Celebrate America250: Gen. Artemas Ward

July 3, 1775. George Washington replaced General Artemas Ward as commander-in-chief of the patriot forces besieging the British Army in Boston. Much excellent writing has been produced about George Washington. Since I cannot hope to improve on it, I will focus on the man he replaced.

Artemas Ward was born in 1727 in the Central Massachusetts town of Shrewsbury. He attended Harvard College and graduated in 1748, becoming a school teacher and then a grocer. He was well-respected in his town and became the tax assessor and a selectman, eventually tapped to be a major in the local militia. In 1757, he was elected to the provincial legislature, the General Court. He commanded a militia regiment in the French and Indian War, although he never saw combat due to an attack of gallstones.

In the General Court, he was a zealous opponent of the Stamp Act, second only to James Otis. His dogged rhetoric earned him the ire of the royal governor, who revoked his militia commission. In 1768, he defeated the lieutenant governor in an election to the General Court, in response to which the royal governor annulled the election and expelled him from the legislature. Nonetheless, he continued to serve in the (illegal) provincial assembly that the patriots formed and was active on many committees of correspondence and supply, which mainly entailed illegally procuring gunpowder, muskets, and cannons. In February 1775, the provincial assembly appointed him commander-in-chief of the Massachusetts militia.

When war broke out in April 1775 with the Battles of Lexington and Concord, Artemas Ward rose from his sickbed (another attack of gallstones) to command the militia that had gathered around Boston. He proved to be an inspired choice for that moment. He was good at leading by consensus among the fractious militia and at organizing the digging of trenches and building fortifications to keep the British hemmed into Boston. New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut also appointed him commander of their militia units that had gathered around Boston. He spent much of his time procuring meat, flour, powder, muskets, entrenching tools, and so much more that the besieging army required. He raised more militia from surrounding towns and implored those already in the line to stay and be ready to fight.

But Ward was also a hesitant commander. When the British plans leaked to capture Bunker Hill and Dorchester Heights, he waited to fortify Bunker Hill until Gen. Israel Putnam finally demanded that it be done. On the day of the battle, June 17, 1775, he hesitated to commit enough patriot soldiers and powder to the battle because he feared that the British would attack Dorchester Heights as well. Nonetheless, he made the inspired choices of William Prescott and especially John Stark to command the defense of Bunker Hill. His forces inflicted 1,054 casualties on the British, the most they suffered in any battle of the Revolution.

When George Washington arrived to take command on July 3, 1775, he criticized Ward as "a fat old church warden" without the military skills to lead an army. But in reality, Gen. Artemas Ward had organized a militia rabble into a passable army that kept the British hemmed into Boston for nearly three months. It was a time when the militia army could easily have fallen apart in squabbling. So many men could have drifted home to work in their fields and shops that there would have been no army at all. If Artemas Ward had not held things together during the early months of the siege, there might have been no army, no siege, and no revolution at all.

The Continental Congress had appointed Ward second in command under Washington, thanks to John Adams' intervention, but Ward wanted to resign. He felt he was inadequate to the task and his health was poor. He performed one more crucial service to the Revolution on March 4, 1776, when his men built the surprise fortifications overnight on Dorchester Heights for the artillery that Henry Knox had dragged down from Fort Ticonderoga. The quick emplacement of the artillery there prevented the British from seizing the Heights and forced them to evacuate Boston two weeks later. Finally, in March 1777, his resignation was accepted.

Ward continued to distinguish himself in public service. He was again a delegate to the General Court and served as president of the Massachusetts Executive Council (1777-1779), essentially the governor of the new state. He was elected as a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1780. He was elected Speaker of the Massachusetts House and served two terms in the new federal House of Representatives. In 1795, he retired from the House, although he continued to serve as chief justice of the Worcester County Court of Common Pleas. In 1797, he retired from public life to live out his remaining days on his farm at Shrewsbury. He died of a stroke in 1800, and his legacy quickly faded.