God Himself Our Captain

BOSTON, MARCH 6 — APRIL 17, 1775

The mildest winter in living memory had yielded to an early spring. Not once had the Charles River iced over, and even now whispers of green could be seen on the Common sward and across the tumbling hills to the north. By reducing the need for firewood, this "extraordinary weather for warlike preparations," as one pugnacious clergyman called it, had preserved Boston from even greater suffering in the nine months since British warships had closed the port. Still, warehouses stood vacant, shipyards idle, wharves deserted, shop shelves barren. The only topsail vessels in view were the eight Royal Navy men-of-war plugging the harbor approaches. "It is now a very gloomy place, the streets almost empty," a woman wrote an English friend in early March 1775. "Many families have removed from it, & the inhabitants are divided. ... Some appear desponding, others full of rage."

Only a bountiful local crop of lambs and charity from other colonies preserved Boston from hunger: fish and flour from elsewhere in New England, rice from the Carolinas, rye from Baltimore, a thousand bushels of wheat from Quebec, cash from Delaware and Montreal. By British decree, provisions arriving by sea were unloaded in Marblehead and carted twenty miles to Boston, an expensive, tedious detour. Town selectmen launched projects to employ the unemployed — street paving, well digging, building a new brickyard. But gangs of idle sailors, longshoremen, ropemakers, riggers, and carpenters could often be found loitering by the docks or in the town's ninety taverns.

Even in better days, Boston had known ample misery — smallpox and measles epidemics, Quaker and witch hangings. For the past three decades the population had stagnated at fifteen thousand people, all of them wedged into a pear-shaped, thousand-acre peninsula with seventeen churches, no banks, no theaters, and a single concert hall, in a room above a shop. Puritan severity was not far removed. A generation earlier, both actors and theatergoers could be fined for "immorality, impiety, and a contempt for religion"; other miscreants were branded alphabetically —"A" for adulterers, "B" for burglars, "F" for forgers. Counterfeiters who escaped a scorching "C" might be nailed to the pillory by their ears. But never had the town seemed more abject or more menacing; these days there were as many British soldiers in Boston as adult male civilians. One resident watching the regiments at drill lamented that the Common "glows with warlike red."

On Monday morning, March 6, the "gloomy place" abruptly sprang to life. Hundreds and then thousands filled the streets, most of them walking, since by ordinance no carriage or wagon could be driven at speeds faster than "foot pace" without risk of a ten-shilling fine. The annual commemoration of the 1770 Boston Massacre would be held a day late this year to avoid profaning the Sabbath, and Dr. Joseph Warren, a prominent local physician, intended to deliver a speech titled "The Baleful Influence of Standing Armies in Time of Peace." An "immense concourse of people," as one witness described it, made for Milk and Marlborough Streets, where an octagonal steeple rose 180 feet above the Old South Meeting House, with its distinctive Flemish-bond brick walls, enormous clock, and split-banner weathervane. By eleven a.m., five thousand packed the place to the double rafters and cambered tie beams. More than a hundred box pews filled Old South's floor, with high paneled sides to block chilly drafts and wooden writing arms for those inclined to take notes on the day's sermon. An upper gallery with benches wrapped around the second floor. Between the arched compass-headed windows rose a high pulpit, now draped in black and crowned with a sounding board.

"People's expectations are alive for the oration," the lawyer John Adams had recently written. An uneasy murmur rose from the congregants, along with the smell of damp wool, perspiration, and badly tanned shoe leather. It was rumored that mass arrests were likely this morning, and that British officers had agreed that if the king were insulted they would draw swords and slaughter the offenders. "We may possibly be attacked in our trenches," Samuel Adams had warned, and a witness reported that almost every man in attendance "had a short stick, or bludgeon in his hand." The murmur in Old South grew louder when several dozen red-coated officers clumped through the door and stood in the aisles.

Samuel Adams was ready for them. An undistinguished petty official who had squandered a family malthouse fortune, Adams ran an impressive political organization, deftly shaping public opinion through a newspaper syndicate that for years had told other colonies — often with lurid hyperbole — what life was like in a free town occupied by combat troops. "He eats little, drinks little, sleeps little, thinks much," an adversary later wrote, "and is most decisive and indefatigable." Now fifty-two and afflicted with a pronounced tremor in his head and hands, he often stood on his toes when excited, and surely he was on his toes now. He quickly cleared...