William Sutherland was a British officer during the
American Revolution
The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in British America between 1765 and 1791. The Americans in the Thirteen Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in the American Revoluti ...
.
Lieutenant Sutherland, of the
38th Regiment of Foot, marched with the British troops, under the command of
General Gage
General Thomas Gage (10 March 1718/192 April 1787) was a British Army general officer and colonial official best known for his many years of service in North America, including his role as British commander-in-chief in the early days of t ...
, from
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
,
Massachusetts
Massachusetts (Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut Massachusett_writing_systems.html" ;"title="nowiki/> məhswatʃəwiːsət.html" ;"title="Massachusett writing systems">məhswatʃəwiːsət">Massachusett writing systems">məhswatʃəwiːsət'' En ...
on the night of 18 April 1775 led by Lieutenant-Colonel
Francis Smith. The next morning, 19 April, Sutherland and another officer, Lieutenant Adair of the Marines, at the lead of the column about a mile from
Lexington, were confronted by an armed colonist who aimed his
musket at them, pulled the trigger, but the gun misfired (actually it flashed in the pan, i.e. the primer powder failed to ignite the charge in the musket). Convinced that the colonist meant to kill them, they returned to the column and informed Major
John Pitcairn
Major John Pitcairn (28 December 1722 – 17 June 1775) was a Marine Service officer who was stationed in Boston, Massachusetts, at the start of the American War of Independence.
Born in Scotland in 1722, Pitcairn joined the Naval Service at ...
of the
British Marines of the incident. Pitcairn and the British column marched on to Lexington where they met and fired on local
minutemen on the village green.
After this initial engagement, the British troops marched on to
Concord
Concord may refer to:
Meaning "agreement"
* Pact or treaty, frequently between nations (indicating a condition of harmony)
* Harmony, in music
* Agreement (linguistics), a change in the form of a word depending on grammatical features of other ...
. Sutherland was with the British soldiers at the
North Bridge in Concord when they confronted around 400 Massachusetts militia and minutemen. He attempted to rally the troops and hold the bridge when the colonial militia returned fire, "the shot heard round the world," thus igniting the American Revolution. Sutherland was wounded in the shoulder during the engagement and returned to Boston during the British retreat. Shortly afterwards, Sutherland was promoted to captain. Sutherland would later write
[See Sutherland, William, and Richard Pope. Late News of the Excursions and Ravages of the King's Troops on the nineteenth of April 1775 as set forth in the Narrative of Lt. William Sutherland of His Majesty's 38th Regiment of Foot and of Richard Pope of the 47th Regiment. Edited by Harold Murdock. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1927.] about the British action at Lexington and Concord.
Over four years later, now a major, Sutherland was in command of a British fort at
Paulus Hook
Paulus Hook is a community on the Hudson River waterfront in Jersey City
Jersey City is the second-most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey, after Newark.[Hudson River
The Hudson River is a river that flows from north to south primarily through eastern New York. It originates in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York and flows southward through the Hudson Valley to the New York Harbor between N ...]
) in present-day
Jersey City,
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...
. On 19 August 1779, the fort was attacked by 400 Continental soldiers led by
Light Horse Harry Lee
Henry Lee III (January 29, 1756 – March 25, 1818) was an early American Patriot and U.S. politician who served as the ninth Governor of Virginia and as the Virginia Representative to the United States Congress. Lee's service during the Amer ...
in what became known as the
Battle of Paulus Hook. The fort, along with around 150
Hessian soldiers were captured. Sutherland managed to escape into a small redoubt within the fort with a small force of a few officers and forty Hessians. Lee was not able to capture the men in the redoubt and left the next morning.
Further reading
* Sutherland, William, and Richard Pope. Late News of the Excursions and Ravages of the King's Troops on the nineteenth of April 1775 as set forth in the Narrative of Lt. William Sutherland of His Majesty's 38th Regiment of Foot and of Richard Pope of the 47th Regiment. Edited by Harold Murdock. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1927.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sutherland, William
Year of birth missing
Year of death missing
South Staffordshire Regiment officers
British Army personnel of the American Revolutionary War
Place of birth missing