On this day 250 years ago, Patriots estimated to total from 2000 to more than 20,000, occupied the towns of Charlestown (now Somerville) and Cambridge, Massachusetts in response to the Powder Alarm. The assembled crowd demanded and received the resignation of royal officials who lived in Cambridge including Lieutenant Governor Thomas Oliver and Judges Samuel Danforth and Joseph Lee who were all members of the Governor’s Mandamus Council. They also chased the despised tax collector, Benjamin Hallowell, from town on horseback into Boston. The supposed commander of the Colony’s militia General William Brattle and Attorney General Jonathan Sewell likewise fled to Boston.
Recognizing that all of Massachusetts had risen to oppose his plans to seize gunpowder and military stores in the colony, Governor Gage wrote Lord Dartmouth, secretary of state for the colonies, that although he had intended “to send a Body of Troops to Worcester, to protect the Courts there, . . . Disturbance being so general, and not confined to any particular Spot,” he did not know “where to send them to be of Use.” Sending soldiers to enforce royal authority in Massachusetts outside of Boston would require “dividing them in small Detachments, and tempt Numbers to fall upon them, which was reported to be the Scheme of the Directors of these Operations.” Gage assumed that the assembled crowds of Patriots were all being directed by Sam Adams, Joseph Warren and the Patriot leaders when in fact the risings were all spontaneous and actually surprised and to some extent alarmed the Patriot leadership.
Also on this day 250 years ago in Braintree, Massachusetts Abigail Adams wrote to her husband John in Philadelphia concerning the events in Cambridge:
I own I feel not a little agitated with the accounts I have this day received from Town. Great commotions have arisen in concequence of the discovery of a Tratorous plot of Colonel Brattle’s—his advice to Gage to Break every commisiond officer, and to seize the province and Towns Stock of powder.3 This has so enraged and exasperated the people that there is great apprehension of an immediate rupture. They have been all in flames ever since the new fangled counsellors have taken their oaths. The importance with which they consider the meeting of the Congress, and the result thereof to the community, withholds the arm of vengance already lifted but which would most certainly fall with accumalated wrath upon Brattle were it posible to come at him, but no sooner did he discover that his treachery had taken air, than he fled not only to Boston, but into the camp for Safety.
Sources: https://www.americainclass.org/sources/makingrevolution/rebellion/text2/oliverloyalistsviolence.pdf; https://historycambridge.org/Cambridge-Revolution/Brattle%20House.html; https://allthingsliberty.com/2017/03/country-crowds-revolutionary-massachusetts-mobs-militia/#_edn19; https://founders.archives.gov/?q=%222%20September%201774%22&s=1111311111&sa=&r=1&sr=
The National Park Service, History Cambridge, the Somerville Museum, and other Massachusetts organizations will be commemorated the Powder Alarm at the Powder House and other locations in Cambridge and Somerville starting today, September 2, 2024 with a lecture on Wednesday, September 4, 2024. https://www.nps.gov/long/learn/news/events-in-cambridge-and-somerville-mark-the-250th-anniversary-of-the-powder-alarm.htm
Also on this day 250 years ago, George Washington, Edmund Pendleton and Patrick Henry arrived at Rock Hall, Maryland on their way to the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia. They “lodged at New Town on the Chester” and the next day they had “Breakfast at Down’s (Galena).”
On This Day In The Revolution 