The Great Ipswich Fright

The 21st of April, 1775, witnessed an awful commotion in the little
village of Ipswich. Old men, and boys, (the middle aged had marched to
Lexington some days before,) and all the women in the place who were
not bedridden or sick, came rushing as with one accord to the green in
front of the meeting house.
A rumor, which no one attempted to trace or authenticate, spread from
lip to lip that the British regulars had landed on the coast and were
marching upon the town. A scene of indescribable terror and confusion
followed. Defence was out of the question, as the young and ablebodied
men of the entire region round about had marched to Cambridge and
Lexington. The news of the battle at the latter place, exaggerated in
all its details, had been just received; terrible stories of the
atrocities committed by the dreaded "regulars" had been related; and
it was believed that nothing short of a general extermination of the
patriots, men, women, and children, was contemplated by the British
commander.
Almost simuItaneously the people of Beverly, a village a few miles
distant, were smitten with the same terror. How the rumor was
communicated no one could tell. It was there believed that the enemy
had fallen upon Ipswich, and massacred the inhabitants without regard
to age or sex. It was about the middle of the afternoon of this day
that the people of Newbury, ten miles farther north, assembled in an
informal meeting at the town house to bear accounts from the Lexington
fight and to consider what action was necessary in consequence of that
event. Parson Carey was about opening the meeting with prayer when
hurried hoof beats sounded up the street, and a messenger, loose
haired and panting for breath, rushed up the staircase. "Turn out,
turn out, for God's sake," he cried, "or you will be all killed! The
regulars are marching on us; they are at Ipswich now, cutting and
slashing all before them!'' Universal consternation was the immediate
result of this fearful announcement; Parson Carey's prayer died on his
lips; the congregation dispersed over the town, carrying to every
house the tidings that the regulars had come. Men on horseback went
galloping up and down the streets shouting the alarm. Women and
children echoed it from every corner. The panic became irresistible,
uncontrollable. Cries were heard that the dreaded invaders had reached
Oldtown Bridge, a little distance from the village, and that they were
killing all whom they encountered. Flight was resolved upon. All the
horses and vehicles in the town were put in requisition; men, women,
and children hurried as for life towards the north. Some threw their
silver and pewter ware and other valuables. into wells. Large numbers
crossed the Merrimac, and spent the night in the deserted houses of
Salisbury, whose inhabitants, stricken by the strange terror, had fled
into New Hampshire to take up their lodgings in dwellings also
abandoned by their owners.
A few individuals refused to fly with the multitude; some, unable to move
by reason of sickness, were left behind by their relatives. One old
gentleman, whose excessive corpulence rendered retreat oil his part
impossible, made a virtue of necessity; and, seating himself in his door
way with his loaded king's arm, upbraided his more nimble neighbors,
advising them to do as he did, and "stop and shoot the devils."
Many ludicrous instances of the intensity of the terror might be related.
One man got his family into a boat to go to Ram Island for safety. He
imagined he was pursued by the enemy through the dusk of the evening, and
was annoyed by the crying of an infant in the after part of the boat. "Do
throw that squalling brat overboard," he called to his wife, "or we shall
be all discovered and killed." A poor woman ran four or five miles up the
river and stopped to take breath and nurse her child, when she found to her
great horror that she had brought off the cat instead of the baby!
All through that memorable night the terror swept onward towards the north
with a speed which seems almost miraculous, producing everywhere the same
results. At midnight a horseman, clad only in shirt and breeches, dashed by
our grandfather's door, in Haverhill, twenty miles up the river. "Turn out!
Get a musket! Turn out! " he shouted; "the regulars are landing on Plum
Island! glad of it," responded the old gentleman from his chamber window;
"I wish they were all there, and obliged to stay there." When it is
understood that Plum Island is little more than a naked sand ridge, the
benevolence of this wish can be readily appreciated.
All the boats on the river were constantly employed for several hours in
conveying across the terrified fugitives. Through "the dead waste and
middle of the night" they fled over the border into New Hampshire. Some
feared to take the frequented roads, and wandered over wooded hills and
through swamps where the snows of the late winter had scarcely melted. They
heard the tramp and outcry of those behind them, and fancied that the
sounds were made by pursuing enemies. Fast as they fled, the terror, by
some unaccountable means, outstripped them. They found houses deserted and
streets strewn with household stuffs abandoned in the burry of escape.
Towards morning, however, the tide partially turned. Grown men began to
feel ashamed of their fears. The old Anglo-Saxon hardihood paused and
looked the terror in its face. Single or in small parties, armed with such
weapons as they found at hand, among which long poles, sharpened and
charred at the end, were conspicuous, they began to retrace their steps. In
the mean time such of the good people of Ipswich as were unable or
unwilling to leave their homes became convinced that the terrible rumor
which had nearly depopulated their settlement was unfounded.
Among those who had there awaited the onslaught of the regulars was a young
man from Exeter, New Hampshire. Becoming satisfied that the whole matter
was a delusion, he mounted his horse and followed after the retreating
multitude, undeceiving all whom he overtook. Late at night be reached
Newburyport;. greatly to the relief of its sleepless inhabitants and
hurried across the river, proclaiming as he rode the welcome tidings. The
sun rose upon haggard and jaded fugitives, worn with excitement and
fatigue, slowly returning homeward, their satisfaction at the absence of
danger somewhat moderated by an unpleasant consciousness of the ludicrous
scenes of their premature night flitting.
Any inference which might be drawn from the foregoing narrative derogatory
to the character of the people of New England at that day, on the score of
courage, would be essentially erroneous. It is true, they were not the men
to court danger or rashly throw away their lives for the mere glory of the
sacrifice. They bad always a prudent and wholesome regard to their own
comfort and safety; they justly looked upon sound heads and limbs as better
than broken ones; life was to them too serious and important, and their
hard gained property too valuable, to be lightly hazarded. They never
attempted to cheat themselves by under estimating the difficulty to be
encountered or shutting their eyes to its probable consequences. Cautious,
wary, schooled in the subtle strategy of Indian warfare, where self
preservation is by no means a secondary object, they had little in common
with the reckless enthusiasm of their French allies or the stolid
indifference of the fighting machines of the British regular army. When
danger could no longer be avoided, they met it with firmness and iron
endurance, but with a very vivid appreciation of its magnitude. Indeed, it
must be admitted by all who are familiar with the history of our fathers,
that the element of fear held an important place among their
characteristics. It exaggerated all the dangers of their earthly
pilgrimage, and peopled the future with shapes of evil. Their fear of Satan
invested him with some of the attributes of Omnipotence, and almost reached
the point of reverence. The slightest shock of an earthquake filled all
hearts with terror. Stout men trembled by their hearths with dread of some
paralytic old woman supposed to be a witch. And when they believed
themselves called upon to grapple with these terrors, and endure the
afflictions of their allotment, they brought to the trial a capability of
suffering undiminished by the chloroform of modern philosophy. They were
heroic in endurance. Panics like the one we have described might bow and
sway them like reeds in the wind; but they stood up like the oaks of their
own forests beneath the thunder and the bail of actual calamity.
It was certainly lucky for the good people of Essex County that no wicked
wag of a Tory undertook to immortalize in rhyme their ridiculous hegira, as
judge Hopkinson did the famous Battle of the Kegs in Philadelphia. Like the
more recent Madawaska war in Maine, the great Chepatchet demonstration in
Rhode Island, and the "Sauk fuss" of Wisconsin, it remains to this day
"unsyllabled, unsung"; and the fast fading memory of age alone preserves
the unwritten history of the great Ipswich fright.

(From: Prose Works of John Greenleaf Whittier, Vol. 11, pp. 115-121. Entered
according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by John Greenleaf Whittier,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
Massachusetts. Boston: Ticknor and Fields.)

THE GREAT IPSWICH FRIGHT    Stories