Nearly a Powder Keg in Salem
Colonel Leslie and Salem Residents Have an Argument Across a Drawn Bridge
Do you ever write down a quote, and then years later, when wanting to use it for part of a post, discover that you can’t find your original notes, and then spend hours chasing every thread of memory you have around that research, only to come up empty?
That’s where I have been for about a week now. I clearly remember reading an account of Leslie’s Retreat, 26 February 1775, that I found amusing. I also clearly remember that wherever I had read this, they had used Monty Python as a descriptor of the events. All that I can find, evidence wise, of something I wrote down regarding it is the following text that I wrote on a Facebook post at the time.
"Go home and tell your master he sent you on a fool's errand and has broken the peace of our Sabbath. What! Do you think we were born in the woods to be frightened by owls?" - Sarah Tarrant, yelling at British soldiers during the unsuccessful "raid" of Salem prior to Lexington and Concord.
Note to self: Be more like Sarah Tarrant.1
I had very specific thoughts about this passage being in a book (which could be wrong). I had very specific thoughts about writing down notes about this passage. (These notes have not materialized.) I have now been through several books in my collection, several of which don’t even mention Col. Alexander Leslie in the index, let alone have mention of Leslie’s Retreat in the text. (At least one mentioned the Retreat very briefly in text, but still didn’t mention Leslie in the index, even though his name was mentioned in the Retreat section.) I have been through several historian blogs, just in case it wasn’t a book. Still - nothing.
And here I am, with only two days left to write and I still cannot find the text I originally read - at least as I remember it. I do, however, have quite a few more references to Leslie’s Retreat. Just… not the one with the Monty Python references.
So, on we go with the full account, from my other sources, of Leslie’s Retreat, or the Salem Gunpowder Raid.
(And if you happen to know of an historian who wrote an account of Leslie’s Retreat while comparing it to a Monty Python skit, please tell me which book it is in, because I am at a loss.)
The outcome smacked of comic opera. Once the British column was spotted in Marblehead, Salem residents were warned just in time to move the sought-after cannon. When Leslie neared the town center, he found a drawbridge raised and behind it a considerable body of county militia.2
The central character of Leslie’s Retreat is, of course, Leslie. Or more specifically, Colonel Alexander Leslie. He, along with the 64th Regiment of Foot, were dispatched from Castle William in Boston Harbor to Marblehead in February of 1775. Salem had been assembling military supplies. “One of the workmen [building carriages for the brass cannons they had acquired] was supposed to have been a traitor and gone to Boston on Saturday afternoon, February 25, to inform General Gage what was going on; but it seems more likely that word was sent by some of the more important Salem tories.”3
For those familiar with the story of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, this sounds familiar. The British hear of munitions being stored somewhere, and they go out to investigate. But this is two months before Lexington and Concord.
They clearly thought they were being clever. The British decide to give little warning, leaving by ship from Castle William. They land in Marblehead. “The transport arrived at Marblehead about noon, but appeared to be manned as usual, for the soldiers were kept below decks.”4 Col. Leslie, waiting until the colonists were at Sunday Services, landed and marched off toward Salem.
It backfired. Major John Pedrick is often given credit for getting the alarm to Salem. This is likely a falsehood that has been picked up from his daughter and repeated so often it’s in a number of history books.5 However the alarm arrived, the people of Salem got to work.
“Colonel Mason, with a group of young men, rushed from his house in North Street to the shop where his guns were. David Boyce and other truckmen hurried along with their teams. There was no snow on the ground and some of the guns were dragged to an adjacent oak woodlot near Buffum street, and covered with leaves and the carriages hidden.”6 At some point, between the troops reaching Salem from the south and marching through town, Colonel Mason got back over the drawbridge north of town and then the bridge was drawn up so the troops could not cross.
Meanwhile, having come down from towns north of Salem, there are militia men behind the residents of Salem at the bridge as well. Col. Leslie was faced “with a large, angry, armed crowd and a raised drawbridge.”7
I do quite enjoy the back and forth conversation as related in James Duncan Phillips’ Salem in the Eighteenth Century. It goes thusly:
Leslie held a conference with his officers, and then announced to Captain Felt that he was determined to cross the bridge if he stayed till autumn, and that he would turn the warehouses on West’s Wharf into barracks.
‘Nobody would care for that,’ remarked Felt with a bit of a sneer.
‘By God, I will not be defeated,’ replied the colonel, decidedly nettled.
‘You must acknowledge that you have been already baffled,’ replied Felt.
‘I desire you do not fire on those innocent people.’ [Interjected Reverend Mr. Barnard.]
‘Who are you?’ demanded Leslie abruptly.
‘I am Thomas Barnard, a minister of the Gospel, and my mission is peace,’ replied the worthy minster, ‘and I pray to Heaven there may be no conflict.’
‘I am on the king’s highway and I won’t be stopped,’ retorted Leslie.
‘It is not the king’s highway,’ asserted old Captain Barr. ‘It is a road built by the owners of the lots on the other side, and no king, country, or town has anything to do with it.’8
This conversation keeps going. You have to wonder how much of it might have been fictionalized considering the sheer length of this conversation in a history book. You begin to see why a comparison to Monty Python might have been made. Some of the arguments sound like the French and English arguing in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
In any event, Colonel Leslie eventually promises that he will march his men no more than 50 rods, but that he must cross the bridge so that he will not be caught in a lie when he says he found no cannons (with even more back-and-forth that continues to sound like a Monty Python sketch).
Colonel Leslie’s decision to march 50 rods and turn around and head back to Boston somewhat narrowly evades starting the war by two months. But the lesson is learned from this event, that 250 men is not enough, and many more will be enlisted for the Concord expedition, with far more secrecy.
As for Sarah Tarrant? That quote from earlier? That’s from when the Redcoats were leaving. She cannot help but send them on their way with one last barb. Sarah Tarrant has the last word.
Are you in the Salem area this weekend? The City of Salem is marking the 250th Anniversary of Leslie’s Retreat this year with a number of events.
Saturday, Feb 22: REENACTMENT DAY!
Speaking Program at St. Peter’s Episcopal - Free! (9:30AM)
Reenactment at North Bridge (11:00 AM!) - Free! Public viewing at various places along the route.
“Loyalists in our Midst” Tours - Free! Departing from St. Peter’s, First-Come-First-Serve.
“Fashion in the Season of Revolution” at the Peabody Essex Museum
Revolution Ball at Hamilton Hall
Sunday, Feb 23: “In Open Rebellion” Presentation at Salem’s Old Town Hall.
https://www.salemma.gov/home/news/salem-commemorates-250th-anniversary-historic-leslies-retreat
Note: This Sarah Tarrant quote, I have since found in multiple other sources, including some of the linked websites and blogs in the end notes.
Kevin Phillips, 1775: A Good Year for Revolution. (New York: Penguin Books, 2012), 10.
[Side note: This is the closest I came to the Monty Python quote I was looking for.]
James Duncan Phillips, Salem in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, MA: The Riverside Press, 1937), 351.
James Duncan Phillips, Salem in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, MA: The Riverside Press, 1937), 352.
You can read more about Mrs. Story in John Bell’s blog:
Boston 1775: The Myth of Major John Pedrick (https://boston1775.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-myth-of-major-john-pedrick.html)
James Duncan Phillips, Salem in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, MA: The Riverside Press, 1937), 353.
Donna Seger, streetsofsalem (blog). https://streetsofsalem.com/2014/02/26/resistance-and-retreat-in-salem-1775/ (Access Date: 2/7/2025)
James Duncan Phillips, Salem in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, MA: The Riverside Press, 1937), 357-8.
Additional Sources:
https://www.salemma.gov/home/news/salem-commemorates-250th-anniversary-historic-leslies-retreat
Account of Leslie’s Retreat - Library of Congress
https://www.loc.gov/item/02002954/https://boston1775.blogspot.com/2021/02/leslies-retreat-commemorations-21-feb.html
https://boston1775.blogspot.com/search?q=leslie%27s+retreathttps://historicipswich.net/2023/02/22/leslies-retreat-or-how-the-revolutionary-war-almost-began-in-salem/