Hours of Darkness (2)

(Part one here)

18 April, 1775: Two men stood in the moonlit darkness on the shore of the Charles River, gazing across the water towards Boston, their eyes searching for a boat...

21 October, 1861: Two men stood in the pre-dawn darkness on the Virginia side of the Potomac, their eyes turned back across the water, looking for boats. Today there could be battle...

18 April, 1775: Tomorrow there could be battle. They'd already seen the signal from the opposite shore - two lights in the tower of the old North Church - meaning the British soldiers would be crossing the river this night. Not on the boat they were waiting for - the good Lord willing, that craft would deliver the man who'd arranged that signal with them a few days before: Paul Revere - whose crossing wouldn't be made without danger; not far off floated the Somerset, a British man-of-war...

21 October, 1861: The men were colonels, commanders of the two Massachusetts regiments from which elements had crossed the Potomac from Maryland on this small-scale invasion of Virginia. A raid was probably a better word for it. The mission was simple - take out a rebel camp and return to Maryland. Unless, the orders added (with a significant amount of room for interpretation), a strong position was found in Virginia that could be held until reinforcements arrived.

The older of the two men, Col. William Lee, of Marblehead, commanded the 20th Massachusetts Infantry. His unit's role in this mission was support - only two companies of his regiment were here - but he'd elected to accompany them, leaving his number two man in charge at camp in Maryland. His counterpart here on the Virginia shore had more troops and the main mission - to lead five companies of his 15th Massachusetts Regiment inland to take out that camp; Lee's smaller force was to remain on Ball's Bluff to cover any retreat. But back on Harrison's Island, perhaps one hundred yards out in the river from where they now stood, were five more companies of Lee's 20th - the designated reinforcements, under Major Paul Revere.

The sun was beginning to rise. It was time for the 15th to move out, and the 20th to take their positions. Lee followed his counterpart to the top of the bluff.

If only there were more boats... it had taken most of the previous night for even this small combined force to cross the water in the few they had available. They might have hoped to discover one or two additional tucked away somewhere here on the Virginia side, but there were none to be seen. They would have to make do with what they had... though Lee would prefer having more men on this mission - and knew that once any real battle began it would be too late for them to be sent; Revere crossing over would be a welcome sight indeed.

18 April, 1775: Revere crossing over would be a welcome sight, thought Richard Devens as he waited. He wondered if he'd been captured, or delayed... Earlier that day Devens, while returning to Charlestown from a joint meeting of the Committee of Public Safety and the Committee of Supplies (among the members: Col. Jeremiah Lee of Marblehead) at a town called Menotomy, had encountered a suspicious number of British soldiers on the road. That they were out and about somewhere along his route - and likely waiting for riders spreading the alarm - was information Revere would need.

"On the 18th of April, '75, Tuesday," Devens recorded, "the committee of safety, of which I was then a member, and the committee of supplies, sat at Newell's tavern, at Menotomy. A great number of British officers dined at Cambridge. After we had finished the business of the day, we adjourned to meet at Woburn on the morrow. Left to lodge at Newell's: Gerry, Orne, and Lee. Mr. Watson and myself came off in my chaise at sunset. On the road we met a great number of B. O. [British officers] and their servants on horseback, who had dined that day at Cambridge. We rode some way after we met them, and then turned back and rode through them, went and informed our friends at Newell's." Thus informed, Gerry (Elbridge Gerry - later the fifth Vice President of the United States under James Madison) sent a messenger to alert John Hancock and Sam Adams at Lexington; Devens resumed his trip back to Charlestown, where his suspicion that the soldiers he'd encountered were something more than curious sightseers was confirmed by the warning signal from Boston. Now he waited for Paul Revere.

In his own testimony on the night's events, Revere would tell a simple tale of his crossing:

But others would offer the sort of details that build legends - "that while Paul and his two comrades were on their way to the boat, it was suddenly remembered that they had nothing with which to muffle the sound of their oars. One of the two stopped before a certain house at the North End of the town, and made a peculiar signal. An upper window was softly raised, and a hurried colloquy took place in whispers, at the end of which something white fell noiselessly to the ground. It proved to be a woolen undergarment, still warm from contact with the person of the little rebel."

On the opposite shore Richard Devens waited in the moonlight - not knowing if the first boat he'd see would contain Revere or the vanguard of the British army the two lanterns had told him were coming by sea. Devens had dispatched another rider upon sighting those signal lamps, but Revere would get here, too, he was sure. For now there was little to do but wait.

21 October, 1861: Paul Revere knew if his five companies on Harrison's Island were needed on the Virginia shore they'd be needed quickly - and for that they'd need more boats. Besides the problem of numbers, none of the few available here looked capable of transporting the cannon he was expected to bring along. It wasn't in his nature to accept delays - so he sent some of his men back to the Maryland side of the island to fetch a larger one left there. Beyond that, there was little to do but wait.

The sun rose. Not long after he thought he heard shots fired from somewhere beyond Ball's Bluff...

April, 1775: Devens wasn't the only member of the revolutionary committees to lose sleep that night. Back in Menotomy, others would, too.

The great man of Marblehead in the colonial day was Colonel Jeremiah Lee, whose still elegant mansion is to be seen there. Unlike many of the gentry of his time, Colonel Lee was a thorough-going patriot. He was, with Orne and Gerry, a delegate to the first and second Provincial Congresses of 1774. When the famous Revolutionary Committee of Safety and Supplies was formed, he became and continued a member until his death in May, 1775. Colonel Lee was with the committee on the day before the battle of Lexington, and with Gerry and Orne remained to pass the night at the Black Horse tavern in Menotomy, now Arlington. When the British advance reached this house it was surrounded, the halfdressed patriots having barely time to escape to a neighboring corn-field, where they threw themselves upon the ground until the search was over. From the exposure incident to this adventure Lee got his death.

"He furthered the cause of independence in risky, undercover capacities - including the clandestine procurement of weapons from France and Spain," reads this brief modern biography. "His covert activities, the secrecy of his meetings with John Hancock and Sam Adams, and his early and tragic death explain why Jeremiah Lee plunged into obscurity, and remained absent from the history books both then and now."

Others in his family took up the cause. His nephew and protege, William Raymond Lee, was commissioned a captain in one of the first regiments formed after Lexington and Concord - within two years he was a Colonel and commanded his own. William's son would serve in the War of 1812. His grandson, also named William Raymond Lee, would later attend West Point - where his classmates included Robert E Lee of Virginia (possibly a distant relation) and Jefferson Davis from Mississippi. Years later, on the morning of October 21, 1861, he was a colonel and regimental commander himself, at Ball's Bluff in Virginia, preparing a message for his Major, Paul Revere.

October, 1861: Henry Abbott of the 20th Massachusetts had accompanied his commander, Colonel Lee, to the final planning session with the commander of the 15th prior to the raid. Two days after what turned out to be a battle, he described that meeting in a letter to his mother. "I never heard of [a] more clearsighted, cooler or more satisfactory statement of a plan" than the one developed that night, he wrote. For this, Abbott (not surprisingly) gave all credit to his commander, who, he added, stated repeatedly that night his belief "that in case of defeat no retreat was possible. We must either conquer or die."

Abbott described Lee as "in the merriest of moods" - in contrast to the 15th's commander, Colonel Charles Devens. Devens, Abbott wrote, "seemed like a man who had made up his mind he was going on a forlorn hope." If both descriptions were accurate, their moods had no bearing on their fates. After the battle Devens would make his way - wounded - back to the island. Lee, along with Paul Revere (the latter also wounded) and hundreds of other soldiers would be numbered among the prisoners in Virginia.

Devens would survive the Civil War, during which he was promoted to Brigadier General (later Brevet Major General). From 1873 to 1891 he was an associate justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, with a four year break from '77 to '81 when he served as Attorney General of the United States in the Cabinet of President Rutherford B. Hayes.

"Charles Devens was born in Charlestown, Mass., April 4, 1820," read the brief biography prepared for the dedication of his statue in Worcester on July 4th, 1906. "He was the son of Charles and Mary (Lithgow) Devens, and a great-grandson of Richard Devens, who was a member of the Committee of Safety and Commissary General of Massachusetts during the Revolutionary War..."

18 April, 1775: "They landed me on Charlestown side," Revere wrote. "Richard Devens, Esq.who was one of the Committee of Safty, came to me, & told me, that he came down the Road from Lexington, after Sundown, that evening; that He met ten British Officers, all well mounted, & armed, going up the Road."

"I then took a horse from Mr. Larkin's barn," Devens recalled in his own testimony - the midnight rider would need a ride, of course - then he "sent off P. Revere..."

21 October, 1861: It took a damned long time for a courier to bring a message by boat back to the island; the morning was near half over as Revere read the latest from Colonel Lee. He and Devens had indeed encountered the enemy, and were "determined to fight."

Major Revere ordered his men to the boats. The waiting had ended, it was time to join Lee and Devens. Paul Revere was going to war.

Epilogue - 21 October, 1861: It took decidedly longer for a courier to bring a message from Virginia to the island, cross the island and take another boat to the Maryland shore. From there he traveled to General Stone's headquarters a few miles down the river to deliver it.

The General wished - not for the first time - there was a better way. The rebel sympathizers on this side were suspected of sending messages to their friends in Virginia at night via lights - thus making all his division's movements known to the enemy - but obviously such signals were useless in daylight hours... At least Stone could telegraph McClellan in Washington - whatever he knew, his commander could be told immediately. Now he sent an optimistic message, indicating his forces had engaged the enemy, and he believed they could occupy Leesburg that day.

Though after a bit of consideration, he appended a concern: "We are a little short of boats."

Next: Julia Cutler's Journal