Читать книгу Old Boston Days & Ways - Mary Caroline Crawford - Страница 6

SHIPS of war, some little time before this, had cast anchor in the harbor, and two regiments were now (1770) encamped on the Common further to ensure the execution of the royal will. The cause of the coming of the troops had been the defiance by the Massachusetts legislature of the king's command to rescind a certain circular letter which had been sent out by Samuel Adams with the unmistakable purpose of securing the cooperation of the other colonies in resistance to the Townshend Acts. The king desired above all things to prevent any such union as this, and it occurred to him that he could do much to head it off by frightening the patriots with redcoats. But Parliament had its own quarrels with George III, and would not easily consent to this course. Accordingly, some excuse was needed to justify the unusual measure. The sacking of Hutchinson's house was made so to serve. Then, in June, 1768, there was a slight conflict between townspeople and revenue officers, in which no one was hurt, but which led to a great town meeting in the Old South Meeting-House, and gave color to Governor Bernard's complaint that Boston was a disorderly town, and that he was being intimidated and hindered in the execution of the laws there.

Yet the king's real purpose in sending the troops was, as has been hinted, to force the people to observe the odious Townshend Acts.

This being the case the arrival of the soldiers simply increased, of course, the danger of disturbance. Moreover, even according to British-made law, the men should have been lodged in Castle William down the harbor. The trouble which immediately ensued may be directly traced indeed to the infringement of this provision. For encounters between the soldiery and the town people soon became frequent, and in September, 1769, James Otis was brutally assaulted at the British Coffee House by one of the commissioners of customs, aided and abetted by two or three army officers.

Otis eventually became insane from being struck on the head in this affray, and the feeling of the people toward the soldiers naturally increased in bitterness.

The Boston Massacre was, then, as inevitable as the explosion of a cask of powder into which a lighted match has been thrown. For a week there had been collisions here and there throughout the town, and the affair before the Custom-house on King Street, in the course of which seven of Captain Preston's company fired into the crowd, killing five men and wounding several others, was but the logical climax to what had gone before. The slaughter of those five men, — one of whom was Crispus Attucks, now memorialized on Boston Common, — secured in a moment what a year and a half of decorous protest had failed to accomplish, — the withdrawal of the troops to the Castle. Hutchinson had to do this in spite of himself, for Samuel Adams, at the head of a committee just appointed by an immense mass-meeting in the Old South Church, came to him in the council chamber of the Town House and, in the name of three thousand freemen, commanded the removal of the soldiers.

When the news of this move reached Parliament the two regiments thus summarily withdrawn at the request of a mere citizen were dubbed by Lord North the " Sam Adams's regiments."

Yet, so strong still was self-restraint and a sense of justice in the community, that Captain Preston and his men had a fair trial, their counsel being people of no less importance than John Adams and Josiah Quincy. Six of the soldiers, together with the captain, were acquitted; the two men who were found guilty were branded on the hand.

In the diary of Deacon John Tudor, — a rare and privately published work, — I have come upon what seems a contemporary and an eminently fair account of this historic encounter: "March, 1770, On Monday evening the 5th current, a few Minutes after 9 O'clock a most horrid murder was committed in King Street before the Custom house Door by 8 or 9 Soldiers under the Command of Capt Thos Preston of from the Main Guard on the South side of the Town House. This unhappy affair began by Some Boys & young fellows throwing Snow Balls at the sentry placed at the Customhouse Door. On which 8 or 9 Solders Came to his assistance. Soon after a Number of people collected, when the Capt commanded the Soldiers to fire, which they did and 3 Men were Kil'd on the Spot & several Mortaly Wounded, one of which died next morning. The Capt soon drew off his Soldiers up to the Main Guard, or the Consequencis mite have been terable, for on the Guns fiering the people were alarm'd & set the Bells a Ringing as if for Fire, which drew Multitudes to the place of action. Levt Governor Hutchinson, who was Commander in Chefe, was sent for & Came to the Council Chamber, were some of the Magistrates attended. The Governor desired the Multitude about 10 O'clock to sepperat & go home peaceable & he would do all in his power that Justice shold be don &c. The 29 Regiment being then under Arms on the south side of the Townhouse, but the people insisted that the Soldiers should be ordered to their Barracks 1st before they would' sepperat, Which being don the people sepperated aboute 1 O'clock. Capt Preston was taken up by a warrent given to the high Sherif by Justice Dania & Tudor [the writer of the Diary] and came under Examination about 2 O'clock & we sent him to Goal soon after 3, having Evidence sufficient to commit him on his ordering the soldiers to fire; So aboute 4 O'clock the Town became quiet. The next forenoon the 8 Soldiers that fired on the inhabitants was also sent to Goal.

"Tuesday a. m. the inhabitants mett at Faneuil Hall & after some pertinant speeches, chose a Committee of 15 Gentlemen to waite on the Levt Governor in Council, to request the immediate removeal of the Troops. The message was in these Words. That it is the unanimous opinion of this Meeting that the inhabitants & soldiery can no longer live together in safety; that nothing can Ratonaly be expected to restore the peace of the Town & prevent Blood & Carnage but the removal of the Troops: and that we most fervently pray his Honor that his power & influence may be exerted for their instant removal. His Honor's Reply was. Gentlemen I am extremely sorry for the unhappy difference & especially of the last Evening & Signifieng that it was not in his power to remove the Troops &c &c.

"The Above Reply was not satisfactory to the Inhabitants, as but one Regiment should be Removed to the Castle Barracks. In the afternoon the Town Adjourned to Dr. Sewill's Meetinghouse [the Old South], for Fanieuil Hall was not larg enough to hold the people, their being at least 2,000, some supos'd near 4,000, when they chose a Committee to waite on the Levt. Governor to let him & the Council Know that nothing less will satisfy the people than a total & immedaiate removal of the Troops oute of the Town. — His Honor laid before the Council the Vote of the Town. The Council thereon expressed themselves to be unanimously of opinion that it was absolutely Necessary for his Majesty service, the good order of the Town &c that the Troops Should be immeditly removed oute of the Town.

"His Honor Communicated this advice of the Council to Col Dalrymple & desir'd he would order the Troops down to Castle William.

After the Col. had seen the Vote of the Council He gave his Word & honor to the Town's Committe that both Regiments should be remov'd without delay. The Comte return'd to the Town Meeting & Mr. Hancock, chairman of the Com'te Read their Report as above, which was received with a shoute & clap of hands which made the Meetinghouse Ring: So the Meeting was dessolved and a great number of Gentlemen appear'd to Watch the Center of the Town & the prison, which continued for II Nights and all was quiet again, as the Soldiers was all moved of to the Castle."

But the Yankee dead of that fifth of March were buried with a great funeral procession in the Granary Burying Ground and on each fifth of March after that, until the celebration of July 4th came to take its place, the day of the massacre was observed at Boston in stirring patriotic addresses. Before the news of the massacre had reached England, on the very day indeed of the event, Lord North brought in a bill to repeal the duties which the Bostonians so deeply resented with the exception of that on tea. This the king insisted upon retaining in order to avoid surrendering the principle at issue. The first effect of the royal generosity was to weaken the spirit of opposition in America and to create a division among the colonies. For the greater part of the Americans were desirous, after the fashion of mankind everywhere, to let things go on peaceably if possible. Hutchinson shrewdly observed, in June, 1772, that the union of the colonies seemed to be broken and he hoped it would not be renewed, for he believed it meant separation from the mother country, and that he regarded as the worst of calamities.

Already Dr. Franklin, the ablest man to whom Boston had ever given birth, had been appointed agent of Massachusetts in England and was striving in every way he could to harmonize the interests of the two contestants.

His efforts in this direction were variously received. In his Journal for "Wednesday 16 January, 1771," one reads: "I went this morning to wait on Lord Hillsborough. The porter at first denied his Lordship, on which I left my name and drove off. But before the coach got out of the square the coachman came

and said, 'His Lordship will see you, sir.' I was shown into the levee room where I found Governor Bernard, who, I understand, attends there constantly." Bernard and Franklin were not fond of each other, neither being able, truth to tell, to do the other justice. Moreover, Bernard and Hutchinson were friends and Franklin was bent, as subsequent developments showed, upon the removal from office of the author of the " Hutchinson letters."

In the autumn of 1772, an extra session of the assembly was wanted to consider what should be done about having the judges paid by the Crown. This Hutchinson refused to call, whereupon Samuel Adams devised a scheme by which assemblies were rendered unnecessary. Each town, at his suggestion, appointed a standing committee which could consult with committees from other towns and decide upon the action to be taken in case of emergency.

From the fact that the greater part of the work of these committees was necessarily done by letter they were called "Committees of Correspondence." This was the step that effectively organized the Revolution. For now there was always in session an invisible legislature which the governor had no means of stopping.

The next step was the extension of the plan so that there were committees of correspondence between the several colonies. From that to a permanent Continental Congress was an easy transition.

No sooner was the machinery for resistance at hand than there came a magnificent opportunity to use it and to challenge the Crown. The duty on tea had not been removed, and in America generally no tea was being imported from England. The colonists were smuggling it from Holland. Now, unless the Americans could be made to buy tea from England and pay the duty on it, the king must own himself defeated, — and the East India Company would be deprived of a valuable market. A law was accordingly pushed through Parliament authorizing the exportation of tea without the payment of duty in England. As a result, it was pointed out, the tea, plus the tax imposed by the Revenue Act, could be sold in America under the cost of tea smuggled from Holland.

It was supposed that the Americans would, of course, buy the tea that they could get most cheaply. Not yet had it been borne in upon the stupid ministers of the king that those men in America were contending for a principle, not looking for a bargain in groceries.

Clearly, theirs was the blindness of those who will not see. The attitude of the colonists towards tea had been repeatedly defined. Communication was slow in those days, to be sure, but all that happened eventually found its way to the mother country and the news that tea was a tabooed beverage in Boston could not have failed to reach those interested. A meeting had been held at Faneuil Hall in which the men had voted to abstain totally from the use of tea (many of them really liked it, too, in those days), and soon the mistresses of four hundred and ten families pledged themselves to drink no more tea till the Revenue Act was repealed.

A few days later, one hundred and twenty young ladies formed a similar league. "We, the daughters of those patriots," said they, "who have and do now appear for the public interest, and in that principally regard their posterity, — as such do with pleasure engage with them in denying ourselves the drinking of foreign tea, in hope to frustrate a plan that tends to deprive a whole community of all that is valuable in life." And, not to be behind the Daughters of Liberty, the students of Harvard College bound themselves, in 1768, to use no more of "that pernicious herb."

Even the children caught the infection of liberty. Hannah Winthrop writes to Mrs. Mercy Warren, in 1769: "I went to see Mrs. Otis, the other day. She seems not to be in a good state of health. I received a visit lately from Master Jemmy. I will give you an anecdote of him. A gentleman telling him what a Fine Lady his mama is & he hoped he would be a good Boy & behave exceeding well to her, my young master gave this spirited answer, I know my Mama is a fine Lady, but she would be a much finer if she was a Daughter of Liberty." It once even fell to the lot of John Adams to be rebuked by a Daughter of Liberty for having called for tea in her house. "Is it lawful for a weary traveler to refresh himself with a dish of tea, provided it has been honestly smuggled or paid no duties?" he asked. "No, sir," responded the lady. "We have renounced all tea in this place, but I'll make you coffee."

Even the word aroused resentment, it will be seen.

In New York, Philadelphia and Charleston, mass-meetings of the people voted that the consignees to whom the East India Company had shipped the odious tea should be ordered to resign their offices, and they did so. At Philadelphia the tea-ship was met and sent back to England before it had come within the jurisdiction of the custom-house. At Charleston the tea was landed, and as there was no one to receive it or pay the duty, it was thrown into a damp cellar and left there to spoil. In Boston things took a different turn. Three times the consignees were asked to resign, and three times they refused. Their stubbornness is the better understood when we learn that two of them were Governor Hutchinson's own sons. It was on Sunday, November 28, 1773, that the "Dartmouth," loaded with tea, arrived in Boston Harbor. From Rotch, the owner of the vessel, the Committee of Correspondence promptly obtained a promise that the ship should not be entered until Tuesday. On Monday the towns about Boston were invited to attend a mass-meeting in Faneuil Hall.

As the result of this and other similar meetings, the firm resolve that that tea should on no account be landed took possession of the people. Two other ships soon came to anchor near the " Dartmouth" and were guarded, as she was, by a committee of citizens. The consignees by this time would have been willing to yield, but Hutchinson would not give a permit to let the vessels go sailing back to England. So the days wore away and the time was fast drawing near when the tea would be seized under the law and brought on shore. Then came the last day and the Collector of Customs still refused absolutely to grant a clearance to the ships unless the teas were discharged.

The next day was December 16, 1773, and seven thousand people were assembled in town meeting in and around the Old South Meeting-House. Eagerly they awaited, in the fast-darkening church, the return of Rotch, who had been sent out to the governor's house in Milton to ask as a last resort for a passport from him. At nightfall the ship-owner returned with the word that the governor refused such a passport.

No sooner had he made this report than Samuel Adams arose and said: "This meeting can do nothing more to save the country." The words were a signal, but they were also a simple statement of truth. For by sunrise the next morning the revenue officers, in the ordinary course of events, would board the ships and unload their cargoes; then the consignees would go to the custom-house and pay the duty, — and the king's scheme would be crowned with success.

Yet not so did things fall out. For, the instant that Adams' words left his lips, a shout was heard in the street and some forty or fifty men, disguised as Indians, darted by the door and down towards the wharves, followed by the people. Rushing on board the tea-ships, the "Mohawks," as they were called, set themselves, in most businesslike fashion, to clearing the vessels of their cargoes. No violence was committed, no tea was taken. British historians are wont to characterize the affair as a riot, but it was very far indeed from being that. Henry Cabot Lodge, in his illuminating book on Boston, has called the tea-party "a picturesque refusal" on the part of the people of Boston to pay the tax. "But," he adds, truly, " it was also something more. It was the sudden appearance, in a world tired of existing systems of government, of the power of the people in action.

The expression may have been rude and the immediate result trivial, but the act was none the less of the gravest consequence. It was the small beginning of the great democratic movement which has gone forward ever since, and which it would have been well for English statesmen who were then concerned with it to have pondered deeply."

Retaliation was, however, the only idea that the king and his ministers could then entertain and, in spite of opposition on the part of certain far-seeing men in Parliament, two acts to express this were passed. One was the Boston Port Bill designed to suspend the trade and close the harbor of the town which had dared rebellion. The other was the Regulating Act, by which the charter of Massachusetts was annulled, its free government swept away and a military governor appointed with despotic power such as Andros had had, nearly a hundred years before.

Odd that those well-read English ministers did not press to its logical conclusion that analogy of Andros!