Section IV

FAST RIDERS CARRIED THE NEWS to Providence and Newport, Hartford and New Haven, New York, Philadelphia, then on to Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, 1,100 arduous miles from Boston. For all who believed in the American cause, it was the first thrilling news of the war.

“The joy of our friends in Boston, on seeing the victorious and gallant troops of their country enter the town almost on the heels of their barbarous oppressors was inexplicably great,” reported the New Haven Journal.

“The British,” said the New York Constitutional Gazette, “were completely disgraced.”

Free men under arms had triumphed, with all the world watching, and in the “admirable and beloved” Washington, the country had a hero, as the citizens of Philadelphia and members of Congress read in the Evening Post of March 30:

To the wisdom, firmness, intrepidity, and military abilities of our admirable and beloved general, his Excellency George Washington, Esq.; to the assiduity, skill, and bravery of our other worthy generals and officers of the army; and to the hardiness and gallantry of the soldiery, is to be ascribed, under God, the glory and success of our arms, in driving from one of the strongest holds in America, so considerable a part of the British army.

Congress ordered a gold medal struck in Washington’s honor. “The disinterested and patriotic principles which led you to the field have also led you to glory,” read a formal letter of gratitude.

Those pages in the annals of America will record your title to be a conspicuous place in the temple of fame, which shall inform posterity, that under your directions, an undisciplined band of husbandmen, in the course of a few months, became soldiers.

“What an occurrence is this to be known in Europe?” wrote Elbridge Gerry of the Massachusetts delegation in Congress. “How are Parliamentary pretensions to be reconciled to facts?” What was especially wondrous was that the British had been driven from Boston by only “about the thirtieth part of the power of America.”

It would be six weeks before the news reached London, and on May 6, a storm of criticism and recrimination erupted in Parliament, led by the same ardent Whigs whose real power was no more than it had ever been. In the House of Commons, Colonel Isaac Barre, Lord Cavendish, and Edmund Burke spoke severely against the administration, as Lord North and Lord Germain defended the management of the war.

In the House of Lords, in defense of the ministry, the Earl of Suffolk patiently and correctly explained that abandoning Boston had been the established policy since the previous October.

“Let this transaction be dressed in what garb you please,” answered the Duke of Manchester, “the fact remains that the army which was sent to reduce the province of Massachusetts Bay has been driven from the capital, and that the standard of the provincial army now waves in triumph over the walls of Boston.”

At the headquarters in Cambridge, the Boston selectmen and a delegation from the legislature of Massachusetts came to offer their gratitude to Washington for saving the town “with so little effusion of human blood,” and to shower him with praise. Harvard, in the spirit of the moment, conferred an honorary degree on the man who had had almost no formal schooling.

Responding to such tributes, Washington was duly modest and gracious, and in truth they meant more than he showed. He was happy to “hear from different quarters that my reputation stands fair,” he wrote privately to his brother. He hoped it would be remembered also that none of what happened had come easily or predictably.

We have maintained our ground against the enemy under [a]…want of powder, and we have disbanded one army and recruited another within musket shot of two and twenty regiments, the flower of the British army, when our strength has been little if any superior to theirs, and at last have beat them in a shameful and precipitate manner, out of a place the strongest by nature on this continent, strengthened and fortified in the best manner and at an enormous expense.

He was proud of the part he had played and wanted to say something about that, at least to his brother, and about the misconceptions he had been obliged to maintain.

I believe I may, with great truth, affirm that no man perhaps since the first institution of armies ever commanded one under more difficult circumstances than I have done…. Many of my difficulties and distresses were of so peculiar a cast that in order to conceal them from the enemy, I was obliged to conceal them from my friends, indeed from my own army, thereby subjecting my conduct to interpretations unfavorable to my character.

An attack by Howe on Dorchester Heights had been his “utmost wish,” and he could “scarce forbear lamenting the disappointment” he felt. Like others, he attributed the storm of March 5 to the intervening hand of God. He did not “lament or repine at any act of Providence,” he told Joseph Reed, for “in great measure” he had become a convert to the view of the poet Alexander Pope that “whatever is, is right.”

For the Loyalists who had fled with the enemy, he had only contempt. “Unhappy wretches! Deluded mortals!” he called them. He had heard of some committing suicide and thought it would be well if more did the same. “By all accounts a more miserable set of beings does not exist.”

But then he had little time to dwell on such matters. “I am hurried in dispatching one brigade after another for New York and preparing for my own departure,” he informed Reed.

***

THE SIEGE had been the stunning success it was proclaimed, and Washington’s performance had been truly exceptional. He had indeed bested Howe and his regulars, and despite insufficient arms and ammunition, insufficient shelter, sickness, inexperienced officers, lack of discipline, clothing, and money. His patience with Congress had been exemplary, and while he had been saved repeatedly by his council of war from his headlong determination to attack, and thus from almost certain catastrophe, he had accepted the judgment of the council with no ill temper or self-serving histrionics.

He had kept his head, kept his health and his strength, bearing up under a weight of work and worry that only a few could have carried.

Having struggled with his festering dislike of New Englanders, he had proven a keen judge of character and ability and pinned his hopes on such untried born-and-bred Yankees as Greene and Knox. Without Knox, there would have been no triumph at Dorchester Heights. Henry Knox, in sum, had saved the day. And while Nathanael Greene had not played so spectacular a part as Knox, the troops under his command were distinguished as the best disciplined in the army, and he himself had emerged as Washington’s ideal lieutenant. In Greene and Knox, Washington had found the best men possible, men of ability and energy who, like Washington, would never lose sight of what the war was about, no matter what was to come. All important, too, was the devotion and loyalty these two young officers felt for Washington.

After the “miracle” of Dorchester Heights, Washington was never again to speak ill of New Englanders because they were New Englanders.

He had no illusions about the gravity of what lay ahead. Nor did many of the wisest heads in Congress. The humiliation the British had been subjected to, John Hancock warned Washington, could well make them an even more formidable foe.

What may be their views, it is indeed impossible to tell, with any degree of exactness [Hancock wrote]. We have all the reason, however, from the rage of disappointment and revenge, to expect the worst. Nor have I any doubt, that as far as their power extends, they will inflict every species of calamity upon us.

But great political change was in the offing, Washington sensed, as he confided to Joseph Reed in one of the last letters written from his Cambridge headquarters. This he attributed in good part to the pamphletCommon Sense, published earlier in the year, the author of which, Thomas Paine, was as yet unknown.

My countrymen, I know from their form of government and steady attachment heretofore to royalty, will come reluctantly into the idea of independency [Washington wrote], but time and persecution brings many wonderful things to pass, and by private letters which I have lately received from Virginia, I findCommon Sense is working a powerful change there in the minds of many men.

“The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth,” Paine had written. “Everything that is right or reasonable pleads for separation.”

***

ONE AFTER ANOTHER the regiments were departing for New York. An army that had moved not at all for nearly a year was on the march, leaving New England for the first time.

The huge bastions that encircled Boston were left standing, but only a holding force under General Ward remained to keep watch.

To most of the men the prospect of being on the move was extremely welcome. Spirits were higher than they had ever been. The soldier’s life, many decided, had much to be said for it after all.

Most of those in the ranks had no idea where they were bound, but were glad to be going. One soldier, John Lapham of Duxbury, wrote to his “Honored Parents” to send a pair of shoes as quickly as possible, “for I expect that I shall march off soon, but whither we shall go I do not know nor can I tell.”

Generals Heath and Sullivan and their forces had already departed. General Greene and five regiments followed on April 1. Three days later, on Thursday, April 4, Washington rode off from Cambridge.