American Rebels

by Nina Sankovitch

  In closing, he exhorted his fellow colonists: “The blind may see, the callous must feel, the spirited will act.”18

  And act they did. In October 1772, Sam Adams, urged on by Josiah Quincy Jr., called for the establishment of a “Committee of Correspondence … to state the Rights of the Colonists and of this Province” and to communicate those rights to the other colonies, as well as to “the World.”19

  The Committee of Correspondence formed; a group of twenty-one, they met to debate what course of action to follow in protesting Parliament’s latest maneuvers. On November 20, 1772, the committee submitted a report to the town meeting. Sam Adams, along with James Otis Jr., Josiah Quincy, and Dr. Joseph Warren, had accomplished an unimaginable feat: in less than three weeks, they had brought their committee, with its participants of diverging views and backgrounds, to a place of agreement and certitude. Their report, which would be known as the Boston Pamphlet, laid the groundwork for that which Governor Hutchinson had long feared: rebellion.

  “We the Freeholders and other Inhabitants of Boston,” stated the report submitted by the committee, “apprehending there is abundant to be alarmed at the plan of Despotism … can no longer conceal our impatience under a constant, unremitted, uniform aim to enslave us, or confide in an Administration which threatens us with certain and inevitable destruction.”20

  The Boston Pamphlet set out in plain terms the rights of American colonists: “Among the natural Rights of all the Colonists are three.… First, a right to Life; Secondly to Liberty; thirdly to Property.”21 A long list of grievances was included, covering everything from tax revenues and tax collectors to control over the salaries of provincial government officers and the use (and abuse) of juryless admiralty courts.

  In closing, the writers of the pamphlet (and surely Josiah was author here) invoked the law as both savior of the people and as an ideal worth fighting for: “Let us consider Brethren, we are struggling for our best Birth Rights and Inheritance.… Let us disappoint the Men, who are raising themselves on the Ruin of this Country. Let us convince every Invader of our Freedom, that we will be as free as the Constitution our Fathers recognized, will justify.”22

  John Hancock was not on the committee that prepared the Boston Pamphlet, in part because of bad health and in part because he was uncertain about the readiness of other towns and colonies to join Boston in its battle against Britain. Nevertheless, as moderator of the Boston Town Meeting, it was Hancock’s duty to call for a vote on its approval. And once it was approved in a unanimous vote and then sent out for printing to be presented to the other colonies, it was Hancock’s name, as moderator, that was prominently displayed on the first page in large bold type.

  Now that his name was so intimately linked with the work of the committee, Hancock did not hesitate to publicize the Boston Pamphlet and advocate for cooperation across the colonies in protecting colonial rights and privileges. He urged towns to create their own committees of correspondence and write their own reports, as well as to sign on to the pamphlet. Colonists across Massachusetts, and America, responded by organizing their own local and regional committees to debate British policies and decide their political futures.

  In England, Ben Franklin, having received a copy of the Boston Pamphlet, sent it out for reprinting and then went about London distributing it to pro-colonial advocates and their opponents alike. It was not lost on English readers of the pamphlet that its American authors had invoked the same reasoning used by the original founders of their colony for breaking with England in the first place: it was “that generous ardor for Civil and Religious liberty which in the face of every danger, and even death itself, induced our fathers to forsake the bosom of their Native Country, and begin a settlement in bare Creation.”23

  That same ardor for freedom would carry the colonists forward in their struggle to again assert their own sovereignty and right to liberty. While there were many in England who saw such passion as a danger to the status quo of empire, others recognized the resolve of the colonies as an opportunity for Parliament to ease off on the colonies and get things back to the way they used to be.

  For the citizens of Braintree, the Boston Pamphlet was remarkably similar to the Braintree Instructions written in 1765 by John Adams, in which he had laid out in no uncertain terms the illegality of taxation of the colonists by Parliament. It was easy enough for the people of Braintree to now support the Boston Pamphlet, and to once again herald their native-born legal tactician.

  John welcomed the praise but still persevered in his plan to stay out of politics. He wanted to keep to his plan of working hard, staying healthy, and cherishing his peace: “I must remember Temperance, Exercise and Peace of Mind. Above all Things I must avoid Politicks, Political Clubbs, Town Meetings, General Court.… I must ride frequently to Braintree to inspect my Farm, and when in Boston must spend my Evenings in my Office, or with my Family, and with as little Company as possible.”24

  For the time being, such a life would suffice for John Adams; and it would please Abigail as well (although she had objected to returning to Boston, unhappy to leave her sister Mary). But the plan John had laid out in September was already crumbling, bit by bit, and would soon be laid to waste not only by the rising ambitions of Adams but also by the persistent oppressions of Parliament and the hidden machinations of Hutchinson.

  * * *

  By the end of the year 1772, Josiah Quincy’s health had deteriorated even further. The effort he put into creating the Boston Pamphlet took its toll, and his consumption returned in force and with violence: his coughing spells produced blood and led to throbbing headaches and sleepless nights, compounding his growing frailty. He suffered frequent fainting spells, and friends and family began to worry for his life. Dr. Warren, his partner on the committee to write the pamphlet and his always loyal friend and physician, advised Josiah to travel to softer climates for a long visit; a restful vacation in the southern colonies might just be what was needed to restore his strength and vitality.

  But Josiah had a different goal in mind when he acceded to Dr. Warren’s suggestion. He would willingly travel south but rest was not his primary intention. Instead, he would use the trip to begin a one-man campaign to first understand, and then corral, the political interests of the southern colonies, with the end goal of binding the interests of the South to the interests of the North.

  Josiah knew there were colonists in the southern colonies as concerned as New Englanders about the state of affairs with Parliament. But the concerns of the Southerners were distinct from those of the Northerners: their economies were different; religion was treated in a different way; and the courts and the administrative offices in each colony were distinct, one from the other. “Were I to lament anything,” Quincy wrote in his journal, “it would be the prevalent and extended ignorance of one colony with the concerns of another.”25

  His journey south would be a scouting trip, and a campaign to bring Southerners in line with Northerners. As he wrote in a letter to a friend, “Let us forgive each other’s follies and unite while we may.… To think justly is not sufficient, but we must think alike, before we shall form a union; that truly formed, we are invincible.”26 And to be invincible was the goal, when facing the daunting powers of Britain.

  17

  Branching Out

  A mutual exchange of sentiments will give us, as men,

  knowledge of each other; that knowledge naturally creates esteem,

  and that esteem will, in the end, cement us as colonists.

  —JOSIAH QUINCY JR.

  On January 1, 1773, John Adams sat at his desk, at his new home on Queen Street in Boston, and took out his diary. “January the first, being Friday,” he began. Then he continued, his quill pen scratching away on the manuscript paper, “I never was happier in my whole life than I have been since I returned to Boston. My resolutions to devote myself to the pleasures, the studies, the business and the duties of a private life are a source of ease and comfort to me.”
1

  But like so many resolutions made in a new year, those of John Adams would not last the month. In just three days, he put pen to paper again but not to scribble private thoughts in his diary. John Adams, political pamphleteer, was back in business. Three of his pieces were published in the Boston Gazette in the month of January, and many more would come out over the next few months. Published under his own name, these very public—and very political—writings would bring him the fame he had craved as a younger man but would also divert him from a quiet private life—book on his lap, seat by the hearth, and Abigail nearby—for good.

  John’s writings began as an exploration of the law concerning the issues of judges’ salaries and appointments and the importance of impartial justice; he argued that judges beholden to Crown or Parliament were simply not capable of carrying out their judicial duties. At the end of his first piece, after lengthy paragraphs in which he quoted two English legal experts, Sir Edward Coke and Sir Robert Raymond, and referred to dozens of English cases and proclamations, John added, “I have many more things to say upon this subject.”2 And indeed he did, as two more lengthy letters followed on the same subject within the month.

  But he also branched off into the broader subject of how much control Parliament could exercise over all the administrative positions of the Massachusetts colony. When at the end of January the Massachusetts House of Representatives asked John to revise its written response to Governor Hutchinson’s recent speech to the General Court—in which Hutchinson asserted the absolute sovereignty of Parliament over the colonies—he quickly got to work.

  Within a week, he rewrote the reply, creating a text fifteen pages long. In it, Adams argued that the original charter granted the colonists “all the Liberties and Immunities of free and natural Subjects … and a Legislative was accordingly constituted within the Colony; one Branch of which consists of Representatives chosen by the People, to make all Laws, Statutes, Ordinances, &c. for the well-ordering and governing the same.”3

  Although Governor Hutchinson repeatedly invoked “the Supreme Authority of Parliament” in setting the colonial legislative agenda, and Parliament “claimed a Power of making such Laws as they please to order and govern us,” John argued that both the language and the intent of the Massachusetts Charter were both clear and binding: “it cannot be supposed to have been the Intention of the Parties in the Compact, that we should be reduced to a State of Vassallage, [therefore] the Conclusion is, that it was their Sense, that we were thus Independent.”4

  Leave the colonists to govern themselves under the charter, John advised: “Should the People of this Province be left to the free and full Exercise of all the Liberties and Immunities granted to them by Charter, there would be no Danger of an Independance [sic] on the Crown.”5

  It was not independence from England—the creation of a new country—that John Adams argued for; it was for colonists to be left to govern themselves, as citizens of England. He as yet had no thought of separating from Great Britain—nor had Josiah Quincy Jr. or Sr., nor Edmund Quincy, nor his daughter Dolly, nor John Hancock. These stalwart natives of Braintree might argue most forcefully for liberty, yet they still without hesitation pledged “Allegiance … to the King of Great-Britain, our rightful Sovereign.”6

  There was no thought of rebellion; in fact, as Josiah Quincy Jr. argued again and again, it was Parliament and its sycophants in the colonies who were “rebels” against the British Constitution. The colonists fighting for their rights were not only the true patriots and truly loyal to Great Britain; they were also the chosen ones of God. After all, Josiah wrote, “tyrants are rebels against the first laws of Heaven and society: to oppose their ravages is an instinct of nature, the inspiration of God in the heart of man. In the noble resistance which mankind make to exorbitant ambition and power, they always feel that divine afllatus [inspiration] which … causes them to consider the Lord … as their leader, and his angels as fellow soldiers.”7

  When Josiah Jr., John Adams, and John Hancock spoke of revolution, they spoke of it in terms of “that glorious aera [sic]” when, in 1688, James II was removed from the English throne and the rights and privileges of Englishmen were restored to them under the reign of William III.8 As Josiah Jr. put it, in quoting the English legal genius Sir William Blackstone, the “flagrant abuse of any power, by the crown or its ministers, has always been productive of a struggle.”9

  A struggle, a revolution, a rebellion: for the patriots of Braintree, the words all signified justified agitation that was necessary to restore and protect the rights of colonists, both natural and man-given.

  Governor Hutchinson, however, saw only treason in the colonists’ protests and writings. To contest the will of Parliament and the king—whether disputing the right of Parliament to tax the colonists, or of the Crown to pay the salaries of judges and administrators, or of admiralty courts to hear cases without a jury—was rebellion against Crown and country. The Boston Pamphlet was, in Hutchinson’s opinion, the culmination of the colonists’ fomenting of rebellion: it was the “foulest, subtlest, and most venomous serpent ever issued from the egg of sedition.”10

  * * *

  Josiah Jr. finalized his plan of departure from Boston, bound for Charleston; he would leave by early February 1773. Having lost his oldest boy, Ned, when he sought a travel cure for his consumption, Josiah Sr. worried that his youngest son’s journey might be similarly ill-fated. Travel by sea was always with its risks, and in the winter months it was sure to be rough. The vessel would travel along the coastline for a good part of the journey, but by necessity it would venture out into the waters around Bermuda and then swing back toward the southern colonies.

  Many a ship had gone down in those treacherous waters; the area was known as cursed. But his son Josiah was determined to go, and Abigail, his loyal wife, supported him in his choice. Josiah Sr. insisted that Abigail and the baby come out to Braintree to stay for the duration of Josiah’s time away; the anxious grandfather hoped to find distraction in keeping the little boy entertained. He tried to convince his son to complete a final will, even sending the lawyer John Lowell to Josiah Jr.’s office on Queen Street, but the younger Josiah procrastinated and no final testament was taken.

  * * *

  Notices began flowing into Boston, addressed to the town meeting and sent from villages and towns throughout the colony, underscoring widespread approval for the Boston Pamphlet and offering promises that local committees of correspondence would be set up to keep vigilant watch over the workings of Parliament.

  From Marlborough on the northern coast came the message “Death is more eligible than slavery.” From Chatham on the Cape, “Our civil and religious principles are the sweetest and most essential part of our lives, without which the remainder is scarcely worth preserving.” And from far out in the Berkshires: “As we are in a remote wilderness corner of the earth, we know little. But neither nature nor the God of nature requires us to crouch, Issaachar-like, between the two burdens of poverty and slavery.”11

  Hutchinson considered these incipient committees of correspondence to be agents of rebellion and treason, and claimed the documents produced by the committees were seditious, as they “would be sufficient to justify the colonies in revolting, and forming an independent state.”12 Together with his lieutenant governor, his brother-in-law Andrew Oliver, Hutchinson worked to suppress the committees, writing acid denunciations both of their purpose and of the characters of the men on the committees—“the worst of them one would not chose to meet in the dark and three or four at least of their correspondence committee are as black hearted fellows as any upon the Globe.”13

  But in a private letter to England, Hutchinson acknowledged that he was losing the battle against the committees. Their popularity was growing, and their ideas flourished: “a right to independence … is more and more asserted every day and the longer such an opinion is tolerated the deeper the root it takes in men’s minds and becomes more difficult to eradicate bu
t it must be done or we shall never return to good government and good order.”14

  * * *

  On February 8, 1773, Josiah Quincy Jr. set sail on the Bristol Packet bound for Charleston. As the ship sailed down through Boston Harbor, Josiah could see his father’s mansion on the hills of Braintree; he wrote in his journal, “I came in sight of my father’s cottage,” and it gave him such a sweet sentiment of both regret and renewal: “the sweetest harmony I ever caroled.”15 He began a new journal to record his travels south, dedicating it on the first page both to his wife, Abigail—“who has a right to a very large share of my thoughts and reflections, as well as to participate, as far as possible, of all my amusements and vicissitudes”—and to “a future witness to my self of my own sentiments and opinions.”

  He finished the dedication with the hope that “into whose hand this Journal either before or after my death may chance to fall, Excuse … those trifles and impertinencies I foresee it will contain.”16

  After a calm day of travel, which Josiah spent translating a passage of Virgil (brought on by the sight of his father’s home on the hill: “We have left our country’s borders and sweet fields”17), the weather—and Josiah’s health—took a turn for the worse. “Exhausted to the last degree, I was too weak to rise, and in too exquisite pain to lie in bed.”

  When he attempted to go up on deck for fresh air, “My sickness came on with redoubled violence, and after several fainting turns, I was carried back to bed.” Lying below deck was no better: “my pains came on so violent, and my cabin was so sultry and hot, to rise or perish seemed the only alternative.”18