American Rebels

by Nina Sankovitch

  The funeral party was given assigned places in the processional parade that followed Elizabeth Quincy’s coffin from Josiah Quincy Sr.’s home in Braintree to the burying ground across from the North Parish Church. Elizabeth was laid to rest close to Edmund’s parents, in a space where Edmund expected he would soon join her.

  Edmund and Elizabeth had been married for over forty-four years. Edmund found it hard to imagine life without her, but he submitted to the will of God: “True love inspires us with a perfect submission to divine will,” he wrote in a letter to his youngest daughter. “Persuaded that all things are governed by infinite wisdom and goodness, we submit to whatever happens.”24

  With Dolly’s mother gone, Lydia Hancock contrived to bring the young woman closer into the Hancock family. She had grown genuinely fond of Dolly, but she was also convinced that John’s marriage to her would be the final step in her yearslong plan of establishing her nephew as the most respected and favored man in Boston. By tying the names of Hancock and Quincy together through an unbreakable vow, John’s social standing would be without question. Quincy was a name long esteemed in the colony, and one that could be traced back, allegedly, to the Baron de Quincy, second earl of Winchester, who was at King John’s side when he signed the Magna Carta. To be part of that family would make the subsequent Hancock dynasty undeniably grand.

  And there was yet another motive to Aunt Lydia’s matchmaking. Lydia knew rumors still swirled about her nephew’s supposed lover, an older woman named Dorcas Griffiths, whom Hancock allegedly visited often in her rooms on Hancock’s Wharf. Lydia wanted those rumors quashed. Having first conferred with Dolly’s father and garnered his approval, Lydia convinced Dolly to spend even more time at the mansion on Beacon Hill.

  Under Lydia’s careful chaperoning, Dolly was invited to stay for days at a time, sharing a roof but not a bed with John Hancock, and acting as Aunt Lydia’s companion on many social visits throughout Boston. The news of the intimacy between the couple spread quickly and Lydia’s plan seemed secure, as the rumors began to shift; the latest gossip was that John Hancock and Dorothy Quincy would certainly be married, it was only a question of when. No one mentioned Dorcas Griffiths anymore; especially when the woman publicly allied herself with a British officer and turned Tory.

  12

  Pressing Forward

  May you have fortitude to suffer, courage to encounter,

  activity and perseverance to press forward.

  —JOSIAH QUINCY JR.

  “Suffering well, our fortune we subdue,” wrote a Boston Gazette columnist in January 1770.1 Although the identity of the columnist is unclear, the pen of Josiah Quincy Jr. can be seen both in the words of Virgil that he quoted and the sentiments conveyed. The piece was written to rally the people of Boston to suffer the British troops and taxes, not in silence but in open rebellion. In the weeks that followed, Josiah would publish a number of pieces all with the purpose of inspiring his fellow colonists to rise up against British oppression.

  In a letter published in the Gazette in February, under the pen name “The Independent,” Josiah warned his fellow colonists that “America is now the slave of Britain … every day more and more in danger of an increase in our burdens, and a fastening of our shackles,” and urged, “I wish to see my countrymen break off—forever!—all social intercourse with those whose commerce contaminates, whose luxuries poison, whose avarice is insatiable, and whose unnatural oppression are not to be borne.”2

  While Josiah continued to promote rebellion through nonviolent means (through the boycott of any and all goods produced in Britain), many of his Long Room Club associates were losing patience with nonviolent measures, and sought to accelerate a more active—and violent—rebellion against British oppressors. Led by Sam Adams, these Sons of Liberty sought to focus colonial ire on specific individuals, including the British soldiers who patrolled the streets and the shop owners who sold British goods, as well as the citizens who purchased them.

  Sam Adams spent every night that winter going from tavern to tavern, meeting place to meeting place, attempting, like Josiah Jr., to revive resistance to Britain. But unlike Josiah, Adams and the original members of the Loyall Nine encouraged the harassment—and worse—of any and all individuals associated with British oppression.

  During his nightly tours of drinking establishments, Adams was often accompanied by men dressed like Mohawk Indians. In both British and American political cartoons, American colonists were depicted as Native Americans, and Liberty was often portrayed as a young Native American woman. What better costume to wear when protesting the British than the clothes of America’s original inhabitants? The symbolism of the Mohawks was especially strong, given their ferocity in fighting against the English during the French and Indian War.

  While Adams roused spirits and fervor in the taverns, outside on the streets of Boston, large gangs of young boys implemented their own effective forms of protest. Once the first snow fell in December, the boys packed snowballs with ice and stones and then launched them at passing soldiers, while harassing them incessantly with jeers and catcalls. Now the boys enlarged the pool of victims to include not only British soldiers but also anyone buying or selling British goods.

  Every week the Boston Gazette published names of merchants who “AUDACIOUSLY continue to counteract the UNITED SENTIMENTS of the BODY of Merchants thr’out NORTH-AMERICA by importing British Goods contrary to the Agreement.”3 On market days, Thursdays, which were also school holidays, boys freed from the classroom set out to harangue any home or establishment where importers—those who sold or traded in British goods—lived or worked. The gangs of schoolboys broke windows or splattered them with mud or feces, threw rocks and sticks at proprietors and patrons, and launched snowballs. They destroyed or defaced shop signs, then made new signs featuring the word “importer” in black ink and a large painted hand pointing directly at an offending store.4

  John Adams found the use of children to bolster the boycott of British goods distasteful; Josiah Jr. agreed and renewed his condemnations of moblike activity. John Hancock remained silent on the issue, happy to let Sam Adams bear the brunt of criticism. Hancock understood that the gangs of boys were effective in raising both spirits and ire, and could only help the cause of resistance.

  * * *

  Josiah Quincy Jr. and John Adams had offices close to each other, now that John had taken a small space on King Street near the State House for his legal practice. Having traveled together on the court circuits of Massachusetts and Maine, John and Josiah began to work jointly on a few cases in a partnership they both enjoyed. John found an unexpected friend in the younger Josiah, especially now that his interactions with Jonathan Sewall had dwindled to none, social or otherwise.

  Sewall had been named judge of Admiralty for all of Nova Scotia, with a large salary and little work required (he could assign lawyers in Canada to take on his duties). Serving still as attorney general of the colony, he now received a double salary; the added prestige of holding the title of judge was another perk of the appointment. The Whigs of Boston attacked Sewall for accepting what they saw as a bribe to remain a Loyalist, and even his father-in-law, Edmund Quincy IV, wrote that Sewall had been “caught in a snare of six hundred a year.”5

  Jonathan and his wife, Esther, would soon move into a new home, a large and grand house in Cambridge purchased from Richard Lechmere, a Loyalist. The house was on Brattle Street, home to many of the consorts and colleagues of Thomas Hutchinson; so many Loyalists lived on the street that it came to be known as “Tory Row.”6

  While Esther withdrew into the luxuries still available to those associated with the British officials, her youngest sister, Dolly, enjoyed the more subdued but still pleasant lifestyle she shared with Lydia Hancock and her handsome nephew. The women of Boston had recently and very publicly confirmed their support of the boycott, as reported in the Boston Gazette: “upwards of one hundred Ladies at the North Part of this town” signed an agreement to
drink no tea “till the Revenue Acts are repealed.”7

  No tea drinking, no wearing of lace, no salt on her bread: Dolly, as the daughter of one activist for colonial rights and the companion of another, would comply with the prohibitions—but living much of the time with the Hancocks, she could comply in comfort.

  For political purposes, the Hancock household had to keep up the appearance of a relatively simple lifestyle. But John’s land and real property holdings would always keep him wealthy, and his home was abundant with luxuries not available to Dolly’s father and sisters or to her cousin Abigail Adams. Nevertheless, sales of goods from Hancock’s warehouses were on a downward spiral; not only did he have fewer goods to sell, but fewer people had the means to buy them, especially as prices rose on scarce items. His shipping fleet continued to carry whale oil exports on his own account and freight for other merchants, but he had to be careful that shipments from England did not contain boycotted items, and his profits from carrying both oil and goods for others fell.

  No matter the impact on his bottom line, Hancock remained dedicated to the economic boycott. Defying the orders of Acting Governor Thomas Hutchinson (a role Hutchinson took on following Bernard’s return to England), Hancock convened meetings with his fellow merchants at Faneuil Hall to strategize on how to protect their trade while also protesting the duties and taxes imposed by Parliament. He, along with many others who were complying with the nonimportation agreement, felt especially angry toward those merchants who continued to “meanly sacrifice the rights of their own country to their own avarice and private interest” by trading in British goods.8

  When Sam Adams asked Hancock to join in a mass demonstration against Hutchinson and his sons, Thomas Jr. and Elisha, who were both wealthy importers of British goods, Hancock refused. He was fearful of another mob attack on Hutchinson, and although he was no fan of the man, he wished him no harm.

  Perhaps more important, Hancock turned down the request because Josiah Quincy Jr. warned him that such a mass demonstration could be viewed as mob action against a British governor, which would be “an Act of high treason.”9 Parliament had already in the spring sought to use the ancient Treason Act, promulgated in the times of King Henry VIII, to bring charges against members of the colonial government in Massachusetts, and the threat of treason now hung over every action any colonist might undertake to protest parliamentary measures.

  Josiah Jr. suggested to Hancock that the march against Hutchinson had in fact been fomented by Hutchinson and his spies to trick Hancock and other Sons of Liberty; it was a “trap in order to ensnare them … [and] to take every advantage of them.”10 Following Josiah Jr.’s counsel, Hancock stayed home and the protest went on without him.

  More than two thousand merchants and laborers surrounded Thomas Hutchinson’s home, demanding that his sons cease and desist from the selling of “contraband tea” and that all other British goods be returned immediately to England.11 Hancock, settled in for the night in his mansion, received the news from a messenger sent by Sam Adams: the protest had been handled peacefully, without violence. No one had been hurt, no damage was inflicted on Hutchinson’s home, and the crowd had dispersed when threatened with charges of treason.

  Josiah Quincy Jr. was gratified to hear that no charges of treason would be brought against any of the organizers of the protest. Once more, he set himself to work writing invectives against the Townshend Acts, with the goal of keeping nonimportation going. Compliance with the economic boycott was still the crucial focus of nonviolent protest; it was the colonists’ best—and perhaps only—weapon against parliamentary programs of taxation, troops, and control of the courts.

  Due to the lag in communication between the colonies and Great Britain, the colonists did not know just how well their economic boycott was working to mobilize merchants in Great Britain against the Townshend Acts. Parliament, now led by Prime Minister Frederick North, was in fact weighing the options of a partial repeal of the acts. Townshend himself had long since died, and the merchants of Great Britain were eager to start trading with the colonies again. Nevertheless, Lord North wanted to make sure the colonists understood that Parliament’s right to govern the colonies was absolute and that as a source of revenue raising, Parliament would never give up on taxing the colonists.

  * * *

  On February 4, 1770, little Suky Adams died in Braintree. John and Abigail traveled with heavy hearts to the village. A bonfire was lit to thaw the ice and snow in the spot chosen for her interment in the burial grounds across from the North Parish Church. She would be buried near the grave of her grandfather, Deacon John Adams. In the spring, a small stone would be laid on the spot, just beyond a stand of early budding forsythia, but the space for grieving had already been marked in Abigail’s heart. John Adams wrote nothing of the death in his diary.

  But just a few weeks later, John wrote about the death of another child, “lately kil’d by Richardson.”12 The child was Christopher Seider, the eleven-year-old son of German immigrants. He was shot dead by Ebenezer Richardson, a former informer for the Crown customs office, who had come to the defense of a shopkeeper and importer, Theophilius Lillie, when Lillie became the target of an unruly gang of boys.

  As Thomas Hutchinson would later describe it, “The whole Street filled with People who would suffer no person to go to his [Lillie’s] shop.”13 Richardson, who lived close by, attempted to drive the boys away but only succeeded in further enraging them. The boys began to pelt Richardson with sticks and to yell epithets at him, circling around him like foxes in a chicken yard.

  Richardson, retreating to his home, shouted out to the boys to disperse. They replied they “were as free as he to stand in the king’s highway” and began to throw fruit peelings, small rocks, sticks, and eggs at his home.14 A brickbat was thrown through a window, breaking the glass; soon, more windows were struck and rocks began to fly. One rock hit Richardson’s wife, and others came close to striking his two terrified daughters. Richardson barricaded himself inside the home, along with a friend, George Wilmot, who had appeared out of the crowd to help.

  Richardson and Wilmot went to the top floor of the house and stood by the now glassless window overlooking the crowd below. Looking up, the gathered mob could see that the beleaguered men wielded muskets. Richardson knelt to an opening and laid his musket across the bare sill. The crowd went still. Richardson fired. Pea-sized pellets of lead sprayed through the crowd, hitting a sailor in the leg, the hand of a young man, and the body of eleven-year-old Christopher Seider.

  When Seider died later that night, Richardson was charged with murder. Josiah Quincy Jr. was chosen to defend Richardson as his court-appointed lawyer. Opposing him would be his brother, Samuel Quincy, acting as solicitor general for the colony. (Jonathan Sewall should have tried the case but excused himself, leaving it to Sam Quincy to prosecute.) Using the legal maxims of “a man’s house is his castle” and he “is not obligated to fly from his own house,” Josiah, assisted in the case by John Adams, argued that the shooting of the boy was a form of self-defense.15 Richardson would be found guilty nonetheless but was pardoned by the king later in the year.

  Rex v. Richardson was not the only case Josiah would be assigned to defend that involved mobs, trespasses, self-defense, physical harm, and even death. But Richardson’s fatal reprisal against an enraged crowd would be long-remembered as the first of the many bloody incidents caused by the presence of British troops in Boston. As John Adams put it in another case he took on with Josiah, “Soldiers quartered in a populous town will always occasion two mobs where they prevent one. They are wretched conservators of the peace.”16

  Sam Adams and his Sons of Liberty planned to make Christopher Seider’s funeral a political statement against the British troops patrolling Boston. The turnout was tremendous, despite the “snow & Hail … Smart Thunder & Lightning”17 that had besieged the city days before. Close to three thousand people gathered for the funeral, “the largest perhaps ever known in Ameri
ca.”18 The procession of mourners began at the Liberty Tree and then proceeded along Orange Street to Newbury, then up Winter to end up at the Old Granary Burying Ground on the east side of the Boston Common.

  Led by two hundred schoolboys, Seider’s coffin was carried by six of his friends. Behind the coffin marched thousands of Boston citizens, followed by thirty chariots and chaises carrying another hundred or so mourners. Acting Governor Hutchinson cynically noted that if the Sons of Liberty had the opportunity to resurrect Seider, they “would not have done it, but would have chosen the grand funeral.”19

  Alerted by his fellow selectman John Rowe that he had better attend the funeral as a sign of fellowship with the citizens of Boston, John Adams wrote in his diary, “My Eyes never beheld such a funeral. The Procession extended further than can be well imagined.… This Shewes, there are many more Lives to spend if wanted in the Service of their Country. It Shews, too that the Faction is not yet expiring—that the Ardor of the People is not to be quelled by the Slaughter of one Child.”20

  John’s prediction that the “Ardor of the People” would not be quelled would prove true. The “slaughter of one child” wouldn’t suppress the will of the colonists; nor would the deaths of five civilians one week later, struck down by British soldiers in what would come to be called a massacre.

  13

  Mayhem and Massacre

  Let us here pause, and view the citizen and the soldier.

  —JOSIAH QUINCY JR.

  On the evening of March 5, 1770, John Adams was at the home of his friend Henderson Inches, a Boston merchant, attending a meeting of a club of which he was a member.1 It was a Whig gathering, men meeting to discuss how best to address the constriction of colonial rights under Parliament’s regime of oppression. But all discussions were suspended when suddenly, “We were allarmed with the ringing of Bells, and supposing it to be the Signal of fire, We snatched our Hats and Cloaks, broke up the Clubb, and went out to assist in quenching the fire or aiding our friends who might be in danger.”