America's First Soldiers , livre ebook

A merica’s F irst S oldiers
Amelia McNutt
Austin Macauley Publishers
2023-01-06
America’s First Soldiers About the Author Dedication Copyright Information © Acknowledgment Part 1: The Stories : 1775–6 Introduction Chapter I The Road to Lexington Part 1 General Thomas Gage Part 2 The Odd Couple Part 3 Those Waiting for Gage Part 4 Marching into History Chapter II Lexington Green Chapter III Concord Part 1 A Noble Appearance Part 2 The North Bridge Chapter IV Battle Road Part 1 Back to Lexington Part 2 Percy and Lexington Part 3 Back to Boston Chapter V Siege of Boston Part 1 Besieged Part 2 Imagination Part 3 The Proclamation Part 4 The Plans Chapter VI Bunker Hill Part 1 A Boston Sunrise Part 2 The Assault Part 3 Aftermath Conclusion The Game Had Changed Part 1 Washington in Cambridge Part 2 Washington’s Yankee Part 3 The Guns Part 4 Boston is Free Epilogue Part 2: The Places: 2021 Boston, Massachusetts Green Dragon Tavern 11 Marshall Street Boston Old North Church 193 Salem Street Boston (North End) Copp’s Hill Burial Ground Hull Street Boston Bunker Hill Monument Monument Square Charlestown Section-Boston Lexington, Massachusetts Lexington Green 1625 Massachusetts Avenue Lexington, Massachusetts Old Burial Ground Lexington Green, Harrington Road Lexington, Massachusetts 02420 Battle Road-Trail Parker’s Revenge Minute Man National Historical Park Lincoln, Massachusetts 01773 Concord, Massachusetts Col. James Barrett Farm 448 Barrett’s Mill Rd, Concord, MA 01742 Wright’s Tavern 2 Lexington Road, Concord, MA 01742 Sleepy Hollow Cemetery 34A Bedford St. Concord Battle Road Trail – Meriam’s Corner Concord and Lincoln Massachusetts Battle Road Trail – Brooks Hill Village Concord and Lincoln Massachusetts Battle Road Trail – The Bloody Angle Concord and Lincoln Massachusetts Old North Bridge 174 Liberty Street, Concord, Massachusetts References Endnotes
About the Author
Amelia McNutt is a hardworking researcher, writer, and lecturer, with a life-long passion to uncover the unknown stories and unsung heroes of America’s military history. Being from the Boston area, she has always had a connection to the fascinating chronicles of the American Revolution which began in Massachusetts. She also researches World War I and World War II, often traveling to the battlefields in Europe including Normandy, France.
Her work is guided and empowered by her personal mission statement:
Learn The Stories – Don’t Let Their Glory Fade.
Dedication
To every man and woman of America’s armed forces who unselfishly dedicated and sacrificed themselves for the grateful citizens of this great nation.
Thank you.
To those who have tolerated, inspired, and cared for me. You know who you are.
Thank you.
Copyright Information ©
Amelia McNutt 2023
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.
Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
Ordering Information
Quantity sales: Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address below.
Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data
McNutt, Amelia
America’s First Soldiers
ISBN 9781649798145 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781649798152 (Hardback)
ISBN 9781649798176 (ePub e-book)
ISBN 9781649798169 (Audiobook)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022915415
www.austinmacauley.com/us
First Published 2023
Austin Macauley Publishers LLC
40 Wall Street,33rd Floor, Suite 3302
New York, NY 10005
USA
mail-usa@austinmacauley.com
+1 (646) 5125767
Acknowledgment
I wish to thank all the helpful and supportive members of Austin Macauley Publishers. Thank you all for guidance and support.
I wish to thank, Rosanne Crowley, for endlessly listening to my accounts of military history. She has, through her patience and strength, kept me focused and on track writing this book.
Thank you to my supportive family and friends. Thank you to Sarah who edited an essay that became this book.
I have had many travels in writing this book and was inspired by the words of many authors’ past – in particular, Professor Allen French. I also met more than one informative, and passionate guide along the Battle Road Trail, one in particular was very helpful. Thank you, Patrick McGarrity.
Writing a book is at times very solitary work, the underpinning of that is the understanding of family and friends. Sometimes a question asked, or a smile offered was just what this writer needed to believe in this project. Thank you all.
Part 1: The Stories : 1775–6
Introduction
“These are the times that try men’s souls.”
The Crisis (1776)
Thomas Paine (1737–1809)
Late in the evening of 19 April 1775, a large group of British soldiers arrived on Charlestown Neck across the Charles River from the Town of Boston. Clad in their notorious redcoats, they were easy to see even in the darkest of nights, and this was indeed a dark night for the British Soldiers in Boston. On this night, the Redcoats that ran onto the Charlestown Peninsular looked different, they were in total disarray: fatigued, breathless, weary, frightened.
Some were wounded, others without weapons, or ammunition, and nearly all drained of their courage to die for King and Country. They looked like men who had been chased by ghosts.
Wednesday, 19 April 1775 was the day the American Revolution went from ideas, thoughts, conversations, prayers, and hopes to actions driven by the most ordinary and extraordinary persons in Massachusetts. The events of 19 April are further distinguished on 17 June 1775 at the Battle of Bunker Hill and on 17 March 1776 as the British retreated from Boston to never return.
Chapter I The Road to Lexington

Part 1 General Thomas Gage
“America is a mere bully, from one end to the other, and the Bostonians by far the greatest bullies.”
General Thomas Gage
1770
It was just before dawn on Wednesday, 19 April 1775, as the lead elements of a large detachment of British Soldiers marching from Boston to Concord disturbed the Colonial residents at Lexington. The deployment of 700 British soldiers marching into the Massachusetts countryside was a loud, bold, and different stroke for the British in Boston.
This immense display of Colonial era power was begrudgingly ordered by the Commander and Chief, British Forces in North America, Lieutenant General Thomas Gage. General Gage knew better than to anger Colonial Americans, his superiors did not.
Gage arrived in Boston 13 May 1774 aboard the HMS Lively , a heavily armed Royal Navy ship sent to Boston to aid in the blockade the Port. General Thomas Gage was a career officer from an old, distinguished, aristocratic family that could trace its noble roots all the way back to the 15th century. Thomas attended military school, and after his school training, as was the custom purchased his commission as a lieutenant.
As a young officer, Gage was at Culloden’s Moor in 1746, when the British Army annihilated the Scottish Highlanders in the final act of the last Scottish Jacobite rebellion . He also had fought alongside George Washington in the French and Indian War . He was very familiar with Americans, having spent nearly two decades in Colonial America. General Gage even married an American, Margret Kemble, a younger woman from New Jersey who would outlive him by thirty-seven years.
The King appointed Gage Royal Military Governor of Massachusetts Colony, and Commander and Chief of British Forces in North America in an effort to restore British sovereignty in rebellious Boston, and Massachusetts. Gage was the King’s expert on all things Colonial American.
Gage’s job was nearly impossible. By 1774, lines had already been drawn in Boston separating Loyalists from Patriots. Boston specifically, and Massachusetts as a whole was the seat of the rebellious colonial activities in British America in the waning decades of the 18th century. To his credit, Gage repeatedly tried to quell the ever-rising tensions and anti-British sentiments in Boston and Massachusetts with patience and peaceful means whenever possible.
He wanted to avoid armed conflict in Colonial America at nearly any cost. He understood his rebellious countrymen better than most of his peers. He did not want to engage the rebels and offer to them a reason for a violent exchange.
When Gage arrived, The Boston Massacre was a recent and bitter memory, of only four years. The Boston Tea Party was a current memory occurring just six months past. The famous dumping of over 300 chests of valuable British tea into Boston Harbor on December 16, 1773, incited the British Ministers in Parliament. They demanded that Boston residents pay for the lost tea. That was too extreme a remedy for the citizens of Boston.
With Boston unwilling to please the ministers in London, they devised a series of Acts to be imposed on Boston and Massachusetts, and General Thomas Gage was there to enforce them. These punitive Acts did not bring the Bostonians to their knees, they rather tore apart any remaining bonds of kinship between the mother county and her colonies.
The New England Colonies and their sister colonies had faced other “Acts” before. These Acts were nothing less than taxes. The Stamp Act , and The Townsend Acts had been imposed upon the citizens of the American Colonies unsuccessfully a decade earlier. These taxes elicited a resounding chorus from the Colonies.
Voices erupted together from the pulpits of New England’s protestant churches, the hills of Pennsylvania and Virginia, th