CHARLES TOWNSHEND, SAM ADAMS, AND THE MASSACRE
Unfortunately, when the Stamp Act was repealed, the way had been left
open for future trouble. The Rockingham ministry, the most liberal which
could then be assembled, even in repealing the Stamp Act thought it
incumbent upon them to assert, in the Declaratory Act, the right to tax
America. The succeeding ministry, called together under the failing
Pitt, was the means of reasserting the right. Pitt, too ill to support
the labor of leading his party in the Commons, entered the House of
Lords as Earl of Chatham, thus acknowledging the eclipse of fame and
abilities which in the previous reign had astounded Europe. It was
during one of his periods of illness, when he was unable to attend to
public affairs, that a subordinate insubordinately reversed his public
policy by proceeding once more to tax America.
Charles Townshend was Chancellor of the Exchequer. It was he who had
urged the reenactment of the Sugar Act in 1763, and he now saw
opportunity to put through a more radical policy. In violation of all
implied pledges, disdaining restraint from his colleagues, this
brilliant but unstable politician introduced into Parliament a new bill
for raising an American revenue. "I am still,"[17] he declared, "a firm
advocate of the Stamp Act.... I laugh at the absurd distinction between
internal and external taxation.... It is a distinction without a
difference; if we have a right to impose the one, we have a right to
impose the other; the distinction is ridiculous in the sight of
everybody, except the Americans."
"Everybody, except the Americans!" The phrase, from an important speech
at a critical moment, marks the fact that a world of thought divided
the two parts of the Empire more truly than did the Atlantic. But not as
yet so evidently. It is only in unconscious acknowledgments such as
these that we find the English admitting the new classification. In
studying the years before and after this event we find the Americans
often called Puritans and Oliverians, while the possible rise of a
Cromwell among them is admitted. Yet the parallel, though unmistakably
apt, and containing a serious warning, was never taken to heart, even in
America.
Americans were very slow in approaching the conclusion that colonists
had irrefragable rights. Caution and habit and pride in the name of
Englishman kept them from it; the colonist, visiting England for the
first time, still proudly said that he was going "home." There was no
reason why this feeling should ever change, if only the spirit of
compromise, the basis of the British Constitution, had been kept in mind
by Parliament. But the times were wrong. Hesitate as the colonists might
before the syllogism which lay ready for completion, its minor and
major premises were already accepted. That they were Englishmen, and
that Englishmen had inalienable rights, were articles of faith among
them. The conclusion would be drawn as soon as they were forced to it.
And Townshend was preparing to force them.
Townshend proposed small duties on lead, paints, glass, and paper.
Besides this, he withdrew the previous export duty, one shilling per
pound, on tea taken from England to America, and instead of this he laid
an import duty of threepence per pound. This was ingeniously new, being
internal taxation in a form different from that of the Stamp Act. At the
same time was abandoned the ancient contention that customs duties were
but trade regulations. The new taxes were obviously to raise an English
revenue. For the execution of the new laws provision was made in each
colony for collectors to be paid directly by the king, but indirectly by
the colonies. The head of these collectors was a board of Commissioners
of the Customs, stationed at Boston. It will be seen that thus were
begun new irritations for the colonies, in the shape of duties for the
benefit of England, and of a corps of officials whose dependence on the
crown made sure that they would be subservient tools.
While this was done, no change was made in the plan to maintain in
America an army at colonial expense. Indeed, New York was punished for
refusing to supply to the troops quartered in the city supplies that had
been illegally demanded. Its assembly was not allowed to proceed with
public business until the supplies should be voted. Thus every other
colony was notified what to expect.
The Revenue Acts were passed in July, 1767. Upon receiving the news the
colonies expressed to each other their discontent. Concerning the
Customs Commissioners Boston felt the greatest uneasiness. "We shall
now," wrote Andrew Eliot, "be obliged to maintain in luxury sycophants,
court parasites, and hungry dependents." The strongest expression upon
the general situation was in Dickinson's "Farmer's Letters."[18]
"This," said he, "is an INNOVATION, and a most dangerous innovation. We
being obliged to take commodities from Great Britain, special duties
upon their exportation to us are as much taxes as those imposed by the
Stamp Act. Great Britain claims and exercises the right to prohibit
manufactures in America. Once admit that she may lay duties upon her
exportations to us, for the purpose of levying money on us only, she
will then have nothing to do but to lay those duties on the articles
which she prohibits us to manufacture, and the tragedy of American
liberty is finished."
There was but one way to meet the situation. In October the town of
Boston resolved, through its town meeting, to import none of the
dutiable articles. The example was followed by other towns until all the
colonies had entered, unofficially, into a non-importation agreement.
The question arose, What further should be done? Otis was beginning his
mental decline. It was now that Samuel Adams, or Sam Adams, as Boston
better loves to call him, came into the leadership which he ever after
exercised.
He was a man of plain Boston ancestry, whose father had interested
himself in public affairs, and who, like his son, was of doubtful
business ability. Sam Adams's interests were evident from his boyhood,
and when in 1743 he took his degree of Master of Arts at Harvard, he
presented a thesis on the subject: "Whether it be Lawful to resist the
Supreme Magistrate, if the Commonwealth cannot otherwise be preserved."
Although he inherited a little property from his father, and although
from the year 1753 he served constantly in public offices, up to the
year 1764 he had scarcely been a success. His patrimony had largely
disappeared; further, as tax-collector he stood, with his associates,
indebted to the town for nearly ten thousand pounds. The reason for this
is not clear; the fact has been used to his disadvantage by Tory
historians, the first of them being Hutchinson, who calls the situation
a "defalcation." But in order to feel sure that the state of affairs
was justified by circumstances, we need only to consider that in the
same year Adams was chosen by the town on the committee to "instruct"
its representatives, and a year later was himself made a legislator.
From that time on, his influence in Boston and Massachusetts politics
steadily grew.
His political sentiments were never in doubt. In his "instructions" of
1764 are found the words: "If Taxes are laid upon us in any shape
without our having a legal representative where they are laid, are we
not reduced from the Character of free Subjects to the miserable State
of tributary Slaves?"[19] Throughout the Stamp Act agitation he was
active in opposing the new measures. He was found to be ready with his
tongue, but especially so with his pen. For this reason he was
constantly employed by the town and the Assembly to draft their
resolutions, and some of the most momentous documents of the period
remain to us in his handwriting. When at last, at the beginning of 1768,
some one was needed to express the opinion of Massachusetts upon the
Townshend Acts, Samuel Adams was naturally looked to as the man for the
work.
He drafted papers which were, one after the other, adopted by the
Massachusetts Assembly. The first was a letter of remonstrance,
addressed to the colony's agent in London, and intended to be made
public. It protested, in words seven times revised by the Assembly,
against the proposed measures. Similar letters were sent to members of
the ministry and leaders of English opinion. Another letter was
addressed to the king. Of the success of this, Adams apparently had
little hope, for when his daughter remarked that the paper might be
touched by the royal hand, he replied, "More likely it will be spurned
by the royal foot." The final one of these state papers was a circular
letter addressed to "each House of Representatives or Burgesses on the
continent." This expressed the opinion of Massachusetts upon the new
laws, and invited discussion. That nothing in this should be considered
underhanded, a copy of the circular letter was sent to England.
It is significant that at the same time the new revenue commission sent
a secret letter to England, protesting against New England town
meetings, "in which the lowest mechanics discussed the most important
points of government with the utmost freedom,"[20] and asking for
troops.
This begins the series of misrepresentations and complaints which,
constantly sent secretly to England, became a leading cause of trouble.
The working of the old colonial system is here seen in its perfection.
Believing in the right to tax and punish, the Ministry appointed
officers of the same belief. These men, finding themselves in hot water
in Boston, were annoyed and perhaps truly alarmed, and constantly urged
harsher measures and the sending of troops. The ministry, listening to
its own supporters, and disbelieving the assertions of the American
Whigs, more and more steadily inclined toward severity.
Perhaps no falser idea was created than that Boston was riotous. Says
Fiske: "Of all the misconceptions of America by England which brought
about the American Revolution, perhaps this notion of the turbulence of
Boston was the most ludicrous." One of the most serious also. The chief
cause was in the timorousness of Bernard, the governor. On the occasion
of the anniversary of the repeal of the Stamp Act, when, as Hutchinson
said, "We had only such a mob as we have long been used to on the Fifth
of November," Bernard wrote that there was "a disposition to the utmost
disorder." As a crowd reached his house, "There was so terrible a yell
it was apprehended they were breaking in. It was not so; however, it
caused the same terror as if it had been so." That such a letter should
have any effect on home opinion is, as Fiske says, ludicrous. Yet the
mischief caused by these reports is incalculable. "It is the bare
truth," says Trevelyan, "that his own Governors and
Lieutenant-Governors wrote King George out of America."[21]
Another little series of incidents at this time shows the official
disposition to magnify reports of trouble. For some weeks the ship of
war _Romney_ had lain in the harbor, summoned by the commissioners of
customs. That the ship should be summoned was in itself an offence to
the town; but the conduct of the captain, in impressing seamen in the
streets of Boston, was worse. Bad blood arose between the ship's crew
and the longshoremen; one of the impressed men was rescued, but the
captain angrily refused to accept a substitute for another. Trouble was
brought to a head by the seizure, on the order of the commissioners of
customs, of John Hancock's sloop, the _Liberty_, on alleged violation of
regulations. Irritated by the seizure, and by the fact that the sloop
was moored by the side of the _Romney_, a crowd threatened the customs
house officers, broke the comptroller's windows, and, taking a boat
belonging to the collector, after parading with it through the streets,
burnt it on the Common.
This was the second disturbance in Boston which can be called a riot.
But it was of small size and short duration; the influence of the Whig
leaders, working through secret channels, quieted the mob, and there was
no further trouble. Nevertheless, four of the commissioners of the
customs seized the occasion to flee to the _Romney_, and to request of
the governor protection in the Castle, declaring that they dared not
return. But the remaining commissioner remained undisturbed on shore,
and a committee of the council, examining into the matter, found that
the affair had been only "a small disturbance." A committee from the
Boston town meeting, going in eleven chaises to Bernard at his country
seat, secured from him a promise to stop impressments, and a statement
of his desire for conciliation. Nevertheless Bernard, Hutchinson, and
the various officers of the customs, used the incident in their letters
home to urge that troops were needed in Boston.
This was but an interlude, though an instructive one, in the main course
of events. Massachusetts had protested against the new Acts. The next
issue arose when the Assembly was directed, by the new colonial
secretary, Lord Hillsborough, to rescind its Remonstrance and Circular
Letter. The debate on the question was long and important; the demand
was refused by a vote of seventeen to ninety-two. The curious can still
see, in the Old State House, the punch-bowl that Paul Revere was
commissioned to make for the "Immortal Ninety-two;" and there still
exist copies of Revere's caricature of the Rescinders, with Timothy
Ruggles at their head, being urged by devils into the mouth of hell.
These are indications of the feelings of the times. The immediate result
was that in June, 1768, Bernard dissolved the house, and Massachusetts
was "left without a legislature." Upon the news reaching England, it
was at last resolved to send troops to Boston. The crisis in
Massachusetts was now serious. Against the governor and the expected
troops stood only the council, with slight powers. Some machinery must
be devised to meet the emergency, and the solution of the difficulty was
found by Samuel Adams. His mind first leaped to the ultimate remedy for
all troubles, and then found the way out of the present difficulty.
The ultimate solution was independence. Though in moments of despondency
and exasperation the word had been used by both parties, until now no
one had considered independence possible except Samuel Adams. From this
period he worked for it, in secret preparing men's minds for the grand
change. According to a Tory accusation made in a later year, Adams
"confessed that the independence of the colonies had been the great
object of his life; that whenever he met a youth of parts he had
endeavored to instil such notions into his mind, and had neglected no
opportunity, either in public or in private, of preparing the way for
independence."[22]
Another Tory source, a deposition gathered when the Tories were
preparing an accusation against Adams, shows the agitator at work.
During the affair of the sloop _Liberty_, "the informant observed
several parties of men gathered in the street at the south end of the
town of Boston, in the forenoon of the day. The informant went up to one
of the parties, and Mr. Samuel Adams, then one of the representatives of
Boston, happened to join the same party near about the same time,
trembling and in great agitation.... The informant heard the said Samuel
Adams then say to the same party, 'If you are men, behave like men. Let
us take up arms immediately, and be free, and seize all the king's
officers. We shall have thirty thousand freemen to join us from the
country.'"
The statement of the deposition is crude and overdone, yet there can be
no doubt that from this time Adams did work for the one great end. At
first he was alone, yet he recognized the temper of the continent, and
saw the way that the political sentiments of the country were tending.
The methods which he followed were not always open; for never did he
avow his true sentiments, while often protesting, on behalf of the town
or the province, loyalty to the crown. Doubtless he did train the young
men up as he saw them inclined. In one case we know that he failed.
"Samuel Adams used to tell me," said John Coffin, a Boston Tory,
"'Coffin, you must not leave us; we shall have warm work, and want
you.'"[23] But in other cases Adams succeeded: one by one John Hancock,
Josiah Quincy, Jr., John Adams, and Joseph Warren were by him brought
into prominence. And at the same time he began to accustom men's minds
to new methods of political activity.
This Adams did in the present difficulty, when, in default of the
Assembly, he yet needed an expression of the opinion of the province.
Through his means was called a convention of the towns of Massachusetts,
which met in Faneuil Hall, on the 22d of September, 1768.
The convention was self-restrained. It called upon the governor to
convene the Assembly, and approved all the acts which had caused the
Assembly's dismissal; it resolved to preserve order, and quietly
dissolved itself. "I doubt," said the British Attorney-General, "whether
they have committed an overt act of treason, but I am sure they have
come within a hair's breadth of it."
Immediately afterwards arrived the ships with troops. These were landed
with much parade, to find a peaceful town, yet one which from the first
was able to annoy them. Demand was made for quarters for the soldiers;
the Selectmen and Council replied by referring to the law which forbade
such a requisition until the barracks at Castle William should be
filled. By neither subtlety nor threats could the town be induced to
yield; the troops camped on the Common until, at great expense, the
crown officials were forced to hire quarters. It was but the beginning
of the discomfort of the troops, openly scorned in a town where
three-quarters of the people were against them. Where few women except
their own camp-followers would have to do with the soldiers, where the
men despised them and the boys jeered, where "lobster-back" was the
mildest term that was flung at them, there was no satisfaction in
wearing the king's uniform.
[Illustration: FANEUIL HALL]
Eighteen months of this life wore upon the soldiers. The townsfolk
became adepts at subtle irritations, against which there was not even
the solace of interesting occupation; for except for daily drill there
was nothing to do. In time the more violent among the troops were ripe
for any affray; while the lower classes among the inhabitants, stanch
Whigs and sober livers, were sick of the noisy ribaldry which for so
long had made unpleasant the streets of the town. Out of these
conditions grew what has been called the Boston Massacre.
The best contemporary, and in fact the best general authority for this
event is the "Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre in Boston." This
was published by the town for circulation in England, and is still
extant in Doggett's reprint of 1849, and in Kidder's of 1870. In a
report of a special committee the town rehearses both the events of the
Massacre and the proceedings which followed it. Seventy-two pages of
depositions are appended to the report of the committee: no other single
event of those days is made so vivid to us.
The Massacre was preceded by minor disturbances. On the second of March,
1770, insults having passed between a soldier and a ropemaker, the
former came to the ropewalk, "and looking into one of the windows said,
_by God I'll have satisfaction!_ ... and at last said he was not afraid
of any one in the ropewalks. I"--thus deposes Nicholas Feriter, of
lawful age, "stept out of the window and speedily knocked up his heels.
On falling, his coat flew open, and a naked sword appeared, which one
John Willson, following me out, took from him, and brought into the
ropewalks." The soldier returned a second and a third time, each time
with more men from his regiment. At the last they were "headed by a tall
negro drummer, with a cutlass chained to his body, with which, at first
rencounter," says valiant Nicholas, "I received a cut on the head, but
being immediately supported by nine or ten more of the ropemakers, armed
with their wouldring sticks, we again beat them off."
For three days there was, among the two regiments stationed in the town,
anger which the inhabitants endeavored to allay by the discharge of the
ropemaker who gave the original insult, and by agreements made with the
commanding officer, Colonel Dalrymple. But, as afterwards appeared,
there were warnings of further trouble. Cautions were given to friends
of the soldiers not to go on the streets at night. The soldiers and
their women could not refrain from dark hints of violence to come. It is
even possible that violence was concerted. On the night of the fifth a
number of soldiers assembled in Atkinson Street. "They stood very still
until the guns were fired in King Street, then they clapped their hands
and gave a cheer, saying, 'This is all that we want'; they then ran to
their barracks and came out again in a few minutes, all with their arms,
and ran toward King Street." "I never," so runs other testimony, "saw
men or dogs so greedy for their prey as these soldiers seemed to be."
But the affray was of small proportions, and soon over. The actual
outbreak originated in a quarrel between a barber's boy and a sentry,
stationed in King Street below the east end of the Town House.[24] Boys
and men gathered, the sentry called out the guard, fire-bells were rung,
and the crowd increased. The captain of the guard was not the man for
the emergency. Said Henry Knox, afterward general and Secretary of War,
"I took Captain Preston by the coat and told him for God's sake to take
his men back again, for if they fired his life must answer for the
consequence; he replied he was sensible of it, or knew what he was
about, or words to that purpose; and seemed in great haste and much
agitated." The gathering still increased, there was crowding and
jostling, snowballs and possibly sticks were thrown; the soldiers grew
angry and the officer uncertain what to do. "The soldiers," testified
John Hickling, "assumed different postures, shoving their bayonets
frequently at the people, one in particular pushing against my side
swore he would run me through; I laid hold of his bayonet and told him
that nobody was going to meddle with them. Not more than ten seconds
after this I saw something white, resembling a piece of snow or ice,
fall among the soldiers, which knocked the end of a firelock to the
ground. At that instant the word 'Fire!' was given, but by whom I know
not; but concluded it did not come from the officer aforesaid, as I was
within a yard of him and must have heard him had he spoken it, but am
satisfied said Preston did not forbid them to fire; I instantly leaped
within the soldier's bayonet as I heard him cock his gun, which that
moment went off.... I, thinking there was nothing but powder fired,
stood still, till ... I saw another gun fired, and the man since called
Attucks, fall. I then withdrew about two or three yards.... During this
the rest of the guns were fired, one after another, when I saw two more
fall.... I further declare that I heard no other affront given them than
the huzzaing and whistling of boys in the street."
After the firing, other soldiers were summoned to the spot, and more
townspeople appeared. The soldiers, says the official narrative, "were
drawn up between the State House and main guard, their lines extended
across the street and facing down King Street, where the town people
were assembled. The first line kneeled, and the whole of the first
platoon presented their guns ready to fire, as soon as the word should
be given.... For some time the appearance of things were dismal. The
soldiers outrageous on the one hand, and the inhabitants justly incensed
against them on the other: both parties seemed disposed to come to
action."
Had the affair gone further, so that the soldiers fired again, or the
townspeople stormed the barracks, then the affray would have resembled
the riots not uncommon in Europe at that time, and known even in
England. In such a case the turbulence of Boston might have been proved.
But the good town was later able to claim that up to the actual breaking
out of hostilities not one soldier or Tory had been harmed in
Massachusetts. In the present case nothing further happened. The
stubborn people stood their ground, but the eager troops were restrained
and led away. The punishment of the offenders took place according to
law, with John Adams and Josiah Quincy, Jr., leaders of the Whigs, as
successful defenders of the captain.
The important consequences were political. Though the people dispersed
that night, they assembled on the morrow in a crowded town meeting,
where Samuel Adams guided the actions of the assembly. Adjourning from
Faneuil Hall to the Old South, which itself could not accommodate them
all, the throng passed the very spot of the Massacre and under the
windows of the State House, where the lieutenant-governor viewed them.
This man was Hutchinson, acting governor in the absence of Bernard, and
at last about to arrive at the goal of colonial ambition.
Thomas Hutchinson has been too much condemned, and of late years almost
too much commended. He had spent thirty years in the service of the
colony, holding more offices, and more at the same time, than any man of
his generation. Now he was unpopular and misjudged, yet he was a man for
his day and party honest and patriotic; his end, in exile in England,
was one of the tragedies of American loyalty. But though a braver man
than Bernard and more public-spirited, his methods were equally
underhanded, and he fatally mistook the capacity of his countrymen to
govern themselves. A man who could wish for less freedom of speech in
England was not the man to sympathize with the spirit of Americans.
He now, backed by a few councillors and officials, was to face Sam Adams
and the Boston town meeting. With a committee from the meeting, Adams
came to the State House to demand the withdrawal of the troops to the
Castle. Hutchinson answered that he would withdraw one regiment, but had
not the power to remove both. Retiring at the head of his committee,
Adams passed through a lane of people on his way to the Old South. "Both
regiments or none!" he said right and left as he passed, and every one
took up the word. "Both regiments or none!" cried the meeting. Voting
his report unsatisfactory, it sent him back to the governor to repeat
his demand.
"Now for the picture," wrote John Adams many years after. "The theatre
and the scenery are the same with those at the discussion of the writs
of assistance. The same glorious portraits of King Charles the Second,
and King James the Second, to which might be added, and should be added,
little miserable likenesses of Governor Winthrop, Governor Bradstreet,
Governor Endicott, and Governor Belcher, hung up in obscure corners of
the room. Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson, commander-in-chief in the
absence of the governor, must be placed at the head of the
council-table. Lieutenant-Colonel Dalrymple, commander of his majesty's
military forces, taking rank of all his majesty's councillors, must be
seated by the side of the lieutenant-governor and commander-in-chief of
the Province. Eight-and-twenty councillors must be painted, all seated
at the council-board. Let me see,--what costume? What was the fashion of
that day in the month of March? Large white wigs, English scarlet-cloth
coats, some of them with gold-laced hats; not on their heads indeed in
so august a presence, but on the table before them or under the table
beneath them. Before these illustrious persons appeared SAMUEL ADAMS, a
member of the House of Representatives and their clerk, now at the head
of the committee of the great assembly at the Old South Church."[25]
[Illustration: 1722--SAMUEL ADAMS 1803 By John Singleton Copley]
It is this moment that Copley chose to represent Adams. Facing the
governor, the officers, and the councillors, Adams stood in his simple
"wine-colored suit," and appealed to the charter and the laws. "If you
have power to remove one regiment, you have power to remove both. It is
at your peril if you do not. The meeting is composed of three thousand
people. They are become very impatient. A thousand men are already
arrived from the neighborhood, and the country is in general motion.
Night is approaching; an immediate answer is expected."[26]
Hutchinson was a man learned in the history of the province and the
people, and the occasion had impressed him already. As the meeting had
passed under his windows on the way to the Old South, a friend at his
side had remarked that this was not the kind of men that had sacked his
house. He had noted the resolute countenances of the best men of the
town, and had--to use his own words--judged their spirit to be as
strong, and their resolve as high, as those of the men who had
imprisoned Andros. Adams, narrowly watching him now, marked the tumult
in Hutchinson's mind.
"I observed his knees to tremble," said Adams afterward; "I saw his face
grow pale; and I enjoyed the sight."[27] For Hutchinson, poorly
supported and irresolute, the strain was too great. He temporized and
parleyed, but he thought again of Andros, and gave way. It was a
complete triumph for the town. The troops, until their removal to the
Castle could be effected, were virtually imprisoned in their barracks by
a patrol of citizens. From that time they bore the name of the "Sam
Adams regiments."
FOOTNOTES:
[17] Bancroft, vi, 48.
[18] Farmer's Letters, quoted in Bancroft, vi, 105.
[19] Hosmer, "Life of Samuel Adams," 48.
[20] Bancroft's "United States," vi, 128.
[21] "American Revolution," Part 1, 43.
[22] Hosmer's "Life of Adams."
[23] Sabine's "Loyalists."
[24] King Street is now State Street, and the Town House is the Old
State House.
[25] Hosmer's "Samuel Adams," 172.
[26] Bancroft, vi, 344.
[27] Bancroft, vi, 345.