History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 73

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1534

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She then goes on to speak of the rage for privateer- ing which prevailed, and adds that "vast numbers" were employed in that way. Before entering further into the burden which the war then imposed on Braintree, it will be well to try to form some idea of | buildings. With this part went eighteen acres of pasture. Bought in 1774, the cost of the property was £440, or $1465. In 1765 there were 327 houses in Braintree, occupied by 357 families. At the time of the war the number of houses may have increased to 400. That bought by John Adams was one of the better sort. Judging by the sum paid for it, an estimate of $300 to a house and a family would seem to be liberal, for in the town there were some paupers and many poor people, who, living only, never accumulated anything. The owners of farms were accounted the rich men. The sum of $400,000 would thus represent the aggregate accu- mulated wealth of Braintree in 1776.

the strength which was there to bear the burden. What was the population of the town during the Revolution ?- and what was its wealth ? The census | of 1765 gives the population at 2433, that of 1776 at 2871, and that of 1790 at 2771. During the war, therefore, taken as one period, Braintree must have numbered a population of close upon 2800 souls. Of these, 700 would have been males above sixteen years of age; for the war lasted eight years, and in the course of it a new arms-bearing generation grew up. Experience has always shown that, for the practical purposes of war, men above forty years of age are useless. As members of a home-guard and during short periods of service, they can be made more or less effective. But the bivouac, long marches, and unac- customed fare break them down. They are not equal to campaign exposure. Consequently not more than two-thirds at most of the men above sixteen in any community are properly capable of bearing arms.

Those above forty years of age, and the halt, the lame,

Such being the strength,-450 men capable of bearing arms, with an accumulation of $400,000 be- hind them,-it remains to consider the burden. This is no less difficult correctly to estimate than the other. The rolls show, for instance, that Braintree furnished 1600 men for military duty in the course of the war,

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HISTORY OF NORFOLK COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

besides a large number (of which there is no record) who served on the water. And, again, in one single year (1781) it assessed itself $600,000 to buy beef for the army and pay the town expenses. But the $600,000 were paid in paper currency, and the term of service of the men was apt not to exceed three days. Such figures only serve to falsify. During the Revo- lution Braintree did not contribute either 1600 men or a million dollars, for the simple reason that her in- habitants did not number the one or have the other. The drain was doubtless heavy enough, but it was at least limited by the total resources.

In considering, then, the Braintree enlistments, those for short periods must be left out of the ac- count. A service of one or two days in guarding the shore may have been a summer picnic, with an agreeable spice of danger, but in no sense was it war. The men engaged in that service were not soldiers. They were mere members of a posse com- itatus. The shorter enlistments also were of not much more value. Indeed, experience has shown that in actual war there is no more cruel way of wasting blood and treasure than sending to the field men en- listed for a few weeks or months. Almost never are they of any real service.

A Mr. Partridge, of Duxbury, one of a committee who waited on Washington in October, 1776, asked him whether enlistments for one year would not suf- fice. He exclaimed in reply, " Good God ! gentle- men, our cause is ruined if you engage men for only a year. You must not think of it. If we hope for success we must have men enlisted for the whole term of the war." This course was too Spartan ; the weaker, the more wasteful, and more murderous one of short enlistments was pursued. Accordingly, men were enlisted in Braintree for the Canada expe- dition in 1776, for the Rhode Island expeditions in 1777 and 1778, and for the Penobscot expedition of 1779 ; others went down to garrison the castle in the harbor. Furnishing and equipping these men went far toward exhausting the town ; but it was playing at war. It was the three-year Continentals who did the work. They were at Long Island, and they were at Stony Point ; they forced Burgoyne's intrenchments, and captured Rahl's Hessians; they bore the heat of Monmouth, and stormed the redoubt at Yorktown. This was war. The question is always,-How many of these men did the town put into the field ? Pic- nics and summer promenades do not count.

So also as regards taxes and supplies. That the stress on the towns during the Revolution was great is indisputable. They were called on for money and they were called on for men, for clothes, and for meat.

But the figures are apt to be expressed in Continental currency. There was no financial, as there was no military, folly which the New England people did not commit during the Revolution. Throughout they showed that the town-meeting is ill adapted to war. They tried to make patriotism a substitute for the 1 provost-guard. They issued false money. They regulated prices. They mobbed those who preferred not to exchange good merchandise for worthless paper. It was not in them to do what Frederick II. | did in Prussia,-take the men they needed and the supplies they needed and finish up the work in hand. That would have been war. What they did was to campaign interminably under town-meeting inspira- tion.

As regards the actual money contributions of Braintree to the war of independence, the records are suggestive, but exasperatingly vague. They are full of votes alluding to reports and statements at the time made, but since lost. There are almost no exact fig- ures. Even when supplemented by the State archives they fail to piece out the story. One thing is appa- rent : the zeal of the early 1775 soon vanished. Not only in the years which followed could few recruits be obtained from among the townsmen, but they would not submit to a draft. In September, 1777, and again in June, 1780, the Braintree town-meeting formally voted to indemnify the militia officers for any fine they might incur by omitting to draft men when required so to do by the General Court. Commit- tee after committee was then appointed to fill up the quota by going out to hunt up men in other towns. The inhabitants were finally divided into classes, and each class was called upon to somewhere secure its recruits. The poorest and worst material in the com- munity was thus collected together and swept into the ranks. A large portion of the heroes of '76 were men of this stamp. In 1781, for instance, Capt. Joseph Baxter, one of the town recruiting committee, had a long wrangle with the selectmen of Boston over a wretched bounty-jumper named Williams. Both parties claimed him as one of their quota. The Bos- ton agents had given him fifteen guineas, and Capt. Baxter " was drove to the utmost extremity to prove the justness of his claim to said Williams, but finally obtained him." The records of the year 1780 indicate the most severe stress. They read as follows, the meeting being held in the Middle Precinct meeting- house on the 27th of June. The motion was

"To make an offer to such persons as will engage to go into the service.

" After a considerable debate on the matter, it was

" Voted, To give each man One Thousand Dollars as &

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Bounty, also Half a Bushel of Corn for Every Day from the Time they march to the time they are discharged or leave the army ; and also half a bushel of Corn for every Twenty miles they shall be from home when discharged ; and also

" Voted, That the town will pay them the forty shillings per month promised by the State, in hard money, if the soldiers en- able the town to Receive the said 40/ from the State. Unless it will best sute the soldiers to Receive it from the State them- selves.

"Voted, The Selectmen should give Security to the persons that shall engage pursuant to the foregoing vote; and also the Selectmen Procure the Corn at Harvest, and Store it for the men until they return.

" General Palmer generously gave into the hands of the mod- erator One Thousand and Eighty Dollars, to be equally divided among the thirty-six men that shall first engage in the six months' service as a Reinforcement to the Continental Army. For which the thanks of the Town were voted him.

"The Familys of such men as shall engage for the Term of six months shall be supply'd by the Selectmen with Corn, wood, or such other articles as they stand in need of, which is to be charged and Reducted from the wages of that person, which is to be paid him in Corn upon his Returning home."

At an adjourned meeting held the next day it was further voted to exempt from tax all notes issued by the town for money loaned it to procure men. Two days later the town again met, and then

" The Committee Reported that they had Inlisted thirty-one men, and that there was a prospect of Inlisting the other five men which is wanting to complete the first 36 men called for, and likewise a part or all the nine men Required.

"General Palmer generously made the same offer to the nine men as he did to the 36 men,-that was thirty dollars each ; for which the Thanks of the Town was again Voted him."

At an adjourned meeting, held on the 5th of July, it was,

"after a Long Debate, Voted that the officers' pay, including the State's pay, be made equal to a Private."

At another adjourned meeting on the 10th,

" the Votes that was past on that day (5th) Concerning the officers' pay being all disannul'd and void, Voted, To give each officer that shall go from this Town for the three months' service Four Hundred Dollars, being the same sum as was voted the soldiers as a Bounty ; also Voted the officers the same pay from the town, Exclusive of their other pay, as the Soldiers receive. Cap. Newcomb appeared to go upon the encourage- ment."

town sent not less than 150 men, enlisted to the close of the year, into Washington's army about Boston. In 1776 about 120 men were furnished. In 1777 some seventy were enlisted for three years. In no year were less than forty sent, except in 1781, when the enlist- ment appears to have been for four months only. Under this system the same men in the course of a seven- years' war may have enlisted several times. It is im- possible, therefore, to even estimate the portion of Braintree's 650 arms-bearing men who actually served in the Continental army, though it is probably safe to say that the number did not fall below 300. For shorter terms and in the militia every man in town capable of bearing them bore arms. The average force of Continentals which the town kept in the field would seem to have been about seventy men. There is no record of the number of those who were wounded, or who died in battle or in camp. Neither do the figures which have been given include those who served on the 'sea. Indeed, it is only through incidental mention in the letters of Mrs. Adams that we even know that privateering was all the rage among the young men of Braintree. Yet not only did she so describe it in 1776, but five years later, in December, 1781, she sent to her hus- band at the Hague the names of no less than twelve Braintree boys captured in the British Channel on the privateer " Essex," from Salem, and then con- fined in Plymouth jail. "Ned Savil," "Job Field," and " Josiah Bass" were unmistakable North Precinct names, and doubtless many score of others saw service in this same way. Nor was it a service lightly to be spoken of. The supplies and munitions of war picked up by the Yankee privateers went far toward keep- ing Washington's army in the field.

So far, therefore, as men were concerned, it seems probable that the Revolutionary land and sea service combined kept at least a fourth part of the effective arms-bearing force of Braintree continually employed from 1775 to 1782. They were drawn away from all peaceful occupations, and, in place of being producers, they became consumers. What the consumption of the war amounted to now remains to be considered. During the three years prior to Lexington and Con- cord-that is, between 1772 and 1774-Braintree raised annually by taxation the sum of £150 pro- vincial money, or $500, to meet current town ex- penses ; the precinct or church levy being a distinct charge. In 1776 the sum of £1176 was raised under three separate votes. This, too, was in hard money, for even as late as December of that year silver was

The calls for men were incessant until 1782. A new crop of fighting material had then matured, for the boy not yet twelve when the skirmish at Concord bridge took place was eighteen at the surrender of Yorktown. Between 1775 and 1782, as nearly as can now be estimated, Braintree sent into the field about 550 men, enlisted for periods of six months or over. The number of men, as well as the length of enlistment, varied with the different years. In 1775, but ten per cent. premium. The next year the for instance, besides militia to guard the coast, the | amount raised was £1500. Indian corn was still

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HISTORY OF NORFOLK COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

only five shillings a bushel, its ordinary price being four shillings ; but rye had doubled, selling for twelve shillings, while rum had gone up from three to eight shillings, and molasses was not to be had. In May, 1778, the sum of £4000 was ordered to be assessed immediately, for in April a requisition in kind of shirts, shoes, and stockings had been made on the town. A similar requisition for blankets had been made in January, 1777. In June, 1779, another requisition of shirts, shoes, and stockings was made, the town to furnish "a number of these articles equal to one-seventh Part of the Male Inhabitants above the Age of sixteen years;" from which pos- sibly it might be inferred that Braintree then had some ninety men in service. In January the select- men had been ordered to procure one thousand bushels of grain for the town, and in November a levy of £6000 was voted "toward defraying the charges of the same." The currency was now fast losing its value,-how fast may be inferred from the fact that in place of the former allowance of two pence a head for killing old blackbirds, in May, 1780, the sum of thirty shillings was voted, while the three shillings a day for labor on the highways became seven pounds ten shillings. Indeed, there were no longer any quotable prices. Calico was from thirty to forty dollars per yard, molasses twenty dol- lars a gallon, sugar four dollars a pound. In May, 1780, the selectmen were ordered to secure corn, so as to be prepared to give those who enlisted half a bushel of it a day instead of money. In July a requisition came for shirts, shoes, stockings, and blan- kets, and another for horses; in September a third for 23,400 pounds of beef, and in December yet a fourth for 44,933 additional pounds of beef. In ber £60,000 more. At the same time the selectmen were directed to " wait on Col. Quincy and know of him whether he will lend the Town a sum of hard money." He apparently did so; though exactly how it was used or what became of it was subsequently a matter of curious inquiry and repeated investigation.

August it was voted to raise £120,000, and in Octo- | tion was not yet so large as it had been ten years before, in 1776, and a long period of terrible de- pression followed the return of peace. The stress had indeed been great and the loss of men and means oppressive; but none the less Braintree had been fortunate,-the war had never once crossed the boundary of the town.

But the paper money delusion was now over. The issues were discredited, and but half of the £200,000 assessment of 1780 was ever collected. In 1781 the sum of £1400 in specie was raised, and the town as usual was called on for beef and clothing in kind. In 1782 only £700 were raised, but the requisitions for men and supplies still came in. In March, 1783, the old record-book, which had served for fifty-two years, was full, and when he bought a new one the town clerk noted on its first page that its price was " Five Silver Dollars."

In view of these requisitions in kind, and the utter confusion of the currency, it is impossible to say what the real money cost of the Revolution was. When peace at last came Braintree was heavily in debt. But its notes had shared the fate of the paper currencies in which they were payable. Some of them were paid; some were compromised ; some were repudiated. The annual tax levy, which be- fore the war was only £150, after it became £1000. The cases of individual hardship must have been many. Fortunately there were in those days few who lived on fixed incomes. Indeed, the minister was almost the only such person who could be sug- gested. All others were dependent on their labor or the produce of their fields. Taxes and the in- creased price of labor more than used up the whole profits of industry. During the entire Revolutionary period the people were eating into their accumulated substance. Braintree, it has been seen, kept an average of seventy men in the Continental army, besides militia, and practically, of course, had to pay and supply them. This could not have been done at less than three shillings per day for each man. Consequently, at the lowest computation, the war of independence could not have cost the in- habitants of Braintree less than $100,000 in money. | It has been seen that $100,000 was probably equiva- lent to at least one-fourth part of the entire accumu- lation since the settlement of the town. That one- fourth part of the whole substance of the community should have been thus consumed in distant military operations seems incredible; and the statement of the fact should cause in subsequent generations a realizing sense of the obstinate spirit of independence which nerved the patriot side. In 1786 the popula-

The military contribution of Braintree to the war of independence was limited to men and supplies. She furnished no officer who rose to high command, or evinced marked soldierly qualities. Deacon Joseph Palmer was commissioned brigadier-general, but, though a man of active nature and full of enter- prise of a certain sort, Palmer was then sixty years of age. Ilis campaigning days were past. Full of zeal, he was at Bunker Hill, and subsequently very active during the siege of Boston, but his largest · experience was as commander of the Massachusetts

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contingent in the unfortunate " secret expedition" of September, 1777, planned to drive the British from Rhode Island. It is claimed that the wretched failure of the expedition was not to be laid at Gen. Palmer's journment." A committee of fifteen was accordingly door ; but Mrs. Adams could not refrain from saying in a letter to her husband,-" I know you will be mortified, but if you want your arms crowned with victory, you should not appoint what Gen. Gates calls dreaming deacons to conduct them."

During the later years of the struggle John Adams was absent from the country. In November, 1777, he had come home and then, while still at Braintree, been selected to represent the Congress in Europe. All arrangements having been made, the frigate " Boston" reported in Boston Harbor to carry him abroad, and in February it lay at anchor in Nantasket Roads. On the morning of the 13th, Mr. Adams left his house at Penn's Hill, and accom- panied by his son John Quincy, now a boy of ten, drove down to Norton Quincy's, at Mount Wol- laston, on the Germantown road. His wife did not accompany him ; most probably she did not feel equal to so doing. Hardly had he got to Norton Quincy's when a boat from the frigate pulled up to the beach. In it was Captain Tucker, of the " Boston." Coming up to the house he joined Mr. Adams, who, after writing a few hurried lines to his wife, walked down to the shore, and, bidding good-by to Norton Quincy, the party was rowed across the bay to the frigate. As the father and the young lad drew away from the familiar land, they could not but have cast homesick glances back to it ; for it was mid- winter, and the British were masters of the sea. But " Johnny," his father wrote, behaved "like a man."

Mr. Adams returned home the next year, reaching Braintree on the 2d of September. A week later a town-meeting was held for the purpose, among other things, of choosing delegates to the convention which was to meet at Cambridge, on the 1st of September, for the purpose of framing a State Constitution. It was voted to send only one delegate, and " the Honble. John Adams, Esq., was chosen for that purpose." While yet engaged in the work of drafting the Con- stitution Mr. Adams was again sent abroad, and left Braintree on the 13th of November. On the 22d of the following May " the freeholders and other inhab- itants of Braintree qualified to vote in the choice of a Representative"-so the record ran-met in the Middle Precinct meeting-house and made choice of Richard Cranch to the General Court ; at the same time " the male Inhabitants of said Town of the age of Twenty-one Years and upwards" were assembled to consider of the form of government agreed on by

the convention. " The Form being Read, The Town thought proper to choose a Committee to take the same under consideration and Report upon the ad-

selected, with Gen. Palmer at its head. This was by no means the first time in recent years that the in- habitants of Braintree had met to consider questions of fundamental law. And, indeed, nothing could be more characteristic than the formal and deliberate manner in which they uniformly approached the sub- ject. They seemed fully impressed with its import- ance. In February, 1778, the Articles of Confedera- tion and Perpetual Union then drawn up by the Continental Congress had been submitted. The Braintree record states that in the town-meeting these articles were "distinctly and Repeatedly read and maturely considered." They were approved except in one point. The action of the town upon this was significant, as showing how jealous the ordinary New Englander was of his local independence, and what a vast educational work then remained to be done be- | fore a stable Federal Constitution had any chance of adoption. It was provided in the Articles of Con- federation that Congress should " have the sole and exclusive right and power of determining on peace or war." For this necessary provision the town of Brain- tree formally submitted the following absurd substi- tute : "The United States in Congress Assembled shall first obtain the approbation of the Legislative Body of each of the United States, or the major part of them, before they shall determine on peace or war."

At this same time the General Court submitted a draft of a State Constitution which had been prepared by it for approval by the people. It was considered in a Braintree town-meeting held on the 13th of April. Having been read, it was referred to a com- mittee of fifteen to take the same " under Consider- ation and Report upon the adjournment." . Capt. Peter B. Adams, a younger brother of John, was chairman of this committee. A month later it re- ported that those composing it " did not approve" of the proposed government, and "it being put to the members present, thirteen was in favor of the form, seventy-four against it."

Gen. Palmer's committee had the Constitution of 1780 under consideration for two weeks. It then re- ported " sum alterations and amendments, which being read to the Town was Voted and axcepted." Gen. Palmer was then chosen a delegate, in place of John Adams, to attend the convention which was to perfect the draft. The first election under the Constitution was held on the 4th of the following September, and

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HISTORY OF NORFOLK COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

in Braintree 106 votes were cast for Governor, of which John Hancock received 95, and James Bow- doin 11. Richard Cranch was four weeks later chosen the first representative. The following year only 62 votes were cast, and in 1782 only 94. In the last- named year the vote between Hancock and Bowdoin was a tie; but in 1783, Benjamin Lincoln received 87 votes to 14 cast for Hancock. The war was now | over, and the people of Braintree, in common with the rest of the State, were feeling the full effects of the reaction which followed it. There had been a com- plete financial collapse ; business and enterprise were dead, and labor was in comparatively little demand. The utmost discontent prevailed, and an inferior set of political leaders made their appearance. It was the time which preceded Shay's insurrection. Yet, so far as the record shows, the town of Braintree had now fallen back into the old accustomed ways. The regular town-meeting was held, and the usual action taken at it. The great question of the day related to " A very slender excuse indeed to whom ought we to hearken to the Great Governor of the world or to the Voice of the sober and consciencious People, a semmilar excuse once was given by a King of Gods antient People for his disobedience of a special command because he feared the people but the inspired Profits Introgative was hath the Lord as great dilght in burn offerings and sacrifice as in obeying the Voice of the Lord behold to obey it better than sacrifice and to hearken than the fat of Rambs. We cannot conceive that the diference of opinion or the fear of the People ought to cause an abolition of that sacred command ye fourth Commandment but that it ought to have it due extent at one end or the other, perhaps in some future day this sober and Consciencious party may request an other part of six hours more to be abolished and so on, untill that Great and most In- teresting command becomes null and void, not by the traditions of men, but by the Law of the State, to draw to a close in as con- cise a manner as a thing of so great weight and Importance will admit of your Committee are of opinion that a Remonstrance be preferred to the aforesaid honourable Court when assembled that there may be a revision of and amendment of the above cited Law that their be no part of the fourth Commandment abolished by Law but that it may have its full extent as re- vealed to us in the Sacred Scriptures that thereby the Blessings of him who hath ever held an holy jealousy over his Sabath may decend on this Continent and on every State of the same is the sincere wish of your Committee." finances. They were in extreme confusion. The valuation for work done on the highways had fallen from £7 10s. a day in 1780 to three shillings now, and in the collection of taxes a dollar in silver was ordered to be accepted in lieu of $120 in Continental currency. The schools had been reopened, and though the Committee of Safety was still in existence, its work had ceased. But there was one subject, be- sides the town debts and the badness of the times, which now worried Braintree. The General Court had passed an act determining the legal limits of the Sabbath. Accordingly the warrant for the March meeting of 1783 contained an article " that the town may advise thereon and act as they shall think most agreeable to the Sacred Law of God." When the meeting had assembled, Deacon Holbrook, of the Mid- dle Precinct, was chosen moderator, and a vote was passed " that it should be deemed a disorder for any person to go upon the seats in the meeting-house with their feet." Finally the article relating to the Lord's Day was referred to a committee of seven, of which Joshua Hayward was chairman. The report of this The next formal instructions approved by the town were three years later, when, in the summer of 1786, which a few months afterwards culminated in Shay's rebellion. committee was presented at an adjourned meeting, and, after two readings, was accepted and approved. No | the State was seething with that spirit of discontent extract can do justice to it. As the criticism of a town meeting upon a solemn legislative act, it is unique and characteristic :

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History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 73

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed Publication date: 1884 Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & Co. Number of Pages: 1534

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1534