_RECONCILIATION. THE DISMEMBERED EMPIRE RE-UNITED IN BONDS OF
FRIENDSHIP. "BLOOD IS THICKER THAN WATER."_
It is well known and now acknowledged that for the past hundred years it
has been the deliberate and well considered policy of the United States
to eradicate everything British from the country to the north of us.
During the Canadian rebellion of 1837, as well as during the Fenian raid
of 1866, the American frontier was openly allowed to be made a base of
operation against British North America.
Canada has always claimed that she has been deprived of enormous areas
of territory by the United States through sharp practice and
unjustifiable means, especially in Oregon, Maine and Alaska. The most
notable case of duplicity on the part of the United States was that of
the Northeast boundary settled under the Ashburton Treaty of Washington
in 1842. After a bitter controversy it was left out to arbitration for
the King of the Netherlands to decide. The award was accepted by Great
Britain and rejected by the United States. The question remained in
abeyance for two years, during which there was imminent danger of a
collision and of war. Military posts were simultaneously established and
rashly advanced into the wild country which both parties claimed as
their own. Redoubts and blockhouses were erected at several points.
Reinforcement of troops from either side poured in. The public mind in
the United States became inflamed by the too ready cry of "British
outrage," proclaimed in all quarters by the reckless politicians of both
parties in order to lash the national spirit into fury. The people in
the whole length and breadth of the Union were, to a man, convinced of
the justice of their claim and of the manifest wrong intended by Great
Britain. The Nation at large was ready and anxious for war, and had a
skirmish taken place on the frontier involving the death of a dozen men
during the so-called "Aroostook War," the whole country would have
rushed to war and plunged the two nations into hostilities, the end of
which no man then living could have foreseen.
During this trouble, the English people were quite calm and almost
apathetic. With a vague notion of the locality of the disputed
territory, a total ignorance of the merits or demerits of the dispute,
and a profound contempt of the blustering and abuse of American
politicians and newspapers, they were perfectly content to leave affairs
in the hands of the government.
Finally a joint commission was appointed from the States of Maine and
Massachusetts (both having rights in the disputed territory) and sent to
Washington to negotiate a treaty with Lord Ashburton, a nobleman well
adapted to the occasion from his connection by marriage, and property in
the United States.
The odds were greatly against the British negotiator. His principal
adversary was Daniel Webster, Secretary of State, who in one of his
letters said: "I must be permitted to say that few questions have arisen
under this government in regard to which a stronger or more general
conviction was felt that the country was in the right than this question
of the northeast boundary." He reiterated his own belief in "the justice
of the claim which arose from our honest conviction that it was founded
in truth and accorded with the intention of the negotiators of the
treaty of 1783." The whole of the disputed territory amounted to
6,750,000 acres. At last a compromise was effected which granted to
Great Britain 3,337,000 acres, and to the United States 3,413,000 acres,
and acknowledged the title of England to all the military positions upon
the frontier, and 700,000 acres more was awarded her than was assigned
to her by the King of the Netherlands.
But the decision of the Commissioners suited neither party. The factions
in England pronounced Lord Ashburton to have been sold, and those in
America declared that Webster had been bought. The most violent
opposition to the treaty was made; every part of it was denounced, and
it became at last doubtful if the Senate would ratify it. That final
consummation was, however, suddenly effected in a most remarkable
manner, the Senate coming to its decision by an unexpected majority of
thirty-nine to nine, after several days of secret debate. The sanction
of the Queen and the British government had been given without
hesitation and the people on both sides of the Atlantic were well
satisfied with the termination of the long and virulent dispute, and the
Northeastern Boundary Question would have sunk into the archives of
diplomatic history, but truth like murder will out, and it so happened
that Mr. Thomas Colley Grattan, British Consul for Massachusetts[99]
who, at the request of the commissioners, had accompanied them to
Washington to assist them in their negotiation, had the fortune to
discover after the treaty was signed, the duplicity of the Senate during
their secret debates leading to the ratification of the treaty. He says:
"My informant gave unmeasured expression to his indignation, which he
assured me was fully shared in by his friends, Judge Story and Dr.
Channing. Judge Story expressed himself without reserve on Webster's
conduct as a 'most disgraceful proceeding.'" Other gentlemen of Boston
entirely coincided in these opinions.
[99] For full particulars see his work, "Civilized America," Vol. I,
Chap. XXI, XXII, XXIII.
[Illustration: Map of the Boundary Line between Maine and New
Brunswick.]
"It is obvious to all persons familiar with boundary disputes that the
most important evidence in such disputes is founded on surveys and maps.
Early in the controversy there was a strange disappearance of the one in
the archives of the State Department, that had been transmitted by
Franklin to Jefferson in October, 1790, with the true boundary line
traced on it. It was, therefore, with great astonishment that I learned
from the confidential communication just alluded to that during the
whole of the negotiations at Washington, while the highest functionaries
of the American Government were dealing with Lord Ashburton with seeming
frankness and integrity, pledging their faith for a perfect conviction
of the justice of their claim to the territory which was in dispute. Mr.
Webster had in his possession and had communicated to them
all--President, Cabinet, Commissioners and Senate--the highest evidence
which the case admitted, that the United States had never had a shadow
of right to any part of the territory which they had so pertinaciously
claimed for nearly fifty years. This evidence, as my conscientious
informant told me, was nothing less than a copy of an original map
presented by Dr. Franklin to Count de Vergennes, the Minister of Louis
XVI, on December 6, 1782 (six days after the preliminaries of the treaty
of Paris of 1783 were signed) tracing the boundary, as agreed upon by
himself and the other commissioners, with a strong red line south of the
St. John, and exactly where a similar line appears in an unauthenticated
map discovered in London subsequent to Lord Ashburton's departure on his
mission."
Public attention being aroused by the statements made by the British
Consul to his government, the injunction of secrecy imposed by the
Senate on its members was dissolved, and permission was given for the
publication of the speeches made in secret session of August 17-19,
1842. The most important of those speeches was that of Mr. Rives,
chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs. His principal argument was
that if they did not sign the treaty, the dispute would be referred to a
second arbitration with very great danger of their losing the whole, Mr.
Webster, the Secretary of State, having sent to him to be laid before
the Senate a communication and a copy of the map presented by Dr.
Franklin to Count de Vergennes. In short, it is exactly the line
contended for by Great Britain except that it concedes more than is
claimed. When this communication was read, Senator Benton informed the
Senate that he could produce a map of higher validity than the one
referred to. He accordingly repaired to the library of Congress and soon
returned with a map which there is no doubt was the one sent by Franklin
to Jefferson already alluded to as having been surreptitiously removed
from the archives of the State Department some years before. The moment
it was examined it was found to sustain, by the most precise and
remarkable correspondence in every feature, the map communicated by Mr.
Webster. Mr. Benton then stated that "if the maps were really authentic
the concealment of them was a fraud on the British, and that the Senate
was insulted by being a party to the fraud," and further that "if
evidence had been discovered which deprived Maine of the title to
one-third of its territory, honor required that it should be made known
to the British."
The sudden acceptance of the treaty was in consequence of the evidence
of the maps, and the conviction of all concerned that a discovery of
their existence before the conclusion of a treaty would have given
irresistible strength to the English claims.
Calhoun said: "It would be idle to suppose that these disclosures would
not weigh heavily against the United States in any future negotiations."
The settlement of the Oregon boundary question again showed American
hatred of England to be chronic. The question finally resolved itself
into whether the threat of 54.40 or fight should be carried out, (a
threat to deprive Canada of access to the Pacific Ocean and the
possession of most of the enormous wheat fields now being developed in
the northwest) or to fight Mexico and extend its boundaries to the South
instead of the north. This latter scheme suited the slaveholders best
who were then in power. The United States government then entered into a
war with Mexico, one of the most unjustifiable contests ever entered
into by a civilized nation. By this war of conquest the United States
nearly doubled its territory. It must be said to the credit of New
England that she would not take any part in this war any more than she
did in the war of 1812.
When confederation of the Canadian provinces occurred in 1867, there was
placed on record in the House of Representatives at Washington that it
was disapproved and that the House regarded the Act of Confederation as
a menace to the United States. For a hundred years after the Revolution
it had been the policy of the United States to force Canada into
annexation, and it was considered that she would be more likely to come
into the Union if she was harrassed by a high tariff, boundary and
fishing disputes, but now it is known to have been all wrong. The
factors worked out just the reverse. Conditions have arrived that were
little foreseen until within ten years. The American people have
recognized the fact that a great change has taken place in Canada which
materially effects the relation between Canada and the United States.
Mr. Root, U. S. Secretary of State, recently said:
"Canada is no longer the outlying northern country in which a fringe of
descendants of royalists emigrating from the colonies when they became
independent of Great Britain, lived and gained a precarious subsistence
from a fertile soil. It has become the home of a great people increasing
in population and wealth. The stirrings of a national sentiment are to
be felt. In their relations to England one can see that while still
loyal to their mother country, still a loyal part of the British Empire,
they are growing up, and, as the boy is to his parents when he attains
manhood, they are a personality of themselves. In their relations to us
they have become a sister nation. With their enormous national wealth,
with their vigor and energy following the pathway that we have followed,
protecting their industries as we have protected ours, proud of their
country as we are proud of ours, they are no longer the little remnants
upon our borders; they are a great and powerful sister nation."
For years after the Civil War there came from the press, from the
lecture platform, and from the political rostrum, the most relentless
abuse of Great Britain and everything British. Lecturers gave their
audiences vivid descriptions of the Revolution and the war of 1812, in
which American valor was always rated high and British brutality was
held up to scorn. These lectures were frequently of thrilling interest
because the speakers were not handicapped by matters so paltry as facts
of history. But the most formidable batteries of wrath were trained
against everything British from the political stump. The iron-lunged
orators told of the iniquity of England, of its infamous tariff laws,
the oppression of Ireland, etc. He was but a poor speaker who could not
enliven a political meeting by twisting the tail of the British lion.
All this is now changed. It was brought about by President Cleveland's
Venezuelian message of December, 1895, and the Spanish War. When the
Venezuelian episode occurred, England was believed to be isolated and
without an ally. It proved that war could be declared against Great
Britain at any time, in ten minutes, upon any pretext. The insolent
message fell upon every one in England, from Lord Salisbury down, as a
bolt from the blue sky. Englishmen were as innocent as babes of
intentional offence to the United States. They had no conception that
there existed in the United States such latent irritation or antagonism
as under the first provocation would lead to an almost open avowal of
national enmity. It, however, happily disclosed the fact that there
still existed in the United States a numerous highly educated and
conservative element (not dissimilar to the vanished Loyalists of the
last century) in which one seldom finds a trace of antagonism to the old
mother country. Following the message, magazine reviews, the public
press, and the pulpit overflowed with a brilliant series of public
utterances and these soon checked the noisy approving outbursts of a
reckless half-educated majority to obtain whose votes at the next
election undoubtedly prompted the presumptuous interference of the chief
of the Republic and the unfriendly tone of his message.
Within three years after the message a wonderful change came over the
people of the United States. The Spanish War had taken place and instead
of finding Great Britain to be the hereditary enemy of the United
States, which they had been taught in the school histories to believe,
it was found that among the great powers of the world, Great Britain was
the only friend which the United States had, and that "blood was thicker
than water." It was discovered that the nations were envious of the
great Republic, and that Britain alone was proud of her eldest daughter.
It was remarked to the writer by a Spanish officer shortly after the
surrender of Porto Rico: "But mind you, this from an old man who has
studied history. You would never have had these islands had not England
stepped in at the beginning of the trouble and said to all the nations
of the world, 'Allow me to present my daughter, America.'" It was found,
too, that the "traditional friendship" of Russia was of but little
account at that time.
It was Russia that eagerly became the spokesman for envious Europe and
gave voice to the words: "Now is the time for us to combine and crush
this huge American monster before she becomes too strong for all of us,
as she is already too strong for any one of us." It was Russia that
planned to have the "concert of Europe" warn us that we were not to pose
as champion of any other American people against any form of misrule by
Europe--and that we were not to dare to meddle in Europe on any pretext.
She failed because England refused to join the league, or to enter with
the other powers into a naval demonstration before Cuba, but so long as
the war lasted with Spain the Russian diplomats kept pounding at every
backdoor in Europe with an insistence that something be done to cut our
comb, or make trouble or lose us the friendship of England. Our people
in Washington know all this. They know also the behavior of the Russian
minister at Washington who thought to poison us against England in the
very days when we were buying in that country and shipping in secret
from that country the vital necessities which the war demanded and which
we had not got; when great steamers were found abandoned off New York
loaded with contraband of war, cannon, arms, ammunition, etc., and towed
into port by United States warships; when coal and ammunition were left
on desert islands in the Philippines by British warships for the use of
the United States navy; when England's fleet at Manila stood ready to
take sides with Dewey and to open fire, to begin war on the Germans
should occasion arise. American naval officers who were there know these
facts to be true, and it is very significant that the Navy Department
has not published the correspondence between it and Admiral Dewey at
that time. We are hated all over the continent of Europe. Paris made a
fete day when she imagined Sampson's fleet was destroyed.
The Germans hate us for taking 3,000,000 fighting men away from them,
and also because we prevented them from purchasing the Philippines from
Spain, and because the Monroe doctrine prevents them from obtaining
colonies or naval stations in the Western Hemisphere. The Austrians hate
us for humiliating Spain. There is not a country to the south of us but
what hates us. Every republic in South America would put a knife in our
back if the opportunity occurs.
Very significant, too, was the reception and banquet given at Windsor
Castle in 1896 by Queen Victoria to the Ancient and Honorable Artillery
Company of Boston--the oldest military organization in the Western
Hemisphere--and the grand reception they received everywhere they went
in England. It was a revelation to the Americans, as every one of them
acknowledged, to receive such marked expression of kindliness and
brotherhood at the old home. It was something they did not expect. The
company more than reciprocated when the parent company, The Honourable
Artillery of London, visited Boston in 1903. Once more were seen armed
British sailors and soldiers marching through Boston's streets under the
British flag, the buildings along the entire route beautifully
decorated, and the visitors received with vociferous welcome wherever
they went. We will hope that something even better and more substantial
may yet come to us, when the United States and Great Britain will be
allied in amity as firm as that which now holds together these federal
states. "Old prejudices should be cast aside; the English-speaking
states recognizing their kinship, should knit bonds together around the
world, forming a kingly brotherhood inspired by beneficence, to which
supreme dominion in the earth would be sure to fall; for whatever may be
said today for other stocks, the 135,000,000 of English-speaking men
have been able to make themselves masters of the world to an extent
which no people has thus far approached.
"If love would but once unite, the seas could never sever. Earth has
never beheld a co-mingling of men, so impressive, so likely to be
frought with noble advantages through ages to come, as would be the
coming together of English-speaking men in one cordial bond."[100]
[100] Short History of Anglo-Saxon Freedom.
The statesmen of Britain and America can do no worthier service than to
find a way by which their strength may be combined to secure the peace
of the world and the betterment of mankind. It is not necessary that
their governments should be unified, or even that any hard and fast
treaty obligation incurred. It is only necessary that they should agree
to be friends and to stand by each other in all that will further these
great objects. They alone of all the nations can do this and that they
ought to do it few will deny. Both must forget certain bitterness born
of the past and certain jealousies growing out of the greatness of both.
What Great Britain is doing for the many peoples under her care and what
this nation is doing for the few outside our borders that we have in
hand we might unitedly do for a great portion of the globe and its
inhabitants. This combination must be strong enough to check certain
highwaymen in international relations and to install a wholesome regard
for human rights. Such an outcome of present friendliness will not be
achieved in a day or generation. But it will come; it must come. Asia
and the continent of Europe may become Chinese or Cossack, but the
English-speaking race shall rule over every other land and all the
islands and every sea.
The present time is a critical period in the life of the American
Republic, and therefore in the life of the world. The impotence of the
federal government to stop strike disturbances, lynchings and
disfranchisements, the growing power of an oligarchial and plutocratic
Senate, and the perils of imperialism are disquieting enough, but worst
of all is the evil of party rule and party strife.
Washington abhorred party and regarded it as a disease which he hoped to
avert by putting federalists and anti-federalists in his cabinet
together. The intuition of the founders of the Republic was that the
president should be elected by a chosen body of select and responsible
citizens, but since the Jacksonian era, nomination and election have
been completely in the hands of the Democracy at large, and the election
has been performed by a process of national agitation and conflict
which sets at work all the forces of political intrigue and corruption
on the most enormous scale, besides filling the country with persons
almost as violent and anti-social as those of the Civil War.
The qualification for public office from that of president down to that
of a member of a city council in national, state or city politics is not
a question of which man is most worthy of public confidence. It is no
longer eminence but availability. The great aim of each party is to
prevent the country from being successfully governed by its rival. Each
will do anything to catch votes and anything rather than lose them.
Government consequently is at the mercy of any organization which has
votes on a large scale to sell, or corporations that will freely
contribute its funds. The Grand Army of the Republic is thus enabled to
levy upon the nation tribute to the amount of a hundred and fifty
million dollars each year, thirty-six years after the war, although
General Grant at the close of the war said that the pensions should
never exceed seven millions each year. And now both parties in their
platform promise their countenance to this exaction.
The recent exposures of the millions contributed by the trusts, tariff
protected industries, life insurance companies, etc., to the campaign
funds has astonished the world. The history of the most corrupt
monarchies could hardly furnish a more monstrous case of financial
abuse, to say nothing of the effect upon national character.
Each party machine has a standing army of wire pullers with an apparatus
of intrigue and corruption to the support of which holders of office
under government are assessed. The boss is a recognized authority, and
mastery of unscrupulous intrigue is his avowed qualification for his
place. The pest of partyism invades all the large cities of the country.
New York is made the plunder of the thieves of one party and
Philadelphia of thieves of the other. It is surely impossible that any
nation should endure such a system forever. A nation which deliberately
gives itself up to government by faction, under the name of party, signs
its own doom. The end may be delayed but it is sure. The American people
undoubtedly have the political wisdom and force to deal with this
crisis, but there is no evidence that these qualities are being brought
to bear on the situation nor is there any great man arisen to lead the
reform.
PART II.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES
of the
LOYALISTS OF MASSACHUSETTS
with
THE ADDRESSES TO GOVERNOR HUTCHINSON. THE CONSPIRACY ACT; AND
RESOLUTION, RELATING TO THE BANISHING AND CONFISCATION OF THE
ESTATES OF THE ABSENTEES, AND REFUGEES, AND A LIST OF THE LOYALISTS
THAT WENT TO HALIFAX ON THE EVACUATION OF BOSTON.
The Loyalists of Massachusetts
WHO WERE THE INHABITANTS OF THE NEW ENGLAND COLONIES AT THE TIME OF THE
REVOLUTION?
The first and second chapters of this work treated of the settlement of
Massachusetts and the framing and establishing of that social system and
form of government which through successive generations, the settlers
and their descendants took part, which culminated in the Revolution. The
founders of Massachusetts and of all New England, were almost entirely
Englishmen. Their emigration to New England began in 1620, it was
inconsiderable till 1630, at the end of ten years more it almost ceased.
A people consisting at that time of not many more than twenty thousand
persons, thenceforward multiplied on its own soil, in remarkable
seclusion from other communities, for nearly two centuries. Such
exceptions to this statement are of small account. In 1651 after the
battle of Dunbar, Cromwell sent some four or five hundred of his Scotch
prisoners to Boston, but very little trace of this accession is left.
After the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, about one hundred
and fifty families of French Huguenots came to Massachusetts; their
names and a considerable number of their posterity are yet to be found.
A hundred and twenty Scotch-Irish families, came over in 1719 and
settled in Boston, and New Hampshire. Some slight emigrations from it
took place at an early date, but they soon discontinued, and it was not
till after the Revolution that those swarms began to depart, which have
since occupied so large a portion of the territory of the United States.
During that long period their identity was unimpaired. No race has ever
been more homogeneous than this, at the outbreak of the Revolution, and
for many years later. Thus the people of New England was a singularly
unmixed race. There was probably not a county in England occupied by a
population of purer English blood than theirs. Down to the eve of the
war in 1775, New England had little knowledge of the communities which
took part in that conflict with her. Till the time of the Boston Port
Bill, Massachusetts and Virginia, the two principal English settlements,
had with each other scarcely more relations of acquaintance, business,
mutual influence, or common action, than either of them had with Bermuda
or Barbados.
During the latter part of the nineteenth century vast numbers of Irish,
and next to them German, came to New England, so at the time of writing,
1908, it is claimed that one half of the inhabitants of Boston are
Irish, or of Irish parentage. During the past ten years the places of
the Irish are being taken by the Italians, Jews, Portuguese, Greeks,
Armenians, French Canadians, and others. The reader will see from the
foregoing that the contestants in Massachusetts during the Revolutionary
war were a race representing a peculiar type of the Englishmen of the
seventeenth century who, sequestrated from foreign influences formed a
distinct character by their own discipline, and was engaged in a work
within itself, on its own problem, through a century and a half, and
which terminated in the Revolutionary War, that dismembered the Empire.
That the foregoing statement concerning the purity of the race at the
time of the Revolution is a correct one, is shown in the following
biographies of the Loyalists of Massachusetts, for in nearly every case
their ancestry date back to that of the first settlers, through several
generations.
THE ADDRESSERS.
The importance of the following addressers is out of all proportion to
their apparent significance. They are an indispensable genesis to the
history of the Loyalists. For the next seven years the Addressers were
held up to their countrymen as traitors and enemies to their country. In
the arraignments, which soon began, the Loyalists were convicted not out
of their mouths, but out of their addresses. The ink was hardly dry upon
the parchment before the persecution began against all those who would
not recant, and throughout the long years of the war, the crime of an
addresser grew in its enormity, and they were exposed to the perils of
tarring and feathering, the horrors of Simbury mines, a gaol or a
gallows.
ADDRESS OF THE MERCHANTS AND OTHERS OF BOSTON
TO GOV. HUTCHINSON.
_Boston_, May 30, 1774.
We, merchants and traders of the town of Boston, and others, do now wait
on you, in the most respectful manner, before your departure for
England, to testify, for ourselves the entire satisfaction we feel at
your wise, zealous, and faithful administration, during the few years
that you have presided at the head of this province. Had your success
been equal to your endeavors, and to the warmest wishes of your heart,
we cannot doubt that many of the evils under which we now suffer, would
have been averted, and that tranquility would have been restored to this
long divided province; but we assure ourselves that the want of success
in those endeavors will not abate your good wishes when removed from
us, or your earnest exertions still on every occasion to serve the true
interest of this your native country.
While we lament the loss of so good a governor, we are greatly relieved
that his Majesty, in his gracious favor, hath appointed as your
successor a gentleman who, having distinguished himself in the long
command he hath held in another department, gives us the most favorable
prepossessions of his future administration.
We greatly deplore the calamities that are impending and will soon fall
on this metropolis, by the operation of a late act of Parliament for
shutting up the port on the first of next month. You cannot but be
sensible, sir, of the numberless evils that will ensue to the province
in general, and the miseries and distresses into which it will
particularly involve this town, in the course of a few months. Without
meaning to arraign the justice of the British Parliament, we could
humbly wish that this act had been couched with less rigor, and that the
execution of it had been delayed to a more distant time, that the people
might have had the alternative either to have complied with the
conditions therein set forth, or to have submitted to the consequent
evils on refusal; but as it now stands, all choice is precluded, and
however disposed to compliance or concession the people may be, they
must unavoidably suffer very great calamities before they can receive
relief. Making restitution for damage done to the property of the East
India Company, or to the property of any individual, by the outrage of
the people, we acknowledge to be just; and though we have ever
disavowed, and do now solemnly bear our testimony against such lawless
proceedings, yet, considering ourselves as members of the same
community, we are fully disposed to bear our proportions of those
damages, whenever the sum and the manner of laying it can be
ascertained. We earnestly request that you, sir, who know our condition,
and have at all times displayed the most benevolent disposition towards
us, will, on your arrival in England, interest yourself in our behalf,
and make such favorable representations of our case, as that we may hope
to obtain speedy and effectual relief.
May you enjoy a pleasant passage to England; and under all the
mortifications you have patiently endured, may you possess the inward
and consolatory testimonies of having discharged your trust with
fidelity and honor, and receive those distinguishing marks of his
Majesty's royal approbation and favor, as may enable you to pass the
remainder of your life in quietness and ease, and preserve your name
with honor to posterity.
William Blair, John Greenlaw, Theophilus Lillie,
James Selkrig, Benjamin Clark, Miles Whitworth,
Archibald Wilson, William McAlpine, James McEwen,
Jeremiah Green, Jonathan Snelling, William Codner,
Samuel H. Sparhawk, James Hall, James Perkins,
Joseph Turill, William Dickson, John White,
Roberts & Co., John Winslow, jr., Robert Jarvis,
William Perry, Joseph Scott, Thomas Aylwin,
Jas. & Pat. McMasters, Samuel Minot, William Bowes,
William Coffin, Benjamin M. Holmes, Gregory Townsend,
Simeon Stoddard, jr., Archibald McNiel, Francis Green,
John Powell, George Leonard, Philip Dumaresq,
Henry Laughton, John Borland, Harrison Gray,
Eliphalet Pond, Joshua Loring, jr., Peter Johonnot,
M. B. Goldthwait, William Jackson, George Erving,
Peter Hughes, James Anderson, Joseph Green,
Samuel Hughes, David Mitchelson, John Vassall,
John Semple, Abraham Savage, Nathaniel Coffin,
Hopestill Capen, James Asby, John Timmins,
Edward King, John Inman, William Tailor,
Byfield Lynde, John Coffin, Thomas Brinley,
George Lynde, Thomas Knight, Harrison Gray, jr.,
A. F. Phipps, Benjamin Green, jr., John Taylor,
Rufus Green, David Green, Gilbert Deblois,
David Phips, Benjamin Green, Joshua Winslow,
Richard Smith, Henry H. Williams, Daniel Hubbard,
George Spooner, James Warden, Hugh Turbett,
Daniel Silsby, Nathaniel Coffin, jr., Henry Lyddell,
William Cazneau, Silvester Gardiner, Nathaniel Cary,
James Forrest, John S. Copley, George Brinley,
Edward Cox, Edward Foster, Richard Lechmere,
John Berry, Colbourn Burrell, John Erving, jr.,
Richard Hirons, Nathaniel Greenwood, Thomas Gray,
Ziphion Thayer, William Burton, George Bethune,
John Joy, John Winslow, Thomas Apthorp,
Joseph Goldthwait, Isaac Winslow, jr., Ezekial Goldthwaite,
Samuel Prince, Thomas Oliver, Benjamin Gridley,
Jonathan Simpson, Henry Bloye, John Atkinson,
James Boutineau, Benjamin Davis, Ebenezer Bridgham,
Nathaniel Hatch, Isaac Winslow, John Gore,
Martin Gay, Lewis Deblois, Adino Paddock.
ADDRESS OF THE BARRISTERS AND ATTORNEYS OF
MASSACHUSETTS TO GOV. HUTCHINSON, MAY, 30, 1774.
A firm persuasion of your inviolable attachment to the real interest of
this your native country, and of your constant readiness, by every
service in your power, to promote its true welfare and prosperity, will,
we flatter ourselves, render it not improper in us, barristers and
attorneys at law in the province of Massachusetts Bay, to address your
Excellency upon your removal from us with this testimonial of our
sincere respect and esteem.
The various important characters of Legislator, Judge and first
Magistrate over this province, in which, by the suffrages of your
fellow-subjects, and by the royal favor of the best of kings, your great
abilities, adorned with a uniform purity of principle, and integrity of
conduct, have been eminently distinguished, must excite the esteem and
demand the grateful acknowledgements of every true lover of his country,
and friend to virtue.
The present perplexed state of our public affairs, we are sensible, must
render your departure far less disagreeable to you than it is to us--we
assure you, sir, we feel the loss; but when, in the amiable character of
your successor, we view a fresh instance of the paternal goodness of our
most gracious sovereign; when we reflect on the probability that your
presence at the court of Great Britain, will afford you an opportunity
of employing your interests more successfully for the relief of this
province, and particularly of the town of Boston, under their present
distresses, we find a consolation which no other human source could
afford. Permit us, sir, most earnestly to solicit the exertion of all
your distinguished abilities in favor of your native town and country,
upon this truly unhappy and distressing occasion.
We sincerely wish you a prosperous voyage, a long continuation of health
and felicity and the highest rewards of the good and faithful.
We are, sir, with the most cordial affection, esteem and respect,
Your Excellency's most obedient and very humble servants,
Robert Achmuty, Andrew Cazneau, David Ingersoll,
Jonathan Sewall, Daniel Leonard, Jeremiah D. Rogers,
Samuel Fitch, John Lowell, David Gorham,
Samuel Quincy, Daniel Oliver, Samuel Sewall,
William Pynchon, Sampson S. Blowers, John Sprague,
James Putnam, Shearjashub Brown, Rufus Chandler,
Benjamin Gridley, Daniel Bliss, Thomas Danforth,
Abel Willard, Samuel Porter, Ebenezer Bradish,
From the Essex Gazette of June 1, 1775.
_Salem, May 30, 1775._
Whereas we the subscribers did some time since sign an address to
Governor Hutchinson, which, though prompted to by the best intentions,
has, nevertheless, given great offence to our country: We do now
declare, that we were so far from designing by that action, to show our
acquiescence in those acts of Parliament so universally and justly
odious to all America, that on the contrary, we hoped we might in that
way contribute to their repeal; though now to our sorrow we find
ourselves mistaken. And we do now further, declare, that we never
intended the offence which this address occasioned; that if we had
foreseen such an event we should never have signed it; as it always has
been and now is our wish to live in harmony with our neighbors, and our
serious determination is to promote to the utmost of our power the
liberty, the welfare, and happiness of our country, which is inseparably
connected with our own.
John Nutting, N. Sparhawk, Thomas Barnard,
N. Goodale, Andrew Dalglish, Nathaniel Dabney,
Ebenezer Putnam, E. A. Holyoke, William Pickman,
Francis Cabot, William Pynchon, C. Gayton Pickman,
In Committee of Safety, Salem, May 30, 1775.--The declaration, of which
the above is a copy, being presented and read, it was voted unanimously
that the same was satisfactory; and that the said gentlemen ought to be
received and treated as real friends to this country.
By order of the Committee,
RICHARD DERBY, JR., Chairman.
ADDRESS OF THE INHABITANTS OF MARBLEHEAD TO
GOV. HUTCHINSON.
_Marblehead, May 25, 1774._
His Majesty having been pleased to appoint his Excellency the Hon.
Thomas Gage, Esq., to be governor and commander-in-chief over this
province, and you, (as we are informed,) begin speedily to embark for
Great Britain: We, the subscribers, merchants, traders, and others,
inhabitants of Marblehead, beg leave to present your our valedictory
address on this occasion; and as this is the only way we now have of
expressing to you our entire approbation of your public conduct during
the time you have presided in this province, and of making you a return
of our most sincere and hearty thanks for the ready assistance which you
have at all times afforded us, when applied to in matters which affected
our navigation and commerce, we are induced from former experience of
your goodness, to believe that you will freely indulge us in the
pleasure of giving you this testimony of our sincere esteem and
gratitude.
In your public administration, we are fully convinced that the general
good was the mark which you have ever aimed at, and we can, sir, with
pleasure assure you, that it is likewise the opinion of all
dispassionate thinking men within the circle of our observation,
notwithstanding many publications would have taught the world to think
the contrary; and we beg leave to entreat you, that when you arrive at
the court of Great Britain, you would there embrace every opportunity of
moderating the resentment of the government against us, and use your
best endeavors to have the unhappy dispute between Great Britain and
this country brought to a just and equitable determination.
We cannot omit the opportunity of returning you in a particular manner
our most sincere thanks for your patronizing our cause in the matter of
entering and clearing the fishing vessels at the custom-house, and
making the fishermen pay hospital money; we believe it is owing to your
representation of the matter, that we are hitherto free from that
burden.
We heartily wish you, sir, a safe and prosperous passage to Great
Britain, and when you arrive there may you find such a reception as
shall fully compensate for all the insults and indignities which have
been offered you.
Henry Saunders, John Fowle, Thomas Lewis,
Richard Hinkly, Robert Hooper, 3d, Sweet Hooper,
Samuel Reed, John Gallison, Robert Hooper,
John Lee, John Prince, Jacob Fowle,
Robert Ambrose, George McCall, John Pedrick,
Jonathan Glover, Joseph Swasey, Richard Reed,
Richard Phillips, Nathan Bowen, Benjamin Marston,
Isaac Mansfield, Thomas Robie, Samuel White,
Joseph Bubler, John Stimson, Joseph Hooper,
Richard Stacy, John Webb, John Prentice,
Thomas Procter, Joseph Lee, Robert Hooper, jr.
ADDRESS TO GOVERNOR HUTCHINSON FROM HIS FELLOW
TOWNSMEN IN THE TOWN OF MILTON.
This document which was printed recently in the "History of Milton," was
not a matter of record, and had never been printed before, it had also
failed to meet the searching eye of the antiquarian, and the author said
"it has come down to us in its original manuscript yellow with age."
It will be noticed the signers were obliged to recant, so as to save
their property from being destroyed by the mob, and from personal injury
and insult such as tarring and feathering, etc. It was with such doings
that the "Sons of Despotism" amused themselves, and made converts to the
cause of "liberty." It, however, did not save James Murray and Stephen
Miller, who were banished, and Miller's estate confiscated.
_To_ THOMAS HUTCHINSON _Esquire Late Gov. &c._
SIR,--We the Select Men, the Magistrates and other principal Inhabitants
of the Town of Milton, hearing of your speedy Embarkation for England,
cannot let you leave this Town which you have so long honored by your
Residence without some publick Expression of our sincere wishes for your
health and happiness.
We have been Eye Witnesses, Sir, of your amiable private and useful
publick Life; We have with concern beheld you, in the faithful and
prudent Discharge of your Duty exposed to Calumnies, Trials and
Sufferings, as unjust as severe; and seen you bearing them all with
becoming Meekness and Fortitude.
As to ourselves and Neighbours in particular; altho many of us, in
future Perplexities will often feel the Want of your skillful gratuitous
advice, always ready for those who asked it, we cannot but rejoice for
your Sake Sir, at your being so seasonably relieved by an honourable and
worthy Successor, in this critical and distressful period from the
growing Difficulty of the Government of your beloved native Province.
And we see your Departure with the less Regret, being convinced that the
Change at present will contribute to your and your Family's Tranquility:
possessed as you are of the applause of good men, of the favour of our
Sovereign, and the Approbation of a good Conscience to prepare the Way
to Rewards infinitely ample from the King of Kings; to whose Almighty
protection, We, with grateful hearts commend you and your family.
Signed
SAML. DAVENPORT STEPHEN MILLER BENJAMIN HORTON
JA. MURRAY JOSIAH HOW ZEDAH CREHORE
REPLY OF GOVERNOR HUTCHINSON.
GENTLEMEN
I have received innumerable marks of respect and kindness from the
Inhabitants of the Town of Milton, of which I shall ever retain the
most grateful Remembrance. I leave you with regret. I hope to
return and spend the short remains of my life among you in peace
and quiet and in doing every good office to you in my power.
THO. HUTCHINSON.
* * * * *
Milton, Sept. 21, 1774.--Messrs. Davenport Miller and How were taken to
Task by the Town Meeting for having signed the above address altho it
was never presented or published. They were required by next day to make
an acknowledgement of their offence--And a Committee of fifteen was
chosen to treat with them and Mr. Murray.
Sept. 22. These Culprits attended and made the following
acknowledgement, of which the Committee accepted, requiring them to sign
it and to read it severally before the Town Meeting on the green. This
done the Meeting by some Majority voted it not satisfactory. The
offenders all but Capt. Davenport went home without making any other.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT.
Whereas We the Subscribers did sign and endeavour to promote among the
Inhabitants of our Town of Milton an Address to Gov. Hutchinson a few
days before his Embarkation for England, which Address contained
Compliments to the Gov. that we did and do still, in our consciences,
believe to be justly due to him; and Whereas we did further believe that
it would be very acceptable to the Town to give them such an Opportunity
of showing their gratitude to the Governor.
Now since the Temper of the Times is such, that what we meant to please
has eventually displeased our Neighbours, We, who desire to live in
peace and good will with them are sorry for it. Witness our hands this
22d. day of Sept. 1774.
Signed
JA. MURRAY SAML. DAVENPORT
STEPHEN MILLER JOSIAH HOW
After the departure of the first three of these, the meeting insisted on
Capt. Davenport's making the following acknowledgement, and that the
committee should have the rest to make it at or before the next
town-meeting on Monday, 3d October:--
Whereas We the Subscribers have given the good People of this Town and
Province in General just Cause to be offended with each of us, in that
unguarded action of ours in signing an address to the late Governor
Hutchinson, for which we are heartily sorry and take this opportunity
publickly to manifest it, and declare we did not so well consider the
Contents. And we heartily beg their forgiveness and all others we may
have offended: Also that we may be restored to their favour, and be made
Partakers of that inestimable blessing, the good Will of our Neighbours,
and the whole Community.
Witness our hands
Milton 22d Sept. signed SAML. DAVENPORT
24 Sept. ---- JOSIAH HOW
25 Sept. ---- JA. MURRAY
25 Sept. ---- STEPHEN MILLER
ADDRESS PRESENTED TO HIS EXCELLENCY GOVERNOR GAGE, JUNE 11TH, 1774,
ON HIS ARRIVAL AT SALEM.
To his Excellency Thomas Gage, Esq., Captain-General, Governor and
Commander-in-Chief of the Province of Massachusetts Bay in New
England, and Lieutenant-General of his Majesty's Forces.
May it please your Excellency:
We, merchants and others, inhabitants of the ancient town of Salem, beg
leave to approach your Excellency with our most respectful
congratulations on your arrival in this place.
We are deeply sensible of his Majesty's paternal care and affection to
this province, in the appointment of a person of your Excellency's
experience, wisdom and moderation, in these troublesome and difficult
times.
We rejoice that this town is graciously distinguished for that spirit,
loyalty, and reverence for the laws, which is equally our glory and
happiness.
From that public spirit and warm zeal to promote the general happiness
of men, which mark the great and good, we are led to hope under your
Excellency's administration for everything that may promote the peace,
prosperity, and real welfare of this province.
We beg leave to commend to your Excellency's patronage the trade and
commerce of this place, which, from a full protection of the liberties,
persons and properties of individuals, cannot but flourish.
And we assure your Excellency we will make it our constant endeavors by
peace, good order, and a regard for the laws, as far as in us lies, to
render your station and residence easy and happy.
John Sargent, John Prince, Benjamin Lynde,
Jacob Ashton, George Deblois, William Browne,
William Wetmore, Andrew Dalglish, John Turner,
James Grant, Joseph Blaney, P. Frye,
Henry Higginson, Archelaus Putnam, Francis Cabot,
David Britton, Samuel Porter, William Pynchon,
P. G. Kast, Thomas Poynton, John Fisher,
Weld Gardner, Samuel Flagg, John Mascarene,
Nathaniel Daubney, Nathan Goodale, E. A. Holyoke,
Richard Nicholls, William Pickman, Jos. Bowditch,
William Cabot, C. Gayton Pickman, Ebenezer Putnam,
Cabot Gerrish, Nathaniel Sparhwak, S. Curwen,
William Gerrish, William Vans, John Nutting,
Rowland Savage, Timothy Orne, Jos. Dowse,
William Lilly, Richard Routh, Benjamin Pickman,
Jonathan Goodhue, Stephen Higginson, Henry Gardner.
THE "LOYAL ADDRESS FROM THE GENTLEMEN AND PRINCIPAL INHABITANTS OF
BOSTON TO GOVERNOR GAGE ON HIS DEPARTURE FOR ENGLAND, OCTOBER 6,
1775," WAS SIGNED AS FOLLOWS:
John Erving, James Selkrig, John Greecart,
Thomas Hutchinson, jr., Archibald Cunningham, Richard Clarke,
Silvester Gardiner, William Cazneau, Benjamin Fanieul, jr.,
Wm. Bowes, David Barton, Thomas Amory,
John Timmins, John Semple, George Brindley,
Nathaniel Coffin, Henry Lawton, Ralph Inman,
John Winslow, jr., William Brattle, Edward Winslow,
Alexander Bymer, John Troutbeck, Benjamin M. Holmes,
Robert Hallowell, Stephen Greenleaf, William Jackson,
Robert Jarvis, William Walter, Richard Green,
David Phips, James Perkins, James Murray,
John Tayler, Phillip Dumaresque, Joseph Scott,
Archibald McNeal, Joshua Loring, jr., Peter Johonnot,
Francis Green, Henry Lloyd, Nathaniel Cary,
Benjamin Davis, William Lee Perkins, Martin Gay,
Thomas Courtney, George Leonard, Samuel Hughes,
John Sampson, Thomas Brinley, William Coffin, jr.,
William Tayler, Daniel Hubbard, Adino Paddock,
John Inman, Samuel Fitch, Andrew Cazneau,
Wm. Perry, John Atkinson, Henry Lindall,
John Gore, Joseph Turill, Theophilus Lillie,
Isaac Winslow, jr., Samuel Hirst Sparhawk, Henry Barnes,
William Dickerson, Ebenezer Brigham, M. B. Goldthwait,
William Hunter, William Codner, Lewis Gray,
Robert Semple, Jonathan Snelling, Nathaniel Brinley,
John Joy, Benjamin Gridley, John Jeffries, jr.,
Gregory Townsend, Gilbert Deblois, Archibald Bowman,
Isaac Winslow, Edward Hutchinson, Jonathan Simpson,
Byfield Lyde, Miles Whitworth, Nathaniel Tayler,
John Love, Daniel McMasters, James Anderson,
Hugh Tarbett, John Hunt, 3d, Lewis Deblois,
Nathaniel Perkins, James Lloyd,
John Powell, William McAlpine,
THE LOYAL ADDRESS TO GOVERNOR GAGE ON HIS DEPARTURE, OCTOBER 14,
1775, OF THOSE GENTLEMEN WHO WERE DRIVEN FROM THEIR HABITATIONS IN
THE COUNTRY TO THE TOWN OF BOSTON, WAS SIGNED BY THE FOLLOWING
PERSONS:
John Chandler, Seth Williams, jr., David Phips,
James Putnam, Charles Curtis, Richard Saltonstall,
Peter Oliver, sen., Samuel Pine, Peter Oliver, jr.,
Jonathan Stearns, Thomas Foster, Edward Winslow, jr.
Ward Chipman, Pelham Winslow, Nathaniel Chandler,
William Chandler, Daniel Oliver, James Putnam, jr.
List of the inhabitants of Boston, who on the evacuation by the
British, in March, 1776, removed to Halifax with the army. Taken
from a paper in the handwriting of Walter Barrell from the
Proceedings of the Mass. Hist. Soc., Vol. 18, page 266.
Lieutenant-Governor Oliver and servants 6
_Council, &c._
Peter Oliver and niece 2
Harrison Gray and family 5
Timothy Ruggles and sons 3
Foster Hutchinson and family 13
Josiah Edson 1
John Murray and family 7
Richard Lechmere 12
John Erving 9
Nathaniel Ray Thomas and son 2
Abijah Willard and two sons 3
Daniel Leonard and family 9
Nathaniel Hatch 7
George Erving 6
_Custom House._
Henry Hulton 12
Charles Paxton 6
Benjamin Hallowel 7
Samuel Waterhouse, _Secretary_ 7
James Porter, _Comptroller Gen'l_ 1
Walter Barrell, _Inspector Gen'l_ 6
James Murray, _Inspector_ 7
William Woolen, _Inspector_ 2
Edward Winslow, _Collector, Boston_ 1
Charles Dudley, _Collector, Newport_ 2
George Meserve, _Collector, Piscataq_ 1
Robert Hallowel, _Comptroller, Boston_, 6
Arthur Savage, _Surveyor, &c._ 6
Nathaniel Coffin, _Cashier_ 4
Ebenezer Bridgham, _Tide Surveyor_ 8
Nathaniel Taylor, _Dep'y Naval Officer_ 2
Samuel Mather, _Clerk_ 3
Samuel Lloyd, _Clerk_ 6
Christopher Minot, _Land Waiter_ 1
Ward Chipman, _Clerk Sol._ 1
Robert Bethel, _Clerk Col._ 1
Skinner, Cookson, and Evans _Clerks_ 3
James Barrick, _Clerk Insp._ 5
John Ciely, _Tidesman_ 4
John Sam Petit, _Tidesman_ 6
John Selby, _Clerk_ 2
Edward Mulhall, _Tidesman_ 1
Hammond Green, _Tidesman_ 1
John Lewis, _Tidesman_ 6
Elkanah Cushman, _Tidesman_ 1
Edmund Duyer, _Messenger_ 3
Samuel Chadwel, Tidesman__ 1
Samuel Sparhawk, _Clerk_ 5
---- Chandler, _Land Waiter_ 1
---- Patterson, _Land Waiter_ 1
Isaac Messengham, _Coxwain_ 1
Owen Richard, _Coxwain_ 1
_Refugees._
Ashley, Joseph 1
Andros, Barret 1
Atkinson, John, _Merchant_ 4
Atkins, Gibbs 1
Ayres, Eleanor 3
Allen, Ebenezer 8
Bowes, William, _Merchant_ 4
Brinley, Thomas, _Merchant_ 3
Burton, Mary, _Milliner_ 2
Bowen, John 2
Blair, John, Baker 1
Bowman, Archibald, _Auctioneer_ 1
Broderick, John 3
Butter, James 2
Brown, Thomas, _Merchant_ 6
Byles, Rev'd Doctor 5
Barnard. John 1
Black, John 7
Baker, John, Jun'r 1
Badger, Rev'd Moses 1
Beath, Mary 4
Butler, Gilliam 1
Brandon, John 2
Brattle, William 2
Coffin, Williamn 2
Cazneau, Andrew, _Lawyer_ 1
Cednor, William 1
Connor, Mrs. 2
Cummins. A. and E. _Milliners_ 3
Coffin, William, Jun'r, _Merchant_ 4
Cutler, Ebnezer 1
Campbel, William 1
Caner, Rev'd Doctor 1
Cook Robert 1
Chandler, John, Esq'r 1
Chandler, Rufus, _Lawyer_ 2
Chandler, Nathaniel 1
Chandler, William 1
Carver, Melzer 1
Cooley, John 4
Courtney, Thomas 11
Carr, Mrs. 3
Deblois, Gilbert 5
Doyley, John 4
Dunlap, Daniel 1
Danforth, Thomas 1
Dumaresq, Philip, _Merchant_ 8
De Blois, Lewis 3
Duncan, Alexander 1
Doyley, Francis 1
Dickenson, Nathaniel 1
Draper, Margaret 5
Dougherty, Edward 2
Dechezzan, Adam 7
Duelly, William 3
Emerson, John 1
Etter, Peter 7
Fisher, Wilfree 4
Foster, Thomas 1
Faneuil, Benjamin, _Merchant_ 3
Fitch, Samuel, _Lawyer_ 7
Foster, Edward, _Blacksmith_ 7
Full, Thomas 5
Foster, Edward, Jun'r 5
Forest, James 7
Flucker, Mrs. 6
Gilbert, Thomas 1
Gallop, Antill 1
Gray, Andrew 1
Gray, John 3
Goldsbury, Samuel 3
Gardiner, Doctor Sylvester 8
Gridley, Benjamin 1
Grison, Edmund 2
Gay, Martin 3
Gilbert, Samuel 1
Grozart, John 1
Gray, Mary 1
Green, Francis 8
Greenwood, Samuel 5
Grant, James 1
Griffith, Mrs. 3
Gore, John 3
Griffin, Edmund 4
Hill, William 17
Hallowel, Rebecca 4
Hall, Luke 1
Henderson, James 5
House, Joseph 1
Hughes, Samuel 1
Hooper, Jacob 2
Hicks, John, _Printer_ 1
Hurlston, Richard 1
Holmes, Benjamin Mulberry 11
Hatch, Hawes 1
Hale, Samuel 1
Hester, John 6
Hutchinsen, Mrs. 7
Horn, Henry 7
Hefferson, Jane 1
Heath, William 1
Jones, Mary 6
Jarvis, Robert 1
Inman, John 3
Joy, John 8
Ireland, John 2
Jefferies, Doctor John 6
Johannot, Peter 1
Jones, Mrs. 4
Knutter, Margaret 4
King, Edward and Samuel 7
Lazarus, Samuel 1
Lovel, John, Sen'r 5
Leonard, George 9
Liste, Mrs. 5
Lillie, Theophilus 4
Lutwiche, Edward Goldston 1
Lyde, Byefield 5
Leddel, Henry 4
Laughton, Henry 5
Lloyd, Henry 10
Linkieter, Alexander 4
Lowe, Charles 2
Loring, Joshua, Jun'r 1
Murray, William 3
Moody, John, Jun'r 1
McKown, John 1
McAlpine, William 2
Moody, John 4
McKown, John (of Boston) 5
Macdonald, Dennis 1
Mackay, Mrs. 1
Mitchelson, David 2
McNeil, Archibald 13
Marston, Benjamin 1
Moore, John 1
Miller, John 5
Mulcainy, Patrick 4
MacKinstrey, Mrs. 12
Morrison, John 1
McMaster, Patrick and Daniel 3
McMullen, Alexander 1
Mitchel, Thomas 1
Mills, Nathaniel 2
McClintock, Nathan 1
Nevin, Lazarus and wife 2
O'Neil, Joseph 4
Oliver, William Sanford 1
Oliver, Doctor Peter 1
Powel, John 8
Philips, Martha 3
Phipps, David 11
Pelham, Henry 1
Putnam, James 7
Paine, Samuel 1
Perkins, Nathaniel 1
Patterson, William 3
Philipps, Ebenezer 1
Paddock, Adine 9
Pollard, Benjamin 1
Patten, George 3
Perkins, William Lee 4
Price, Benjamin 2
Page, George 1
Rummer, Richard 3
Rogers, Jeremiah Dummer 2
Rogers, Samuel 1
Richardson, Miss 1
Rose, Peter 1
Read, Charles 1
Ramage, John 1
Roath, Richard 6
Rhodes, Henry 5
Russell, Nathaniel 3
Richards, Mrs. 3
Ruggles, John and Richard 2
Smith, Henry 6
Sullivan, George 1
Serjeant, John 1
Scoit, Joseph 3
Simonds, William 3
Stow, Edward 4
Sterling, Elizabeth 1
Sterling, Benjamin Ferdinand 1
Simpson, John 5
Simpson, Jonathan, Jun'r 2
Semple, Robert 4
Stayner, Abigail 3
Stearns, Jonathan 1
Savage, Abraham 1
Saltonstal, Leveret 1
Service, Robert 5
Snelling, Jonathan 6
Sullivan, Bartholomew 2
Smith, Edward 4
Spooner, Ebenezer 1
Selknig, James 6
Scammel, Thomas 1
Shepard, Joseph 2
Thompson, James 1
Taylor, Mrs. 5
Terry, Zebedee 1
Terry, William 4
Taylor, William 2
Winslow, Isaac 11
Winslow, Pelham 1
Winslow, John 4
Winslow, Mrs. Hannah 4
Winslow, Edward 1
Williams, Seth 1
Willis, David 4
Wittington, William 3
Warden, William 2
Williams, Job 1
Warren, Abraham 1
Willard, Abel 4
Warden, Joseph 3
Willard, Abijah 1
Whiston, Obadiah 3
Wheelwright, Joseph 1
Winnet, John, Jun'r 1
Wright, Daniel 2
Welsh, Peter 1
White, Gideon 1
Wilson, Archibald 1
Welsh, James 1
Worral, Thomas Grooby 5
----
[927]926
FOR MR. SAMUEL B. BARRELL
From his friend and kinsman,
THEODORE BARRELL
Saugerties Ulster Co.,
New York, Aug. 16, 1841
MANDAMUS COUNSELLORS.
_Salem, Aug. 9, 1774._ The following were appointed by his majesty,
counsellors of this province by writ of mandamas,[101] viz:--
[101] Those whose names are in italics alone took the oath of office.
Col. Thomas Oliver, Lieut. Governor, President; Peter Oliver, _Thomas
Flucker_, _Foster Hutchinson_, Thomas Hutchinson, Jr., _Harrison Gray_,
Judge Samuel Danforth, Col. John Erving, Jr., James Russell, Timothy
Ruggles, _Joseph Lee_, _Isaac Winslow_, Israel Williams, Col. George
Watson, Nathaniel Ray Thomas, Timothy Woodbridge, William Vassall,
_William Browne_, Joseph Greene, _James Boutineau_, Andrew Oliver, Col.
Josiah Edson, Richard Lechmere, _Commodore Joshua Loring_, John
Worthington, Timothy Paine, _William Pepperell_, Jeremiah Powell,
Jonathan Simpson, Col. John Murray, Daniel Leonard, Thomas Palmer, Col.
Isaac Royall, Robert Hooper, Abijah Willard, _Capt. John Erring, Jr._
BANISHMENT ACT OF THE STATE OF MASSACHUSETTS.
An Act to prevent the return to this state of certain persons
therein named, and others who have left this state or either of the
United States, and joined the enemies thereof.
Whereas Thomas Hutchinson, Esq., late governor of this state, Francis
Bernard, Esq., formerly governor of this state, Thomas Oliver, Esq.,
late lieutenant governor of this state, Timothy Ruggles, Esq., of
Hardwick, in the county of Worcester, William Apthorp, merchant, Gibbs
Atkins, cabinet maker, John Atkinson, John Amory, James Anderson, Thomas
Apthorp, David Black, William Burton, William Bowes, George Brindley,
Robert Blair, Thomas Brindley, James Barrick, merchant, Thomas Brattle,
Esq., Sampson Salter Blowers, Esq., James Bruce, Ebenezer Bridgham,
Alexander Brymer, Edward Berry, merchants, William Burch, Esq., late
commissioner of the customs, Mather Byles, Jun., clerk, William Codner,
book-keeper, Edward Cox, merchant, Andrew Cazneau, Esq., barrister at
law, Henry Canner, clerk, Thomas Courtney, tailor, Richard Clark, Esq.,
Isaac Clark, physician, Benjamin Church, physician, John Coffin,
distiller, John Clark, physician, William Coffin, Esq., Nathaniel
Coffin, Esq., Jonathan Clark, merchant, Archibald Cunningham,
shop-keeper, Gilbert Deblois, merchant, Lewis Deblois, merchant, Philip
Dumaresque, merchant, Benjamin Davis, merchant, John Erving, Jun. Esq.,
George Erving, Esq., Edward Foster and Edward Foster, Jun., blacksmiths,
Benjamin Faneuil, Jun., merchant, Thomas Flucker, Esq., late secretary
for Massachusetts Bay, Samuel Fitch, Esq., Wilfret Fisher, carter, James
Forrest, merchant, Lewis Gray, merchant, Francis Green, merchant, Joseph
Green, Esq., Sylvester Gardiner, Esq., Harrison Gray, Esq., late
treasurer of Massachusetts Bay., Harrison Gray, Jun., clerk to the
treasurer, Joseph Goldthwait, Esq., Martin Gay, founder, John Gore,
Esq., Benjamin Hallowell, Esq., Robert Hallowell, Esq., Thomas
Hutchinson, Jun., Esq., Benjamin Gridley, Esq., Frederick William Geyer,
merchant, John Greenlaw, shopkeeper, David Green, merchant, Elisha
Hutchinson, Esq., James Hall, mariner, Foster Hutchinson, Esq., Benjamin
Mulbury Holmes, distiller, Samuel Hodges, book-keeper, Henry Halson,
Esq., Hawes Hatch, wharfinger, John Joy, housewright, Peter Johonnot,
distiller, William Jackson, merchant, John Jeffries, physician, Henry
Laughton, merchant, James Henderson, trader, John Hinston, yeoman,
Christopher Hatch, mariner, Robert Jarvis, mariner, Richard Lechmere,
Esq., Edward Lyde, merchant, Henry Lloyd, Esq., George Leonard, miller,
Henry Leddle, book-keeper, Archibald McNeil, baker, Christopher Minot,
tide-waiter, James Murray, Esq., William McAlpine, bookbinder, Thomas
Mitchell, mariner, William Martin, Esq., John Knutton, tallow-chandler,
Thomas Knight, shop-keeper, Samuel Prince, merchant, Adino Paddock,
Esq., Charles Paxon, Esq., Sir William Pepperell, baronet, John Powell,
Esq., William Lee Perkins, physician, Nathaniel Perkins, Esq., Samuel
Quincy, Esq., Owen Richards, tide-waiter, Samuel Rogers, merchant,
Jonathan Simpson, Esq., George Spooner, merchant, Edward Stowe, mariner,
Richard Smith, merchant, Jonathan Snelling, Esq., David Silsby, trader,
Samuel Sewall, Esq., Abraham Savage, tax-gatherer, Joseph Scott, Esq.,
Francis Skinner, clerk to the late council, William Simpson, merchant,
Richard Sherwin, saddler, Henry Smith, merchant, John Semple, merchant,
Robert Semple, merchant, Thomas Selkrig, merchant, James Selkrig,
merchant, Robert Service, trader, Simon Tufts, trader, Arodi Thayer,
late marshal to the admiralty court, Nathaniel Taylor, deputy naval
officer, John Troutbeck, clerk, Gregory Townsend, Esq., William Taylor,
merchant, William Vassal, Esq., Joseph Taylor, merchant, Joshua Upham,
Esq., William Walter, clerk, Samuel Waterhouse, merchant, Isaac Winslow,
merchant, John Winslow. jr., merchant, David Willis, mariner, Obadiah
Whiston, blacksmith, Archibald Wilson, trader, John White, mariner,
William Warden, peruke-maker, Nathaniel Mills, John Hicks, John Howe,
and John Fleming, printers, all of Boston, in the county of Suffolk,
Robert Auchmuty, Esq., Joshua Loring, Esq., both of Roxbury, in the same
county, Samuel Goldsbury, yeoman, of Wrentham, in the county of Suffolk,
Joshua Loring, jr., merchant, Nathanial Hatch, Esq., both of Dorchester,
in the same county, William Brown, Esq., Benjamin Pickman, Esq., Samuel
Porter, Esq., John Sargeant, trader, all of Salem, in the county of
Essex, Richard Saltonstall, Esq., of Haverhill, in the same county.
Thomas Robie, trader, Benjamin Marston, merchant, both of Marblehead, in
said county of Essex, Moses Badger, clerk, of Haverhill, aforesaid,
Jonathan Sewall, Esq., John Vassal, Esq., David Phipps, Esq., John
Nutting, carpenter, all of Cambridge, in the county of Middlesex, Isaac
Royall, Esq., of Medford, in the same county, Henry Barnes, of
Marlborough, in said county of Middlesex, merchant, Jeremiah Dummer
Rogers, of Littleton in the same county, Esq., Daniel Bliss, of Concord,
in the said county of Middlesex, Esq., Charles Russell, of Lincoln, in
the same county, physician, Joseph Adams, of Townsend, in said county of
Middlesex, Thomas Danforth, of Charlestown, in said county, Esq., Joshua
Smith, trader of Townsend, in said county, Joseph Ashley, jr.,
gentleman, of Sunderland, Nathaniel Dickenson, gentleman, of Deerfield,
Samuel Bliss, shopkeeper, of Greenfield, Roger Dickenson, yeoman, Joshah
Pomroy, physician, and Thomas Cutler, gentleman, of Hatfield, Jonathan
Bliss, Esq., of Springfield, William Galway, yeoman, of Conway, Elijah
Williams, attorney at law, of Deerfield, James Oliver, gentleman, of
Conway, all in the county of Hampshire, Pelham Winslow, Esq., Cornelius
White, mariner, Edward Winslow, jr., Esq., all of Plymouth, in the
county of Plymouth, Peter Oliver, Esq., Peter Oliver, jr., physician,
both of Middleborough, in the same county, Josiah Edson, Esq., of
Bridgewater, in the said county of Plymouth, Lieutenant Daniel Dunbar,
of Halifax, in the same county, Charles Curtis, of Scituate, in the said
county of Plymouth, gentleman, Nathaniel Ray Thomas, Esq., Israel
Tilden, Caleb Carver, Seth Bryant, Benjamin Walker, Gideon Walker, Zera
Walker, Adam Hall, tertius, Isaac Joice, Joseph Phillips, Daniel White,
jr., Cornelius White, tertius, Melzar Carver, Luke Hall, Thomas Decrow,
John Baker, jr., all of Marshfield, in the said county of Plymouth,
Gideon White, jr., Daniel Leonard, Esq., Seth Williams, jr., gentleman,
Solomon Smith, boatman, all of Taunton, in the county of Bristol, Thomas
Gilbert, Esq., Perez Gilbert, Ebenezer Hathaway, jr., Lot Strange, the
third, Zebedee Terree, Bradford Gilbert, all of Freetown, in the same
county, Joshua Broomer, Shadrach Hathaway, Calvin Hathaway, Luther
Hathaway, Henry Tisdel, William Burden, Levi Chace, Shadrach Chace,
Richard Holland, Ebenezer Phillips, Samuel Gilbert, gentleman, Thomas
Gilbert, jr., yeoman, both of Berkley, in the said county of Bristol,
Ammi Chace, Caleb Wheaton, Joshua Wilbore, Lemuel Bourn, gentleman,
Thomas Perry, yeoman, David Atkins, laborer, Samuel Perry, mariner,
Stephen Perry, laborer, John Blackwell, jr., laborer, Francis Finney,
laborer, and Nehemiah Webb, mariner, all of Sandwich, in the county of
Barnstable, Eldad Tupper, of Dartmouth, in the county of Bristol,
laborer, Silas Perry, laborer, Seth Perry, mariner, Elisha Bourn,
gentleman, Thomas Bumpus, yeoman, Ephraim Ellis, jr., yeoman, Edward
Bourn, gentleman, Nicholas Cobb, laborer, William Bourn, cordwainer, all
of Sandwich, in the county of Barnstable, and Seth Bangs, of Harwich, in
the county of Barnstable, mariner, John Chandler, Esq., James Putnam,
Esq., Rufus Chandler, gentleman, William Paine, physician, Adam Walker,
blacksmith, William Chandler, gentleman, all of Worcester, in the county
of Worcester, John Walker, gentleman, David Bush, yeoman, both of
Shrewsbury, in the same county, Abijah Willard, Esq., Abel Willard,
Esq., Joseph House, yeoman, all of Lancaster, in the said county of
Worcester, Ebenezer Cutler, trader, James Edgar, yeoman, both of
Northbury, in the same county, Daniel Oliver, Esq., Richard Ruggles,
yeoman, Gardner Chandler, trader, Joseph Ruggles, gentleman, Nathaniel
Ruggles, yeoman, all of Hardwick, in the said county of Worcester, John
Ruggles, yeoman, of said Hardwick, John Eager, yeoman, Ebenezer Whipple,
Israel Conkay, John Murray, Esq., of Rutland, in said county of
Worcester, Daniel Murray, gentleman, Samuel Murray, gentleman, Michael
Martin, trader, of Brookfield, in the said county of Worcester, Thomas
Beaman, gentleman, of Petersham, in the same county, Nathaniel Chandler,
gentleman, John Bowen, gentleman, of Princeton, in the said county of
Worcester, James Crage, gentleman, of Oakham, in the same county, Thomas
Mullins, blacksmith, of Leominster, in the said county of Worcester,
Francis Waldo, Esq., Arthur Savage, Esq., Jeremiah Pote, mariner, Thomas
Ross, mariner, James Wildridge, mariner, George Lyde, custom house
officer, Robert Pagan, merchant, Thomas Wyer, mariner, Thomas Coulson,
merchant, John Wiswall, clerk, Joshua Eldridge, mariner, Thomas Oxnard,
merchant, Edward Oxnard, merchant, William Tyng, Esq., John Wright,
merchant, Samuel Longfellow, mariner, all of Falmouth, in the county of
Cumberland, Charles Callahan, of Pownalborough, in the county of
Lincoln, mariner, Jonas Jones of East Hoosuck, in the county of
Berkshire, David Ingersoll, of Great Barrington, Esq., in the same
county, Jonathan Prindall, Benjamin Noble, Francis Noble, Elisha Jones,
of Pittsfield, in the said county of Berkshire, John Graves, yeoman,
Daniel Brewer, yeoman, both of Pittsfield, aforesaid, Richard Square, of
Lanesborough, in the said county of Berkshire, Ephraim Jones, of East
Hoosuck, in the same county. Lewis Hubbel, and many other persons have
left this state, or some other of the United States of America, and
joined the enemies thereof and of the United States of America, thereby
not only depriving these states of their personal services at a time
when they ought to have afforded their utmost aid in defending the said
states, against the invasions of a cruel enemy, but manifesting an
inimical disposition to the said states, and a design, to aid and abet
the enemies thereof in their wicked purposes, and whereas many dangers
may accrue to this state and the United States, if such persons should
be again admitted to reside in this state:
Sect. 1. Be it therefore enacted by the Council and House of
Representatives, in general court assembled, and by the authority of the
same, that if either of the said persons, or any other person, though
not specially named in this act, who have left this state, or either of
said states, and joined the enemies thereof as aforesaid, shall, after
the passing this act, voluntarily return to this state, it shall be the
duty of the sheriff of the county, and of the selectmen, committees of
correspondence, safety, and inspection, grand jurors, constables, and
tythingmen, and other inhabitants of the town wherein such person or
persons may presume to come, and they are hereby respectively empowered
and directed forthwith to apprehend and carry such person or persons
before some justice of the peace within the county, who is hereby
required to commit him or them to the common gaol within the county,
there in close custody to remain until he shall be sent out of the
state, as is hereinafter directed; and such justice is hereby directed
to give immediate information thereof to the board of war of this state:
and the said board of war are hereby empowered and directed to cause
such person or persons so committed, to be transported to some part or
place within the dominions, or in the possession of the forces of the
king of Great Britain, as soon as may be after receiving such
information: those who are able, at their own expense, and others at the
expense of this state, and for this purpose to hire a vessel or vessels,
if need be.
Sect. 2. And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, that if
any person or persons, who shall be transported as aforesaid, shall
voluntarily return into this state, without liberty first had and
obtained from the general court, he shall, on conviction thereof before
the superior court of judicature, court of assize and general gaol
delivery, suffer the pains of death without benefit of clergy.--[_Passed
September, 1778._]
WORCESTER RESOLUTIONS RELATING TO THE ABSENTEES AND REFUGEES.
The following votes were passed by the citizens of Worcester, May 19,
1783, and contain the substance of their doings relative to the
refugees:
Voted,----That in the opinion of this town, it would be extremely
dangerous to the peace, happiness, liberty and safety of these states to
suffer those who, the moment the bloody banners were displayed,
abandoned their native land, turned parricides, and conspired to involve
their country in tumult, ruin and blood, to become subjects of and
reside in this government; that it would be not only dangerous, but
inconsistent with justice, policy, our past laws, the public faith, and
the principles of a free and independent state, to admit them ourselves,
or have them forced upon us without our consent.
Voted,----That in the opinion of this town, this commonwealth ought,
with the utmost caution, to naturalize or in any other way admit as
subjects a common enemy, a set of people who have been by the united
voice of the continent, declared outlaws, exiles, aliens and enemies,
dangerous to its political being and happiness.
Voted,----That while there are thousands of the innocent, peaceable and
defenceless inhabitants of these states, whose property has been
destroyed and taken from them in the course of the war, for whom no
provision is made, to whom there is no restoration of estates, no
compensation for losses; that it would be unreasonable, cruel and
unjust, to suffer those who were the wicked occasion of those losses, to
obtain a restitution of the estates they refused to protect, and which
they abandoned and forfeited to their country.
Voted,----That it is the expectation of this town, and the earnest
request of their committees of correspondence, inspection and safety,
that they, with care and diligence, will observe the movements of our
only remaining enemies; that until the further order of government, they
will, with decision, spirit and firmness, endeavor to enforce and carry
into execution the several laws of this commonwealth, respecting these
enemies to our rights, and the rights of mankind; give information
should they know of any obtruding themselves into any part of this
state, suffer none to remain in this town, but cause to be confined
immediately, for the purpose of transportation according to law, any
that may presume to enter it.
CONFISCATION ACT.
CONSPIRACY ACT.
An Act to confiscate the estates of certain notorious conspirators
against the government and liberties of the inhabitants of the late
province, now state, of Massachusetts Bay.
Whereas the several persons hereinafter mentioned, have wickedly
conspired to overthrow and destroy the constitution and government of
the late province of Massachusetts Bay, as established by the charter
agreed upon by and between their late majesties William and Mary, late
King and Queen of England, etc., and the inhabitants of said province,
now state, of Massachusetts Bay; and also to reduce the said inhabitants
under the absolute power and domination of the present king, and of the
parliament of Great Britain, and, as far as in them lay, have aided and
assisted the same king and parliament in their endeavors to establish a
despotic government over the said inhabitants:
Sect. 1. Be it enacted by the Council and House of Representatives, in
General Court assembled, and by the authority of the same, that Francis
Bernard, baronet, Thomas Hutchinson, Esq., late governor of the late
province, now state, of Massachusetts Bay, Thomas Oliver, Esq., late
lieutenant governor, Harrison Grey, Esq., late treasurer, Thomas
Flucker, Esq., late secretary, Peter Oliver, Esq., late chief justice,
Foster Hutchinson, John Erving, jr., George Erving, William Pepperell,
baronet, James Boutineau, Joshua Loring, Nathaniel Hatch, William
Browne, Richard Lechmere, Josiah Edson, Nathaniel Rae Thomas, Timothy
Ruggles, John Murray, Abijah Willard, and Daniel Leonard, Esqs., late
mandamus counsellors of said late province, William Burch, Henry Hulton,
Charles Paxon, and Benjamin Hallowell, Esqs., late commissioners of the
customs, Robert Auchmuty, Esq., late judge of the vice-admiralty court,
Jonathan Sewall, Esq., late attorney general, Samuel Quincy, Esq., late
solicitor general, Samuel Fitch, Esq., solicitor or counsellor at law to
the board of commissioners, have justly incurred the forfeiture of all
their property, rights and liberties, holden under and derived from the
government and laws of this state; and that each and every of the
persons aforenamed and described, shall be held, taken, deemed and
adjudged to have renounced and lost all civil and political relation to
this and the other United States of America, and be considered as
aliens.
Sect. 2. Be it enacted by the authority aforesaid, that all the goods
and chattels, rights and credits, lands, tenements, and hereditaments of
every kind, of which any of the persons herein before named and
described, were seized or possessed, or were entitled to possess, hold,
enjoy, or demand, in their own right, or which any other person stood or
doth stand seized or possessed of, or are or were entitled to have or
demand to and for their use, benefit and behoof, shall escheat, enure
and accrue to the sole use and benefit of the government and people of
this state, and are accordingly hereby declared so to escheat, enure and
accrue, and the said government and people shall be taken, deemed and
adjudged, and are accordingly hereby declared to be in the real and
actual possession of all such goods, chattels, rights and credits,
lands, tenements and hereditaments, without further inquiry,
adjudication or determination hereafter to be had: any thing in the act,
entitled, "An act for confiscating the effects of certain persons
commonly called absentees," or any other law, usage, or custom to the
contrary notwithstanding; provided always, that the escheat shall not be
construed to extend to or operate upon, any goods, chattels, rights,
credits, lands, tenements or hereditaments, of which the persons afore
named and described, or some other, in their right and to their use,
have not been seized or possessed, or entitled to be seized or
possessed, or to have or demand as aforesaid, since the nineteenth day
of April, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and
seventy-five.--[_Passed April 30, 1779. Not revised._]
STATE OF MASSACHUSETTS.
An Act for confiscating the estates of certain persons commonly called
absentees.
Whereas every government hath a right to command the personal service of
all its members, whenever the exigencies of the state shall require it,
especially in times of an impending or actual invasion, no member
thereof can then withdraw himself from the jurisdiction of the
government, and thereby deprive it of the benefit of his personal
services, without justly incurring the forfeiture of all his property,
rights and liberties, holden under and derived from that constitution of
government, to the support of which he hath refused to afford his aid
and assistance: and whereas the king of Great Britain did cause the
parliament thereof to pass divers acts in direct violation of the
fundamental rights of the people of this and of the other United States
of America; particularly one certain act to vacate and annul the charter
of this government, the great compact made and agreed upon between his
royal predecessors and our ancestors; and one other act, declaring the
people of said states to be out of his protection; and did also levy war
against them, for the purpose of erecting and establishing an arbitrary
and despotic government over them; whereupon it became the indispensable
duty of all the people of said states forthwith to unite in defence of
their common freedom, and by arms to oppose the fleets and armies of the
said king; yet nevertheless, divers of the members of this and of the
other United States of America, evilly disposed, or regardless of their
duty towards their country, did withdraw themselves from this, and other
of the said United States, into parts and places under the acknowledged
authority and dominion of the said king of Great Britain, or into parts
and places within the limits of the said states, but in the actual
possession and under the power of the fleets or armies of the said king;
thereby abandoning the liberties of their country, seeking the
protection of the said king, and of his fleets or armies, and aiding or
giving encouragement and countenance to their operations against the
United States aforesaid:
Sect. 1. Be it enacted by the Council and House of Representatives, in
General Court assembled, and by the authority of the same, that every
inhabitant and member of the late province, now state, of Massachusetts
Bay, or of any other of the late provinces or colonies, now United
States of America, who, since the nineteenth day of April, Anno Domini
one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five, hath levied war or
conspired to levy war against the government and people of any of the
said provinces or colonies, or United States; or who hath adhered to the
said king of Great Britain, his fleets or armies, enemies of the said
provinces or colonies or United States, or hath given to them aid or
comfort; or who, since the said nineteenth day of April, Anno Domini one
thousand seven hundred and seventy-five, hath withdrawn, without the
permission of the legislative or executive authority of this or some
other of the said United States, from any of the said provinces or
colonies, or United States, into parts and places under the acknowledged
authority and dominion of the said king-of Great Britain, or into any
parts or places within the limits of any of the said provinces,
colonies, or United States, being in the actual possession and under the
power of the fleets or armies of the said king; or who, before the said
nineteenth day of April, Anno Domini one thousand seven hundred and
seventy-five, and after the arrival of Thomas Gage, Esq., (late
commander-in-chief of all his Britannic Majesty's forces in North
America,) at Boston, the metropolis of this state, did withdraw from
their usual places of habitation within this state, into the said town
of Boston, with an intention to seek and obtain the protection of the
said Thomas Gage and of the said forces, then and there being under his
command: and who hath died in any of the said parts or places, or hath
not returned into some one of the said United States, and been received
as a subject thereof, and (if required) taken an oath of allegiance to
such states, shall beheld, taken, deemed and adjudged to have freely
renounced all civil and political relation to each and every of the said
United States, and be considered as an alien.
Sect. 2. And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, that all
the goods and chattels, rights and credits, lands, tenements,
hereditaments of every kind, of which any of the persons herein before
described were seized or possessed, or were entitled to possess, hold,
enjoy or demand, in their own right, or which any other person stood or
doth stand seized or possessed of, or are or were entitled to have or
demand to and for their use, benefit and behoof, shall escheat, enure
and accrue to the sole use and benefit of the government and people of
this state, and are accordingly hereby declared so to escheat, enure and
accrue.--[_Passed April 30, 1779. Not revised._]
BIOGRAPHIES
OF THE
LOYALISTS _of_ MASSACHUSETTS
THOMAS HUTCHINSON.
GOVERNOR OF MASSACHUSETTS 1771-4.
Among all the loyalists of the revolted colonies, there was none so
illustrious, through his position and abilities, as Thomas Hutchinson,
Governor of Massachusetts. No public man of this State was ever subject
to more slander, personal abuse, and misrepresentation than he, and no
son of Massachusetts ever did so much to benefit and advance the best
interests of the State; beyond all question he was the greatest and most
famous man Massachusetts has ever produced.
Descended from one of the oldest and most noted of Massachusetts
families, he was not one of the first members of it to acquire
prominence, that distinction belongs to the celebrated Ann Hutchinson,
wife of William Hutchinson who came over in 1634, "that woman of ready
wit and bold spirit," more than a match for her reverend and magisterial
inquisitors, and who won to her side men even of such power as John
Cotton and Sir Henry Vane. She was finally banished and with her
followers went to live under the protection of the Dutch, at Long Island
where she and all of her family except one child were killed by the
Indians[102], her husband having died the year previous.[103] Her
grandson, Elisha Hutchinson, became the first chief justice under the
old charter and afterwards assistant and commander of the town of
Boston. His son, Col. Thomas Hutchinson, was of scarcely less note. He
it was who seized Captain Kidd when he resisted the officers of justice
sent against him, and was the father of Governor Thomas Hutchinson. He
was a wealthy merchant, and councillor who made his native town a sharer
in his prosperity by founding the North End Grammar School. He lived in
the North Square in the finest house in Boston. Here his son, the future
governor, was born Sept. 9, 1711 and the two, father and son, occupied
it for more than sixty years, till it was sacked by the mob in 1765.
[102] This was Colonel Edward H. Hutchinson who was killed by the
Indians during King Philip's war. He was father of Elisha Hutchinson.
[103] William Hutchinson was the first grantee of East Milton, where the
Governor afterwards resided. He settled in Boston on the "Old Corner
Bookstore" lot, corner of School and Washington streets. William
Hutchinson was the grandson of John Hutchinson, Mayor of Lincoln,
England.
When five and a half years old the boy was sent to the school
established by his father, and at the age of twelve went thence to
Harvard College. He graduated in 1727, and three years after he took the
degree of Master of Arts. He then became a merchant--apprentice in his
father's counting room. At the age of twenty-one, he had amassed by his
own efforts L500. He married Margaret Sanford, daughter of the Governor
of Rhode Island. In 1735 he joined the church, in 1737 he became
selectman of Boston, and four months later, was elected Representative
to the General Court. At the age of twenty-six, he entered upon his
wonderful career, so strangely and sadly varied. When he stepped into
leadership, he seemed simply to come to his own, for since the
foundation of Massachusetts Bay there had been no time when some of his
name and line had not been in the front.
From the first he is set to deal with questions of finance; as early as
June 3, 1737, he is appointed to wrestle with a tax bill, and before the
end of the year he is settling a boundary dispute with New Hampshire,
and it was a mark of confidence when in 1740 he was appointed, being
then 29, to go to England to represent the case to men in power. A far
more memorable service than this had already been entered upon by him,
and was resumed upon his return in which he was thoroughly successful in
spite of great difficulties, it also having a close relation with the
coming into being of the United States.
New England was at this time cursed with an irredeemable paper currency.
Democracies never appear to so poor advantage as in the management of
finances, and no more conspicuous instance in point can be cited, than
that of provincial New England, throughout the first half of the 18th
century. The Assembly, the members of which were simply the mouthpieces
of the towns, surrendered their private judgment and became submissive
to the "Instruction" which they received at the time of their election,
was uniformly by a large majority, in favor of an irredeemable paper
currency. Before the enormous evils which early became apparent and
constantly grew in magnitude, the Assembly was impotent. Widows and
orphans, classes dependent on fixed incomes, were reduced to distress,
creditors found themselves defrauded of their just dues, till almost
nothing was left, a universal gambling spirit was promoted. The people
saw no way to meet the evil but by new, and ever new issues of the
wretched script, until with utter callousness of conscience, men
repudiated contracts voluntarily entered upon, and recklessly discounted
the resources of future generations by placing upon them the obligations
their own shoulders should have borne. The action of the Council in
which the higher class was represented was uniformly more wise, and
honorable, than that of the lower House during this period of financial
distress, and it is especially to be noted that King and Parliament
threw their influence on the right side, and sought repeatedly to save
the poor blind people from themselves. The right of the home government
to interfere in colonial affairs was then never questioned.
Massachusetts would dodge if she could, the government mandates, but the
theories of a later time, that Parliament had no jurisdiction over sea
and that the King, having granted the charter, had put it out of his
power to touch the provincial policy, in these days found no expression.
The Revolution was now preparing, the Colonies were chafing under
restrictions imposed beyond the ocean for their own benefit. It is now
generally admitted, that this was one of the first causes of the
Revolution, perhaps the most potent of all causes. In all this time of
distress no figure is apparent so marked with traits of greatness as
that of Thomas Hutchinson. All the Colonies were infected with the same
craze, but no other man in America saw the way out. Franklin, level
headed though he was, elaborately advocated paper money, turning a good
penny in its manufacture.[104] The father of Samuel Adams was one of the
directors of the iniquitous "Land Bank" and the part taken by Hutchinson
in causing Parliament to close it, was what led to the undying hatred of
Samuel Adams towards Hutchinson, and the Government. When "Instructions"
were reported in Town Meeting, Hutchinson was immediately on his feet,
and declared he would not observe them, there were immediately cries
"Choose another Representative." This could not be done during the
session; he consistently threw his influence on the hard money side, and
so far lost popularity that he was dropped in 1739. He was, however,
elected again in 1742, and was Speaker in 1746-7-8.
[104] A Modest Inquiry into the Nature and Necessity of a Paper
Currency.
What saved the province from financial ruin at this time was the capture
of Louisburg. This warlike enterprise of Shirley led the country to
increase its debt to between two and three million dollars, but the
paper money was so depreciated at the close of the war that L1,200 was
equal to only L100 sterling. Parliament very generously voted to
reimburse the Province for the expense it had gone to in this war, and
voted to pay L183,649, 2s 7 1-2d sterling.
Mr. Hutchinson, who was then Speaker of the House of Representatives,
considered this to be a most favorable opportunity for abolishing bills
of credit, the source of so much iniquity, and for establishing a stable
currency of gold and silver for the future. L2,200,000 would be
outstanding in bills in the year 1749 L180,000 sterling at eleven for
one, which was the rate at that time, would redeem all but L220,000. It
was therefore proposed that Parliament should ship to the Province
Spanish dollars, and apply same to redeem the bills, and that the
remainder of the bills should be met by a tax on the year 1749. This
would finish the bills. The Governor approved of the bill prepared by
Mr. Hutchinson but when the Speaker laid the proposal before the House,
it was received with a smile; for a long time the fight was hopeless,
many weeks were spent in debating it.
The large class of debtors preferred paper to anything more solid.
Others claimed that though the plan might have merit, the bills must be
put an end to in a gradual way, a "fatal shock" would be felt by so
sudden a return to a specie basis. When the vote was taken the bill was
decisively rejected. The chance of escaping from bondage seemed to be
irrecoverably gone. A motion to reconsider having been carried, the
conviction overtook some men of influence, and the bill for a wonder
passed. The Governor and Council were prompt to ratify, and while the
people marvelled, it was done. The streets were filled with angry men
and when it was reported that Hutchinson's home was on fire there were
cries in the street "Curse him, let it burn." His fine home at Milton, a
recent purchase, many thought should be protected by a guard. The
infatuation was so great, the wish was often expressed that the ship
bringing the treasure might sink. Many doubted whether the treasure
would really be sent, and this uncertainty perhaps helped the adoption
of the bill.
But the treasure came, seventeen trucks were required to cart from the
ship to the Treasury, two hundred and seventeen chests of Spanish
dollars, while ten trucks, conveyed one hundred casks of coined copper.
At once a favorable change took place. There was no _shock_ but of the
pleasantest kind, a revulsion of popular feeling followed speedily,
until Hutchinson, from being threatened at every street corner, became a
thorough favorite. Twelve years after this time Hutchinson wrote, "I
think I may be allowed to call myself the father of the present fixed
medium." There is no doubt of it. He alone saw the way out of the
difficulty, and nothing but his tact, and persistency, pushed the
measure to success. This is admitted by his enemy, John Adams, who
thirty years after Hutchinson's death said, "If I was the witch of
Endor, I would wake the ghost of Hutchinson, and give him absolute power
over the currency of the United States, and every part of it, provided
always that he should meddle with nothing but the currency. As little as
I revere his memory, I will acknowledge that he understood the subject
of coin and commerce better than any man I ever knew in this country. He
was a merchant, and there can be no scientific merchant, without a
perfect knowledge of a theory of a medium of trade."[105] Hutchinson, in
the third volume of his history of Massachusetts, remarks that the
people of Massachusetts Bay were never more easy and happy, than in 1749
when, through the application of the Louisburg reimbursement to the
extinction of the irredeemable bills, the currency was in an excellent
condition. It excited the envy of the other colonies where paper was the
principal currency.
[105] Curwen's Journal p. 456.
In 1750 he was again elected to the Assembly and "he was praised as much
for his firm" as he had before been abused for "his obstinate
perseverance." He was made chairman of a commission to negotiate a
treaty with the Indians of Casco Bay. He also settled the boundary
question with Connecticut, and Rhode Island, as he had done previously
with New Hampshire. Massachusetts became greatly the gainer by this
settlement of its boundaries. The present boundaries of Massachusetts
are those established by Hutchinson. In 1752 he was appointed Judge of
Probate, and Justice of the Common Pleas, for the County of Suffolk. In
the spring of 1754 he lost his wife. With her dying voice and with eyes
fixed on him she uttered three words, "Best of husbands." He loved her
tenderly; twenty years later, taking thought for her grave, as we shall
see later on in this article (where his countrymen could not let her
bones rest in peace, but they must desecrate her grave on Copps Hill.)
"In 1754 he was sent as delegate to the Convention held in Albany, for
the purpose of Confederating the Colonies, the better to protect
themselves from the French. Hutchinson and Franklin were the leading
minds of the body. To these two the preparation of important papers was
confided and plans made to prevent the 'French from driving the English
into the sea.'"
In 1758 Hutchinson became Lieutenant Governor. The excellent financial
condition produced by Hutchinson's measure ten years previous, still
continued, and was made even better than before. Quebec had fallen, and
Canada was conquered by the English, and the mother country, made
generous by success, sent over large sums of money to reimburse the
Colonies for the share they had taken in bringing about the brilliant
success, the result was that the taxes became a burden of the lightest
ever before known.
In 1760 Chief Justice Sewall died. Hutchinson was appointed his
successor by Governor Bernard. James Otis, Sr., then Speaker of the
Assembly, desired the place. James Otis, Jr., a young vigorous lawyer,
who was soon to arrive at great distinction, vigorously espoused his
father's cause. Hutchinson warned the Governor of trouble, in case the
Otises were disappointed. Bernard however, saw the risk of this, and
declared he would in no case appoint Otis, but named Hutchinson instead.
At once the younger Otis vowed vengence, a threat which he soon after
proceeded to execute by embarrassing the Governor, including the new
Chief Justice also in his enmity. Though before friends of government,
the Otises now became its opposers, and as the younger man presently
developed power as an unequalled popular leader, he became a most
dangerous foe. "From so small a spark," exclaimed Hutchinson, "a great
fire seems to have been kindled." Henceforth the two men are to have no
feelings for each other, but dread and hatred. An agitation began
between these two men, destined before it closes, to affect most
profoundly the history of the whole future human race.
In February, 1761, Hutchinson just warming to his work as Chief Justice,
was a principal figure in the disturbance about "Writs of Assistance" or
"Search Warrants." The customs taxes were evaded the whole country over,
in a way most demoralizing. The warehouses were few indeed in which
there were no smuggled goods. The measures taken for tariff enforcement
were no more objectionable than those employed today. Freedom to be sure
is outraged when a custom-officer invades a man's house, his castle, but
high tariff cannot exist without outrages upon freedom. A change had
come about; the government had declared the laws must be enforced, and
it lay upon Hutchinson to interpret the laws and see to this
enforcement. The position of the Chief Justice was an embarrassing one.
His own proclivities were for free trade; his friends had been concerned
in contraband commerce, according to the universal practice in the term
of slack administration. Hutchinson was as yet a novice in the Chief
Justiceship, but he made no mistake in postponing his decision, and have
the Court wait till the English practice could be known. When news came
from England, a form was settled on as near to that employed in England,
as circumstances would permit. Writs were issued to custom-house
officers, for which application should be made to the Chief Justice by
the Surveyor-General of the customs.[106] Before this determination was
reached James Otis made his memorable plea against "Writs of
Assistance," one of the epoch-making events in the history of America.
John Adams afterward said, "I do say in the most solemn manner, that Mr.
Otis's oration against Writs of Assistance breathed into this nation the
breath of life."
[106] For further matter concerning the Writs of Assistance and James
Otis see p. 34.
Hutchison's popularity from now begins to wane, and the main hand in
this was no doubt the teachings of James Otis whose phrase "no taxation
without representation" was used as a rallying cry. Boston at once
elected him as its Representative in the Assembly, and his leadership
thus was scarcely broken even when he became insane. At last he became a
great embarrassment to his party, from the fact that, although his wits
were gone, the people would still follow him. Peter Oliver, who
succeeded Hutchinson as Chief Justice is quoted by John Adams as saying
to him, that Otis would at one time declare of the Lieutenant Governor,
"that he would rather have him than any man he knows in any office"; and
the next hour represent him as "the greatest tyrant and most despicable
creature living."[107]
[107] Adams' Diary, June 5th, 1762.
Hutchinson was now known as a "prerogative man," ready to defer to the
home government in important things, but there was as yet no definite
line drawn between prerogative men and patriots. Otis always scouted the
idea of independence of the Colonies as disloyal folly, his successor,
Samuel Adams, was the first to preach disloyalty and secession. Otis, as
Moderator in Town Meeting in Boston, in 1763, spoke eloquently of the
British empire and constitution. He said, "The true interests of Great
Britain and her plantations are mutual, and what God in his providence
has united, let no man dare pull asunder." As to parliamentary
supremacy, Otis was much more emphatic than Hutchinson. He said, "the
power of Parliament is uncontrollable, but by themselves, and we must
obey. Forcibly resisting the Parliament and the King's laws is high
treason. Therefore let the Parliament lay what burdens they please upon
us; we must, it is our duty, to submit, and patiently to bear them till
they will be pleased to relieve us."[108]
[108] Rights of the British Colonies.
Otis conceded to Parliament supremacy, but insisted that the Colonies
should have representatives there. Hutchinson considered representation
there impracticable, and while conceding supremacy, thought it should be
kept well in the background, while the Colonies managed for themselves.
Great Britain has really always held to this position even to the
present day--"Although the general rule is that the legislative assembly
has the sole right of imposing taxes in the Colony, yet when the
imperial legislature chooses to impose taxes according to the rule of
law they have a right to do it." So decided the English judge Blackburn
in 1868 in a case when Jamaica was involved.[109] Mansfield's position
that the Colonies were _virtually_ represented in Parliament was an
entirely reasonable one. Parliamentary supremacy in the British empire
is, indeed kept well in the background at the present moment, but let
any great emergency arise, such as some peril to the mother country. If
the Colony should remain apathetic, or in any way render aid and comfort
to the enemy, the dependency would be as arbitrarily ridden over by the
fleets, and armies, as in the days of George III. So long as America
remained dependent, parliamentary supremacy was necessary. It would only
be got rid of by such a declaration as that of 1776. This, Hutchinson
was not ready for nor any other person in the Colonies until many years
after this time, except one man, Samuel Adams, who said taxation without
representation was tyranny and representation was impossible.
[109] Yonge Const. His. of Eng. p. 66. See also Todd, Parl. Gov. in the
British Colonies 1899.
The correctness of the position of Hutchinson in the case of the Writs
of Assistance have been maintained and exhibited in detail by so high an
authority as the late Horace Gray, Esq., for many years Chief Justice of
the Supreme Court of Massachusetts and at the time of his decease
justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.[110] A currency
dispute took place in 1762 as regards the parity between gold and
silver. Hutchinson represented the Council and Otis the House, the
former, true to the policy which had already been of such advantage, set
himself once more against a course certain to lead to a disastrous
depreciation. This financial controversy led to further unpopularity,
and lost him not only a great number of friends, but the House while
reducing the allowance to the Superior Court in general, refused to make
any allowance to him whatever as Chief Justice. After the great war with
France, which was waged mainly for the benefit of the Colonies, it was
found that England had a debt of L140,000,000 instead of L70,000,000
which it had before the war. England also had paid the Colonies vast
sums of money as previously stated, expenses incurred in protecting
themselves from the French. The American civil and military
establishments before the war was L70,000 per annum, it was now
L350,000. George Grenville, Chancellor of the Exchequer thought that the
Colonies ought to contribute towards it; he did not expect them to raise
the whole, but a portion of it, and did not intend to charge them with
any interest on the national debt, although it was largely incurred on
their behalf.
[110] See Quincy, Massachusetts Reports 1761-1772. Appendix 1.
In February, 1765, he laid a bill before Parliament for further
defraying the expenses of protecting the colonies and he proposed to
charge certain stamp duties in said colonies. The agents of the several
colonies had an interview with him and tried to dissuade him from it. He
replied that he had considered the whole case and believed the colonies
should contribute something to the mother country to pay for their
protection, every penny of which would be spent in the colonies, and
that he knew of no better way than a stamp tax. "If," he said, "you can
tell of a better, I will adopt it." Benjamin Franklin, proposed that the
demand for money should be made in the old constitutional way in the
form of a requisition to the Assembly of each province. Can you agree,
rejoined Grenville, on the proportion that each colony should raise. The
question touched the heart of the difficulty, the agents were obliged to
answer in the negative, and the interview speedily closed, a few days
later the fatal Bill passed,--one of the most momentous legislative Acts
in the history of mankind.
The position of Hutchinson was a trying one; he favored neither the
issuance of the Writs of Assistance nor the Stamp Act. The whole course
of the government he disapproved of he had been ready to cross the ocean
to remonstrate for the Colony, against the impolitic treatment. On the
other hand, the disloyal tone which daily grew rife about him, was
utterly against his mind, he saw no outcome for it but independence, a
most wise forecasting of the situation, in fact there was no middle
ground. Independence seemed to him and to every man then, except Sam
Adams, a calamity. If that was to be avoided, there was nothing for it
but to admit the supremacy of Parliament.[111] But the Province, to
which he had been like a father, was growing away from him, and before
the summer ended, he was to receive a blow as ruthless, and ungrateful,
as it was possible to give. He was at this time a Judge of the highest
Judicial Court, a member of the Council, and Lieutenant Governor at the
same time. He had performed the duties of these incompatible offices to
the satisfaction of the community, as is shown in the writings of John
Adams before he became Hutchinson's enemy. He says, "Has not his merits
been sounded very high by his countrymen for twenty years? Have not his
countrymen loved, admired, revered, rewarded, nay, almost adored him?
Have not ninety-nine in a hundred of them really thought him the
greatest and best man in America? Has not the perpetual language of many
members of both Houses and of a majority of his brother-counselors been,
that Mr. Hutchinson is a great man, a pious, a wise, a learned, a good
man, an eminent saint, a philosopher etc? Nay, have not the affections
and the admiration of his countrymen arisen so high as often to style
him the greatest and best man in the world, that they never saw, nor
heard, nor read of such a man--a sort of apotheosis like that of
Alexander and that of Caesar while they lived?"[112]
[111] For further information concerning the Stamp Act, see p. 37.
[112] John Adams, Diary, March 17, 1766.
It is not possible to give a more glowing eulogy in the English language
of a person, than this written by John Adams, the successor of
Washington as second President of the United States, but it could
scarcely be less. The regularity of his life, his sympathy for the
distressed, his affability, his integrity, his industry, his talents for
business, and the administration of affairs, his fluency, and grace, as
public speaker. His command of temper, and courteousness under
provocation, united to form a rare man, and to give him influence. In a
country where literary enterprise was very uncommon, he had devoted a
great part of his life to investigating the history of his native
province, busy though he was in so many places, in behalf of the public,
he found time to carry it forward. In 1764 was published in Boston the
first volume of his "History of Massachusetts Bay," a carefully studied
work quite unparalleled in the meagre colonial literature, and is still,
and will always remain, of the first authority respecting the beginning
of New England. In 1767 came the second volume. He had access to
original papers such as no person now possesses which were of the
highest historical value. Writing to a friend in England in 1765, he
said, "I think from my beginning the work until I had completed it,
which was about twelve months, I never had time to write two sheets at a
sitting without avocations by public business, but forced to steal a
little time in the morning and evening while I was in town, and leave it
for weeks together so I found it difficult to keep any plan in my mind."
In his third volume, written twenty years later and not published till
1828, more than forty years after his death, the heat of the fight is
still in the heart beating behind the pen, in painting the portraits of
his contemporaries. Otis, Sam Adams, Hancock and others, the men who
bore him down after the fiercest possible struggle. His portrait drawing
is by no means without candor, and one wonders that the picture is no
darker. His presentment is always clear and dignified; his judgment of
men and events are just. It is the work of the thoughtful brain whose
comments on politics, finance, religion, etc., are full of intelligence
and humanity.
And now Hutchinson approaches the most crucial period of his life. As
seen in a previous chapter after the passing of the Stamp Act, and the
adoption of the Patrick Henry Resolves, the people grew riotous and
treason was talked of openly. The first great riot was on August 14,
1765. In the morning the effigies of Andrew Oliver, the Stamp agent, and
Lord Bute the former prime minister, were hung on an elm tree, on the
corner of what is now Washington and Essex streets, in the evening they
were taken down, carried as far as Kilby street, where a new government
building was torn down by the mob, who, taking portions of the wood-work
with them, proceeded to Fort Hill, where they burnt the effigies in
front of the home of Mr. Oliver and committed gross outrages on his
premises which were plundered and wrecked.[113]
[113] See page 40 for a more full description.
On the evening of the 26th the riots recommenced with redoubled fury.
Lieutenant Governor Hutchinson, also Chief Justice, the second person in
rank in the colony and a kinsman of Oliver, was made a mark for the most
unmeasured outrage. The story is best told in the words of the victim in
a letter to a friend.
To Richard Jackson, Boston, Aug. 30, 1765.
My Dear Sir--I came from my house at Milton the 26 in the morning.
After dinner it was whispered in the town there would be a mob at
night, and that Paxton, Hallowell, the custom house, and admiralty
officers' houses would be attacked; but my friends assured me that
the rabble were satisfied with the insult I had received, and that
I was become rather popular. In the evening, whilst I was at supper
and my children round me, somebody ran in and said the mob were
coming. I directed my children to fly to a secure place, and shut
up my house as I had done before, intending not to quit it; but my
eldest daughter repented her leaving me, hastened back and
protested that she would not quit the house unless I did. I
couldn't stand against this, and withdrew with her to a neighboring
house, where I had been but a few minutes before the hellish crew
fell upon my house with the rage of devils, and in a moment with
axes split down the doors and entered. My son being in the great
entry heard them cry 'Dam him, he is upstairs, we'll have him.'
Some ran immediately as high as the top of the house, then filled
the rooms below and the cellar, and others remained without the
house to be employed there. Messages soon came one after another to
the house where I was to inform me the mob were coming in pursuit
of me, and I was obliged to retire through yards and gardens to a
house more remote, where I remained until 4 o'clock, by which time
one of the best finished houses in the Province had nothing
remaining but the bare walls and floors.
Not content with tearing off all the wainscot and hangings, and
splitting the doors to pieces, they beat down the partition walls;
and although that alone cost them near two hours, they cut down the
cupola or lanthorn and they began to take the slate and boards from
the roof, and were prevented only by the approaching daylight from
a total demolition of the building. The garden house was laid flat,
and all my trees, etc., broke down to the ground. Such ruin was
never seen in America. Besides my plate and family pictures,
household furniture of every kind, my own, my children, and
servants, apparel, they carried off about L900 sterling in money
and emptied the house of everything whatsoever, except a part of
the kitchen furniture, not leaving a single book or paper in it,
and have scattered or destroyed all the manuscripts and other
papers I had been collecting for thirty years together, besides a
great number of public papers in my custody. The next evening, I
intended to go to Milton with my children, but meeting two or three
small parties of the ruffians who I suppose had concealed
themselves in the country, and my coachman hearing one of them
say, 'There he is'! my daughters were terrified, and said they
should never be safe, and I was forced to shelter them that night
at the Castle.[114]
[114] Mass. His. Soc. Vol. XXVI, p. 146.
[Illustration: Governor Hutchinson's House Destroyed by the Mob.]
Josiah Quincy, then twenty-one years old, writing in his diary Aug. 27,
1765, says that Hutchinson's life "it is more than probable, was saved
by his giving way to his eldest daughter and leaving the house." He
described "the coming into court the next day of the stripped Chief
Justice, clothed in a manner which would have excited compassion from
the hardest heart. Such a man in such a station, thus habited, with
tears starting from his eyes, and a countenance which strongly told the
inward anguish of his soul,--what must an audience have felt, whose
compassion had before been moved by what they knew he had suffered, when
they heard him pronounce the following words which the agitation of his
mind dictated, "Gentlemen,--There not being a quorum of the Court
without me, I am obliged to appear. Some apology is necessary for my
dress; indeed, I had no other. Destitute of everything,--no other shirt;
no other garment but what I have on; and not one in my whole family in a
better situation than myself. The distress of a whole family around me,
young and tender infants hanging about me, are infinitely more
insupportable than what I feel for myself, though I am obliged to borrow
part of _this_ clothing.
"Sensible that I am innocent, that all the charges against me are false,
I can't help feeling: and although I am not obliged to give an answer to
all the questions that may be put to me by every lawless person, yet I
call God to witness--and I would not, for a thousand worlds, call my
Maker to witness to a falsehood--I say I call my Maker to witness, that
I never, in New England or Old, in Great Britain, or America, neither
directly or indirectly, was aiding, assisting or supporting--in the
least promoting or encouraging--what is commonly called the Stamp Act;
but, on the contrary, did all in my power, and strove as much as in me
lay, to prevent it. This is not declared through timidity, for I have
nothing to fear. They can only take away my life, which is of but little
value when deprived of all its comforts, all that was dear to me, and
nothing surrounding me but the most pressing distress.
"I hope the eyes of the people will be opened, that they will see how
easy it is for some designing, wicked man to spread false reports to
raise suspicion and jealousies in the minds of the populace, and enrage
them against the innocent, but if guilty, this is not the way to
proceed. The laws of our country are open to punish those who have
offended. This destroying all peace and comfort and order of the
community--all will feel its effects; and all will see how easily the
people may be deluded, inflamed and carried away with madness against an
innocent man. I pray God give us better hearts." The Court then
adjourned to October 15th.
Why Hutchinson should have fallen into such great disfavor, it is not
easy to say. Gordon, a writer of Whig leaning, but a fair minded witness
of all that occurred suggests that there were some who still
entertaining rancor towards him for doing away with paper money in 1748,
for, as we have seen, his position in 1762 on the currency was not
popular. Moreover the mob was led on to the house by a secret influence,
with a view to the destruction of certain public papers known to be
there relating to the grant of the New Plymouth Company on the Kennebec
River.[115] Hutchinson himself speaks on having given rise to animosity
against him for having taken certain depositions in the interest of
government, before him in his character of Chief Justice to which his
name was signed. They were purely official acts; for the depositions he
had no responsibility whatever, but the unreasoning mass of the people
confused him with others. There was nothing in his course at the time of
the Writs of Assistance, at which the people needed to feel aggrieved.
He was with the people in opposing the external taxes, also in
disapproving the Stamp Act. Now that they were imposed, he to be sure
thought nothing would answer but submission, but certainly in his
declaration here he was nothing like so emphatic as James Otis, who
still remained the popular idol. Otis had said in May, "It is the duty
of all humbly and silently to acquiesce in all the decisions of the
supreme legislature." In private talk he was still more vigorous in his
utterances. He said to Hallowell, "That Parliament had a right to tax
the Colonies, and he was a d----d fool who denied it and that this
people never would be quiet till we had a Council from home, till our
charter was taken away, and till we had regular troops quartered upon
us."[116] Hutchinson had never expressed his thoughts anywhere near so
definitely as this.
[115] His. of Am. Rev., Vol. I., p. 180.
[116] John Adams' Diary, Jan. 16, 1776.
The inhabitants of Boston and the Province were generally ashamed of the
outrage upon Hutchinson, but the mob still dared to show its hand.
Though in the first rush of feeling many of the rioters were sent to
jail, they were afterwards set free. The chief actor seems to have been
a shoemaker, named Mackintosh, who, though arrested, was presently
discharged; Hutchinson declares this was through the interference of men
of good position, who feared that a confession from him would implicate
them. Hutchinson's demand of the legislature for compensation for the
destruction of his home, was at last effectual. He is said to have
received L3,194, 17s. 6d., a fair indemnity. The Act had attached to it
for a "rider" pardon to all who had taken part in the disturbance
connected with the Stamp Act. Bernard hesitated to sign the Act; but was
finally induced to do so by his earnest wish to have Hutchinson receive
justice. When the Act was sent to England, the King disallowed it; such
lawlessness could not be condoned, even that a faithful official might
receive his rights. But the money had been paid before the news of the
King's displeasure arrived.
A period of lawlessness now followed. Riots were absolutely unpunished,
for no jury would convict the rioters. Governor Bernard wrote that his
position was one of utter, and humiliating impotence, and that the first
condition of the maintenance of English authority in Massachusetts was
to quarter a powerful military force at Boston.
Two regiments arrived Sept. 28, 1768. Shortly before their arrival the
people gathered together in an immense meeting, and voted that a
standing army could not be kept in the province without its consent. On
the arrival of the troops everything was done by the people to provoke
and irritate them. A perfect reign of terror was directed against all
who supported the government. Soldiers could not appear in the streets
without being the objects of the grossest insults. A press eminently
scurrilous and vindictive was ceaselessly employed in abusing them. They
had become as Samuel Adams boasted 'the objects of the contempt even of
women, and children.' Every offence they committed was maliciously
exaggerated and vindictively prosecuted, while in the absence of
martial law, they were obliged to look passively on the most flagrant
insults to authority. At one time the "Sons of liberty" in a procession
a mile and a half long marched around the State House, to commemorate
their riots against the Stamp Act, and met in the open fields to chant
their "liberty song" and drink "strong halters, firm blocks, and sharp
axes, to such as deserve them." At another an informer, who was found
guilty of giving information to revenue officers, was seized by a great
multitude, tarred and feathered, and led through the streets of Boston,
which was illuminated in honor of the achievement.
A printer who had dared to caricature the champions of freedom was
obliged to flee from his house, to take refuge among the soldiers, and
ultimately to escape from Boston in disguise. Merchants who had ventured
to import goods from England were compelled by mob violence to give them
up to be destroyed, or to be re-embarked. A shopkeeper who sold some
English goods, found a post planted in the ground with a hand pointing
to his door, and when a friend tried to remove it, he was stoned by a
fierce mob through the streets. A popular minister delighted his
congregation by publicly praying "that the Almighty would remove from
Boston the English soldiers."[117]
[117] Lecky's Am. Rev. Chapt. XI., p. 127.
These outrages led to the so-called Boston Massacre, more fully
described in a previous chapter.[118] None of the mobs of that time of
mobs was more brutal and truculent than that which provoked the firing
of the group of baited men, standing their ground with steady
discipline, among the clubs and missiles resorted to now, to enforce the
usual foul and blasphemous abuse. Lieutenant Governor Hutchinson
fulfilled at this time with complete adequacy the functions of chief
magistrate, for Governor Bernard was at this time in England. Hutchinson
was at once in the street, in imminent danger of having his brains
dashed out, expostulating, entreating that order might be
preserved.[119] It was a fine exhibition of power and courage. His
standing in the east balcony of the State House, with the snow reddened
beneath by the blood of the killed, with the regiments kneeling in rank
ready for street firing, and several thousand of enraged men on the
other side on the point of rushing into the fight, he was able to hold
both parties in check. His prompt arrest of Captain Preston and the
squad which had done the killing, was his full duty; and it is to the
credit of the troop that the officer and his men in the midst of the
exasperation gave themselves quietly into the hands of the law. Instead
of a bloody battle, there was substituted a well-ordered civil process,
due delay being observed that the passion of both sides might subside
and the evidence, pro and con be calmly weighed. A mild and just verdict
was the outcome, to which all submitted. Men they were, all of the same
stock, for the time being fallen into antagonism, seeing things
differently. All, however, bore themselves like Englishmen, showing the
quality which has made the Anglo-Saxon race a mighty one.
[118] Boston Mobs, page 43.
[119] Mass. A. His. Vol. XXXI., p. 491. Witness at the trial of the
soldiers said "He stood close behind him, and one of the mob lifted up a
large club over my head, and was going to strike, but he seized him by
the arm and prevented it."
Since the departure of Bernard there had been no session of the
legislature. In March one took place that was the cause of a new dispute
between the Lieutenant Governor and the legislature, which was destined
to be long and important. It was as to how far the chief magistrate
could be bound by royal instruction. Hutchinson says the Assembly was
prorogued to meet at Boston March 14th, 1770, but before the time
arrived there came a further signification of the King's pleasure that
it should be held at Cambridge, unless the Lieutenant Governor had more
weighty reasons for holding it at Boston, than those which were
mentioned by the Secretary of State against it.[120] On the 15th of
March therefore the legislature met in the "Philosophy Room" in Harvard
College, in Cambridge.
[120] Hutchinson His. Vol. III., p. 280.
Remonstrances were passed by the Council and the House against the
removal to which Hutchinson replied "That the King by his prerogative
could remove the legislature from the 'Town House in Boston' did not in
his mind admit of a doubt and therefore he disregarded the
remonstrance." Soon after the Massacre, Hutchinson begged the Earl of
Hillsborough, the Colonial Secretary, to allow him to resign. He said,
"I must humbly pray that a person of superior powers of body and mind
may be appointed to the administration of the government of this
Province. I shall faithfully endeavor to support such person according
to the best of my abilities, and I think it not improbable that I may be
capable of doing his Majesty greater service in the Province, even in a
private station than at present."[121] Instead of accepting his
resignation he was appointed Governor in March, 1771, and his wife's
brother-in-law, Andrew Oliver, being at the same time commissioned
Lieutenant Governor, and Thomas Flucker Secretary.
[121] M. A. Hist. Vol. XXVI., Mar. 27 to Hillsboro.
At his inauguration while the Assembly and the Congregational ministers
were silent, there were many congratulations, among them Harvard
College. The students singing in Holden Chapel the anthem, "Thus saith
the Lord from henceforth, behold! all nations shall call ye blessed; for
thy rulers shall be of thine own kindred, your nobles shall be of
yourself, and thy governors shall proceed from the midst of thee."
April 1, 1771, he writes to Colonel Williams of Hatfield. "It's certain
all the valuable part of the town have shown me as much respect
personally, as in my public character, as I could desire. Two Adamses,
Phillips, Hancock, and two or three others, who, with the least reason
have been the most injurious, are all of any sort of consideration who
stand out."[122] Again on April 19, 1771, in a letter to Hillsboro,
referring to the Town Meeting he says, "In these votes, and in most of
the public proceedings of the town of Boston, persons of the best
character and estate have little or no concern. They decline attending
Town Meetings where they are sure of being outvoted by men of the lowest
order, all being admitted, and it being very rare that any scrutiny is
made into the qualification of voters."[123]
[122] M. A. Hist. Vol. XVII., p. 131.
[123] M. A. Hist. Vol. XXVII., p. 151.
The hopes Hutchinson and the friends of government were never brighter
since the troubles began with the government, than in the spring of
1771. Among Hutchinson opponents men like Andrew Eliot, thought "it
might be as well not to dispute the legal right of Parliament." Otis
too, pursued a strong reactionary course and when on May 29 the
legislature met, at his instance, while the remonstrance was passed as
had become usual, against the removal of the legislature from Boston,
the clause was struck out which denied to the crown the right to remove.
The principle so long contended for was then sacrificed, the right of
prerogative to infringe the charter at this point was acknowledged, and
it would be easy to proceed on the ground that the crown might take what
liberties it pleased with the charter. Otis's change was indeed
startling. Samuel Adams was going on in the old road, when Otis started
up, and said they had gone far enough in that way, the Governor had an
undoubted right to carry the court where he pleased, and moved for a
committee to represent the inconveniences of sitting there, and for an
address to the Governor. He was a good man; the minister said so, and it
must be so: and moved to go on with the business, and the House voted
everything he moved for.[124]
[124] John Adams' Works, Vol. II., p. 266.
"Serious as was the defection of James Otis that of Hancock was even
more so. His wealth, popular manners and some really strong qualities
made his influence great. Samuel Adams had exploited Hancock, with all
his consummate art ever since his appearance in public life, making him
a powerful pillar of the popular cause. Contemptuous allusions to
Hancock as little better than an ape, whom Samuel Adams led about
according to his will, have come down from those times."[125] Such
things were flying in the air and Hancock was feeble enough to be moved
by them, if they came to his ears. Whatever may have been the reason,
Hancock forsook his old guide, voted with the party of Otis for the
acknowledgment of Hutchinson's right to convene the legislature where
and when he choose. Hancock's defection at this time from the Whig cause
seemed imminent, and when Hutchinson fled to England, three years later
and his papers fell into the hands of his enemies, it was found
necessary to suppress certain documents, belonging to this time as it is
supposed they compromised Hancock, who in 1774 was once more firmly on
the side of the Colonies.
[125] Hosmer's Life of Thomas Hutchinson p. 213.
Samuel Adams probably never experienced a greater mortification than
when, as a member of a committee, he waited, by command of the House,
upon Hutchinson to present an address acknowledging the right of the
Governor to remove the General Court "to Housantonic in the western part
of the Province," if he desired, nor, on the other hand, did the
Governor ever enjoy a greater triumph. Hutchinson must have felt that he
was even with his chief adversary for the humiliation of the preceding
year, the driving out of the regiments. Adams felt his defeat keenly,
but gave no sign of it, he saw his influence apparently on the wane, but
was as unremitting as ever in his attempts to retrieve lost ground. But
for him the revolutionary cause at this time must have gone by the
board.