USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts, 1630-1880, Vol. III > Part 29
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1 90
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
interest were few in the extreme. The fortunes of the Bostonians were in- volved in commerce, enterprising, far reaching, and successful; 1 but it may be fairly said, that outside of business and professional work the only intel- lectual excitement was found in politics ; and to politics, consequently, all the strongest and ablest men of the community turned their zealous attention. To understand the history of Boston during the period included between the dates placed at the head of this chapter, it is necessary, if we wish to set in strong relief the characteristic features of the time, and not to wander in a tangled maze of valueless details, to study the fortunes of the ruling political party in the town. In that party, or in opposition to it, we must sooner or later meet with every man of importance; in their contests we must deal with every question which affected the interests of the town as well as those of the State or Nation; and thus we cannot fail to comprehend the general character of the life and society of that day and generation.
The peace of 1782 found Boston shorn of many of the attributes which had made her the first among the towns of the English colonies in America. The population, which before the war had numbered nearly twenty thousand, sank at the time of the siege to six thousand, comprising only those abso- lutely unable to get away ; and when peace came it had risen to but little over twelve thousand. Military occupation, pestilence, and the flight of the Tory party had done their work, and had more than decimated the people. Commerce, the main support of the inhabitants, suffered severely in the war, and had been only partially replaced by the uncertain successes of the pri- vateers. The young men had been drawn away to the army; both State and Confederacy were practically bankrupt; and the disorganization conse- quent upon seven years of civil war was great and disastrous. Boston was brought face to face with this gloomy condition of her affairs when the long strain of the Revolution was removed by the Treaty of Paris, and her people, with characteristic energy, set to work at once to remedy their misfortunes. Again the harbor was whitened with the sails of merchant ships, once more the trades began to flourish with their old activity in shop and ship-yard,2 and the old bustle and movement were seen anew in the streets; but there was much weary work to be done before the ravages of war could be repaired. Ten years elapsed before the population reached the point at which it stood prior to the Revolution; and in that decade both town and State had much to endure in settling the legacies always bequeathed to a community by civil strife. The adjustment of social, finan- cial, and political balances, after such a wrenching of the body politic, was a slow and in some respects a harsh and trying process, and many years passed before a condition of stable equilibrium was again attained.
The mere fact of revolution implies, of course, a rearrangement of classes in any community to a greater or less extent. In the provincial times, although the political system and theory of Massachusetts were demo-
1 [See Mr. H. A. Hill's chapter in Vol. IV. -ED.]
2 [See the chapter on " Industries" in Vol. IV .- ED.]
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THE LAST FORTY YEARS OF TOWN GOVERNMENT.
cratic, there was a vigorous and powerful aristocracy holding all the ap- pointed and many of the elective offices, and recognized as leaders in public affairs. As a rule, this provincial aristocracy, which had its headquarters in Boston, was strongly in sympathy with the Crown, and abandoned the country on the success of the Patriots, either in the great flight which took place when Howe evacuated Boston, or singly, when opportunity offered. Their estates were confiscated, and they themselves took refuge for the most part in the northern provinces, and sometimes in England; but wherever they were their loyalty was remembered, and they were aided by the Eng- lish Government.1 Here and there exceptions to this rule could, of course, be found, - as notably in the case of John Hancock and the Quincys; although even in the latter family of Patriots one distinguished member was a Tory, and went into exile in consequence.2 There were a few others of this class who, while their sympathies were with England, managed to preserve a judicious neutrality, and remained in their native town, suspected by many, and stripped of all political power, but retaining their social posi- tion, and after many years regaining some portion of their influence. These remnants of the provincial aristocracy were at best but trifling, and new men had ample openings in the great gaps which war had made. The new men, of course, came; and equally, of course, they were the leaders of the successful Revolution. They were not, however, as commonly happens in such cases, drawn from the class immediately below that which had been overthrown. The country aristocracy, the squires and gentry of the small towns and villages, unlike their brethren of the capital, had been as a rule on the side of resistance to England, and had furnished most of the Revolu- tionary 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, most prolific of all, came the Parsonses, Pickerings, Lees, Jack- sons, Cabots, Lowells, Grays, and Elbridge Gerry. These men and their families rapidly filled the places left vacant in society by the old supporters of the Crown, and, of course, already possessed the political power which they had gained by the victories of the Revolution. This new aristocracy maintained for many years the ascendancy in public affairs which had been held by their predecessors, but their tenure, weakened by the ideas devel- oped in the Revolution, was more precarious; and although they dictated the policy of the State for nearly half a century, their power as a class broke down and disappeared before the rapid rise and spread of democracy during the lifetime of the next generation.
1 [See Editorial Notes at the end of Mr. eral of the Province, a brother of Josiah Quincy, Scudder's chapter in this volume. - E.D.] Jr., the Patriot. There is a biography of him in
2 [This was Samuel Quincy, Solicitor-Gen- the appendix to Curwen's Journal .- En.]
192
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
The Patriot party - the Whigs of the Revolution - triumphed so com- pletely by the result of the war that they found themselves not only masters of the field in 1782, but absolutely unopposed. In their own num-
11.11
JOHN ADAMS.1
bers future party divisions were in due time formed, and we can detect the germ of those divisions, even before the peace, in the Constitutional Conven- tion which met at Boston in 1780.2 The old chiefs as a rule leaned, as
1 [This cut, made by the kind permission of the Hon. Charles Francis Adams, follows Stu- art's portrait of the old statesman, taken in 1825, a year before his death, in his eighty-ninth year. See Mason's Stuart, p. 125. A portrait by Cop- ley, showing him in court dress, painted in 1783, was given to Harvard College in 1828 by W. N. Boylston, is engraved in Adams's Works, vol. v., and hangs in Memorial Hall, where is another by J. Trumbull, given by Andrew Cragie
in 1794. Another by Stuart is owned by Mr. T. Jefferson Coolidge, of Boston. There is in the Historical Society's cabinet a copy, by Stuart Newton, of Gilbert Stuart's portrait. See Pro- ceedings, April, 1862, p. 3. The Boston Magazine, February, 1784, has a full-face portrait of John Adams, engraved by J. Norman. - ED.]
2 [See Mr. Charles Deane's valuable paper on the connection of Judge Lowell with the Declaration of Rights, in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc.,
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THE LAST FORTY YEARS OF TOWN GOVERNMENT.
might be expected, to popular and democratic views; but what was more important, they belonged, like Sam Adams, to the class of minds which can destroy or defend, but which cannot construct. The younger leaders, on the other hand, belonged to the coming period of reconstruction, when a new fabric of politics and society was to be built up, and were more con- servative and less democratic than those whom they had followed in the conflict with England. The first serious division of opinion in the l'atriot. party grew out of the difficulties engendered by the war. The heaviest burdens were financial. Debts, public and private, weighed severely upon the State, and upon nearly every member of the community. General in- solvency, in fact, prevailed. The war had drained the country of specie; the Continental paper was worthless, and that of the State not much better. The scarcity of a decent circulating medium was so great that payments in kind were legalized. To thinking men it was already obvious that a strong central government, stability, order in the public finances, and a vigorous administration, both State and National, were essential to drag the country out of the chaos of floating debts, and knit once more the political bonds almost dissolved by war. To effect such results was no easy matter. So- ciety and public opinion had been grievously shaken, and old habits had been loosened and weakened. As always happens in times of distress and depression, there were many among the more ignorant of the community who mistook effect for cause. They were poor and in debt; and in the means adopted by their creditors to collect debts through the usual legal machinery, they believed they saw the source of their sufferings. The popular feeling of discontent in the western part of the State, therefore, began as early as 1782 to express itself in resistance to law and to the courts. Matters went on from bad to worse; violence and force became more and more common ; the power of the State was crippled; and at last it all culminated in the insurrection known in our history as Shays' Rebellion, which not only threatened the existence of the Commonwealth, but shook to its foundations the unstable fabric of the Confederacy. While the storm was gathering, John Hancock, the popular hero and governor, not fancying the prospect opening before the State, and the consequent difficultie. and dangers likely to beset the chief magistrate, took himself out of the way, and the younger and more conservative element in politics elected James Bowdoin in his stead. It was a fortunate choice in every way. Bowdoin was a wise, firm, courageous man, perfectly ready to sacrifice popularity, if need be, to the public good. He was warmly supported in Boston, as the principles and objects of Shays and his followers were peculiarly obnoxious to a business community. The alarm in the town was very great, for it looked as if their contest for freedom was about to result in anarchy. The young men came forward, armed themselves, and volunteered for service; but the Governor's firmness was all that was needed. General Lincoln, at the head of the mili-
April, 1874, p. 299; also Governor Bullock's admirable paper in the Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc., April 27, 1881. - ED.]
VOL. III. -- 25.
A
194
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
tia, easily crushed the feeble mob gathered by Shays, whose followers were entirely dispersed.1 Nevertheless the rioters represented, although in a very extreme fashion, the general sentiment of the State, demoralized and shaken by civil war, as was shown by the almost criminal delay of the lower branch of the Legislature in sustaining the Governor in his efforts to main- tain order, and by their reluctance to declare the insurgents in rebellion,-a step forced upon them by the vigor of the Governor and Senate. This un- happy condition of public opinion was still more strongly manifested at the next election. The issue was made up between pardon and sympathy for the rebels on the one side and just and salutary punishment on the other. The conservative party, in favor of the latter course, put forward Bowdoin ; while Hancock, who had been under shelter, now came forward once more to catch the popular support as the advocate of mercy, which another better and braver man had alone earned the right to dispense. Hancock had chosen his time well. Popular feeling in the country districts was with the insurgents, and Bowdoin was defeated; although Boston, now thoroughly in the hands of the younger and more conservative party, strongly sustained him. Thus the new party of order and reconstruction started in Boston, which continued to be its headquarters; and gradually extending its influ- ence, first through the castern towns and then to the west, came finally to control the State.
The Shays Rebellion did more, however, than decide the elections in Massachusetts. It was without doubt an efficient cause in promoting the Constitutional Convention at Philadelphia, and in frightening the decrepit and obstructive Congress of the Confederation. The adoption of the Con- stitution, submitted by the delegates who met in Philadelphia, was an event of national as well as local importance, for the adhesion of the great State of Massachusetts was essential to success. Boston was the scene of the protracted struggle in the Convention which was held to consider this
1 [The story of this insurrection enters into the substance of all histories of Massachusetts, but it has been amply told by G. R. Minot, in his
Seo. R. lunch
monograph, Insurrections in Massachusetts in 1786, published in 1788, and in a second edition in 1810; and there are numerous refer- ences to contemporary and other an- thorities in a chapter on it in Barry's Massachusetts, iii. ch. 6. See also Sar- gent's Dealings with the Dead, No. 29, and Holland's Western Massachusetts. There is a volume in the Massachusetts Archives on Shays' Insurrection. A company of light infantry was raised in Boston to act against the insurgents, Harrison Gray Otis being made captain, with Thomas Russell and John Gray as lieutenants. Boston liberally
supplied the means by which, in January, Gen- eral Lincoln was put in command of forty-four hundred men, and with these he marched from Roxbury on the twenty-first.
When Bowdoin went to Cambridge to review Brooks's troops, being then about fifty-eight years old, he is described as wearing a gray wig, cocked hat, white broad- cloth coat and waistcoat, red small-clothes, and
black silk stockings. Sullivan's Public Men, letter ii. Massachusetts Revolutionary Rolls, ix. contains certificates of service in Shays' Rebel- lion. - ED.]
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THE LAST FORTY YEARS OF TOWN GOVERNMENT.
momentous question, first in Brattle-Street Church, still bearing the marks of Washington's cannon, and later in the State House, and later still in the meeting-house in Long Lane.1 The town was, of course, deeply interested in the result, and strongly in favor of the Constitution; but the details of the long conflict which ended in its adoption do not im- mediately concern this history. The conservative elements, which had
JAMES BOWDOIN.2
begun to take a party shape in the Shays Rebellion, developed into a strong and homogeneous body in favor of the Constitution. They had an arduous battle to fight, and they fought it well. Against them were arrayed all the sympathizers with the Shays Rebellion, besides many who had actually taken part in it, and who, having tasted the sweets of incipient anarchy, were averse to anything like strong government. There can be no
1 [See Vol. II. p. 513 .- E.D.]
2 [This cut follows a miniature by Copley, painted about 1770, now owned by the Hon. Robert C. Winthrop, Bowdoin's descendant. See Perkins's Copley's Life and Paintings, P. 37. There is a profile of Bowdoin in the Massachu- setts Magazine, January, 1791. Mr. Winthrop
delivered at Bowdoin College an excellent ad- dress on Bowdoin's life and character, which is contained in his Speeches and in a later volume on Bowdoin, Franklin, and Washington, from the same gentleman. A privately printed edition, with additions and notes of the Life and Services of Bowdoin, bears date 1876.
196
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
doubt that at the outset public feeling and a majority of the Convention were against the Constitution; and, morcover, the great leaders of the Rev- olutionary period, Hancock and Adams, were lukewarm. By ability in debate, by perseverance, by managing and flattering Hancock,1 these dif- ficulties were gradually overcome; while to gain the earnest and active support of Adams, the popular sentiment of Boston was invoked. The mechanics of the town, under the lead of Paul Revere, held a great meeting at the Green-Dragon Tavern,2 on Union Street, and passed resolutions in favor of the Constitution. This was the voice of an oracle to which Adams had often appealed in trying times, and its utterance now weighed with him, and changed cool and critical approval to active support. Perhaps it de- cided the fate of the Constitution; for the great influence of Adams may well have counted for much in a close majority of only nineteen votes.
The adoption of the Constitution by Massachusetts was a source of great satisfaction to Boston,3 and was celebrated with great rejoicing. After the ratification the members of the Convention dined together, toasts were drunk, and the asperities of debate were forgotten for the moment in a general sense of pleasure and relief. The next day a procession paraded the streets. First came the representatives of agriculture; then the trades ; then the " Ship Federal Constitution," drawn by thirteen horses, with a crew of thirteen men; then captains and seamen of merchant-vessels ; and finally more trades and the militia companies. The procession visited the houses of the Boston delegates, fired salutes in front of the State House, while the proceedings concluded with another great public dinner. In the evening ar old long-boat, named " The Old Confederation," was borne by another pro- cession to the Common, and there burned amid the shouts of the people.
With intense interest Boston watched the adoption of the Constitution by one State after another; and we can see, in the newspapers, the rapid development of the new party of reconstruction, the friends of the Con- stitution, now known as Federalists, and the corresponding increase of bitterness toward all who attempted to thwart a measure believed, in Boston at least, to involve the future existence of the nation. The party which thus took shape in the debates of the Constitutional Convention, and was solidified and strengthened by victory, bent all its energies to selecting senators and representatives who were well known to be strong friends of
1 [Referring to Hancock's proposition of amendments, which perhaps saved the Consti- lution in the Convention, Rufus King writes to General Knox : " Hancock will hereafter receive the universal support of Bowdoin's friends; and we leil him that if Virginia does not unite, which is problematical, that he is considered as the only fair candidate for President." We all know the sequel : Virginia did unite ; and the Massachu- setts Governor had a very bad attack of gout when the Virginian President visited Boston the next year. See Amory's James Sullivan, i. 223. -ED.]
2 [See Vol. II. p. v .- ED.]
8 [The debates of this convention, edited by B. K. Peirce and Charles Hale, were published by the State in 1856. The "conciliatory resolu- tions" introduced hy Hancock were written by Parsons (Memoir of Theophilus Parsons, 70), though their authorship has been claimed for James Sullivan, and perhaps for others. Some of Dr. Belknap's minutes of the debates are printed in Mass. Ilist. Soc. Proc., March, 1858, p. 296. See Mr. Cummings's chapter in this volume' for an account of Benjamin Russell's reports. - ED.]
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THE LAST FORTY YEARS OF TOWN GOVERNMENT.
the new scheme. Flushed with their first triumph, the Federalists were generally successful, and both senators were tried friends of the Constitu- tion; but their most signal victory was in the Boston District,1 where they elected Fisher Ames,2 the young and eloquent champion of the Constitu- tion, over Sam Adams, the veteran of the Revolution, the idol of the town, but now suspected of coolness toward the great instrument which was des- tined to be the corner-stone of a nation. The defeat of Adams by Ames marked Boston as the great centre of New England Federalism.
The pleasure excited in Boston by the successful establishment of the new government found an opportunity for expression when Washington, - venerated and beloved, the mainstay of the Union, as he had been of the Revolution, - made his visit to Massachusetts in the autumn of 1789. The President, accompanied by the Vice-President, John Adams, was re- ceived by the authorities on the outskirts of the town; 3 and, having been presented with an address, rode through the streets on a fine white horse, escorted by a long procession,4 civil and military, and greeted on all sides by the applause of a dense crowd. On arriving at the State House he was conducted to a platform thrown out on the west side of the building,
1 [On April 12, John Adams, on his way to New York to become the first Vice-President under the new Constitution, was escorted into Boston from Roxbury by a troop of horse. Amid the ringing of bells he was carried to Governor Hancock's, where he lunched with the digni- taries ; and then, amid another firing of cannon, he went on his journey. - ED. ]
2 [The son of Fisher Ames, Seth Ames, Esq., in making in 1854 a new edition of the works, speeches, and correspondence of his father, con- cluded that as his own recollections were of no account, - he was but three years old at his fa- ther's death, - he could not do better by way of introduction than to give the kindly memoir by Dr. Kirkland, and let the letters, then first printed, stand as a supplement to it. In 187t a new con- tribution to the subject appeared in a volume of Ames's Speeches in Congress, 1789-1796, edited by Pelham W. Ames, including five speeches not given in his works. Fisher Ames studied in the office of William Tudor, in Boston, and though his residence in the town was not a long one, he represented it as part of the Suffolk District in the First Congress. It was he, too, when Wash- ington died, who was selected to pronounce a eulogy before the Legislature in Boston. On his own death, in t808, his body was brought to Boston, that Samuel Dexter might pronounce an oration over it. Stuart's portrait of Ames is owned by Mrs. John E. Lodge, of Boston, de- seending to her from her grandfather, George Cabot, Ames's friend. The likeness in Memo- rial IIall, Cambridge, is a copy, not accounted good, by Stuart, purchased of him in 1810. Mason's Stuart, p. 127. A good engraving, by T.
Kelley, of Stuart's Fisher Ames appeared in the Boston Monthly Magazine, January, 1826. He is the subject of some further biographical details in Loring's Hundred Boston Orators, p. 296. - ED.Į
8 [As Washington approached Boston he was met by a troop of horse from Cambridge, and in this town he tarried an hour, to visit the man- sion which had been his headquarters at the time of the siege. llis chariot was now changed for the saddle, and at the village green General Brooks saluted him with a thousand militia in line. - Et.]
4 [The procession was headed by the band of the French fleet then in the harbor, which at the same time united its salvos with those of the Castle and the parading artillery companies ; while Colonel Bradford, with five companies of city troops, took the lead. It will be remembered that before the start was made Washington was kept waiting in the cold while an unseemly al- tercation took place between the selectmen and Sheriff Ilenderson, who was present represent- ing the Governor, and assumed to control the order of the march. The sheriff threatened "to make a hole " through some of the town's officers, and they waived their rights. They later, Dee. 12, 178g, wrote an indignant letter to Hancock, who replied by sending Henderson's version of the affair, in which he claimed to have acted "according to his Excellency's orders," which Hancock did not gainsay ; and to this the select- men returned a temperate reply that they should not presume to altereate with his Excellency, ete. The letters are in the Charity Building collection. - ED.]
198
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
and arranged, as we are informed, " to exhibit in a strong light .the Man . of the People." As Washington stood forth in all his simple majesty,
WASHINGTON.1
cheers rang out, and an ode was sung in his honor by singers placed in a triumphal arch close by. After this the procession broke up, and then for
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