Chronicles of the Revolutionary War

By Clarence M. Carroll and Geoffrey A. Todd

Chronicles of the Revolutionary War organizes the events of the tumultuous birth of the United States into easily read, short chapters. These chapters enliven the story of the American Revolution and capture the spirit of Americas patriot forebears with a balanced account that also respects their British and Tory antagonists. Ideal for students, or even for reading aloud at meetings of historical societies, the book received its inspiration from Patriot Medal recipient Clarence M. Carroll, who has had a lifelong interest in educating the public about American History. Even those who already have an excellent grasp of the history of the Revolutionary War can profit from this book, as it can also serve as a concise outline of that surprisingly broad and expansive subject.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jan 24, 2006
• ISBN: 9781425912215

Clarence M. Carroll

An historian by education and a writer by profession, Geoffrey A. Todd has lived all over the world, including behind the Iron Curtain in Communist Romania, and in the United Kingdom.  Thus, he writes about the genesis of American liberty from a balanced perspective—valuing freedom, but appreciating our British cousins.  Clarence M. Carroll, whose Introduction graces the Chronicles, is a recipient of the Patriot Medal, one of the highest honors awarded by the Sons of the American Revolution.  The book owes its genesis to his ardent desire for a concise and affordable history of the Revolutionary War that can educate and encourage the citizens of his beloved country, whether newly arrived, or descended from families who have lived in America for generations.  

Book preview

Three Men from Boston.

Samuel Adams.

Samuel Adams was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on September 27th, 1722. His father was a member of the Massachusetts General Court, or provincial assembly. He studied at Harvard College and graduated in 1740. His family’s fortune was ruined when in 1741 Parliament outlawed the Massachusetts land bank, and his father died when Adams was twenty-five years old. He failed in several business ventures, and as a tax collector did not collect the revenues or keep proper accounts. Soon, however, he devoted himself to politics, where he excelled, and was elected to the Massachusetts General Court.

In the Revenue Act of 1764, in which Parliament took the new step of taxing colonial commodities not just to regulate trade, an accepted right, but to raise revenue, Adams saw a violation of colonial rights, a case of taxation without representation. Adams took advantage of the troubles which followed the implementation of the Townshend duties (discussed below). In particular he publicized the confrontation, on March 5th, 1770, between British soldiers, quartered in Boston to protect the customs officials, and Boston citizens, in which five Bostonians were killed, promoting the incident as the Boston Massacre. This publicity ended up forcing Governor Hutchinson to move the British soldiers from Boston to Castle William, and strengthened the patriots’ position in the town. In 1772 Adams organized committees of correspondence which soon linked almost every colony. He wrote with Joseph Warren a pamphlet on the Rights of Colonies which was circulated throughout the colonies. He was active in instigating the Boston Tea Party of December 16th, 1773, the British reaction to which led to the assembling of the first Continental Congress on September 5th, 1774. At the Continental Congress Adams represented Massachusetts with his second-cousin, John Adams. He was an early advocate of independence and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. He died on October 2nd, 1803, having served as lieutenant governor and governor of Massachusetts.

James Otis.

James Otis was born in West Barnstable, Massachusetts, on February 25th, 1725. His father was a lawyer and politician of great repute. Otis graduated from Harvard College in 1743 at age eighteen and was admitted to the bar in 1748. He was an active figure in Massachusetts politics, serving in the General Court, or provincial assembly. In 1761 he challenged the British-imposed writs of assistance. These were search warrants designed to help enforce the trade and navigation laws by permitting customs officers to search any house for smuggled goods without specifically mentioning the house or the goods in the writ. Otis argued for citizens’ rights against this kind of treatment based on principles of natural law, a philosophy that was to play a large part in American thought, and which was articulated in Thomas Paine’s Common Sense and in the Declaration of Independence.

Otis was a Massachusetts delegate to the Congress in New York in October, 1765, which was the first meeting the colonies convened at their own initiative, called to consider the Stamp Act. The Stamp Act, designed to raise revenue by placing a stamp tax on all sorts of documents and printed items, was another form of taxation without representation. Otis spoke eloquently against the argument that because major British towns were not represented in Parliament, the colonies should not be complaining that they were not represented; he argued simply that those British towns too should be represented.

The Stamp Act was repealed in March, 1766, because of colonial refusal to pay debts and a boycott that hurt British merchants. Unfortunately for British-American relations, Charles Townshend was made Chancellor of the Exchequer in a time when America’s friend, William Pitt the Elder, Earl of Chatham and Prime Minister, was incapacitated by illness. The Townshend Acts were imposed upon the colonies in 1767, which included new taxes and the same writs of assistance to help enforce them that Otis had earlier challenged. Otis vocally opposed these Acts and angered some customs commissioners, one of whom attacked him in a coffee-house in September of 1769, beating him brutally. This attack impaired Otis mentally and he was not the same man afterwards. He died on May 23rd, 1783, after being struck by lightning.

Thomas Hutchinson.

Thomas Hutchinson was born on September 9th, 1711, in Boston, the son of a wealthy merchant. His family had helped to found Puritan New England. Hutchinson graduated from Harvard in 1727. He started his career as a businessman and then turned to politics in 1737, serving on the Boston Board of Selectmen. He served in the Massachusetts General Court, or provincial assembly, until 1749, as a member of the state council from 1749-66, as chief justice of the Superior Court from 1760-69, and as lieutenant governor from 1758-71. He was acting governor in 1770 and was made royal governor of Massachusetts in 1771, serving until 1774.

Hutchinson was deeply loyalist and saw rebellion against British authority as a hopeless enterprise fueled by the rhetoric of a few reckless men like Samuel Adams, whom he hated. Because of his perceived support of the Stamp Act of 1765, and his prominent position as chief justice and lieutenant governor, an angry mob attacked his magnificent mansion on the night of August 26th, 1765, during which a number of valuable documents and manuscripts were destroyed. He came to fear the common people and felt it was his duty to impose the letter of the law at the time of the Boston Massacre in 1770, when he was acting governor, refusing to remove the troops from the town until he absolutely had to. Against the advice of the Massachusetts legislature he attempted to force the unloading of British tea in 1773 by a legal maneuver, precipitating the Boston Tea Party. As the situation deteriorated he was replaced in 1774 by General Thomas Gage as military governor.

He left America and sailed to England, serving as an advisor to George III and his government. He died on June 3rd, 1780, in London. He took an interest in American history and wrote the History of the Colony and Province of Massachusetts Bay, in three volumes, which he had worked on while he was in America.

A Boston Patriot

"Sam Adams is the man for me,

He’s inherited Otis’s dignity,

You can keep Governor Hutchinson,

For rightful liberty Adams is the one."

The Boston Tea Party, December 16th, 1773.

Since 1770 the Sons of Liberty had campaigned against the drinking of British tea because of the tax on tea, the last remaining Townshend Duty, which British Prime Minister Lord North kept as a symbol of Parliament’s right to tax. In 1773 the British East India Company, in financial difficulties, was granted a monopoly on all tea exported to the colonies. The Company elected to use its own agents and entirely cut out colonial merchants. The tea would be cheaper, but the new situation hurt American merchants, and the tea still had the despised Townshend Duty.

The Americans reacted with vigor against this monopoly. In Charleston tea was allowed to be landed, but not to be offered for sale. In New York the tea was rejected and sent back to England. In fact at every major port people demanded that the tea be sent back. But in Boston Governor Thomas Hutchinson held the Dartmouth and two other ships in port on the technicality that they had failed to clear customs. Samuel Adams and the town leaders decided to make a decisive statement: on the night of December 16th a group of men dressed as Mohawk Indians boarded the three ships and dumped 10,000 Pounds Sterling worth of tea into the harbor.

This greatly inflamed the situation with England, as the East India Company was one of Great Britain’s most prestigious corporations. Many members of Parliament had a lot of money invested in it. Parliament consequently passed what the colonists called the Intolerable Acts. These included the Boston Port Act, which closed Boston harbor until the city compensated the East India Company for the loss of its tea, and the Massachusetts Government Act, which replaced the 1691 Charter of the colony with a frame of government that took power away from the Massachusetts House of Representatives and gave it to the Crown-appointed governor.

All of this meant that a moderate approach to relations between Britain and America was becoming more and more untenable. It led directly to the assembling of the First Continental Congress on the 5th of September, 1774, in Carpenter’s Hall, Philadelphia. The fires of revolution were being stoked.

Brave Boston

Brave Boston, your Compatriots salute you!

You dared the British yoke to overthrow,

You saw most clearly what we had to do,

You led us on the path we had to go.

Brave Boston, live in freedom now and ever!

You’ve earned the right to claim the foremost place,

Because of you from hesitation we were severed,

To follow at Lady Liberty’s reckless pace!

G.A.T.

Lexington, early morning, April 19th, 1775.

In 1775 Lieutenant-General and Governor Thomas Gage was in command of British troops lodged in Boston with orders keep rebellious Massachusetts in line and to enforce various burdensome and punitive Acts of Parliament. These included the Port Act of 1774, which was meant to close Boston commerce to the outside world until the Bostonians paid back the East India Company for the tea lost in the Boston Tea Party.

The Provincial Congress of Massachusetts, meeting in the latter part of 1774, had purchased munitions and organized regiments of Minutemen. Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire joined in collecting and storing munitions of war. In Massachusetts there was a large store of patriot munitions at Concord. In April of 1775 a Committee of Safety was operating at Concord, and several other secret societies operating as patrolmen observed the British throughout the colony. When the crisis came, the Americans would be ready.

Suspicious troop instructions and waterfront activity alerted Boston area patrolmen to anticipate an expedition by boat across Back Bay to East Cambridge and then by road to Concord to attempt to take the munitions stored there. Paul Revere was sent by Dr. Joseph Warren to Lexington to warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams. When he returned to Boston he organized a signal at the North Church Steeple: if the British set out by water two lanterns would be shown, and if by land across the Neck (the narrow isthmus that connected Boston with the mainland) then one lantern would be shown to alert the patriots.

Patriot Joseph Warren had news of the British departure on the night of April 18 as soon as it happened. He sent out riders Revere and William Dawes to sound the alarm. Revere had Captain John Pulling, Jr. give the two-lantern signal for the sea departure of the British. Both Dawes and Revere had to elude the British to get out of the Boston area, Dawes mingling with soldiers to do so, Revere being rowed by two friends using muffled oars across the river to Charlestown. A group of patriots, having seen the signal, was waiting for him.

After that Dawes had a smooth ride, while Revere met with many obstacles. Revere made it to Medford where Captain Hull called up his Minutemen. He arrived at Lexington by midnight at Parson Clarke’s home where Hancock and Adams were staying and who now prepared to escape. Having taken a shorter route, Revere waited half an hour for Dawes at the Parson’s house and they set out for Concord. They were overtaken by Dr. Samuel Prescott and the three rode on, sounding the alarm. They were eventually forced to split up by some British, Revere being captured and then released.

Meanwhile the grenadier and light infantry companies of Gage’s regiments, under the overall command of Lieutenant-Colonel Francis Smith of the 10th foot, with Major John Pitcairn of the Marines leading the light infantry, were proceeding toward Concord. At Menotomy six companies of light infantry, under Pitcairn, were sent ahead.

Thaddeus Bowman brought the news that the British had almost arrived at Lexington to Captain James Parker and his company of Minutemen. Parker ordered his men into position, and this much smaller number of Americans faced off against six or eight hundred British soldiers. Parker ordered, Stand your ground! Don’t fire unless fired upon! But if they want to have a war, let it begin here!

The British officers called out "Throw down