Chapter X: The Price That Had to Be Paid 315 (5)

All were repulsed. There was hot fighting going on near Lynn. It was difficult for the battle commander to judge what its result would be. Once his forces sent to Fort Heath for more men. Later, they telegraphed that they were holding their ground.

The enemy struck again, and again. He made an attempt on Winthrop, and lost two destroyers in the mine fields. The fleet opened heavy fire at short intervals, to mask the attack of the landing parties. But the telegraph and telephone system of the forts sent word everywhere, to all the outlying posts, of the uniform success of the defense, with the result of making their fight constantly more effective.

_The Defenses Hold Out_

The defenses were holding out. When word came at last that the raiders who had landed at Marblehead Neck were retreating to their boats, the end of the night’s fighting had arrived. The fleet called off its boats, and took them aboard.

It was near dawn. Once more, for the last time, the ships ran in, passing the batteries at full speed, and fired from every gun that would bear in the instant of their passing. Every huge turret gun, every broadside battery, opened up at once.

For many miles inland the air trembled and hummed. The hills growled with rolling echoes. Windows in distant places blew inward and walls trembled. But the defenses held.

Ship after ship swung in that fierce circle and passed. It was the climax of the night’s bombardment. When the dawn spread far on the ocean horizon, the defenders saw the enemy fleet lying back against it, far out of the zone of fire.

The sea was bare between them and the forts, except for a rent ruin hanging on the Outer Brewster where a shattered destroyer was aground. Off Cohasset lay another, sprawling on the rocks called The Grampuses, half out of the sea as if it were the torn body of a weird monster that had thrown itself ashore in a dying agony.

“No damage,” said Fort Revere. “No damage, except dismounted searchlight,” said Fort Strong. “One 6-inch gun dismantled,” said Standish. “No damage,” reported Andrews and Banks. In Fort Warren two 3-inch quick firers were destroyed.

“We could hold them off forever,” said the battle commander, “if we were protected from the land.”

_It Was His Last Fight_

The successful fight of his defenses had made it only the more bitter for him. He knew that this was the last fight. He knew that the army that was sweeping northward would take him in the back before night.

He looked at one of his 12-inch rifles. He walked over to it and patted the beautiful thing, so shapely, so graceful that it seemed impossible that it should weigh 35 tons. “If they had just given you that little extra elevation!” he murmured. “Then yonder ships wouldn’t dare lie within 20,000 yards of us.”[101]

But “they” had not given the rifles that little extra elevation. “They” had found time enough and money enough to pay for bridges over muddy creeks, for printing millions of words of oratory, for hundreds of private bills. “They” had been able to find money to pay themselves for constructive recesses of Congress, and mileage for journeys that they had not made. But they had not been able to find money for defense.

Just a little foresight, and Boston, that now was trembling, might be sitting behind that charmed circle of its great guns and laughing at all the navies of the world.

Haggard and pale, Boston’s people looked toward the sea and the dawn. The sullen thunders still rolled out there, but slowly now, and far off. The fleet was using only its heaviest guns, and firing deliberately, though steadily. Having failed to destroy the effectiveness of the defenses, it would content itself with long range fire, simply to wear the defenders out till the army should arrive.

All night long Boston people, moved to unendurable terror by the bombardment, had tried to flee from the city. All night long other crowds had tried to enter it. On all the roads these opposing crowds had met and jostled.

_Opposing Streams of Fugitives_

They warned each other, and tried to turn each other back. Shells were falling into Boston town, said the people who were fleeing from the city. Crazed by fear, they invented the most monstrous tales and believed them.

The in-coming refugees, too, invented tales. They told of soldiers who had appeared in nearby towns, and who were burning and killing. Nothing so well illustrated the effect of terror on the faculty of reason as the fact that always, after this wild interchange of news, the city people continued to press toward the country, fearing soldiers less than the cannon-shots that had rung in their ears all night; and the country people rushed into the city, so panic-driven by what they had heard of the soldiers and their bloody day of vengeance, that they cared nothing for the heavy thunder that was shaking all the air.

Though the roads out of Boston were thus crowded, the fugitives were only a small proportion of the population. Never before had humanity realized how firmly men are chained to their habitat. Here was a city, terribly beset by land and sea with unknown, terrible fate closing steadily around it. Beyond lay the United States where there was complete freedom still, and safety. Yet who could seek it?

There were none who could go, except those temporarily mad with fear, or those so abjectly poor that it mattered nothing to them where they trudged. The workers could not go. They had to cling to the places that they knew, to the scanty foot-hold that was all the more precious to them for its scantiness. The rich could not go. Money had stopped. All that they owned had become suddenly valueless for producing cash; and without cash they could not flee. The merely well-to-do, whose whole life depended on the town, whose whole possessions lay in real estate, in homes, in shops--where could they turn?

_Boston in Hopeless Fear_

They stayed. They even tried, dully, to attend to business, though there was no business. Mail was still coming in and going out, but in a vastly circuitous way, as it had to go around by way of Burlington, and so through Vermont and New Hampshire to its destination. Boston could communicate still by telegraph and telephone with the United States outside of southern and western New England; but this, too, was in an equally circuitous way, and even such service as existed was constantly in danger of being severed.

Motor traffic had almost ceased on the streets. The trolley and train services were cut down to the merest necessity. Gasoline and coal shortage already had begun to make itself felt. Prices had gone up for flour and for meat. The fish wharves held none except empty vessels.

There was an unreasoning fear of the waterfront streets. People shrank from them, and used the side streets, as if the tiny difference of a block or two could save them, should shells begin to fall.

There was a fear, less unreasoning, of tall buildings. Most of the upper stories in high office buildings were deserted, except for daring ones who went in temporarily to look toward the harbor.

A renewed fear of aeroplanes also had seized the city. For days they had passed and repassed, till the people had become almost accustomed to them, since they threw no bombs nor made other demonstrations. Now, with the steady cannonading, the old fear returned. There were wild flights when the whirring roar was heard. More than once, men and women were trampled in those sudden dumb panics. Hypnotized by the impending of a greater tragedy, the citizens scarcely noted these episodes that, in any other time, would have shocked the town.

A rumor went through the streets that the fleet had been driven off. Survivors from Winthrop appeared in the city. They clutched at strangers and told with quivering mouths how the shells had crashed into their town, and how they and theirs in night clothes had fled between falling walls through a night ruddy with fire.

Refugees from Breed’s Island told how the ground was all ploughed by shells falling wild. They told of the water tower, flung far down the hill.

_Cities Destroyed and Taken_

Hull was destroyed utterly. There was nothing left of it. All gay Nantasket had vanished. Between it and Point Allerton the houses along shore were thrown on each other and torn apart or burned.

On the last train to come in from the direction of Brockton were some who had fled from that city. It had been taken by the advancing army in the small hours of the morning. The town authorities, ordered out of bed by soldiers, had been escorted to the enemy commander, who had made them write announcements. Before sunrise all the streets flaunted placards ordering the inhabitants to continue their business. Other placards warned them to deliver up all arms of any description.

Twenty of the most prominent men, said the fugitives, had been seized as hostages.

Every little while now Boston’s communication with some point was being cut. These severed lines told of the advance of the hostile army as eloquently as messages might.

Up and down Washington street moved the multitude, waiting for news. The Old South Meeting House that has looked down on so many dramatic Boston spectacles never had looked on one so tragic as this--on a proud and not timorous city that was waiting impotently to be taken and dealt with.

Had the enemy come quickly, had the army advanced into Boston with a swift rush, it would have been less agonizing for the waiting city than this slow, systematic, machine-like advance like the jaws of a great pincer that were closing down with cruel deliberation.

The armed circle was contracting all the time, but it contracted slowly. Though the enemy’s scouts had assured him long ago that the road was free, he was taking no chances in that hostile land, whose sting he had felt. Far as he might throw out his advance guards, he took care that they should remain in constant touch with the main force and with each other. He moved his divisions in fighting array. He kept an unbroken line of communications.

_Making Good His Possessions_

Wherever the army passed, it made good its possession wholly. It left no village behind it in its march whose means of existence, communication, food supply and machinery of labor and business it had not made entirely its own.

Where there were destroyed places, the invader organized the population to rebuild them. He levied on every community, large and small, for funds. He paid out nothing of his own, except written scrip. At one blow the whole financial system of the conquered country was converted into one great source of tribute.

Suddenly there came a storm of news to the Boston papers. It came from the country to the south of the harbor--from Cohasset and Hingham, Weymouth and Quincy.[102]

Heavy artillery was being unloaded all along the line of the south shore branch of the Old Colony Railroad. Horses and limbers were moving along all the roads to the shore. Soldiers were advancing into all the towns.

Before the Hingham wires were cut, the correspondent in that town reported that enormous guns were being moved through it, on heavy motors.

Quincy telegraphed that troops had hurried through there and seized the 100-foot Great Hill, and also the yacht club house on Hough’s Neck. Then Quincy, too, was cut off.

Scarcely half an hour later the fire from the forts broke out furiously. It was answered, with greater speed and fury, from the shore, where the foe had posted his great guns to enfilade the harbor defenses.

At Fort Revere the commandant cut away concrete emplacements and succeeded in swinging one of his 12-inch guns around to fight the assailants, putting a heavy howitzer near Hingham out of action.

A second plunging shot fell near a gun behind Baker Hill; but the assailants, from howitzer batteries concealed under Turkey and Scituate Hills, concentrated a desperate bombardment on him that drove the Americans from the works.[103]

Firing from heavy caliber weapons at short range, pouring explosives and common shell and shrapnel from every vantage point along all the shore, the hostile army swept the rear of the harbor defenses with such blasts that the mere impact of the solid shells made a din like the pounding of monstrous rivetters’ hammers.[104]

From the sea all the big guns of the ships struck into the chorus. The vessels pressed in as closely as they dared and opened with every cannon that could get the range.

_Boston Completely Isolated_

Boston’s populace, listening to the clamour from the sea, scarcely noted that the bulletins were announcing that all the railroad lines of the Boston and Maine Railroad leading north and northwest to Portsmouth, Haverhill, Lawrence and Lowell had been seized, and that Boston was completely cut off.

Silent policemen appeared all at once followed by men with posters and paste-pails. The crowds saw posters go up on their walls, signed by the Boston Citizens’ Committee.

There was a poster in great red letters warning the inhabitants to deliver any firearms that they possessed in the City Hall within six hours.

“ATTENTION!” said another placard. “In case of military occupation of the city, a single disorderly act may mean the ruin of all. It is the duty of all citizens to offer no resistance, and to report to the authorities any plan toward resistance.”

There was a great stir in the crowd. A cab was pushing its way through Washington Street. Two dishevelled and blood-stained artillerymen, and an equally dishevelled civilian were in it.

While the soldiers went on to the City Hall, the civilian got out and entered a newspaper office. He was a reporter.

The rumor sped from man to man in the crowd before the building and from street to street that news had arrived from the forts. There was a tremendous press into Washington Street, where men and women, crushed together, stared at the building.

The cab hardly had stopped at the City Hall before a bulletin went up.

FORT ANDREWS GARRISON
DIES AT ITS POST

IGNORES SUMMONS TO SURRENDER

ONLY THREE MEN ESCAPE FROM RUINS

Ten minutes later the “extras” appeared and were whirled through the town. They passed with the speed almost of the wind; for men passed them from hand to hand. They shouted the news to people looking from windows, in a delirium half of dismay, half of exultation. The newspaper man had brought in such a tale as would live in American history.

_The Newspaper Man’s Story_

He had been writing his story during the night’s bombardments while the mortar pits quaked around him with the eruptions of their steel volcanoes. He told how, in the morning, there had come suddenly from the shore the enfilading fire that caught the works in the back.

The men at the mortars, unable to turn their ordnance against these assailants, continued to fire at the ships, obedient to the instructions from the range-stations, till the blasts from the bursting charges above and around them tore away all the systems of fire control.[105]

One enemy howitzer, trained at the very edge of a pit, threw shot on shot till a group of mortars was buried under the débris that was hurled down from the torn mounds.

The mortars ceased action. The assailant, suspending his bombardment, demanded instant surrender, with the condition that the works must be delivered intact. The remnants of the garrison, black with smoke and grime, wounded and burned, replied by manning such movable artillery as was left. There was only one end to that. It was death. In twenty minutes there were four men left alive in the defenses--two artillerymen, the newspaper man and a noncommissioned officer.

They lay flat under a mound. There was a small boat hidden below the far end of the island. “Get out of this if you can!” said the noncommissioned man, an electrician sergeant. “Hurry! I’ll give you five minutes! Good-by!”

He crawled back into the works. As they rowed away, they saw boats with invaders leaving the mainland for the island. Then there came a lick of flame out of the mortar battery that expanded instantly into a spraying fountain. An enormous detonation nearly blew their boat out of the water. The sergeant had found the firing key and touched off the hidden mine to demolish the defenses.

In the excitement over this news that had broken the dull strain of waiting, the people of Boston scarcely noticed that all at once the firing at sea had stopped.

_Demanding Surrender_

Down the harbor a boat with a flag of truce was lying under Fort Warren. An officer, led blind-folded into the works, presented a summons transmitted from the headquarters of the army. It called on the commander to surrender the entire system of defenses without further damage. It demanded also that a complete diagram of all the mine fields be delivered at once.

“You have four hours,” continued this summons. “At the end of that time, we shall bring our artillery to bear on the city from every quarter. Every five minutes thereafter we shall fire on a given section. You have made a brave and magnificent defense. By surrendering now, you will save your city from unnecessary destruction which you are unable to prevent otherwise.”

“I will reply in half an hour,” said the commander. At the end of that time he sent this answer:

“I shall surrender the defenses on condition that the city be left inviolate: that no troops occupy it: that the civil authorities be left in control: and that no levy be made on the municipality.”

“Absolutely refused,” the hostile commander replied promptly. “Unconditional surrender, or bombardment begins at time stated. If any attempt is made to dismantle works, bombardment will begin at once.”

This was at noon. The hour-hand of the Old South Meeting House clock had not quite touched one, when artillery was passing through Waltham and Newton Centre, and along all the roads crossing the Charles and Neponset Rivers.

There were cavalry and cycle and motor troops on these roads, and trains full of infantry. But always and everywhere was artillery. The sleek guns, pounding along New England’s highways, spoke so wickedly of destructiveness, that they were more terrifying to the population than long columns of heavily armed men.

At Jamaica Plain big howitzers were detrained and taken to the ridge running west by north from the line of the New York and New England railroad. More guns were unloaded in Brookline and posted on the crests from whose tops, 200 feet high, they had all Brookline, all Boston to the bay, and Cambridge and Somerville under their long range fire.[106]

Infantry with field guns occupied Cambridge and Somerville, and laid their ordnance on all points that covered Boston from there. A regiment pushed quickly through Charlestown, took possession of the great grounds of the Navy Yard and stationed a battery of 3-inch field pieces under the Bunker Hill Monument.

_The Final Threat_

At quarter past three the hostile General sent a message to the American commander at Fort Warren apprising him of the disposition of the guns. “In one quarter of an hour,” said he, “the bombardment will begin. We shall fire at Brookline first.”

The commander walked to the shattered flagstaff of the fort, on whose splintered top the American flag was waving in the wind from the Atlantic. He bared his head, and with his own hand hauled down the colors that he had defended so well.

Five minutes later the colors on all the defenses dropped.

Until then no soldiers had appeared in the city of Boston itself. The armed ring had contented itself with encircling all the suburbs. Now the telephone bell rang in the City Hall, and a voice asked for the Mayor.

The voice was that of the hostile commander, speaking from Brookline.

“Your defenses are in our hands,” he said. “Our guns command every part of your city. I have the honor to demand unconditional and peaceable surrender at once, with all property of every kind. I regret to say that I can give you no time for discussion. I must request you to give me your answer now.”

The Mayor, with the instrument at his ear, looked around at the members of the Committee. “It is the army commander,” he said. “He demands unconditional surrender.”

“There is only one answer to make,” said one of the Committee.

“WE SURRENDER”

The Mayor turned to the telephone. “We surrender,” he said.

“Very well,” was the response. “A body of troops under a general officer will enter the city at once. They will have orders to punish any disturbance severely. I shall have the honor of calling on you shortly after my men have occupied the town.”

A little later the Citizens’ Committee saw cavalry with machine guns approach the City Hall. Similar bodies were taking position in all the squares and parks, and posting their little guns where they could sweep the intersecting streets. Up and down Washington Avenue, and up and down all the side streets, were sentinels and guard parties. A wagon train was encamped on the Common.

And a little later still, preceded by light cavalry, three automobiles rolled through the streets to the City Hall. In each sat four men, dressed in campaign uniforms. They were leaning back, smoking, and looking with interest at the buildings. They seemed not to see the silent crowds that lined the sidewalks.

These sedate, cheerful, interested gentlemen were the commander and his staff, arriving to take formal possession of the city. With machine guns and rifles threatening all around them, the silent people of Boston saw their conquerors enter the City Hall, and knew that their sovereignty had passed into alien hands.

VIII

DEFENDING CONNECTICUT

“What is happening in Boston?” The question stood before the United States and there was no answer. All communication with it had been annihilated as if by a lightning stroke.

Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire still were able to reach the rest of the country with entire freedom, except that everything, mail, telegraph messages and freight, had to pass by way of the Lake Champlain Valley exclusively. But Boston, the richest half of Massachusetts, all of Rhode Island and the whole eastern end of Connecticut were as completely cut off as if all that great territory had been torn from the continent and dropped into the sea.

Of the 195 American cities with more than thirty thousand population, twenty-two were in the section that had been lost by the United States. The assessed valuation of those cities alone was more than two billions seven hundred millions of dollars. Ten thousand manufacturing establishments were in the grip of the conqueror.[107]

The grip lay on the captured country like a thing of iron. Telegraph and telephone could be used only under the supervision of soldiers who controlled every central operating station and scrutinized everything, cutting out any expression that did not suit them or refusing transmission altogether. Against these decisions there was no appeal.

_Post Offices Occupied_

The post offices were occupied by censors. Every piece of mail passed under their eyes and reached those to whom it was addressed only after long delay and generally with parts of it obliterated by heavy daubs of printing ink.

All the springs of creative work were broken. Shops and manufactories were open, under orders from the military commanders, but the owners and managers did not know what to do. They continued to produce, dully and without plan. They dared not make even the most unimportant contract, for no man could guess what might happen next. There was no money to be had, except for pressing needs. The banks throughout the conquered territory had been commanded to hold all cash in their vaults. Every man who applied for money had to prove to military officers that it was for immediate subsistence.

In the banks and trust companies’ offices everywhere there were posted placards reading as follows:

“Our conquest, having been completed, carries with it absolute
ownership of property conquered from the enemy State, including
debts as well as personal or real property.”[108]

The richest man in New England was on a level with the poorest. However much wealth he might have lying in the banks, he could draw only enough for daily food. He could not take anything from his safety deposit vaults. They were guarded by armed sentries who permitted access only to those who came accompanied by officers.

This condition would last, as the invaders informed the people, until a complete list of all funds had been made.

In every financial department of cities and towns were uniformed men demanding cash statements and lists of assessed valuations for the purpose of apportioning the amount of contribution to be levied on each community.

While the enemy was going thus systematically to work to ascertain the full money value of his prize, he made requisitions for immediate needs in every place occupied by him. The troops demanded hay, oats, corn and other forage. They paid for the supplies with written papers that acknowledged receipt; but it was noticed that these receipts did not promise payment.[109]

_$50,000 a Day Levied_

In Boston the municipal authorities were informed that the city was subject to a cash levy for the support of troops at the rate of $1 daily for each man of the occupying army, making an amount payable in bank funds of $50,000 a day.[110]

The authorities had no recourse except to find the money. Nominally in control, they were held rigorously to account for the obedience of their city. The Headquarters Staff of the invading army had possession of the State House, and from this point sent out brief orders.

Prominent among the notices that were posted here and in all public places of Boston was the announcement of the institution of the new government. It was:

“On and after this date the City of Boston is under the rule of the
Headquarters Staff of this army. The present civil officials of the
city will continue their functions. A continuance of existing civil
and penal laws, and the exercise of legislative, executive and
administrative duties are permitted under the sanction and with the
participation of the military government.”[111]

Had Boston town gone under in flame and terror, the very fury of the catastrophe might

have carried men through it with less of despair than this cold conquest. Instead of blows to be struck, or blood to be shed, there was only humiliation--humiliation intensified hourly by the cool, unimpassioned correctness with which the enemy treated the fallen city.

He did not even fill the city with troops. Only four thousand infantry and a regiment of cavalry were sent in to hold all Boston. The rest of the army remained outside, encamped or quartered on the people of the suburbs and the towns of the metropolitan district.

_Unconcerned Conquerors_

Unconcerned, almost unguarded, the commander and his officers moved about the town. They went in and out of the City Hall with the assurance of superiors. They occupied the two largest hotels. Brookline people reported that the Country Club there had been turned into a brigade headquarters.

Dazed, as if in the bonds of an ugly nightmare that must vanish if they could only awaken, the people of Boston looked at this handful of men who had so easily, so calmly, made themselves utter masters of a metropolitan district of 39 municipalities--13 cities and 26 towns all within fifteen miles of the State House. From the State House this dozen or two dozen quiet, business-like men in uniform ruled with a word or two over 415 square miles with a population of more than a million and a half of people, and a taxable value of more than two and one-half billions of dollars.[112]

In the city so helplessly given over to them, there were, according to the certificate then lying in the City Clerk’s office, 124,000 men liable to enrollment in the State Militia. These were part of those “millions of men” of whom passionate orators had spoken so often--the millions of heroic, strong, intelligent American freemen who would instantly spring to arms at the call of need and sweep the most daring invader back into the sea.[113]

They were heroic. They were strong. They were intelligent. But they were confronted by the cold truth. It stared at them from all their squares, from all their parks, from the approaches to all their bridges. It was the cold truth--in the shape of cannon. Even the grounds of Harvard and of Boston University were occupied by batteries. Sentinels were on watch in Boston’s church towers with machine guns that pointed down into the streets.

Against that machinery of war, courage was as futile as a dream. Strength was as helpless as an infant in a cyclone. Intelligence was naked against the unintelligent steel.

_Helpless as Any Village_

So this city, one of the richest of the world, next to New York in its imports, with its enormous railroad terminals that drew together the roads of a continent’s commerce, had dropped into the invader’s hand almost for the picking, and lay in his grasp as incapable of resistance as if, instead of being the fourth greatest city of the United States, it had been a seaside village.[114]

There had not been a shot fired after the last shot had sounded from the harbor forts and the American flag had vanished from the harbor sky.

There was nothing to do. Slowly, systematically as it had invested Boston, so the army had taken Boston. There was no commanding point in all the country around it that was not crowned with heavy artillery. There was no road to the city that was not held by troops who demanded passes. Patrols moved constantly through the streets.

Through the whole metropolitan district had been sent a proclamation issued by the local authorities, warning the people that all intercourse between the territories occupied by belligerent armies whether by letter, by travel, or in any other way, had been interdicted and was punishable by fine or imprisonment, or, in cases of serious infraction, by death after summary trial. This proclamation was countersigned by the military commanders of the various districts.[115]

Another proclamation, issued from headquarters in the State House, said:

“The civil authorities, by and with the consent of the military
government, proclaim that troops will be quartered on the
inhabitants at the pleasure of regimental and company officers. The
troops are required to respect the persons and property of citizens
during the good behavior of the latter. Any treachery on the part
of citizens is punishable by death. Refusal to comply with any
provision of this proclamation will be punished with fine or
imprisonment, or in aggravated cases by confiscation of any
property whose use has been denied the troops.”[116]

_Clearing the Wharves_

Along the water-front an order was given to clear all the big wharves. Owners of vessels berthed there were instructed to have them towed to basins or anchored in the stream. Provided with diagrams of the mine-fields that had been surrendered under the conditions of capitulation, the mine-sweepers cleared the harbor for the entrance of the fleet.

Floating from more than a score of warships and transports, the Coalition’s flags moved toward the city. Cannon saluted them from the forts, and they saluted in reply. Among the stricken thousands on shore there were many who sobbed as they heard the foreign thunders peal around their bay, and saw the foreign flags against their sky, with never a starry banner on all those ancient American waters.

There were foreign ships lying under the forts, unloading spare guns to replace those that were destroyed. All the works were busy with enemy sailors, repairing the defenses to protect conquered Boston against attack from its own navy.

Naval and army transports steamed up to the city, and took possession of the wharves and the Navy Yard basins. Destroyers and small craft moved up the channel to the Mystic River and occupied the naval and marine hospitals. Marines and sailors came ashore in South Boston and established a signal station on Telegraph Hill.

The naval commander seized all Federal property that had anything to do with the conduct of the harbor. He assumed control of the quarantine and pilot service and declared the port open under his supervision.[117]

_The News Shut Off_

All this, and all else of importance that was happening in their city, the people of Boston could learn only slowly and in fragments, as the news spread from man to man by word of month. The newspapers were under armed guard, like all other important places that touched on public business. Censors sitting at editorial desks permitted only the printing of the most trivial routine news of local happenings that did not touch on the real concerns of the invaded country and city.

The first pages of all the newspapers were reserved by the military government for its announcements. These were headed:

OFFICIAL!

ORDERS AND DECISIONS BY THE MILITARY
GOVERNMENT OF MASSACHUSETTS AND
THE CITY OF BOSTON

There were so many of them that there was no room for news on the first pages, even had news been permitted.

Within twenty-four hours the city had been set back to its condition in the seventeenth century when Boston’s first newspaper was throttled by a reactionary legislature.[118]

The people of Boston did not know if Connecticut had been conquered. They did not know if New York had fallen. They did not know where their army was or what it was doing. A great battle might be deciding the fate of the entire country, but no whisper reached them.

As in Colonial days, they were reduced to such knowledge as might come from rumor or from information whispered by those who learned something by chance.

It was in this way that nearly everybody in Boston came to know that in the State House there sat a council, dressed in uniform and bearing military rank, but in reality a council of men learned in international and United States law. Surrounded by great rows of books which they had brought with them, these men were the real rulers of the conquered land.[119]

The Commanding General and his field staff might act with summary authority under the rules of war. The Commanding General’s name might be signed to all the scores of orders that issued daily. But this council of military lawyers acted as governors, judges and soldiers at once. Their decisions in all mooted cases, their ingeniously worded orders, were perfecting the enemy’s complete possession.[120]

_Stripping Boston of Its Treasure_

No American, great or humble, might go a step beyond the prescribed and routine affairs of the day without first learning what their orders were. No man held property, whether it were priceless or beggarly, except by their favor. No man knew at any moment what remaining liberties might not be taken from him at a word from them.[121]

With the impersonal coldness of a judicial machine they went about the work of stripping the city of treasure. In all the departments of the municipality were soldier experts, studying the books. In the Custom House were half a hundred others searching the records of exports and imports. Every financial institution of the city had been ordered to present its accounts in the State House.

During all this time the invader made daily requisitions for the use of the troops or for other military purposes. He demanded for the navy a supply of 10,000 pounds of smoking tobacco, 1,000 pounds of roasted coffee, one ton of rice, 500 pounds of salt, and 50,000 pounds of fresh meat. He made requisition for paint, cable, ropes, hose, and steel for the ships.[122]

There were requisitions for medical supplies, for cloth and for shoes. To the harassed officials, who remonstrated against the hardships that were laid on the city, and pointed to the state of its trade, the reply was that it was one of the richest cities in the world and that the levies were modest. When a deputation of citizens pressed the protest, the council printed its reply in the “official” columns of the newspapers.

“In regard to the requisitions made by the occupying army,” said this statement, “attention is called to the fact that the United States Supreme Court in the case New Orleans versus Steamship Company, 20 Wall, 394, decided that the military governing authority ‘may do anything to strengthen itself and to weaken the enemy,’ and that the Court further stated that ‘there is no limit to the powers that may be exerted in such cases save those which are found in the laws and usages of war.’”[123]

_The Old Spirit_

Despite the cannon that glowered in all the streets, Boston’s fury at this ironic rejoinder nearly broke through all restraint. In the old city that had the famous Tea Party among its prized achievements, the spirit of that past age awoke again, and spread, almost without concerted thought or intention. Wherever men could meet they formed in groups to ease their minds by free speech, if they could do nothing else. In several quarters of the city there were incipient riots, suppressed by the police only just in time to avoid bloody interference by the soldiers.

“We must curb this town,” said the Commanding General to the military council in the State House. “It is not one to remain cowed for long, without repressive measures.”

The council nodded. Next morning’s newspapers had on their first pages an announcement that made many readers rub their eyes and stare incredulously at the printed page, for on it was such a proclamation as might have been read in Boston town in the reign of Charles I. It was headed:

SEDITION LAW

1. Every person resident in the territory occupied by the power exercising sovereignty by right of conquest, who shall utter seditious words or speeches, or write, publish or circulate scurrilous libels against the governing authority, or who shall conceal such practices that come to his knowledge, shall be punished summarily and severely.

2. Every person who joins a secret society or attends a secret meeting for the purpose of advocating sedition or rebellion shall be punished summarily and severely.[124]

Again the citizens’ committee protested. Boston lawyers represented to the military council that American citizens could not be held guilty of sedition or rebellion if they adhered to their country.

_Citizens of No Country_

“The inhabitants of conquered territory,” answered the council, “are citizens of no country. They are under the jurisdiction of the occupying army; but they are not even entitled to the privileges of citizens of the country which controls that army.”[125]

“But mere conquest does not entitle you to treat them as rebels,” urged the committee. “They are within their rights to preserve their allegiance, so long as they do not violate the rules of war by opposing you with arms.”

One of the officers smiled. He opened a book. “Once more I must respectfully refer you to your own court decisions,” he said, and read from a United States Supreme Court verdict: “‘Conquest is a valid title while the victor maintains exclusive territory of the conquered country.’”[126]

“There is nothing that we can do,” the committee reported to the people. It was the refrain that sounded in all the United States just then. To the wild projects for desperate defense that were being broached every day in the city of New York, to the frenzied demands that the volunteers in the western camps be rushed into the field, to the curses directed at the American army because it refused to fight, the same answer formulated itself because there was no other. Always, from all quarters, to all demands and imprecations, the only answer that was possible was: “There is nothing that we can do!”

The city multitudes surrendered wearily to the situation; but there were men whom the helpless reply drove frantic.

There were hundreds of these men in New York, Brooklyn, Jersey City, Newark, and all the towns eastward from there into Connecticut. They were militiamen who had not been able to join their organizations when they went to the front, or whose organizations had been merely paper ones. There were members of sportsmen’s clubs, accustomed to the use of heavy-caliber fire-arms and to the trail, and there were many men who were moved simply by the recklessness of courage.[127]

During the days while there drifted through the United States the broken, incomplete but ever-growing story of New England’s uprising and its fearful suppression, these men had begun to assemble in Connecticut’s country between New Haven and Hartford, urged by no settled plan but moving to that district simply because it was the last American front between New York and the invading army.

_The Foe’s Slow Advance_

The enemy was moving westward slowly. He had to hold out a mighty screen northwestward against the American army that now lay beyond the Berkshire Hills, holding the land between western Connecticut and Albany. That army, intact and out of his reach, was a constant, acute danger. It endangered his communications, it endangered his base, it endangered his divisions that occupied Boston. It forced him to advance only in continual readiness for battle on flanks and rear-lines.

During the slow approach the men who had gathered between New Haven and Hartford began to form some sort of an organization. Almost it evolved itself.

The enemy pushing forward along the north, took Springfield with cavalry and artillery. The undefended city surrendered without a blow.

From New Haven and Hartford, to the factory cities of Wallingford and Meriden, Middletown and New Britain, along all the factory-lined valleys, there passed a word that gathered workers from shops and idle men from streets. All one long day, and all one evening, they moved toward the two cities. They seemed aimless enough; but there were leaders who put themselves at their head secretly in the night.

Suddenly they were angry, determined, united bodies of men. Suddenly, like a suddenly awakened wind, they stormed the great arms factories of the two towns.

They came with guns and pistols. They came with crowbars and picks. They came with stones, and with nothing except their bare hands. They hauled their dead aside and withered under the fire of the guards, and burst through and took the works.

In Hartford they seized a whole train-load of rapid-firers and machine guns that had been loaded for the American army. In New Haven they took almost four thousand sporting rifles.

The riot fever spread to Bridgeport. The mob arose and seized the cartridge factories.

_The Mad Adventure_

It was a mad thing, springing less from purpose than from the insanity that invasion had laid on men’s minds. It could have but one mad end. Yet this army of madmen was moved and molded by a touch of the American ability to “do things”--that very ability on which the people might, indeed, have depended with perfect assurance, if only they had not depended on it wholly.

America did, truly, have men who would fight. They were here; and they were to fight such a fight as would be remembered many a long day. America had the men to lead, too. Though they knew that this was a hopeless thing, they “took hold.”

They took hold of men armed with magnificent rifles, but of a score of different patterns for different kinds of sport, and demanding a score of different shapes and calibers of cartridges. They took hold of infantry militia fragments whose companies had had only two or three assemblies a year for target practice with average attendances of only 11 or 12 men. They improvised scout detachments of volunteers with bicycles and motors.[128]

Young doctors took hold with nothing but emergency kits, without ambulances, without litters, without even helpers who would know how to find a wound or apply a first aid bandage.

The army of madmen went forward to the Connecticut River to hold the western bank from Hartford to Middletown.

They did not know how to dig trenches.

They dug ditches. They did not know how to make defenses for their machine guns. They piled trees that would skewer them with splinters under shell fire, or heaped up rocks that would fly into fragments and kill like shrapnel.

They were all of three thousand men. They were the kind of men whom America has expected always in times of peace to call to its defense. They were callous-handed workers in metal and wood and leather; bleached workers from woolen mills and cotton spindles; ‘longshoremen from the harbor cities of the Sound; professional men resolute with the fervor of the time; road-makers and teamsters and shoemakers; hunters, yachtsmen, and football players.

_What Americans Could Have Done_

That day along the Connecticut River they showed what America’s men could have done had they learned how to do it in advance and had they been armed for the work.

They lay behind their pitiable defenses, with their motley weapons, commanded by men who did not know war. They bore the shock of machine gun assaults from advance patrols. They bore the shock of cavalry charges from scouting detachments.

At Middletown they were attacked in force by heavy cavalry that crossed under cover of gun-fire and outflanked them, and charged in mass. They sent the charge back, broken, with many empty saddles.

They lay under the fire of a 3-inch gun at Cromwell for an hour, and endured, and died--but they denied the river crossing to a battalion.

For two long hours they held the river along their whole line. It seemed to them that they were fighting a great battle. Surely their dead testified to it, and the hot fire that beat on them testified to it, and across the river, or floating down with the stream, were many enemy dead to testify to it.

They cheered and shouted to each other hoarsely that they were winning. They watched, with ever-growing savage lust, for more assailants.

In the headquarters of the advancing army there was received this report from the brigade commander: “Two or three thousand raw but determined Americans disputing passage of Connecticut River with our advance guards. They have machine guns, no artillery. Am sending field guns forward. Shall have passage clear in an hour.”

“Use ample force,” answered the commander. “These Americans!” he said to his aid. “They aren’t to be underestimated. A little more preparation--”

“And we wouldn’t be here!” laughed the aid.

_Thirty Minutes Later_

Thirty minutes afterward, from points wholly invisible to the Americans, there burst the shattering thunder of field-artillery. Explosive shells flew over and into the trenches. Shrapnel screamed at them, and burst like sentient things right in their faces, to drive rattling bullets in all directions.[129]

Their machine guns were useless. There was nothing in sight at which to fire. The men lay face down, clutching dirt, choking with fumes and smoke, stunned by the blasting things that burrowed into their earth-works and blew them apart and tore living bodies to pieces.

At Rocky Hill a militia company of artillery tried to move its gun into better shelter. The plow-horses that had been seized to drag it, wild with terror, became entangled in the traces and fell. Cutting them away, the men wheeled the cannon into position by hand. But their armory never had been fitted for sub-caliber practice, as it never had been fitted for mounted instruction. None of the men had been qualified as first class or even as second class gunners. They fired, and their shots went wild, serving only to betray their situation to the enemy. They did not know how to place themselves for protection from indirect fire. So they died.[130]

A troop of militia cavalry, trying to move forward near Hartford, was cut off by an advance patrol of enemy cavalry that had crossed the river to outflank the defenders from the north. The Americans charged. But they were mounted on horses never used before for cavalry work. The enemy riders were men trained to swordsmanship. The American troop had averaged only 13 men in mounted drill in a whole year, because they had possessed neither horses nor armory.[131]

The green brutes reared at the sight of weapons. They pitched into each other as the enemy cavalry dashed at them, and added their iron hoofs to the mêlée. For one brief moment eyes stared into eyes, and it was hack and thrust. Then the enemy riders were through them, and whirled like a gale and swept through them again, and killed and killed.

_The Massacre of the Connecticut River_

“Annihilated,” reported the scout cavalry a little later, when its squadrons came up. “Our loss one dead, three slightly wounded.”

Annihilated! Yes, gentlemen of Congress, sitting in Washington at that moment and passing resolutions and appropriations, and uttering fine sentiments about millions for defense and not one cent for tribute! There were ugly things there on the Connecticut River shore that answered you more loudly in their eternal silence than if they had spoken with a thousand angry tongues.

That day’s battle that filled the fields of Connecticut with dead men’s bones to be plowed up in many a year afterward, went down in American history as the massacre of the Connecticut River. A massacre it was--an American massacre, carefully prepared by elaborate carelessness through many a year before.

Less than a thousand men, it was said afterward, escaped from the massacre. They crawled away down gullies or swam down the river, and hid under weeds and panted, and tied up their wounds with rags from their ragged garments. They were never able to tell what had occurred. They knew only that they had thought there was victory--and then, in front of them, and on their flanks, and behind them, there had come flames as if a hot line of blast furnaces had opened to blow in their very faces, wherever they turned.

“We have taught them their lesson!” said the hostile commander. “We shall have no more trouble.”

It was true. Western Connecticut was broken under the invader’s rod as Eastern Massachusetts had been broken. That night the army occupied Hartford, Meriden, New Britain, and New Haven, though not before the arms factories had been blown up, to welcome the soldiers with flaming ruins.

The next morning cavalry detachments began cautiously to scout into the Berkshire Hills, to feel for the American outposts.

IX

THE CAPTURE OF NEW YORK CITY

When the news of the Battle of Connecticut went through the United States, there was a temporary end to all patience, to all calculations of prudence. There was an end to everything except blind passion. The United States was not a patient Nation, but no Nation, however patient, could have remained so at such a time. No man, however deeply admired, could have counseled wisdom then. No interests, however great, could have controlled.

All the knowledge that had gone to the public about the utter unreadiness of the freshly enlisted volunteers to take the firing line; all the information that had been given to the people about the condition of their army; all the proofs that the foe had given with blood and fire of his immense superiority--all these were as nothing. That the army, if it had fought now, must be destroyed, was as nothing. The cry was that the army must fight!

Trusted leaders pointed in vain to the history of the United States to prove that whenever its raw forces had hurried into battle in obedience to popular demand, the result had been only to hurry disaster. In vain they pointed to the Civil War and the hideous death-tolls paid by both sides without military advantage to either.

Men would not listen. They would not reason. They hated those who remained cool enough to reason. It was the human equation that, at some time or another, defies all the combination of man’s intelligence.

_The President Goes to the Army_

No administration, however determined, could have ignored it. Secretly, a special train was made ready in Washington. Secretly, in the night, the President of the United States with his advisers and staff boarded it and were taken northward.

No dispatches went ahead of it, except railroad orders to clear tracks. After passing Baltimore, it went by way of Harrisburg and Wilkesbarre, avoiding Philadelphia and the city of New York. Through the sad, black iron and coal country of Pennsylvania it passed to the New York State line without a welcome anywhere.

“We might be fugitives,” said the President, looking out with sleepless eyes.

At Jefferson Junction an armored train with machine guns and a 3-inch rifle slid in ahead of them from a siding where it had been waiting. An officer entered the President’s train and requested that all shades be kept down. Thus, furtively, the Nation’s ruler entered Albany.