USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Metropolitan Boston; a modern history; Volume I > Part 22
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The Boston leaders who came to the fore during this period of strife can hardly be written about too often. They were the fruition of seeds long planted, and indicate the growth of ideas and ideals in our country as events did not. They were in truth, the representative men of their
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day ; particularly in their weaknesses, their idiosyncrasies, and their fail- ures do they stand for the stage of development which Boston and the colonies had reached. Consider just a few of "Boston's Immortals," Samuel Adams, James Otis, John Adams, Joseph Warre, John Hancock, Paul Revere the silversmith, and John Singleton Copley, artist ; what a gallery these make in the halls of fame! Then there are those whose names are seldom mentioned, the men of wealth and ability who sided with their King and left Boston in sorrow during the Revolution. The contrast between the town of 1775 and that of 1776, when its population was reduced by more than a half, is evidence as much of the number of loyalists who had lived here as of the number of its patriots enlisted in colonial armies.
James Otis-James Otis was one of the lawyers of Boston, of whom there were few because the law was not an attractive profession while Massachusetts was a royal province. In 1761, he was the advocate gen- eral of the province until it became his duty to defend a government case under the Writs of Assistance which enabled customs officers to search the homes of suspected smugglers. He resigned, and came in court as the representative of the persons endeavoring to prove that the stand of the government was illegal. His speech on this occasion, a marvel of research and oratory, initiated a new order of belief and action against the arbitrary claims of Great Britain. As John Adams said, "Then and there the child Independence was born." His too brief career as a patri- otic leader began on that day, but he took the lawyer's stand on many questions, which sometimes was on the side of the government, which did not add to his popularity. Yet in spite of this, he was looked up to by the men of his day, and swayed the multitude by his oratory as few could. To him was given the privilege of uttering the first great war cry "no taxation without representation." Attacked by a political enemy, Cap- tain Robinson, his brilliant but unstable mind was all but wrecked, and from 1769, his life was spent in practical retirement. Was it a time of a return of mind and spirit when he borrowed a gun and took his place with the Americans in the battle of Bunker Hill?
Samuel Adams-Samuel Adams, "Father of the Revolution," one of the principal leaders in the events which preceded the Revolution, as well as a prominent member of the Continental Congress from 1774 to 1781, continued in public service for the whole term of his long and influential life. Although always a national character, he was a Bostonian of the Bostonians. His biographer, Dr. James K. Hosmer, wrote of him :
"Of this town of towns, Samuel Adams was the son of sons. He was strangely identified with it always. He was trained in Boston schools, and Harvard College. He never left the town except on the town's er-
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rands, or those of the Province of which he was its head. He had no private business after the first year of his manhood; he was the public servant simply and solely in places large and small, fire-ward, committee to see that chimneys were safe, tea collector, moderator of town meet- ings, representative. One may almost call him the creature of the town- meeting." Adams seems always to be a central figure of any event in which he had a part. Two British regiments had been quartered in the town for some time. Trouble between the townspeople and these troops came to a head on the evening of March 5, 1770. The people were fired upon and three were killed and eight wounded. This was the famous Boston Massacre. The next day the citizens went to see Governor Hutchinson asking that the soldiers be moved out of town. The Gov- ernor pleaded that he had no authority to remove the regiment. In the face of a formal committee of fifteen, he persisted in his stand, but un- fortunately for his position, the senior officer then in Boston said one of the regiments could be shifted if Hutchinson desired it. To continue the picture as drawn by Howe in his history of Boston: This was the mes- sage which the committee was empowered to convey to the anxious town-meeting. So great had been the throng that had come to Faneuil Hall, that it was inadequate and an adjournment to the Old South Meet- ing-house had taken place. It was a short walk, then, that the commit- tee had to take-from the head of King (now State) Street to the head of Milk Street. But it was a walk which Samuel Adams turned to mo- mentous account. Hat in hand he passed, with his fellows, between the double row of townspeople overflowing from the meeting-house into the streets. Right and left as he walked, he turned to the eager citizens, and said, and said again, "Both regiments or none!" For the purpose of the day, it was as good a phrase as any that Otis ever coined for the cur- rency of speech. Once within the Old South, the committee delivered its message: one regiment might go to the Castle in the harbor if the magistrates must have it so. But from all the people crowding the floor, stairways, doors and galleries, rolled back the words of Adams, "Both regiments or none!" This was the simple reply which the committee of seven, now chosen, had to bear back to the Lieutenant-Governor, his august councillors, and the military authorities. It was only fitting that Sam Adams, having framed in the street the answer which the town- meeting gave in the meeting-house, should deliver it in the council chamber. And so he did-in the plainest terms. "If you, or Colonel Dalrymple under you," he addressed himself to Hutchinson, "have the power to remove one regiment, you have the power to remove both ; and nothing short of their total removal will satisfy the people or preserve the peace of the Province." With such argument as this he convinced all but Hutchinson. At last the sturdy Loyalist himself, persuaded by his
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secretary, Andrew Oliver, that further resistance was futile, yielded the point, and both regiments were ordered to the Castle. Thus it was that the 14th and 29th regiments of his Majesty's forces won from the lips of Lord North himself the memorable nickname of the "Sam Adams Regiments." By this title they are still known in local history. In the annals of the British Army, the 14th, with a record extending from the siege of Gibraltar and Culloden, through Corunna, Waterloo, and the Crimea down to South Africa, is now the "Prince of Wales' Own"; the 29th, which fought at Ramillies, in the Peninsular campaign, and against the Boers, has become the "Worcestershire." The name of Sam Adams does not happen to appear in the army list in connection with either regiment.
The energy and power of one man in turning the tragedy of the "Mas- sacre" so quickly into a victory for the people are worthy of all admira- tion.
Delegates to the Continental Congress-The "energy and power" which Adams put into his efforts to bring about the independence of the American colonies is remarkable, when it is realized that he was none too strong physically, and never blessed with sufficient means to live comfortably, although his very poverty was evidence of his lack of self- seeking, and one of the sources of his popularity with the working clas- ses. He had an unacceptable message to carry when he was sent with Thomas Cushing, Robert Treat Paine, and John Adams, to the Conti- nental Congress at Philadelphia in 1774, for he was probably the only one in all that assembly who stood for the complete emancipation of the colonies. He was very tactful about it all, for he knew that the members had been warned that the four were "desperate adventurers" and that he, Samuel Adams, was "a very artful designing man, most desparately poor and wholly dependent upon his popularity with the lowest vulgar for his living." Independence was about as popular with the aristocratic south- ern members of the Congress as was Adams and his three colleagues. All four were very diplomatic and self-effacing, however, and Samuel made a stroke of genius by suggesting that, rather than not have the ses- sion opened without prayer, when this was opposed by Mr. Jay of New York and Mr. Rutledge of South Carolina on the plea that the differ- ences of religious opinion were too great for all to join in the same act of worship, that Mr. Duché, an Episcopal clergyman, should read prayers. As John Adams tells the story: "Accordingly, the next morning, he appeared in his pontificals and read . . . the thirty-fifth Psalm (Plead my cause, O Lord, with them that strive with me; fight against them that fight against me . . . ). You must remember this was the morning next after we heard the horrible rumor of the cannonade of Boston. I
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never saw a greater effect upon an audience. It seemed that Heaven had ordained that Psalm to be read on that morning. Then Mr. Duché burst into extemporary prayer for America, for Congress, for the Prov- ince of Massachusetts Bay, and especially for the town of Boston." And, concludes John Adams, "It has had an excellent effect upon everybody here." One of its excellent effects was the placing of both the Adamses on the committee appointed for the investigation of the rights of the colonies which had been infringed, and the best means of securing redress.
One is tempted to relate many things about this Boston patriot. His ,work for his country was never ended ; to his State, when Massachusetts became a State, he came to its aid in a crisis as its Governor. Upon his death, October 2, 1803, the day was made the occasion of national mourn- ing. On June 5, 1776, a resolution was introduced in the Continental Congress, that the colonies declare themselves free and independent States. Debate began three days later. Samuel Adams worked untir- ingly, and the successful passing of the measure has been credited to the "timely remarks" of Adams; and that by one long speech, characterized by Elbridge Gerry as Samuel Adams' ablest effort, three wavering mem- bers were finally convinced that "Independence must be attained. So Zealously did the Man of the Town Meeting work, during the three weeks interval allowed in order that hesitating delegates might consult their constituents, that, when the measure was again taken up, on the first days of July, there was no longer a dissenting voice." If any man had a right to be proud and let that pride show in his acts and letters, Samuel Adams was that man. Yet the note he indited to his friend in Boston, John Pitts, has in it not one phrase of personal pride. It simply was a letter of quiet happiness that a decision had been made, closing with "I hope our affairs will now wear a more agreeable aspect than they have of late, S. A."
John Adams-John Adams and John Hancock, both under forty at the outbreak of the Revolution, were intimate friends and co-workers in the stirring days before the actual break. John Adams was the son of a farmer, taught school for awhile at Worcester, studied law, and soon rose high in legal circles. John Hancock, after completing his education, went into business with his uncle, Thomas Hancock, at Boston, inheriting the estate upon his uncle's death in 1764. The two men were very much unlike in station and character, but worked well together, each somehow being a complement of the other. Adams was less of the showman but reached greater heights in public life; Hancock knew how to dramatize himself, and was always in the public eye. Adams wielded a fruitful pen, many of his later writings having more than simply a historical
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value even today. But, as some one has said, if Adams held the pen, Hancock cut the quills.
John Adams, with his judicial temperament. was eminently fitted for leadership in a time when level heads were at a premium. He defended, with Josiah Quincy, Jr., the offending soldiers of the Boston Massacre. He had been counsel for Boston in the opposition to the Stamp Act. When, in 1770, he moved to Boston, he was elected to the General Court of Massachusetts, and from this time on spent thirty years in the service of his State and country. A member of the Provincial and Continental Congresses, he was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, but there is no record of his making any remarks such as that of Hancock at this time, who wrote his signature at the head of the list in a bold, dash- ing style, "that George the Third might read it without spectacles." George seems never to have interested himself in the document, and to those of the present generation who make the pilgrimage to Washington to see the famous parchment, it is somewhat of a disappointment to find that of all the many signatures to the Declaration, only that of Han- cock's and one other are still visible. John Adams went to France, Hol- land and England on diplomatic errands for this country ; he was Vice- President of the United States, and succeeded Washington as the chief magistrate of the Nation, serving from 1797 to 1801. The administration of John Adams was torn with fierce dissensions which estranged him from the political leaders of New England, and at the end of his term he retired into private life. He died on July 4, 1826, after having survived nearly all of his associates of the Revolution.
John Hancock-There was so much of the bizarre about the career of John Hancock that the temptation is great to repeat many of the tales told concerning him. Just two analyses of his character and career will be mentioned. One was written by Mrs. Mercy Warren, the favorite sister of James Otis, who should know whereof she wrote. Her im- pression was that, "Mr. Hancock was a young gentleman of fortune, of more external accomplishments than real abilities. He was polite in manners, easy in address, affable, civil and liberal. With these accom- plishments he was capricious, sanguine and implacable; naturally gen- erous, he was profuse in expense ; he scattered largesses without discre- tion, and purchased favors by the waste of wealth, until he reached the ultimatum of his wishes, which centered in the focus of popular applause. He enlisted early in the cause of his country, at the instigation of some gentlemen of penetration, who thought his ample fortune might give consideration while his fickleness could not injure, so long as he was under the influence of men of superior judgment. They complimented
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him by nominations to committees of importance, till he plunged too far to recede; and flattered by ideas of his own consequence, he had taken a decided part before the battle of Lexington, and was president of the Provincial Congress when that event took place."
A more modern estimate of John Hancock is that made by Henry Cabot Lodge in his chapter in the "Memorial History": "There have been but few men in history who have achieved so much fame, and whose names are so familiar, who at the time really did so little and left so slight a trace of personal influence upon the times in which they lived as John Hancock. He was valuable chiefly from his picturesqueness. Every- thing about him is picturesque, from his bold, handsome signature, which gave him an assured immortality, to his fine house which appears in the pictures of the day as the 'Seat of His Excellency, John Hancock.' His position, wealth, and name made him valuable to the real movers of the Revolution, when men of his stamp were almost without exception on the side of the Crown ; and it was this which made such a man as Sam Adams cling to and advance him, and which gave him a factitious importance. Hancock was far from greatness; indeed, it is to be feared that he was not much removed from being 'the empty barrel,' which is the epithet, tradition says, that the outspoken John Adams applied to him. And yet he had real value after all. He was the Alcibiades, in a certain way, of the rebellious little Puritan town; and his display and gorgeousness no doubt gratified the sober, hard-headed community which put him at its head and kept him there. He stands out with a fine show of lace and velvet and dramatic gout, a real aristocrat, shining and resplendent against the cold gray background of every-day life in the Boston of the days after the Revolution, when the gay official society of the province had been swept away. At the side of his house he built a dining hall, where he could assemble fifty or sixty guests; and when his company was gathered he would be borne or wheeled in, and with easy grace delight every one by his talk and finished manners. In society his pettiness, peevishness, and narrowness would vanish and his true value as a brilliant and picturesque figure would come out. His death was but one of the incidents which, as the old century hastened to its close, marked the change which had fairly come." John Hancock died Oc- tober 8, 1793, while serving his eleventh year as Governor of Massachu- setts.
Paul Revere-Paul Revere, of Huguenot descent, a "jack of all trades" and seemingly master of them all, was born the same year, 1735, as John Adams, with whom he was closely associated in the pre-Revolutionary events about Boston. When scarcely twenty he was commissioned a
VIEW FROM CHAUNCEY STREET, BOSTON, NOVEMBER 22, 1872
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second lieutenant in the expedition against the French at Crown Point. He early took sides with the lovers of liberty and contributed to their support, and incidentally to his own, with a series of engraved political cartoons, or caricatures, which are still treasured. As the rebellious spirit of New England sought expression in organizations, Revere was a favorite for membership on these committees. He was also a prime mover in the formation of clubs among the artisans of the town, such as the "Sons of Liberty," the "Caucus Club" and others. It was as the Messenger of the Revolution that his fame has come down to the present generation, but the "Ride of Paul Revere," celebrated by Longfellow, was not the first time he acted in this capacity. When the "Mohawks" staged the Boston Tea Party it was Paul Revere who carried the news hot-foot to New York and Philadelphia. Throughout the war he gave efficient service to the patriotic cause, and is credited with being one of the de- ciding although indirect influences which brought Samuel Adams over to the side of the Federal Constitution, which hung in the balance in 1789. Revere, as the representative of the Boston mechanics, told Adams of the enthusiasm of his fellows for the federal scheme. Adams listened and came over to the winning side. Paul Revere was the first president of the Massachusetts Mechanics' Association from 1794 to 1797, and Masons like to recall that he was the Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Massa- chusetts during these same years. He died at Boston, May 10, 1818.
Other Boston Patriots-There are other Bostonians of the Revolu- tionary days who were well capable of ranking along side of those already named, even if they played less conspicuous parts. Joseph War- ren, the physician, filled many offices of trust. Made a major-general on June 14, 1775, three days later he was killed at the battle of Bunker Hill. Josiah Quincy stood at the bar with Adams in the unpopular defense of the British soldiers accused of the Boston Massacre. He also fell at the threshold of the bloody conflict; his son Josiah was a president of Harvard and the first of three of the family name to be mayors of Boston. Then there was Thomas Cushing and Robert Treat Paine, gentlemen both, and delegates to the Continental Congress from Massachusetts. Cushing was for years the Speaker of the Massachusetts House; Paine was a learned judge, a trenchant writer. William Tudor, eminent at the bar, served with distinction in the army. James Bowdoin, with a reputa- tion on both sides of the Atlantic for science and learning, had the cour- age to accept the Governorship during the Shays' Rebellion, when John Hancock had one of his convenient gouty spells. Nor should we forget the artist, John Singleton Copley, to whose skilled hand Boston owes
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much of her knowledge of the appearance and position of the Boston folk and times.
Loyalist Notables-There were "giants in those days," heroic figures quite the admiration of the historically inclined, even when the halo of patriotism is left unobserved. The Boston of the Revolution was forced by the events which preceded it into bloom, and the flowers of Puritan- ism as produced then are still a marvel to those who think of Puritanism as a barren plant, or one which could send forth little that was admirable. Nor must it be thought that the great ones of that period were only those who shone among the patriots. The storm of obloquy which fell upon those who favored the English crown, has quite overshadowed those who have a right to the admiration of the Bostonian. Thomas Hutchinson, last of the provincial Governors, had many unamiable characteristics, but he was both learned and able in law, and his "His- tory of Massachusetts" is written in so impartial a style as to still be one of the best of our sources of the early history of the Commonwealth. What of Jonathan Sewell, attorney-general of Massachusetts; Andrew Oliver, Lieutenant-Governor, and others of less official standing but con- tributing the intellectual and social life of Boston before the exodus of the Loyalists after the declaration of war. Sabine, in his "American Loyalists," estimates that 2,000 of the adherents of the King left Massa- chusetts at this time, and figures that of three hundred and ten banished from the State, more than sixty were Harvard graduates. John Adams believed that one-third of the citizens of the colonies at large favored the Crown. "The last contest in the town of Boston, in 1775, between the Whigs and Tories, was decided by five against two."
Boston's Descent From the Heights-In 1774 Boston, as has been em- phasized, was the great town of the colonies; this in spite of the fact that it had been exceeded in population by some others. It was the brain and the mouth of the revolt, as it was the center of the northern aristo- cracy of wealth and culture. Its higher life, as well as the commercial, had reached great heights. The all but complete collapse of the town in much that was best was not due simply to a' loss of population, but to the sort of people that had departed. The constant accession of those of means and culture from the province was for the most part loyal to the King, and upon the lifting of the siege were dispersed, the most of the Tories going to Canada and from thence abroad. Even the higher lights among the patriots were scattered over the colonies, and for the greater part engaged in the business of the Nation. Many of these never returned to their native town, and the eminence of Boston had to be rebuilt upon such remnants as remained, with the material which again
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came to Boston to occupy the places of those who had been driven out, or chose other sections for their homes.
Fortunately, as Lodge has pointed out, there was a country aristoc- racy to fill in the great gaps the war had made. "The new men, of course, came; and equally, of course, they were the leaders of a successful Rev- olution. They were not, however, as commonly happens in such cases, drawn from the class immediately below that which was overthrown. The country aristocracy, the squires and gentry of the small towns, unlike their brethren of the capital, had been, as a rule, on the side of re- sistance to England, and had furnished the most of the Revolutionary leaders. When their battle was won many of them came up from their counties and settled in Boston, occupying the places of their banished opponents, and not infrequently by cheap purchases becoming possessors of the confiscated homes of the exiles. To this class, which to borrow a very famous name, may be not inaptly styled the Country Party, be- longed, for example, the Adamses and Fisher Ames from Norfolk, the Prescotts from Middlesex, and the Sullivans from New Hampshire; while from Essex, the most prolific of them all came the Parsonses, Pickerings, Lees, Jacksons, Cabots, Lowells, Grays and Elbridge Gerry."
Mr. Lodge was writing of politics when he indited the above, but it shows the manner in which the post-Revolutionary development was accomplished. In 1776, the population of Boston is given as 2,719 (it had numbered about 15,000 a few years earlier). Commerce had been wrecked, and shipbuilding, the principal industry with it. While the destruction of the material things of the town by the beleaguered British had been comparatively small, there were few to renew and replace what was gone, and seemingly fewer who had the heart to take up the task of rebuilding. Although the war passed on after the raising of the siege, and never returned to Boston during the next half dozen years, there were but few signs of recuperation, except along mercantile lines, and in these only because the few that had means, as is usual in war times, were spending them lavishly, and those who had little were imitating the wealthy. "King Hancock" as the Tories styled John of the name, appeared "in public with all the pageantry and state of an Oriental prince. . . . He is attended by four servants dressed in superb livery, mounted on horses richly caparisoned; and escorted by fifty horsemen with drawn swords." But another observer in this same year, 1780, wrote: "Boston affords nothing new but complaints upon com- plaints, I have been credibly informed that a person who used to live well has been obliged to take the feathers out of his bed and sell them to an upholsterer to get money to buy bread. Many doubtless are ex- ceedingly distressed ; but yet, such is the infatuation of the day that the rich, regardless of the necessities of the poor, are more luxurious and ex-
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