Thomas Gage (general)

Thomas Gage 1721-87, English general in North America. He came to America (1754) with Gen. Edward Braddock and took part in the ill-fated expedition against Fort Duquesne (1755). Later in the last of the French and Indian Wars he served under James Abercromby and Jeffery Amherst. Gage was appointed (1760) governor at Montreal and later succeeded Amherst (1763) as commander in chief of British forces in North America. He thus had a highly significant post in the years when trouble between the colonists and the British government grew, and the British soldiers were receiving the brunt of the colonists' resentment. In the critical year of 1774, Gage was chosen to succeed Thomas Hutchinson as governor of Massachusetts, where affairs were most serious. He tried to put down the dissident forces in the colony and to enforce the Intolerable Acts. He ordered the arrest of Samuel Adams and John Hancock . In Apr., 1775, he sent soldiers to seize military stores at Concord, and the colonial militia resisted; the battles of Lexington and Concord on Apr. 19 began the American Revolution. In Oct., 1775, he resigned and was succeeded by Gen. William Howe as commander in chief in the colonies, and by General Guy Carleton as commander in Canada.

Bibliography: See biography by J. Alden (1948); study by A. French (1932, repr. 1968).

Gage, Thomas (1721–1787), British general and royal governor of Massachusetts.In the French and Indian War, Gage demonstrated personal courage on the battlefield, but little talent for command. His real skill was as an administrator, and he fully proved it as the military governor of Montréal from 1761 to 1763. For more than a decade after succeeding Jeffrey Amherst as commander in chief of British North America in 1763, Gage confronted the legacies of the French and Indian War. After suppressing Pontiac's Rebellion, he struggled to keep land‐hungry colonists from new conflicts with the Indians. Following the Stamp Act upheavals, he tried to keep smugglers and other scofflaws from flouting Parliament's authority. Gage's mission soon shifted from protecting American colonists to controlling them. In 1774, Gage, newly appointed governor in chief of Massachusetts, enforced the Coercive Acts by closing the port of Boston and suspending representative government in the colony. In the ensuing crisis, he sent British troops to seize patriot supplies in the battles of Lexington and Concord (19 April 1775), triggering the Revolutionary War. Following the Battle of Bunker Hill (17 June 1775), he was recalled to England and blamed for allowing the American colonies to rebel.

Bibliography

John R. Alden , General Gage in America, 1948.
George Athan Billias , George Washington's Opponents, 1969.

Jon T. Coleman

Gage, Thomas (1719 or 1720–87) commander in chief of British forces in North America (1764–75) and the last royal governor of Massachusetts (1774–75), born in Firle, Sussex, England. Gage was charged with enforcing the Intolerable Acts in the face of a well-organized and angry populace. When he sent troops to seize military stores at Concord and to apprehend John Hancock and Samuel Adams (April 19, 1775), the fighting that broke out marked the start of the Revolutionary War. At the Battle of Bunker Hill (1775), Gage's only other significant engagement of the war, the British casualty rate was nearly 40 percent. As an outnumbered wartime commander in a hostile region, Gage was unable to meet the unrealistic expectations of his home government and was recalled to England in October 1775.