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NOTE 2. The Response in Britain

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Volume 4, Chapter 2, The Response in Britain

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So zealous and skillful were the American radicals at spreading their account of Lexington

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and Concord that, by a feat of seamanship and enterprise, the American version reached

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Britain two full weeks before the official dispatches of General Thomas Gage.

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Dr. Warren dispatched the skillful young mariner, Captain John Derby, to England from Salem.

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Derby reached London before the end of May, quickly placing the papers in the custody

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of the radical John Wilkes, by then Lord Mayor of London.

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The next day the American version of the affair hit the English press with great impact.

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The Reverend John Horne, a leading radical of London, promptly issued an appeal for funds

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to aid the widows and orphans of Americans murdered at Lexington. Funds to help our beloved

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American fellow subjects, who faithful to the character of Englishmen, preferring death

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to slavery, were, for that reason only, inhumanely murdered by the King's troops. For sending

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Between the money thus raised to Benjamin Franklin, who had already sailed for America

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earlier that year, Horn was imprisoned by the Crown.

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For its part, the British government, bereft of information for two critical weeks, could

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only deny that such battles had taken place, a denial that made it a laughing stock when

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Gage's dispatches finally arrived.

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The outbreak of war had a great and critical impact upon the liberal Whigs, many of whom

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were high-ranking officers in the British armed forces. Some refused outright to serve

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in war against the Americans, including Admiral Augustus Keppel and Lord Effingham. Rather

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than lead the war against the Americans, Effingham published his resignation from the army in

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September, for which he received public thanks from London, Dublin, Newcastle and other cities.

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The British Army was hit by numerous other resignations of conscience-stricken Whigs.

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Lord Chatham publicly refused to allow his son, William Pitt the Younger, to fight against

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the Americans. A typical Whig defection among leading Englishmen was that of Granville Sharp,

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The Man Chiefly Responsible three years earlier for the legal action that outlawed slavery

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within England.

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When the American Revolution broke out, Sharp was assistant to the Secretary of Ordnance

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and was in charge of ordering the munitions for the British Army and the colonies.

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By midsummer he obtained extended leave from his duties because I cannot return to my ordnance

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Warren declared that the Americans were duty-bound to resist invasion of their rights. This American

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victory for the minds of the British people was never entirely erased by the government,

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especially since Warren had been careful to appeal to the English's fellow subjects in

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natural alliance against the Crown and its armed forces. The Crown, of course, in the

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The manor of hardliners throughout history refused to acknowledge that its policy of

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coercion had failed.

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Instead, so much the more did the Americans need to be suppressed and the rebels and villains

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to be taught a lesson.

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For the moment, six regiments from the Mediterranean were to be sent to Boston and more enlistments

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were hoped for, enlistments that failed to materialize.

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Neither was the North Ministry at all apologetic about the failure to cowl the Americans.

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Instead, blame was put on subversive Whigs, who had put ideas of liberty and revolution

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into the heads of the Americans, and, more specifically, on the supposed incompetence

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of General Gage, who had, however, been essentially acting on Crown Orders.