The Revolutionary War Letter You Were Never Supposed To See

In May 1775, a letter was sent to British General Thomas Gage in Boston the likes of which had never been received before. The letter certainly looked harmless enough. It was very short, and it didn’t say anything important at all—it simply requested the delivery of some papers. But this mysterious letter contained far more than meets the eye.

Barely ten days later, twenty-two-year-old Benjamin Thompson, a young, burgeoning physicist, was arrested in Woburn, Massachusetts, on suspicion of being inimical to America. Thompson had arrived in Woburn after fleeing from Concord, New Hampshire, where had also been suspected of disloyalty.

Thompson was no stranger to Woburn. He had been born and raised in the bucolic farm village twelve miles north of Boston. In fact, one of his closest childhood companions was Loammi Baldwin. On April 19, 1775, thirty-year-old Baldwin, a major in the Massachusetts militia, served as commanding officer of the Woburn companies as they responded to the Lexington alarm and participated in some of the heaviest fighting of the day.

As the noose of suspicion grew tighter and tighter around Thompson, and accusations of treachery more and more strident, Baldwin staunchly supported his lifelong friend. Thompson and Baldwin shared a mutual interest very unusual in 1760s and 1770s Woburn—a love of scientific theory and experimentation. Other than that shared love of science, Thompson and Baldwin did not have as much in common at all.

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This video goes on location to various historical sites in the Boston and Woburn, Massachusetts, area and traces the activities of Benjamin Thompson in the dawning days of the American Revolution, culminating in a final twist that you—literally—will not see coming.