Relive the Revolutionary War!
“We shall certainly be attack’d the first dark night”, wrote Thomas Ainslie, a British customs official in the city of Quebec. The British had been warned by deserters that the American army was planning to attack, and they were on the alert.
Before the British navy bombarded and burned Norfolk, Virginia, a rumor went around that the town had already been destroyed. A messenger riding from Norfolk to Williamsburg reported that while he was on his way, he heard cannon firing, and Virginia Colonel Thomas Elliott wrote from Hampton that the firing was heard until 9 p.m. (on December 28). But what was it really? Celebrating the Christmas season with cannons. A newspaper in Williamsburg got the real story from a man who had just come from Norfolk: “it was only a Christmas frolick between lord Dunmore and the captains of the navy, upon visiting each other on board their ships.”
I guess if you have some cannons at your disposal, plenty of gunpowder, and nothing else to do, you might as well put them to good use for livening up the party!
“The detested town of Norfolk is no more!” wrote a British midshipman on January 9, 1776. Almost a month earlier, British troops and Loyalist Americans had been forced to evacuate the town of Norfolk, Virginia, and had taken refuge on board the ships of the Royal Navy, where they were relatively safe from the rebel forces who had occupied the town.
But the rebels, led by Colonels Robert Howe and William Woodford, wouldn’t let the British come on shore to get water or food. Life was certainly not comfortable on board the ships, especially with all of those extra passengers. It’s easy to see why some of the British detested the town.
This standoff continued until January 1. The same British midshipman wrote:
About four o’clock in the afternoon the signal was given from the Liverpool, when a dreadful cannonading began from the three ships, which lasted till it was too hot for the rebels to stand on their wharves. Our boats now landed, and set fire to the town in several places. It burned fiercely all night, and the next day; nor are the flames yet extinguished; but no more of Norfolk remains than about twelve houses, which have escaped the flames.
Only a handful of men were wounded on either side, and only one of the British was killed. There were still people living in the town when the bombardment started, and the Americans thought that a couple of women and children might have been killed.
But even though few people were injured, a lot of people lost their homes, businesses, and belongings. “Does it not call for vengeance from God and man?” asked Colonel Woodford. It seems to me that destroying people’s homes is a very good way of getting them to hate you, and there were probably some people from Norfolk who hadn’t been very enthusiastic about the war before, but who became red-hot rebels after watching their town burn to the ground.
Several hundred American troops, led by Colonel William Woodford, were on their way toward Norfolk, Virginia, to attack the British, when they were stopped by a smaller British force at Great Bridge. This bridge was the only practical place for them to cross the river, but the British had removed the planks from the bridge and had built a fort at the northern end. The Americans made their own fortifications on the other side of the river, but they couldn’t cross.
They were stuck like this for a couple of weeks. Then, early on the morning of December 9, 1775, Captain Samuel Leslie and a couple hundred British soldiers joined the forces already in the fort, which included some American Loyalist volunteers, as well as some slaves who had been given their freedom in exchange for fighting for the British.
Led by Captain Charles Fordyce, the combined British forces put the planks back on the bridge and charged the American fortifications. The Americans, however, were awake and ready for them — it was just after reveille — and when the British got close, they fired. Captain Fordyce was killed, and a few dozen other officers and soldiers were either killed or wounded. Colonel Woodford described the battle:
[Captain] Leslie with all the regulars [British soldiers] (about 200)…arrived at the bridge about 3 o’clock in the morning, joined about 300 black and white slaves, laid planks upon the bridge, and crossed just after our reveille had beat; a lucky time for us, and you’ll say rather an improper season for them to make their push, when, of course, all our men must be under arms….capt. Fordyce of the grenadiers led the van with his company, who, for coolness and bravery, deserved a better fate, as well as the brave fellows who fell with him, who behaved like heroes. They marched up to our breastwork with fixed bayonets, and perhaps a hotter fire never happened, or a greater carnage, for the number of troops. None of the blacks, &c. in the rear, with capt. Leslie, advanced farther than the bridge.
I have the pleasure to inform you, that the victory was complete…. This was a second Bunker’s Hill affair, in miniature; with this difference, that we kept our post, and had only one man wounded in the hand.
Letter from Colonel William Woodford to Edmund Pendleton, in Naval Documents of the American Revolution, vol. 3, pp. 39-40.
Although small in terms of the number of troops involved, the battle was a significant victory for the Americans. The British soon left their fort, and the Americans marched on and soon drove the British out of Norfolk.
Let’s take a look at what happened in the American Revolutionary War in its first year. Here are some — but certainly not all — of the most important and notable events, starting with the beginning of the war in April, 1775:
All in all, it was quite an eventful year, and many of the important events are unknown to most people today. But even though the colonies didn’t declare independence until the next year, the events of 1775 had far-reaching consequences.
For the most part, the British Royal Navy in America in 1775 was busy capturing American vessels and gathering food and supplies for the besieged army in Boston. But in October, British Admiral Graves sent Lieutenant Henry Mowat to “chastize” a number of New England towns — or, to put it more bluntly, to “lay waste burn and destroy such Seaport Towns as are accessible to his Majesty’s Ships”. Graves gave the order on October 6, and Mowat sailed with four ships — the Canceaux, Symmetry, Spitfire, and Halifax — to carry it out.
Mowat decided to go first to Falmouth (now Portland), Maine. It was the 17th when he arrived there and lined up his ships in position to bombard the town. He sent an officer on shore with a letter, telling the people that he would give them two hours to “remove…the Human Species out of the…town”, and then he would start firing. Three leading citizens went out to talk with Mowat aboard his ship, the Canceaux, and he agreed to wait until the next morning so that the people would have enough time to get out of the town. He also told them that if they would “surrender their cannon and musketry, and give hostages for their future good behaviour,” then he would try to convince the Admiral to change his mind about destroying Falmouth.
Not surprisingly, although the people were given until the next morning to leave, they didn’t surrender their firearms. The whole town was thrown into a panic, and people started working frantically to get themselves and their belongings out of town. The Reverend Jacob Bailey described what happened the next day:
The morning was calm clear and pleasant, without a breath of wind, and the town was crowded with people and carts from the country to assist in removing the goods and furniture of the inhabitants. At exactly half an hour after nine the flag was hoisted at the top of the mast [as a signal], and the cannon began to roar with incessant and tremendous fury. … The oxen, terrified at the smoak and report of the guns ran with precipitation over the rocks, dashing everything in pieces, and scattering large quantities of goods about the streets. In a few minutes the whole town was involved in smoak and combustion. … The bombardment continued from half after nine till sunset, during which all the lower end and middle of the town was reduced to an heap of rubbish. … In a word about three quarters of the town was consumed and between two and three hundred families who twenty four hours before enjoyed in tranquility their commodious habitations, were now in many instances destitute of a hut for themselves and families; and as a tedious winter was approaching they had before them a most gloomy and distressing prospect.
In some places where the buildings weren’t very close together, and so the fire wouldn’t spread very well, Mowat sent men ashore to set the buildings on fire. The British also destroyed some ships in the harbor.
Mowat moved his ships down the harbor the next morning, and reported that the fire was still raging in the town that evening.
The destruction of Falmouth was a forceful display of British military might, and an example of how the rebellious Americans could be punished. But while it might have made some Americans think twice about rebelling, it also gave them another reason to hate the British.
Fortunately, Mowat’s ships had used up most of their ammunition, and some of his guns and one of his ships were damaged, so he didn’t try to destroy the other towns that Admiral Graves had singled out.
Naval Documents of the American Revolution, vol. 2, pp. 324, 471, 487-8, 500, 516.
When the Revolutionary War began in Massachusetts, the Americans were defending their home turf. But only five months later, they were invading a colony that wasn’t involved in the war at all: Canada.
Canada had only been part of the British empire since the end of the French and Indian War in the previous decade, and most of the people who lived there (other than the Indians) were French Catholics, which made them quite different from most of the people in the other colonies. It wasn’t exactly a foreign country, but it wasn’t too far from it — and there were plenty of people alive who still remembered fighting the French. Now they were trying to convert the Canadians to their cause. As George Washington put it in a printed appeal to the Canadians:
We have taken up Arms in Defence of our Liberty, our Property, our Wives, and our Children, we are determined to preserve them, or die. We look forward with Pleasure to that Day not far remote (we hope) when the Inhabitants of America shall have one Sentiment, and the full Enjoyment of the Blessings of a free Government.
… The Cause of America, and of Liberty, is the Cause of every virtuous American Citizen; whatever may be his Religion or his Descent, the United Colonies know no Distinction but such as Slavery, Corruption and arbitrary Domination may create. Come then, ye generous Citizens, range yourselves under the Standard of general Liberty—against which all the Force and Artifice of Tyranny will never be able to prevail.
At first, the American revolutionary leaders hesitated to authorize an invasion of Canada, but finally they decided to go ahead with it. In New York, Generals Schuyler and Montgomery led the main invasion up Lake Champlain and the Richelieu River. But a smaller force — about 1,100 men — took what was supposed to be a shortcut through Maine.
They were led by bold Benedict Arnold. If you think that Benedict Arnold was a traitor, you’re right — but not in 1775. He was dedicated and daring then and for years afterward. And he had a plan.
Using a map that had been made around 1761 by a British officer, John Montresor, he planned to take a relatively small force in flat-bottomed boats called batteaux, and go up the rivers and through the wild, unsettled areas of Maine, and so take the city of Quebec by surprise.
It didn’t work nearly as well as they had hoped. For one thing, the “shortcut” — as often happens with shortcuts — wasn’t so short after all. Their batteaux had been hastily and poorly made; their food went bad and ran out. Sometimes they had to haul the batteaux up the swift, shallow streams with ropes and by holding on to the bushes along the banks. Sometimes they had to carry the batteaux (and all their equipment, including guns, food, ammunition and more) around waterfalls, or over hills from one river to the next. Nowadays we call that kind of thing a portage (which is a French word, pronounced por-TAWZH); back then they stuck with an English term and simply called it a “carrying place.” Arnold summed it up quite nicely when he said, “I have been much deceived in every Account of our Rout, which is longer, and has been attended with a Thousand Difficulties I never apprehended.”
Some of the companies in the rear decided to turn back, since food was rapidly running out (as I mentioned in my previous post). I won’t call them cowards, though; I wasn’t there, and I’ve never been in danger of starving to death. Some men did in fact die of hunger and disease.
At any rate, with great daring and perseverance, Arnold reached the St. Lawrence River with about 700 men in early November and looked at his goal — the city of Quebec — across the river. But it was just a little out of reach…
By the way, Maine was not its own colony, but there were some settlers there, and the region had its own name.
“Address to the Inhabitants of Canada, 14 September 1775,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed September 29, 2019, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-01-02-0358. [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, vol. 1, 16 June 1775 – 15 September 1775, ed. Philander D. Chase. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1985, pp. 461–463.]
Montrésor, John. A map of the sources of the Chaudière, Penobscot, and Kennebec rivers. [?, 1761] Map. https://www.loc.gov/item/74692578/.
“To George Washington from Colonel Benedict Arnold, 27–28 October 1775,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed September 29, 2019, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-02-02-0224. [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, vol. 2, 16 September 1775 – 31 December 1775, ed. Philander D. Chase. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1987, pp. 244–246.]
Good morning! I thought I’d start the week out with a question: What was the first battle in the Revolutionary War in which more than one colony participated?
Know the answer? Leave a comment on this post. Have a question of your own? I’ll try to find the answer for you.
Happy Monday!
What are you willing to give for your liberty? How much is it worth to you?
It’s easy enough to say you’d be willing to give your all, but how much are you giving now? And how much are you holding back, showing that you’re not willing to give it? That might be a good indicator of where your heart really lies.
A year before the Continental Congress declared independence, they published a declaration to justify why they were taking up arms against the British. Their choice to fight was not an easy one, but, they said, “We have counted the cost”. The closing words of the Declaration of Independence make clear what that cost would be: “And for the support of this Declaration,” they said, “with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”
That was what they said they were willing to give — and some of them did indeed give it, showing that their words were not empty.
What about you? Would you sign?
When is Independence Day?
Well, it’s July 4th, but you could say that it’s really July 2nd. That’s the day when the Continental Congress actually voted to become independent. (Actually, they voted that they already were “Free and Independent States”.) John Adams, who had been working for quite a while to get Congress to declare independence, wrote:
The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America.—I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.
So why don’t we celebrate July 2nd? Because of the Declaration of Independence. The things said in the Declaration are a whole lot more inspiring and famous than simply a vote saying that the colonies were independent of Great Britain. And the Declaration was finished (though not signed) on July 4th.
So which day is the real Independence Day? Take your pick; it doesn’t really matter. After all, it’s really the independence that should be celebrated, not just the day.
Source: “John Adams to Abigail Adams, 3 July 1776,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed April 11, 2019, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/04-02-02-0016. [Original source: The Adams Papers, Adams Family Correspondence, vol. 2, June 1776 – March 1778, ed. L. H. Butterfield. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963, pp. 29–33.]
Note: “Epocha” means “a memorable event or date”.
