1776

by David McCullough

Boston having no theater, Faneuil Hall, sacred to Boston patriots as “the cradle of liberty,” was converted on General Howe’s wish into a “very elegant playhouse”

On the evening of January 8, uniformed officers and their ladies packed Faneuil Hall for what was expected to be the event of the season,

At the same moment, across the bay, Connecticut soldiers led by Major Thomas Knowlton launched a surprise attack on Charles-town, and the British responded with a thunderous cannon barrage. With the roar of the guns, which the audience at Faneuil Hall took to be part of the show,

William Howe’s ability and courage were indisputable.

But for all his raw courage in the heat and tumult of war, Billy Howe could be, in the intervals between actions, slow-moving, procrastinating, negligent in preparing for action, interested more in his own creature comforts and pleasures.

He would be a good soldier always, whenever put to the test. He meant business,

he had far greater experience than Washington, a far more impressive record, not to mention better-trained, better-equipped troops, and ships of the Royal Navy riding at anchor in the harbor.

He also had the ostensible advantage of experienced sub...

When, in the previous spring, Howe, Clinton, and Burgoyne had sailed from England for the war in America, they truly represen...

If the desperate American need for leaders had thrust young men like Nathanael Greene into positions beyond their experience, the British military system, wherein commissions were bought and aristocrats given preference, denied many men of ability roles they should have played.

Howe’s sources of intelligence, furthermore, were pitiful,

Oddly, Howe seems to have had no interest in the man who led the army aligned against him.

Washington, by contrast, was constantly trying to fathom Howe’s intentions, his next move.

On January 16, two days after his woeful letter to Reed, Washington convened a council of war

Washington spoke of the “indispensable necessity of making a bold attempt” on Boston.

Late the following day, January 17, well after dark, a dispatch rider dismounted at Washington’s headquarters carrying the worst news of the war thus far.

The army Washington had sent across the Maine wilderness under Benedict Arnold to attack Quebec had been defeated.

That he was about to take action could be read easily enough between the lines of this and other correspondence that went speeding off in the pouches of fast mail riders.

camps were alive with rumors and speculation.

cold as it was, there was still no “ice bridge” sufficient to carry an army. Some mornings Washington went to the bay to jump up and down on the ice himself to test its strength.

He made a personal reconnaissance of the approaches to Dorchester, even to the heights apparently, accompanied by several of his officers,

There was, however, agreement to another plan. Instead of striking at the enemy where they were well fortified, they would lure the enemy out to strike at them, as had been done at Bunker Hill.

Three thousand men under General Thomas were to take part in fortifying the Heights. Another 4,000 were to stand by at Cambridge for an amphibious attack on Boston, once the British launched their assault on the Heights—amphibious

THE DATE HAD BEEN SETTLED. The move on Dorchester would begin after dark on March 4 and be completed by first light the morning of March 5, the anniversary of the Boston Massacre.

But it may not be amiss for the troops to know that if any man in action shall presume to skulk, hide himself, or retreat from the enemy, without the orders of his commanding officer, he will be instantly shot down, as an example of cowardice.

General Thomas would say it was as early as ten o’clock when the fortifications on the Heights were sufficiently ready to defend

It was also about ten when a British lieutenant colonel, Sir John Campbell, reported to Brigadier General Francis Smith that the “rebels were at work on Dorchester Heights.”

Smith, a stout, slow-moving, slow-thinking veteran of thirty years’ servi...

By the first faint light before dawn, everything was ready, with at least 20 cannon in place.

It was an utterly phenomenal achievement.

Howe could dally no longer. With his generals gathered at the Province House at midmorning, he made his decision: he would attack,

even if the carnage that had resulted from such an attack at Bunker Hill was as well known to him as to any man alive.

Captain Archibald Robertson thought the plan little short of madness

By nightfall, a storm raged, with hail mixed with snow and sleet.

Clearly there would be no British assault that night.

that morning, Howe called off the attack and gave orders to prepare to evacuate Boston.

The great majority of the Loyalists had never lived anywhere else, or ever expected to live anywhere else. They were disillusioned, disoriented, and not a little resentful.

They had wanted no part of the rebellion—“

had trusted, not unrealistically, in the wealth and power of the British nation to protect them and put a quick end to what, by their lights, had become mob rule.

it always seemed strange to me that people who contend so much for civil and religious liberty should be so ready to deprive others of their natural liberty. . . .

It was early afternoon when the first troops from Roxbury—500 men who had already had smallpox and were thus immune—crossed the Neck and marched into Boston, drums beating, flags flying, and led by Artemus Ward on horseback.

By all rights, it should have been Washington who made the triumphal entry, but in a characteristically gracious gesture he gave the honor to Ward,

Washington rode into Boston the following day, Monday, March 18, and took a close look at the place for the first time,

the surprise for Washington was how much had not been destroyed or carried off, so great had been the chaos and rush of the enemy in the last days.

The other surprise was the strength of the enemy’s defenses.

The town was “amazingly strong . . . almost impregnable, every avenue fortified,”

Certain that Howe intended to sail for New York, he had already sent five regiments in that direction. But with the British fleet still hovering below Castle Island, he dared not send more, and worried now that Howe’s withdrawal might be a trick,

Those on board the ships were as puzzled by Howe’s intentions as anyone. “We do not know where we are going, but are in great distress,” one Loyalist wrote.

At last, on March 27, ten days after the evacuation of Boston, the fleet was again under way, and this time heading for the open sea.

By day’s end the fleet had disappeared over the horizon, bound not for New York but for Halifax.