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THE NEW HAMPSHIRE EPISODE (1774)
In the fall of 1774 occurred the first significant overt act towards the British Government. Although it took place in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the subsequent relation of it to the Battle of Bunker Hill associates it closely with Massachusetts. In a letter to Lord Dartmouth, Wentworth, then governor of New Hampshire, thus describes the affair :
"News was brought to me, that a drum was beating about the town to collect the Populace together in order to take away the gunpowder and dismantle the Fort. I immediately sent the Chief Justice of the Province to warn them from engaging in such an attempt. He went to them, where they were collected in the centre of the town, near the townhouse, explained to them the nature of the offence they proposed to commit, told them it was not short of Rebellion, and in- treated them to desist from it and disperse. But all to no purpose. They went to the Island; and, being joined there by the inhabitants of the towns of Newcastle and Rye, formed in all a body of about four hundred men, and the Castle being in too weak a condition for defence (as I have in former letters explained to your Lordship) they forced an entrance in spite of Captain Cochran; who defended it as long as he could; but, having only the assistance of five men, their numbers overpowered him. After they entered the fort, they seized upon the Captain, triumphantly gave three Huzzas, and hauled down the King's colours. They then put the captain and men under confinement, broke open the Gunpowder magazine, and carried off about 100 Barrels
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of Gunpowder, but discharged the Captain and men from their confinement before their departure."
The powder thus easily secured was carried to Durham, New Hampshire, and stored under the pulpit in the local church. When, as is common knowledge, the provincial troops at Bunker Hill were quite without ammunition to load the miscellaneous guns and fowling pieces with which they were holding back the British, "An ample supply of powder ar- rived in the nick of time. It had been brought over from Durham, sixty miles away, in old John Demeritt's ox-cart, and it was a part of the store that had been buried under Parson Adams's pulpit. Failing it, Prescott might on that day have shared the martyrdom of Warren, and Molly Stark might indeed have been that night a widow."
AMERICAN AFFAIRS IN ENGLAND (1774-1775)
British statesmen paid little heed to provincial affairs during the summer's parliamentary recess, for they were confident in the belief that the five coercive measures would utterly crush the threatened rebellion. They were assured by their Tory friends in America that the spirit of Massachusetts, the ringleader, was completely broken. How great must have been their surprise and consternation, upon the reassembling of Parliament, November 30, to learn from His Majesty's address, that "a most daring spirit of disobedience to the law" still unhappily prevailed in Massachusetts, and had "broken forth in fresh violence of a criminal nature."
In the address of the House in reply to the King, his ministers were somewhat forcefully reminded of their con- fident promises that the coercive acts would secure submis- sion. Notwithstanding this implied criticism, the address was carried by a vote of 264 to 73. The Lords were less com- plaisant, and registered for the first time in parliamentary annals a protest against continuing to enforce the five ob- noxious acts. Nevertheless the King's party was strong enough to secure in the upper House a vote of confidence by 63 affirmatives to 13 negatives.
Just before the Christmas recess, news came of the alarming proceedings of the Continental Congress; whereupon the min-
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istry seemed inclined to take a milder attitude, when word from the Tories in New York, to the effect that their colony would probably break loose from the Provincial Association, put them in heart again. So the King's Government vacillated and practically did nothing. During one of the parliamentary debates "many ludicrous stories" concerning the cowardice of the American militia were told, "greatly to the entertain- ment of the House." They were doubtless less amused at Burke's famous speech on conciliation ; yet, despite his masterly arguments, nothing more definite was done, even after Lexing- ton, than to iterate and reiterate the King's royal and belli- gerent purpose to "crush the Colonies."
WORK OF COMMITTEES OF CORRESPONDENCE (1774-1775)
Meanwhile, on the western side of the water there was no "amusement," but much and increasing action. One of the most fruitful undertakings of the fall of 1774, was the strengthening of the committee of correspondence be- tween the colonies, established as early as 1772 at the instance of several of the colonies, and confirmed by the Continental Congress. Their zeal and wisdom in tightening the bonds between colony and colony, their skillful work in making converts to the patriot cause, and their moderation in dealing with a great number of difficult situations, are worthy of high praise. In view of old antagonisms and of the counter-activity of the Tories, particularly in New York, it would have been difficult, if not impossible, without these vigilant and industrious Committees, for the widely scattered provinces to have put up, as they did after the Battle of Lexington, a front so united as to leave no question, even in the unreceptive mind of George the Third, that he was face to face with actual Revolutionary War.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
BANCROFT, GEORGE .- History of the United States; author's last revision (6 vols., N. Y., Appleton, 1887)-Vol. III-IV.
BECKER, CARL LOTUS .- The Eve of the Revolution (Chronicles of America, Vol. XI, New Haven, Yale Univ. Press, 1918).
BOTTA, CHARLES .- History of the War of the Independence of the United States of America (2 vols., New Haven, Whiting, 1837)-Translated from the Italian by G. A. Otis.
CHANNING, EDWARD, HART, ALBERT BUSHNELL, AND TURNER, FREDERICK JACKSON .- Guide to the Study and Reading of American History (Boston, Ginn, 1912)-See especially chap. XIX.
FARRAND, MA'X .- The Fathers of the Constitution; a chronicle of the Establishment of the Union (Chronicles of America, Vol. XVI, New Haven, Yale Univ. Press, 1921).
FISKE, JOHN .- The American Revolution (2 vols., Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1896)-One of the most agreeable of narratives of the Revolu- tionary period.
FORCE, PETER, compiler .- American Archives; consisting of Authentic Records, State Papers, Debates, and Letters and Other Notices of Publick Affairs, the Whole Forming a Documentary History of the Origin and Progress of the North American Colonies; of the Causes and Accomplishment of the American Revolution. Fourth Series. (6 vols., Washington, 1837-1853).
FROTHINGHAM, RICHARD .- Rise of the Republic of the United States (Bos- ton, Little, Brown, 1890).
GETTEMY, CHARLES F .- The True Story of Paul Revere (Boston, Little, Brown, 1905).
GREEN, JOHN RICHARD .- History of the English People (5 vols., N. Y. International Book & Publishing Co., 1899).
GRIFFITH, WILLIAM .- Historical Notes of the American Colonies and Revolution from 1754 to 1775 (Privately printed, Burlington, N. J., 1843)-A very useful compendium of documents, speeches, etc., cover- ing the period named.
HART, ALBERT BUSHNELL .- American History Told by Contemporaries (4 vols., N. Y., Macmillan, 1897-1901).
HOWARD, GEORGE E .- Preliminaries of the Revolution, 1763-1775 (The American Nation : A History, Vol. 8, N. Y., Harper, 1905)-See chaps. XIV-XVIII.
LECKY, WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE .- A History of England in the Eight- eenth Century; (8 vols., N. Y., Appleton, 1888-1891)-See Vol. IV, chap. III.
MAHON, PHILIP HENRY STANHOPE, Lord,-History of England from the Peace of Utrecht to the Peace of Versailles, 1710-1783 (5 vols., Little, Brown, 1855).
McMASTER, JOHN BACH .- A History of the People of the United States from the Revolution to the Civil War (8 vols., N. Y., Appleton, 1883- 1913).
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SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
MASSACHUSETTS : PROVINCIAL CONGRESS .- The Journals of Each Provincial Congress of Massachusetts in 1774 and 1775, and of the Committee of Safety, . . . with other Documents, Illustrative of the Early History of the American Revolution (Boston, 1838).
MUNROE, JAMES PHINNEY .- The New England Conscience, with Typical Examples (Boston, R. G. Badger, 1915).
MURDOCK, HAROLD .- The Nineteenth of April, 1775 (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1923)-A careful study of sources concerning the Battle of Lexington and of the period just preceding.
MUZZEY, DAVID S'AVILLE .- The American Adventure (N. Y., Harper, 1927) -See Chap. II.
PATTON, JACOB HARRIS .- A Concise History of the American People (2 vols., N. Y., Fords, Howard & Hulbert, 1883).
PORTER, EDWARD GRIFFIN .- "The Beginning of the Revolution" (JUSTIN WINSOR, Memorial History of Boston, 4 vols., Boston, Osgood, 1882- 1886)-See Vol. III, pp. 1-66.
SPARKS, JARED .- The Life of Benjamin Franklin (Boston, Tappan & Dennett, 1844).
TREVELYAN, Sir GEORGE OTTO .- The American Revolution (6 vols., N. Y. and London, Longmans, Green, 1905-1915)-See Vol. I.
VAN TYNE, CLAUDE HALSTEAD .-- The American Revolution (American Na- tion : a History, Vol. IX, N. Y., Harper, 1905)-Chap. I recounts the fundamental and immediate causes of the Revolution.
WINSOR, JUSTIN, editor .- The Memorial History of Boston (4 vols., Boston, Osgood, 1882-1886).
WINSOR, JUSTIN, editor .- The Narrative and Critical History of America (8 vols., Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1889).
CHAPTER XVIII
THE SPIRIT OF MASSACHUSETTS (1775)
BY LAWRENCE S. MAYO Assistant Dean of Harvard Graduate School
JOHN BULL AND JOHN CODLINE
It has been said of John Bull that if you look him in the eye he will back down. If this characterization is true, there is, and always has been, an essential difference between John Bull and John Codline, as Jeremy Belknap dubbed Massachu- setts in his allegorical history of the United States. From the time when John Winthrop and his fellow Puritans made up their minds to leave England and to found a colony where they would not be bothered by bishops or a ritual that of- fended their religious convictions, the Bay Colony seldom if ever backed down from any position it had taken. Any at- tempt to coerce her always led to resistance, and any attempt to bully her resulted in an upheaval.
This spirit manifested itself first when Edmund Andros and Edward Randolph endeavored to torture her into sub- jection. They succeeded, to be sure, in taking away her charter and in planting an Episcopal church in Boston; but the men of Massachusetts finally overthrew both Andros and Randolph and locked them up. What is more to the point, they did so without any definite authorization from William III.
Seventy-five years later trouble for Massachusetts began again. This time, as has been set forth in earlier chapters, it was not a question of charter or of church, but of taxation, direct and indirect. On the question of the Stamp Act, Massa- chusetts and her sister provinces looked John Bull in the eye and John Bull backed down. He did so at the request of his own merchants no doubt; but those merchants knew that the basic reason was the determined opposition of the colonies.
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JOHN BULL AND JOHN CODLINE
The later Townshend Acts were an experiment in indirect taxation. They encountered less violent but equally convincing opposition; and, with the exception of the duty on tea, were repealed about three years after their passage. Then, in the course of time, came the Tea Act of 1773 and the explo- sion of public opinion known as the Boston Tea Party.
Before 1774 the British Parliament may have bluffed, but it had been wise enough not to try to bully Massachusetts. This does not mean that the customs officials and some of the mili- tary had not attempted intimidation in their dealings with individuals; but it is significant that the British government had not yet displayed an aggressive or a vindictive attitude. Many of the Members of Parliament who voted for the Tea Act doubtless saw in it only a possible remedy for the financial difficulties of the East India Company, and never thought of its effect on the sensibilities of the American colonists. Like the Stamp Act and the Townshend Acts it was a blunder, not a predetermined attack upon the alleged rights of the Ameri- cans. Owing to a less pardonable blunder on the part of Governor Hutchinson, violence and destruction of property resulted from this supposedly innocuous measure. Thereupon Britain made up her mind to bully the town of Boston into footing the bill for the destroyed tea. She should have known better.
On the morning after the Tea Party, John Adams meta- phorically threw his hat in the air as he made the following entry in his diary: "This is the most magnificent movement of all. There is a dignity, a majesty, a sublimity in this last effort of the patriots, that I greatly admire. The people should never rise without doing something to be remembered, some- thing notable and striking. This destruction of the tea is so bold, so daring, so firm, intrepid and inflexible, and it must have so important consequences, and so lasting, that I cannot but consider it as an epocha in history." John Adams was right, at least as regards its being an "epocha"; but his convic- tion that it was a "magnificent movement" was not shared by all his fellow-citizens. After all, asked many respectable peo- ple, had not the savages who perpetrated the Tea Party gone too far? Some substantial Bostonians were certain that they had.
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SPIRIT OF MASSACHUSETTS
COLONIAL SENTIMENT
One of their number, Harrison Gray, who was the treasurer of the province, passed judgment on the deed and upon the doers. To him it was "an action of such a malignant, atro- cious nature, as must expose the wicked perpetrators of it, without sincere repentance, to the vengeance of that Being who is a GOD of order and not of confusion and who will punish all THIEVES as well as liars in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone." The attitude of the mercantile class is reflected in Rowe's diary. John Rowe was a prominent mer- chant and incidentally the owner of one of the tea ships. He had been town-clerk once or twice in recent years, and though on friendly terms with army officers and customs officials, he had shown no sign of being a Tory. Yet when he heard of the Tea Party he wrote "I am sincerely sorry for the Event"; and two days later his opinion remained unchanged: "Tis a Disastrous Affair and some People are much Alarmed."
Benjamin Franklin, then in London and so three thousand miles away from the turbulent atmosphere of Boston, was in a better position for taking a dispassionate view of the affair than was Adams, Gray, or Rowe, and it is interesting to note that he appears to have agreed with Rowe. In the Tea Party he saw "an Act of violent Injustice on our part" and he spoke his mind in a letter to the Massachusetts Committee of Corre- spondence. "I am truly concern'd as I believe all considerate Men are with you, that there should seem to any a Necessity for carrying Matters to such Extremity, as, in a Dispute about Publick Rights, to destroy private Property ... I cannot but wish and hope that before any compulsive Measures are thought of here, our General Court will have shewn a Dis- position to repair the Damage and make Compensation to the Company." In New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston, in fact in all the provinces outside of New England, after the transient exhilaration of the Boston Tea Party had passed, the sober judgment of American society was that Sam Adams and his radical following had gone too far. It was not impossible that a pro-British reaction might sweep through the continent at any moment.
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COLONIAL SENTIMENT
In New England it was a question whether Samuel Adams could keep the populace worked up on the tea-tax issue. If he could do so, the hullabaloo of December 16, 1773, would not react unfavorably upon the cause of the radicals. If he could not do so, his party would lose all the political momentum they had succeeded in acquiring during the preceding fifteen months. Accordingly, before the people of Massachusetts had an op- portunity to meditate upon the Tea Party, they were to be hustled into a boycott of all tea whether dutied or smuggled. The fact that the Boston Committee of Correspondence urged the prohibition of the sale of tea sufficed to bring about the desired action in a few Massachusetts towns.
Many more kept their heads to a certain extent and boy- cotted only taxable tea. After all, what was the harm in drink- ing smuggled tea? One or two communities did even more independent thinking and refused to be brow-beaten by the Boston committee or any other. In general, however, the towns of Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island came at least half-way and banned the importation of dutiable tea. Thus by rapid and determined work Sam Adams and his as- sociates increased the opposition to the British government at a time when public opinion might easily have swung in the opposite direction.
CONSERVATISM OF THE MERCHANTS
One might suppose that the first social group to rebel against the British government because of this punitive measure would have been the merchants. Surely they were to be hit hardest by the closing of the port; but curiously enough they inclined to consider the sentence not unreasonable. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that they deemed it more prudent to accept the penalty than to join forces with Sam Adams and his turbulent cohorts. After the repeal of most of the Townshend duties in 1770, Boston merchants, like those elsewhere in the colonies, had adjusted their minds and their business to the existing trade regulations. So after 1770 they settled down more or less contentedly and turned a deaf ear to the fulminations of the Sons of Liberty.
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THE SPIRIT OF MASSACHUSETTS
So far as they were concerned the quarrel was over. In spite of the new tariff and the rigid administration of the cus- toms service it was still possible to make a fair margin of profit. Then why worry about the two-sided question of Parliament's right to tax the colonies? Even John Hancock was quiescent in 1772, and one gets the impression that in that year he found talk about the recovery of "our just rights" distinctly boring. Could not someone make it clear to Samuel Adams, Dr. Joseph Warren, and young Elbridge Gerry of Marblehead, that things were really going very well, and that there was no point in their harping on the theoretical rights of transplanted Englishmen?
It is true that the Tea Act of 1773 roused the merchant aristocracy from its political indifference, for in it they saw the trade in a popular commodity taken out of their hands and monopolized by a great corporation. This was a very different matter from that of paying duty on imports and passing the tax on to the consumer in the form of an increase in the price of the goods. For the moment, therefore, they were willing to form an alliance with the radicals who were against the importation of any tea that was taxed. This coa- lition worked fairly well up to a certain point. Then came the Hutchinson impasse and the Boston Tea Party. This de- struction of property was not included in the merchants' scheme of opposition; and being property-holders themselves they were both shocked and alarmed. In trying to thwart unwel- come legislation by Parliament they had come dangerously near to anarchy. Of the two evils, misgovernment was much preferable to no government; and they hastened back to their conservative position. Having played with fire and been burnt, they were more than ever convinced that their interests would be best served by bowing to the will of Parliament, come what might. Accordingly, when the provisions of the Boston Port Act were known, most of the merchants and shopkeepers after a moment of vacillation took steps to make it clear that they were for and not against the British government in the present crisis.
In May, 1774 Governor Hutchinson, worn down with care and perplexity, was on the point of sailing for England where he could give the King and the ministry a first-hand account of
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SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT
the difficulties prevailing in his native province. His depar- ture and mission afforded the merchants of Boston and its vicinity an excellent opportunity for showing their colors. In a carefully worded document they praised the "wise, zeal- ous and faithful Administration" of Hutchinson, lamented the recent popular tumults, and asked the departing executive to assure the King of their willingness to pay their share of the East India Company's bill for damages. This was presented to Hutchinson on May 30. And lest there be any doubt about their position, they drew a corresponding address of welcome to his successor in the governorship, General Gage.
These evidences of submission were signed by more than one hundred and twenty citizens, of whom at least half were what we should now call "business men." If their sentiments and policy had prevailed, Boston would have paid for its Tea Party in cash and the port would have been opened at an early date. Happily for the future United States these "lovers of peace and good order" were opposed by a determined group, which a conservative contemporary described as "the mer- chants who either will not or cannot make remittances, the smugglers, the mechanicks, and those who are fascinated with the extravagant notion of independency." It is hardly neces- sary to add that the leader of this group was Samuel Adams.
"THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT" (June, 1774)
The first serious trial of strength between the conservatives and the radicals occurred on May 30, 1774, just twenty days after the news of the passage of the Port Act reached Boston. At a town meeting held on that day the mercantile party turned out in great numbers, determined to put through their policy of submission and reparation. Just what happened to their attack is not clear. One of their number tells us that the leaders of the opposition "placed themselves at the doors of the hall" and "so terrified many honest well meaning per- sons that they thought it prudent not to act at all in the affair." However that may have been, we know that they failed to carry the meeting. Instead of voting for reparation, the town approved the drafting of "a Paper, to be carried to each Family in the Town, the Report [Purport?] of which to be,
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THE SPIRIT OF MASSACHUSETTS
not to purchase any Articles of British Manufactures, that can be obtained among Ourselves, and that they will purchase Nothing of, but totally desert those who shall Counterwork the Salutary Measures of the Town." This, then, was Boston's reply to the Parliament that had closed her port, and to her own mercantile aristocracy who cared more for peace and prosperity than for the ancient rights of British subjects.
Now came the problem of bringing the merchants into line with the people, "our freeholders and yeomanry" as the Reverend Charles Chauncy defined that term. With organi- zation all things are possible. Without organization little can be accomplished. No one knew this better than Samuel Adams, and no one in the colonies was a better organizer than he. The system of committees of correspondence with which he had resuscitated a dying cause in 1772 and 1773 had given proof of his ability, and upon this system he now relied in his effort to build up a universal, uncompromising resistance to Parlia- ment.
Adams was the chairman of the Boston Committee of Cor- respondence which he had brought into being in the autumn of 1772. Some claimed that that committee no longer had any legal existence, as it had not been reappointed by the town meeting in subsequent years. Whether Samuel Adams was assured of its legality does not appear ; but in the Boston committee he saw the keyboard of an instrument upon which he could play a number of patriotic airs, and he did not hesi- tate to avail himself of it.
June 5, 1774, he and his associates formulated and launched a commercial agreement which they hoped would cement the country towns into a block of resistance that would sustain Boston in its fight with Parliament.
This agreement was astutely christened the "Solemn League and Covenant," a title which was certain to appeal to the descendants of the early settlers of Massachusetts for it re- called the great contest between Cromwell and Charles in the seventeenth century. It was drawn by a sub-committee con- sisting of Dr. Joseph Warren, Dr. Benjamin Church and Mr. Greenleaf, and it bound those who subscribed to it to abstain from the purchase or use of any British imports whatsoever after October 1. Those who declined to adopt it were to be
From the portrait by Copley in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
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