Excerpt
CHAPTER I. RECRUITING.
There was great excitement among the citizens of the town of Pittsfield in the province of Massachusetts on the first day of May in the year 1775.
Master Edward Mott and Noah Phelps, forming a committee appointed by the Provincial Assembly of Connecticut, had arrived on the previous evening charged with an important commission, the making known of which had so aroused the inhabitants of the peaceful settlement that it was as if the reports of the muskets fired at Lexington and Concord were actually ringing in their ears.
These two gentlemen had with them a 2 following of sixteen men, equipped as if for battle, and the arrival of so large an armed body had aroused the curiosity of the good people until all were painfully eager to learn the reason for what seemed little less than an invasion.
When it was whispered around that Master Mott and Phelps had, immediately upon their arrival, inquired for Colonel James Easton and Master John Brown, and were even then closeted with those citizens, the more knowing ones predicted that this coming had much to do with the warlike preparations that were making in Boston and New York, designed to put a check upon the unlawful doings of his majesty the king.
When morning came, that is to say, on this first day of May, it was generally understood throughout the settlement that the Provincial Assembly of Connecticut had agreed upon a 3 plan to seize the munitions of war at Ticonderoga for the use of that body of men known as the American army, then gathered at Cambridge and Roxbury in the province of Massachusetts.
The gossips of Pittsfield stated that one thousand dollars had been advanced from the Provincial Treasury of Connecticut to pay the expenses of the expedition; that the sixteen men making up the following of the committee were recruits who had pledged themselves to capture this important fortress which formed the key of communication between New York and the Canadas, and that they proposed to march through the country to Shoreham, opposite Ticonderoga, recruiting as they went, with the belief that on arriving there their force would be sufficiently large to capture the fort.
The boys as well as the men were highly 4 excited, as was but natural, by such rumors, and a certain Isaac Rice, who prided himself upon being fourteen years old, instead of gathering with his companions, listening eagerly to every word which dropped from the lips of the older members of the community, conceived the idea of applying to what he believed to be the fountain-head of all information regarding military matters.
This supposedly wise man was none other than Corporal Elijah Watkins, generally known as “Corporal ’Lige,” sometimes spoken of as “Master Watkins;” but always to Isaac Rice, “the corporal.”
He was looked upon as an old man when he served under Abercrombie at Ticonderoga in ’58, and believed of a surety he was as well informed in military affairs as Isaac Rice, his ardent disciple, fancied him to be....