American Rebels

by Nina Sankovitch

  The act provided that starting on June 1, there would be a complete blockade of goods coming into or leaving Boston, to be enforced by troops already on their way. The blockade would continue until a full reparation had been made to the East India Company for the tea destroyed on the evening of December 16, 1773. The intent of the act was clearly stated: to punish the citizens of Boston for their “dangerous commotions and insurrections.”22 The impact was equally clear: with no food or fuel arriving in port, but instead only more troops, the people of Boston were to be starved, frozen, and beaten into submission.

  Within days of the Harmony’s arrival, the British navy ship Lively sailed into Boston Harbor. Armed and ready to enforce the Boston Port Act, she carried on board General Thomas Gage, commander in chief of British forces in America. He had been appointed by Parliament to take Thomas Hutchinson’s place as governor of Massachusetts. Hutchinson was ordered to England, to answer for his mishandling of the colony. But for now, Gage and Hutchinson would stay together on Castle Island, conferring over how best to subdue the rebellious colony of Massachusetts.

  Gage had already announced that the seat of government would be moved over the next month from Boston to Salem; the Governor’s House would be relocated there, and all meetings of the General Court of Massachusetts would convene there. The reasoning was simple: with no goods allowed to land in Boston, how could the work of governing the entire colony be fueled?

  John Adams wrote to Abigail in Weymouth, where she had gone to stay with her parents for a brief visit. “We live my dear Soul, in an age of Tryal.… The town of Boston must suffer martyrdom: It must Expire. And our principal Consolation is, that it dies in a noble cause.” But just as quickly as he seemed to give up on Boston, he urged his wife to dig in and fight. “We must continue to many ways as we can to save Expences, for We may have Calls … to prevent other very honest, worthy people from suffering.”

  Then he assured her, “I can truly say that I have felt more Spirits and Activity since the Arrival of this News, than I had done before for years. I look upon this as the last Effort of Lord North’s Despair. And he will as surely be defeated in it, as he was in the project of the Tea.”23

  All the measures Hancock had proposed in his Boston Massacre speech—a union of the colonies, the establishment of a militia, a meeting of a “general Congress”—seemed more necessary than ever. Boston could not oppose Britain and its harsh Port Act on its own. The networks Josiah Quincy Jr. had identified in the South had to be notified, as well as local and colonywide committees of correspondence in both the North and the South.

  Unity of action throughout the colonies was needed: “Let us catch the divine enthusiasm … of changing the hoarse complaints and bitter moans of wretched slaves, into those cheerful songs, which freedom and contentment must inspire,” John Hancock proclaimed. “Let us humbly commit our righteous cause to the great Lord of the universe, who loveth righteousness and hateth iniquity.”24

  No matter how Gage and his troops intended to enforce the Boston Port Act, Samuel Quincy quietly announced to his family that neither he nor Jonathan Sewall would execute arrest warrants on John Hancock or any of the others indicted in England for treason. There was no need to further excite raised emotions, he explained. As things stood, the tension was high enough, and the point of no return was too close for Sam’s comfort.

  Even after becoming solicitor general, Samuel Quincy had successfully straddled the line between colonists protesting for their liberty and the royal administrators charged with implementing Parliament’s orders. He balanced himself there with the certainty that he was serving his duty to both. As he wrote to Josiah Jr., “A consciousness … of having done his duty will support every man against the attacks of obloquy and reproach.”25

  But the time was fast coming when he would have to choose. He would have to land on one or the other side of the line he so carefully straddled, and no one who knew him well—much less those many others who gossiped blindly about him—could predict where he would finally end up.

  * * *

  Four days after receiving news of the Boston Port Act, Josiah Quincy Jr. published an eighty-two-page critique of it, titled Observations on the Act of Parliament Commonly Called the Boston Port-Bill. Addressed to “the FREEHOLDERS AND YEOMANRY of my country … in you … do I place my confidence, Under God,” Josiah beseeched his fellow colonists to acknowledge the “insidious arts, and … detestable practices … used to deceive, disunite and enslave the good people of this Continent,” and warned them that “the extirpation of bondage, and the reestablishment of freedom are not of easy acquisition … trial and conflicts you must endure; hazards and jeopardies—of life and fortune—will attend the struggle.”26

  But he also reminded them that “nothing glorious is accomplished, nothing great is attained, nothing valuable is secured without magnanimity of mind and devotion of heart to service … dedicate yourselves at this day to the service of your country; and henceforth live A LIFE OF LIBERTY AND GLORY.”27 His rhetoric enflamed all who read it, of all classes, infuriating the Loyalists and encouraging patriots across the board.

  Copies of Josiah’s essay flew around Boston and out to the villages and towns of Massachusetts. Messengers on horseback, just returned from delivering news of the Port Act itself to points south, including New York City and Philadelphia, now turned around and went back again, this time carrying satchel-loads of Josiah’s pamphlet. Reprints made in Philadelphia found their way farther south, to Maryland, North Carolina, and all the way to South Carolina.

  Within a few weeks, Ben Franklin in London received his copy of Josiah’s pamphlet, which he then reprinted and circulated widely to the colonies’ supporters and sympathetic members of Parliament; nonsympathetic members had to wait a bit longer, but soon they too would read Quincy’s scathing attack on Parliament and on those “Legislators, who could condemn a whole town.”28

  Josiah’s final warning was lost on no one, from Boston to Charleston to London—and Castle Island, where Gage still remained holed up with the former governor, Thomas Hutchinson: “America hath … her Patriots and Heroes, who will form a BAND OF BROTHERS: men who will have … courage, that shall inflame their ardent bosoms, till their hands cleave to their swords—and their swords in their Enemies hearts.”29 Josiah still used the word “sword” as a metaphor, the pen being his favorite weapon and the field of public opinion his favorite battleground.

  Josiah was certain that Hutchinson, with his false tales and exaggerated accounts of what was going on in Massachusetts, had been behind the harsh retributions passed by Lord North and Parliament. If leaders in England could be shown the true facts of what had been occurring in Massachusetts and understand how determined the colonists were in retaining their rights as English citizens—and at the same time, how much they wished to contribute to the British empire of trade and its promulgation of freedom and liberty, reason, and intellect—Josiah was certain that peace between the mother country and its colony could be reached.

  Josiah still believed in England, and through his pen, he sought to make the English lords and legislators, the Crown and all his advisers, still believe in Massachusetts.

  21

  Punishment and Indignation

  Does not every man, who feels one ethereal spark

  yet glowing in his bosom,

  find his indignation kindle at

  the bare imagination of such wrongs?

  —JOSIAH QUINCY JR.

  On June 1, 1774, the port of Boston was closed. Bells tolled, merchants closed and bolted their shop doors, and colonists wore funeral bands around their arms and observed fasts, while sending imploring prayers to heaven. But no measures undertaken by the citizens of Boston—no amount of praying or fasting or public mourning—could prevent the blockade of their port. Eight British warships were deployed to strategic points around the harbor, with the largest vessel, the Captain, settling in between Hancock’s Wharf and Long Wharf. The warship strad
dled the lanes in and out, its British guns fixed on Boston.

  “Poor unhappy Boston,” lamented merchant John Rowe. “God knows only thy wretched fate. I see nothing but misery will attend thy inhabitants.”1 As the days of June passed, the sun growing hotter and the air heavier, the docks remained quiet: no shuffling of crates and boxes, no mainsails raised with a clanging of bells, no shouting of shipmates or horns blasting news of arrival or departure. Only the crowing of seagulls echoed down the silent rows of dry-docked boats, listless wharves, and deserted moorings.

  How different the harborside had been just two weeks earlier, when Thomas Gage finally arrived in Boston for his swearing-in as governor of the colony. Large crowds gathered on King Street, from the Town House down to Long Wharf, to welcome him to town. It seemed as if all of Boston had turned out that day, from judges to dockworkers, from merchants to street vendors, from wives of the wealthy to fishmongers’ daughters. There had been hope then, some lingering optimism, that Gage would not impose the blockade; that he would recognize the woes of Boston and moderate the fury of Parliament.

  John Hancock was at the head of a delegation sent to greet Commander Gage, leading his Corps of Cadets to the foot of Long Wharf. There, as Gage descended from his warship, the Cadets raised their guns and shot a salute into the air.

  Gage presented the Cadets with a banner richly embroidered with his own coat of arms. The banner was hoisted up and displayed to the crowd. Gage stood back, a smile across his face, prepared to accept from the Cadets both their thanks and their allegiance to him, as his official bodyguards.

  But when Hancock failed to salute the new governor, an accepted protocol that signaled both allegiance and obedience, Gage’s smile turned to a grimace. He waved Hancock away and proceeded up King Street to the Town House of Boston. Accompanied only by local Crown officials and his own British advisers and officers, Gage entered the building, where he was sworn in as governor of Massachusetts.

  At the celebration held later at Faneuil Hall, “a good dinner” to which “but very few gentlemen of the town” were invited, toasts were given and cheers made.2 When Gage insisted on giving a tribute to departing Governor Hutchinson, the “toast was received with a hiss,” merchant John Andrews, one of the partygoers, noted: “such was the detestation in which that tool of tyrants is held among us.”3 Gage assessed the crowd and then reassured them that he was in Massachusetts to perform his duty “as a servant to the Crown [but] would do all in his power to serve” the colonists. John Andrews was not alone in his sentiments, which he expressed as “a little doubtfull.”4

  Andrews’ doubts were valid, as Gage immediately set about imposing Parliament’s restrictions on Boston’s trade, even going beyond what Parliament had dictated as just punishment for the town. Regiment after regiment of troops was moved into the city, to be quartered on Boston Common. Not only would they live on the Common, but they would go through their daily training exercises there, in full view of the citizens of Boston. Any deserters caught and tried would also be shot on the Common, again in full view of all.

  Having deployed his warships to strategic points in the harbor, Gage announced that the scope of their enforcement would include prohibiting any movement by boat, from skiffs on up, within harbor waters. Although Parliament had provided that fuel and certain foodstuffs could proceed by water into the town, Gage forbade it.

  All necessities, along with everything else, would have to be carted in on wagons from the ports of Salem or Marblehead to the north, a journey of thirty miles that some predicted would cost as much as the journey from England to America. The Boston Neck, the narrow strip of land that connected Boston to the mainland, would be the only entry into the city.

  For a town whose economy revolved entirely around the movement of goods through its docks, shutting down harbor trade meant desolation and ruin. By the end of June, close to one-third of Boston’s population had fled, desperate for work, food, and salvation. Shops were closed, and those few that remained open would soon have little to sell.

  What goods did arrive in Boston from ports to the north were costly, given the expense and difficulties involved in delivering them by wagonload to town. The narrow Boston Neck was clogged with traffic: citizens desperate to leave and merchants’ cartloads of goods lining up to be brought in.

  John Adams lamented to Abigail that his legal business was sure to fail due to the “unfortunate Interruptions” and that all his recent purchases—“books … a Pew … [our] House in Boston”—would be “almost fatal” to their financial stability.5 He vowed to hang on as long as he could, with clients still to represent at court sessions scheduled for the summer.

  But he worried about his own future, and that of his colony: “We have not Men, fit for the Times. We are deficient in Genius, in Education, in Travel, in Fortune—in every Thing. I feel unutterable Anxiety.—God grant us Wisdom, and Fortitude!”6

  He began to think of leaving Boston once again, and returning with his family to Braintree. As always, the peace and beauty of Braintree called to him: “My Fancy and Wishes and Desires, are at Braintree, among my Fields, Pastures and Meadows.”7 Life on the seaside farm, with its resources of wood, milk, fish, and vegetables, would be easier than scrambling for expensive food and fuel in the blockaded city.

  Rumors abounded of further strictures to be placed on Massachusetts by Lord North. John could not imagine just how far Parliament might go: “I confess myself to be full of fears that the Ministry and their friends and Instruments will prevail, and crush the Cause and Friends of Liberty.”8 Abigail, burdened by the daily search for open stores and markets, was also eager to leave. She missed her sister and her gardens and the Braintree farmhouse she considered home.

  * * *

  As summer settled in, news of more Intolerable Acts promulgated by Parliament arrived. The measures were harsh: the Massachusetts Charter had been revoked; town meetings were limited to just one a year; colonists would no longer elect their legislative representatives but instead a mandamus council appointed by the Crown would run the colony; any British officer or soldier accused of a crime would no longer be tried in colonial courts but would be sent to British courts overseen by British judges; and British soldiers were now allowed to live in uninhabited houses, barns, and warehouses, as well as in private houses when necessary.

  Josiah Quincy Jr. was stunned by these wide-ranging acts. But he was also energized, because as harsh as they were, he could use their clear purpose—to intimidate all the colonies of America—to rally support to the cause of the New Englanders. Parliament was likely to extend the measures to cover Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, South Carolina—or any of the other colonies where tea ships had been sent back, their cargoes undelivered, and where tea agents had been bullied into resigning or Loyalists harassed.

  Josiah would warn all Americans that what had happened in Boston could happen to them. The response to such threats from England must be not a lessening of their protests, but rather an increase; the colonists must show unity against the oppressions of Parliament. Messengers, led by Paul Revere, were sent out to towns and villages throughout the colony and America, to spread the word about Parliament’s new measures and urge support from all quarters for poor, beleaguered Boston.

  Josiah set to furious writing again, both for the press and in private letters to men he had met on his travels south, exhorting colonists everywhere to unite. He urged that the proposal to hold a colonial congress be taken seriously; now was the time to join together and collectively address Parliament’s oppressions of liberty. As an active member of the Boston Committee of Correspondence, he promoted a “Solemn League and Covenant” to boycott all British goods and trade “until the … Act for blocking up the … Harbour shall be repealed, and a full restoration of our Charter Rights be obtained.”9

  Only by uniting in “our indispensable duty to lay hold of every Means in our Power to preserve and recover our much injured Constitution,” Josiah argued, would
the rights of the colonists be restored, and war avoided: “no [other] alternative between the horrors of slavery or the carnage and desolation of a civil war” exists but to engage in “this peaceable measure … to break off all trade, commerce, and dealings” with Great Britain.10

  Boycotts had worked before, against the Stamp Act and against the Townshend Acts—surely, they would work again. If only all the colonies of the continent could meet in a congress and agree to such financial measures, Josiah prophesied, misery for all America might be averted.

  * * *

  Sympathy for Boston, and gifts for its besieged inhabitants, poured into the town: “11 wagons’ load of the riches of the Banks [over 20,000 pounds of fish], one cask of the fatness of Spain [oil], some cash,”11 from Marblehead; 33 barrels of pork, 58 barrels of bread, 56 barrels of flour, 330 bushels of wheat, and 142 bushels of corn from Virginia; and 3,000 bushels of corn, along with various supplies as well as money, sent from Maryland with the message “Words are said to be cheap but it is universally allowed, that when a man parts with his money, he is in earnest.”12

  With the 258 sheep that arrived from Windham, Connecticut, came a vow of allegiance: “we hereby assure you, that to the utmost of our power we will assist you in every measure necessary for the common safety.… This town is very sensible of the obligations we, and with us, all British America, are under to the Town of Boston … generous defenders of our common rights and liberties.”13

  But help didn’t come only from well-wishers beyond the Boston Neck. At a town meeting held in Faneuil Hall in mid-June, Josiah Quincy Jr. proposed that the well-to-do of Boston contribute resources to help feed the poor, whose numbers were doubling every week as more businesses closed and work became hard to find. Josiah’s proposal was met with jeers until John Adams, acting as moderator of the meeting, stepped in and scolded the men for their swinish behavior; quoting a favorite poet, he accused them of acting like “owls and cuckoos, asses, apes, and dogs.”14 Josiah’s motion was reconsidered, and silk-lined purses were opened.