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https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/this-year-is-the-250th-anniversary-of-the-first-battle-of-the-american-revolution-but-it-ended-in-a-standoff/
Without any shots to hear around the world, a little-known and heated standoff marked the opening of America’s Revolutionary War.
On February 26th, 1775, two-hundred and fifty years ago last week, British Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Leslie led a raid into the town of Salem, Massachusetts, to seize what they expected to be cannon stored at a makeshift armory.
Rather than finding artillery, after arriving at the north bridge into town they found an inflamed citizenry, largely unarmed, but indignant in the face of British demands. The colonists flooded Salem’s streets and barred Leslie’s passage until the officer was forced to negotiate and withdraw.
Charles Moses Endicott, a man who fancied himself Salem’s official historian, recorded the event from eyewitness accounts offered by elderly Salemites, and is, as Robert Pushkar writing for the Smithsonian Magazine points out, the only reason we know of it.
“Here … we claim the first blow was struck in the war of independence, by open resistance to both the civil and military power of the mother country; comparatively bloodless, it is true, but not the less firm and decided,” Endicott wrote in his account published by “W. Ives & G. W. Pease, printers.”
According to Pushkar’s references, the British Army commander relied on a network of spies and Loyalist sympathizers to uncover that the colonial militia were converting ship cannon into land-operable pieces, a domineering aspect of war at the time which could be used to control vast acreage of approach terrain.
Launching a raid to confiscate the cannon on a Sunday, Commander-in-Chief Thomas Gage thought, would be convenient since the inhabitants of Salem would be in church or at home resting. This, Pushkar writes, was the wrong deduction. The fact that the Salem townspeople sat in congregation allowed word of the approaching British regiment to spread instantly.
Approaching Salem by ship, the 64th British Regiment of Foot disembarked with muskets, bayonettes, and equipment for searching crates and homes for contraband. They approached, and Major John Pedrick of the local militia raced to town on his horse to alert his commanding officer, Minuiteman Colonel David Mason, who went into church to spread word.
The people raised one portion of the drawbridge that marked the north entrance into the town. Faced with their passage blocked, an angry throng of catcalling, whistling, and fist-waving colonists, and the prospect of fire coming from the local militia on the northern bank of the river, who warned the British that they would be “dead men” if they opened up on the crowd, Leslie, an experienced military officer, was in a bind.
Gage had told him not to open fire unless fired upon, but his goal was an imperative one and it lay on the opposite end of the bridge. Without knowing where the cannon were or who had hidden them in which house, it would require egregious violations of Colonial law, British Common Law, and the general conduct of war to enact a violent raid in which innocents would be killed and private property destroyed.
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After an hour and a half consultation though, Leslie insisted that he could not withdraw, telling the colonists he was ready to stay there “until next autumn.”
Pushkar notes that had a British or Colonial soldier gone rogue, the Revolutionary War would have all but certainly started that day. Yet the combination of a young Loyalist minister’s appeals and the understanding that Lieutenant Colonel Leslie needed to save face led to an agreement: the drawbridge would be lowered and the regiment permitted to “march in a peaceable manner” no more than 275 yards into the town, “and then return, without molesting any person or property,” Endicott wrote.
This they did, and jeers followed their retreat, including one from a local nurse who supposedly asked them “Do you think we were born in the woods to be frightened by owls?”
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Gage, an officer and a gentleman, issued the same orders during the approach of the British to Concord, where more cannon were believed to be stationed. However, he selected John Pitcairn as commanding officer over Leslie, perhaps changing the course of destiny, as the former was a more resolute type, and bade the redcoats open fire when a shot rang out that is recognized as the start of the war.
History, it is often said, is written by the victors, and the Salemites certainly would have been the greatest of victors America had ever seen if violence had been avoided. As such, they themselves have been responsible for saving the memory of that fateful day, called the Salem Gunpowder Raid, and thank goodness they did.
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