Thomas Gage (264)

Thomas Gage (10 March 1719–2 April 1787) was an army officer and colonial governor, and a member of the American Philosophical Society, elected in 1768. Born in Sussex, England, Gage’s father, a viscount and member of parliament, saw his son off to Westminster School in 1728. After the boy completed his schooling, Viscount Gage bought his son a lieutenant's commission in 1741. Fortunately for the young man, his elder brother used his wealth and connections to further Gage’s military career. By late 1754, Gage traveled to North America and served in Major-General Edward Braddock’s ill-fated campaign to halt the advance of the French in the lucrative Ohio River valley in the Seven Years’ War. Despite Gage’s decidedly mixed military ventures thus far, he was nevertheless promoted to major-general in 1761 and soon after, Montreal’s military governor. The Crown’s recall of Lord Amherst as commander-in-chief for North America proved Gage’s newest appointment. His next assignment, as Governor of Massachusetts, brought him far less popularity especially when he attempted to enforce a series of much maligned Parliamentary acts, regionally known then and now as the Intolerable Acts. By the following year, relations between the colonials and the British government had only worsened. In April 1775, Gage, acting on orders from the British government, sent troops to Concord, Massachusetts to “arrest and imprison the principal actors and abettors” of the independence movement and destroy a cache of colonial arms. That mission, punctuated by the “shot heard round the world,” sparked nothing less than the American Revolution. Gage’s success that day proved limited, as was his subsequent victory of Bunker and Breed’s Hill, success that cost almost half of the men he sent to take the area. In light of these costly and even embarrassing losses, junior officers arrived and took over the war from there. He resigned the governorship and returned to England in the fall of 1775. Gage lived out the rest of life in relative peace and safety, enjoying a social life and testifying on behalf of friends for the Loyalist Claims Commission. He died after an extended period of discomfort. He was survived by his wife Margaret. (DNB, PI)