New Page #48!

It's St. Patrick's Day, Alan. Apparently the Mulligans start the party early.

On the night of March 4, 1776 George Washington used the cannon that Col. Henry Knox had delivered to Boston to fortify an advantageous position called Dorchester Heights overlooking Boston Harbor. For two days the Americans fired their guns though it was mostly just for the spectacle, not to really engage in battle… just yet. British guns answered in kind, though they, too, did little real damage.

(I’m glossing over that whole part about Knox going to Fort Ticonderoga to drag 120,000 pounds of cannon back through the snowy mountains of upstate New York. That’s a whole other adventure that we just won’t get to in The Dreamer but it sure is worth your time to pursue independently!)

The morning of March 5th brought the 6th Anniversary of the Boston Massacre. (A year prior Dr. Warren was giving his Boston Massacre Oration at Old South…)

The British woke up that morning to the annoying buzz of Americans digging atop their brand-new redoubt, complete with 20 guns… aimed at them.  The situation was eerily similar to Bunker Hill.

Allegedly General Howe said, “My God, these fellows have done more work in one night than I could make my army do in three months.”

Howe’s instinct was to attack, but just like when the fog would roll in later that year, nature intervened in the Americans’ favor. A sudden, horrible sleet and snow storm prevented the British from making the amphibious landing and it continued into the next day. Howe remembered Bunker Hill and made the decision (perhaps overdue) to abandon Boston and bring the fight to a better position.

It wasn’t just the British army that packed up to leave Boston. Large numbers of Loyalists fled the city as well. Families were forced to take whatever they could on a ship, in just a few hours, and leave the rest of their lives behind them.  Looting ensued as there was chaos in the city.

On March 15th Howe tried to set sail for Nova Scotia. Due to more ill winds, they weren’t able to leave the harbor until March 17th. And, if you live near Boston, you’ll recognize that day as “Evacuation Day” not just St. Patrick’s Day.

There’s a little story I found over on Boston 1775 about the Americans realizing they could finally get into the city after the nearly year-long siege that began after Lexington on April 19th. General John Sulivan was an American who had his eye on the activity of British soldiers boarding the ships in Boston Harbor. From his perch at Charlestown Neck, he saw sentries still guarding Bunker Hill, “standing as usual with their Firelocks shouldered.” He got suspicious though, “finding they never moved,” and upon closer observation realized they were dummies.  HA!

This convinced him that the British really had gone, and it was safe to go into the city.

Clever, clever Brits.

The first men to cross over into the city that afternoon were 500 men from Roxbury who already had smallpox and thus were immune. What’s Alan doing among them? Well, that’s another story for another day. (But it IS a story you can look forward to, drawn by Meg Syverud and written by yours truly.)

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* I’ll be at a Tristate Con in Huntington, WV on June 9th. *

 New Page #46!

Not Nathan's finest moment, admittedly.

Remember that time Nathan put his foot his mouth and got punched in the face for it? Yeah, apparently Alan hasn’t forgotten, either.

Joseph Warren was already famous before he died but martyrdom sealed the deal.  After his death, Warren became a legend. When I visited Forrest Hills Cemetery last summer,  I found an interesting inscription on Mary Warren’s grave. It reads, “She was… an object of general interest in the town of Roxbury.” Of course she was. She was the great, fallen General Joseph Warren’s mother.

In Dr. John Warren’s biography (written by his son Edward), the following story is told. This tale is funny because apparently Dr. John was a speedster (multiple such accounts are in the bio), but more importantly, the final line reveals the regard he was held in for being the brother of Dr. Warren, even 20 years after his death at Bunker Hill.

“When [John Warren] drove in a sulky or chaise, he drove very rapidly; sometimes fearfully so. On one occasion, Dr. Danforth accompanied him to a consultation. He afterwards declared in very strong language that he would never ride with Dr. Warren again. ‘He would sooner ride with the d—l.’ The streets of Boston were not very much crowded in those days; rapid progression was easier. A military company sometimes barred the way, and on one occasion, a captain who knew him and perceived his rapid approach, gave the order to open to the right and left; either respecting the surgeon’s haste, or paying this honor to the brother of the slain general.”

Nathan’s taunt makes more sense now, right? So does this scene.

If you didn’t read the blog last week, click to read what that skull is all about in today’s update. Dr. Warren’s brothers as well as Paul Revere were present when his body was exhumed to be moved to a more appropriate burial site. He had been in the ground on Breed’s Hill for a year after a British Officer, in his own words, “stuffed the scoundrel with another rebel, into one hole, and there he, and his seditious Principles may remain.”

Well, he and his Principles remained there for only a year until the British evacuated the city and left Breed’s Hill unguarded. Paul Revere was able to positively ID the body once it was dug up as belonging to Warren.

John Warren was no stranger to corpses. In college he was a part of a secret club at Harvard called the Spunkers who would dig up bodies to dissect and study for medical purposes. Because of this, I’ve always wondered how he responded that day. He took the news of his brother’s death very, very hard. So my guess is that his response was less than clinical.  None the less, it must have been closure– there could be no more doubt.

I know the two deaths are unrelated, but I’ve often pitied the family of another of our favorite patriots who got no such closure after rumors of his death circulated unconfirmed.

But I get ahead of myself…

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 New Page #45!

"...or until I forget everything. In which case, it would be nice if you told me why I was mad."

After nearly a year long siege, the British evacuated Boston on March 17th, 1776. When this happened, the soldiers who had been camped outside of the city made a hasty return to the town. More than Boston, the Warrens were interested in what they would find over at Breed’s Hill which was once again free of Redcoat occupation.

A man claimed he knew where Dr. Joseph Warren had been buried, and led Paul Revere and some of Warren’s brothers to the spot. When they dug up the body, Revere recognized false teeth he had put in not long before the battle, wired in with a special contraption he had invented just for Dr. Warren. There was no mistake, this was him.

Lest you think the only research I do is historical, I made sure that at the time Warren was exhumed the soft tissue would have been all gone. You know that if you’re an organ and tissue donor, someone has to, uh, collect that stuff before it can be of use. Yeah, my neighbor does that. So I figured who better to ask about corpses? He did his neighborly duty and after some investigating and confirmation, got back to me with an answer: New England, in the dirt, for a year? Nothing but the bone.

Whew. Because I would not have wanted to draw it otherwise.