Bunker Hill

the buildings associated with Thomas’s large estate, and Marshfield became one of the few loyalist outposts beyond Boston in Massachusetts.
    Even in once-belligerent Worcester, the patriot movement was showing distressing signs of infighting and waning momentum. “[We] are in a most lamentable situation . . . ,” Ephraim Doolittle wrote John Hancock. “Our Tory enemies using all their secret machinations to divide us and break us to pieces. . . . I fear if we are not soon called to action we shall be like a rope of sand and have no more strength.”
    —
    By the beginning of the new year, Gage had long since been joined by his wife Margaret and the rest of their extended family, which included his adjutant and brother-in-law Stephen Kemble. The extraordinarily capable engineer Captain John Montresor helped oversee the building of the fortifications at the town entrance, which by January had been finished off with a coat of whitewash. One of Gage’s most trusted associates was the Swiss-born General Frederick Haldimand, who had recently arrived from New York and taken up residence in a house near the common.
    In an incident that started in a way reminiscent of what had proved to be John Malcom’s undoing, Haldimand was approached by a “committee” of boys who complained that his servant had thrown ashes on the coasting, or sledding, path that ran past his house. Slipping into the patriot rhetoric of the day, the boys explained that “their fathers before them had improved it as a coast from time immemorial” and requested that the snow and ice in front of the general’s house be returned to its former state. Haldimand was happy to oblige, and when he later told Gage of the encounter, his commander wearily responded that “it was impossible to beat the notion of liberty out of the people, as it was rooted in ’em
from their childhood
.”
    Gage received much criticism that winter from both sides. Many of the patriots viewed him as the hated tool of the North administration, while his own officers dismissed him as “an old woman” who pandered unnecessarily to the townspeople. Gage realized that the simmering tension between the soldiers and Bostonians could explode at any moment into a bloody act of violence that might spark a war. Since he could always discipline his own troops, the townspeople were his chief concern, and he made every effort to address their demands, however irritating and seemingly inconsequential. Since this took up a disproportionate amount of his time, he proved less available to the many mandamus councillors who had been forced to take up residence in the city. John Andrews commented that while Gage was “always ready to attend to” the selectmen and other community leaders, “the poor refugee councilors are obliged to walk the entry [of Province House] for hours before they can be admitted to audience.” Inevitably contributing to Gage’s coolness to the councillors was their reluctance to testify against the patriot leaders, and Andrews was convinced that Gage secretly “despises them from his heart.”
    Gage’s relationship with Admiral Graves was also less than ideal. The frosty decorum that existed between the two commanders in the summer quickly degenerated in December with the arrival of several hundred marines under the command of Major John Pitcairn. The marines existed in a kind of jurisdictional netherworld between the army and the navy (John Andrews claimed they exemplified the worst attributes of both), and Graves, who was as volatile and outspoken as Gage was courteous, objected to the general’s insistence that the marines remain under his sole control. When later in the winter Graves’s blockade turned away a vessel with much-needed supplies for the soldiers stationed in Boston, even the mild-mannered Gage had difficulty controlling his temper.
    Some observers attributed the acrimony between the two leaders to their wives, who, like their husbands, vied for dominance within the increasingly circumscribed world of Boston. In addition to being beautiful, Margaret was reported to be strong-willed, and one British officer even claimed that Thomas Gage “was governed by his wife.” Another officer reported that a ball held on January 11 was the result of a subscription scheme “proposed by Mrs. Gage and carried into execution by her favorites by which she enjoyed a dance and opportunity of seeing her friends at no expense.” Despite the plight of