American Rebels

by Nina Sankovitch

  Having been trained at Harvard under its newly broadened curriculum, Briant was a man who thought the best of other people and preferred to see hope, rather than doom, for all humankind. He liked to have a good time and believed everyone should find joy in their lives and spread the joy through good works. He discounted the threats of eternal suffering leveled by the New Lights ministers and instead focused his theology on the ability of human beings to think for themselves.

  Preaching from his own pulpit in Braintree but also wherever else he was invited to speak, Briant charged the New Lights preachers with taking advantage of “the unthinking multitude” by claiming to be divinely gifted with the ability to interpret scripture for everybody else.3 He accused the preachers of threatening their audiences with eternal damnation and turning them “into such fiery Bigots, as to be ready to die in the Defence of Stupidity and Nonsense.”4

  Briant found an example of such “Stupidity” in the so-called bonfire of the vanities, in which large fires, set by the New Lights ministers, were used to burn and destroy books they deemed dangerous, along with fancy clothes and household goods they condemned as frivolous. The fires were cheered on by frenzied crowds of converts, the hysteria running so high that in one instance the minister, James Davenport, took off his pants and threw them into the fire.

  The New Lights’ insistence on predestination—that one’s fate, heaven or hell, was determined from birth—was especially troubling to Briant. Briant firmly believed in the individual’s ability to decide for himself or herself what was right in the eyes of the Lord. Furthermore, Briant believed that the right choices would result in an individual’s eventual salvation by a loving God (salvation by good works).

  He questioned the doctrine of salvation by grace alone because it removed the role of personal responsibility, “so as to destroy all moral Agency, and set themselves down with this vain Thought, that nothing on their Part is necessary to Salvation, but if they are designed for it, they shall irresistably be driven into Heaven.… And if they are not, no Prayers, nor Endeavours will avail.”5

  * * *

  Around the same time as the religious controversy in Braintree was heating up, news of a different kind rocked Boston. The Bethel, a small ship owned by the local mercantile firm of Quincy, Quincy, and Jackson (a partnership of Josiah Quincy, his brother Edmund Quincy IV, and their brother-in-law, Edward Jackson) had captured the Jesus Maria and Joseph, a Spanish galleon, as it traveled from Havana to Cádiz. England was at war with Spain (the War of the Austrian Succession), and news of the capture of an enemy ship was celebrated. Throughout the fall of 1748, newspapers were filled with accounts of the daring seizure on the high seas.

  The chase occurred at night off the coast of Gibraltar. Under cover of darkness, Isaac Freeman, the captain of the Bethel, fooled the larger Spanish vessel into surrendering to his much smaller ship. Writing to Josiah Quincy later, Freeman described how as dawn broke over the seas and the size of the Bethel became apparent, the captured Spanish crew “were ready to hang themselves on sight of our six wooden guns, and [with] scarce enough men to hoist the topsails.”6 The Spanish ship was escorted all the way to Boston Harbor by the Bethel and its entire cargo off-loaded, now the property of Quincy, Quincy, and Jackson.

  Chests of treasure, each one filled to the top with gold and silver pieces, were paraded through the streets of Boston by sailors armed with pistols and cutlasses, and cheered on by massive crowds; all of Boston was “wild with excitement.”7 In all, 161 chests were carried from the harbor to Josiah Quincy’s home on Marlborough Street, there to be deposited in his cellar for safekeeping.

  The captain of the captured ship was given two chests of money in recompense for his losses. Grateful for the unusually kind treatment he and his crew had received—more commonly, crew were imprisoned, ransomed, or impressed into naval service—the overjoyed Spaniard gave “a grand ball for his captors.”8

  Despite the lucrative seizure, the primary goal of the firm Quincy, Quincy, and Jackson was not privateering but rather the importing of goods from abroad to sell in the colonies. Given Josiah Quincy’s outgoing ways—he was always the most talkative in the room—and his overall enthusiasm, he was the one charged with going to Europe to put the trading deals together. He did his job well and the firm prospered.

  Josiah’s search for goods and markets took him to Paris, Amsterdam, Cádiz, and Leghorn (as the English then called Livorno, Italy). Family history passed down the tale of Josiah impersonating a priest while in Italy, speaking only in Latin to men he met in coffeehouses and bars, and then having to run for his life when the locals caught on. When the Bethel captured the Spanish treasure ship in the summer of 1748, Josiah was abroad and had no idea of the treasures that awaited him. Arriving home on one of the spring ships, he went down to his cellars, took a good look around, and returned upstairs to celebrate with his family. All the long journeys spent away from home, separated from his wife, Hannah, and their four children could now be put behind him forever. He and his two partners had become among the wealthiest merchants in New England.

  Edmund Quincy had already begun happily spending his newly won riches. He purchased a grand house in Boston on Summer Street, with a long garden that reached all the way back to the gardens of his brother Josiah’s house on Marlborough Street. He then set about turning his Braintree home into a handsome country estate, building a waterfall in the creek that ran beside the house and making improvements to the formal garden. He added a long allée of lime trees along the gravel path that led to the house from the street, and he bought new furnishings for the interiors, including a harpsichord and more books for his already extensive library.

  Edmund’s wife, Elizabeth, continued to spend most of her time in the Braintree home with her daughters, Katy, Esther, and Sarah, while Edmund traveled back and forth between town and country. When his youngest daughter, Dorothy, born in May 1747, was old enough to attend school, he brought her to Boston to attend a girls’ academy there: “Daughter Dolly looks very Comfortable, and has gone to School, where she seems to be very high in her Mistresses’ graces.”9 All of his daughters had been given an education—Edmund believed in teaching women to think for themselves—but now he had the money to offer the best education possible.

  Dolly was the only child, of all Edmund and Elizabeth’s nine children, to enjoy a childhood in this new world of expansive wealth. Although Edmund and Elizabeth were never poor, as a young wife and mother Elizabeth had had to run a small store out of their home to raise extra money for the family. Those days seemed to be over for good. Both Edmund and Elizabeth intended to enjoy their newfound wealth to the utmost, and to share the pleasures they could now afford with all the extended family, in Boston and in Braintree.

  * * *

  Because of the extensive time Josiah had spent abroad over the past ten years, he knew little about the spiritual controversy involving Reverend Briant and his pastorship in Braintree. But his cousin John Quincy, his brother Edmund, and Deacon Adams, all living in Braintree and active in the North Parish Church in the late 1740s and early 1750s, found themselves in the thick of it.

  Although many Massachusetts ministers were sympathetic to Briant’s characterization of the New Lights preachers as fanatical, Briant was widely criticized for daring to question settled dogma of Calvinist Protestantism and accused of skating dangerously close to heresy. In a sermon delivered from the South Parish Church of Braintree, Reverend John Porter from Scituate went so far as to accuse Briant of being among the “pretended Preachers of Righteousness,” comparing him to “the Arians, Socians, Arminians, Antinomians, and even the Quakers.”10

  Like Anne Hutchinson before him, Lemuel Briant could rely on the faithful of Braintree to support him against accusations of heresy and shrug off the charges of antinomianism. But when Abigail Briant left her husband, claiming that he had mistreated her, the backing of his community began to falter. As Jonathan Mayhew, a Boston minister and friend to Lemuel Br
iant, reported in a letter, while there were those in the village who remained “generally well-satisfied with Him … [others] indeed give heed to the evil Reports which his wife spread concerning him.”11

  Stories began to circulate through the village in the summer of 1752 that Reverend Briant was not only a bad husband but he also failed as a minister because was too “jocular and liberal.” As John Adams, now sixteen years old and a sophomore at Harvard, described it, “a Controversy was carried on between Mr. Bryant the Minister of our Parish and some of his People, partly on Account of his Principles which were called Arminian and partly on Account of his Conduct, which was too gay and light if not immoral.”12

  In December 1752, members of the North Parish Church called for a meeting to consider the behavior of their pastor; the council was held at the home of Deacon Adams. While a few of the attendees complained of Briant’s “gross Errors of Arminianism” (alleging that Briant called into question accepted doctrines of original sin and the total depravity of humanity), arguments flew back and forth as to whether the young man had committed heresy. No resolution could be reached, and the council adjourned until January.

  When they met again in the new year, once again convening in the home of Deacon Adams, one of the members of the church council accused Reverend Briant of mistreatment of his wife, along with “intemperance, gaming, neglect of family duties.”13 But again, no agreement could be reached as to the question of his heresy or how to deal with him.

  John Adams was disturbed by the “Spirit of Dogmatism and Bigotry” that pervaded the debate over Briant.14 Like his father, and like Reverend Briant, John believed “good deeds were more important than faith.”15 But many in the town, including John’s uncle, Ebenezer Adams, ignored the many kindnesses and liberality of Reverend Briant and focused instead on Briant’s attacks on accepted Protestant theology, his too-joyous demeanor, and his lack of humility.

  Finally, in the spring of 1753, the North Parish Church appointed a new council to review the charges against Briant and decide once and for all what to do with him. This council was chaired by John Quincy, master of Mount Wollaston and cousin to Edmund and Josiah. Quincy and his committee did not take long to complete their assigned task. They cleared Briant of all charges of heresy and, furthermore, supported his continued ministry of the North Parish Church.

  Most important, the Braintree Council proclaimed their commitment to a liberal theology that allowed differing interpretations of scripture, and that refused to demand “any particular Profession of a Minister’s Faith at his Ordination.” Even if a minister made “any such Profession, it could not destroy his Right of Private Judgment, nor be Obligatory upon him, any further than is Continued to appear to him agreeable to Reason and Scripture.”16

  In other words, men and women, gifted with reason and intelligence, had the right to assess for themselves the validity of church dogma and modify their behavior as they themselves saw fit and good.

  This “right of private judgment” in spiritual matters would prove to be even more important to the colonists of Braintree when it came to political matters. If a church could lay down rules that, in the reasoned and reasonable opinion of a parishioner, might be best ignored, then a government that sought to bind its citizens in ways that the citizens found to be unjust could also be disobeyed. The colonists of this new world in which reason won out over dogma were coming to see that it was their right to interpret exactly what their obligations were to a government that, in their judgment, no longer deserved obedience or loyalty.

  Reverend Briant, having fallen ill and now all alone in his parsonage (his wife having long gone), resigned from his pastoral duties at Braintree in October 1753. He was given a respectful send-off, organized by Edmund Quincy, in “thanks for his labors in the ministry among us.” He died a year later in Boston at the age of thirty-three.17

  * * *

  After taking his share of the bounty earned with the capture of the Jesus Maria and Joseph, Josiah ended the business partnership with his brother and brother-in-law, and the firm of Quincy, Quincy, and Jackson closed its doors. Josiah wanted to settle down and become a country squire. First, he would find suitable furnishings for a new house, and then he would move back to his native village, set up some businesses there (glassmaking and cider-pressing for starters), and become involved in local politics.

  Josiah took his time going through the Boston warehouses, picking out furniture to bring to the planned country estate in Braintree. Most of the fine pieces he chose had been imported from England—chairs and tables, even tiles for the fireplace. When he saw a grand Japanned chest, over seven feet tall on long, elegant legs, he knew he had to have it. The chest had been crafted in Boston and was decorated with deeply lacquered scenes depicting pastoral views of open skies, flying birds, and lazily grazing sheep; these were the country views he longed for.

  Having inherited more than two hundred acres from his father, lands set high on a hill overlooking the bay and continuing down to the marshy coastline, Josiah considered building a new home for his family. But in the end, he chose to live on the green in the village, taking over the Hancock parsonage from the departing Reverend Briant. The handsome old home where John Hancock had spent his early years would never serve as a parsonage again.

  4

  The Education of Girls

  If we mean to have Heroes,

  Statesmen and philosophers,

  We should have learned women.

  —ABIGAIL QUINCY

  Abigail Smith was just a baby the first time she came to Braintree, carried by her mother from Weymouth to meet her grandparents, Elizabeth and John Quincy. As she grew into a girl, Abigail came frequently on her own to the village. Walking the four miles to see her “merry and chatty” grandmother, she passed up hill and down in eager anticipation of the final ascent to the Quincy mansion overlooking the bay.1 She stayed at Mount Wollaston for weeks at a time, spending her “early, wild, and giddy days” there, under the tutelage of her adoring and encouraging grandmother.2

  As Abigail later wrote, she “chiefly lived during the early period of my life” with her grandmother, from whom she learned “many good Rules and Maxims.”3

  Her parents, Reverend William Smith and his wife, Elizabeth Quincy Smith, taught their children—one boy and three girls—to exercise decorum, principle, and prudence in their behavior. Mrs. Smith wrote to her son Billy, “As soon as you were capable of reasoning, you [were] treated like a reasonable creature—when anything was demanded of you, the reason was given.”4

  The children were expected to think beyond their own interests and desires in helping those in need, including the sick, the impoverished, and all those who had lost hope. Mrs. Smith was known throughout Weymouth for her acts of kindness that “at once promoted the publick Good, and that of Individuals, by the best kind of Charity.”5 To be of use in the community, to be respected in the community: these were the important attributes of a pastor and his family.

  Reverend Smith had steered his congregation carefully through the turbulence brought on by the New Lights controversy. From the pulpit, he rejected the hysteria and the rigidity of the revivalist ministers, but he never refuted their sermons supporting the basic tenets of Congregational dogma.

  Having observed the proceedings in Braintree against Reverend Briant, Reverend Smith’s goal was to preserve peace in the Weymouth community and to also ensure his continued position there. His appreciative congregation listened as he preached forgiveness and grace and warned against gossip and idleness. Rationality and calm was the underlying spirit of everything Reverend Smith and his wife did in their community and in their home.

  But while her parents taught lessons of charity, propriety, and reason, it was from her grandmother, Elizabeth Quincy—and her “happy method of mixing instruction and amusement together”6—that Abigail learned to embrace her natural rebelliousness and also to steady it with discipline and determination. Her parents might have complaine
d about Abigail’s “volatile giddy disposition,” but her grandmother praised her spirit, for “wild colts make the best horses.”7 She understood that Abigail, like herself, saw nothing wrong in having a good time while also doing good work: life was not just to be endured but to be enjoyed.

  These “excellent lessons which I received from my grandmother” were never forgotten: “I frequently think they made a more durable impression upon my mind, than those which I received from my own parents,” Abigail would write later. Grandmother and granddaughter shared the same “lively, cheerful disposition,” but what most impressed young Abigail, along with her grandmother’s “unaffected piety,” was her ability to be both good-natured and strong-willed; her grandmother was kind and cheerful but also exerted an “inflexible adherence to certain principles.”8 Abigail herself would be praised for both her generosity and her determination in the years to come.

  During young Abigail’s solo visits to Braintree, she also visited with her cousins, the sons and daughters of Edmund and Josiah Quincy. Of all her cousins, she admired Josiah’s daughter, Hannah, most of all. Although Hannah was eight years older than Abigail, they were very much alike, both lively and bright and, like Abigail’s grandmother, bold and forthright.

  When Hannah’s mother died in August 1755, at the end of a cool, damp summer, little Abigail was there to offer her older cousin whatever comfort she could. But Hannah’s carefree days were over. At the age of nineteen, she had to become caregiver for her father and her twelve-year-old brother, Josiah Jr., who was often sickly, and also the caretaker of the parsonage on the green. Even when her father remarried in 1757, Hannah’s duties continued, and in fact increased: with the arrival of her half-sibling, Elizabeth, she now had a baby to care for, and also the girl’s mother, who had fallen ill after the birth.