Born in 1719, the second son of an English lord, Thomas Gage followed the career path of many British aristocratic “spares” and entered the army. After combat duty in Europe during the endless wars between France and Britain, Gage arrived in America in 1775. He was just in time to be sent to the Ohio Valley where he fought at the disaster of Braddockâs defeat on the Monongahela River by a small army of French and Indians. They ambushed the British who had refused to adopt the American tactics of wilderness warfare. Gage was lucky enough to escape with his life, along with a new comrade he had acquired during the campaign, Major George Washington.
After the war, Gage was installed as military governor of Montreal, where he performed effectively, winning over French citizens. He was rewarded by appointment as British Commander-in-Chief over all British America. For the next 12 years, he carried a Herculean set of responsibilities, defending the Atlantic Coast, all of Canada and the Great Lakes, the Ohio Valley, former French outposts on the Mississippi River, as well as onducting relations with a host of potentially hostile Indian nations. Somehow Gage succeeded, winning kudos from American colonists and British foreign secretaries alike.
But as the decade of the 1760s continued, the task became infinitely more difficult as the British Parliament passed a series of taxes to recoup the vast sums spent on the previous war. There were riots following passage of the Stamp Act, leading to its repeal; the same thing happened after the imposition of the Townshend Duties. Gates wrote in 1766 that “a mob Assembled in the Night at Albany (northward on the Hudson from his headquarters in New York) and pulled down a great part of a very fine Provisions Storehouse belonging to the King, and robbed it of a Quantity of Provisions.” Meanwhile, the British government was constantly ordering Gage to reduce expenses for maintaining garrisons in the Colonies. Gage’s letters revealed a man who was growing more and more frustrated. He was trying to shut down smuggling by merchants like John Hancock who violated the Navigation Acts by importing “Molasses, Sugar,and Rum…from the foreign ports of the West Indies,” flouting trade regulations. After the passage of the Townshend Duties, Gage was ordered by Secretary Lord Hillsborough to move more troops to Boston to deal with the protests that erupted there. “I am taking Measures to defeat any Treasonable Designs,” Gage wrote Hillsborough, “but if open and declared Rebellion makes it’s Appearance, I mean to use all the Powers lodged in my Hands…to make Head against it.”
Boston had become the center of colonial opposition, and Gage moved there from New York to deal with any problems himself. Midway through 1773, Gage and his young American wife went to England for a brief vacation. He may have preferred to remain, giving up his increasingly impossible responsibilities, but she wanted to return to her family and friends in New York. By this time the Tea Act had been passed, followed by the Boston Tea Party, and the decision by Great Britain to close the Port of Boston.
Gage now moved back to Boston to take over the role as governor of Massachusetts. But the situation was rapidly spinning out of control. “It is agreed that popular Fury was never greater in this Province than at present,” he wrote London in the fall of 1774. At the same time the Continental Congress was meeting in Phidalphia, debating next steps for the Colonies, which agreed on non-importation and support for Boston. Gage was now writing, “Civil Government is near its End…Nothing that is said at present can palliate…Conciliating, Moderation, Reasoning is over. Nothing can be done but by forceable Means.”
He then added: “If Force is to be used, it must be a considerable one…for to begin with Small Numbers will encourage Resistance and not terrify; and will in the End cost more in Blood and Treasure.” As 1775 began, nothing could have been more prescient! Yet, Gage would be accused of letting the situation spin out of control, and his years of effective service rapidly forgotten. He suffered the same fate as many leaders before and after him, overtaken by events that no one was probably equipped to handle.