Saturday, March 21, 2020

Siege of Boston in the American Revolution

Siege of Boston in the American Revolution The Siege of Boston occurred during the American Revolution and began April 19, 1775 and lasted until March 17, 1776. Commencing after the opening battles at  Lexington Concord,  the Siege of Boston saw the growing American army block the land approaches to Boston. During the course of the siege, the two sides clashed at the bloody Battle of Bunker Hill in June 1775. The stalemate around the city also saw the arrival of two commanders who would play a central role in the conflict over the next three years:  General George Washington  and  Major General William Howe. As the fall and winter progressed, neither side proved able to gain an advantage. This changed in early 1776 when artillery captured at Fort Ticonderoga arrived in the American lines. Mounted on Dorchester Heights, the guns compelled Howe to abandon the city. Background In the wake of the Battles of Lexington Concord on April 19, 1775, American colonial forces continued to attack British troops as they attempted to withdraw back to Boston. Though aided by reinforcements led by Brigadier General Hugh Percy, the column continued to take casualties with particularly intense fighting occurring around Menotomy and Cambridge.  Finally reaching the safety of Charlestown late in the afternoon, the British were able to gain a respite. While the British consolidated their position and recovered from the days fighting, militia units from across New England began arriving on the outskirts of Boston. Armies Commanders Americans General George WashingtonMajor General Artemas Wardup to 16,000 men British Lieutenant General Thomas GageMajor General William Howeup to 11,000 men Under Siege By morning, around 15,000 American militiamen were in place outside of the city. Initially guided by Brigadier General William Heath of the Massachusetts militia, he passed command to General Artemas Ward late on the 20th. As the American army was effectively a collection of militias, Wards control was nominal, but he succeeded in establishing a loose siege line running from Chelsea around the city to Roxbury. Emphasis was placed on blocking Boston and Charlestown Necks. Across the lines, the British commander, Lieutenant General Thomas Gage, elected not impose martial law and instead worked with the citys leaders to have private weapons surrendered in exchange for allowing those residents who desired to leave Boston to depart. The Noose Tightens Over the next several days, Wards forces were augmented by new arrivals from Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire. With these troops came permission from the provisional governments of New Hampshire and Connecticut for Ward to assume command over their men. In Boston, Gage was surprised by the size and perseverance of the American forces and stated, In all their wars against the French they never showed such conduct, attention, and perseverance as they do now. In response, he began fortifying parts of the city against attack. Consolidating his forces in the city proper, Gage withdrew his men from Charlestown and erected defenses across Boston Neck. Traffic in and out of the city was briefly restricted before both sides came to an informal agreement allowing civilians to pass as long as they were unarmed. Though deprived of access to the surrounding countryside, the harbor remained open and ships of the Royal Navy, under Vice Admiral Samuel Graves, were able to supply the city. Though Graves efforts were effective, attacks by American privateers led prices for food and other necessities to rise dramatically. Lacking artillery to break the stalemate, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress dispatched Colonel Benedict Arnold to seize the guns at Fort Ticonderoga. Joining with Colonel Ethan Allens Green Mountain Boys, Arnold captured the fort on May 10. Later that month and into early June, American and British forces skirmished as Gages men attempted to capture hay and livestock from the outer islands of Boston Harbor (Map). Battle of Bunker Hill On May 25, HMS Cerberus arrived at Boston carrying Major Generals William Howe, Henry Clinton, and John Burgoyne. As the garrison had been reinforced to around 6,000 men, the new arrivals advocated for breaking out of the city and seizing Bunker Hill, above Charlestown, and Dorchester Heights south of the city. The British commanders intended to implement their plan on June 18. Learning of the British plans on June 15, the Americans quickly moved to occupy both locations. To the north, Colonel William Prescott and 1,200 men marched onto the Charlestown Peninsula on the evening of June 16.  After some debate among his subordinates, Prescott directed that a redoubt be constructed on Breeds Hill rather than Bunker Hill as originally intended. Work commenced and continued through the night with Prescott also ordering a breastwork to be built extending down the hill to the northeast. Spotting the Americans works the next morning, British warships opened fire with little effect. In Boston, Gage met with his commanders to discuss options. After taking six hours to organize an assault force, Howe led British forces over to Charlestown and attacked on the afternoon of June 17. Repelling two large British assaults, Prescotts men stood firm and were only forced to retreat when they ran out of ammunition. In the fighting, Howes troops suffered over 1,000 casualties while the Americans sustained around 450. The high cost of victory at the Battle of Bunker Hill would influence British command decisions for the remainder of the campaign. Having taken the heights, the British began work to fortify Charlestown Neck to prevent another American incursion. Building an Army While events were unfolding in Boston, the Continental Congress in Philadelphia created the Continental Army on June 14 and appointed George Washington as commander-in-chief the following day. Riding north to take command, Washington arrived outside Boston on July 3. Establishing his headquarters in Cambridge, he began molding the masses of colonial troops into an army. Creating badges of rank and uniform codes, Washington also began creating a logistical network to support his men. In an attempt to bring structure to the army, he divided it into three wings each led by a major general. The left wing, led by Major General Charles Lee was tasked with guarding the exits from Charlestown, while Major General Israel Putnams center wing was established near Cambridge. The right wing at Roxbury, led by Major General Artemas Ward, was the largest and was to cover Boston Neck as well as Dorchester Heights to the east. Through the summer, Washington worked to expand and reinforce the American lines. He was supported by the arrival of riflemen from Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. Possessing accurate, long range weapons, these sharpshooters were employed in harassing the British lines. Next Steps On the night of August 30, British forces launched a raid against Roxbury, while American troops successfully destroyed the lighthouse on Lighthouse Island. Learning in September that the British did not intend to attack until reinforced, Washington dispatched 1,100 men under Arnold to conduct an invasion of Canada. He also began planning for an amphibious assault against the city as he feared his army would break up with the arrival of winter. After discussions with his senior commanders, Washington agreed to postpone the attack. As the stalemate pressed on, the British continued local raiding for food and stores. In November, Washington was presented a plan by Henry Knox for transporting Ticonderogas guns to Boston. Impressed, he appointed Knox a colonel and sent him to the fort. On November 29, an armed American ship succeeded in capturing the British brigantine Nancy outside of Boston Harbor. Loaded with munitions, it provided Washington with much needed gunpowder and arms. In Boston, the situation for the British changed in October when Gage was relieved in favor of Howe. Though reinforced to around 11,000 men, he was chronically short on supplies. The Siege Ends As winter set in, Washingtons fears began to come true as his army was reduced to around 9,000 through desertions and expiring enlistments. His situation improved on January 26, 1776 when Knox arrived in Cambridge with 59 guns from Ticonderoga. Approaching his commanders in February, Washington proposed an attack on the city by moving over the frozen Back Bay, but was instead convinced to wait. Instead, he formulated a plan to drive the British from the city by emplacing guns on Dorchester Heights. Assigning several of Knoxs guns to Cambridge and Roxbury, Washington began a diversionary bombardment of the British lines on the night of March 2. On the night of March 4/5, American troops moved guns to Dorchester Heights from which they could strike the city and the British ships in the harbor. Seeing the American fortifications on the heights in the morning, Howe initially made plans for assaulting the position. This was prevented by a snowstorm late in the day. Unable to attack, Howe reconsidered his plan and elected to withdraw rather than have a repeat of Bunker Hill. The British Depart On March 8, Washington received word that the British intended to evacuate and would not burn the city if allowed to leave unmolested. Though he did not formally respond, Washington agreed to the terms and British began embarking along with numerous Boston Loyalists. On March 17, the British departed for Halifax, Nova Scotia and American forces entered the city. Having been taken after an eleven-month siege, Boston remained in American hands for the remainder of the war.

Wednesday, March 4, 2020

Use of Pastiche in English Prose

Use of Pastiche in English Prose A text that borrows or imitates the style, words, or ideas of other writers. Unlike a parody, which aims for a comic or satiric effect, a pastiche is often intended as a compliment (or an homage) to the original writer(s)though it may just be a hodgepodge of borrowed words and ideas. Examples and Observations: The pastiche prose form openly mimes the content and mannerisms of another written work. Its a respectful, if often jocular, an homage to the work that inspired it. (Its literary cousin is the parody, but that imitation subtly or savagely satirizes its source material.) The pastiche implicitly says, I appreciate this author, the characters, and the fictive world . . . and my imitation is sincere flattery.The affection for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his immortal Sherlock Holmes is evident in August Derleths stories about brilliant, deerstalker-wearing Solar Pons of 7B Praed St.(Mort Castle, Write Like Poe. The Complete Handbook Of Novel Writing, 2nd ed. Writers Digest Books, 2010)The secret mechanism of a pastiche is the fact that a style is not just a unique set of linguistic operations: a style is not just a prose style. A style is also a quality of vision. It is also its subject matter. A pastiche transfers the prose style to a new content (while parody transfers the prose style to an inadmissible and scandalous content): it is, therefore, a way of testing out the limits of a style.(Adam Thirlwell, The Delighted States. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007) Parody and Pastiche in The SimpsonsParody attacks a particular text or genre, making fun of how that text or genre operates. Pastiche merely imitates or repeats for mildly ironic amusement, whereas parody is actively critical. For instance, when an episode of The Simpsons loosely follows the plot of Citizen Kane (rendering Mr. Burns as Kane), no real critique is offered of Orson Welless masterpiece, making this pastiche. Yet on a weekly basis, The Simpsons plays with generic conventions of the traditional family sitcom. It also mocks forms of advertising and . . . it occasionally lambastes the form and format of news, all with critical intent, thereby making such instances bona fide parody.(Jonathan Gray, Jeffrey P. Jones, and Ethan Thompson, The State of Satire, the Satire of the State. Satire TV: Politics and Comedy in the Post-Network Era. New York University Press, 2009)Pastiche in Green Days American Idiot (Musical)The sheer volume of the stage band’s music and the frenet ic rush of action provide constant energy. But tunes recalling the 1950s pastiche of The Rocky Horror Picture Show or, during We’re Coming Home Again, the Phil Spectoresque Springsteen of Born to Run, have few punk credentials. The indulgent-youths versus dutiful-wives combat of Too Much Too Soon also shows how much [Bilie Joe] Armstrong’s characters are [Jack] Kerouac boys and girls at base, American idiots and ennui unchanged.(Nick Hasted, Green Day’s American Idiot, Hammersmith Apollo, London. The Independent, December 5, 2012) Pastiche in Peter PanThe apparent contradiction whereby war converts into a game is weirdly captured in Baden-Powells favorite play, J.M. Barries Peter Pan (1904), which he saw many times in the years he was gestating Scouting for Boys. In the Neverland of the play, Peters boys, the pirates, and the Indians relentlessly track after one another in a literal vicious circle that, though it is on one level all burlesque, an excessive late Imperial pastiche of the commonplaces of childrens fiction, is also deadly seriousas the final carnage on Captain Hooks ship vividly dramatizes.(Elleke Boehmer, introduction to Scouting for Boys: A Handbook for Instruction in Good Citizenship by Robert Baden-Powell, 1908; Rpt. 2004)Samuel Becketts Use of Pastiche[Samuel] Becketts cutting and pasting his reading onto his own stock of prose produced a discourse that Giles Deleuze might call rhizomatic or a technique Frederic Jameson might call pastiche. That is, these early works are finally assemblages, intertextual layerings, palimpsests, the effect of which is to produce (if not reproduce) a multiplicity of meanings in a manner that will come to be thought Postmodern in the second half of the twentieth century. . . .Postmodern pastiche would suggest that the only style possible in contemporary culture is travesty or mimicry of past stylesquite the opposite of what Beckett was developing. Intertext or assemblage or pastiche allowed Beckett to assault the idea of style and so (or thereby) develop his own . . ..(S.E. Gontarski, Style and the Man: Samuel Beckett and the Art of Pastiche. Samuel Beckett Today: Pastiches, Parodies Other Imitations, ed. by Marius Buning, Matthijs Engelberts, and Sjef Houppermans. Rodopi, 2002) Fredric Jameson on PasticheHence, once again, pastiche: in a world in which stylistic innovation is no longer possible, all that is left is to imitate dead styles, to speak through the masks and with the voices of the styles in the imaginary museum. But this means that contemporary or postmodernist art is going to be about art itself in a new kind of way; even more, it means that one of its essential messages will involve the necessary failure of art and the aesthetic, the failure of the new, the imprisonment in the past.(Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism and Consumer Society. The Cultural Turn: Selected Writings on the Postmodern, 1983-1998. Verso, 1998)