USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Celebration of the centennial anniversary of the evacuation of Boston by the British Army, March 17th, 1776 > Part 3
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There was an anticipation of triumph and of fame in this public gift, made at so early a stage in a long strug- gle, and in the opening of the national career of the august commander. Lofty and yet modest in its self- regards as was the dignity of his spirit, was not this
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treasured gift, sometimes taken from its repository and in the retirement and home privacy of Washington, fondly gazed upon, with the reckoning's of memory and a good conscience, in recalling tranquilly the anxious past? The medal, fully appreciated for its intrinsic and symbolic value, has been transmitted through the family of his elder brother. During our civil war it was held by those who lived where the combatants on either side were changing places. Then, for safe-keeping, it was buried in the ground some eleven miles from Harper's Ferry. Un- der ground was the proper place for it then; for it was not meet that it should be in the sunlight during the struggle over the life of the nation which Washington had created and saved. Shall we not all rejoice, fellow-citi- zens, that just after a century has transpired since a great enterprise was consummated, this memorial of it has found its shrine in this rescued city?
It will be for the scholar, the orator, and statesman who worthily owns the name and lineage of the honored and revered founder of this Town and State, in the glorious summer month of the Nation's Centennial, to give elo- quent voice to the echo of a hundred years of the procla- mation of that nation's birth. My word is limited to this old peninsula of Boston. The event to-day commemo- rated, alike in the protracted and weary work which culminated in it, and in its place and import in the yet more protracted series of struggles which it opened, has its transcendent interest and glory. We commemorate the Centennial of the one most memorable day in all the two and a half centuries of the history of Boston, -the day on which the only hostile force that has ever occupied G
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it was driven from it, that its scattered inhabitants might return to their own homes and peaceful ways of honest industry. The theme is not one for rhetorical ornament, nor for ideal, imaginative flights. Its historic facts carry with them stirred emotions and instructive lessons. This is the one day in the long series of centennial commemo- rations, extending through seven years, that belongs especially and exclusively to this dear old town of Bos- ton, - the day of its great deliverance from pestilence, sword and famine. I must, therefore, look upon and address all around me as natives of Boston; or, in the exceptional cases of those of you who may not be so, as, while duly deploring the misfortune, at least its good citi- zens, including the sex that does not yet vote. Let us recall the old town as it was at the time with which we have to deal.
OLD BOSTON.
It was a pear-shaped peninsula, less than two miles in its extreme length, and but little more than one in its greatest breadth. It hung to the main land at Roxbury by a slender stem or neck, of a mile in length, so low and narrow between tide-washed flats that it was often sub- merged. It was occupied by the first colonists here as their capital, because of these natural features; its sea- front, its water-borderings, and the case of defending it at the Neck against Indians and wolves. There was a barrier constructed for this purpose near where the strong lines and defences of our besieged enemy were planted. The territorial area and aspect of the peninsula had been scarcely changed at all, in their natural features, at
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the time of the siege from what they were when it was first settled. Extraordinary changes have been made since, most of them within the last half century. The original seven hundred acres of solid land have now be- come nearly fifteen hundred. The gain has been made by reclaiming the broad, oozy salt marshes, the estuaries, coves and bays, once stretching wide on its northern and southern bounds. Where the area was then the narrow- est it is now the widest. Besides the two elevations, Copp's and Fort Hill, which rose on the northern and southern ends of the promontory, another with triple summits - the only one of which that remains is the site of the State House -gave the name of Tri-mountain, or Tremont, to the settlement. The sharp declivities and bold undulations of the surface of the peninsula had not been disturbed at the time of the siege. The hundred thoroughfares, lanes and alleys, with their narrow courts and sinuous windings, have been broadened and straight- ened and extended and multiplied; the whole surface has been levelled and graded, every square inch of it has been turned over and over, and it has been burrowed under ground as diligently as it has been coursed above. More labor and money have been expended upon the mere soil of this peninsula than upon the land surface of all our other old cities. The granite ledges of the coast and of the interior, the forests of Maine, the sand and gravel of our country hills, have been deposited here to give us deep water margins, to fringe off our marshes, and to make new territory. Abounding bridges and causeways make us forget that this town ever was a peninsula. The thought not irreverently suggests itself that if the Crea-
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tor - as we used to say - but as science is now trying to teach us to phrase it, if the Evolving Power, had had re- gard to our wishes as to the disposal of land and water in this neighborhood, we might have been relieved of much cost and toil. The numerous islands in our beautiful bay bore still some remnants of their original woods, or were covered with tilled fields and pastures for flocks.
The old town had been for nearly a hundred and fifty years the scene of peace, thrift and happiness - with the buffetings of human experience mingled in - for exiles, almost wholly from England, with their descendants. Just previous to the time of its sharp trial it was a privi- leged and an enviable heritage. It enjoyed an entail of blessings from the toils of a laborious, virtuous and God- fearing ancestry, and from a softened, but not repudiated, Puritan sway in its households and modes of life. From extant letters, diaries, family traditions, mercantile ledgers and drawings, the old town may be set forth with such charms of thrift and comfort, and tranquil prosperity, as to draw from some of its present citizens regrets that their times had not been then rather than now. Its homes and marts of business were occupied by people, mostly of one race and mother country and language, with common memories, traditions and interests. One little rill, and that from a most healthful and welcome stream, had then flowed in from a foreign source, giving us, with the Huguenot exiles, names gratefully cherished among us, as Bowdoin, Faneuil, Bassett, Sigourney, Johonnott, Dupee, Chardon, and others.
" Well-to-do," "fore-handed," were the local phrases by which the general condition of the people would have
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been described. There was real wealth, too, in the hands of some, with complacency, luxury and display. There were stately and substantial dwellings, with rich and solid furnishings, for parlor, dining-room, hall and cham- ber, with plate and tapestry, brocades and laces. There were portraits, by foreign and resident artists, of those who were ancestors, and of those who meant to be ancestors. There were formal costumes and manners for the gentry, with parade and etiquette, a self-respecting decorum in intercourse with their own and other classes, warm hospi- tality, good appetites, and abundant viands, liquid and solid, for all. The buildings were detached, none of them in blocks. The homes of many of the merchant princes and high magistrates were relatively more palatial than are any in the city to-day. They stood conspicuous and large, surrounded by generous spaces, with lawns and trees, with fruit and vegetable gardens, and fields for pas- ture, and coach and cattle barns. There were fine equi- pages, with black coachmen and footmen. There were still wide unfenced spaces, declivities and thickets, where the barberry bush, the flag and the mullen-stalk grew undisturbed. There were many quaint old nooks and corners, taverns and inns, " coffee-houses " -- the drinking- vessels in which were not especially adapted to that beverage - shops designated by emblems and symbols, loitering places for news and gossip, resorts of boys and negroes for play or roguery, and some dark holes on wharf or lane. Boston was the chief mart of the prov- ince, which numbered nearly 349,000 when New York had 238,000. The inhabitants in the town were about 17,000. There were some 2,000 buildings, four being of
·
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stone, of which King's Chapel alone remains. Between Beacon and the foot of Park street, stood the Work- house, the Poor-house and the Bridewell, all facing the Common. On the site of the Park-street church stood the Granary; opposite, a large manufactory building, used by the British for a hospital. The Jail occupied the site of the present Court-House. King and Queen, now State and Court streets, were the most compactly covered and lined by taverns, dwellings, marts and offices of exchange. The house provided by the province for the British Governor was opposite the Old South, standing far back, stately, commodious, with trees and lawn up to Washington street. The Old State House, with a dignity which it has not now, held the halls of the Council and the Representatives, with royal portraits and adornings. Ilow little is there here now which the patriots and citizens of the old days, if they came back, would recognize! They would think that we had set ourselves to obliterate all traces of them and their ways. We cannot but regret the removal of all our old landmarks, and the changing of ancient names for new. True, the surface of the earth and its superstructures belong to the living generation, to be disposed wholly for its comfort and convenience. The dead can claim only a resting-place beneath it. They have by no means secured even that always here; and if they should come out from their repose many would have to select their grave-stones from an ornamental border, or would wonder how other people's names were inscribed over their tenements. In the interest of historians, sur- veyors, searchers of titles, of those who would know how things looked and were called before they were born, and
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who would be reasonably sure that they hold the fee of their own graves, let there be henceforward no needless changing of names, except it may be to restore old ones. For we not only wish to know our fathers, but should wish them to know us.
Yet, as the years of strife were approaching, there had come in one qualifying element to the internal harmony and security of old Boston, for there were those under its roofs a century ago who were divided against themselves. For more than a half of its first hundred years the town and the colony had been substantially independent of all for- eign control; pursuing industry and trade on its own re- sources; choosing its own magistrates and holding them to account; making and administering its own laws; fight- ing its own battles with Indians, Dutch and Frenchmen; never, even in poverty or stress of peril, asking, but rather repudiating, public aid from abroad. King and Parliament had been tolerated as undesired correspondents, for re- monstrant and deferential, and rather melancholy letters, but the ocean and some other things had had a very chill- ing effect upon love.' English armies had begun to find their way hither, to fight with us, or for us, incidentally to the more exigent purpose of driving the French off the continent; and, of course, England wanted remuneration for these services. For more than three quarters of a cen- tury before the war, this province, which had prospered best when most neglected, which had earned all the liber- ties it claimed, and never, for a moment, really yielded, had fallen under the sway of foreign masters.
By its second charter, King, Ministry and Parliament, represented here by crown officials, overruled those legis-
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lative and judicial functions which had previously been freely disposed by the people. Boston became, in minia- ture, a vice-royalty, with court and church. A subtle but potent influence brought in foreign interests and regards, feelings and manners, fashions and distinctions. The old sterling, thrifty, frugal stock of the people, holding their independence as toughly as a tradition, as they were about by fighting to make it a certainty, could not and would not harmonize with this new element. They would bow, but they would not bend. They would petition, but they would not comply. They would chaffer, but would ratify no bargain about liberty.
Trade, too, though it had enriched, had demoralized a portion of the community; for nine-tenths of that trade was what is known in law as smuggling. A thousand vessels cleared from Boston in a year, coursing our coasts and skimming all open seas. The revenue laws imposed by Parliament, to restrain the internal and the foreign traffic and commerce of the colonies, were so onerous and severe, that our people acted on the assumption, long be- fore they fought for and assured it, that the king of Eng- land had no right to a revenue from this side of the water, no more than any one can draw checks on a bank in which he has made no deposit. All manufactures, even of articles of prime necessity, from our own raw materials even, were strictly prohibited. Our people did not mean to be poor. They wished to keep their own books. They objected to a partnership which did not increase their capital, nor extend the good-will of their concern.
So that with the crown officials resident here, their descendants, their satellites, and a class of merchants
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whose interests, as traders, were rather with England than with America, we find the keen and vigorous materials of a party within the town hostile to its local and traditional spirit. To these are to be added alike in the town, and throughout this as well as in the other provinces, a few men, high-minded and true-hearted, intelligent, respected for talent, culture, position and influence, who, with fond clinging's to the mother-country, or with halting judgments as they cast the horoscope of the future, or with timid misgivings as to the probable issue of rebellion, shrank from a decision, put in cautions, raised remonstrances, or were goaded by the impatience or rudeness of popular measures into committing them- selves to the doomed side. These loyalists, tories, " gov- ernment-men," while being jealously watched and harshly treated by the liberty party, were correspondingly flattered and cajoled by the crown officials with promises of immu- nity and compensation. But all the inhabitants of the town, rebels and tories alike, were to be common sufferers in the fate awaiting them.
THIE PREPARATION FOR THE SIEGE.
In this warring and distracted world, sieges, the belea- guerment of towns, cities and fortresses, by forces on sea or land, form one of the largest and most exciting elements of all history. A list of them might be classified, and duplicated even, under all the letters of the alphabet, tossing in strange confusion the troubled annals of all lands and all epochs. Stories of skilled manœuvre and artful stratagem, stories of harrowing suffering and of sublime heroism, wrought into thrilling narratives of prose, or 7
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sung in the music and rhythm of immortal poetry, rehearse for us the literature of sieges. We run over, in memory, the leading names of that alphabetical list, with Acre and Babylon, Calais and Derry, Gibraltar, Jerusalem, Luck- now, Malta and Metz, Paris and Pampeluna, Rochelle,{ Saragossa and Sevastopol and Troy, not forgetting the atrocities and the nobleness so glowingly presented by our own Motley in his history of the beleagured cities of the Netherlands.
The passions of love and hate, of creed and empire, of blood and dynasties, have been the weapons of assailers or defenders; and with rare exceptions, in all sieges, the enemy has been without the citadel, and those within it have been guarding their own homes. But this old town of Boston a century ago was invested by its own people against a foc who held it in thrall. The story of the con- tention, running through the ten previous years, which re- sulted in seven years of war on this continent, is, or ought to be, familiar for this Centennial season to all who hear me. The record and the spectacle, as confined simply to this spot of earth, and crowded with matter of surpassing interest, are more than enough for our hurried glance to-day.
The descendants of those exiles who, a century and a half before, had settled upon this rough and barren prom- ontory, had turned weakness to strength, and had attained thrift and vigor from their rugged conditions. The spirit of liberty was in their souls, and the power to maintain it was in their veins and fibre. They always had been free, in night, in distance, in neglect, and even in contempt. And they meant to be free, when, hopefully
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and happily gathering the harvest from a hard soil and a hard tillage, they had become a coveted prize for parlia- mentary spoil and a royal revenue. Seven years before the catastrophe, crews of foreign sailors, and marines to protect its landing, had brought from over the seas a detachment of the royal army, who had taken military possession of this town. Bad and treacherous advices from crown officials here had been stealthily sent to the royal cabinet that two regiments of British regulars would overawe and crush out the demagogue spirit of a few restless men who were here fomenting rebellion. The further advices - a trifle, but not much wiser - were that five regiments would sweep the continent of rebellion. The larger number was multiplied many times, with mer- cenary allies, too; but the continent was too large and hard for the broom. Protests, pleadings and remon- strances, with tongue and pen, had exhausted all their peaceful methods against the quartering of troops in the town. But still they came, with arrogance, insult and defiance, and finally held the town against the dwellers in its homes. The farmers and mechanics of the adjoining country, in this environment of hill and valley, gathered almost in a circle around them, and bade them stay strictly in the close quarters where they were so unwel- come, or take themselves off by the water-way on which they came. Both parties, in due time, as we shall see, came to accord in the latter alternative.
This beleaguerment of the soldiers of his Majesty on the little peninsula which they had invaded was the natural, though somewhat protracted, result of every preceding incident in the controversy. If such troops
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came hither at all, the law provided for them barracks at the Castle, as the cows had a vested right to the Common, and the citizens to their streets and buildings. The commander even had the confidence to demand that the province ,should pay these troops; a proposition which, of course, was not approved. The town-meetings were from the first, and all along to the siege, the great resource of the inhabitants, where courage and shrewdness, temporizing or firm decision, met every emergency as it arose. When the mischief of these Boston town-meet- ings was realized by the royal councillors, their General was ordered to forbid the calling of another. But the selectmen replied that they had no occasion to call another, as the last one was kept alive by adjournment. So the General wrote back, that, for all that he could see, or say, or do, one town-meeting might extend through ten years.
What the people had foreboded from the presence of the soldiers occurred in due time, on March 5, 1770, when a squad of them, on being annoyed and insulted by a few boys and their abettors, fired upon the crowd. The so-called " Horrid Massacre " furnished the theme for the annual oration on that day - " The Danger of Standing Armies in Populous Towns in Times of Peace." The occasion was duly honored by the appointed orator, six years afterwards, in Watertown, as the troops were pre- paring to evacuate. The destruction of the tea in our harbor, in December, 1773, was followed by the vindictive Parliamentary Bill, which tightly closed the Port of Bos- ton to all commerce and water intercourse on June 1st, 1774, the day on which, with the melancholy tolling of
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muffled bells, fitly enough, Hutchinson embarked for England.
From that vengeful measure, more than from any other single event, may be dated the succession of measures upon both sides - though still to be wearily and wofully deferred for its final act - which broke the bond between England and her American colonies. In the pitiful con- dition to which it was now reduced, the melancholy and starving town appealed to the other towns in this prov- ince, and to the other provinces, and made its own cause one of warning and concern to the whole continent. The appeals were nobly answered, and generous contributions of goods, and food and money were made to the stricken and impoverished people from all the seaboard and inland settlements, including even Canada. A generous gift from the future commander appears on the list. Then came a royal breach of the organic provisions of the Province Charter, assuming for the King the appointment by mandamus of the Governor's councillors, and subverting the securities for the conduct of courts of justice. In the judgment of reason and equity, not as a prompting of , passion, this royal breach was regarded as arresting the royal sway in this province. Henceforward the King's Governor became a military general instead of a civil magistrate; his official power was restricted immediately to this peninsula, or to whatever range he might cover with his forces. The province, as we shall see, first of its own impulse, and then by help of advice from the Conti- mental Congress, took measures for forming and adminis- tering, as a substitute, a popular government. That train of measures was initiated in a Massachusetts Assembly, at
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Salem, in June, 1774, meeting with doors locked against the governor's vetoing messenger, when delegates were commissioned to a Continental Congress. Committees of Correspondence busily pursued their sympathetic tasks. Attempts, once baffled and once successful, were made by detachments of soldiers to seize supplies which the prov- ince was beginning to gather for the impending strife. Against the remonstrances of the Selectmen of Boston, enforced by those of the Continental Congress, General Gage renewed and strengthened the fortifications on the Neck, alleging that he did not design to prevent free ingress and egress, but only to protect his own troops. His official spies had more than once been sent out into the adjoining country, and returned with over-estimates of the stores which the provincials were gathering. Our Centennial of the last year told us all there is to be told of the raid of April 19, after the stores at Concord, with the British invasion of the country, and of the humiliation of the disorderly return to town. Better would it have been for them then had they tarried longer in Charlestown. Certain ventures made by the provincials to secure hay and live stock upon the harbor islands, in defiance of British gunboats, fill the interval to the day of Bunker Hill. The story of that, too, has been exhaustively told.
THE CLOSING IN OF BOSTON.
The first stage in the investment of Boston, for the pur- pose of confining the royal forces to the peninsula, began on the evening of the day of Concord and Lexington. Minute-men, farmers, mechanies, and miscellaneous bands and groups, with such weapons as they could put their
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hands on, and such rations as their households furnished for the moment, gathered upon every foot of soil on the surrounding main land of hill, field and marsh. They changed day by day for nearly a year ensuing, but only by substitution of persons and material. They came first as startled men rush out to a conflagration, and stay by to watch lest it should spread. Cattle were still browsing in the pastures, and horses were tethered to the carts they had drawn with their rustic freight. The picturesque groups, in the homely array of the farm or the workshop, with their arbors or shanties, and an occasional tent extemporized from a fishing-smack, as seen from a quiet distance might have suggested a gypsy encampment, or a spring picnic. But they stayed there so long and to such purpose, with such a work to do, and under the training of such a mas- ter mind and hand, as to become an army, uniformed, drilled, disciplined and officered for a campaign after the stern methods of war. The beleaguerment and invest- ment of the little sea-washed peninsula, which were to extend steadily, with sterner clasp and throttle for the eleven ensuing months, began then. There was still some passing in and out of the town, by land or water, under surveillance, allowed by privilege, or for purposes of necessity, or seized by spies, informers, deserters, or those of adventurous daring. But the invading forces were held to their contracted quarters, and henceforward were deprived of vegetables and fresh provisions, except such as they could seize from the islands, or obtain by a supply vessel. Then came the aggravation of the miseries of the patriotic inhabitants of the town, insulted by the military, sneered at by their own fellow-citizens, - who boastfully
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