Chapter Seven
brAINTREE
Massachusetts Bay Colony
While the King remained silent, Parliament moved to punish all New England for our resistance.
And as the British prepared to make war against us, our own patriot leaders called upon militia to form a defense, hoard weapons,
and store military supplies.
My husband played no part in that, but given the response of the king to our continental congress, it seemed as if John might
indeed be considered a traitorous rebel.
Yet, fear didn’t silence him. His legal cases went abandoned as he penned essays for the gazettes about the latest outrages.
We had never supposed our king to be a tyrant before, but now it was openly spoken of.
To mark the anniversary of that terrible night our neighbors called the Boston Massacre, the patriot schoolteacher James Lovell
gave a stirring oration at the Old South Church in which he said the killings wouldn’t have happened were it not for a standing
army amongst us.
We all crowded close to hear, nodding our heads.
Why not constables or watchmen to keep order? The notion of using soldiers to enforce unpopular laws was tyrannical. “You see the danger of it,” Lovell said, reminding us of that winter’s night when
anxious soldiers shot boys and left them bleeding scarlet in the snow. “When did our assembly pass an act to hazard our property,
liberty, and lives? What check have we upon a British Army? Can we disband it? Can we stop its pay?”
We all knew the answer. And I, too, felt the indignation rise in my breast.
“Athens once was free,” Lovell continued, proving himself a fine speaker. “Until a citizen—a favorite of the people—destroyed
the commonwealth and made himself tyrant. In Rome, Caesar got the affections of his army, overthrew the state, and made himself
dictator. By the same instruments, many lesser republics have fallen prey to the devouring jaws of tyrants.”
Many who had doubted the king was a despot left Mr. Lovell’s speech with their minds changed. I left it as fearful as I was
defiant, for I thought it only a matter of time before the jaws of tyranny snapped down upon us, too.
The fangs sank in come April, on the day John banged into the house, his straw farmer’s hat askew, so agitated that he still
had a shovel in his hand. “Abigail!”
I rushed from the kitchen. “What’s happened?”
John panted, sweat dripping from his brow. “Fighting in Concord. A rider just told me the British opened fire on militiamen
there. Then a bloodbath in Lexington when they tried to retreat. Maybe two hundred, three hundred dead.”
I couldn’t credit it. Concord was more than fifty miles north, so I’d never been there, though my brother had a house up that
way. “Any word of Bill?”
John nodded. “Your brother was one of the militiamen who returned fire, his whereabouts now unknown.”
My brother had always been a wayward soul, and I had hard feelings about his drinking and gambling, but the thought Bill might
be shot dead erased any feeling other than worry. “Dear God. What of his wife and children?”
“All I know is that your sister-in-law is trying to nurse one of the dying British regulars.”
Dying . . .
Had it really come to this?
John’s grave expression told me that it had. “The British were in Concord in an attempt to seize my cousin Sam and others,
but they were warned just in time by Mr. Revere.”
Learning this, my heart clenched such that I felt the need to lean back against the wall for steadiness. My first worry was that if the authorities were looking for Samuel Adams, they might confuse one Adams for another, as would happen again many times in our lives.
My second worry was that my husband might also now be a wanted man in his own right.
The same thought occurred to our son Johnny, who peered from the doorway where he eavesdropped. “Will you hide, Papa?”
I, too, desperately wanted to know John’s answer. And I held my breath, waiting while my husband leaned the shovel against
the door and took off his gloves. “No,” John finally said. “I won’t hide. Swim or sink, live or die, survive or perish, I
am with my country. You may depend upon it.”
My clenching heart swelled with pride and fear in equal measure. I couldn’t have loved a coward, but I’d married a lawyer,
not a soldier. I’d chosen my husband precisely because he was the sort to quarrel with a pen, not a musket.
Still, I was grateful that he had a musket. And when he pulled it down and sent Johnny to saddle his horse, I asked, “Where
do you go?”
“To Lexington to see for myself what’s happened,” John replied. “I’ll look for your brother. I’ll send word. If danger approaches,
take the children to the woods.”
I nodded, trying not to clutch his arm and beg him to stay. If my husband were captured, the British might hang him. And even
if he were somehow overlooked in this scene of war, all our worldly comforts were now at risk.
I felt weak in every limb. Only a terrible rage finally stiffened my spine. The king had chosen to kill us rather than let the East India Company lose money. Britain was now stained with the blood of its own children, and I’d
never look upon her as a mother country again. So, as John readied to go, I pulled myself upright, kissed his cheek, and whispered,
“What does this mean for us?”
“It means war,” John said. “The die is cast. The Rubicon crossed. And if we don’t defend ourselves, they will kill us.”
The British retreated to Boston. Now fifteen thousand militiamen from all over New England laid siege to hold them there. The fighting was no longer distant. It was ten miles
away. And because our house was on the main road, militiamen and refugees from Boston passed hourly, so we heard bits of their
conversation from our windows.
“Starve ’em out if they mean to attack us—”
“—stop them from launching raids—”
“They’ll have no supplies or reinforcement over land!”
Some of the refugees included my own sister Mary and her husband, who had obtained a special visa to be allowed to leave Boston.
Other passersby begged for help, including a minuteman who staggered to my house carrying a wounded comrade. “He’s been shot.
Thought we had it patched up last night, but now it’s bleeding again.”
We put the injured man on my kitchen floor, where I knelt to see if there was anything I might do. I’d asked Patty and Nabby
to wind bandages and now they came to good use. Thankfully, the wound did not look mortal. Then again, how would I know? I
was no doctor!
Once the wounded man was rebandaged and resting, I emptied my larder to feed bedraggled families who had fled Boston and walked
through the night. For myself, I was determined to stay in Braintree doing what I could to help. To make room for refugees
in need of lodgings, I said, “Patty, Nabby, you sleep with me, and the boys will, too, leaving room for the injured in the
house. Surely, our tenant farmers will make room for the rest.”
In this, unfortunately, I was firmly opposed by the surly and impudent Mr. Hayden, who was renting some rooms in our dairy.
Though he had himself two sons in the Patriot militia, he refused to move his belongings to make space for those fleeing the
fight.
“It’ll only be for a few days,” I argued with Mr. Hayden.
“Not even one day,” he said, spitting tobacco juice altogether too near my boot. “It may be your milk house, but as a paying
tenant I have the right of it, and it’s not your place to demand I surrender an inch of it.”
I tried a softer appeal. “I know you to be a great patriot, sir, and if you could—”
“Don’t work your wiles on me, Mrs. Adams,” he snapped. “You’re a handsome little woman, but I’ll not be stirred. And if you
put my belongings out of place, I shall have the law on you.”
The law. As if there were any such thing in this chaos! He’d never speak to my husband this way, but I had no recourse, because Mr.
Hayden believed John wouldn’t support my “womanly weakness” in taking in refugees. Worse, I didn’t know if he was wrong.
I’d heard too little from John since he rode off with his musket. Only that my brother was alive and in the fight while my
husband was on his way to Philadelphia to rejoin congress there.
Those shots at Lexington and Concord were, as they now say, heard round the world. And I believed the British would sorely regret it. Other colonies were rising up, too. New York seized royal arms and munitions.
Men of Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Rhode Island joined the militia in the thousands. Marylanders were already marching
north to fight for us.
It was, indeed, to be war.
On an evening in mid-June, the thunder of guns startled me from my bed, the noise so loud it rattled the house and awakened
my children. It was still the wee hours of the morning; two-year-old Tommy was crying, and after lighting a candle, I reached
for him while Johnny and Charlie clambered to the window in their nightclothes, eager to see.
Charlie said, “Doesn’t sound like muskets.”
And his older brother, Johnny, told him, “It isn’t. It’s a cannonade from the British ships in the harbor. Mama, will you
take me up Penn’s Hill to see?”
What a brave and inquisitive boy Johnny was. But as I gentled his baby brother, I said, “We can’t leave the little ones.”
Hugging herself against the noise of the bombardment, Nabby said, “I’ll stay with them.”
She could be trusted, and there was Patty, too, who had tumbled from her bed with the rest of us as the cannons continued to rumble.
Now I felt as if I must put on a brave face for the children. So, as dawn lit upon us, I dressed and took our eldest son to
climb to a perch where we could see. Johnny and I knelt together in the grass. And having had the foresight to grab his father’s
spyglass before we left the house, my eldest boy used it to peer in the direction of the rising pillars of smoke that blackened
the dawn.
Breed’s Hill blazed in red and yellow while British warships blasted away, illuminating the sky with explosions. It was far
off, but not far enough, for already the air became tinged with the scent of sulfur and pulsed around us with malevolent force.
We kept low, holding hands.
“When will it stop?” Johnny asked.
Maybe not ’til they’ve laid us to ashes, I thought, but dared not say. With the light of dawn, I could see that neighbors were gathering at my gate to share news
passed by riders.
“Farmer Whittemore has been shot in the face and bayoneted—”
“—but that man is nearly eighty years old!—”
“Old enough to fire a musket.”
Upon hearing of the incident, Dr. Tufts had rushed to the scene to help the old farmer, though he despaired of his life. Meanwhile,
patriots like Mrs. Warren’s husband and brother were both fighting at Breed’s or Bunker Hill. Everything was rumor and confusion.
And every farmwife bustled out to the road with bandages and brews for the exhausted or injured.
One of the youngest—more boy than man—collapsed before me in tears. “Are you hurt?” I asked, reaching for his hands to offer
comfort.
“It’s Dr. Joseph Warren!” he cried. “He’s dead.”
I shook my head, refusing to believe it. But the militiaman told a grisly story. “Musket ball to the brain. But that wasn’t
enough for the villains. The British tried to sever his head for a trophy. Don’t know where they buried him or if they left
him for the vultures.”
At this, a shriek of distress sounded from behind me, and I turned to see that Nabby had heard it all.
The good doctor had become a cherished friend. He’d tried to save my daughter Susanna. He’d been kind to John when he suffered that frightening attack of pain in his chest. And he was always tending my little ones of every sniffle.
Despite my children’s eyes upon me, I burst into tears. Nabby and Johnny did the same, the three of us huddled together in
grief as I reassured them that Dr. Warren would be remembered as a great patriot, and that he was in God’s gentle hands, now.
I couldn’t be so easily reassured, for I’d later hear that the British threw Joseph Warren into a common grave. Was that to
be my husband’s fate?
John wasn’t a soldier, but he’d written that we must all become soldiers now. And as if reading my thoughts, a neighbor said,
“We’re only farmers. We don’t have a chance against the finest fighting force in the world.”
But as John had said, the die was cast. We would fight anyway. We would have to.
John and I might be separated by distance, but we were tightly united in this desperate struggle. And so were our children.
Victory could be our only salvation. So that night I collected my pewter spoons and began melting them to make musket balls
for the fight.