The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts, 1630-1880, Vol. III, Part 7

Author: Jewett, Clarence F; Winsor, Justin, 1831-1897
Publication date: 1880-1881
Publisher: Boston : J.R. Osgood
Number of Pages: 770

USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts, 1630-1880, Vol. III > Part 7

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1 Boston Gazette, Feb. 12, 1770, et seq. ; Loss- ing, Field-Book, i. 488.

2 Lossing, " 1776," p. 90.

3 Rev. S. Cooper to Governor Thomas Pow- nall, Jan. 1, 1770.

4 Theophilns Lillie.

5 Ebenezer Richardson, who lived near by.

6 Christopher Snider.

7 Evening Post, Feb. 26, 1770. [See Hutch- inson ; Gordon, i. 276; John Adams's Works, ii 227 .- ED.]

THE BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTION.

ensued, in which sticks and cutlasses were freely used. Several were wounded on both sides, but none were killed. The proprietor and others interposed, and prevented further disturbance.1 The next day it was re- ported that the fight would be resumed on Monday. Colonel Carr, com- mander of the Twenty-ninth, complained to the Governor of the conduct of the rope-makers. Hutchinson laid the matter before the council, some of whom freely expressed the opinion that the only way to prevent such colli- sions was to withdraw the troops to the Castle; but no precautionary meas- ures were taken. At an early hour on Monday evening, March 5, numerous parties of men and boys were strolling through the streets, and whenever they met any of the soldiers a sharp altercation took place. The ground was frozen and covered with a slight fall of snow, and a young moon shed its mild light upon the scene. Small bands of soldiers were seen passing between the main guard2 and Murray's barracks in Brattle Street, armed with clubs and cutlasses. They were met by a crowd of citizens carrying canes and sticks. Taunts and insults soon led to blows. Some of the soldiers levelled their firelocks, and threatened to " make a lane " through the crowd. Just then an officer3 on his way to the barracks, finding the passage obstructed by the affray, ordered the men into the yard and had the gate shut. The alarm-bell, however, had called out the people from their homes, and many came down towards King Street, supposing there was a fire there. When the occasion of the disturbance was known, the well disposed among them advised the crowd to return home; but others shouted : "To the main guard ! To the main guard ! That's the nest !" Upon this they moved off towards King Street, some going up Cornhill, some through Wilson's Lane, and others through Royal Exchange Lane. Shortly after nine o'clock an excited party approached the Custom House, which stood on the north side of King Street, at the lower corner of Exchange Lanc, where a sentinel was standing at his post. "There's the soldier who knocked me down !" said a boy whom the sentinel, a few min- utes before, had hit with the but-end of his musket. "Kill him! Knock him down !" cried several voices. The sentinel retreated up the steps and loaded his gun. "The lobster is going to fire," exclaimed a boy who stood by. " If you fire you must die for it," said Henry Knox,4 who was passing.

1 [Sec Drake, Landmarks, 274. It was men of the Fourteenth Regnnent who were engaged in this affair, and their barracks were in the modern Atkinson Strect. - ED.]

2 The "main guard " was located at the head of King Street, dircetly opposite the south door of the Town House. The soldiers detailed for daily guard-duty met here for assignment 10 their several posts.

3 Captain Goldfinch.

4 Afterward general, and secretary of war. [ Knox was of Scotch-Presbyterian stock from the north of Ireland, and his family belonged to the parish of Moorhead, the pastor of the Long Lane

meeting-house. His father, William, a ship- master, had married Mary, a daughter of Robert Campbell; and Henry was their seventh son, and was born in 1750, in a house which Drake, Life of Henry Knox, p. 9, depicts, and says was standing, in 1873, on Sea Street, opposite the head of Drake's wharf. Losing his father in 1762, Henry went into the employ of Wharton & Bowes, who had succeeded the year before to the stand of Daniel Henchman, on the south corner of State and Washington streets. Knox was in this employ when the massacre occurred; but the next year (1771) he started business on his own account on the same street, about where

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

" I don't care," replied the sentry ; " if they touch me, I'll fire." While he was saying this, snowballs and other missiles were thrown at hini, where- upon he levelled his gun, warned the crowd to keep off, and then shouted to the main guard across the street, at the top of his voice, for help. A sergeant, with a file of seven men, was sent over at once, through the crowd, to protect him. The sentinel then came down the steps and fell in with the file, when the order was given to prime and load. Captain Thomas Preston of the Twenty-ninth soon joined his men, making the whole num- ber in arms ten.1 About fifty or sixty people had now gathered before the Custom House. When they saw the soldiers loading, some of them stepped forward, shouting, whistling, and daring them to fire. "You are cowardly rascals," they said; " lay aside your guns and we are ready for you." "Are the soldiers loaded ?" inquired a bystander. "Yes," answered the Captain, "with powder and ball." "Are they going to fire on the in- habitants?" asked another. "They cannot," said the Captain, " without my orders." " For God's sake," said Knox, seizing Preston by the coat, " take your men back again. If they fire, your life must answer for the conse- quences." "I know what I'm about," said he, hastily ; and then, seeing his men pressing the people with their bayonets, while clubs were being freely used, he rushed in among them. The confusion was now so great, some calling out, "Fire, fire if you dare !" and others, "Why don't you fire?" that no one could tell whether Captain Preston ordered the men to fire or not; but with or without orders, and certainly without any legal warning. seven of the soldiers, one after another, fired upon the citizens, three of whom were killed outright: Crispus Attucks,2 Samuel Gray, and James Caldwell; and two others, Samuel Maverick8 and Patrick Carr, died soon after from their wounds. Six others were badly wounded. It is not known that any of the eleven took part in the disturbance except Attucks, who had been a conspicuous leader of the mob.

When the firing began the people instinctively fell back, but soon after returned for the killed and wounded. Captain Preston restrained his

the Globe newspaper now is, calling his estab- lishment the " London Bookstore." At least one book, Cadogan on the Gout, bears his imprint, 1772, and at the end of it is a list of medical and other books which he. had imported. Brinley Catalogue, No. 1585. See H. G. Otis's letter in N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., July, 1876, p. 362. In November, 1774, Knox writes to Long-

Knox

man in London : "The magazines and new pub- lications concerning the American dispute are the only things which I desire you to send at present." It will be remembered that Knox but six months before this had married a daughter

of the royalist secretary of the province, Thomas Flucker, who had vainly tried to prevent the union ; and a year from the day of their marriage Knox had slipped out of Boston clandestinely, to avoid interception by Gage, while his wife concealed in her quilted skirts the sword her hus- band was afterwards to make honorable .- ED.] 1 Some accounts say eight.

2 Usually called a mulatto, sometimes a slave ; and in the American Historical Record for De- cember, 1872, he is held to have been a half- breed Indian. [George Livermore gives us a glimpse of the past life of Crispus Altucks as a slave, in his " Historical Rescarch on Negroes as Slaves," in Mass. Ifist. Soc. Proc. 1862, Aug., p. 173. See also N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., Oct. 1859, P. 300. - F.D.]

3 [Sce Sumner's East Boston, p. 171 .- ED.]

THE BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTION.

men from a second discharge, and ordered them back to the main guard. The drums beat to arms, and several companies of the Twenty-ninth formed, under Colonel Carr, in three divisions, in the neighborhood of the Town House. And now the alarm was everywhere given. The church bells were rung, the town drums beat to arms, and King Street was soon thronged with citizens who poured in from all directions. The sight of the mangled bodies of the slain sent terror and indignation through their ranks. The excitement surpassed anything which Boston had ever known before. It was indeed a " night of consternation." No one knew what would happen next; but in that awful hour the people were guided by wise and prudent leaders, who restrained their passions and turned to the law for justice. About ten o'clock the Lieut .- Governor appeared on the scene and called for Captain Preston, to whom he put some sharp and searching questions. Forced by the crowd he then went to the Town House, and soon appeared on the balcony, where he spoke with much feeling and power concerning the unhappy event, and promised to order an inquiry in the morning, saying " the law should have its course; he would live and dic by the law." On being informed that the people would not disperse until Captain Preston was arrested, he at once ordered a court of inquiry ; and after consultation with the military officers, he succeeded in having the troops removed to their barracks, after which the people began to disperse. Preston's exam- ination lasted three hours, and resulted in his being bound over for trial. The soldiers were also placed under arrest. It was three o'clock in the morning before Hutchinson retired to his house. By his judicious exer- tions he succeeded in calming a tumult which, had it been left to itself, might in a single night have involved the town in a conflict of much greater proportions. Early in the morning, large numbers of people from the sur- rounding country flocked into the town to learn the details of the tragedy, and to confer with the citizens as to what was to be done. Faneuil Hall was thrown open for an informal meeting at eleven o'clock. The town clerk, William Cooper, acted as chairman until the selectmen could be summoned from the council chamber, where they were in conference with the Licut .- Governor. On their appearance, Thomas Cushing was chosen moderator; and Dr. Cooper, brother of the town clerk, opened the meet- ing with prayer. Several witnesses brought in testimony concerning the events of the previous night. A committee of fifteen, including Adams, Cushing, Hancock, and Molineux, was chosen to wait on the Lieut .- Gov- ernor and inform him that the inhabitants and soldiery could no longer live together in safety; and that nothing could restore peace and prevent fur- ther carnage but the immediate removal of the troops.1 In the afternoon at three o'clock a regular town-meeting was convened at the same place, by legal warrant, to consider what measures could be taken to preserve the

1 [Dr. Belknap records an anecdote told by Governor Hancock, of the trepidation which seized Hutchinson when the committee went to

VOL. III .- 5.

him and demanded the removal of the troops after the massacre. Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., March, 1858, p. 308 .- ED.]

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

June 29 TH.

In the name by order of The House of Representatives I am with respect your mest humbledent Thomas Cushing &fresher

1 [This cut follows a painting which has for and is believed, front the costume, to represent many years hung in the Essex Institute, Salem, the Patriot of this name; though the earlier

THE BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTION.

SAMUEL ADAMS.1

peace of the town. The attendance was so large that the meeting was ad- journed to the Old South, which was soon crowded to its utmost capacity.

Speaker of the same name, who died in 1748, may possibly have been the sitter. The painting itself has no inscription, as the courteous Libra- rian, Dr. Henry Wheatland, informs me. In 1876 a descendant caused a copy of it to be made for Independence Ilall, Philadelphia, in the belief that it represented the later Thomas Cushing. He was born in Bromfield Street, on the spot long occupied by the public house of that name .- ED.]

1 [This cut follows the larger of Copley's por- traits of Adams, and was painted when he was forty-nine. The smaller and later one has already been given in Vol. 11. p. 438. The present pic- ture for many years hung in Faneuil Hall, and is now in the Art Museum; it has been engraved before in Wells's Life of Samuel Adams, vol. i., in Bancroft's United States, vol. vii., and else- where. It represents the Patriot, clad in dark red, defending the rights of the people under the

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

Samuel Adanis presented the report of the committee, which was that they could not obtain a promise of the removal of more than one of the regi- ments at present. "Both regiments or none!" was the cry with which the meeting received this announcement. The answer was voted to be unsatis- factory ; and another committee was appointed, consisting of Samuel Adams, John Hancock, William Molineux, William Phillips, Joseph Warren, Joshua Henshaw, and Samuel Pemberton, to inform the Lieut .- Governor that nothing less than the total and immediate removal of the troops would satisfy the people. At a late hour the committee returned with a favorable report, which was received by the meeting with expressions of the greatest satisfaction. Before adjourning, a strong military watch was provided for ; and the whole subject of the public defence was left in the hands of a "committee of safety," consisting of those who had just waited on the Lieut .- Governor.

On Thursday, March 8, the funeral of the slain was an occasion of mournful interest to the whole community. The stores were generally closed. The bells of Boston, Charlestown, Cambridge, and Roxbury were tolled. Never before, it was said, was there so large an assemblage in the streets of Boston. The procession started from the scene of the massacre in King Street, and proceeded through the main street six deep, followed by a long train of carriages, to the Middle or Granary Burying-ground, where the bodies of the victims were deposited in one grave.

After the removal of the troops to the Castle, nothing occurred to dis- turb the usual quiet of the town. The people waited patiently for the law to have its course. In October, Preston's case came on for trial in the Superior Court, followed in November by that of the soldiers implicated in the massacre. Through the exertions of Samuel Adams and others, the best legal talent in the province was secured on both sides. The prosecu- tion was conducted by Robert Treat Paine, in the absence of the king's at- torney.1 Auchmuty, the prisoners' counsel, had the valuable assistance of John Adams and Josiah Quincy, the distinguished Patriots, who gener- ously consented to take the position, - a severe ordeal at such a time, - in order that the town might be free from any charge of unfairness, and that the accused might have the advantage of every legal indulgence.2 As a

Charter,-as he may be supposed to have ap- peared when he confronted Hutchinson and his council on the day after the massacre. Wells, Life of Adams, i. 475. The Copley head of Sam Adams was engraved by J. Norman in An Im- partial History of the War in America, Boston, 1781. The journals of the Boston committee of correspondence, as well as the papers of Sam Adams, are in the possession of Bancroft the historian. Frothingham, Life of Warren, p. vii. Wells, Life of Sam Adams, vol. i. pp. vi. and x., gives a particular account of the Adams papers. Bancroft's United States, p. vi. preface. See an estimate of Adams in Mr. Goddard's ch. - ED.] by John T. Morse, Jr., in Vol. IV .- ED.]

1 [This was Jonathan Sewall, who, as John Adams says, "disappeared." It is probable that Samuel Quincy - a few months later to be made solicitor-general - assisted Paine, as stated by Ward in his edition of Curren's Journal, and by Mr. Morse in Vol. IV. ; though I find no con- temporary authority for such statement, unless what John Adams says ( Works, x. 201) in con- nection with the soldiers' trial applies as well to Preston's. Quincy is known, however, to have been on the Government side in the soldiers' frials. - ED.]

2 [See the chapter on " The Bench and Bar,"

Fişof

THE BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTION.

Josiah Zumy un !? 1

result of the trial, Preston was acquitted; six of the soldiers were brought in "not guilty ; " and two were found guilty of manslaughter, branded in the

1 [Of this picture there is this account by Miss E. S. Quincy in Mason's Life of Gilbert Stuart, p. 244: "There was an engraving that his widow, Mrs. Abigail Quincy, considered an excellent likeness. This print, Stuart had de- clined to copy; but after reading the memoir of J. Quincy, Jr., published in 1825, he said : ' I must paint the portrait of that man;' and re- quested that the print, and the portrait of his brother Samuel Quincy, by Copley, should be sent to his studio." Miss Quincy says in a pri-

vate letter: "The portrait was entirely satis- factory to my father and Mrs. Storer. The cast in his eye was one of his characteristics which they would not have allowed to be omitted." Jonathan Mason, who studied law in Mr. Quin- cy's office, Mr. Gardiner Greene, who saw him in London, Dr. Holbrook, of Milton, and many others testified to the likeness. There is an estimate of Quincy in Mr. Goddard's chapter in this volume. Quincy lived on the present Washington Street, a little south of Milk Street

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

hand in open court, and then discharged. These trials must ever be re- garded as a signal instance of that desire for impartial justice which char- acterized the American people throughout the stormy period which ushered in the Revolution.1

The manuscript of instructions to the represen- graph. Kidder, who formerly owned the docu tatives of the town, in his handwriting (1770), ment, has printed it in his Boston Massacre, p. 10

Served Crawford. went home a bank of 60 block _ met Number of People going down towards ; Town House with Sticks - a falls former faw about a dozen with Straks. in Zucker f and quenul and ving towards 14 of - way quat Sticks, pulty large Gudpuls, not com walking Gaus

is noted in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., December, Evidence of Commotions that Evening, 1873, p. 216. See also Frothingham's War- to gulls when ?? ren, p. 1 56. His family relations can be traced in Vol. II. p. 547, and in the accounts of the Bromfield and Phillips family in the same vol- ume pp. 543, 548. His father-in-law was William Phillips, who was the Sampson Salter Blowers, who assisted Adams son of the Rev. Samuel Phillips of Andover, and and Quincy, had graduated at Harvard in 1763, who coming to Boston entered into business con- nections with Edward Bromfield, a rich mer- Pamp " S. Blower chant, whose daughter he afterward married, in 1764, and whose house on Beacon Street, figured in Vol. II., p. 521, he bought and lived in till his death in 1804. Hc amassed a large fortune, and was only made a barrister in 1773; and in the next year married a daughter of Benjamin Kent, with whom he went to Nova Scotia at the time of the loyalist exodus. The presiding judge was the younger Lynde, whose portrait is which has been transmitted to our day, though now mainly possessed by a collateral branch of the family. He took the Patriot side in the Rev- olution ; and in August, 1774, Josiah Quincy, Jr., writes to Samuel Adams, then in Philadelphia : " It is very difficult to keep our poor in order. Mr. Phillips has done wonders among them. 1 do not know what we should do without him." After his daughter (Mrs. Quincy) lost her husband given in Vol. II. p. 558. All that remains of his charge is given in the appendix of The Diaries of Benjamin Lynde, and of Benjamin Lynde, Fr. Boston, privately printed, 1880. in 1775, she with her young son, the future Pres- ident Quincy, lived with her father till 1786. Mr. Phillips's two younger daughters - twins, born in 1756, Sarah and Hannah - married re- spectively Edward Dowse and Major Samucl Shaw, who had been an aid to General Knox

Jamuel Phan

in the Revolution. Both were pioncers in open- ing trade with China after the war, and Shaw's memoir has been written by President Quincy. Shaw lived in Bulfinch Place, in a honse built for him in 1793 by Charles Bulfinch; and it is to-day, shorn of its ample grounds, known as Hotel Waterston. An account of Phillips can be found in the American Quarterly Register, xiii., No. 1 .- ED.]

1 For details see Lives of John Adams and Josiah Quincy. The Brief used by the former is in the Boston Public Library. [It is a small brochure of ten leaves, six by four inches, fast- encd by a pin, and four of the leaves are blank. The annexed fac-simile is of the opening para-

John Adams wrote to J. Morse in 1816 (Works of John Adams, x. 201) that the report of Pres- ton's trial " was taken down, and transmitted to England, by a Scottish or English stenogra- pher, without any known authority but his own. The British Government have never permitted it to see the light, and probably never will." When the trial of William Wemms and seven other soldiers came on, Nov. 27, 1770, the same short-hand writer, John Hodgson, was employed; and the published report, -entitled The Trial of William Wemms, . . . for the Murder of Crispus Attucks. . . . Published by per- mission of the Court. . . . Boston : printed by y. Fleeming, and sold at his Printing Office, nearly opposite the White Horse Tavern in Newbury Street. M.DCC.LXX.,-makes a duodecimo of two hundred and seventeen pages. It gives the cvi- dence and pleas of counsel. The last seven pages are occupied with a report, "from the minutes of a gentleman who attended," of the trial, December 12, of Edward Manwaring and

THE BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTION.

Previous to 1770 the people of Boston had celebrated the Gunpowder Plot annually with public demonstrations. After the Boston massacre, the

others, who were accused by several persons of drawn up by the same gentlemen, and, as print- firing on the crowd during the massacre from ed, is called A short Narrative of the Horrid an adjacent window in the Custom House ; but they were easily acquitted. This little volume was reprinted in Bos- ton in 1807 and 1824, and again in Kidder's monograph in 1870. The plan of King Street, used at the trials, pre- pared by Paul Revere, is in the collection of Judge Mellen Chamberlain, of the Boston Public Library. An examina- tion of the reports of the trial is made in P. W. Chandler's American Criminal Trials, i.

Boston New England march 29: 170 James Bowdom Jam! Pemberton, Fortyphilamen

A minute narrative of the events was printed between black lines in the Boston Gazette of March 12, but the papers of the day made few references to the event till after the trial, when more or less discontent with the verdict was manifested. Such particularly marked a series of articles in the Gazette, signed " Vindex " (Sam Adams), which reflected upon the argu- ments of the counsel for defence. Buckingham, Reminiscences, i. 168.

Some verses inscribed upon one of the pict- ures of the massacre closed as follows, referring to Boston and Preston : -

" Should venal courts, the scandal of the land, Snatch the relentless villain from her hand, Keen execrations, on this plate inscribed, Shalt reach a judge who never can be bribed."

A letter from William Palfrey to John Wilkes, dated Boston, March 13 (1770), is printed in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., March, 1863, p. 480. (See also Sparks, American Biography, new series, vol. viii.) And on p. 484 is printed one from Thomas Hutchinson to Lord Hillsborough on the same theme.

There are some particulars entered upon the Town Records of the statements made at the meeting at Faneuil Hlall the next forenoon ; but so many were ready to testify, that a committee was appointed to gather the evidence. The an- nexed autographs are attached to a letter ad- dressed to the agent of Massachusetts in London, the original of which is in the Lee collection of papers in the University of Virginia Library ; and with the letter was sent a copy of a Nar- rative authorized by the town. A similar letter, and other copies, were sent to various important people in England, -a list of whom, together with the letter, is printed at the end of some copies of the Narrative, which was also probably

Massacre in Boston perpetrated in the evening of the Fifth Day of March, 1770, by Soldiers of the XXIXth Regiment, with some Observations on the State of Things prior to that Catastrophe. Boston . printed by order of the Town, by Messrs. Edes & Gill. MDCCLXX. It had an appendix of depo- sitions, including one of Jeremiah Belknap ; but another, of Joseph Belknap, is contained in the Belknap Papers, i. 69, in the cabinet of the Massachusetts Historical Society. A large fold- ing plate showed the scene in State Street. It was immediately reprinted in London, in at least three editions, - two by W. Bingley, in Newgate Street, with the large folding plate re-engraved ; and the third by E. and C. Dilby, with a smaller plate, a fac-simile of which, somewhat reduced, is given on the next page. The supplement of the Boston Evening Post, June 18, 1770, has news from London, May 5, announcing the republica- tion of it, and stating that the frontispiece was engraved from a copper-plate print sent over with the "authenticated narrative."

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The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts, 1630-1880, Vol. III, Part 7

Author: Jewett, Clarence F; Winsor, Justin, 1831-1897 Publication date: 1880-1881 Publisher: Boston : J.R. Osgood Number of Pages: 770

Author: Jewett, Clarence F; Winsor, Justin, 1831-1897
Publication date: 1880-1881
Publisher: Boston : J.R. Osgood
Number of Pages: 770