American Rebels

by Nina Sankovitch

  * * *

  In London, Ben Franklin was worried for Josiah Quincy Jr., his young friend. He had been coughing up blood for days and was too weak to leave his rooms even to attend Parliament: “It is a thousand pities his strength of body is not equal to his strength of mind. His zeal … will, I fear, eat him up.”21

  Franklin called in a doctor to look after Josiah. Dr. John Fothergill was well known throughout London as an excellent doctor; he was personal physician to Lord Dartmouth and a number of other worthies. He was also a devoted and active friend to America, and as a Quaker, he hoped for a peaceful resolution to the present conflict. He visited Josiah a number of times over the winter and refused payment every time: “I consider this as a public cause to which we must all contribute.”22

  Upon Fothergill’s advice, Quincy moved to Islington on the outskirts of London, to stay with his wife’s uncle, Thomas Bromfield. He recuperated there, dining on fresh vegetables and hearty broths and taking walks in quiet lanes. As his strength came back, he even ventured out on horseback into the surrounding countryside. “Rode out for the fourth time on horseback, about 12 or 14 miles,” he wrote in his journal on February 26. “Evidently better when I am in open air, and the motion of the horse not fatiguing.”23

  He continued to meet with friends and allies, turning increasingly to two American brothers, William and Arthur Lee, and two Englishmen, Joseph Priestley and Richard Price, all of them men whom Franklin considered both too radical and too militant in their ambitions for America. Josiah, however, found their resolve matched his own. Liberty for America was their cause, and they encouraged Josiah in his growing certainty that the only way to achieve liberty was through an absolute independence from England.

  And the only way to win independence, Josiah was convinced, was for the colonies to fight as one country, a unified coalition of north and south, farmer and lawyer, fisherman and merchant. Josiah understood that Lord North also saw danger in a union of the colonies, and that was why he would do all he could to divide them, one from the other.

  Josiah wanted to get the message to his countrymen to stand strong and stand together. But the mail was less secure than ever, and he’d been warned against conveying anything in writing that might be construed as instructions of rebellion, for then he would be immediately arrested.

  Should Josiah himself return to America to deliver the message? Dr. Fothergill and Ben Franklin advised against it, but the Lee brothers and other radicals encouraged him to do it. As Josiah wrote in his journal, “they insist upon my going directly to Boston: they say no letters can go with safety; and that I can deliver more information and advice viva voce, than could or ought to be wrote. They say my going now must be (if I arrive safe) of great advantage to the American Cause.”24

  Only Josiah could reveal the full magnitude of Lord North’s plans, and he must do it face-to-face with his colonial compatriots in America.

  * * *

  The March 5 anniversary of the Boston Massacre fell on a Sunday in 1775. Because of the Sabbath, the annual oration would take place the next day. Monday dawned unseasonably warm, and already by early morning, crowds began filling the streets of Boston, as if all those who had remained in town were determined to attend. By midday a large number of people had gathered at the Old South Meeting House, and when the doors opened, they swarmed inside.

  Joseph Warren was the chosen orator for the commemoration, and all were eager to hear him. Five years had passed since the bloody clash between troops and townspeople. Now even more Redcoats lived in Boston, walked its streets, and patrolled the ports. Freedoms in politics, trade, and social life once taken for granted now seemed dear. Warren was known as a healer; surely he could bring some hope to Boston after a long winter and with little respite from hardships in sight.

  At one end of the Old South Meeting House, by the pulpit, a low platform had been set up. John Hancock took his place there beside other town leaders, nodding to Edmund Quincy, who was seated to the side with a good view of the stage. The crowd was loud, their chatter anxious and eager, as they waited for Warren to arrive. In the house on Beacon Hill, Dolly and Aunt Lydia were also anxious, seated together in the drawing room of Hancock’s mansion, waiting for news.

  They were right to be anxious. A group of British troops appeared at the door of the Old South Meeting House. More than three dozen in all, they pushed their way in, looking for seats. Sam Adams invited them to sit at the very front, and room was made for them.

  One of the men held an egg in his pocket. The plan agreed to by the Redcoats—but unknown to their commander, Governor Gage—was that if Warren were to make any treasonous statement against the king, the egg would be thrown at him, signaling to the other soldiers “to draw swords.” A soldier later reported the plot to Thomas Hutchinson in England, adding, “they would have massacred Hancock, Adams, and hundreds more.”25

  But it was not Warren’s intent to speak ill of King George. Instead, he wished to appear to all the crowd as a sage, imparting wisdom and advising both courage and restraint. To further the image of sage, when Warren finally arrived, climbing over rows of people to get to the pulpit, he was dressed not in topcoat and breeches but in a toga.

  The symbolism was not lost on anyone: Warren was dressed as Cicero, a wise man of ancient Rome. Only citizens of Rome could wear togas; slaves and soldiers were forbidden the honor. Now as wise man and citizen, Warren spoke to his fellow colonists.

  “Our country is in danger, but not to be despaired of,” he proclaimed. “Our enemies are numerous and powerful; but we have many friends, determining to be free, and heaven and earth will aid the resolution. On you depend the fortunes of America. You are to decide the important question, on which rest the happiness and liberty of millions yet unborn.”26

  The crowd was rapt, listening to every word, colonists and troops alike.

  “Act worthy of yourselves,” Warren advised.27 The egg remained in the pocket of the soldier; the swords of his compatriots, sheathed. The oration proceeded peacefully.

  But after Warren’s oration ended and Sam Adams rose to speak, the soldiers in the front row grew restive and belligerent. They began to shout and bang their heels. Sam Adams had been denounced by Governor Gage as “flagitious,” a villain and a traitor, and they could not allow him to speak.28

  “Fie! Fie!” they yelled out, trying to drown out Adams’ words.

  Up in the gallery, the words yelled by the soldiers were heard as “Fire! Fire!” Mayhem broke out. Those seated in the upper galleries flung themselves through windows and landed on the roof, flailing as they spun downward; the crowds below surged to the doors to get out. A regiment of troops passing by on the street and marching to the beat of drums only added to the noise and confusion.

  As Edmund related it later to Dolly and Lydia, the mayhem might have turned to murder but for the restraint shown by all. How much longer could such restraint last, Edmund wondered.

  Hancock prophesied that it would not last long on either side. Warren had claimed in the crowded hall that “an independence on Great Britain is not our aim. No, our wish is, that Britain and the colonies may, like the oak and the ivy, grow and increase in strength together.”29 But Hancock knew that behind closed doors, away from prying English eyes and ears, Warren, Sam Adams, and now he too, believed that a separation was necessary, lest the English ivy choke the American oak.

  To achieve such separation would require an unshackling of all restraint, Hancock believed, and an unbridled bravery concomitant with utter fearlessness: the path to independence would be “through fields of blood.”30 As Warren proclaimed that day in the Old South Meeting House, what glory for all of them if they could achieve a new country, with the “adored goddess Liberty … on the American throne.… Even the children of your most inveterate enemies … [who] in secret curse their stupid, cruel parents, shall join the general voice of gratitude to those who broke the fetters which their fathers forged.”31

  Edmund had nodd
ed at the words. He too believed that in the “present expected contest” there was a God-given “Glorious” plan for a new country to be born: “ye Kingdom of Christ is to be erect, here, in the Western Hemisphere, called yet by some, ‘the New World.’”32 A new world of guaranteed liberties, blessed under God and protected by the people of America—and the Old World left behind once and for all.

  26

  Ship in a Storm

  Heaven grant that a grand constellation

  of virtues may shine forth

  with redoubled lustre,

  and enlighten this gloomy hemisphere!

  —JOSIAH QUINCY JR.

  On March 4, 1775, Josiah Quincy Jr. boarded a ship in Plymouth, England, bound for America. He went charged with the mission to warn Americans that Britain had no intention to reconcile with the colonies, but instead, as William Lee insisted, “the Ministers, with their leader are violently blowing the coals into a flame, that will lay waste the whole British Empire.”1

  Josiah also carried with him details about secret plans being hatched in England to help the colonists in the fight for their rights. Those plans, treasonous and detailed as they were, were too explosive—and dangerous to creators and sharers alike—to be penned in a letter, or even written about in his journal. The only way to share them was to keep the details memorized and then reveal those details to his fellow patriots in person. Josiah was on his way to America to do just that.

  For over a week his ship stayed in the harbor at Plymouth, as late winter storms ravaged the Atlantic, making travel dangerous. Josiah wrote to Thomas Bromfield, whose house in Islington had been his refuge during the worst of his illness, “The sea runs high, and I can scarcely write legibly.… My cough is far from better, though in the day-time I am troubled a very trifle with it.… I wrote you I had been ill-used and deceived. I discover every day more instances of it.… I am perplexed much what I ought to do. The sea runs so high.”2

  Fevers again set in, and Josiah found he was becoming confused and uncertain; it was hard to focus on the tasks at hand. Who had “ill-used” him? Did he feel betrayed by friends in England—or by the enemies to America that he found there? Before arriving in London, he believed that all British citizens were brothers under the skin, and that once he appealed to those in England who had misunderstood the motives and desires of the colonists, all peace and harmony between England and America would be restored. He had been wrong.

  His cough worsened as he waited at anchor for the ship to set sail. Dr. Fothergill had warned him against traveling and advised him to rest awhile in a seaside town before attempting the return home. Josiah wondered if he should try to disembark—“I have a thousand minds to go to Bristol”3—but then he thought of his secret mission, and he resolved to stay aboard and see the journey through.

  All he wanted were the means and fortitude to carry out his plan of “preventing calamity and producing much good to Boston and the Massachusetts Bay, and in the end to all America.”4

  Finally, on March 18, the vessel left Plymouth and began its trip across the sea. Just days later, Ben Franklin would follow his young friend. During Josiah’s journey west, the weather on the open ocean turned every day more miserable, the air wet and cold, the waters rough and the wind hard. Josiah had no choice but to remain below deck in the putrid atmosphere of his cabin, growing more ill by the day. He longed to go on deck at night and see the stars overhead, guiding him home, but he hadn’t the strength to rise from his bed.

  * * *

  The Massachusetts Provincial Congress moved to Concord for their March meetings; Cambridge was too uncomfortably close to Governor Gage and his increasingly large army. John Hancock, along with Sam Adams, was invited to stay at the parsonage in Lexington, six miles to the east, where he had lived for a brief time as a boy. The bishop of Lexington had died long ago and now the Reverend Jonas Clarke, married to Hancock’s cousin Lucy Bowes, lived in the manse.

  John Adams had not been invited to participate in this third meeting of the congress, and although it irked him to be left out of the proceedings, he wrote to James Warren, husband of Mercy Otis Warren: “I was much averse to being chosen, and shall continue so, for I am determined, if Things are Settled, to avoid public Life. I have neither Fortune, Leisure, Health nor Genius for it.… I cannot help putting my Hand to the Pump, now the Ship is in a storm, and the Hold half full of Water. But as soon as she gets into a Calm and a Place of Safety, I must leave her.”5

  As soon as peace returned to his province, John intended to once again settle down into the private life of a village lawyer and gentleman farmer. He had made duty to his country a priority, but he had to make money again, as he found himself “a Man of desperate Fortune, and a Bankrupt in Business.”6

  But no one in the colony expected a swift return to peace. In Boston, signs were everywhere that Gage was preparing for something big. As the Massachusetts Spy reported, “the army in this town seem to be preparing for a matter & considerable number of wagons are made and now ready for their use.”7 Longboats were deployed in the harbor, the kind used to bring troops from ship to shore. Training drills on the Common were intensifying. And newspapers reported everything from the number of hogs being sent from England to feed the troops to warnings of royal seizures of colonists’ arms and powder. There was no doubt that Gage intended to engage his troops in some kind of military maneuver—but to what purpose? And where?

  Unbeknown to the colonists—and to Josiah Quincy Jr., whose ship they overtook and easily passed—two British warships were crossing the Atlantic. The Nautilus and the Falcon carried on board arms, ammunition, troops, horses, food supplies, and detailed orders for Governor Gage from Lord Dartmouth. Lord William Howe (younger brother to Lord Richard) was also due to arrive any day aboard the Cerberus from Portsmouth, with regiments of horses and additional supplies for the troops stationed in Boston.

  Rumors of the ships’ arrival began to circulate. Josiah Quincy Sr. kept watch from the monitor atop his roof in Braintree; frustrated and angry, and worried for his colony, he wrote to Ben Franklin, “Are we Bastards, and not Children, that a Prince, who is celebrated as the best of Kings, has given his consent to so many and such unprecedented Oppressive Acts?”

  Then he asked, “Who are answerable for all the horrid consequences of a long and bloody civil War?—They, who from Motives of Avarice and Ambition, attack, or They, who from a Principle of Self-preservation, defend?”8 He wondered where his son Josiah was now, whether he was still seeking negotiations with England alongside Franklin or whether he was on his way home to Massachusetts.

  As head of the Committee of Safety, John Hancock ordered six additional companies of Massachusetts artillerymen to be ready to go. Medical supplies, canteens, and other supplies were purchased, “sufficient for an army of fifteen thousand to take the field.”9

  Hancock also ordered that four brass fieldpieces and a pair of mortars currently under Loyalist command in Boston be seized and spirited away before such arms could be turned over to Gage. The two cannons were subsequently named “Adams” and “Hancock” in honor of Sam and John; the one named Adams would explode within weeks, but the Hancock endured through many a battle to come.10

  Hancock knew what an army needed to get ready for war. He’d learned from his uncle Thomas, who had made a vast fortune outfitting English troops in their various campaigns throughout Canada and New England. Now Hancock would use that knowledge, along with some of his fortune, to make sure his men were properly supplied for war.

  With so much of his time taken up by the Committee of Safety, Hancock resigned the presidency of the Provincial Congress to Joseph Warren. He had become, in essence, commander in chief of the Massachusetts militia, charged not only with outfitting the militia and training them but also with calling them out to battle.

  But the Provincial Congress did not give Hancock absolute powers to wage war. He was only permitted to call out militiamen if “the Army under Command of General Gage �
�� shall march out of the Town of Boston, with Artillery or Baggage.” Furthermore, the Massachusetts men were only to fight against such forces “on the defensive so long as it can be justified on the principles of reason and self-preservation.”11

  The Massachusetts representatives did not want to be accused of having started a war, so they made sure their instructions were clear and well known: the militiamen could defend the rights of colonists but were prohibited from mounting an offensive against England.

  Even amid the nonstop work of building up and supplying an army, Hancock still found time to write to Dolly. From Concord, Hancock wrote of his regrets at being held there by “Business of utmost importance.” He promised to “return as soon as possible.”

  Writing to her from a room “full of Committee Men,” he wrote nevertheless of matters close to his heart: “no Person on Earth can be possess’d of greater affection & regard for anyone, than I have for the Lady to whom I address this, & be fully convinced that no Distance of Time or place can ever Erase the Impressions made & the determinations I have formed of being forever yours, in that Confidence & Expectation I close.… My Dear Dolly, Yours forever in every respect.”12

  The letter was signed with his name, the signature large and the flourish below it bold.

  * * *

  John Hancock returned to Boston, but as March turned to April, it became apparent that life in the town was becoming too dangerous for him, and for Dolly and Lydia. In early April, a small band of British soldiers approached the Beacon Hill mansion and began hacking away at the surrounding fences “in a most scandalous manner.”13