MAP ILLUSTRATING THE ENEMY ATTACK ON BOSTON AND NEIGHBORING CITIESImage unavailable: MAP ILLUSTRATING THE ENEMY ATTACK ON BOSTON AND NEIGHBORING CITIES
The Deadly Blind Man’s Buff
The ships entered a shrouded, black sea where there was not a light to warn of reef or shoal. Lightless themselves, they groped with deep-sea leads and sounding machines till they assured themselves of safe positions where they might have sea-room to swing around in great closed circles at high speed.
These circles would cut deeply into the circles of the fire zones of the defenses. At close range the vessels, invisible to the forts, could send a furious volley into them, and rush past before the guns could find them, to return on their circle and fire from some other point. It was the penalty that darkness lays on land defenses. But it penalized the ships, also.[93]
They would have to fire without sighting their mark. They dared not betray themselves to the waiting guns on land by throwing their search-lights on the defenses, while the defenses could sweep the sea incessantly, for their searchlights were disposed along miles of coast, far aloof from the batteries.
If the search-lights were effective, the ships should have to flee to the farthest limit of the coast guns’ range. At that distance they, in turn, could not deliver an effective bombardment of the land so long as it was dark. So, then, all the ferocious game of war centered for the time on the search-lights. The death-laden ships, the death-laden guns on land, had to wait till it was learned what the lights would do.[94]
The enemy knew that the American defenseshad only about one-half the search-light installation that was needed. The hostile sailors had not been forced to depend on spies for this information. It was in American reports that had been made to Congress session after session.[95]
They had prepared for their game of blind man’s buff by long consultations over charts. Every ship’s officer was provided with minute instructions for every contingency that human wit could forecast in the headlong game of chess that is played with cannon.
Defenders Stand Prepared
The defenders were ready, too. In the human chain that began with the battle commander, and reached from him through links of district commanders to fire commanders and battery commanders, each man had his orders for any oneof a hundred things that might occur, however quickly it might come.
They knew what batteries to fire and when, at the extreme fire zone, at the intermediate zone, and at the third fire zone which commanded the mine fields. They had before them, worked out to the ultimate detail, the order of fire if the enemy ships should come in column, in double column, or in scattered formation. Far down the beaches, north and south, they had every range plotted, that the great guns might be turned on landing parties if the secondary shore defenses should fail to hold them.[96]
The ships struck simultaneously all along the line of defenses. They fired close in north and south, and from battleships out at sea. A plunging fire went over Nahant and across into Winthrop. The speeding ships missed the defenses and their bursting shells wrecked the town instead. As its flames reddened the sky,the flames of Hull, at Point Allerton on the end of the southern peninsula, made a red reply.
The quick search-lights caught the ships. Again and again the white light-shafts fell on veering, speeding vessels and made them hurry to get away before the fire-control of the defenses could cover them.
Still they returned. Each time they approached at a new point in the hope of developing a defect in the light-system. Each time they fired all the metal that they could throw in the one instant before the beams fell on them.
There were few hits made by these running ships; but they could afford to waste ammunition, since their continual attack forced the defenders to use their own insufficient supply.
A Game of Wits
While half-naked men in ships’ turrets and half-naked men at coast guns and in mortar pits were toiling to wreak brute destruction, a game of wits was being played just as busily. This game was played, not on the huge armored ships, not in the formidable engine-batteries of the forts, but in places miles away from either.
Image unavailable: “The quick searchlights caught the ships.”“The quick searchlights caught the ships.”
They were insignificant little places from the point of view of war—summer settlements on friendly beaches, harmless little coves, pleasant shores beset with the fantastic hotels and fantastic towers of American pleasure-places. In the summer days of peace, probably not one in any thousand of the happy crowds that played and laughed there ever imagined that these serene, careless places could have any importance some day in battle.
That night they were playing a part that was full of danger to the venturesome ships. The American engineers had established portable search-lights there, and made base stations and range-finding points of them. Every one of these insignificant out-lying points was endowing the guns in the distant defenses with an added deadliness of accuracy.
The modern rifled gun is fired not by sight but by mathematics. The position of its target is found not by guess but by triangulation. Far away, on either side of land batteries are observers. The straight line from one to the other is the base line. As soon as they sight a ship, each turns his instruments on it and getsthe angle from his end of the base line. The ship to be fired at is at the apex of the triangle thus obtained.
The men at the guns get this position by telephone instantly. They know to a foot what their weapons’ elevation must be with a given charge of powder and a given weight of projectile to reach that distant spot. They set their mammoth piece, elevate it above the parapet on its lift, fire it and bring it back into concealment again.
To bombard these base-stations from the sea was nearly futile. The shells that could sweep a fore-shore and make it untenable for an army might never find these few scattered, concealed men or these scattered, hidden, tiny stations. A whole fleet might rave at them for hours, and in vain. There was only one sure, quick way to cripple them.[97]
The Secret Attack on the Shore
Far northward, miles outside of Boston Harbor, beyond the system of the harbor defenses, two ships stood into Nahant Bay, until they were within a line drawn from Fishing Point south of Swampscott to Spouting Horn on Nahant. Here, in 7 fathoms of water, they stopped and lowered their boats.
Manned by crack bluejackets, whose oars were wrapped with cloth that they should not make a sound in the rowlocks, the cutters moved toward the beach at Little Nahant.
Far away the harbor searchlights played like summer lightning. The sailors moved on in utter darkness, toward the invisible beach. They rowed in, in irregular formation, till they could hear the surf. Then the foremost boats lay still, tossing on the swell, waiting for the others to draw abreast. Formless, vaguely gray in the night, the line made a dash.
They were on the first lifting swell of the long waves that tumble toward the land when a fierce white light tore terribly through the night, and blazed on them, and around them. It held them, intangibly, tightly, like the hand of a ghost.
Orange flashes ripped through it. Little Nahant Beach quaked with explosion. In the white light, as if the tossing boats were spectral pictures in a dissolving view, they melted amid the roar of the shore-guns. Black fragments whirled through the steady glare, and shells chopped the sea where there were bobbing heads and clutching hands.
The light stabbed the night, in and out. It veered to sea with enormous speed. A long, black silhouette with three funnels appeared full in the circle of its artificial day. A funnel vanished, and another. A spout of water lifted alongside from a shell that had fallen short. Another, the next instant, smashed into its side and made it reel. The destroyer turned suddenly and rushed at the land. Its steering gear had been shot away. Almost instantly it straightened out again; but Little Nahant was raving. Little Nahant was flaming without pause. The searchlight held the ship. It staggered, like a stumbling animal, pitched twice, each time a little more wildly, and went down bow first.
“Have repulsed attack on search-light station and observers at this point,” went the word
Image unavailable: “A landing was attempted in greater force, with the assistance of a destroyer division lying close to the beach.”“A landing was attempted in greater force, with the assistance of a destroyer division lying close to the beach.”
from Bailey’s Hill on Nahant to the battle commander in Fort Warren. “No losses. Destroyer and five ships’ boats with crews completely eliminated.”
Attacks Made Everywhere
They did not have time to cheer at Fort Warren. On Nantasket Beach, as far south as Nahant was north, a landing was being attempted in greater force and with the determined assistance of a destroyer division that was lying close to the beach.
Here there were three hundred men of Massachusetts Volunteer Militia, Coast Artillery, behind barb-wire and sand-bag defenses with two pieces of field artillery and three machine guns. They were being swept by savage fire from the destroyers.
“We can hold the ships’ boats off. Surf high, and landing will be slow,” they reported to the battle commander by field telegraph. “But we must have relief from naval fire, or cannot concentrate efforts on landing parties.”
Their officers sent the exact distance from the beach of the destroyers. In the forts the fire commanders studied their charts, plotted withdiagrams of the shore in sections. They calculated the range. A dropping shot from a 6-inch gun fell among the enemy vessels one minute later. The next went over. The third struck a destroyer. Before it disappeared, shells were falling among the division too fast to count. Three guns were firing. They were throwing 12 shells in one minute.[98]
Two destroyers were towed away, crippled. Another escaped from the fire zone but sank at sea.
Undeterred, the boat parties tried to run the surf and rush the defenders. But the sea was heavy, breaking with a sharp over-fall. Unprotected by fire from the sea, unable to work their own machine guns in the rough water, the sailors were pounded in the breakers. The field artillery blew their boats apart. The machine guns slashed them. Rifle fire hammered them.
“Attack beaten off,” reported the militiamen. In the surf there were a few drifting pieces of wood, tossing oars and bodies pitching to and fro as the undertow played with them.
The “Hussars of the Sea”
“Destroyer division off this point.” It was a report from Strawberry Hill, south from Fort Revere. Point Allerton’s search-light swung down the beach, the search-light from Strawberry Hill centered on them. The reckless craft, the hussars of the sea, dashed in to a 400 yard range, and, steaming parallel with the beach at full speed, sent in a heavy broadside fire from all their guns. More than three hundred shells were directed against the Strawberry Hill light in those few minutes. They swung, and fled to the sea as the batteries of the fort opened on them.[99]
“Searchlight intact,” reported Strawberry Hill.
“Men have landed on Marblehead Neck, according to reports from Swampscott,” reported Fort Heath. “Three hundred men at least taking road southward.”
“Push forward and occupy Lynn Beach at narrowest part,” telegraphed the battle commanderto the force at Nahant. “Will send one hundred reënforcements by boat to Lynn.”
At Nantasket a second attempt at a landing was made. It was defeated, and the boats withdrew. Two suspicious vessels were sighted almost within Hull Bay and were destroyed by fire from a shore battery. A landing party struck at Strawberry Hill. Another, probably the same that had attempted the second landing at Nantasket, tried to haul three boats over into the Weir River.[100]
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 thedefense, 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 OuterBrewster 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 justgiven 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 heaviestguns, 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 countrypeople 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 realestate, 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 ofa 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 theyand 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, saidthe 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 movedhis 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 weremoving 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 GARRISONDIES 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—twoartillerymen, 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 summonstransmitted 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 anyattempt 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 contenteditself 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 ofcalling 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.
“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 hundredmillions 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 unimportantcontract, 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]
“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 permittedaccess 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 dailyfor 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: