THE REVOLUTION
Cape-Codders were not exempt from the limitations that an All-Wise
Providence has seen fit to place on human nature. Like the rest of
mankind, they had their frailties and went to their graves with all
their imperfections on their heads. But though there was no alchemy
in the Cape soil to make its sons infallible, there was much in its
geographical situation to explain their conduct during the Revolution.
And though some Cape-Codders, by their loyalty to the King, helped to
prolong the war, another Cape-Codder hastened its coming by a speech
made fifteen years before the Declaration of Independence. He was James
Otis, Jr., the West Barnstable Patriot. Since he was the first man to
plant the seed of Independence, not only in the minds of Cape-Codders,
but in the minds of all the northern colonists as well, and since
nothing that had been said or done on the Cape before his time has any
immediate bearing on the Revolution, he becomes a proper person to be
discovered as the curtain rises.
Otis is no local figure; his influence was not confined to Cape Cod,
or for that matter to Massachusetts. His words were heeded in New
York and New Jersey as well as in Watertown and Barnstable, and his
doctrine was the doctrine of patriotism in a sense that it had never
had before; for with him patriotism, for the first time in our history,
meant, not loyalty to the British Crown but separation from it. Otis’s
eloquence was based on a self-confidence and intolerance that were
almost sublime. Anger is as frequently an incentive to eloquence as
it is an impediment to it, and Otis, in the course of his speeches,
always became angry. He was clear in his views, sure that he was right,
and consequently impatient of stupidity or chicanery. On such sure
foundations was his eloquence based. He fetched his doctrine from the
first principles of the rights of mankind--the right of the individual
to hold property; from this sure hypothesis, he developed and proved
the theorem of his statesmanship, and justified the liberation of the
Colonies from unjust taxation by Great Britain.
But he did more than justify Colonial Independence; he created the
idea of it--sowed the first seed that was to grow, through the thorns
of Toryism and the barren ground of selfishness, into Revolution. The
power of his mind reduced complex problems to their simplest terms, and
then solved them. On one occasion he sent to a member of Parliament a
message Byronic in its impudence: ‘I shall transmit to your lordship
by the next mail,’ he wrote, ‘a simple, easy plan for perpetuating the
British Empire in all parts of the world.’ Otis was a Cape-Codder and
had a sense of humor. Though he could have fulfilled the promise of
this letter at least as well as the British Parliament, his tongue was
certainly in his cheek when he wrote the lines and a twinkle in his eye
as he fancied the noble lord’s outraged sense of importance when he
read them.
Otis sprang into political prominence in 1761, when he delivered his
celebrated speech against the Writs of Assistance--those extraordinary
documents--universal search warrants that authorized any official
to enter any house for any goods at any time. But the ultimate
significance of this speech stretched far beyond the blocking of any
particular measure. It created a permanently suspicious state of mind
in the colonists, that caused them, from 1761 until the outbreak of
the war, to scrutinize every act of Parliament with the greatest care;
to ‘snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze’ and to
challenge much legislation that would previously have passed without
suspicion. It was by creating this state of mind in the Colonies that
Otis engendered the germ of Revolution. He opened their eyes not so
much to particular outrages as to the outrageous point of view in
Parliament that gave birth to them; and herein lies his contribution to
our Independence.
The effect of Otis’s Writs-of-Assistance speeches on the Cape was
immediate and violent. Not every one there, by any means, was ready to
declare himself for Independence, and the citizens found themselves
divided into two camps--Loyalist and Patriot. Not content with this,
each camp split into two factions, moderate and extreme. Thus four
clearly defined political parties can be distinguished. There were the
extreme Loyalists, ‘peace-at-any-pricers,’ who, from whatever motives,
regarded war with England as equivalent to suicide or treason. There
were the moderate Loyalists, who wished to avoid war, not because
they believed Revolution was treason, but because they thought it
unnecessary and continued to hope, or to pretend to hope, that the
unhappy state of affairs was only temporary and would be remedied
by Parliament. The Patriots were similarly divided into two wings,
the firebrands and the calmer spirits. The extreme Patriots regarded
the moderates as hardly less evil than Tories; and the feeling was
reciprocal and lasted throughout the war. This furious animosity
appeared with startling intensity in the course of an evening’s
conversation in a Barnstable tavern between Colonel Nathaniel Freeman,
of Sandwich, one of the leaders of the extreme Patriots, and Captain
Samuel Crocker, a dignified and intelligent member of the conservative
branch of the Patriotic Party. Captain Crocker declared that routing
out tea from old women’s larders was a procedure unworthy of a high
cause. Freeman replied that such a statement was toryism. Others of the
violent Patriots agreed with Freeman and showed their patriotism by
pulling up the fence in front of Crocker’s house.
Another incident that shows the heights which political hatred reached
at this restless period occurred when the Barnstable militia were
parading on the village green. Colonel Nathaniel Freeman and Colonel
Joseph Otis, brother of the Patriot, were present, and Captain Samuel
Crocker was putting the company through its drill. As the two Colonels
passed the lines, the soldiers instead of presenting arms, clubbed
their muskets. Otis, like a flash, turned on Captain Crocker and
accused him of being the instigator of the insult. Crocker hotly, and
probably truthfully, denied the charge, whereupon Otis struck him with
his cane. Crocker retaliated, and there followed the spectacle of two
distinguished citizens and officers--both Patriots--both espousing the
same great cause--engaged in something very like a street brawl. The
gentlemen were pulled apart, and their differences were eventually
reconciled. The incident was closed, but remains a clear indication of
the violence of the feeling between factions of the same party.
Some sensitive souls have catalogued the next patriotic demonstration
that took place on the Cape, among the villainies of the Tories.
But there is small doubt that its authors were Patriots, though,
fortunately for their memory, their names are not recorded. A widow
named Abigail Freeman kept a little grocery store in Barnstable. This
lady, like many of her kind, was outspoken; she was an ardent Loyalist
and took no pains to conceal her views. She said quite frankly what
she thought about Colonel Freeman and his friends, and flatly refused
to allow her stock of tea to be confiscated. For these reasons a band
of Patriots waited upon her one night, dragged her from bed to the
center of the village, smeared her with tar and feathers, and rode
her on a rail until, beside herself with terror, she promised to keep
her political views to herself. She was then allowed to make her way
home. Not even the tension of the times or the justice of the cause can
excuse such a performance as this. If the truth were known, it would
doubtless appear that Medford rum, not patriotism, was at the bottom of
the outrage, and this hypothesis does not add to its respectability. It
was another of those unfortunate incidents which, as President Adams
remarks, ‘were more lamented by the Patriots than by their enemies.’
It is pleasant to turn from such atrocities to the legitimate and
laudable activities of our ancestors in their fight for freedom;
the first of these was a demonstration which, quite as truly as the
battle of Lexington or Concord, represents one of the first bold
steps that any of the Colonies took toward freedom. Its immediate
cause was a change which King George saw fit to make in the method of
selecting juries for the superior courts. Instead of being drawn from
the box by the selectmen, as formerly, they were now to be appointed
arbitrarily by the sheriff. Such a manifestation of absolute authority
was intolerable to men who were determined to govern themselves and
had learned by experience that they were able to do so successfully.
The question was, what should they do? Very deliberately, with a full
realization of the seriousness of the step, they decided on direct
action. They would prevent the King’s courts from sitting; they would
prevent it by force if necessary; they would begin at Barnstable.
They well knew that this was treason, and they were ready to take the
consequences. Accordingly, in September, 1774, six months before the
Concord fight, the leading citizens of Rochester, Wareham, and other
towns near by, assembled and started an orderly march down the Cape to
Sandwich. There was no blowing of bugles or flashing of muskets, but
in spirit this ‘Body of the People,’ as they called themselves, was as
truly an army as the grim patriots who a little later faced the British
regulars on the slopes of Bunker Hill. Perfect orderliness and absolute
decorum marked their progress. They had drawn up rules and regulations
for their conduct, and the keynote of these regulations is worth
quoting. ‘We are,’ they said, ‘neither friends to mobs nor riots.’
They spent the night at Sandwich, where they were joined by a
considerable number of the male population, and early the next morning,
under the leadership of Colonel Nathaniel Freeman, they set out down
the Cape for the Barnstable Courthouse. Patriotic citizens joined them
on the march at various stages of its advance, falling in at the rear
of the column, while at its head rode Freeman, a superb figure in
his snow-white wig, wearing his hat tilted jauntily to one side. In
Barnstable they were joined, as at Sandwich, by patriotic citizens, and
by the time they had drawn up in front of the Courthouse door, they
were fifteen hundred strong.
They were in plenty of time. It was ten o’clock in the morning, and
the Court had not yet arrived for its opening session. A committee was
chosen, with Freeman as its spokesman, to state to the Court, when it
should appear, the purpose of the gathering. They had not long to wait.
The bell was rung, announcing the opening of Court, and along the road
came the Chief Justice (the venerable Colonel James Otis, father of
the Patriot) and the other dignitaries, among them, as clerk, Joseph
Otis, his son. They halted close to the outskirts of the crowd, and
Colonel Otis demanded the purpose of the assemblage. Freeman, from his
position on the steps of the building, answered him over the heads of
the crowd. His words are recorded by an eye-witness; ‘May it please
your Honor,’ he said, ‘we have directed this movement to prevent the
Court from sitting or from doing any business. We have taken all the
consequences into consideration. We have weighed them well and formed
this resolution, which we shall not rescind.’
The Chief Justice was a wise man and a good patriot. He was merely
doing his duty by conducting His Majesty’s Court until the war,
for which he fervently hoped, should break out. The old gentleman
continued, even now, to do his duty, and pointed out to Freeman and his
associates that this was not a Superior Court and that its jury had
been drawn from the box in the traditional manner by the selectmen of
the town. But another son of the venerable Chief Justice, James Otis
the Patriot, had taught the colonists to see through such statements
as this, even as the old gentleman had known they would when he spoke
the words. Freeman replied without a moment’s hesitation: ‘We do not
apprehend,’ said he, ‘that if you proceed to business you will do
anything that we could censure. But, sir, from all decisions of this
Court an appeal lies. An appeal to what? To a Court over which we have
no control or influence. And _there_ the jury will be appointed by the
sheriff. For this reason we have adopted this method of stopping the
avenue through which business may otherwise pass to that tribunal.’
Judge Otis must have chuckled at this reply. His conscience was clear.
He had done his duty in trying to open the King’s Court, and had met
with determined and intelligent opposition. After withdrawing for
consultation, he returned a statement to the Body of the People, saying
that the Court consented not to sit. So far the success of the Patriots
was complete, and they might well congratulate themselves not only on
the outcome of their bold move, but quite as much on the dignity and
propriety with which they had carried it out.
But the Patriots’ duty was not yet done. Though the Court had agreed not
to sit this time, there was no guaranty that it would not resume its
activities on a more propitious occasion. Committees were therefore
chosen from the Body of the People to extract written promises from
the various officers of the Court to discontinue all anti-colonial
activities in the future. One of the justices that signed such an
agreement was Edward Bacon, Esq., an eminent Loyalist, whose exertions
in the King’s cause will be mentioned later. Another Court official
was his bitter enemy and one of the most energetic Patriots the Cape
ever produced, Joseph Otis, son of the old Chief Justice and brother
of James the Patriot. Clearly the Body of the People were taking no
chances and were forcing Patriots to sign as well as Loyalists. Other
Loyalists were then routed out from among the crowd, and various
promises and recantations were obtained from them. Committees were
chosen for towns farther down the Cape, ‘to desire of the militia
officers that they would no longer hold commissions under the present
Capt. General, who is appointed to reduce us to obedience to the late
unconstitutional acts.’ In Barnstable, the Edward Bacon aforesaid was
thus obliged to resign his militia commission.
At about this point in the proceedings, Colonel Freeman resigned as
leader of the movement. The Body of the People promptly elected Joseph
Otis in his place, and from this moment forward Otis was unsparing in
his exertions in the cause of Independence. So, although this great
demonstration did not originate on the Cape, a large percentage of its
members were Cape men, the entire scene of its activity was on Cape
soil, and both its leaders were Cape-Codders, one from Sandwich, the
other from Barnstable.
The assemblage next erected a liberty pole in Barnstable and marched
back to Sandwich, where they found that the Tories had taken advantage
of their absence to cut down the Liberty pole there. Before disbanding,
the Body of the People extracted from these enthusiasts apologies for
their behavior, and the price of the pole. These Liberty poles, by the
way, were a picturesque feature of the pre-Revolutionary landscape, and
one of the favorite pastimes was for the Patriots to set them up in the
daytime and for the Tories to cut them down by night. Most of the Cape
towns had them; some had two, and lively scenes were enacted around
them. Whether any unfortunate Tories on the Cape were ever hoisted to
the top of the poles amid the derisive hoots of the Sons of Liberty, is
doubtful; but a bit of doggerel from Trumbull’s ‘McFingal’ describes
such a performance so whimsically that it would be pleasant to believe
it had been practiced once or twice. The poet sings as follows:
‘There from the pole’s sublimest top
The active crew let down a rope;
At once its other end in haste bind
And make it fast upon his waistband;
Till like the earth, as stretched on tenter,
He hung, self-balanced, on his center.
Then upwards, all hands hoisting sail,
They swung him like a keg of ale,
Where looking forth in prospect wide
His tory errors he espied.’
The Tories bided their time and waited for revenge. The most
spectacular instance of this revenge took place at Sandwich a few days
after the proceedings of the Body of the People just described, and was
directed against Colonel Freeman.
This gentleman’s patriotic activities had not prevented him from
continuing his medical practice, and late one night he was aroused
by a call to the bedside of a sick friend. Freeman promptly set out,
though he felt little confidence in the authenticity of the summons,
and was not surprised as he passed Newcomb’s Tavern, a favorite resort
for Sandwich Loyalists, to be accosted by a small group, who came
out and announced in ironic tones that they were a Committee from
the Body of the People, and that they had orders to bring him before
that assemblage to answer for his conduct as leader of the recent
demonstration at Barnstable. Freeman replied that he would have nothing
to do with them or their tavern. They then fell upon the Doctor,
knocked him down, and might have killed him but for the arrival of some
Patriots who came running to his support. He was carried home, his
wounds were bandaged, and a warrant for the arrest of his assailants
was immediately issued. This was a lucky thing for them, for it alone
prevented what would have looked very much like a lynching party with
the Patriots on the lower end of the rope. But the law took its course,
and the Court, which was convened at West Barnstable with the venerable
James Otis as Chief Justice, fined the ruffians £100 and forced them
to give bonds for their good behavior in the future. The fury of
the Patriots was partially allayed by this action, but it was not
satisfied. They erected a platform in Sandwich, marched the Tories from
the Courthouse to it, and compelled them to subscribe to the following
apology and recantation:
Whereas the subscribers did attack and cruelly beat Dr. Nathaniel
Freeman with such unparalleled cowardice and barbarity as would
disgrace grace the character of a ruffian or a Hottentot, for no
other reason or provocation than that he, uninfluenced by hope or
fear, has dared to stem the tide of tyranny and corruption ... we
sincerely and heartily ask forgiveness of Heaven, whose sacred laws
we have so shamefully violated, and of Dr. Freeman, a gentleman
to whom we are indebted for the most important services done this
Country.... And we do solemnly engage for the future religiously to
regard the laws of God and man and conduct ourselves in all respects
as becometh friends to society and good government.
Sandwich, Oct. 10, 1774.
But the Loyalists were not all conciliatory, nor would they always
recant. Benjamin Percival, of South Sandwich, has this pithy entry
in his diary for February 25, 1778: ‘Went to town to see the tories
take the oath of Allegiance but they all refused it.’ Even those who
grudgingly apologized for their behavior were by no means convinced of
the error of their ways, any more than a Fiji Islander, who, for the
sake of expediency, assures the missionary that the Christian religion
is the only religion, becomes thereby a pillar of the Church.
Sandwich and Barnstable were not the only Cape towns that were troubled
by Loyalists. There were enough of them in Truro to make things very
uncomfortable, personally and professionally, for Dr. Adams, the town
physician and a staunch patriot. They contemplated storming his house,
but were prevented by some of the cooler heads among their number.
They did succeed, however, in seriously curtailing his practice by
establishing a tabu on consulting him professionally. They preferred
to remain sick, or to go elsewhere for a physician whose political
sentiments were closer to their own. Misery loves company, and Dr.
Adams found a congenial spirit in the Reverend Mr. Upham, the patriotic
clergyman of Truro. This gentleman entertained at his house a group of
citizens whose patriotism, like his own, burned hot and strong, and Dr.
Adams, in a letter dated December 5, 1774, says that the minister was
slandered outrageously by certain Loyalist members of the parish, and
was refused admission to their houses.
Nowadays, when it is the fashion to point complacently to a pirate
or two or a witch among the branches of the family tree, there is
no need of repeating the stock justification for Loyalists. But
Loyalists on the Cape had more than the stock justification. In the
first place, the British navy was the best and largest in the world,
and the Cape consisted entirely of unprotected shore line, with the
crooked finger of Long Point beckoning the British fleet into the
shelter of Provincetown Harbor. Most of the Cape money was by this
time invested in shipping of one kind or another, and many of the
inhabitants were sailors. In case of war, the former would be ruined
and the latter idle. The only chance of protecting the shores was by
a large and well-equipped home guard for every town. Instead of being
allowed to maintain such home guards, the Cape towns would certainly
be called upon to furnish their full quota of men and material for
the Continental armies. Their families and homes would thus be left
defenseless.
Here, then, was a situation that might well give pause to the stoutest
Patriot and lend color to the pretexts of the most craven Loyalist.
Brave men who were willing to fight for freedom might well think twice
if they lived on the Cape; and cowards in search of escape from the
thunder of the guns that sounded closer and closer in their ears, found
in these reflections a highly respectable refuge. Remember, then, in
considering the question of the Cape’s patriotism, that every one of
her citizens who first voted for Independence and then marched off to
fight, knew that, though a committee would try to see to it that his
family did not starve, his house stood on a shore that was unprotected
against landing parties, and his family had only an insignificant home
guard to protect them.
Events showed that these fears were prophetic. The British were quick
to realize the strategic value of Provincetown Harbor as a base for
naval operations, and promptly sailed in with a fleet of frigates--the
celebrated Somerset among them--and dropped anchor just off the town.
This gave them control, not only of Provincetown, which, consisting
of only a score or so of dwelling-houses, was of itself of no great
importance, but of Truro as well, and Truro was a far more considerable
settlement. That the enemy never attacked either town is explained
quite simply by the fact that no attack was necessary. So completely
defenseless were the shores, and so inadequate was Truro’s home guard,
that the Britishers were free to go ashore as they pleased and help
themselves to fresh water and provisions. They did, it is true,
indulge in a little minor raiding alongshore, in small boats, but
for the most part their coming and going was peaceable, and as month
followed month, their relations with the townspeople became almost
friendly. Before the end of the war, a chaplain from one of the British
frigates was preaching in the Truro church, though the record does
not add that he was entertained after the service at the homes of the
townspeople! That the British officers were not insensible to the
charms of the Cape girls appears from the fact that Dr. William Thayer,
a surgeon on one of His Britannic Majesty’s frigates that was anchored
in Provincetown Harbor, married Lucy Rich, of South Truro, and after
the war settled there with his wife and practiced medicine until he
died.
Such instances of fraternizing and affection were, however,
exceptional. Provincetown and Truro were hostile to the fleet, and
the fleet was hostile to the towns. There is the story of a comic
maneuver executed by the captain of the little Truro home guard. He saw
a raiding party push off from the fleet in small boats and head for
shore. He promptly mustered his handful of recruits, marched them to a
convenient rise of ground at the water’s edge and kept them marching
round and round it until the British from their boats concluded that a
large armed force was at hand to receive them, and returned to their
ships without more ado. This yarn smacks of local jingoism, but is
quite in accord with the Cape Cod sense of humor and with the British
tactics at Truro and Provincetown. They were not looking for a fight,
and doubtless landed somewhere else quite unmolested the next day.
But it was warfare all the same. If the townspeople ventured outside
the harbor for a mess of fish, there was danger of being picked up by
the enemy, as David Snow and his father were. They were fishing off the
back side of Truro in a small boat, were captured by one of the British
vessels, and did not see home again for seven years. Always, too,
the inhabitants had to endure the humiliation of helplessness. They
never forgot that the Englishmen could sack the town at any moment.
With this emergency in view, they had a committee ready to discuss
terms of capitulation if it should be necessary. Exactly what form
this capitulation was to take does not appear from the intentionally
non-committal language of the record. Probably they would have bought
exemptions from bombardment.
The British squadron did not confine its attention to Provincetown and
Truro. Hardly a day passed but the sails of His Majesty’s frigates
cast gray shadows across some Cape town and kept them all in a state
of vigilance and alarm. Militia detachments were detailed to watch
the shore even in villages as well protected by nature as Sandwich.
If these militia companies had been left intact, they would have
furnished considerable security; but they were no sooner formed than
orders came from headquarters directing them to march off to Cambridge
or Providence to join the Continental forces. The staunchest Patriot
resented withdrawing troops from his scantily guarded shores to go to
the aid of towns that were safely tucked away inland among the hills.
Colonel Joseph Otis (now a general) writes in 1778, ‘There is scarcely
a day that the enemy is not within gun shot of some part of our coast,
and they very often anchor in our harbors.’ Again he writes, in reply
to an order for fifty men to go to Providence, ‘As the enemy are around
and threaten danger here, it is like dragging men from home when their
houses are on fire. But I will do my best to comply.’ Once more he
says, ‘Highanos is much exposed; and to draw men off to Falmouth causes
much uneasiness.’ A little later a whole militia company was ordered
from Barnstable to Boston. Colonel Hallett, of Yarmouth, replied, ‘The
general opinion that prevails among the people here is that this county
is so much exposed on both sides to the enemy that it would be very
dangerous to send off those men.’ Again, two months after the signing
of the Declaration of Independence, twenty per cent of all the Cape
militia was ordered to New York, and sixty whaleboats assembled at
Falmouth to transport them.
But the constant demands for men were not all that was required of
the Cape. Boots, beef, and blankets in a steady stream poured out of
its towns until it looked as if nothing would be left. The situation
was desperate. The citizens looked from the rotting hulls of their
fishing schooners to the sails of the British fleet that hung ever
in the offing, and wondered what the end would be. The strain became
too great for some of the weaker spirits. They flew the white flag
and petitioned to be allowed to move their families to Kennebec or
the Provinces, in spite of the embargo that the Government, partly to
forestall this maneuver and partly to prevent their falling into the
hands of the enemy, had placed on outgoing vessels.
But desperation more often engendered reckless and in fact illegal
valor, and for every man who begged to be allowed to go to Kennebec,
there were a dozen who resolved to defy the embargo, run the British
blockade, and trade with New York or Rhode Island. Sometimes these
adventurous traders succeeded for a voyage or two. More often they
failed, as did two little vessels that in October, 1779, set sail from
Hyannis for Stonington. One was captured; the other driven ashore. This
disaster was the harder to bear because it was effected by Loyalist
refugees who had established themselves in considerable numbers on
Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, where their knowledge of Cape waters
proved of great value to the enemy. A more insidious practice of the
British was to issue propaganda encouraging deserters. Notable among
these propagandists was one Leonard, who is picturesquely described
as head ‘of the Loyalist gang in the Sound.’ This worthy suggested to
the desperate Patriots that they were fighting against their will,
and promised protection and comfort to all who would come over to the
enemy. Some no doubt yielded to the temptation, but strange to say
their numbers were offset by a trickle of returning Loyalists, who,
through the dark days of their indecision, had finally seen the light,
and now avowed their allegiance to the cause of Independence.
The skill of the British in holding up blockade-runners led indirectly
to the only real engagement between the local militia and His
Majesty’s troops that occurred on Cape soil--the attack on Falmouth
in the spring of 1779. The situation of Falmouth was in one respect
the most precarious of any of the Cape towns. It was close to the
Elizabeth Islands, and these islands formed a very convenient base for
British naval operations. Tarpaulin Cove in particular was a point
of concentration for the King’s ships, and from this snug anchorage
a series of raids along the Falmouth shore provoked the citizens to
retaliation.
The British in their raids used a type of boat called shaving mills.
These were good-sized sailboats of light construction and shallow
draft. They usually mounted a single gun forward. The largest of them
had three masts which could be easily unstepped and stowed with their
sails, so as not to be in the way. They could carry twenty-five men
and still leave room for as much beef and mutton as they were likely
to capture in a single raid. If they were so lucky as to pick up an
unguarded Yankee schooner moored alongshore, so much the better; they
had men enough to sail her off. Equipped with these craft and sometimes
piloted by renegade Patriots, the British succeeded in diminishing the
food supply of Falmouth until the inhabitants were at their wits’ end.
Their fury was increased when the enemy on one occasion captured a
schooner that had run the blockade and was returning to Falmouth with
a cargo of corn which she had procured on a voyage to the Connecticut
River. This was the last straw, and Major Joseph Dimmock determined to
recapture the schooner. He manned three whaleboats and rowed off by
night to Tarpaulin Cove, where the vessel lay. As soon as it was light
enough to locate the schooner and her captor, Dimmock and his three
boats rowed up to them at top speed, boarded the schooner, retook her,
and sailed out of the Cove. After further adventures and more fighting,
he finally got her safely into Woods Hole.
A few such exploits stung the British into planning an elaborate attack
on Falmouth with the object of burning the town. They assembled a
fleet of about ten vessels, and on April 2, 1779, anchored close to
shore and began to send off landing parties under the protection of a
barrage from their heavy guns. The townspeople had received warning
in time to get reënforcements of two militia companies from Sandwich
to bolster up their own home guard. While they were waiting for these
reënforcements, the Falmouth men improved their time by entrenching
themselves alongshore. The Sandwich companies arrived before daylight
and established themselves beside their Falmouth brethren in the new
trenches, so that the British landing parties, as they rowed toward
shore, were confronted by a force more than twice as large as they
had ever seen there before, and by proportionally brisk volleys of
musketry. This gave the attack a different complexion; so instead of
trying to land, they returned to their vessels--no doubt for further
orders--and they did not again disembark. The cannon balls did some
damage, but as they were aimed chiefly at the breastworks instead of
at the town itself, most of the buildings escaped without injury,
and the fleet soon after sailed away. One result of this repulse was
particularly gratifying--the trickle of returning Loyalists increased
to a stream.
Yet the situation of the Cape was critical. Her shipping was ruined;
the shores infested by hostile warships; the militia ordered inland;
the cattle either requisitioned or taken by the enemy. But though they
foresaw these consequences, most of the Cape towns had voted for war.
One, however, Barnstable, stands out as an exception, and failed to
instruct its Representative to vote in favor of the Declaration of
Independence. The fact is of particular significance, for Barnstable,
as the county seat, should have set the pace for her neighbors up and
down the Cape. That she failed at this critical moment in the Nation’s
history is a serious blot on her patriotism, and was so regarded by
many Barnstable citizens, who protested that the action of the town
failed to represent the wish of the majority of the townspeople.
The meeting at which this unpatriotic decision was reached took place
on June 25, 1776. The language of the resolution is a little guarded,
though its intention is clear enough. It reads: ‘Voted not to give
any instructions to the Representative with regard to Independence.’
Colonel Joseph Otis and twenty-two other indignant Barnstable Patriots
immediately published a protest. Sturgis Gorham, who had been present
at the meeting and had voted with the majority, answered the protest in
language that makes it look as if the phrasing of the resolution had
been made purposely non-committal in order to leave a loophole in case
of just such an attack as Otis’s. Gorham said that there was nothing
in the language of the resolution to indicate that the town _did
absolutely refuse to support the cause of Independence if such a course
seemed necessary_. This kind of hedging reflects no more credit on the
town than the vote itself does. Weathervanes have their uses, however,
and Gorham’s reply at least shows the strength of Otis’s patriotic
blast. What actually happened at this famous town meeting was this.
The Loyalist camp, headed by Edward Bacon, Esq., ably seconded by
Nymphas Marston, the moderator, so intimidated the meaner spirits
that out of a total of one hundred and forty, only sixty-five dared
to vote at all. Of these, thirty voted in favor of instructing their
Representative for Independence; thirty-five voted against it. General
Otis’s contention was that if the silent seventy-five had not been
bullied out of voting, the town would have gone patriotic. Whether
he is right or wrong is a matter of no consequence. The fact remains
that of those who had the courage to vote in spite of Squire Bacon,
five more were against the Declaration of Independence than were for
it; and little confidence can be put in the patriotic zeal of men who
let themselves be beaten into silence on such a question, even by so
impressive a figure as the Squire.
Surely the seed of Independence has flourished mightily in a century
and a half! To-day, if the wealthiest man in a Cape town rises in
meeting and declares that the town should do thus and so, it is
regarded by the citizens as a pretty good reason for voting in the
negative. Feudalism has gone out of style since the days of Caleb
Williams. But it was feudalism, or something very like it, that
prevented Bacon from being arrested and his property sold. Throughout
the Revolution he never wavered in his loyalty to the Crown; yet,
far from being molested or ostracized, he was in 1778 elected a
Representative to the Legislature. Thanks to another protest by Joseph
Otis, however, Bacon was excluded from a seat in the House and returned
to Barnstable. But his political prestige did not suffer from this
rebuff, for in 1780 he was a member of the General Court, a position
which he had already held several times before, notably in 1774, when
he had been forced by the Body of the People to resign his commission
in the militia and abandon his office as justice. He died at his home
in Barnstable in 1783.
The Cape’s best efforts in the war, naturally enough, were on the
sea, where many of the citizens had earned a living before the war
began. Twenty-one vessels--ranging all the way from shaving mills to
ships--were commanded by Cape-Codders, and carried in all one hundred
and twenty-six guns and more than six hundred men--not a bad showing
for an impoverished region. Besides these twenty-one captains, a good
percentage of the crews of other privateers were Cape fishermen or
traders. The General Arnold is a case in point. In December, 1778,
she sailed out of Boston on a cruise to harass Britishers off the
Southern States. In trying to weather the Cape, she was driven back
by a northeast gale, and anchored off Plymouth Harbor in a temporary
lull which Captain Magee mistook for the end of the storm. With the
renewal of the storm, the Arnold dragged, pounded her seams open on
the flats and filled with water almost to the main deck, driving
the men from their shelter below. They stayed on deck, exposed to a
blinding snowstorm and smothered with flying spray, from Saturday
afternoon until Monday morning. Of her crew of one hundred and five,
seventy-eight froze to death. Of these, eleven were Barnstable men and
one came from Falmouth. Another disaster gives us significant figures.
In the fall of 1780, the British captured the American privateer brig
Resolution and sent her crew to the Old Mill Prison. Among them were
sixteen Cape men, chiefly from Wellfleet and Truro.
The Yankees were quick to see the effectiveness of shaving mills for
coastwise raids, and these extraordinary craft, manned by Americans,
cruised along the shores of the British Provinces, plundering towns
exactly as the British plundered the Cape. A party landed in a shaving
mill near Barrington, Nova Scotia, intent on raiding the sheep-pen of
one Hezekiah Smith. Some of them went to the door of the farmhouse and
looked in. Among them was a young Cape-Codder, who, as soon as he got
a good look at the inhabitants of the house, cried ‘Hello, Aunt Nabby!
How are you?’ Aunt Nabby, it appears, was one of those with whom the
Cape air had not agreed, and who had emigrated some years previously
to this secluded spot in search of peace. She must have realized the
futility of her flight when she recognized, in this cheerful Yankee
raider, a nephew whose family had been made of sterner stuff and had
stayed on the Cape. The conclusion of this yarn is the standard one and
has been told of both sides in every war in the world. Aunt Nabby took
a gun from the corner and announced that she would shoot the first man
who stole a sheep. The invaders returned shame-faced to their boats
without any mutton!
Here is a more creditable privateering exploit, and one that was
conceived and carried out entirely by Cape-Codders. In 1779, two
English vessels, one of them the General Leslie of twelve guns,
lay in Old Town Harbor, Martha’s Vineyard, guarding some recent
American prizes. Captain Joseph Dimmock, of Falmouth, whose previous
exploits have been described, determined to attack them. He collected
twenty-five fellow townsmen and fitted out a little sloop with two
three-pounders. Thus equipped, he set sail for Old Town Harbor, boarded
the General Leslie amid a brisk fire of musketry, forced the crew
below, battened down the hatches, and brought her into Hyannis along
with his own little vessel.
Benjamin Franklin and John Adams, Commissioners in France, give in
their communications some important information as to the numbers
of Cape-Codders the British found on the American privateers they
captured. Adams writes, ‘Whenever an English man-o’-war has taken an
American vessel, they have given the whalemen among the crew ... their
choice either to go on board a man-o’-war and fight against their
country or go into the [British] whale fisheries.’ So much by way of
introduction. The joint communication from the Commissioners follows:
‘The English last year (1777) carried on a very valuable whale fishery
... off the River Plate. They have this year about seventeen vessels
in this fishery. _All the officers and almost all the men belonging to
these seventeen vessels, are Americans from Nantucket and Cape Cod_,
... excepting two or three from Rhode Island and perhaps one from Long
Island.’
Sometimes Fate took a hand in the fortunes of the Colonies and
delivered a British ship to them free in their back yards. The outer
shore of the Cape is about the most dangerous spot on the Atlantic
Coast, and it was not to be expected that the Britishers, with all
their skill, could cruise there off and on for seven years with
impunity. The Cape’s long, exposed coast line paid its inhabitants
back from time to time for the anxiety it cost them. One such payment
was the wreck of His Majesty’s transport Friendship, which came ashore
on the back side of Truro late in the winter of 1776, and furnished
General Washington’s army with paint, canvas, and other marine stores,
as well as cannon and small arms. A year or so later, another British
vessel, the Cumberland, found her grave on the Yarmouth flats.
But the enemy’s most serious loss was the ship-of-war Somerset in
November, 1778. The Somerset mounted sixty-four guns and was one of
the vessels that had been sailing in and out of Provincetown Harbor
at will since the beginning of the war. It was, therefore, a happy
day for the townspeople when she struck on the outer bar near Dead
Man’s Hollow, not far from the Highland at North Truro, pounded over
with the rising tide, and hit the beach helpless. The home guard took
four hundred and eighty survivors in charge, and they were marched by
Captain Enoch Hallett through a chain of jubilant villages to Boston.
Two months later, the General Court directed the sheriff to sell the
contents of the ship--a somewhat naïve order, for though Colonel Doane,
of Wellfleet, had been officially put in charge of the wreck, by the
time the sheriff’s sale took place she had been picked clean by local
mooncussers. This, no doubt, is what General Joseph Otis, a master of
racy phraseology, refers to as ‘wicked work at the wreck’; or perhaps
he refers to what was bound to happen if a Truro and a Provincetown man
got hold of the same coil of ratline-stuff at the same moment.
Another wreck--the most picturesque of them all, though important
only for what it shows us of the Provincetowners’ state of mind and
morals--occurred very early in the war. In March, 1776, Jolly Allen, a
prosperous Boston shopkeeper and a staunch Tory, deciding, like many
of his ilk, that a change of scene was indicated, chartered the sloop
Sally and engaged a captain to sail him with his wife and family and
all their possessions to Halifax. The Captain, who did not know one
end of a vessel from the other, soon had the Sally pounding on Peaked
Hill Bars behind Provincetown, with her sails blown to ribbons. He did
not even know how to take them in; a halyard and a bobstay were one
and the same thing to him. Allen was justly indignant, and to add to
his troubles, one of the party, Mrs. Wezzle by name, came down with
smallpox.
It did not take long for news of the Sally’s predicament to reach
Provincetown. A couple of citizens who had had smallpox rowed off and
brought all hands ashore. Allen was put in a wretched hovel, through
which wind and weather blew with perfect freedom; here his wife died.
The Sally was floated high and dry on the beach, and the selectmen
sent a message to the General Court stating that in their opinion her
company were ‘some of those vermin which have been so destructive to
the peace and good order of the Colony,’ and asking what they should do
with them.
Up to this point the Provincetown men had behaved with commendable
propriety. But while they were waiting for a reply from headquarters,
they improved their time by looting the Sally with the thoroughness and
dispatch of which only experienced mooncussers are capable. Under the
pretext of saving the cargo for the colonial authorities, they began
carting it across the sand hills to town; but so small a fraction of
each wagonload ever reached the village that it was laughable. Pious
citizens took pleasure in visiting Allen in his shanty and regaling
him with graphic accounts of how he was being robbed. ‘A gentleman of
veracity came to me,’ he writes, ‘and ... said he had seen one of the
completest battles he ever had in his life, and all on my account.
About fifteen or sixteen men and women was fighting battle royal in the
fields, and condemning one another, and each saying the other had taken
more of my property than they.’
Allen had need of the vein of whimsical philosophy with which he seems
to have been blessed. He saw that there was nothing for him to do but
grin and bear it, and began making friends with some of his callers.
To convince them that he was no stranger to misfortune, he related
how he had been deceived by the pseudo-captain of the Sally. This
tale elicited instant and genuine sympathy from his seagoing captors,
for sympathy was cheap, and Allen’s goods were all safely in their
possession. To quote again from the unhappy merchant’s narrative,
‘the people, as incensed as they was against the government and their
friends, when they heard my case, how I had been used by the Captain,
... they was ready to tear him to pieces. They called him a fresh-water
captain; that they should not choose to hang a salt-water Captain,
but a fresh-water Captain, it would give them all the pleasure
imaginable.’ It looks as though a strain of the old wild blood still
ran in the Provincetown veins! To crown their impertinence, they sent
the General Court a bill for one hundred and fifty pounds for their
exertions in saving the sloop’s cargo. No wonder Allen was glad to be
rid of Cape-Codders and to try his luck, as he soon after did, with the
authorities in Watertown instead.
A few days after the wreck of the Somerset, James Otis, the venerable
Chief Justice, died. This gentleman’s advanced age prevented him from
taking any part in the Revolution that called for great physical
exertion. He was not able, like his son James, to start a war or, like
his son Joseph, to command a brigade; but he had worked himself to high
places in affairs of state. He started life as a mechanic and ended
as Judge of Probate, Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, and
President of the Council, which meant that he was the chief executive
magistrate in Massachusetts after the departure of General Gage. These
honors he achieved with no education beyond the grammar school. He was
repeatedly elected to the Provincial Legislature and was twice Speaker
of the House. He remained throughout his life a level-headed Patriot,
respected even by his enemies, and the head of a family that has
brought much honor to Cape Cod.
An anecdote will show the extraordinary way in which Otis kept
matters in their proper perspective, even through the trying times
when perspectives were frequently lost. One day as he stood with some
friends in the doorway of his house, a certain Bill Blachford, a
deserter from the army, came hobbling along the road on his way from
camp, bent almost double with rheumatism. As President of the War
Council, it was Otis’s duty to arrest deserters. ‘Hullo!’ said one of
his friends; ‘there’s Bill Blachford!’ Otis instantly turned his back
to the road and entered the house. ‘Where is the rascal?’ he cried. ‘I
can’t see him.’
Far more tragic than the death of the old Chief Justice was the death
of his son James, who was struck by lightning and instantly killed in
the spring of 1783. Though he lived to see the triumphant end of the
war for which he was so largely responsible, it meant nothing to him.
His mind was gone, and the orator, whose eloquence twenty years before
had electrified the colonists, now babbled of green fields and blinked
at the sun. There was mercy in the lightning that killed him.
The condition of the Cape at the end of the Revolution was, in fact,
nothing to cheer any man who contemplated it. The constant calls
for men and material had drained the towns dry. Their commerce was
gone; their fishing vessels were hauled out and the daisies grew rank
between their seams; what little money they had was worthless through
depreciation. The most eloquent proof of their poverty is found in
the bald phrases of the report of a committee sent by the General
Court in 1782 to investigate the condition of the Cape towns: ‘We have
fully and critically attended to the service and are satisfied that
the several towns in said [Barnstable] County have complied with the
utmost of their abilities with the requisitions made upon them by the
General Court for beef and men, and that said towns are incapable of
complying therewith any further.’ The committee further reported that
‘all deficiencies of beef or men due from any of the towns in the
County of Barnstable should be abated to them and that all fines for
said deficiencies should be remitted.’ In the following spring (1783)
the State Treasurer was directed ‘to recall the executions issued for
taxes and to stay in the future, until further ordered, executions for
two-thirds of the taxes.’ This order applied to the towns of Eastham,
Harwich, Yarmouth, Barnstable, Sandwich, and Falmouth.
It is not the custom of governments to excuse requisitions or to remit
taxes. The fact that the General Court of Massachusetts did both these
things is evidence enough of the impoverished condition of the county.
The Cape weathered the storm and emerged, shattered but triumphant,
with plenty of sea-room to refit.