The Siege of Boston Part 2

[15] Bancroft's "United States," v, 203.

[16] The Castle, or Castle William, referred to in this chapter, was the old fort on Castle Island. It was never put to any other use than as a barracks and magazine.

CHAPTER III

CHARLES TOWNSHEND, SAM ADAMS, AND THE Ma.s.sACRE

Unfortunately, when the Stamp Act was repealed, the way had been left open for future trouble. The Rockingham ministry, the most liberal which could then be a.s.sembled, even in repealing the Stamp Act thought it inc.u.mbent upon them to a.s.sert, in the Declaratory Act, the right to tax America. The succeeding ministry, called together under the failing Pitt, was the means of rea.s.serting the right. Pitt, too ill to support the labor of leading his party in the Commons, entered the House of Lords as Earl of Chatham, thus acknowledging the eclipse of fame and abilities which in the previous reign had astounded Europe. It was during one of his periods of illness, when he was unable to attend to public affairs, that a subordinate insubordinately reversed his public policy by proceeding once more to tax America.

Charles Townshend was Chancellor of the Exchequer. It was he who had urged the reenactment of the Sugar Act in 1763, and he now saw opportunity to put through a more radical policy. In violation of all implied pledges, disdaining restraint from his colleagues, this brilliant but unstable politician introduced into Parliament a new bill for raising an American revenue. "I am still,"[17] he declared, "a firm advocate of the Stamp Act.... I laugh at the absurd distinction between internal and external taxation.... It is a distinction without a difference; if we have a right to impose the one, we have a right to impose the other; the distinction is ridiculous in the sight of everybody, except the Americans."

"Everybody, except the Americans!" The phrase, from an important speech at a critical moment, marks the fact that a world of thought divided the two parts of the Empire more truly than did the Atlantic. But not as yet so evidently. It is only in unconscious acknowledgments such as these that we find the English admitting the new cla.s.sification. In studying the years before and after this event we find the Americans often called Puritans and Oliverians, while the possible rise of a Cromwell among them is admitted. Yet the parallel, though unmistakably apt, and containing a serious warning, was never taken to heart, even in America.

Americans were very slow in approaching the conclusion that colonists had irrefragable rights. Caution and habit and pride in the name of Englishman kept them from it; the colonist, visiting England for the first time, still proudly said that he was going "home." There was no reason why this feeling should ever change, if only the spirit of compromise, the basis of the British Const.i.tution, had been kept in mind by Parliament. But the times were wrong. Hesitate as the colonists might before the syllogism which lay ready for completion, its minor and major premises were already accepted. That they were Englishmen, and that Englishmen had inalienable rights, were articles of faith among them. The conclusion would be drawn as soon as they were forced to it.

And Townshend was preparing to force them.

Townshend proposed small duties on lead, paints, gla.s.s, and paper.

Besides this, he withdrew the previous export duty, one shilling per pound, on tea taken from England to America, and instead of this he laid an import duty of threepence per pound. This was ingeniously new, being internal taxation in a form different from that of the Stamp Act. At the same time was abandoned the ancient contention that customs duties were but trade regulations. The new taxes were obviously to raise an English revenue. For the execution of the new laws provision was made in each colony for collectors to be paid directly by the king, but indirectly by the colonies. The head of these collectors was a board of Commissioners of the Customs, stationed at Boston. It will be seen that thus were begun new irritations for the colonies, in the shape of duties for the benefit of England, and of a corps of officials whose dependence on the crown made sure that they would be subservient tools.

While this was done, no change was made in the plan to maintain in America an army at colonial expense. Indeed, New York was punished for refusing to supply to the troops quartered in the city supplies that had been illegally demanded. Its a.s.sembly was not allowed to proceed with public business until the supplies should be voted. Thus every other colony was notified what to expect.

The Revenue Acts were pa.s.sed in July, 1767. Upon receiving the news the colonies expressed to each other their discontent. Concerning the Customs Commissioners Boston felt the greatest uneasiness. "We shall now," wrote Andrew Eliot, "be obliged to maintain in luxury sycophants, court parasites, and hungry dependents." The strongest expression upon the general situation was in d.i.c.kinson's "Farmer's Letters."[18]

"This," said he, "is an INNOVATION, and a most dangerous innovation. We being obliged to take commodities from Great Britain, special duties upon their exportation to us are as much taxes as those imposed by the Stamp Act. Great Britain claims and exercises the right to prohibit manufactures in America. Once admit that she may lay duties upon her exportations to us, for the purpose of levying money on us only, she will then have nothing to do but to lay those duties on the articles which she prohibits us to manufacture, and the tragedy of American liberty is finished."

There was but one way to meet the situation. In October the town of Boston resolved, through its town meeting, to import none of the dutiable articles. The example was followed by other towns until all the colonies had entered, unofficially, into a non-importation agreement.

The question arose, What further should be done? Otis was beginning his mental decline. It was now that Samuel Adams, or Sam Adams, as Boston better loves to call him, came into the leadership which he ever after exercised.

He was a man of plain Boston ancestry, whose father had interested himself in public affairs, and who, like his son, was of doubtful business ability. Sam Adams's interests were evident from his boyhood, and when in 1743 he took his degree of Master of Arts at Harvard, he presented a thesis on the subject: "Whether it be Lawful to resist the Supreme Magistrate, if the Commonwealth cannot otherwise be preserved."

Although he inherited a little property from his father, and although from the year 1753 he served constantly in public offices, up to the year 1764 he had scarcely been a success. His patrimony had largely disappeared; further, as tax-collector he stood, with his a.s.sociates, indebted to the town for nearly ten thousand pounds. The reason for this is not clear; the fact has been used to his disadvantage by Tory historians, the first of them being Hutchinson, who calls the situation a "defalcation." But in order to feel sure that the state of affairs was justified by circ.u.mstances, we need only to consider that in the same year Adams was chosen by the town on the committee to "instruct"

its representatives, and a year later was himself made a legislator.

From that time on, his influence in Boston and Ma.s.sachusetts politics steadily grew.

His political sentiments were never in doubt. In his "instructions" of 1764 are found the words: "If Taxes are laid upon us in any shape without our having a legal representative where they are laid, are we not reduced from the Character of free Subjects to the miserable State of tributary Slaves?"[19] Throughout the Stamp Act agitation he was active in opposing the new measures. He was found to be ready with his tongue, but especially so with his pen. For this reason he was constantly employed by the town and the a.s.sembly to draft their resolutions, and some of the most momentous doc.u.ments of the period remain to us in his handwriting. When at last, at the beginning of 1768, some one was needed to express the opinion of Ma.s.sachusetts upon the Townshend Acts, Samuel Adams was naturally looked to as the man for the work.

He drafted papers which were, one after the other, adopted by the Ma.s.sachusetts a.s.sembly. The first was a letter of remonstrance, addressed to the colony's agent in London, and intended to be made public. It protested, in words seven times revised by the a.s.sembly, against the proposed measures. Similar letters were sent to members of the ministry and leaders of English opinion. Another letter was addressed to the king. Of the success of this, Adams apparently had little hope, for when his daughter remarked that the paper might be touched by the royal hand, he replied, "More likely it will be spurned by the royal foot." The final one of these state papers was a circular letter addressed to "each House of Representatives or Burgesses on the continent." This expressed the opinion of Ma.s.sachusetts upon the new laws, and invited discussion. That nothing in this should be considered underhanded, a copy of the circular letter was sent to England.

It is significant that at the same time the new revenue commission sent a secret letter to England, protesting against New England town meetings, "in which the lowest mechanics discussed the most important points of government with the utmost freedom,"[20] and asking for troops.

This begins the series of misrepresentations and complaints which, constantly sent secretly to England, became a leading cause of trouble.

The working of the old colonial system is here seen in its perfection.

Believing in the right to tax and punish, the Ministry appointed officers of the same belief. These men, finding themselves in hot water in Boston, were annoyed and perhaps truly alarmed, and constantly urged harsher measures and the sending of troops. The ministry, listening to its own supporters, and disbelieving the a.s.sertions of the American Whigs, more and more steadily inclined toward severity.

Perhaps no falser idea was created than that Boston was riotous. Says Fiske: "Of all the misconceptions of America by England which brought about the American Revolution, perhaps this notion of the turbulence of Boston was the most ludicrous." One of the most serious also. The chief cause was in the timorousness of Bernard, the governor. On the occasion of the anniversary of the repeal of the Stamp Act, when, as Hutchinson said, "We had only such a mob as we have long been used to on the Fifth of November," Bernard wrote that there was "a disposition to the utmost disorder." As a crowd reached his house, "There was so terrible a yell it was apprehended they were breaking in. It was not so; however, it caused the same terror as if it had been so." That such a letter should have any effect on home opinion is, as Fiske says, ludicrous. Yet the mischief caused by these reports is incalculable. "It is the bare truth," says Trevelyan, "that his own Governors and Lieutenant-Governors wrote King George out of America."[21]

Another little series of incidents at this time shows the official disposition to magnify reports of trouble. For some weeks the ship of war _Romney_ had lain in the harbor, summoned by the commissioners of customs. That the ship should be summoned was in itself an offence to the town; but the conduct of the captain, in impressing seamen in the streets of Boston, was worse. Bad blood arose between the ship's crew and the longsh.o.r.emen; one of the impressed men was rescued, but the captain angrily refused to accept a subst.i.tute for another. Trouble was brought to a head by the seizure, on the order of the commissioners of customs, of John Hanc.o.c.k's sloop, the _Liberty_, on alleged violation of regulations. Irritated by the seizure, and by the fact that the sloop was moored by the side of the _Romney_, a crowd threatened the customs house officers, broke the comptroller's windows, and, taking a boat belonging to the collector, after parading with it through the streets, burnt it on the Common.

This was the second disturbance in Boston which can be called a riot.

But it was of small size and short duration; the influence of the Whig leaders, working through secret channels, quieted the mob, and there was no further trouble. Nevertheless, four of the commissioners of the customs seized the occasion to flee to the _Romney_, and to request of the governor protection in the Castle, declaring that they dared not return. But the remaining commissioner remained undisturbed on sh.o.r.e, and a committee of the council, examining into the matter, found that the affair had been only "a small disturbance." A committee from the Boston town meeting, going in eleven chaises to Bernard at his country seat, secured from him a promise to stop impressments, and a statement of his desire for conciliation. Nevertheless Bernard, Hutchinson, and the various officers of the customs, used the incident in their letters home to urge that troops were needed in Boston.

This was but an interlude, though an instructive one, in the main course of events. Ma.s.sachusetts had protested against the new Acts. The next issue arose when the a.s.sembly was directed, by the new colonial secretary, Lord Hillsborough, to rescind its Remonstrance and Circular Letter. The debate on the question was long and important; the demand was refused by a vote of seventeen to ninety-two. The curious can still see, in the Old State House, the punch-bowl that Paul Revere was commissioned to make for the "Immortal Ninety-two;" and there still exist copies of Revere's caricature of the Rescinders, with Timothy Ruggles at their head, being urged by devils into the mouth of h.e.l.l.

These are indications of the feelings of the times. The immediate result was that in June, 1768, Bernard dissolved the house, and Ma.s.sachusetts was "left without a legislature." Upon the news reaching England, it was at last resolved to send troops to Boston. The crisis in Ma.s.sachusetts was now serious. Against the governor and the expected troops stood only the council, with slight powers. Some machinery must be devised to meet the emergency, and the solution of the difficulty was found by Samuel Adams. His mind first leaped to the ultimate remedy for all troubles, and then found the way out of the present difficulty.

The ultimate solution was independence. Though in moments of despondency and exasperation the word had been used by both parties, until now no one had considered independence possible except Samuel Adams. From this period he worked for it, in secret preparing men's minds for the grand change. According to a Tory accusation made in a later year, Adams "confessed that the independence of the colonies had been the great object of his life; that whenever he met a youth of parts he had endeavored to instil such notions into his mind, and had neglected no opportunity, either in public or in private, of preparing the way for independence."[22]

Another Tory source, a deposition gathered when the Tories were preparing an accusation against Adams, shows the agitator at work.

During the affair of the sloop _Liberty_, "the informant observed several parties of men gathered in the street at the south end of the town of Boston, in the forenoon of the day. The informant went up to one of the parties, and Mr. Samuel Adams, then one of the representatives of Boston, happened to join the same party near about the same time, trembling and in great agitation.... The informant heard the said Samuel Adams then say to the same party, 'If you are men, behave like men. Let us take up arms immediately, and be free, and seize all the king's officers. We shall have thirty thousand freemen to join us from the country.'"

The statement of the deposition is crude and overdone, yet there can be no doubt that from this time Adams did work for the one great end. At first he was alone, yet he recognized the temper of the continent, and saw the way that the political sentiments of the country were tending.

The methods which he followed were not always open; for never did he avow his true sentiments, while often protesting, on behalf of the town or the province, loyalty to the crown. Doubtless he did train the young men up as he saw them inclined. In one case we know that he failed.

"Samuel Adams used to tell me," said John Coffin, a Boston Tory, "'Coffin, you must not leave us; we shall have warm work, and want you.'"[23] But in other cases Adams succeeded: one by one John Hanc.o.c.k, Josiah Quincy, Jr., John Adams, and Joseph Warren were by him brought into prominence. And at the same time he began to accustom men's minds to new methods of political activity.

This Adams did in the present difficulty, when, in default of the a.s.sembly, he yet needed an expression of the opinion of the province.

Through his means was called a convention of the towns of Ma.s.sachusetts, which met in Faneuil Hall, on the 22d of September, 1768.

The convention was self-restrained. It called upon the governor to convene the a.s.sembly, and approved all the acts which had caused the a.s.sembly's dismissal; it resolved to preserve order, and quietly dissolved itself. "I doubt," said the British Attorney-General, "whether they have committed an overt act of treason, but I am sure they have come within a hair's breadth of it."

Immediately afterwards arrived the ships with troops. These were landed with much parade, to find a peaceful town, yet one which from the first was able to annoy them. Demand was made for quarters for the soldiers; the Selectmen and Council replied by referring to the law which forbade such a requisition until the barracks at Castle William should be filled. By neither subtlety nor threats could the town be induced to yield; the troops camped on the Common until, at great expense, the crown officials were forced to hire quarters. It was but the beginning of the discomfort of the troops, openly scorned in a town where three-quarters of the people were against them. Where few women except their own camp-followers would have to do with the soldiers, where the men despised them and the boys jeered, where "lobster-back" was the mildest term that was flung at them, there was no satisfaction in wearing the king's uniform.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FANEUIL HALL]

Eighteen months of this life wore upon the soldiers. The townsfolk became adepts at subtle irritations, against which there was not even the solace of interesting occupation; for except for daily drill there was nothing to do. In time the more violent among the troops were ripe for any affray; while the lower cla.s.ses among the inhabitants, stanch Whigs and sober livers, were sick of the noisy ribaldry which for so long had made unpleasant the streets of the town. Out of these conditions grew what has been called the Boston Ma.s.sacre.

The best contemporary, and in fact the best general authority for this event is the "Short Narrative of the Horrid Ma.s.sacre in Boston." This was published by the town for circulation in England, and is still extant in Doggett's reprint of 1849, and in Kidder's of 1870. In a report of a special committee the town rehea.r.s.es both the events of the Ma.s.sacre and the proceedings which followed it. Seventy-two pages of depositions are appended to the report of the committee: no other single event of those days is made so vivid to us.

The Ma.s.sacre was preceded by minor disturbances. On the second of March, 1770, insults having pa.s.sed between a soldier and a ropemaker, the former came to the ropewalk, "and looking into one of the windows said, _by G.o.d I'll have satisfaction!_ ... and at last said he was not afraid of any one in the ropewalks. I"--thus deposes Nicholas Feriter, of lawful age, "stept out of the window and speedily knocked up his heels.

On falling, his coat flew open, and a naked sword appeared, which one John Willson, following me out, took from him, and brought into the ropewalks." The soldier returned a second and a third time, each time with more men from his regiment. At the last they were "headed by a tall negro drummer, with a cutla.s.s chained to his body, with which, at first rencounter," says valiant Nicholas, "I received a cut on the head, but being immediately supported by nine or ten more of the ropemakers, armed with their wouldring sticks, we again beat them off."

For three days there was, among the two regiments stationed in the town, anger which the inhabitants endeavored to allay by the discharge of the ropemaker who gave the original insult, and by agreements made with the commanding officer, Colonel Dalrymple. But, as afterwards appeared, there were warnings of further trouble. Cautions were given to friends of the soldiers not to go on the streets at night. The soldiers and their women could not refrain from dark hints of violence to come. It is even possible that violence was concerted. On the night of the fifth a number of soldiers a.s.sembled in Atkinson Street. "They stood very still until the guns were fired in King Street, then they clapped their hands and gave a cheer, saying, 'This is all that we want'; they then ran to their barracks and came out again in a few minutes, all with their arms, and ran toward King Street." "I never," so runs other testimony, "saw men or dogs so greedy for their prey as these soldiers seemed to be."

But the affray was of small proportions, and soon over. The actual outbreak originated in a quarrel between a barber's boy and a sentry, stationed in King Street below the east end of the Town House.[24] Boys and men gathered, the sentry called out the guard, fire-bells were rung, and the crowd increased. The captain of the guard was not the man for the emergency. Said Henry Knox, afterward general and Secretary of War, "I took Captain Preston by the coat and told him for G.o.d's sake to take his men back again, for if they fired his life must answer for the consequence; he replied he was sensible of it, or knew what he was about, or words to that purpose; and seemed in great haste and much agitated." The gathering still increased, there was crowding and jostling, s...o...b..a.l.l.s and possibly sticks were thrown; the soldiers grew angry and the officer uncertain what to do. "The soldiers," testified John Hickling, "a.s.sumed different postures, shoving their bayonets frequently at the people, one in particular pushing against my side swore he would run me through; I laid hold of his bayonet and told him that n.o.body was going to meddle with them. Not more than ten seconds after this I saw something white, resembling a piece of snow or ice, fall among the soldiers, which knocked the end of a firelock to the ground. At that instant the word 'Fire!' was given, but by whom I know not; but concluded it did not come from the officer aforesaid, as I was within a yard of him and must have heard him had he spoken it, but am satisfied said Preston did not forbid them to fire; I instantly leaped within the soldier's bayonet as I heard him c.o.c.k his gun, which that moment went off.... I, thinking there was nothing but powder fired, stood still, till ... I saw another gun fired, and the man since called Attucks, fall. I then withdrew about two or three yards.... During this the rest of the guns were fired, one after another, when I saw two more fall.... I further declare that I heard no other affront given them than the huzzaing and whistling of boys in the street."

After the firing, other soldiers were summoned to the spot, and more townspeople appeared. The soldiers, says the official narrative, "were drawn up between the State House and main guard, their lines extended across the street and facing down King Street, where the town people were a.s.sembled. The first line kneeled, and the whole of the first platoon presented their guns ready to fire, as soon as the word should be given.... For some time the appearance of things were dismal. The soldiers outrageous on the one hand, and the inhabitants justly incensed against them on the other: both parties seemed disposed to come to action."

Had the affair gone further, so that the soldiers fired again, or the townspeople stormed the barracks, then the affray would have resembled the riots not uncommon in Europe at that time, and known even in England. In such a case the turbulence of Boston might have been proved.

But the good town was later able to claim that up to the actual breaking out of hostilities not one soldier or Tory had been harmed in Ma.s.sachusetts. In the present case nothing further happened. The stubborn people stood their ground, but the eager troops were restrained and led away. The punishment of the offenders took place according to law, with John Adams and Josiah Quincy, Jr., leaders of the Whigs, as successful defenders of the captain.

The important consequences were political. Though the people dispersed that night, they a.s.sembled on the morrow in a crowded town meeting, where Samuel Adams guided the actions of the a.s.sembly. Adjourning from Faneuil Hall to the Old South, which itself could not accommodate them all, the throng pa.s.sed the very spot of the Ma.s.sacre and under the windows of the State House, where the lieutenant-governor viewed them.

This man was Hutchinson, acting governor in the absence of Bernard, and at last about to arrive at the goal of colonial ambition.

Thomas Hutchinson has been too much condemned, and of late years almost too much commended. He had spent thirty years in the service of the colony, holding more offices, and more at the same time, than any man of his generation. Now he was unpopular and misjudged, yet he was a man for his day and party honest and patriotic; his end, in exile in England, was one of the tragedies of American loyalty. But though a braver man than Bernard and more public-spirited, his methods were equally underhanded, and he fatally mistook the capacity of his countrymen to govern themselves. A man who could wish for less freedom of speech in England was not the man to sympathize with the spirit of Americans.

He now, backed by a few councillors and officials, was to face Sam Adams and the Boston town meeting. With a committee from the meeting, Adams came to the State House to demand the withdrawal of the troops to the Castle. Hutchinson answered that he would withdraw one regiment, but had not the power to remove both. Retiring at the head of his committee, Adams pa.s.sed through a lane of people on his way to the Old South. "Both regiments or none!" he said right and left as he pa.s.sed, and every one took up the word. "Both regiments or none!" cried the meeting. Voting his report unsatisfactory, it sent him back to the governor to repeat his demand.

"Now for the picture," wrote John Adams many years after. "The theatre and the scenery are the same with those at the discussion of the writs of a.s.sistance. The same glorious portraits of King Charles the Second, and King James the Second, to which might be added, and should be added, little miserable likenesses of Governor Winthrop, Governor Bradstreet, Governor Endicott, and Governor Belcher, hung up in obscure corners of the room. Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson, commander-in-chief in the absence of the governor, must be placed at the head of the council-table. Lieutenant-Colonel Dalrymple, commander of his majesty's military forces, taking rank of all his majesty's councillors, must be seated by the side of the lieutenant-governor and commander-in-chief of the Province. Eight-and-twenty councillors must be painted, all seated at the council-board. Let me see,--what costume? What was the fashion of that day in the month of March? Large white wigs, English scarlet-cloth coats, some of them with gold-laced hats; not on their heads indeed in so august a presence, but on the table before them or under the table beneath them. Before these ill.u.s.trious persons appeared SAMUEL ADAMS, a member of the House of Representatives and their clerk, now at the head of the committee of the great a.s.sembly at the Old South Church."[25]