American Rebels

by Nina Sankovitch

  One afternoon as he was strolling by himself on the Boston Common, a man approached him—a man he’d never seen before. The man carried a large packet of letters, which he thrust at Hancock. The man told Hancock that some of the letters had the signature of Governor Hutchinson and others bore signatures of friends of Hutchinson. The man had no idea if the letters were fake or genuine, but he asked that Hancock oversee the formation of a committee to establish their authenticity, explaining that if those letters proved to be the real thing, the ensuing scandal for Hutchinson could be devastating.

  Having finished his story, Hancock then reached beneath the desk behind him and pulled out a large packet of letters. The story told by Hancock was a complete fiction: the letters had come into his possession via Sam Adams, who had received them from Thomas Cushing, who had in turn received them from Ben Franklin, who had sent them from London. Franklin had asked that his role in the release of the letters be kept a secret, so Hancock and Sam Adams had come up with the story of the stranger on the Boston Common.

  The letters, most of them written by Hutchinson to a friend in England, but also including letters written by Andrew Oliver, dated back to the late 1760s, and ranged over various issues of colonial administration. Over the next few weeks, details contained in the letters would leak out, and eventually the letters would be published in their entirety. As the fictional stranger on the Common had predicted, the scandal for Hutchinson was calamitous.

  In one letter Hutchinson described the leaders of Boston as “Ignorant” and its citizens as cowards: “As the prospect of British revenge became more certain [with the arrival of troops in 1768] the people’s courage abated in proportion.” In a letter written in 1769, Hutchinson wrote: “There must be an abridgement of what are called English liberties.… I doubt whether it is possible to project a system of government in which a colony 3000 miles distant shall enjoy all the liberty of the parent state.… I wish the good of the colony when I wish to see some further restraint of liberty.”1

  In another letter dated around the same time, he asked for “standing troops … to support the authority of the government,” and in still another he requested that Parliament approve as necessary the curtailing of “English liberties in colonial administration.”2

  Although the letters did not go far beyond statements Hutchinson had made publicly over the years, seen as a whole—and given the spin that Sam Adams applied to their publication in the Boston Gazette—public outrage was immediate. Hutchinson was now proven to be “the dangerous FOE of Liberty, of truth, and of Mankind.”3

  By summer, the outrage would turn violent, with effigies of Hutchinson and Oliver set afire and widespread protests in the streets.

  John Adams was enraged by the letters, seeing in them the proof of Hutchinson’s disloyalty to and betrayal of his own people: “Bone of our bone, born and educated among us! The sublety of this serpent, is equal to that of the old one.”4 The reference was to the serpent in the Garden of Eden, but now it would be the serpent itself cast out of Boston—or such was the fervent hope of the patriots.

  The House charged Hutchinson and Oliver with “the great corruption of Morals, and all the Confusion, Misery and Bloodshed which have been the natural Effects” of their actions. Then the representatives passed a resolution, demanding that both men be removed from office.5

  Hutchinson protested to the House that he had demonstrated neither “the Tendency [nor the] Design … to subvert the Constitution of the Government, but rather to preserve it entire.”6

  But by the end of June a petition signed by John Hancock and three other leaders of the House was sent to the king, asking for the removal of Hutchinson and Oliver from their posts. It was a largely symbolic move, most likely to be ignored, but the petition to remove Bernard had been successful, and the colonists were hopeful as well as vengeful.

  John Adams, now fully back in the political arena, felt energized, powerful, ecstatic. When he had been elected to the House in May, his fellow representatives had nominated him to serve as a member of the Governor’s Council, a legislative body whose members were nominated by colonists but had to be approved by the governor. Governor Hutchinson had vetoed Adams’ appointment, and when a friend sought to console Adams for the veto, lamenting that not only was it a loss for the colonists but it would be a “check” on John’s career, John had quickly responded: “I considered it not as a Check but as a Boost.”7 For who would want the approbation of Governor Hutchinson now?

  Abigail took John’s reentry into politics well, in part because of a new friendship she had formed with a woman who would serve as a mentor to Abigail. Sixteen years older than Abigail, Mercy Otis Warren was born and raised in Boston, where she had been tutored alongside her brothers in a politically active family. She now lived in Plymouth with her husband, James Warren (no relation to Dr. Joseph Warren).

  James was a friend of John Adams and, like John, played a prominent role in both local and colonywide politics. Mercy, like Abigail, managed the family farm and raised the children. Mercy was also a published poet and a playwright. Her writings were pointedly political; her first play, titled The Adulateur, based on the events of the Boston Massacre, was an open indictment of Thomas Hutchinson and his policies.

  In Abigail’s first letter to Mercy, written after John and Abigail had been guests in the Warren home in Plymouth, she asked if the two could begin a correspondence: “I venture to stretch my opinions, and tho like the timorous Bird I fail in the attempt and tumble to the ground yet sure the Effort is laudable, nor will I suffer my pride … to debar me the pleasure, and improvement I promise myself from this correspondence.”8

  Mercy answered in the affirmative, and within a short space of time, she and Abigail became close epistolary friends. Not only did Mercy serve as a model politician’s wife, but she also showed Abigail how to be a well-informed and politically engaged woman herself. John, already well-acquainted with Mercy through his friendship with her husband, was pleased with the closeness between the two women. Many letters would pass back and forth between all three of them over the coming months and years. Mercy was eager to forge closer ties to John Adams, whose future she foresaw as a good one, and she wished to tether her husband’s career with John’s. But she also sincerely liked both Abigail and John, and they admired her in return.

  Abigail was growing in confidence, as her four children, curious and kind, grew under her tutelage into readers (by the age of nine, Nabby could—and did—read any book that Abigail offered her) and writers. As early as age six, John Quincy Adams was writing letters of substance to his cousins, such as the one in which he wrote, “i thank you for your last letter i have had it in my mind to write to you this long time but afairs of much less importance has prevented me … too much of my time in play there is a great Deal of room for me to grow.”9

  Having been given so much responsibility in caring for the farm and the children, as well as her community, Abigail was resolved to do it all “in the best manner I am capable of.”10 She already had firm ideas on a range of issues, including educating girls, ending slavery, and promoting self-reliance; her friendship with Mercy, an older woman who had forged her own place in colonial politics, would encourage Abigail to articulate her ideas more fully and act on her feelings with courage.

  * * *

  June 1773 was unusually hot. Although little rain fell, the air was heavy and damp. The dusty streets of Boston, combined with the humidity and heat, made for miserable conditions in town. Aunt Lydia took Dolly Quincy with her to Point Shirley on the north shore, where the Hancocks had a summer home. John joined the women when he could, and friends from surrounding houses were invited for cold suppers, tea parties, and carriage rides by the sea. Dolly had retrieved her ribbons and laces from the drawer where she had hidden them during the boycott of British goods, and once again she dressed in fine dresses of linen and silk, prettified with all the flimflammery she might desire.

  And yet Dolly found th
at her tastes had changed. She no longer wanted lace-lined flounces or a trail of ribbons along her waist. Dolly would always dress well, as did John Hancock, but at her advanced age of twenty-six, and with her status as companion to the protector of Boston, she was no longer interested in trying to be the belle of the ball. Even as Aunt Lydia insisted on paying for her gowns, it was her father, a patriot and a religious stalwart, who reminded Dolly that modesty best suited her in her new role. Did she not remember the female figure of America that Paul Revere had engraved for all to see? She had been dressed for both prayer and battle, and Dolly should do the same. John Hancock needed her steady by his side: as “he appears to rise higher, the greater the burdens,” Edmund Quincy wrote, and she, his beloved daughter, should do all she could to support him.11

  John Hancock was busier than ever as keeper of the town, both in politics and in public works. He was on more committees than any other member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, overseeing everything from land disputes to Hutchinson’s letters to street lighting, colonial appointments, and repairs to public buildings. He continued to drill his eighty Cadets on a weekly basis, and his commitment to the entertainments of the citizens of Boston continued as well, with refreshments and music supplied for celebration days, including the commemoration of the king’s thirty-fifth birthday on June 4, 1773.

  In July, John sat alongside Aunt Lydia and Dolly in a prominent pew of the Brattle Street Church to hear Dr. Cooper’s sermon. The church bell, paid for by Hancock, rang out, celebrating the consecration of the newly built church. Hancock had arranged for the bell’s inscription: “I to the church the living call / And to the grave I summon all.”12

  But it was the church elders who had provided the engraving on the cornerstone of the new church: HON. JOHN HANCOCK. A mark of thanksgiving, to be seen by all who walked by. Sam Adams had written to a fellow patriot in April 1773 that Hancock was a man to be counted on, for he made his mark everywhere, as benefactor of the town and man of the people.

  * * *

  Hannah Lincoln returned to Braintree in late July 1773 to live once more with her father. Her husband, Bela, had died on Georges Island on July 16 and was buried “among the grazing farm animals” in the burial grounds behind the Old Ship Church in Hingham, where the Lincoln family had lived for generations.13 The couple had never had children, and it made sense for Hannah to return to live with her father. Her health had suffered during the long months she spent caring for her cantankerous patient, as had her spirits during the years she spent married to him. Living in Josiah’s house, with its wide windows overlooking the countryside and the seashore, and now free to do as she wished without criticism or insult, just might restore both her health and her spirits, giving back to Hannah what marriage to a difficult and abusive man had taken away.

  Josiah Jr., home again with his wife, Abigail, in Boston, continued to correspond with those he had met during his travels through the South, tightening the connections he had forged and seeking to bolster patriotic fervor wherever he had seen a southern spark of it. He was gratified to receive letters that proved to him that the network was there; he believed that political unity was possible, even across the divides of cultural, religious, and what he deemed “moral” differences (his abhorrence of slavery not abating).

  George Clymer from Philadelphia wrote to him in July, “your Patriotism is the greatest Support of the common cause, and I trust will in Time diffuse itself so universally as to make all Attempts against American Liberty as vain as they are wicked.”14 Clymer referenced New Yorkers as unstable supporters of the patriot cause, but Josiah answered promptly: “Instability is not peculiar to New Yorkers: it is characteristic of men in all ages and nations. Let us forgive each other’s follies and unite while we may.”15

  The issue that would prove to be the catalyst to union was already in play, a new act devised by Parliament to reap taxes from the colonists, while boosting the East India Company, an English trading company on the verge of bankruptcy. Passed by Parliament in May, the Tea Act of 1773 gave the company the exclusive right to supply tea to the colonies; although duties would be paid on every cargo of tea arriving in the colonies, the Act also provided for a drastic reduction in the price of tea by eliminating duties paid in England. The East India tea was to be sent directly to only East India–approved colonial merchants, to be sold only by those consignors. There would be no incentive for independent merchants to smuggle in tea, for who would buy any other tea, when the East India tea cost so little?

  The Tea Act created a monopoly, plain and simple, and would cause the ruin of independent merchants everywhere. From the northern colonies to the southern, protests broke out, with New Yorkers vowing: “The Americans will convince Lord North, that they are not yet ready to have the yoke of slavery rivetted about their necks, and send back the tea from whence it came.”16 From North Carolina came news of the Edenton Tea Party, a collective action taken by the women of that colony, who pledged to boycott all tea coming from England. In South Carolina, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney vowed that tea shipped to Charleston from England would never be allowed to land. The groundwork Josiah Quincy Jr. had laid was beginning to bear fruit.

  Patriots in Boston quickly joined in the protests, promising to “oppose the vending of any Tea, sent by the East India Company … with our lives and our fortunes.”17 And the best way to prevent any tea being sold was to prevent it from ever reaching the colonial markets. If the tea never made it onshore, there would be no taxes collected, no profits for the East India Company—and no further trouble.

  The Massachusetts Committee of Correspondence sent missives to all colonial port towns, declaring that “this tea now coming to us, [is] more to be dreaded than plague or pestilence”; exhorting all colonists to come together “in a most zealous and determined manner, to save the present and future generations from temporal and (we think we may with seriousness say) eternal destruction”; and urging that no cargoes of tea be allowed to unload anywhere in the colonies.18

  * * *

  James Scott, captain of John Hancock’s fleet, was in London that fall, loading up the Hayley, fulfilling orders made by Hancock earlier in the year. When approached by the East India Company to carry a consignment of tea, he flatly refused. But the company had no trouble tracking down other vessels to carry its bales and chests of “weed” (the colonists’ dismissive term for tea) to the colonies. The company was willing to pay over-the-top fees to any shipowner willing to take on its cargo; these prices were so high that the Sons of Patriots called them bribes. And, of course, there were shipowners who succumbed.

  By the end of October, close to two thousand chests of tea on four separate ships were on their way to Boston. Among the consignors designated to receive and sell the tea in Massachusetts were the two sons of Governor Hutchinson, Thomas and Elisha. The Sons of Liberty saw these contracts as further evidence of treachery on the part of the governor, this “government and guidance which his Excellency hath with two of the Tea-Consignees, and the influence he hath over the rest,” and more reason than ever to oppose the landing of the tea at Boston.

  On November 2, signs went up on posts “at almost every corner” throughout the town, inviting “Freemen of this & the neighboring Towns … to meet at Liberty Tree” to bear witness as “the Persons to whom the Tea is shipped by the East India Company, make a public Resignation of their Office as Consignees upon Oath & also swear that they will reship any Tea that may be Consigned to them by said Company by the first Vessell sailing for London.”19 Come see the consignors reject their commission, advertised the signs; but first the consignors had to be scared into doing so.

  Letters were sent to the homes of each merchant consigned to sell the East India tea, including the two Hutchinson brothers. The letters demanded mandatory attendance at the Liberty Tree on November 3 in order to “make a public resignation” of the commission of tea, because receiving and selling such tea “is destructive to the happiness of ever
y well wisher.” A warning was added at the end: “Fail not upon your peril.”20 No signature was attached to the letters, nor to the bills posted throughout the town—nor was any claim to authorship necessary.

  Sam Adams, John Hancock, Josiah Quincy Jr., Joseph Warren: any one of them could have penned the words on behalf the colonists of Boston—and Governor Hutchinson suspected every one of them of doing so, and of fomenting trouble that he would be hard put to control.

  With a limited number of troops now stationed on Castle Island and little support from the tea merchants themselves—they were asking him for protection!—what could Governor Hutchinson possibly hope for in landing tea at Boston? Any attempted unloading of tea cargo was sure to turn violent. Yet he refused to back down: the tea would be landed, he vowed, and the duties collected. After that point, the fate of the tea was not his concern.

  By noon on November 3, 1773, over five hundred Sons of Liberty, accompanied by Sam Adams, John Hancock, and Dr. Joseph Warren, had gathered at the Liberty Tree on Orange Street to witness the consignors’ resignation of their commissions. Josiah Jr., home convalescing, waited restlessly in his library for news. On Orange Street, the men at the Liberty Tree also became more restless as time passed and no merchants arrived to make their resignations.

  The crowd, agitated and grumbling, began to move toward the store of Richard Clarke, a tea merchant and designated consignor. They rallied outside the doorway, shouting for him to come outside and speak to them. Inside, Clarke hunkered down with the Hutchinson brothers, along with Benjamin Faneuil, another designated tea seller. The four men had been meeting, trying to come up with a plan for landing their tea; they had no intention of resigning their commissions. Despite the loud cries from outside, the merchants refused to budge from their seats. The front door of the shop remained closed and bolted.