Lexington and Concord: More Than a British Blunder
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LEXINGTON AND CONCORD: MORE THAN A BRITISH BLUNDER HONORS THESIS Presented to the Honors Committee of Texas State University-San Marcos in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for Graduation in the Honors College by: Mario E. Lucio San Marcos, Texas December 2012 LEXINGTON AND CONCORD: MORE THAN A BRITISH BLUNDER Thesis Supervisor: ________________________________ Shannon Duffy, Ph.D. Department of History Approved: ____________________________________ Heather C. Galloway, Ph.D. Dean, Honors College For Mario R. Lucio And Nellie Lucio ii CONTENTS ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………………….…..v INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………….1 THE BRITISH OCCUPATION OF BOSTON, 1774…………………………….……..8 THE BRITISH EXPEDITION TO CONCORD………………………………………...13 POOR COHESION……………………………………………………………………...37 POOR LEADERSHIP……………………………………………………………….…..41 POOR TROOP DISCIPLINE…………………………………………………………...45 ALCOHOL ABUSE……………………………………………………………………..53 DESERTION…………………………………………………………………………….57 TROOP MISCONDUCT………………………………………………………………...65 THE FUNCTION OF THE BRITISH OCCUPATION ARMY…………………….…..70 CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………..73 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………..74 iii ILLUSTRATIONS & MAPS MAP OF BOSTON AND THE SURROUNDING AREA IN 1775…………………….7 PORTRAIT OF GENERAL THOMAS GAGE……………………………………….....8 PORTRAIT OF MAJOR JOHN PITCAIRN…………………………………………....14 PORTRAIT OF LIEUTENANT-COLONEL FRANCIS SMITH……………………....14 MAP OF LEXINGTON GREEN………………………………………………………..18 DOOLITTLE PRINT: THE BATTLE AT LEXINGTON COMMON……………….....21 DOOLITTLE PRINT: A VIEW OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD……………………..22 MACKENZIE MAP OF CONCORD…………………………………………………....23 DOOLITTLE PRINT: THE ENGAGMENT AT THE NORTH BRIDGE……………...28 DOOLITTLE PRINT: A VIEW OF THE SOUTH PART OF LEXINGTON…………..31 PORTRAIT OF LIEUTENANT FREDERICK MACKENZIE……………………........32 PORTRAIT OF LORD HUGH PERCY………………………………………………...33 MAP OF BOSTON, 1775………………………………………………………………..52 SELF PORTRAIT OF WILLIAM GLANVILLE EVELYN……………………………68 iv Abstract Narratives about the American Revolutionary War have generally explained the British loss at Lexington and Concord as the result of several false strategic assumptions on the part of British leadership. The most frequently cited assumption is the British underestimation of the capability of the American militias and their willingness to engage the British in armed conflict. Meanwhile, historians studying the battle have tended to focus on the tactical missteps of the British expedition to Concord as the major reason for the British defeat. Neither of these explanations is false. However, this thesis has offered a third explanation. The British defeat at Lexington and Concord was rooted in the weakness of the British occupation army itself. Throughout 1774-1775, the British army stationed in Boston suffered from several problems which undermined its overall discipline, morale, and combat effectiveness. Many of these problems were unique to Boston while others affected the entire British army. This thesis has relied on several British firsthand accounts in order gain an understanding of the many hardships experienced by the British army in Boston. This thesis attempts to convey what the British soldiers and officers themselves perceived to be the problems affecting their army. The implication of this thesis is that the British soldiers who fought at Lexington and Concord were not the elite warriors of an idealized army. British soldiers were mere humans who suffered from common human problems. The cumulative effect of those problems weakened the British army. Finally, analyzing the condition of the British occupation army itself provides a more balanced narrative about what went wrong for the British at Lexington and Concord. v Introduction “You know the rest. In the books you have read, How the British Regulars fired and fled, How the farmers gave them ball for ball, From behind each fence and farmyard wall, Chasing the Redcoats down the lane, Then crossing the fields to emerge again, Under the trees at the turn of the road, And only pausing to fire and load.”1 -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere”, 1863 The above passage from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s famous nineteenth century poem describes the battle of Lexington and Concord. More importantly, the passage captures the traditional American perception of the first battle of the American Revolution. That the battle of Lexington and Concord was anything short of a disaster for the British is unquestionable. However, the battle of Lexington and Concord has become ingrained in the American national consciousness as a British blunder that was the result of an overconfident British army. In this narrative the British army not only overestimated its own power and capabilities, but also underestimated that of the American militia. Most general histories of the American Revolution have tended to support this narrative.2 The British certainly overestimated their own strength as well as 1 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.” Tales of a Wayside Inn (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1863. 2 John Ferling, Almost a Miracle: The American Victory in the War of Independence (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 29, 33; Ira D. Gruber, “The Anglo-American Military Tradition and the War for American Independence.” In Against All Enemies: Interpretations of American Military History from Colonial Times to the Present, ed. Kenneth J. Hagan and William R. Roberts (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986), 29; Don Higginbotham, The War of American Independence (New York: The Macmillan 1 underestimated the strength of the Americans and their willingness to resort to military confrontation. However this narrative simplifies the reasons for the British failure and reduces the outcome of the battle to one of wrong assumptions. Historians such as Arthur Tourtellot, Allen French, and David Hackett Fischer have gone into more detail about this historic battle, and have provided more in depth explanations for the British defeat. Three reasons given for the British defeat are poor leadership, poor troop discipline, and poor unit cohesion.3 All three factors certainly contributed to the British failure, and this thesis will examine how they affected the battle. However, these explanations focus on the immediate time frame of the battle of Lexington and Concord. What they do not explain is the root cause of the British failure, which was a weak British army. The British army that engaged the American militia at the battle of Lexington and Concord was not the elite army, famed, and feared throughout the world for its discipline in battle. The Battle of Lexington and Concord revealed the poor state of the British army stationed in Boston. Severe alcoholism, rampant desertion, meager pay, deep animosity between solders and colonists, poor living conditions, troop misconduct, neglect of combat training, and draconian punishment were all problems that plagued the British army in Boston during the winter of 1774-1775. These problems Company, 1971), 51-64; James Kirby Martin, “The Continental Army and the American Victory.” In The World Turned Upside Down: The American Victory in the War of Independence, ed. John Ferling (Westport CT: Greenwood Press, 1989), 20-21; Charles Neimeyer, “Town Born, Town Out: Town Militias, Tories, and the Struggle for Control of the Massachusetts Backcountry.” In War and Society in the American Revolution: Mobilization and Home Fronts, ed. John Resch and Walter Sargent (DeKalb IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2007), 39; William Seymour, The Price of Folly: British Blunders in the War of American Independence (London: Brassey’s, 1995), 39; Neil R. Stout, The Perfect Crisis: The Beginning of the Revolutionary War (New York: New York University Press, 1976), 175-177. 3 Allen French, “The British Expedition to Concord in 1775.”The Journal of the American Military History Foundation 1 (Spring, 1937): 16, 17, 11; Arthur Tourtellot, Lexington and Concord: The Beginning of the War of the American Revolution (New York: Norton and Company Inc., 1959), 209, 105; David Hackett Fischer, Paul Revere’s Ride (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 242, 114-115. 2 undermined the morale and combat effectiveness of the British army which was revealed at Lexington and Concord. To reconstruct a British narrative of the battle of Lexington and Concord as well as to examine British army conditions in Boston during 1774-1775, this thesis chiefly relies on five firsthand British accounts. The diary of Lieutenant Frederick Mackenzie of the Royal Welch Fusiliers was first published by the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1890, and printed in book form in 1926. The diary provides an analysis of the battle from the perspective of a thirty year veteran. 4 A map of Concord with the marked positions of the movements of American and British forces that day was found tucked away in Mackenzie’s diary. The Mackenzie map accurately “illustrates” the actions of April 19th, 1775. 5 The night of the expedition to Concord, Ensign Jeremy Lister of the 10th Foot, volunteered to fill in for a Lieutenant who had feigned sickness. In 1782, Lister wrote down his account of the battle. Published in full in 1931, the Narrative of Ensign Jeremy Lister provides a vivid account of the British retreat from Concord.6 Published in 1924, the diary of Lieutenant John Barker of the King’s Own Regiment, voices the resentment that some British soldiers and officers felt towards both General Gage and the colonists. 4 Frederick Mackenzie,