all their men ashore through the soggy marshes, heard the commotion and realized that the element of surprise had been lost.
From across the countryside, men began to answer the alarm. The militia of Lexington, commanded by Captain John Parker, had gathered before the sun was up. No British had arrived yet, so the men were told to wait but be ready at a moment’s notice.
It was a beautiful spring morning that day in Massachusetts. The grass on the sloping countryside was fresh and green, the fruit trees were covered in snowy white blossoms, and the birds were madly trilling and singing in the tree-tops. The air was cool and damp, seasoned with the unmistakable salty tang of the Atlantic. And in the pretty little town of Lexington, in the faint half-light before dawn, a few dozen men were milling around the green, waiting. They were farmers, most of them. Most held muskets; some held blunderbusses or hunting rifles. Their faces were drawn and anxious as they waited. Suddenly, word came. “They’re coming! They’re coming!” The whispers turned into yells as townspeople rushed around in near panic. Women bundled their children inside. Doors and windows were slammed shut and bolted. Others stood as spectators along the road and lines of houses, wondering what was going to happen.
And on the green, the men under command of Captain Parker lined up, their weapons gripped firm and ready. And they waited. Just as the first rays of dawn rose out of the sea to the east and spread their rosy light across the green of Lexington, the measured tramp of marching boots could be heard. The British rounded a corner, and suddenly the town seemed filled with troops in scarlet uniforms. The advance force of British, led by Major Pitcairn, numbered about three hundred men, with over a thousand more behind them. Parker immediately realized that his forces were overwhelmingly outnumbered, but still the Americans held their ground. The British had momentarily paused when they saw the Americans waiting for them, but now they suddenly surged forward. Major Pitcairn rode ahead on his charger. “Disperse ye rebels!” he shouted at the colonists. “Disperse and lay down your arms!”
Captain Parker realized that his troops stood no chance against such a large force. He ordered his men to disperse. The colonists began to move off the common slowly, and none of them laid down their arms. Suddenly, a shot rang out, ripping through the air. The British troops immediately fired a volley into the thin ranks of the colonists. Confusion filled the air as more shots were fired, British officers yelled at their troops, Americans yelled at the British, more shots were fired and the air filled with gun smoke. The Americans got off a few shots in response, but most of the militia headed for the safety of the woods. The British continued to fire, and then followed up their volleys with a bayonet charge. Captain Parker saw his cousin Jonas run through as he stood on Lexington Green.
It was all over very quickly. The militia had disappeared. The ten wounded and eight dead Americans were quickly dragged off the Green. The British officers marshaled their troops into formation and fired a victory volley before marching out of the town, continuing on their way to Concord. Behind them, the morning in Lexington seemed no longer beautiful. The birds had stopped singing and the bitter smell of gun smoke hung heavy in the air. The sky seemed to have darkened although the sun was still shining. In the houses of the town, the wounded were being tended and a woman’s weeping could already be heard.
News of the skirmish at Lexington spread rapidly to the surrounding villages. Many Americans were shocked that the British had fired on Americans, shocked that people had died, shocked that the war so long in coming had finally begun.
Six miles away at Concord, the militia leaders were getting confused reports. Colonel James Barrett heard that the British at Lexington had fired only with powder, while other reports said numerous Americans had been killed. Some said there were five hundred British, others said three thousand. So Colonel Barrett and his men waited to see what developed as more minutemen arrived, armed and ready.
They didn’t have too long to wait. When Colonel Barrett saw the size of the British force marching towards Concord, he decided to pull his three hundred men back across the Concord River. He knew what the British did not: that most of the weapons had already been removed from Concord and safely hidden away in other towns. As the militia pulled back, the British arrived at Concord and began their house-to-house search for weapons. About one hundred British grenadiers under the command of Captain Walter Laurie were stationed by the North Bridge, the bridge that separated the British and the now-occupied town of Concord from the militia that was growing in size by the minute.
The British found three massive twenty-four pounder cannons buried by Ephraim Jones’s tavern, as well as gun carriages and stored supplies. They smashed the gun trunnions, burned the gun carriages, and dumped nearly a hundred barrels of food and 550 pounds of musket balls into the mill pond. The fire that had been set to the gun carriages spread to a local meetinghouse, and a bucket brigade was hastily arranged.
Colonel Barrett and his forces saw the smoke and became increasingly anxious. The reports from Lexington were ominous; and realizing that his force of four hundred well outnumbered the British guarding the bridge, he decided to march into Concord. The militia was organized into a line two deep on the highway down to bridge. After further consultations with other militia leaders, the order was given to march down to Concord. The men’s weapons were loaded but they were ordered to not fire unless fired upon.
When the British saw the militia advancing, they began to take up defensive positions on the town side of the bridge. The British ranks were in confusion as their inexperienced commander gave poor orders and other officers tried to correct his mistake. The Minutemen marched steadily down the hill, and someone in the British ranks fired. Two more men fired and then an advance squadron let off a ragged volley, irregular pop-pop-pops that shattered the cool morning air.
The Americans had not yet fired a shot, although two men had been killed and four wounded in that opening volley. Finally an officer, Major Buttrick, gave the order. “Fire!” he yelled. “Fellow soldiers, fire!” The line of Americans pulled up and let loose a solid volley of shots that felled three British regulars and wounded a dozen more. The British fell back and the Americans rushed on across the bridge. The British, outnumbered, demoralized, and lacking effective leadership, fled into the safety of the town.
The situation turned into a standoff, with the Americans maintaining defensive positions around the town but not advancing any further, well aware of the much larger force occupying Concord. The British left Concord at about noon, ready for the sixteen mile march back to Charlestown. But they did not realize that as they dallied in Concord, the militia force was growing by the minute, waiting for the British to leave the safety of the town. The British were waiting for reinforcements from Earl Percy, but they were still miles away. Finally, around noon, the British decided to start the march back towards Boston. The minutemen watched in silence as the British troops formed up and began marching east. Soon all the militia had melted into the surrounding countryside, and the warm day seemed peaceful again under the sunshine.
But suddenly, the sound of a musket shot shattered the short-lived silence and a British regular dropped wounded in the ranks. More shots were fired and more British soldiers dropped where they stood. The British were furious. They were not used to warfare where they could not see their enemy. Indeed, they considered it a dishonorable way to fight. In European battles, the contending armies stood facing each other’s ranks and exchanged fire. However, the American militia leaders had no intention of subjecting their forces to the withering volleys the British could deal to their enemies. Instead, the Americans encircled the British in a “ring of fire”, keeping themselves hidden as much as possible while inflicting maximum damage on the British.
It was a new kind of warfare that the British were destined to learn all about during that long tramp back to Boston. Throughout the entire sixteen miles, the British were harried at every step by an enemy they could rarely see.
About five hundred militia men from Chelmsford had formed up in the woods and sniped at the British from Brooks Hill. More men from Bedford and Lincoln ambushed the British at a curve in the road that was surrounded by woods. About thirty British soldiers were killed and the British broke into a trot to escape.
Militia forces had risen to about two thousand by this time, and the long running battles between the British and the militiamen who seemed to be behind every tree were draining the British of ammunition. They were also becoming exhausted. The American forces were being constantly reinforced by new arrivals and different companies as the battle moved into new counties and townships. The situation for the British was growing desperate.
But fortunately for them, British reinforcements had arrived at Lexington, led by Earl Percy. Percy and his men were shocked to see their fellow British soldiers rushing to the safety of the town, looking anxiously over their shoulders and dragging their wounded. Percy’s reinforcements had arrived in the nick of time. He organized the retreat from there to Charlestown, keeping the American militia at bay as much as possible with cannon fire. All through that long afternoon, the battle continued with skirmishing along the road. When the British finally arrived at Charlestown, it was almost evening. They sent the wounded back across the water to Boston. Seventy British soldiers were killed that day, and almost two hundred were wounded. Over fifty were reported missing. For the colonials, about fifty were killed and forty wounded. As the British retreated into Boston to lick their wounds, the militia forces were close behind them. By the next morning, twenty thousand minutemen had surrounded the city, and the siege of Boston had started.
But something even bigger had started that day. The first shots of the American Revolution had been fired. The next eight years would be filled with bloodshed and turmoil throughout the British colonies in North America - colonies that, a little over a year after the revolution began, declared themselves to be the free and independent states of America. That beautiful spring day in Massachusetts had turned into a day that would be remembered for centuries to come, in the nation that was born out of that struggle for freedom.
Sources:
“The American Revolution- The Battles of Lexington and Concord” http://www.theamericanrevolution.org/battledetail.aspx?battle=1
“Department of Military Science- Battle of Lexington and Concord” http://www.wpi.edu/Academics/Depts/MilSci/Resources/lexcon.html
Friday, April 2, 2010
The Battle of the Alamo: March 6, 1836
The morning was still dark, with barely a trace of red on the eastern horizon. The air was colder and damper than usual for east Texas in March. For the past twelve days, the roar of cannons had echoed through the adobe walls of the mission of San Antonio de Bexar, also called the Alamo. But this morning, all was quiet. A faint breeze was stirring, gently rustling through the mesquite grass and ruffling the placid waters of the pond behind the mission. The breeze chilled the men inside the Alamo. The few who slept stirred restlessly; the others, their faces weary and blackened by powder and dust, pulled their jackets closer for warmth.
The Alamo was an old mission made up of a convent and a rectangular courtyard surrounded by a crumbling adobe wall. It stood on a bluff overlooking the little town of San Antonio de Bexar. The San Antonio River fed the stream that wound around the Alamo and purled into the pond behind it. The Old San Antonio Road, one of the main routes in and out of Texas, was nearby. On that morning, about one hundred and eighty men were holed up inside the adobe walls, waiting. For the past twelve days they had been waiting for reinforcements from their fellow Texans, and waiting for what the Mexicans under the command of Generalissimo Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna would do next. The men inside the Alamo knew they were extremely outnumbered by the Mexicans. They knew they could not hold out without reinforcements. They knew they would be granted no quarter if they surrendered. They knew they must hold the Alamo, or die in the attempt.
All of Texas was in a state of upheaval. Throughout years of negotiations and compromises with the Mexican government over civil liberties, land ownership, tariffs, and other issues, Texas had been heading towards a revolution. In 1835, the first shots of the Texas Revolution had been fired in October at the battle of Gonzalez. A Convention was meeting at Washington-on-the-Brazos in March of 1836 even as the siege of the Alamo was underway, to discuss the future of Texas. The Convention had decided that there was no further recourse to the Mexican government; they had declared independence on March 2nd.
But Generalissimo Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna had arrived to put down the rebellion. He crossed the Rio Grande on February 15, with the intention of executing or exiling every Texan of Anglo ascent. Any Texan under arms would be considered a pirate and treated accordingly. When Santa Anna heard that a contingent of rebels were fortifying the old mission on the outskirts of San Antonio de Bexar, he decided to travel there with about two thousand of his troops. Although the mission itself held little military significance, Santa Anna decided he would make an example of the rebels there.
The Alamo was originally under command of Colonel John Neill, but he had been called home because of a family emergency on February 11th. Command of the Alamo was left to twenty-six year old Lt. Colonel William B. Travis and Colonel Jim Bowie. The two had worked out a compromise of joint command, where Bowie commanded the volunteers and Travis was in charge of the regular army troops. However, by the time the siege began, Bowie had fallen ill and left Travis in complete command. Frontiersman and former congressman Davy Crockett was also inside the Alamo with about a dozen of his men from Tennessee.
Santa Anna arrived at San Antonio de Bexar on February 23 and issued an ultimatum to the defenders of the Alamo. He demanded their surrender and declared that no prisoners would be taken in the event of resistance. Lt. Colonel Travis would not listen to talk of surrender; he answered this ultimatum with a cannon shot, and the siege of the Alamo began.
During the two weeks leading up to the siege, Travis had been sending letters pleading for reinforcements and equipment. On February 24th, the day after the siege began, Travis wrote a letter that he addressed “To the People of Texas and all Americans in the World” where he explained the situation at the Alamo. “I have sustained a continual bombardment and cannonade for twenty-four hours” he wrote, “and have not lost a man… I shall never surrender or retreat… I call on you in the name of Liberty, of patriotism, of everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid with all dispatch… if this call is neglected I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible and die like a soldier who never forgets what is due his honor and that of his country.” The appeal finished with the words “Victory or Death” underlined three times. The only response to his impassioned appeal was thirty-two volunteers from Gonzalez who arrived on March 1st.
On the cold morning of March 6, the Texans were hunkered down in their positions, still determined to hold on and wondering if help would ever come. What they did not know was that Santa Anna had ordered an all-out assault of the Alamo that day. Beyond the walls of the Alamo, out on the darkness, on that chilly, damp morning, thousands of Mexican troops were advancing silently towards the Alamo. Their boots were sinking slightly into in the boggy ground as they softly stepped through the curly mesquite grass. But these were battle-hardened troops and the discipline was absolute. Barely a sound was uttered as they advanced through the dark. Any noise they made might have been easily dismissed as the rustle of the breeze whispering across the prairie.
A man standing on the north rampart of the Alamo was gazing dreamily out into the dark. His outfit of head to toe buckskin, trimmed with fringe and topped off with a real coon-skin cap, proclaimed to the world that he was a frontiersman. In fact, he was from Tennessee, and as he leaned on his rifle and the brisk breeze fluttered the fringe on his jacket, he was remembering happier days. His friend Bill was snoring gently at his feet, and the man smiled to hear the sound. He thought of his wife and their log cabin in the Blue Mountains, and his children warm in their beds. He was almost asleep himself when suddenly he stiffened, and stood up as straight as the rifle he immediately slid ready into both hands. Had he seen something out there in the dark, or…?
A yell suddenly tore through the darkness. “Here they come!” A cannon roared, licking flame and sending a ball of death hurtling into the line of Mexicans. Suddenly everyone was awake, yelling at once. Mexican officers could be heard urging on their men “Adalante! Adalante!”
Rifles were pointed over the top of the fort as the first glimmers of sunrise reddened the eastern sky. Lt. Colonel Travis was at his post by the front wall immediately, somehow as neat and immaculate in his dress and manner as ever. The cannons were roaring continuously now, and furrows in the Mexican ranks could be seen where the murderous balls of lead had plowed through them. Above the thud and roar of the cannons was the continuous crack-crack-crack of rifle fire. The air was twanging with bullets around the defenders of the Alamo, and the sky was already darkened with bitter tasting gun smoke. The fighting went on, the officers shouting orders, the cannons bellowing death, the rifles spitting lead, the men of the Alamo still standing and the flag of Texas still whipping in the breeze. Suddenly, the attack was over – the Mexicans were falling back.
But none of the Americans were fooled- they knew the Mexicans would come again. And they did. After rapidly regrouping, the Mexicans were advancing across the prairie again, running full tilt this time, all the element of surprise lost. They ran into the same withering fire from the Alamo. The cannons were hot to the touch and the smoke from the guns was so thick the defenders could barely see from one side of the courtyard to the other. A hale, hearty man with twinkling blue eyes and a big laugh was encouraging his men on a section of the rampart near the church. The Tejanos called him “Don Benito” because he was always friendly, and always cheerful. The Texans called him Crockett, and even now his big smile was on his powder-blackened face.
The Mexicans’ second attack was not much more successful than their first. They still had not managed to breach any of the walls. But they had spotted a weak point. On the north side of the enclosure was a gap in the wall that had been closed with a tall fence of timber.
The Mexicans gathered their forces together and once again hurled themselves at the Alamo. Some of them were armed with ladders to mount the wall. The Americans beat them back again and again. Though dangerously low on ammunition, the cannons were still thudding and the rifles were cracking though the smoky haze. Then one Mexican gained the wall, then another, and then ten or twenty. Suddenly Mexican troops were pouring over the ramparts. The cannon fire was more sporadic now, and the combat had become brutal, hand to hand, vicious warfare. Lt. Colonel Travis, a pistol in one hand and his sword in the other, was one of the first officers to die there at the north wall. The flood of Mexicans increased and the tumult of yells and screams in English and Spanish filled the walls of the Alamo and blood ran in streams along the ramparts. More pistol shots, another cannon boomed, and still the defenders were fighting, desperate men, furious men, men taking their last breaths within the crumbling, blood-soaked walls of the Alamo.
Then, it was over. The Mexicans from either side of the Alamo met in the middle of the courtyard and realized they wore the same uniform. The cannons were silent; no more rifles were heard. The courtyard was filled with bodies of the dead and dying. The sun, which glowed an eerie orange as it peered down through the smoke onto the scene of slaughter, was not yet halfway to the zenith. It was not quite ten o’clock in the morning yet, but all the defenders of the Alamo, which that same sun had risen on less than five hours earlier, were dead. The siege of the Alamo was over.
Over one hundred and eighty Americans died that day in the Alamo. Some eyewitness accounts stated that a few men survived the battle but were immediately executed. And there weren’t only Texans and Tejanos in the Battle of the Alamo; Americans from Tennessee, Kentucky, and New York stood and died with the Texans that day, as well as folks from South Carolina, Missouri, Virginia, and other states. A handful of women and children found hiding in the Alamo were granted safe passage. Casualties among Santa Anna’s troops were as high as 400-600 wounded and killed.
The sacrifice of the defenders of the Alamo was not in vain. Their story inspired and galvanized Texans in their fight for independence and freedom. “Remember the Alamo!” was the battle cry that rang out at the Battle of San Jacinto, where Texans led by Sam Houston defeated Santa Anna a little over a month after the fall of the Alamo.
Americans throughout the decades and of all generations have been inspired by the bravery and self-sacrifice of the men of the Alamo. Those men who died on March 6, 1836 at the Alamo have not been forgotten. The Alamo is still standing on the bluff overlooking San Antonio, and today is the most visited tourist site in the United States.
Sources:
“The Handbook of Texas Online” Texas State Historical Association http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/TT/qdt1.html, “The Alamo: Shrine of Texas Liberty” http://hotx.com/alamo/index.html, Texas State Library and Archives Commission http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/treasures/characters/index.html.
The Alamo was an old mission made up of a convent and a rectangular courtyard surrounded by a crumbling adobe wall. It stood on a bluff overlooking the little town of San Antonio de Bexar. The San Antonio River fed the stream that wound around the Alamo and purled into the pond behind it. The Old San Antonio Road, one of the main routes in and out of Texas, was nearby. On that morning, about one hundred and eighty men were holed up inside the adobe walls, waiting. For the past twelve days they had been waiting for reinforcements from their fellow Texans, and waiting for what the Mexicans under the command of Generalissimo Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna would do next. The men inside the Alamo knew they were extremely outnumbered by the Mexicans. They knew they could not hold out without reinforcements. They knew they would be granted no quarter if they surrendered. They knew they must hold the Alamo, or die in the attempt.
All of Texas was in a state of upheaval. Throughout years of negotiations and compromises with the Mexican government over civil liberties, land ownership, tariffs, and other issues, Texas had been heading towards a revolution. In 1835, the first shots of the Texas Revolution had been fired in October at the battle of Gonzalez. A Convention was meeting at Washington-on-the-Brazos in March of 1836 even as the siege of the Alamo was underway, to discuss the future of Texas. The Convention had decided that there was no further recourse to the Mexican government; they had declared independence on March 2nd.
But Generalissimo Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna had arrived to put down the rebellion. He crossed the Rio Grande on February 15, with the intention of executing or exiling every Texan of Anglo ascent. Any Texan under arms would be considered a pirate and treated accordingly. When Santa Anna heard that a contingent of rebels were fortifying the old mission on the outskirts of San Antonio de Bexar, he decided to travel there with about two thousand of his troops. Although the mission itself held little military significance, Santa Anna decided he would make an example of the rebels there.
The Alamo was originally under command of Colonel John Neill, but he had been called home because of a family emergency on February 11th. Command of the Alamo was left to twenty-six year old Lt. Colonel William B. Travis and Colonel Jim Bowie. The two had worked out a compromise of joint command, where Bowie commanded the volunteers and Travis was in charge of the regular army troops. However, by the time the siege began, Bowie had fallen ill and left Travis in complete command. Frontiersman and former congressman Davy Crockett was also inside the Alamo with about a dozen of his men from Tennessee.
Santa Anna arrived at San Antonio de Bexar on February 23 and issued an ultimatum to the defenders of the Alamo. He demanded their surrender and declared that no prisoners would be taken in the event of resistance. Lt. Colonel Travis would not listen to talk of surrender; he answered this ultimatum with a cannon shot, and the siege of the Alamo began.
During the two weeks leading up to the siege, Travis had been sending letters pleading for reinforcements and equipment. On February 24th, the day after the siege began, Travis wrote a letter that he addressed “To the People of Texas and all Americans in the World” where he explained the situation at the Alamo. “I have sustained a continual bombardment and cannonade for twenty-four hours” he wrote, “and have not lost a man… I shall never surrender or retreat… I call on you in the name of Liberty, of patriotism, of everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid with all dispatch… if this call is neglected I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible and die like a soldier who never forgets what is due his honor and that of his country.” The appeal finished with the words “Victory or Death” underlined three times. The only response to his impassioned appeal was thirty-two volunteers from Gonzalez who arrived on March 1st.
On the cold morning of March 6, the Texans were hunkered down in their positions, still determined to hold on and wondering if help would ever come. What they did not know was that Santa Anna had ordered an all-out assault of the Alamo that day. Beyond the walls of the Alamo, out on the darkness, on that chilly, damp morning, thousands of Mexican troops were advancing silently towards the Alamo. Their boots were sinking slightly into in the boggy ground as they softly stepped through the curly mesquite grass. But these were battle-hardened troops and the discipline was absolute. Barely a sound was uttered as they advanced through the dark. Any noise they made might have been easily dismissed as the rustle of the breeze whispering across the prairie.
A man standing on the north rampart of the Alamo was gazing dreamily out into the dark. His outfit of head to toe buckskin, trimmed with fringe and topped off with a real coon-skin cap, proclaimed to the world that he was a frontiersman. In fact, he was from Tennessee, and as he leaned on his rifle and the brisk breeze fluttered the fringe on his jacket, he was remembering happier days. His friend Bill was snoring gently at his feet, and the man smiled to hear the sound. He thought of his wife and their log cabin in the Blue Mountains, and his children warm in their beds. He was almost asleep himself when suddenly he stiffened, and stood up as straight as the rifle he immediately slid ready into both hands. Had he seen something out there in the dark, or…?
A yell suddenly tore through the darkness. “Here they come!” A cannon roared, licking flame and sending a ball of death hurtling into the line of Mexicans. Suddenly everyone was awake, yelling at once. Mexican officers could be heard urging on their men “Adalante! Adalante!”
Rifles were pointed over the top of the fort as the first glimmers of sunrise reddened the eastern sky. Lt. Colonel Travis was at his post by the front wall immediately, somehow as neat and immaculate in his dress and manner as ever. The cannons were roaring continuously now, and furrows in the Mexican ranks could be seen where the murderous balls of lead had plowed through them. Above the thud and roar of the cannons was the continuous crack-crack-crack of rifle fire. The air was twanging with bullets around the defenders of the Alamo, and the sky was already darkened with bitter tasting gun smoke. The fighting went on, the officers shouting orders, the cannons bellowing death, the rifles spitting lead, the men of the Alamo still standing and the flag of Texas still whipping in the breeze. Suddenly, the attack was over – the Mexicans were falling back.
But none of the Americans were fooled- they knew the Mexicans would come again. And they did. After rapidly regrouping, the Mexicans were advancing across the prairie again, running full tilt this time, all the element of surprise lost. They ran into the same withering fire from the Alamo. The cannons were hot to the touch and the smoke from the guns was so thick the defenders could barely see from one side of the courtyard to the other. A hale, hearty man with twinkling blue eyes and a big laugh was encouraging his men on a section of the rampart near the church. The Tejanos called him “Don Benito” because he was always friendly, and always cheerful. The Texans called him Crockett, and even now his big smile was on his powder-blackened face.
The Mexicans’ second attack was not much more successful than their first. They still had not managed to breach any of the walls. But they had spotted a weak point. On the north side of the enclosure was a gap in the wall that had been closed with a tall fence of timber.
The Mexicans gathered their forces together and once again hurled themselves at the Alamo. Some of them were armed with ladders to mount the wall. The Americans beat them back again and again. Though dangerously low on ammunition, the cannons were still thudding and the rifles were cracking though the smoky haze. Then one Mexican gained the wall, then another, and then ten or twenty. Suddenly Mexican troops were pouring over the ramparts. The cannon fire was more sporadic now, and the combat had become brutal, hand to hand, vicious warfare. Lt. Colonel Travis, a pistol in one hand and his sword in the other, was one of the first officers to die there at the north wall. The flood of Mexicans increased and the tumult of yells and screams in English and Spanish filled the walls of the Alamo and blood ran in streams along the ramparts. More pistol shots, another cannon boomed, and still the defenders were fighting, desperate men, furious men, men taking their last breaths within the crumbling, blood-soaked walls of the Alamo.
Then, it was over. The Mexicans from either side of the Alamo met in the middle of the courtyard and realized they wore the same uniform. The cannons were silent; no more rifles were heard. The courtyard was filled with bodies of the dead and dying. The sun, which glowed an eerie orange as it peered down through the smoke onto the scene of slaughter, was not yet halfway to the zenith. It was not quite ten o’clock in the morning yet, but all the defenders of the Alamo, which that same sun had risen on less than five hours earlier, were dead. The siege of the Alamo was over.
. . . . . .
Over one hundred and eighty Americans died that day in the Alamo. Some eyewitness accounts stated that a few men survived the battle but were immediately executed. And there weren’t only Texans and Tejanos in the Battle of the Alamo; Americans from Tennessee, Kentucky, and New York stood and died with the Texans that day, as well as folks from South Carolina, Missouri, Virginia, and other states. A handful of women and children found hiding in the Alamo were granted safe passage. Casualties among Santa Anna’s troops were as high as 400-600 wounded and killed.
The sacrifice of the defenders of the Alamo was not in vain. Their story inspired and galvanized Texans in their fight for independence and freedom. “Remember the Alamo!” was the battle cry that rang out at the Battle of San Jacinto, where Texans led by Sam Houston defeated Santa Anna a little over a month after the fall of the Alamo.
Americans throughout the decades and of all generations have been inspired by the bravery and self-sacrifice of the men of the Alamo. Those men who died on March 6, 1836 at the Alamo have not been forgotten. The Alamo is still standing on the bluff overlooking San Antonio, and today is the most visited tourist site in the United States.
Sources:
“The Handbook of Texas Online” Texas State Historical Association http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/TT/qdt1.html, “The Alamo: Shrine of Texas Liberty” http://hotx.com/alamo/index.html, Texas State Library and Archives Commission http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/treasures/characters/index.html.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
The Powder Alarm at North Bridge
The British regulars were ready to march. Two hundred and forty troops under the command of Colonel Alexander Leslie had risen in the early morning hours of Sunday, February 26, 1775, and readied their muskets and bayonets. Every man’s uniform was spotless, with brass buttons sparkling and boots shiny black. They were under command of General Gage in Boston, where British troops had been quartered for nearly a year.
General Gage had been sent by King George after the Boston Tea Party to put down the rebellion. The port of Boston had been shut down and British troops had been sent in the thousands. But now it was nearly a year and a half since the Tea Party, and the rebellion had not been put down. On the contrary, it was stronger than ever. Britain’s Parliament had declared Massachusetts in a state of open rebellion earlier that month, on February 9th. Minutemen had been drilling on town commons for months. Paul Revere and his fellow patriots in Boston had established an elaborate network of spies to watch and report every move of the British. It was well known that General Gage was under pressure from the king to stop the “seditious” colonists, and that the British were preparing for action. Springtime, when armies maneuver more easily, was just around the corner, and tensions between the British and Americans were rising by the day.
General Gage had recently received some information that had him worried: David Mason, a veteran of the French and Indian Wars, had been commissioned as an artillery officer by the Massachusetts Committee of Safety. Mason had purchased seventeen brass cannon twelve-pounders from the French, and now he was having the cannons refitted and mounted on special wagons to increase their mobility.
It was this information that roused Colonel Leslie’s troops on that cold, damp Sunday morning. They were ordered to capture the cannon.
The troops of the 64th regiment were loaded onto ships at Castle William and sailed north to disembark at Marblehead. The date of this surprise attack was carefully selected to be a Sunday; Colonel Leslie was hoping that the devout Puritans of Salem would be occupied in their Sunday church services when he arrived with his troops.
Most of the people of Salem and the surrounding communities were indeed in church on that cold, damp Sunday morning. But Colonel Leslie had not realized that the fishermen of Marblehead often plied their trade seven days a week. And so, when the troops landed at Marblehead, news of their arrival was quickly sent around the countryside. The Americans immediately guessed that the British were after Mason’s cannons.
Unaware that warning of their approach was spreading rapidly, the British set off for Salem at a quick march. Their regimental flags were whipping in the tangy salt breeze, stiff and cold after coming straight off the water. The morning was cloudy, with only a few bleak rays of wintry sunshine to glint off the weapons of the soldiers who were marching through the quiet, peaceful countryside. The regimental band’s fife player began playing “Yankee Doodle Dandy”, a song the British played to insult the American country bumpkins. The fife chirped merrily in time to the heavy tramp of two hundred and forty pairs of British boots.
But the British were in for a surprise. As they approached the North River on the road to Salem, they could see a crowd of people on the opposite bank. The tootling fife slowly died away as the British troops saw that the drawbridge across the river had been pulled up. The crowd across the river was made up of nearly a hundred angry, armed Americans. Many were still dressed in their Sunday best. The word had spread quickly, and the churches of Salem had emptied in a twinkling. Men had grabbed their muskets and headed to the bridge. And more were showing up every minute.
Colonel Leslie tried to take control of the situation. “I order you to put down the bridge!” he shouted across the water. “In the name of the King!”
This demand was answered with yells and jeers from the crowd. “We will not,” said American Timothy Pickering. “Why should we?”
“Because you are loyal subjects of King George!” Colonel Leslie replied. His answer caused the Americans to erupt into even louder shouts of derision. Colonel Leslie’s lieutenants urged him to open fire.
John Felt, a Captain in the Massachusetts Committee of Safety, was watching the scene with growing anger, his musket ready and gripped in both hands. He could hear the British lieutenants as they urged their commander to open fire. Suddenly Felt could stand it no longer. “If you open fire, you will all be dead men!” he yelled.
Colonel Leslie had spotted some boats upstream and sent a few men to fetch them. The Americans raced to the boats and scuttled them before the British could get there. A small scuffle ensued, with the Americans taunting the British regulars to action. Joseph Wicher dared the British to bayonet him on the spot, and he was nicked in the brief fight. It was the first bloodshed of the war that hadn’t started – yet.
Meanwhile, Pastor Thomas Barnard crossed the water and began negotiations with Colonel Leslie for a peaceful end of the situation. The crowd of Americans had been steadily growing larger throughout the day, and Leslie realized uneasily that he was becoming outnumbered. As the negotiations proceeded, a Quaker named Joseph Boyce was heading the effort to frantically move the cannons to the nearby town of Danvers.
And still Minutemen were arriving. They came from all over Massachusetts: from Danvers, Lynn, Amesbury, and Marblehead. “Lobsterbacks!” They taunted the soldiers. “Redcoats! Cowards!”
Finally, late in the afternoon when the cannon were all well out of the area, a compromise was reached. The bridge would be lowered and the British would be allowed to advance only 150 yards in search of the cannons. Then, they were to turn around and leave. Colonel Leslie pledged his word, and he kept it. The drawbridge was lowered slowly, creaking and rumbling before it jolted into place. The British fell into formation. They marched across the bridge, their boots echoing hollowly along the wooden surface. Right, left, right, left. The Americans were armed and ready. A silence fell on the crowd as they waited and watched as the British marched past the bridge into the countryside. A few more paces, and then:
“Hhhaaalt!” The British sergeants yelled, their deep voices bellowing across the fields. The British stopped. “Aaaabbboouuut face!” The British turned. They marched back over the bridge. Right, left, right, left, back they way they came.
The Americans could contain themselves no longer. The crowd exploded into jeers and yells, following on the heels of the British, yelling and taunting and cursing. The Minutemen still held their muskets ready, their faces tense and stern as they shadowed the retreating British. They marched back through the streets of Salem in the darkening twilight, back to Marblehead, with the Americans following every step of the way.
David Mason’s cannons were saved and saw no action that day. But the war that didn’t start that day was only temporarily averted. In less than two months, the British would send troops on another mission to take weapons the Americans were hiding, this time at Concord. The war that had almost started by the North Bridge in Salem would instead start not far away on the green of a small farming village called Lexington, where the Minutemen would confront the British on the morning of April 19th, 1775.
General Gage had been sent by King George after the Boston Tea Party to put down the rebellion. The port of Boston had been shut down and British troops had been sent in the thousands. But now it was nearly a year and a half since the Tea Party, and the rebellion had not been put down. On the contrary, it was stronger than ever. Britain’s Parliament had declared Massachusetts in a state of open rebellion earlier that month, on February 9th. Minutemen had been drilling on town commons for months. Paul Revere and his fellow patriots in Boston had established an elaborate network of spies to watch and report every move of the British. It was well known that General Gage was under pressure from the king to stop the “seditious” colonists, and that the British were preparing for action. Springtime, when armies maneuver more easily, was just around the corner, and tensions between the British and Americans were rising by the day.
General Gage had recently received some information that had him worried: David Mason, a veteran of the French and Indian Wars, had been commissioned as an artillery officer by the Massachusetts Committee of Safety. Mason had purchased seventeen brass cannon twelve-pounders from the French, and now he was having the cannons refitted and mounted on special wagons to increase their mobility.
It was this information that roused Colonel Leslie’s troops on that cold, damp Sunday morning. They were ordered to capture the cannon.
The troops of the 64th regiment were loaded onto ships at Castle William and sailed north to disembark at Marblehead. The date of this surprise attack was carefully selected to be a Sunday; Colonel Leslie was hoping that the devout Puritans of Salem would be occupied in their Sunday church services when he arrived with his troops.
Most of the people of Salem and the surrounding communities were indeed in church on that cold, damp Sunday morning. But Colonel Leslie had not realized that the fishermen of Marblehead often plied their trade seven days a week. And so, when the troops landed at Marblehead, news of their arrival was quickly sent around the countryside. The Americans immediately guessed that the British were after Mason’s cannons.
Unaware that warning of their approach was spreading rapidly, the British set off for Salem at a quick march. Their regimental flags were whipping in the tangy salt breeze, stiff and cold after coming straight off the water. The morning was cloudy, with only a few bleak rays of wintry sunshine to glint off the weapons of the soldiers who were marching through the quiet, peaceful countryside. The regimental band’s fife player began playing “Yankee Doodle Dandy”, a song the British played to insult the American country bumpkins. The fife chirped merrily in time to the heavy tramp of two hundred and forty pairs of British boots.
But the British were in for a surprise. As they approached the North River on the road to Salem, they could see a crowd of people on the opposite bank. The tootling fife slowly died away as the British troops saw that the drawbridge across the river had been pulled up. The crowd across the river was made up of nearly a hundred angry, armed Americans. Many were still dressed in their Sunday best. The word had spread quickly, and the churches of Salem had emptied in a twinkling. Men had grabbed their muskets and headed to the bridge. And more were showing up every minute.
Colonel Leslie tried to take control of the situation. “I order you to put down the bridge!” he shouted across the water. “In the name of the King!”
This demand was answered with yells and jeers from the crowd. “We will not,” said American Timothy Pickering. “Why should we?”
“Because you are loyal subjects of King George!” Colonel Leslie replied. His answer caused the Americans to erupt into even louder shouts of derision. Colonel Leslie’s lieutenants urged him to open fire.
John Felt, a Captain in the Massachusetts Committee of Safety, was watching the scene with growing anger, his musket ready and gripped in both hands. He could hear the British lieutenants as they urged their commander to open fire. Suddenly Felt could stand it no longer. “If you open fire, you will all be dead men!” he yelled.
Colonel Leslie had spotted some boats upstream and sent a few men to fetch them. The Americans raced to the boats and scuttled them before the British could get there. A small scuffle ensued, with the Americans taunting the British regulars to action. Joseph Wicher dared the British to bayonet him on the spot, and he was nicked in the brief fight. It was the first bloodshed of the war that hadn’t started – yet.
Meanwhile, Pastor Thomas Barnard crossed the water and began negotiations with Colonel Leslie for a peaceful end of the situation. The crowd of Americans had been steadily growing larger throughout the day, and Leslie realized uneasily that he was becoming outnumbered. As the negotiations proceeded, a Quaker named Joseph Boyce was heading the effort to frantically move the cannons to the nearby town of Danvers.
And still Minutemen were arriving. They came from all over Massachusetts: from Danvers, Lynn, Amesbury, and Marblehead. “Lobsterbacks!” They taunted the soldiers. “Redcoats! Cowards!”
Finally, late in the afternoon when the cannon were all well out of the area, a compromise was reached. The bridge would be lowered and the British would be allowed to advance only 150 yards in search of the cannons. Then, they were to turn around and leave. Colonel Leslie pledged his word, and he kept it. The drawbridge was lowered slowly, creaking and rumbling before it jolted into place. The British fell into formation. They marched across the bridge, their boots echoing hollowly along the wooden surface. Right, left, right, left. The Americans were armed and ready. A silence fell on the crowd as they waited and watched as the British marched past the bridge into the countryside. A few more paces, and then:
“Hhhaaalt!” The British sergeants yelled, their deep voices bellowing across the fields. The British stopped. “Aaaabbboouuut face!” The British turned. They marched back over the bridge. Right, left, right, left, back they way they came.
The Americans could contain themselves no longer. The crowd exploded into jeers and yells, following on the heels of the British, yelling and taunting and cursing. The Minutemen still held their muskets ready, their faces tense and stern as they shadowed the retreating British. They marched back through the streets of Salem in the darkening twilight, back to Marblehead, with the Americans following every step of the way.
David Mason’s cannons were saved and saw no action that day. But the war that didn’t start that day was only temporarily averted. In less than two months, the British would send troops on another mission to take weapons the Americans were hiding, this time at Concord. The war that had almost started by the North Bridge in Salem would instead start not far away on the green of a small farming village called Lexington, where the Minutemen would confront the British on the morning of April 19th, 1775.
Sources:
http://colonial-america.suite101.com/article.cfm/leslies_retreat_salem_ma_1775
http://www.salemfocus.com/Leslie's Retreat.htm
http://www.salemhistoryonline.com/PowderAlarm.html
Thursday, January 21, 2010
The Battle of New Orleans
On the morning of January 8th, 1815, about four thousand Americans were huddled behind an earthen fortification. The morning was cool for New Orleans, and a fog had made everything slippery. The trees in the nearby cypress swamp were dripping wet with the mist. The men behind the breastwork waited in silence. They knew that beyond their fortifications, somewhere out there in the swirling mist, the mightiest army on earth was advancing to take the city of New Orleans – the dripping city whose buildings were barely visible to its defenders through the fog.
The British had finally defeated Napoleon, and had now turned the might of their military machine against the still-fledgling republic of the United States. The British, in a recent bold move, had invaded and sacked the American capitol at Washington D.C. They had burned much of the city and many government buildings, including the White House. Congress had been forced to flee from the advancing British. The long, drawn out war had dangerously drained the U.S. Treasury, and public morale was low.
In fact, the war was technically over. The Treaty of Ghent had been signed in Ghent, Belgium, on December 24, 1814. Once it was ratified by both countries, hostilities were to cease.
But the men who crouched in silence behind the trench outside of New Orleans knew nothing of the treaty that had been signed half a world away. News from Europe often took six months to reach America. And the British officers poised on the outskirts of New Orleans were determined to take this city, the gateway to the mighty Mississippi.
Many of the British were veterans of the long, agonizing war with Napoleon in Europe. Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane had put together a flotilla of over fifty ships to transport 10,000 troops, many of them hardened veterans, from Jamaica. These troops were to be led by Sir Edward Pakenham, brother-in-law to the Duke of Wellington and a decorated veteran of the Napoleonic wars. The British wanted the taking of New Orleans to be a decisive blow, one that would turn the tide of victory to them once and for all.
On the American side, General Andrew Jackson was in command. He had been hastily dispatched from up North when the Americans realized the British had set their sights on New Orleans. General Jackson arrived in late 1814, and found the city of New Orleans in a near panic. Everyone realized the British would be coming soon- in force.
And they were right. On December 23th and then again on December 28th, the British had launched probing attacks. The Americans had withstood them, but had fallen back to a defensive position on the outskirts of New Orleans. While the British waited for reinforcements before making an all-out offensive, the Americans dug in.
Along a line about three-fifths of a mile long, on a field between the Mississippi River on one side and an impassable cypress swamp on the other, the Americans dug a trench in the swampy ground. When their fortification was complete, they had a breastwork made up of earth and cotton bales, and whatever else was handy, that stood at least five feet high. There was a ditch in front that was soon filled with murky water from the nearby swamp.
It was an unusual assortment of troops gathered behind the breastwork on that cool, misty morning. General Jackson had brought all the regular Army troops that he could find, and they joined a rapidly assembling force in New Orleans. Militiamen from the city itself were turning out, many of them wealthy businessmen in elegant clothes, complete with buckled shoes and ruffled shirts. A large number of freed Haitaian slaves were taking up arms as free men. Frontiersmen from Kentucky and Tennessee had arrived with their fringed buckskin and deadly long rifles. There were even pirates defending New Orleans that day – crewmen of the notorious pirate leader Jean Lafitte, who had struck a deal with General Jackson for pardons for his men. It was as diverse a crowd as could be found in any American city of the day, and they were all there for the same purpose – to take aim at the British.
And they didn’t have too long to wait. The British moved in with eight thousand men advancing towards the American breastwork. They were moving quickly to take advantage of the cover from the heavy fog. The Americans, peering anxiously through the swirling darkness around them, spotted the enemy battalions on the march. Yells ripped through the silence as the American officers gave the order to open fire.
Then, as an American soldier later remembered, “I reckon there was a pretty considerable noise.” The American firepower roared out from the cover of the breastwork. After the first round, the motley assortment of Americans fired at will, organization broken up with “everyone firing away on his own hook”. Many couldn’t see what they were firing at, but they poured lead out at the foggy field. The American lines were full of talking, yelling, joking and swearing. Bitter burning gun smoke sat low in the heavy fog. An American colonel from Tennessee, and before that from Ireland, jumped up on the breastwork and stooped down, peering through the darkness. “Shoot low, boys, shoot low!” He yelled in his heavy brogue. “They’re coming on their all fours!”
The Americans did not let up in their heavy fire for nearly an hour. They loaded, shot, and reloaded as fast as they could, many talking and joking all the while, seemingly oblivious of danger and the bullets that whistled by their ears and spattered angrily into the ramparts around them.
The fog still sat low and heavy, obscuring the battlefield and holding the choking gunpowder smoke low to the ground. A few men, determined to see what they were shooting at, jumped to the top of the breastwork and peered into the dimness till they spotted a target- a movement of red through the fog. Then they would take deliberate aim, fire, and jump back down to reload. One man was yelled at by an officer for exposing himself too much. “Colonel,” he asked, pushing his broad-brimmed hat back off his forehead, “I don’t want to waste my powder, and I’d like to know, how I can shoot until I see something?”
Suddenly someone saw something white through the fog. A murmur rippled through the lines of Americans. “A flag – it’s a white flag!” It waved back and forth again and again and then a British officer, a Major, appeared at the breastwork. He was allowed over the lines, and soon surrendered his sword. The British were giving up. The battle was over.
A ragged cheer rose up from among the American lines along the makeshift embankment. The sun, already well on its way up in the morning sky, had been steadily burning through the mist, and now the fog suddenly lifted like a curtain off a stage. The Americans fell silent as they saw the battlefield for the first time. From end to end, from the river on the one side and the swamp on the other, the field was covered with red. Covered with the bodies of fallen British soldiers, some still groaning and trying to move, and others utterly still, piled in some places two or three deep.
The sun had burned through the fog now, and was shining brightly down on the dripping cypress swamp, down on the city and its embattled defenders, down on the scene of carnage they had wrought.
As it turned out, the British advance had been a disaster from the start. They had forgotten some important tools used for climbing embankments. The troops had been split into two columns that had marched straight into the ferocious, deadly hail of American fire. One company of Scottish Highlanders had been almost completely obliterated when they were sent diagonally across the field to reinforce one of the columns. Sir Edward Pakenham was dead, and both of his senior generals had been shot early in the battle.
In all, the British losses were staggering. They suffered over two thousand casualties, and several hundred more were captured. On the American side, eight were killed and thirteen wounded.
The fighting between the Americans and the British came to an end soon after the Battle of New Orleans. This last major battle of the War of 1812, that was actually fought after the war was “officially” over, had not, in the end, changed the outcome of the war. But it had made a hero of “Old Hickory”, as General Jackson was known, and he was elected President in the following election.
The Battle of New Orleans had done more than just make one man’s reputation, however. It had given America a huge boost in morale. It had proven that America could beat the mightiest army on earth. It had proven, for all to see, that the Republic still lived - and the Stars and Stripes would still wave over the United States of America.
Sources: "The Battle of New Orleans, 1815," EyeWitness to History,
eyewitnesstohistory.com (2006)., “The Battle of New Orleans” by A. Wilson Greene, http://www.danielhaston.com/history/war-1812/neworleans-battle.htm,. “Battle: A Visual Journey Through 5,000 Years of Combat”, by R.G. Grant, 2005 DK Publishing, New York.
The British had finally defeated Napoleon, and had now turned the might of their military machine against the still-fledgling republic of the United States. The British, in a recent bold move, had invaded and sacked the American capitol at Washington D.C. They had burned much of the city and many government buildings, including the White House. Congress had been forced to flee from the advancing British. The long, drawn out war had dangerously drained the U.S. Treasury, and public morale was low.
In fact, the war was technically over. The Treaty of Ghent had been signed in Ghent, Belgium, on December 24, 1814. Once it was ratified by both countries, hostilities were to cease.
But the men who crouched in silence behind the trench outside of New Orleans knew nothing of the treaty that had been signed half a world away. News from Europe often took six months to reach America. And the British officers poised on the outskirts of New Orleans were determined to take this city, the gateway to the mighty Mississippi.
Many of the British were veterans of the long, agonizing war with Napoleon in Europe. Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane had put together a flotilla of over fifty ships to transport 10,000 troops, many of them hardened veterans, from Jamaica. These troops were to be led by Sir Edward Pakenham, brother-in-law to the Duke of Wellington and a decorated veteran of the Napoleonic wars. The British wanted the taking of New Orleans to be a decisive blow, one that would turn the tide of victory to them once and for all.
On the American side, General Andrew Jackson was in command. He had been hastily dispatched from up North when the Americans realized the British had set their sights on New Orleans. General Jackson arrived in late 1814, and found the city of New Orleans in a near panic. Everyone realized the British would be coming soon- in force.
And they were right. On December 23th and then again on December 28th, the British had launched probing attacks. The Americans had withstood them, but had fallen back to a defensive position on the outskirts of New Orleans. While the British waited for reinforcements before making an all-out offensive, the Americans dug in.
Along a line about three-fifths of a mile long, on a field between the Mississippi River on one side and an impassable cypress swamp on the other, the Americans dug a trench in the swampy ground. When their fortification was complete, they had a breastwork made up of earth and cotton bales, and whatever else was handy, that stood at least five feet high. There was a ditch in front that was soon filled with murky water from the nearby swamp.
It was an unusual assortment of troops gathered behind the breastwork on that cool, misty morning. General Jackson had brought all the regular Army troops that he could find, and they joined a rapidly assembling force in New Orleans. Militiamen from the city itself were turning out, many of them wealthy businessmen in elegant clothes, complete with buckled shoes and ruffled shirts. A large number of freed Haitaian slaves were taking up arms as free men. Frontiersmen from Kentucky and Tennessee had arrived with their fringed buckskin and deadly long rifles. There were even pirates defending New Orleans that day – crewmen of the notorious pirate leader Jean Lafitte, who had struck a deal with General Jackson for pardons for his men. It was as diverse a crowd as could be found in any American city of the day, and they were all there for the same purpose – to take aim at the British.
And they didn’t have too long to wait. The British moved in with eight thousand men advancing towards the American breastwork. They were moving quickly to take advantage of the cover from the heavy fog. The Americans, peering anxiously through the swirling darkness around them, spotted the enemy battalions on the march. Yells ripped through the silence as the American officers gave the order to open fire.
Then, as an American soldier later remembered, “I reckon there was a pretty considerable noise.” The American firepower roared out from the cover of the breastwork. After the first round, the motley assortment of Americans fired at will, organization broken up with “everyone firing away on his own hook”. Many couldn’t see what they were firing at, but they poured lead out at the foggy field. The American lines were full of talking, yelling, joking and swearing. Bitter burning gun smoke sat low in the heavy fog. An American colonel from Tennessee, and before that from Ireland, jumped up on the breastwork and stooped down, peering through the darkness. “Shoot low, boys, shoot low!” He yelled in his heavy brogue. “They’re coming on their all fours!”
The Americans did not let up in their heavy fire for nearly an hour. They loaded, shot, and reloaded as fast as they could, many talking and joking all the while, seemingly oblivious of danger and the bullets that whistled by their ears and spattered angrily into the ramparts around them.
The fog still sat low and heavy, obscuring the battlefield and holding the choking gunpowder smoke low to the ground. A few men, determined to see what they were shooting at, jumped to the top of the breastwork and peered into the dimness till they spotted a target- a movement of red through the fog. Then they would take deliberate aim, fire, and jump back down to reload. One man was yelled at by an officer for exposing himself too much. “Colonel,” he asked, pushing his broad-brimmed hat back off his forehead, “I don’t want to waste my powder, and I’d like to know, how I can shoot until I see something?”
Suddenly someone saw something white through the fog. A murmur rippled through the lines of Americans. “A flag – it’s a white flag!” It waved back and forth again and again and then a British officer, a Major, appeared at the breastwork. He was allowed over the lines, and soon surrendered his sword. The British were giving up. The battle was over.
A ragged cheer rose up from among the American lines along the makeshift embankment. The sun, already well on its way up in the morning sky, had been steadily burning through the mist, and now the fog suddenly lifted like a curtain off a stage. The Americans fell silent as they saw the battlefield for the first time. From end to end, from the river on the one side and the swamp on the other, the field was covered with red. Covered with the bodies of fallen British soldiers, some still groaning and trying to move, and others utterly still, piled in some places two or three deep.
The sun had burned through the fog now, and was shining brightly down on the dripping cypress swamp, down on the city and its embattled defenders, down on the scene of carnage they had wrought.
As it turned out, the British advance had been a disaster from the start. They had forgotten some important tools used for climbing embankments. The troops had been split into two columns that had marched straight into the ferocious, deadly hail of American fire. One company of Scottish Highlanders had been almost completely obliterated when they were sent diagonally across the field to reinforce one of the columns. Sir Edward Pakenham was dead, and both of his senior generals had been shot early in the battle.
In all, the British losses were staggering. They suffered over two thousand casualties, and several hundred more were captured. On the American side, eight were killed and thirteen wounded.
The fighting between the Americans and the British came to an end soon after the Battle of New Orleans. This last major battle of the War of 1812, that was actually fought after the war was “officially” over, had not, in the end, changed the outcome of the war. But it had made a hero of “Old Hickory”, as General Jackson was known, and he was elected President in the following election.
The Battle of New Orleans had done more than just make one man’s reputation, however. It had given America a huge boost in morale. It had proven that America could beat the mightiest army on earth. It had proven, for all to see, that the Republic still lived - and the Stars and Stripes would still wave over the United States of America.
Sources: "The Battle of New Orleans, 1815," EyeWitness to History,
eyewitnesstohistory.com (2006)., “The Battle of New Orleans” by A. Wilson Greene, http://www.danielhaston.com/history/war-1812/neworleans-battle.htm,. “Battle: A Visual Journey Through 5,000 Years of Combat”, by R.G. Grant, 2005 DK Publishing, New York.
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