1776

by David McCullough

Lee might have been a character out of an English novel, such were his eccentricities and colorful past. He had once been married to an Indian woman, the daughter of a Seneca chief. He had served gallantly with the British army in Spain, and as aide-de-camp to the King of Poland. Like Frederick the Great, he made a flamboyant show of his love for dogs, keeping two or three with him most of the time.

In striking contrast to Lee was Major General Artemus Ward, a heavy-set, pious-looking Massachusetts farmer, storekeeper, justice of the peace, and veteran of the French and Indian War,

General Lee privately called him a “fat, old church warden” with “no acquaintance whatever with military matters.”

Ward was competent, thoughtful, and not without good sense,

Washington made the case for an all-out amphibious assault on Boston, by sending troops across the shallow Back Bay in flat-bottomed boats big enough to carry fifty men each.

There was discussion of these and other points, including the enemy’s defenses, after which it was agreed unanimously not to attack, not for the “present at least.”

It was a sound decision.

The slaughter could have been quite as horrible as that of the British at Bunker Hill.

In restraining Washington, the council had proven its value.

It was to “defend our common rights” that he went to war, Nathanael Greene had told his wife.

Independence was not mentioned. Nor had independence been on the minds of those who fought at Bunker Hill or in Washington’s thoughts when he took command of the army.

IN LATE SEPTEMBER, the discovery that the surgeon general of the army and head of the hospital at Cambridge, Dr. Benjamin Church, was a spy, the first American traitor, rocked everyone.

His treachery had been discovered quite by chance.

Meanwhile, Washington put increasing trust in Greene, as well as another impressive young New Englander, Henry Knox, to whom he assigned one of the most difficult and crucial missions of the war.

It was Henry Knox who first suggested the idea of going after the cannon at far-off Fort Ticonderoga

That such a scheme hatched by a junior officer in his twenties who had had no experience was transmitted so directly to the supreme commander, seriously considered, and acted upon, also marked an important difference between the civilian army of the Americans and that of the British. In an army where nearly everyone was new to the tasks of soldiering and fighting a war, almost anyone’s ideas deserved a hearing.

The first snow fell on November 21,

The British were cutting trees and tearing down old houses for firewood. Supplying the besieged city by sea had become increasingly difficult

The King’s troops were said to be so hungry that many were ready to desert at first chance.

Meanwhile, deserters from the American side were telling the British that Washington’s army was tired and unpaid, that there was too little clothing to keep warm,

On November 25, the British sent several boatloads of the ragged poor of Boston, some 300 men, women, and children, across the Back Bay, depositing them on the shore near Cambridge for the rebels to cope with.

Many were sick and dying,

General Howe was making room in Boston for the reinforcements

it was also said that numbers of the sick had been sent “with [the] design of spreading the smallpox

The Connecticut troops, whose enlistments were to expire on December 9, were counting the days until they could start for home.

reenlistments were alarmingly few.

Some stimulus besides love of country must be found to make men want to serve,

Washington was a man of exceptional, almost excessive self-command, rarely permitting himself any show of discouragement or despair, but in the privacy of his correspondence with Joseph Reed, he began now to reveal how very low and bitter he felt,

The next day, amazingly, came “glad tidings.” A privateer, the schooner Lee, under the command of Captain John Manley, had captured an enemy supply ship,

The ship was loaded with military treasure—a

nearly everything needed but powder.

new recruits did continue to arrive, though only in dribs and drabs.

There was still no news from the expedition to Quebec,

and no word from Colo...

Work on fortifications continued without letup, and despite freezing winds and snow, the work improved.

Washington kept moving the lines nearer and nearer the enemy.

On New Year’s Day, Monday, January 1, 1776, the first copies of the speech delivered by King George III at the opening of Parliament back in October were sent across the lines from Boston. They had arrived with the ships from London.

The speech was burned in public by the soldiers and had stunning effect everywhere,

THAT DORCHESTER HEIGHTS could decide the whole outcome at Boston had been apparent to the British from the beginning.

the rebels had made their surprise move at Charlestown, digging in overnight on Bunker Hill, and it had taken the bloodbath of June 17 to remove them.

it was proposed by Major General Henry Clinton to move immediately on Dorchester. Possession of the heights was “absolutely necessary

while Gage had kept Bunker Hill heavily armed with cannon and manned by five hundred troops, he had done nothing about Dorchester.

Of greater and more immediate interest to the British command was the prospect of abandoning Boston altogether,

Brigadier General James Grant had said months earlier that Boston should be abandoned while there was still time. “We cannot remain during the winter in this place, as our situation must go on worse and that of the rebels better every day,”

by the time General Howe received orders from London to “abandon Boston before winter” and “remove the troops to New York,” it was too late—winter had arrived.

Seeing no reasonable alternative, Howe would wait for spring

He expected no trouble from the Americans.

the British commander was not impatient for action.

John Burgoyne, “Gentleman Johnny,”

WINTER IN AMERICA was a trial British soldiers could never get used to,