Cambridge

Cambridge at War: The Unlikely Capital of an American Revolution

On the morning of July 3, 1775, a tall Virginian in a blue and buff uniform rode into Cambridge, Massachusetts, and everything about the American rebellion changed. George Washington had traveled for eleven days from Philadelphia to take command of what the Continental Congress optimistically called the Continental Army. What he found upon arrival was less an army than a sprawling, loosely organized encampment of New England militia clustered around Harvard College, short on powder, shorter on discipline, and operating under the informal command structures of men who had rushed to arms after Lexington and Concord three months earlier. Cambridge was not a place anyone had planned to make the nerve center of a revolution. It was a quiet college town of perhaps 1,600 souls, known for its elm-shaded lanes and its ancient university. Yet for the better part of a year, from the summer of 1775 into the spring of 1776, this small town west of Boston served as the headquarters of the American war effort—the place where a ragged collection of citizen soldiers was forged, through crisis after crisis, into something resembling a national army. What happened in Cambridge during those months shaped not only the outcome of the siege of Boston but the character of the American military tradition itself.

But Cambridge's role in the Revolution predated Washington's arrival by nearly a year. On September 1, 1774, Cambridge residents responded to the news that General Thomas Gage, royal governor of Massachusetts, had ordered the removal of gunpowder from a magazine in what is now Somerville.

By the following morning, approximately 4,000 people—two and a half times the town's population—had gathered on Cambridge Common.

They soon marched down Brattle Street and surrounded Lieutenant Governor Thomas Oliver's house, demanding his resignation. He stepped down, writing that his house was "surrounded by about four thousand people, and in compliance with their commands, I sign my name."

Charles William Eliot II, presiding over the Cambridge Historical Society, once said that "the Revolution started in Cambridge in 1774."

Wealthy loyalist families who had moved to Cambridge from Boston for the relatively wide stretches of land on which they could build their estates fled back to Boston when sentiment became fervently patriotic.

During the eighteenth century, seven mansions had been built along the main road to Watertown. Because many of their owners were Loyalists during the American Revolution, these houses got the nickname "Tory Row."

Townspeople vandalized the house of Massachusetts attorney general Jonathan Sewall, and within months of the Powder Alarm, the grand houses along Brattle Street stood empty, their owners having fled to the protection of British-held Boston—or ultimately to England and the Caribbean.

Washington took formal command beneath what tradition identifies as a large elm tree on Cambridge Common, though the precise details of the ceremony remain debated by historians. The famous account of a grand ceremony under the elm originated not from any primary source but from the Diary of Dorothy Dudley, which was actually a fiction penned by Mary Williams Greeley for the 1875 Ladies Centennial Committee of Cambridge.

In 1925, the legend was openly discredited at the Cambridge Historical Society, when Samuel F. Batchelder read a paper revealing the forgeries in the tales told about Washington and the tree.

The Washington Elm itself, which lived approximately 210 years, died in 1923.

Contemporary camp diaries kept by soldiers are surprisingly numerous—and surprisingly silent on the supposed grand ceremony. Many of them enter on July 3: "Nothing of importance this day"—"Nothing remarkable"—and the like. What is not debated is the shock Washington experienced upon surveying his forces. Writing to his cousin Lund Washington back at Mount Vernon, he confessed that the difficulties he found were "much greater than I apprehended." The army numbered roughly 16,000 men on paper, but effective strength was considerably lower. Troops were organized by colony and commanded by officers who had been elected by their own men—a democratic arrangement that inspired loyalty within individual companies but made unified command nearly impossible.

The Second Continental Congress had voted on June 15, 1775, to adopt the New England army as the Continental Army, appointing George Washington as commander-in-chief. Between June 17 and 22, Congress appointed the senior general officers: Major General Artemas Ward of Massachusetts, the cautious militia commander who had overseen operations since April and was weakened by illness; Major General Charles Lee, a former British officer whose continental experience and sharp tongue made him a colorful if difficult subordinate, who openly scorned the amateur quality of the troops; and Major General Israel Putnam of Massachusetts.

Among the brigadier generals were William Heath of Massachusetts, John Thomas of Massachusetts, John Sullivan of New Hampshire, and Nathanael Greene of Rhode Island —the Quaker turned soldier who would eventually become one of the finest generals of the war. Washington quickly recognized Greene's intelligence and capacity for growth. Horatio Gates, appointed adjutant general, brought organizational skill from his own British Army background but faced the monumental task of imposing standard procedures on men who had never experienced them. To fill the critical new position of military secretary, Washington selected Philadelphia lawyer Joseph Reed.

On July 22, 1775, Washington announced the reorganization of the army into six brigades, grouped into three Grand Divisions under the major generals at the siege.

Ward commanded Thomas and Spencer's brigades at Roxbury and its southern dependencies. Lee commanded Sullivan's brigade on Winter Hill and Greene's brigade on Prospect Hill, covering the north side of the siege lines.

Putnam commanded a reserve division headquartered in Cambridge at the Apthorp House, maintaining a corps for the defense of the center.

Cambridge's physical landscape was rapidly transformed to serve military purposes. Washington initially used the Benjamin Wadsworth House at Harvard College as his headquarters, but finding he needed more space for his staff, he moved on July 16, 1775, into the abandoned mansion of Loyalist John Vassall Jr. at 105 Brattle Street.

The house had been built in 1759 for the Jamaican plantation owner,

who had kept a number of people enslaved on the property.

It became the first major headquarters of the American Revolution and Washington's second-longest held headquarters of the entire war.

For nine months—from July 1775 to April 1776—Washington lived and worked inside the mansion, transforming it into the first long-term headquarters of the Continental Army.

It was a bustling place, with military officers, administrative staff, free and enslaved laborers, representatives from Congress in Philadelphia, delegations from Massachusetts and the other colonies, and other interested parties constantly coming and going.

During this time Washington was visited by Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, John Hancock, and other revolutionary leaders.

The household at headquarters reflected the complex realities of the Revolution. William Lee was one of the enslaved men Washington brought with him from Virginia to Cambridge in 1775. At headquarters, Lee took on highly visible and trusted duties: as valet, he assisted Washington with dressing, grooming, and maintaining personal equipment, and accompanied Washington on horseback during inspections. Lee remained with Washington throughout the