Bunker Hill

enemy. But as Oliver also observed, “Savage is a convertible term.” Even before the Boston Massacre, the anger that had once been directed toward the Indians had been transferred to the British regulars. And it wasn’t just the army; the British navy, which had a history of abducting colonists for service on its warships, was also a perennial source of outrage and anxiety. In 1769 a harpoon-toting sailor on a vessel from Marblehead stabbed the leader of a British impressment gang in the neck. For a variety of reasons—not the least of which was the people’s hatred of impressment—the sailor was acquitted and released. Fears of the marauding British remained so high in coastal New England that townspeople who lived within twenty miles of the sea routinely brought the same muskets to Sunday meeting that their ancestors had once used against the Indians. The colonists were still fighting for their liberties, but now it was their supposed allies, the soldiers and sailors of the British Empire, who had become the enemy.
    By the end of August 1774, as the possibility of an armed conflict between the New Englanders and the British regulars became increasingly likely, attention turned to the black granular mixture of saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur known as gunpowder. Notoriously difficult to manufacture, gunpowder was almost exclusively produced in Europe. Assuming Britain was about to ban the exportation of gunpowder to Massachusetts (a ban that did, in fact, occur that fall), the militiamen’s firearms would be rendered useless if an alternative supply were not soon found. Gage, on the other hand, could depend on a steady supply of gunpowder from Britain. It was still in his best interests, however, to acquire all available stores in the province, and both sides began a desperate rush for gunpowder.
    By law, each town was allotted its own reserve of powder, which was stored in a regional magazine. In Boston, large quantities had already been taken from the powderhouse on the common as the many towns surrounding the city withdrew their reserves. For his part, Gage wanted to make sure that nothing happened to the powder that belonged to the crown and had begun to move those stocks to the security of the Castle. As part of this effort, he wrote William Brattle (who despite being a major general in the Cambridge militia was always referred to by his alliterative earlier rank as Brigadier Brattle) about the status of the reserves at a powderhouse on Quarry Hill in modern Somerville. Brattle reported that the only remaining powder at the arsenal was the 250 half-barrels belonging to the crown.
    If Brattle had simply answered Gage’s question, all might have remained well with the doughty brigadier. But Brattle, who like Daniel Leonard and Samuel Quincy had started out as a patriot but was now a committed loyalist, chose to relay a conversation he’d had with a militia officer from Concord. The officer, Brattle wrote, had complained of being pressured by local patriots to prepare his company “to meet at one minute’s warning equipped with arms and ammunition.” Brattle recounted how he’d warned the officer that to comply with this policy—which was clearly intended to hasten the militia’s response to a possible incursion by British regulars—was to risk being “hanged for a rebel.” Brattle ended the letter by assuring Gage that “the king’s powder . . . shall remain [at Quarry Hill] as a sacred depositum till ordered out by the Captain General.” The clear implication was that Gage should act quickly to prevent the patriots from stealing the powder.

    Four days later, on Wednesday, August 31, Gage was making his way up Boston’s Newbury Street toward the residence of an officer who lived in a house near the Liberty Tree. Whether it was by accident or (as John Andrews believed) by design, Brigadier Brattle’s unfortunately long-winded letter slipped from the governor’s pocket onto the surface of the street, where someone sympathetic to the patriot cause eventually discovered it.
    Bostonians had already noticed some unusual activity among the soldiers encamped on the common. Earlier that afternoon, a group of several hundred regulars had been culled from the various regiments. After being provided with a day’s provisions, the soldiers were told to be prepared to march early the next morning. “Various were the conjectures respecting their destination,” John Andrews wrote, but not even the