The Minutemen and Their World - Essay Example

?The Minutemen and Their World by Robert Gross Robert Gross has written an excellent social history about the inhabitants of Concord, Massachusetts during the period when they touched fame and were known to the world. He alternates between their preparations for battle and the backgrounds of the citizens lives. He highlights the political, economic, and social events that informed the decisions of the men and women of Concord and influenced their stand against the Redcoats in April of 1775. Gross tells the stories of major members of the town and uses their social and family connections to work his way through the different classes and their problems. He overall provides a stirring view of late eighteenth century New England on the cusp of revolution and freedom. In Concord town politics, though the inhabitants denied it, were as usual. Voting rights were severely restricted and limited the number of men eligible for town leadership. Wealth and leisure time further diminished the pool. Only those with enough of both were able to rise to serve the needs of their fellow men sufficiently. Money and position piled on top of place to complicate life. As a thriving center of commerce, Concord hosted both a bustling town business center and a sprawling farmland. Conflicts between urban and rural inhabitants over basic infrastructure needs excited the assemblies on a regular basis. Schooling, religion, and roads all served a different constituency and for them all to be centered in town was seen as a disservice to the rural community who “had to walk into town in everyday stockings and shoes then for the sake of appearances top in a field and change into their go-to-meeting slippers.”1 Church itself posed a mighty challenge to the unity of Concord’s inhabitants. During the Great Awakening a new preacher ignited fervor among the young and vital in town. His bowing to the interests of youth to fill pews offended the staunch faithful and, somewhat along geographical lines, they broke off to form a second parish. When a new, young preacher replaced the first, a spendthrift schemer, one of the old timers, sought membership in the original parish. His questionable ethics toward his fellow Concordians led to his rejection by the congregation. By extension the outlying parish took this to heart and read into it a refusal to consider reconciliation. Then the same man took his grievances to the political realm and again lost. Concord was indeed a town divided. While the inhabitants of Concord simmered in their own stew of religious discord the colonies entered a period of contention with mother England. The Stamp Act triggered a wave of protests across the colonies and in Boston, party faithfuls organized a vote to recognize Parliament’s actions. When the vote came through it was barely shy of the necessary numbers to pass and demonstrate Massachusetts’ loyalty to the crown. A bitter disappointment to Governor Hutchinson, surely, but one that triggered a wave of political backlash. Much like today’s Tea Party, farmers and businessmen who saw their interests hindered by England’s acts of taxation, mounted an ideological revolt. They organized a revolution at the polls and saw to it that nineteen of thirty-two representatives to Boston were replaced for their efforts of royalist loyalty. In Concord, little interest sparked at the events plaguing the colony. When the vote came to replace their own man, Charles Prescott, they safely returned him to his role. Their concerns lay more in the sixty-six pound expense of burying the Great Awaking pastor, Reverend Daniel Bliss, and in finding his replacement than in subverting England’s fiscal policy toward the colonies. When the Boston Massacre rent headlines, Concord barely paused to comment. Of greater import a debate about relocating the Middlesex County seat from Cambridge to Concord. A matter of convenience more important than matters of state. Gradually, however, the people of Concord came around. In 1772 the Boston Committee of Correspondence wrote seeking a stance against an effort by the Crown to appropriate colonial judges--shifting the payroll from local coffers to royal ones. Concord maintained a careful position and, in their reply, did little to rock the boat. When Parliament enacted the Tea Act in October of 1773, Concord immediately condemned the tax as a violation of rights and freedoms. They readily joined in the subsequent tea boycott but refrained from seeking more than a redefinition of the colony’s relationship with the Crown. In 1774 the Crown took severe action in recriminations against Massachusetts. Reparations for the Tea Party, increased power in the hands of the Crown appointed governor--now Thomas Gage--and banning of council meetings at the local level--save those approved by the governor or held annually for elections. Samuel Adams and his Committee of Correspondence called for a blanket boycott of British goods. Most townsmen balked at the coercive provisions intended to force participation. Concord stepped forward and, taking the lead for the first time, endorsed the boycott--with revisions--over threat of imprisonment ordered by Gage. Concord became the county seat of resistance. In the summer of 1774, a conference of delegates from throughout Middlesex County met there to discuss the Coercive Acts and the future of freedom in the colonies. Two weeks later, in September, freemen forced closure of the county’s court in Concord. Mock courts tried suspected Tories--mainly the old timers, who had broken off from Daniel Bliss’s parish--and sought to humiliate them for their loyalty to the Crown. Concord had finally declared itself on the side of the colonies and began to enact the decrees of both the first Continental Congress and the Continental Association. On September 25, 1774, Concord’s town council voted to raise a town militia: the Minutemen. As the numbers of enlistees in the militia surpassed a hundred in the new year, support for the continental cause began to translate into political power. Joseph Lee, Charles Prescott, Squire Daniel Bliss, and others who remained loyal Tories lost their acclaim before the electorate and were finally replaced by sympathetic ears. But in the approaching light of revolution not all was partisan. The parish of Bliss and Emerson extended a hand of fellowship to the offshoots, inviting any and all to return to the fold; No questions asked, no penance required. Religious faith, too, inspired the Minutemen as Pastor Emerson took pains to instill christian behaviors in the hearts of the enlisted men. But for the importance of faith, family and inheritance played a more important role both in the militia and in life. In the militia, the chain of command was organized largely along kinship lines with Colonel James Barrett at the head. His sons would be first to hear the orders and they would relay those orders to cousins and so on until the entire militia was apprised. In life, Concord’s families adhered to a strict hierarchy that dictated inheritance rights. For the farmers they were, land was vital to survival. Each generation had the option of either inheriting land from their parents or striking out on their own to a new settlement. For Colonel Barrett and his seven children the former option was preferred. Investments in land both in Concord, and its surrounds provided ample property to support Barrett’s progeny, and to do so in a way that guaranteed his children would work to support him in his old age. For others in Concord, though, the choice was not so easy. Over farming and grazing burdened the land until it approached uselessness. Large families and poverty limited bequeathals and many young men were left with only shares in a father’s estate. Often they would take that share and invest in land on the frontier, but a parent could hold off granting such an inheritance in favor of keeping a child’s labor at home. When this happened tempers flared and, normally, within a year or two the parent would relent and the child would leave home to settle on some distant land. Landlessness imposed the harshest conditions. Newcomers without land or means were warned out of a new village or town and escorted back to their last place of residence. This could continue until they landed in their original place of birth. If a person couldn’t pay his debts, he landed in debtors prison awaiting judgment. For some in Concord who were prosecuted in Boston’s courts, debtors prison lasted through the revolution. Women fared even worse. Treated as near property, they were subject to arranged marriages with barely a right of veto. Dowries transferred from their parents to their husbands. Her inheritance was limited also. As a widow, if she survived her husband, she was entitled to a third of the estate --though only for the rest of her life--and if her husband made other provisions for her she would also be entitled to those. Single women were limited in profession and often spent their lives spinning wool. Generally, women led an unpleasant existence. With the provincial congress meeting behind closed doors at Concord, Governor Gage sent a series of spies to suss out the extent of colonial resistance in the surrounding areas, particularly in Concord and Worcester beyond. Some of Gage’s spies were more obvious than others and tried to utilize local Tories as agents. This resulted in one instance of a town faithful, Squire Daniel Bliss, being forced to flee town lest he suffer the wrath of his betrayed neighbors. The intelligence these Tories provided left Governor Gage in little doubt that military action must commence sooner rather than later to prevent a general uprising by the colonists. This he planned. For the colonists, however, the question of Gage’s planned raids was not one so much of where or how, but one of the timing. When would the Redcoats march? The anticipated troop movement came at night, on April 18, 1775. Governor Gage had ordered men to gather on Boston Commons in secrecy and to prepare to march. He did not give them their orders until they actually began to march to prevent colonial spies from learning of the troops’ destination. Gage’s perception of the level of secrecy maintained was far different than the actual level in existence. The colonists had observed all of the activities of the Redcoats throughout the day and were more than capable of interpreting their meanings. Paul Revere and WIlliam Dawes road out to warn the soon to be victimized towns of the troop movements. Men gathered in Lexington commons. The British marched into the square and faced off with the Lexington Men. A shot was fired and the British loosed fire. They killed eight of the Lexington militia. Most of them were shot in the back. As the British regulars marched on towards Concord, Minutemen from Concord and several surrounding villages gathered just north of town, beyond the North Bridge. Coming from Lexington and the mistakes made there, the British arrived in Concord and commenced a relatively civil search for hidden munitions. This civility was limited, however, and a fire was eventually set to the town’s courthouse. Colonel Barrett, the man in charge of the Minutemen outside of town, gave in to pressure from his fellow Concordians and ordered the militia to march into town to defend their homes. The colonists were met by British troops just past the North Bridge. The ensuing battle was brief, only a few minutes, and the colonists didn’t fare well. They were quickly dispersed and separated in their retreat. It took some time for enough soldiers to come back together to begin forming a coherent counter move against the British. Although not a set battle formation, the colonists prepared a raking guerilla attack formation that would hamper the British return to Boston. The Redcoats dawdling in Concord allowed the colonists to move into position and prepare their traps. They shot at the British all along the road back to Lexington and on to Boston, taking on the road revenge for the evils done at home. The Revolutionary War had begun. War affected the economic life of Concord’s inhabitants severely. Refugees from the Siege of Boston and from Harvard and other towns inundated Concord. Not all of these refugees could claim land ownership, but Concord welcomed them briefly anyway. It was their duty to help their fellow colonists against the intransigent British soldiers. Paper money, Colonials, dropped in value and prices skyrocketed. Both deflation and inflation struck the colonies and the purchase of commodities became a difficult gamble dependent upon the availability of a wheelbarrow. Labor, produce, and livestock were all diverted to war aims and the people of Concord were made to make due with less of everything at a lower quality than they had grown used to before April 19, 1775. Concord’s political ideas presaged much of what would come in the following days. In an effort to heal wounds from before the war--wounds caused by divisions in representation at a local level--Concord’s inhabitants began enforcing the idea of responsibility on its elected officials. In a major upset, Concord early decided that for a government to be of the people, the colony would need to hold a constitutional convention to hash out the details of such a government. Otherwise, politics continued as usual with the same town worthies filling elected positions. Over the next several decades Concord continued to build its own. It fought first to be named capital of Massachusetts then, when that bid failed, county seat of Middlesex County. It built up its farming and cultural heritage and took advantage of increasing tourism to the birthplace of the Revolutionary War. It continued to rely on the same families and noble folk who stood in authority before, only now those men bowed to popular control. In every important aspect, Concord continued unaffected--but for tourist money--by its role in April 1775. An historic player left to its own devices as history moved on, unwilling to wait for Concord to find some other reason to shine. Read More