It was pivotal. It was bold. It was a colonial victory. It was never a battle.

Boston, Massachusetts

There is little doubt that Boston was the cradle of the American Revolution. In the 1760s, when Great Britain began imposing various taxes on its American colonies – without any representation in the British Parliament, it was Boston that objected strongly and created the most noise. 

By 1770, the noise become rancor, not only about taxes, but about various other arbitrary and objectionable acts imposed on Boston. There were incidents. Blood was shed. 

In December 1773, following a long list of British restrictions and taxes (still without any representation in Parliament), a heinous tax on tea, an essential commodity, led to American retaliation. In the dead of night, a band of angry citizens disguised as natives in blankets and war paint, boarded a British frigate moored in Boston harbor, and dumped some 300 crates of tea into the Charles River. 

The British punished the colony severely. Boston Harbor was closed to any trade, and the British effectively laid siege to the city until the tea was paid for. The line was drawn. The tea would never be paid for. 

A besieged Massachusetts solicited help from its sister colonies, and a Continental Congress was called for September 1774, in Philadelphia. While sympathetic to the plight of Boston, the Congress was still loath to engage in anything “treasonable,” and sent a well-crafted petition of grievances to King George III. They also agreed to hold a second Congress the following year.

But by the time that Second Congress convened in April, 1775, British soldiers had marched to Lexington and Concord. Shots had been fired on Massachusetts militia men. Considerable blood was shed and lives were lost. Action was required, All thirteen colonies pledged militia recruits, and George Washington of Virginia was selected as General of the Continental Army. He left immediately for Boston. 

The Man, The Plan, The Cannons

Waiting for him in Boston was a Massachusetts militia man and ardent patriot. Henry Knox was a 25-year-old bookseller, who had read every book in his shop on warfare and particularly, artillery. Knowing that the local militias had no weaponry other than their citizens’ personal muskets and powder, he formed a daring plan. 

He advised General Washington, who had served as Colonel in Virginia’s militia for nearly a decade some fifteen years earlier, that heavy artillery was indeed available – but it was some 300 miles away, in Fort Ticonderoga, on the New York-Vermont border. The fort had been captured and deserted, but the big cannons were still there!

Knox’s plan was daring and ingenious: send militia men to the Fort, help themselves to the heavy cannons and bring them back to Boston. Through wooded terrain with no clear paths, in the dead of winter, with snow and ice and freezing cold. As secretly as possible. General Washington agreed to the plan, volunteers were recruited, and they marched to the Fort to retrieve 43 cannons and 16 mortars – weighing more than 5500 pounds.

On December 17, Knox sent a letter to Washington, detailing he enormous difficulty involved in transporting the cannons through ice and winds across Lake George. He advised GW that his men had built 42 strong sleds and had hired 80 yoke of oxen to drag them as far as Springfield, MA. From there he would bring his valuable train to Boston.

On January 25, 1776, an exhausted and half-frozen parade of militia and oxen teams dragging the artillery showed up near Dorchester Heights. It would take another six weeks for powder and ammunition to arrive.

The Miracle

Boston had been under siege for nearly two years. The well-trained and well-equipped British had fortified every high point surrounding the town, including Bunker Hill, which they had taken some months earlier. It was declared a British victory, but British casualties were far greater than American lives lost. The only benefit was determination on both sides. British now encircled and fortified the city of Boston with their big guns. The siege continued.

The only exception was Dorchester Heights, with a commanding view of Boston and its harbor. Working stealthily, the Colonials cleared a path up the Heights so the weapons could be positioned, and if necessary, camouflaged. Surprise would be the Americans’ greatest asset.

On March 2, Abigail Adams, some ten miles from Boston, wrote to her husband in Philadelphia, that “something terrible” had been predicted for weeks, but what/when, she did not know. Then, her letter stopped. The house was shaking. Stopping a passer-by, she learned that the Colonials had begun to fire, and the entire militia was ordered to report immediately, with three-days’ provisions. 

She climbed to the top of the nearest high point, looked across the harbor, and saw and heard the sounds of shells and cannons, meant to harass the British. It was a diversion, created by General Washington, to focus the British away from the monumental fortifications being put in place on Dorchester Heights. In the dead of a bitter cold night, Colonial soldiers had wrapped their wagon wheels in straw to muffle as much sound as possible and dragged their guns up the heights.

In the early morning of March 5, British General William Howe was astounded to see cannons aimed directly at his army from the top of Dorchester Heights. General Washington correctly anticipated that there would either be an attack (with heavy British losses), or they would be forced to vacate the area.

The Heights commanded Boston, and was now heavily fortified by the Colonials, both in firepower and manpower, and the weather was horrendous. General Howe had little choice.

Taking about 1000 Boston Loyalists with them, 11,000 British Redcoats boarded their ships in the harbor, and by March 17, departed without firing a shot.

There were no casualties. There would be no more battles fought in Massachusetts.

The Cradle of Liberty rocked on!

Sources:

Davis, Burke – George Washington and the American Revolution – Random House, 1975

Levin, Phyllis Lee – Abigail Adams – St. Martin’s Press, 1987

Randall, Willard Sterne – George Washington – Galahad Books, 2006

https://www.ushistory.org/valleyforge/served/knox.html

https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/guns-ticonderoga

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/american-forces-occupy-dorchester-heights