Massachusetts Starts Raising an Army
The battles of Lexington and Concord were relatively small events with huge consequences. Like a stone thrown into a pond, the events of April 19, 1775, sent ripples throughout America and the world. The news ran through the colonies like an electric shock. Even in a day when all news had to be carried by hand, all of New England knew about it within a few days, and soon it had spread even to the southern colonies.
Everywhere the story was told, it started all sorts of things in motion. Local governments began preparing for war. Alarmed by the sudden sweep of patriotic fervor, some Tories (those who supported the British government) fled to places where they felt safer — such as Boston, where they had the protection of British troops. Throughout New England, and even in some places farther south, militiamen shouldered their muskets, took some ammunition in a pouch and some food in a knapsack, said goodbye to their families, and marched off to Boston to help fight the British.
But there wasn’t much fighting going on; it was really just a siege. To the landward side of Boston, the thousands of American soldiers began building fortifications to keep the British from getting out, while the British were making their own fortifications to prevent the Americans from getting in. Meanwhile, British warships were still able to go in and out of Boston Harbor, since the Americans had no navy and not enough artillery to stop them.
It was an odd face-off. On the one side were professional, disciplined, uniformed, well-armed British troops, sent to do a job for the British government. On the other side were loosely-organized, poorly-trained American citizen-soldiers, dressed in all sorts of clothing and carrying all sorts of different guns. Unlike the British, they had come voluntarily — to defend their homes, their rights, and their freedoms.
This volunteer “army” was good enough for dealing with short-term emergencies, but a more permanent, organized army was needed for the long haul. Accordingly, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress voted on April 23 to create an army that could defeat the British. They immediately asked the other New England colonies for help. In a letter to the New Hampshire Provincial Congress, they began by describing the military situation:
Vast multitudes of the good people of this and the neighbouring Colonies, are now assembled in the vicinity of Boston for the protection of the Country. The gates of that devoted Town are shut, and miserable inhabitants are pent up there, with a licentious soldiery, as in one common prison. Large reinforcements of the Troops under General Gage are hourly expected; and no reason is left us to doubt that his whole force, as soon as collected, will be employed for the destruction, first of this, and then of our sister Colonies engaged in the same interesting cause; and that all America will be speedily reduced to the most abject slavery, unless it is immediately defended by arms.
Unavoidably reduced to this necessity, by circumstances that will justify us before God and the impartial world, this Congress, after solemn deliberation and application to Heaven for direction in the case, have this day unanimously resolved, That it is our duty immediately to establish an Army for the maintenance of the most invaluable rights of human nature, and the immediate defence of this Colony, where the first attack is made; that 30,000 men are necessary to be forthwith raised in the New-England Colonies for that purpose, and that of that force 13,600 shall be established by this Colony without delay.
Rhode Island, Connecticut and New Hampshire soon followed the example of Massachusetts and started working to build armies that could beat the British in the long run. Although each colony had its own army, they were bound together by a common cause, and they worked together during the siege of Boston.
Sources
American Archives, Series 4, 2:377-78.
De Costa, J, and Charles Hall. A plan of the town and harbour of Boston and the country adjacent with the road from Boston to Concord, shewing the place of the late engagement between the King’s troops & the provincials, together with the several encampments of both armies in & about Boston. Taken from an actual survey. London, 1775. Map. https://www.loc.gov/item/gm71002447/.