Paul Revere's Ride (16 page)

The Golden Ball Tavern still stands on the Old Boston Post Road in Weston, Massachusetts. It was one of a network of Tory safe houses used by General Gage’s spies, Captain Brown and Ensign De Berniere, on their reconnaissance missions in 1775. Innkeeper Isaac Jones, a Loyalist "friend to government," guided them on part of their journey. This early photograph, circa 1868, shows the tavern in winter as it was seen by the British officers. (Courtesy Golden Ball Tavern)

They were saved from further attentions by a late snowstorm that covered their tracks and kept the “country people” indoors. Increasingly fearful for their lives, the British officers pressed on through the storm, heading back toward Boston. In one horrific day they plodded thirty-two miles in ankle-deep snow, finally arriving exhausted and half frozen at the Golden Ball Tavern in Weston. The next morning, while parties of Whigs scoured the countryside, the landlord guided them through back roads to the safety of Boston.
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General Gage was pleased with the thoroughness of their report, but not happy at the thought of sending a force to Worcester. The distance was so great that surprise could not be assured. The roads were difficult, and a dangerous river crossing through the broad marshes at Sudbury could turn into a deadly trap. The
commander in chief returned to his map of New England and searched for another target. His eyes fell on the half-shire town of Concord.
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This village had also become an arsenal of revolution. The Provincial Congress had been meeting there. It was barely twenty miles from Boston—half as far as Worcester. With hard marching on dry roads, Gage reckoned that his troops could be there and back again in a long day.

In mid-March, he summoned Captain Brown and Lieutenant De Berniere to Province House, and asked them to go out again on another secret mission, this time to explore the roads to Concord. On March 20, they left Boston by way of Roxbury and Brookline, and walked through Weston on what was called the Concord Road, at that time the most direct route from Boston Neck to their destination. They found it very dangerous for a marching army, and reported that it was “woody in most places and commanded by hills,” as it remains today.

When they reached Concord, the town appeared to them like an armed camp, with sentries posted at its approaches, and vast quantities of munitions on hand. The British officers met a woman in the road and asked directions to the house of Daniel Bliss, a Loyalist lawyer and one of Concord’s leading citizens. She showed them the way. Bliss welcomed the two officers, and offered them dinner. A little later the woman suddenly returned, weeping with fear. She explained between her tears that several Whigs had stopped her and “swore they would tar and feather her for directing Tories.”

A moment later a message arrived for lawyer Bliss himself, threatening death if he did not leave town. The British officers, who were carrying arms, gallantly offered to escort him back to Boston, and protect him with their lives. The three men set out for Boston. Bliss showed them another route that ran further to the north, through Lexington and the village of Menotomy (now Arlington). It was longer than the roads through Weston, but the countryside was more open, and ambuscades were less to be feared. The British officers returned to Boston and made their report, strongly recommending the northern route through Lexington as the best approach.
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Gage had found the target for his next mission, and a satisfactory way of getting there. It would be Concord, by the Lexington Road. Now his intelligence efforts began to center on the town itself. He had secret agents there, Loyalists who have never been identified, but lived in or near the town and were exceptionally
well informed. One of them wrote regularly to Gage in bad French, describing in detail the munitions stored throughout the town, and the temper of the inhabitants.

Among these reports was a detailed inventory, house by house and barn by barn, of munitions stored throughout the entire community. One building alone was thought to hold seven tons of gunpowder.
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General Gage ordered a map of Concord to be prepared, showing the location of every building known to harbor military stores. He was also told that John Hancock and Sam Adams were staying in the town of Lexington, a smaller community of scattered dairy farms five miles east of Concord center.

In early April, General Gage began to organize his marching force. In strictest secrecy he drafted its orders in his own hand. To command the expedition he selected Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith of the 10th Foot. Smith was a senior officer, very near retirement. Another officer described him as a “heavy man,” inactive, overweight, unfit for arduous service.
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But he was known to be an officer of prudence, moderation, and maturity. His choice betrayed Gage’s own caution and restraint. So also did his orders. Smith was instructed to march “with utmost expedition and secrecy to Concord, where you will seize and destroy all the Artillery, Ammunition, Provisions, Tents, Small Arms, and all Military stores whatever.”

Nothing was mentioned in writing about the arrest of Whig leaders. Gage seems not to have been happy with that part of his instructions. He understood better than men in London the structure of the revolutionary movement. He knew that nobody was really in command of it. If one leader were arrested, ten more would be ready to take his place.

Further, Gage believed in the rule of law. Throughout these turbulent events, even when he was furiously angry with the Whig leaders, he rejected a policy of arbitrary arrest. His written orders for the expedition said nothing about seizing Whig leaders, despite explicit instructions from London for their apprehension. Colonel Smith was given strict orders to keep carefully within the law. “You will take care,” Gage told him, “that the soldiers do not plunder the inhabitants, or hurt private property.”
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Gage believed that the expedition might be resisted by armed force, and urged many precautions. Smith was ordered to march to Concord by the Lexington Road that offered the least danger of ambush, and he was told to secure the bridges of Concord “as soon as possible” when he reached the town.

With startling prescience, Gage understood the form that resistance would probably take. On March 4, 1775, he wrote to Dartmouth in London, “The most natural and eligible mode of attack on the part of the people is that of detached parties of bushmen who from their adroitness in the habitual use of the firelock suppose themselves sure of their mark at a distance of 200 rods [he surely meant yards]. Should hostilities unhappily commence, the first opposition would be irregular, impetuous, and incessant from the numerous bodies that would swarm to the place of action, and all actuated by an enthusiasm wild and ungovernable.”
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Even if the worst happened, Gage believed that a strong force of Regular troops under experienced professional officers had little to fear from these “bushmen.” He wrote that he was “firmly persuaded that there is not a man amongst [them] capable of taking command or directing the motions of an army,” It was his only error in a remarkably trenchant analysis—but one error would be more than enough. His mistake in judgment was not about the probability of resistance, or the motives, tactics, and fighting skills of the New England militia, but about the quality of leadership among them.
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In Boston, the British regiments were ordered to repair their tents, mend their camp kettles, and break out their field equipment. They were sent out on short marches through the country west of Boston, partly to toughen the men, partly to accustom the people of Massachusetts to their movements out of town. Two regiments, the 38th and 52nd Foot, were ordered to march as far as Watertown, and did not return until 5 o’clock at night. Mackenzie noted, “As Watertown is farther than the Regiments have usually gone, and they remained out longer, the country was a good deal alarmed on the occasion.”
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No explanations were given, but Lieutenant Mackenzie surmised that “it is supposed the general has some object in view, and means to familiarize the people of the Country with the appearance of troops among them for a longer time than usual without creating an alarm.”
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Some of these preparations could be made without raising suspicions. Others proved impossible to hide. On Wednesday, April 5, Gage asked the navy to prepare for a movement of troops by boat from Boston across the Back Bay to Cambridge. Admiral Graves, the senior naval officer present, was a difficult man: irascible, corrupt and stupid beyond belief. He did not like to do any soldier’s bidding, and he particularly detested Thomas Gage. Unable
to refuse the general’s request, Admiral Graves acted with precipitate speed and no subtlety whatever. On the very next day, Thursday, April 6, he ordered his ships in the harbor to launch their longboats, and moor them under their sterns, ready for use. On Friday, April 7, that work was done in full view of the town.

The Whigs of Boston were quick to observe this flurry of activity in the harbor. They were also instantly informed that a party of British officers had been sent to examine the roads to Concord. Those two pieces of intelligence were put together, and it was concluded that General Gage was about to move against Concord. So active were the preparations in the harbor that on Saturday morning Whig leaders decided that the Regulars were ready to march, and guessed that these “godless myrmidons” would move on Sunday, April 9, striking on the Sabbath as they had done at Salem.

It was decided to send an urgent warning to Concord, and the job was given to Paul Revere. On Saturday, April 8, the day after Graves lowered his boats into the water, Revere mounted his horse and rode out of town. He reached Concord in the evening with a letter from Doctor Warren, addressed to the leaders of the town. The contents of the message were recorded by Concord’s Jonathan Hosmer. “We daily expect a Tumult,” he wrote to a friend, “There came up a post to Concord [on] Saturday night which informs them that the regulars are coming up to Concord the next day, and if they come I believe there will be bloody work.”
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This first warning proved to be a false alarm. In their zeal Joseph Warren and Paul Revere had acted too quickly. General Gage was not yet ready to march. But Whig leaders were convinced that nothing was wrong in the warning except the date. The people of Concord began to move military supplies out of town, scattering them through the surrounding communities. The Provincial Congress, which had been meeting in Concord, suddenly agreed to adjourn on April 15 for a period of three weeks. Its members packed their bags, and hurried out of town.
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If the British garrison in Boston could keep nothing secretfrom the town, the same was true in reverse. Paul Revere’s trip was quickly reported to General Gage. A secret agent in Concord senta personal message to Province House: “last Saturday the 7th [actually the 8th] of April P: R: toward evening arrived at Concord, carrying a letter that was said to be from Mr. W[arre]n.” Each side kept a wary eye upon the other.
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Through the week that followed, preparations continued in
the British garrison. On the evening of Saturday, April 15, Gage took another step that was impossible to hide. He ordered his regimental commanders to relieve their elite companies of grenadier and light infantry from “all duties till further orders.” The official explanation, that the men were to learn “new evolutions,” deceived nobody. “This I suppose is by way of a blind,” Lieutenant Barker noted in his diary, “I dare say they have something for them to do.” The orders were sent to eleven regiments, and instantly became common knowledge throughout the town. Bostonian John Andrews not only learned their content in a general way, but was able to repeat them verbatim in a letter to a friend.
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The next day was Sunday, April 16. Even though it was the New England Sabbath, Paul Revere made yet another ride. This time he went to Lexington, carrying news of the grenadiers and light infantry to John Hancock and Samuel Adams and other Whig leaders. He also met with Whigs in Cambridge and Charlestown and discussed with them the general problem of an early warning system. The Committee of Safety had already voted to establish a night watch in Roxbury, Cambridge and Charlestown to guard the exits from Boston. The Provincial Congress and its committees also organized an alarm system through New England, but this was a slow and cumbersome network of town committees.
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On April 16, Revere and his friends in Boston, Cambridge, Charlestown, and Lexington considered a more pressing problem: how to send an early warning of movements by the Regulars from Boston on short notice, in the middle of the night, and when exits from the town were closed by General Gage. They worked out what a later generation would call a fail-safe solution that was typical of Revere’s planning: “expresses” of the usual sort if possible, special messengers by clandestine routes, and if all else failed a back-up system of lantern signals from Boston to Charlestown.
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This second trip by Paul Revere was also reported to General Gage. An alert British officer wrote that “the inhabitants conjectured that some secret expedition was on foot,” and were “on the look-out.” Once again it was abundantly clear to the British commander that he could scarcely make a move in Boston without Paul Revere’s spreading the news through the countryside faster than his infantry could march. The Concord expedition was now seriously compromised. On Tuesday, April 18, one of Gage’s Tory agents in Concord sent a report that most of the military stores had been removed from the town. But the spy added that large stocks
of provisions were still there, along with several large 24-pounder cannon and a supply of powder.

Gage realized that unless the Whig express riders could be stopped, the Concord mission had no hope of success. He decided that special measures were necessary to maintain what remained of its secrecy, and specifically to keep Paul Revere from spreading the word. To that end, the British general and his aides planned an elaborate effort of what we would call counter-intelligence.