-Caveat Lector-
an excerpt from:
Lost Men of American History
Stewart H. Holbrook(C)1946
The Macmillan Company
New York, NY
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CHAPTER II
The Great Agitator
IT WAS. commonly believed by boys and girls of past generations, and the
belief is still widespread and very deep --for such is the power of
accumulated indoctrination-that the American Revolution was caused chiefly by
a mob of Boston patriots who, for some vague reason having to do with taxes,
boarded a ship in the harbor and tossed into the sea countless chests of tea
belonging to nobody but George the Third of England, a bestial character
without parallel in all history. The king, not liking to have his tea
destroyed, thereupon hired a pack of mercenaries called Hessians, added
millions of his own redcoats--barbarous fellows to a man--" and sent the lot
of them over here to put the poor and honest colonists in their place.
The canon continues along the classic line, and most of us have come out of
our school days with the general impression that the Revolution was a
spontaneous uprising of embattled farmers, a sudden combustion of patriotism
and pitchforks, when every rustic became a Minute Man, every Minute Man a
hero (except notably Benedict Arnold), equal to six Hessian soldiers or ten
British redcoats, and who sprang to arms at the first alarm. ("If they mean
to have a war," said Captain John Parker, "then let it begin here." ) Not
only did they fairly leap for their muskets, but they continued to fight day
and night until the glorious Republic was an accomplished fact.
This pleasant imbecility, which I have enjoyed as much as the next man, has
been kept alive through a century and a half by poets, by historians,'
editorial writers, artists, and orators, much to the detriment of the United
States of America. It is the chief reason why our country has never yet gone
prepared into a war. And it was possible to impose the imbecility on us
because we Americans, as perhaps no other people on earth, much prefer
romantic fiction to fact.
Actually, the first certainty about the Revolution is that it was carefully
planned by a few shrewd men and carried out by homemade and talented and
ruthless agitators, whom historians have seen fit to call statesmen, and by
military leaders of little experience but of great adaptability. The second
certainty is that the great, mass of American colonists were either passive
to the revolt, or actively opposed to it. John Adams, no man for
overstatement, estimated that throughout the war not more than one-third of
the colonists were heart-and-soul in the Revolution; and this number was
unquestionably much smaller previous to the Declaration. Hence, our glorious
revolt in the cause of pure Liberty was in reality a struggle, on the part of
a few able and active minds, to impose an idea on the mass of the people and
to make them fight and if necessary die for it; and finally to make Great
Britain recognize it as fact. This took, as they say, some doing.
The staging of "popular" revolts since the times of ancient Greece has
always been accomplished by the use of propaganda in word and deed, sometimes
known in the trade as "agitating." The American colonies were fortunate in
having a number, of agitators fit to compare with the best in world history,
and the foremost of these Americans was Samuel Adams, a man who has been
ignored or cavalierly treated by too many writers. The reason for this
treatment, I suspect, probably stems from the typical American desire to have
America's hereos unadulterated, to ignore such realistic methods as Adams
propounded and used. This Adams, a poor relation of John and John Quincy and
the least known of the Historical Adamses, was the one who stopped at
nothing. Lies, subterfuge, misrepresentation of all sorts, and violation of
confidences were his common practice in anything dealing with the Crown, or
with Tories, or with anybody be said was a Tory. He would as lief slug,
figuratively of course, a man from behind as in front. No fencer saw and took
advantage of an opening, a dropped guard, more quickly. And when he thought
it necessary, Samuel Adams did not stop short of cold-blooded arrangements
for producing thoroughly dead Patriot Martyrs, a useful commodity in any
agitation program.
Son of a Boston family dating from Genesis, graduate of Harvard, where he
discovered that theology bored him,
Samuel Adams failed as a counting-room clerk, then ran his father's
prosperous brewing business into bankruptcy. He dabbled too much in politics
to run a business. With the help of his many friends in Boston's political
clubs he was elected to the General Court, as Massachusetts Bay Colony termed
its legislature; and then was made tax collector of the city, a job he
permitted to get out of hand to the amount of five thousand pounds and which
brought him no end of embarrassment. Meanwhile, however, he absorbed many
ideas of government from local politicians, especially from the tragic and
able James Otis, soon to die a madman.
No matter what Adams seemed to be doing, he was playing politics, seeking to
bring about a revolt of the American colonies, and their eventual
independence. The dirtier the politics, the better Adams liked it. He enjoyed
hearing an opponent grunt, when Adams landed one well below the belt. No man
to strut, he preferred to pull the strings, to direct others in carrying out
the plan he had in mind many years before other patriots had even conceived
of such an idea.
There can be little doubt that Adams was the first man in all the colonies to
have the idea of a United States, free and independent; and to carry it into
execution he bent his every effort and talent, which was a talent for
propaganda and subversive organization that approached, genius. If George
Washington was the Father of his Country, then Sam Adams was assuredly the
Father of the American Revolution, and 'tis high time we added his birthday
to our list of holidays.* [*Samuel Adams was born in Boston on the "sixteenth
day of Septbr at twelve of the Clock at noon, being Sabbath day, 1722." This
"a' Old Style. The corresponding date on the present calendar is September
27.]
Adams began his subversive work in the 1760's, when the, mercantile and
navigation acts were bearing down hard on Boston's shipping and business
generally. Middle-aged now, stricken with palsy, dressed in clothes rusty
with age and giving to many "a misleading air of infirmity," he frequented
the Green Dragon, the Bunch of Grapes, and other taverns where, as his tart
cousin. John remarked, "both bastards and legislators are often begotten."
When he heard mechanics or laborers, or businessmen complaining about hard
times, Adams promptly told them the fault was England's. And gradually he
imparted his ideas to John Adams, his lawyer country cousin, and to other
professional men like Dr. Joseph Warren. He worked subtly and with great
success on John Hancock, one of the town's wealthiest young men, and made of
him, if Tories of the time are to be believed, the "Milch Cow of Whiggery."
Hancock's money paid for many of the broadsides and posters that Adams put
out to inflame the populace; and the same source bought the oats needed by P.
Revere and other couriers dispatched on subversive rides by Adams.
Adams had long been friendly with Paul Revere, the silversmith. Nor did he
neglect the lowly; one who claimed Adams as a friend was Andrew McIntosh, a
truly frightful thug, illiterate, brutal, savage, who was the leader of a
gang of waterfront toughs. Adams was a thorough organizer who knew he needed
intellectual lieutenants no more than he did a goodly mob of shoulder-hitters
and eye-gougers.
One of Adams's earliest moves was to amalgamate two or more of the local
gangs of rowdies and impress on their leaders that fighting for what Adams
called "Liberty" was much better than fighting each other. He promised he
would find them plenty of outlet for their notable brawling tendencies. The
opportunity soon arose.
At this period Boston merchants had agreed not to import any British
commodities for sale, but at least eight of them were known to have broken
their "word. One of these was Theophilus Lilly. Street toughs presently
placed a pole with a wooden head at its top in front of Lilly's house. From
.the pole a wooden finger pointed accusingly at his store. Merchant Lilly was
much disturbed. A friend, one Richardson, variously described as "a stout
man" and an "infamous informer," attempted to pull down the pole and effigy.
The toughs pelted him with stones. Whereupon Richardson went into Lilly's
house, reappeared with a musket and shot into the crowd. Christopher Snyder,
aged eleven, was killed.
It is now possible to see plainly the hand of, the Great Agitator, at. work.
The boys funeral, arrangements, for which were unquestionably made by Sam
Adams, was, of the stuff that enshrines martyrs. The coffin, on which was
inscribed "Innocence Itself is not Safe"--hyperbole of the worst sort--was
taken to the Liberty Tree, says an old account, and there a great concourse
assembled and followed the remains to the grave. Six of the dead boy's
comrades supported the coffin, and in their wake marched some five hundred
school boys and girls, followed in turn by "nearly fifteen hundred of the
inhabitants." It was probably the biggest funeral Boston had seen.
It was also the most impressive. While the silent procession made its way,
the deep bells of the city's churches tolled mournfully, being answered by
those of meetinghouses in Cambridge, Dorchester, and Charlestown, for among
Adams's friends were the parsons of local and near-by congregations.
It was a solemn occasion, and political too. The Boston Gazette discovered,
surprisingly in one so young, that "The Little Hero had Shewn signs of
Martial Genius and would have made a Clever man." Sam Adams had long been a
leading contributor to the Gazette. Other papers took up the cry and within
the week had apotheosized young Snyder into the First Martyr to American
Liberty.
Such was the way in which a master of propaganda handled a street row.
Right on the heels of the Snyder incident came the "Bloody Massacre in
King-Street." Its immediate inception was a drunken row between the King's
soldiers and workers in a ropewalk near the waterfront. Noses were bloodied.
Small mobs gathered in many parts of town. A particularly large mob gathered
near, Faneuil. Hall and listened to. a harangue. by a "gentleman in red
cloak and red wig." This May have been Adams. There is no record of what the
man said, but it must have been enough, for as soon as he was done his
audience began to shout "To the main guard!" and "Kill the lobsterbacks:!"
They struck out immediately for King(now State)Street where the Customhouse
and a guard of the soldiery were located.
It was night now, the 5th of March, 1770. The moon was up, lighting the snowy
streets. The little square around the State House, near the Customs, was
already packed with civilians when the mob from Faneuil Hall arrived. Among
them was Crispus Attucks, an enormous mulatto with white, Negro and Indian
blood in his veins. A crowd of sailors and ropewalk workers followed Attucks,
who carried a wicked club and shouted that he was going to remove some of
the claws from the lobsterbacks. He poked a red-coated sentry in the ribs.
The sentry called the guard. The guard turned out under Captain Preston,
fighting its way through the crowd to the sentry's' side.
The crowd pressed harder on the soldiers. Preston gave orders to prime and
load, and there was, a moment of silence, except for the metallic rattle and
solid thump of iron ramrods. Preston took his position in front of the
soldiers to prevent them from firing without orders. It was a tight spot. The
vast dusky Attucks came close, swinging his big club. He made a swing at
Preston, missed, but knocked down one of the soldiers. Gunfire echoed in the
narrow streets.
The mob, heaved backward, the stench of black powder in their noses,
stumbling over one another to get out of there as quickly as possible. Those
who lingered saw five bodies on the hard-packed snow, which was now running
red *in the bright moonlight. Crispus Attucks was dead., So were Sam Gray and
James Caldwell. Sam Maverick and Patrick Carr moaned and shuddered. They were
carried away to die later of their wounds.,
Such was the Boston Massacre itself. Tried in a Boston -court and
courageously defended by, John Adams and, Josiah Quincy, six of the:
soldiers, including Captain Preston, were freed. Two other soldiers were
found guilty, not of murder, but of manslaughter. They were branded on the
hand in open court, then discharged.
Evidence at the trial, in spite of John Adams's care not to probe too deeply
into the origin of the riot, indicated the affair to 'have been carefully
planned. by unnamed civilians.
The freeing of the soldiers by a jury of citizens seemed at first a blow to
the so-called patriot cause. So it would have been except for Sam Adams, who
was equal to the occasion. In the Boston Gazette's next issue he shouted to
ask if this was "ye only satisfaction the publick has got for the MURDER of 5
men?" He recalled that the very dogs of the town had been seen "greedily
licking human BLOOD 'in King-Street." Before this maddening thought could
sink into public consciousness, he had Paul Revere, the local engraver,
silversmith, dentist, and, Son of Liberty, prepare cuts of "5 Coffings for
Massacre" which appeared in the Gazette along with some rousing prose by one
Vindex, who was Samuel Adams.* [In that era nothing was better to rouse
emotion than a nice row of black coffins reproduced with a newspaper article.
The same idea was used later, after the battles of Lexington and Concord.
Patriots eyed the grim containers and fumed for Tory blood. Vindex was
Adams's most favored pseudonym, but he also used Candidens and Valerius
Poplicola.] The dead mobsters became heroes without peer--pure, patriotic,
Christianlike martyrs. Adams sent copies to tavern keepers all over New
England and New York. He reminded his readers, too, that it had been a vile
Tory. who had butchered the innocent lad, Christopher Snyder. But, weep not,
said Vindex, weep not for that martyr of tender age. Revenge him. Vindex
thought it was time for action.
Paul Revere and Henry Pelham, half brother to the artist John Singleton
Copley, now got busy. Between them they concocted an engraving for a
broadside that was on sale by March 26. This was a print of "The Bloody
Massacre perpetrated in King-Street Boston on March 5 1770 by a party of the
29th Regt.,". and it was probably the greatest single piece of propaganda put
out during the entire era. It was of the stuff to inflame the weak-hearted,
to send stout Whigs into spasms of hate. The drawing, like all such
propaganda since, has little or no bearing on fact. As a "representation of
the Horred Affair" nothing could well have been more inaccurate; here was
subversive genius at work.
The picture shows seven lobster-coated soldiers, dressed in perfect line,
shooting into a gathering of exactly nineteen civilians. (Contemporary
accounts indicate the mob to have numbered more than a thousand persons.) The
face of each redcoat is carefully shown, and no face fails to reveal either
arrogance or hate, or both; and behind them their captain, Preston, waves his
sword in the air, apparently shouting orders to fire and meantime retaining
a casual sneer on his cruel face.
As for the "patriots," they are shown dying like flies, and bleeding like
stuck pigs. Never has patriot bled so as these sanguinary men. The blood
appears to be gushing from wounds, veritable holes, that could have been made
with nothing less than a ship's auger. Attucks, the big colored man, is down
in the snow. In the background is the Customhouse, labeled Butcher's Hall.
Beneath the picture are three strophes of doggerel beginning:
Unhappy Boston! See thy Sons Deplore, Thy hallowed Walks besmear'd with
guiltless gore.
Sam Adams's propaganda took effect. The troops were moved to Castle William,
in Boston Harbor. In England, Parliament canceled the hated duties on
everything--except tea. Merchants of Boston voted to lift the boycott on
British goods. Shipping picked up. Employment increased. The affair had sort
of boomeranged on Adams, and the ensuing period of surface calm obliged the
old agitator to produce new "menaces" and remind his public of old horrors.
He must prevent the slothful colonists from reverting to their peaceful and,
to Adams, their sheeplike ways.
Adams was: equal to it. He staged a monster observance on the anniversary of
the. Massacre, when all church bells were tolled, this time for a solid hour;
and funeral orations, filled with more politics than theology, were made by
the many Congregational ministers whom Adams called his Black Regiment. In
the evening there was "a very striking Exhibition at the Dwelling House of
Mr. Paul Revere, fronting Old North Square," and "at one of the Chamber
Windows was the Appearance of the Ghost of the unfortunate Snyder." Adams was
bound that young Snyder's ghost should walk until and if he could arrange for
newer martyrs. The Boston papers, including the red-hot Massachusetts Spy
edited by Isaiah Thomas, gave this and later anniversaries of the Massacre
much prominence.
Governor Francis Bernard of Massachusetts had given up his distasteful job
and returned to England; and presently Thomas Hutchinson, the
lieutenant-governor and a native of Massachusetts, was appointed governor.
Hutchinson was a well-disposed and able man, and the country people of the
province, especially, welcomed him to the post; they considered him a true
native son who could do no wrong. Sam Adams set out immediately to prove how
mistaken they were, to prove, no less, that Hutchinson was the most horrible
tyrant since the Roman Empire. He raked up "horrid examples" from Roman
history to show how natives of Rome had always been the worst tyrants of
their home province, and applied the. analogy to Hutchinson. He did
everything possible to blacken the new governor's public and. private
character and wound up by calling him an "oligarch," which
doubtless sounded to the simple countrymen of the province like a combination
of horse thief, sodomist, and Tory.
Adams also began organizing committees of correspondence, a euphemism for an
undercover movement that was to completely wreck the complacency of the
colonists, not only in New England but elsewhere. Tried and true patriots, in
every town and community were to keep each other informed of any action of
Crown officials, or other Tories, and, to be ready to act as "a band of
brothers, which no force can break, no enemy destroy." Such committees had
been used in the colonies since the beginnings of. the controversy with
England, but they had been rather pale and innocuous. These that Adams was
forming were to be subversive and downright revolutionary. He took pains that
they, should be.
Now another incident occurred to rouse the sluggards. In spite of the general
lightening of customs duties, smuggling was going on at a great rate. In June
of 1772 the Crown's revenue cutter Gaspee stationed in Narragansett Bay,
expressly to hamper Rhode Island's leading industry, fired on a packet which
failed to stop, gave chase, and ran aground at Namquit, where a fast-ebbing,
tide left her high, The packet continued on to Providence And brought news of
the affair to "Mr. John Brown, a leading merchant of that place."
John Brown was not only "a leading merchant" of Providence. Two years before
he had laid with his own hand the cornerstone of Brown University's Hall; and
he was ever a man of action. He, thought that the Gaspee's plight delivered
into patriot hands a fine opportunity to put an end to that "vexatious
ship"--which no doubt had caused trouble for some of Mr. Brown's own vessels.
So, Brown sent Daniel Pearce along Providence's Main Street, beating the life
out, of a drum, shouting the news, and inviting all stout-hearted', men to
join in a voyage for Liberty. Meanwhile Brown prepared a fleet of longboats.
That night sixty-four men setout. As they approached the beached Gaspee, her
commander challenged, then fired a pistol. Thomas Bucklin, one of the
patriots, or pirates, returned the, fire against orders and wounded the
Gaspee's captain., The seagoing mob then boarded the revenue ship, took off
her crew, and set her afire. She presently blew up and, sank. Her crew was
set onshore and the wounded captain given medical attention.
Large rewards were offered by the Crown for information, leading to arrest of
the pirates. Brown was arrested, but no witnesses could be found. He was
released. The inevitable broadsides appeared at once, placing further curses
on the Crown and its revenue boats. And these new inflammations, had in no
manner subsided when the Crown resolved to pay the salaries of Massachusetts
judges, heretofore paid by the province. Samuel Adams, happy at this turn of
events, now opened up with all of his horrors. "A bribe," he shouted from
broadside and newspaper. He demonstrated, at least to his own satisfaction,
that this "bribery" would make the American colonists "as complete slaves as
the inhabitants of, Turkey or Japan." It was time, he went on with great
choler, to "strike a home blow, or sit down under the Yoke of TYRANNY." He
was very fond of capital letters.
The Adams yeast was working famously in this year of comparative surface
calm. One thing and one thing only seems to have driven this middle-aged man
from the mid 1760's to the end: the overthrow of English government in the
colonies. It was his mainspring, his whole drive, his life. No one has been
able to find an ulterior (commercial) motive in Adams's desire for an
independent country. In this respect he stands almost alone among his
fellows, the archetype of the revolutionary agitator.
Now that he had turned his sardonic powers on the committees of
correspondence, the results soon became apparent. Marblehead, Newburyport,
Charlestown, and many smaller towns throughout New England appointed.
committees. It was the same in other provinces. Intercolonial underground was
established with committees as far south as Charlestown in Carolina.
To keep the always suspicious countrymen from thinking that Boston city men
were leading them into trouble, Adams put out a lot of sheer pap about "
sensible Brethren in the country" and how the Boston folk were "imitating"
the resolution of the small villages to "oppose. TYRANNY in all its forms."
This sort of thing, done with complete cynicism, flattered the rustics all
the way up-country to Bennington in the New Hampshire Grants.
Adams also made certain that the committees in all of the colonies were given
regular dosages of raw, red meat in the form of new horrors. He drew up a
truly staggering list of "repressions" from which he said the honest
colonists were suffering at the hands of cruel Ministerial Tools, and sent it
broadcast. Few of the honest colonists had any conception of the irreparable
injuries being perpetrated on them by the Crown until they read Adams's
seething and all-but groundless indictments.
By 1773, at least, it was apparent that these committees of correspondence
were the answer to an agitator's prayer. Isaac Sears and John Lamb of New
York, Patrick Henry in Virginia, and the notable Christopher Gadsden in South
Carolina, all left-wingers in their respective regions, were quick to
circulate the Adams brand of poison, and to elaborate on --it-if that were
possible. It seems hardly too much to say that the committees of
correspondence were the genesis of the United States of America.
Late in 1773 Adams created a tremendous noise in New England when through
Benjamin Franklin he got hold of letters written years before by Hutchinson,
now royal governor of Massachusetts. Paying no attention to Franklin's
admonition. not to make them public, Adams promptly had them read to the
General Court, then published and broadcast. There was really little in the
letters to give offense; little, that is, until Adams gave them his own
interpretation. He intermingled his own remarks with the text of the letters
to such an extent that the total effect of the concoction was to ruin any
influence Hutchinson may still have had with half-hearted patriots.
Adam followed this blow--one of the dirtiest -pieces of fighting possible--by
having the Massachusetts General
Court address the King and request Hutchinson's removal. (This was the period
that caused Hutchinson to refer to Adams as "The Grand Incendiary of the
Province.")
Now came the celebrated Tea Party about which every American has heard, and
about which almost no American knows anything. This is not strange, for few
if any general histories have gone into the elaborate preparations made by
Adams to bring it about.
The Party, like the Massacre, was no sudden and accidental clash between the
Crown officers and the so-'called
patriots. It was manufactured to order, custom-built, with a genius that
overshadowed Adams's comparatively simple if bloody plans for the Massacre.
The Tea Party, in fact, and although it has become one of our symbols, is of
importance to political history chiefly because of the malignantly clever
methods used by Adams to stage it. The opportunity was furnished free by
England; the great East India Company, virtually a part of the English
government, found itself short of cash and long on tea. It had applied to
Parliament for aid and had been granted a monopoly on all tea imported by
the American colonies. The company, fully as ignorant of the American
colonies as were the King and his ministers, decided in an extremely
unfortunate moment to peddle its wares in America through its own appointed
agents, thus eliminating independent merchants. The decision caused colonial
businessmen, many of whom heretofore had been staunch Tories, to ally
themselves with the Whig radicals. Here was government monopoly in all its
brazen hideousness--as Sam Adams took pains to point out.
In late November (1773) three ships loaded with the East India Company's
product arrived in Boston harbor and anchored below Castle William. They were
thus not yet officially in the Port of Boston, a measure Governor Hutchinson
had ordered because of conditions in the city. These conditions amounted to
an impasse: Adams and his crew feared that if the tea were landed, the
Yankees would buy and drink it, thus paying the tea tax, and in so doing
"would drink themselves out of their liberties." Or, at least so Adams
informed them.
Governor Hutchinson demanded of the East India Company that the tea be
landed. But by this time he knew that Adams would stop at nothing to prevent
it. So, he had the ships, anchor just outside the port where, if things went
badly in the town they could return to England with their cargoes intact. If,
however, the ships once actually docked at Boston and were then unable to
discharge their cargoes, they would be liable to confiscation on their return
to England. This was the law, made so by an act of Parliament providing that
no dutiable merchandise could be returned to England in the same ship it went
out in, without a pass or certificate from the governor of the colony to
which the cargoes had been consigned. The governor, in turn, could not give
such. a pass without a, receipt from. the Customhouse that the duty had been
paid. Governor Hutchinson, in holding the three East India Company's ships
away from the port, was simply playing safe.
Safe? Not with Adams loose. Adams had his Liberty Boys board the ships and
summon their captains to appear before the Boston committee of
correspondence. There he ordered the skippers to bring their ships alongside
Griffin's wharf, unless they wanted, he told them, a coat of tar and
feathers' That was the kind of gangster old Sam Adams could be. The, captains
must have taken the order to heart, for the ships were docked at once, as
ordered.; and now Adams had meetinghouse bells rung and boys sent through
town distributing incendiary handbills. But this was not enough. Adams sent
couriers, including the ever-ready Revere, to committees in other parts of
New England. His message was to the effect that if this tea were landed, it
would be a mere opening wedge for England to tax everything needed or used by
the colonies.
Governor. Hutchinson refused to give the ships clearance to return to England
until the Customhouse gave him a receipt for the duties; the Customhouse
refused to give the governor such a receipt until the duties were paid; the
consignees of the tea did not dare, what with Adams ringing bells and passing
handbills, to pay the duties and attempt to unload the tea. Instead, the
consignees were so frightened at the uproar that they left town and took
refuge in Castle William. Sam Adams had now brought about a dilemma that.
made his heart glad.
Setting muscular patriots to watch the moored ships to prevent unloading of
the tea--or departing--Adams called a "general muster" in Faneuil Hall where
he told a large crowd about the dangers to liberty inherent in taxed tea. He
intimated strongly there was only one thing to be done with such tea, and
left it to his audience to figure out what he meant-which was not difficult,
even for the dim-witted. Daily meetings of this sort continued in the Hall.
The muscular Liberty Boys still watched the ships. The 17th of December was a
sort of deadline, the day on which the ships would become liable to seizure
by customs officials for nonpayment of duty.
Adams hardly slept during this period. He still feared that if any of the tea
were landed at all, it would somehow get into colonists' teapots and be
drunk, thus corrupting them beyond mending. On the 16th he called a meeting
that brought several thousand persons, too many for Faneuil Hall; the meeting
adjourned to the Old South Meeting House, and overflowed into the street.
Josiah Quincy and others addressed them. At a quarter to six, just as candles
'were being lighted, Sam Adams stood up-and took the floor. "This meeting,"
he declared in his palsied voice, "can do nothing more to save the country."
It was a prearranged signal. It set off immediate shouting, "Boston harbor a
teapot tonight!" Adams's mob was well organized. Down through the narrow
streets groups of men and boys moved swiftly and silently to Griffin's wharf.
There they divided into three, companies, boarded the three ships, and tossed
overboard all of the tea. When the tide rose that night, and fell, the shore
from the wharf to Dorchester was one long windrow of the East India Company's
best bohea tea.* [*A small vial of tea, said by the Bostonian Society to be
the authentic article, is to be seen in a room in the Old State House,
Boston.]
Other cargoes of the East India Company's vile product were rejected at New
York and Philadelphia and returned to England intact. Another consignment, to
Charleston, South Carolina, was landed and stored in damp cellars where "it
soon became worthless."
It was the job at Boston that echoed in Parliament. England closed the Port
of Boston to all commerce, and did so
effectively. It moved the seat of provincial government from Boston to Salem.
It altered the charter of the colony and provided that henceforth certain
important officials should be appointed by the Crown, instead of elected by
the people. Lastly, it sent General Thomas Gage, commander in chief' of the
British forces in America, to be governor of Massachusetts Bay colony.
These measures were- exactly what Samuel Adams wanted. He promptly called
them , the Intolerable Acts, and went into, a fury in his correspondence with
other committees. Here, he said, was what ye cruel Ministerial Tools would
impose on, honest and patriotic men. Were other colonies going to stand idly
by while Liberty was taken away, first from one, then another? Rhode Island
proposed a continental congress to discuss matters. Connecticut and New York
offered the idea of "a congress of deputies from all the colonies."
Virginia's, House of Burgesses was dissolved by the governor for its radical
acts, but met again without the governor's sanction and declared boldly that
an attack on one colony was an attack on all. . . . The committees of
correspondence were
beginning to function in the manner Sam, Adams had meant them to.
Adding blunder to blunder, Parliament next passed the Quebec Act,
guaranteeing by statute the freedom of worship to the Catholics of that
province. Adams hit the ceiling, "They would make us papists," he shouted; *
[*It is obvious that when Samuel Adams called anyone a papist be meant one or
more of several things--a communicant of the Church of England, a Roman
Catholic, or simply anyone, even a Freethinker, who was opposed to anything
that Adams favored.] and the committees of correspondence were presently
notified that the, Pope and his minions might land at any time and take
charge, of all theology in North America. It was a thought, said Adams, to
make men shudder.
Although Adams made a good deal of a bogey out of the papist menace, of
greater interest to the colonies was anotherclause of the Quebec Act--the one
that extended Quebec's boundaries southward to the Ohio River. Such a
division would conflict with claims of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and
Virginia to lands in the west. It will be remembered, also, that a number of
large land companies thought they owned great hunks of the land which would
be alienated by the Quebec Act.
The colony of Virginia now presented a specific plan for a Continental
Congress, a suggestion that had been made by Adams a number of times, both in
spoken word and in writing. The Virginia plan was heartily endorsed by other
provincial, legislatures, and on September 5, 1774, fifty-three delegates
representing all colonies except Georgia met at Philadelphia. Among them was
Samuel Adams.
It is indicative of the man, of his fanatical one-mindedness, that when he
was elected as a delegate to the First. Continental Congress, Adams did mot
possess sufficient decent clothing to appear in a public gathering, He
probably would have gone as he was, attired in seedy coat and patched
breeches, had not his fellow 'delegates made up a purse, for the explicit
purpose of buying presentable clothing for the Great Agitator. He did buy it,
including some new shoes and buckles, and away they went to Philadelphia.
The First Continental Congress drew up a Declaration of Colonial Rights, both
moderate and dignified, and sent it to the King. It also formed an American
Association, by which the colonies expanded the idea inherent in the
committees of correspondence and agreed among themselves to import or consume
British goods until redress for grievances was obtained. Committees of safety
were to be appointed in every town, and among their duties was that of noting
and reporting any citizen who refused to abide by the Association agreement.
The First Continental Conggress adjourned after making provision for a,
second meeting m May 10, 1775, unless
redress bad been made before that time. Sam Adams returned to Boston. with a
determination to prevent any such
calamity as redress being given to anyone. At this period, a truce, a
concilation with England, would, have been welcome to a large majority of
the Continental Congress delegates, but not to the Old Roman of Boston. On
his jolting way homeward from Philadelphia, Adams must have been turning over
in his mind the several possibilities for further subversive work.*
[*Remarked a fellow delegate, Joseph Galloway, of Adams: `He eats little,
drinks little, sleeps little, thinks much."]
In the meantime, General Thomas Gage had arrived in Boston with four
regiments of troops; and a small British navy, guns ready, rocked at anchor
in the harbor. Gage had been given orders to put down the rebels in
Massachusetts, to discipline the people there, and specifically to arrest
Samuel Adams and John Hancock and to send them to England to be tried as
leaders of the, rebels.
Adams had now almost achieved the war, that he, and he almost alone, had been
working up to for these past ten years. It was now time for the shooting to
begin, and begin it did. This first brush of arms was not on Lexington Green,
nor at Concord Bridge, but in the wilds of New Hampshire, where no poet
caught the echo to tell of the shot that was heard round the world. Yet the
Battle of Fort William and Mary deserves better treatment than it has had.
Early in December (1774) some alert undercover agent for Adams learned that
General Gage was about to send an expedition to Portsmouth, New Hampshire,
to strengthen.Fort William and Mary there. The fort contained "goodly store
of powder and ammunition." Gage well knew that militia companies were
drilling everywhere in New England. The Portsmouth fort was isolated. The
colonial militia, Gage knew, had little powder of its own. The fort was
manned by a small company of soldiers.
Adams made an effort to forestall Gage, and presently Paul Revere was
pounding north through a wintry night on the most important of all his many
rides. On the next afternoon, December 13, he arrived at John Sullivan's home
on the Oyster River in Durham, near Portsmouth. Sullivan, a lawyer and
farmer, had been drilling the local boys for several months. He had also
written Samuel Adams and others urging the colonies to take action for
complete independence. He was a born leader of men, and spoiling for war.
Revere's message was all he needed.
Sullivan sent his hired man around to muster a select group of his militia
boys. After dark that night they floated down the river in short, squat boats
called gundalows to Portsmouth, poled their awkward craft as close to the
fort as they could, then waded ashore, and Sullivan demanded .surrender. The
commander of the fort, Captain Corcoran, although surprised, refused
surrender and he and his men began shooting. They hit nobody, and presently
gave up. For the rest of the night Sullivan and his men worked like beavers,
wading waist-deep in the cold water to transfer to their boats ninety-seven
kegs of gunpowder, a few small cannon, and a number of muskets. The weather
had turned what even residents of New Hampshire allowed was cold. The river
froze solid. For the next two days and nights the expedition slowly cut a
channel upstream through the ice in order to get its booty to Durham and hide
it. Gunpowder was to be a tragic shortage to the Americans in the opening
days of the war, and the powder that brave Sullivan and his men took at
William and Mary was used to good advantage a bit later at Bunker Hill. It.
had been a close shave, too, for the powder had scarcely been landed up-river
and hidden when the British frigate Scarborough arrived at Portsmouth
expressly to take the fort's supplies to Boston.
Revere waited at Durham until he knew the outcome of the expedition, then,
returned to Boston with the good news. Henceforth Revere was a marked man,
under suspicion of Gage. He could no longer get a pass out of the city. From
now on he kept a small rowboat hidden in North Boston, close by the Charles
River.
King George in England was greatly vexed when he learned of the raid on his
fort of William and Mary. He sent orders to General Gage to arrest and punish
every man connected with it and to seize immediately all war supplies of the
rebels.
This peremptory order doubtless reminded Gage that he had not yet been able
to arrest Sam Adams, for whom he had been looking, in his casual sort of way,
for several months. Gage had a pretty smart spy system of his own, and he,
was soon informed of two things: One, that the rebels had gathered a sizable
supply of military stores at Concord; and two, that Sam Adams and John
Hancock were in hiding outside Boston, probably in Lexington.
Dr. Joseph Warren was now acting as chief of the Liberty Boys in Boston. On
March 5, in keeping with Sam Adams's old custom, he had gone to the Old South
Church and there, under the noses of many British officers who had been sent
to listen for subversive utterances, Warren had given the anniversary sermon
on the victim of the Boston Massacre. The meeting came off without incident.
Then, early in April, Warren learned that Gage was to send an expedition to
capture the patriot stores at Concord and to arrest Adams and Hancock. Warren
sent Revere to warn those two men of their danger and to suggest hiding the
stores in a new place. Revere made this daylight ride on a Sunday, April 15.
The stores were moved and re-hidden. Adams and Hancock promised to be on
guard. On the 18th, when British troops were actually moving out of Boston,
Warren sent Revere riding again, and also Billy Dawes, one of the best
horsemen in the colony. This, incidentally, was the ride--the least important
of all Revere's many rides --that made both Revere and Henry W. Longfellow
famous, by a poem as inaccurate as it is blood-tingling. The poem had no
effect on Dawes.
Both Dawes and Revere reached Lexington, where they roused Adams and Hancock,
and found the local Minute
Men, under Captain Parker, already alert and drinking rum in the Buckman
tavern, hard by, the Green. They, too, drank, and then, joined by young
Samuel Prescott, who had been courting his girl, they started for Concord. On
the road they were stopped by British troops. Revere was captured, and his
horse was taken from him. Dawes escaped, but was thrown from his horse. Only
Prescott got through to Concord with the alarm. By now, in any case, all of
Middlesex county was aroused. Candles flickered in farmhouses all the way
from Boston to Lexington, and on to Concord. There were shouts and noises of
men getting their gear together. Women and girls were melting lead and
running bullets.
Midnight had long since passed. It was the 19th of April, 1775. The main
body of redcoats was moving out of Boston an the, road to Lexington and
Concord. It should not be forgotten for an instant that Sam Adams, the old
agitator, was still in Lexington.
pp.11-32
-----
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
Kris
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