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To lovers of Hawthorne, this story might well be followed by that wonderful tale of "Howe's Masquerade," which used to thrill me as a child, and which I cannot even now read unmoved. If not true in actual fact, it gives with absolute truth the Spirit of Seventy-Six.
The winter was a mild one: all too mild for Washington. He was eager to cross the ice on the Back Bay and attack the town; but the ice would not bear. Week by week he watched and tested it; all in vain. It was not till February, that "strong little month," that the real cold came. "When the days begin to lengthen, the cold begins to strengthen." Day followed day of keen, dry cold; night by night the ice "made," till a floor of crystal, solid as rock, lay about the peninsula of Boston. Washington called a council of war and urged an assault on the town. Alas! his field officers demurred, shook their heads, would none of it. Reluctantly he abandoned the plan, and determined to seize instead Dorchester Heights and Noddle's Island (East Boston).
On March 2d, Abigail Adams writes to her husband:
"I have been kept in a continual state of anxiety and expectation ever since you left me. It has been said 'tomorrow' and 'tomorrow,' for this month, but when the dreadful tomorrow will be, I know not. But hark! The house this instant shakes with the roar of cannon. I have been to the door, and find it is a cannonade from our army. Orders, I find, are come for all the remaining militia to repair to the lines Monday night by twelve o'clock. No sleep for me tonight. And if I cannot sleep, who have no guilt upon my soul with regard to this cause, how shall the miserable wretches who have been the procurers of this dreadful scene, and those who are to be the actors, lie down with the load of guilt upon their souls?"
The story continues through the following days.
Sunday evening.
"Monday evening. Tolerably quiet. Today the militia have all mustered, with three days' provision, and are all marched by three o'clock this afternoon, though their notice was no longer ago than eight o'clock Saturday. And now we have scarcely a man, but our regular guards, either in Weymouth, Hingham, Braintree, or Milton, and the militia from the more remote towns are called in as seacoast guards. Can you form to yourself an idea of our sensations?
"I have just returned from Penn's Hill, where I have been sitting to hear the amazing roar of cannon, and from whence I could see every shell which was thrown. The sound, I think, is one of the grandest in nature, and is of the true species of the sublime. 'Tis now an incessant roar; but oh! the fatal ideas which are connected with the sound! How many of our dear countrymen must fall!
"Tuesday morning. I went to bed about twelve, and rose again a little after one. I could no more sleep than if I had been in the engagement; the rattling of the windows, the jar of the house, the continual roar of twenty-four pounders, and the bursting of shells, give us such ideas, and realize a scene to us of which we could form scarcely any conception. About six, this morning, all was quiet. I rejoiced in a few hours' calm. I hear we got possession of Dorchester Hill last night; four thousand men upon it today; lost but one man. The ships are all drawn round the town. Tonight we shall realize a more terrible scene still. I sometimes think I cannot stand it. I wish myself with you, out of hearing, as I cannot assist them.
I hope to give you joy of Boston, even if it is in ruins, before I send this away. I am too much agitated to write as I ought, and languid for want of rest.
"Thursday. All my anxiety and distress is at present at an end. I feel disappointed. This day our militia are all returning, without effecting anything more than taking possession of Dorchester Hill. I hope it is wise and just, but, from all the muster and stir, I hoped and expected more important and decisive scenes. I would not have suffered all I have for two such hills. Ever since the taking of that, we have had a perfect calm; nor can I learn what effect it has had in Boston. I do not hear of one person's escaping since."
Abigail need not have suffered even this momentary discouragement, could she have foreseen the outcome of these hours of suspense. The cannonade which so shook the neighboring towns was ordered by Washington to divert the attention of the British, and to drown the noise of carts crossing the frozen ground: carts whose wheels were bound with straw, and before which the road was strewn with straw, still further to deaden the sound. General Thomas was moving from Roxbury to South Boston with twelve hundred men. Silently, under cover of the darkness, and later of a thick white fog, under shelter of that good thunder of the Cambridge guns, they marched; silently, they took their new stand, laid down their arms to take up pickaxe and spade. In the morning, when the fog lifted, the amazed British looked out on a row of formidable entrenchments on Dorchester Heights, just above their heads.