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American Rebels

Page 47

by Nina Sankovitch


  Chapter 17: Branching Out

    1  Diary of John Adams, vol. 2, January 1, 1773, Adams Papers, MHS.

    2  John Adams to the Boston Gazette, January 11, 1773, Adams Papers, MHS.

    3  John Adams, “Reply of the House to Hutchinson’s First Message, January 26, 1773,” Adams Papers, MHS.

    4  Ibid.

    5  Ibid.

    6  Ibid.

    7  Josiah Quincy Jr., “Observations on the Port-Bill,” Memoir of the Life of Josiah Quincy, p. 318.

    8  John Adams, “Adams Notes of Authorities, Suffolk Inferior Court, Boston, January 1771,” Adams Papers, MHS.

    9  Quincy, “Observations on the Port-Bill,” p. 355.

  10  Boston Town Records, 1770–1777, p. 93; quoted in Fowler, The Baron of Beacon Hill, p. 148, and Unger, John Hancock: Merchant King, p. 161.

  11  See Bowen, John Adams and the American Revolution, pp. 426–427.

  12  Hutchinson as quoted in Unger, John Hancock: Merchant King, p. 162.

  13  Thomas Hutchinson to John Pownall, November 13, 1772, quoted in Andrew S. Walmsley, Thomas Hutchinson and the Origins of the American Revolution (New York: NYU Press, 1999), p. 136.

  14  Thomas Hutchinson to Lord Dartmouth, December 13, 1772, quoted in ibid., p. 137.

  15  Josiah Quincy Jr., Southern Journal, p. 3, Quincy Family Papers, MHS.

  16  Ibid., p. 1.

  17  “Nos patria fines, nos dulcia linquimus Arva,” Virgil, Eclogue I; see Coquillette and York, Portrait of a Patriot, vol. 3, p. 89.

  18  Josiah Quincy Jr., Southern Journal, Quincy Family Papers, MHS, pp. 9–10.

  19  Ibid., p. 11, 17.

  20  Ibid., p. 24, 28–29, 31.

  21  Ibid., p. 25.

  22  Ibid., p. 28.

  23  Ibid., p. 33.

  24  John Adams, “Reply of the House to Hutchinson’s First Message, January 26, 1773,” Adams Papers, MHS.

  25  Bowen, John Adams and the American Revolution, p. 426.

  26  Ibid.

  27  Josiah Quincy Jr. as “Callisthenes,” Boston Gazette, September 28, 1772, extracted in Quincy, Memoir of the Life of Josiah Quincy, p. 52.

  28  Diary of John Adams, vol. 2, March 4, 1773, Adams Papers, MHS.

  29  Adams, The Works of John Adams, vol. 10, p. 162.

  30  Josiah Quincy Jr. to Abigail Phillips Quincy, March 1, 1773, extracted in Quincy, Memoir of the Life of Josiah Quincy, p. 71.

  31  Josiah Quincy Jr., Southern Journal, Quincy Family Papers, MHS, p. 56, 66.

  32  Ibid., p. 45, 90.

  33  Ibid., p. 89.

  34  Ibid., p. 96.

  35  Ibid., p. 104.

  36  Ibid.

  37  Ibid., p. 54; Samuel A. Forman, Dr. Joseph Warren: The Boston Tea Party, Bunker Hill, and the Birth of American Liberty (Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing Company, 2012), p. 100.

  38  Josiah Quincy Jr., Southern Journal, Quincy Family Papers, MHS, p. 114.

  39  Ibid., p. 95.

  40  Ibid., p. 91.

  41  Ibid., pp. 142–143, 172.

  42  Josiah Quincy Sr. to Josiah Quincy Jr., April 9, 1773, Quincy Family Papers, MHS.

  43  Ibid.

  44  Josiah Quincy Jr., Southern Journal, Quincy Family Papers, MHS, p. 56, 65.

  45  Ibid., p. 174.

  46  Ibid., p. 181.

  47  Ibid., p. 110, 94, 114.

  48  Samuel Quincy to Josiah Quincy Jr., April 13, 1773, Quincy Family Papers, MHS.

  49  Diary of John Adams, vol. 2, March 22, 1773, Adams Papers, MHS.

  Chapter 18: Anxiety and Apprehensions

    1  American History Told by Contemporaries, vol. 2, ed. Albert Bushnell Hart and John Gould Curtis (New York: Macmillan, 1901), pp. 421–22.

    2  Mercy Otis Warren, History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution, vol. 1 (Boston: 1805), p. 56, 352–53.

    3  Boston Gazette, July 19, 1773, MHS.

    4  Diary of John Adams, vol. 2, April 24, 1773, Adams Papers, MHS.

    5  Journals of the House (Boston, 1773), quoted in Fowler, The Baron of Beacon Hill, p. 152.

    6  Journals of the House of Representatives of Massachusetts, vol. 50, 1773–1774 (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1981), p. 41.

    7  Diary of John Adams, vol. 3, August 1775, Adams Papers, MHS.

    8  Abigail Adams to Mercy Otis Warren, July 16, 1773, Adams Papers, MHS.

    9  John Quincy Adams to Betsy Cranch, 1773, Adams Papers, MHS.

  10  Abigail Adams to Mercy Otis Warren, July 16, 1773, Adams Papers, MHS.

  11  Edmund Quincy to Dorothy Quincy, June 18, 1773, Quincy Family Papers, MHS.

  12  The New England Historical and Genealogical Register, 1874 (Boston: New England Historical, Genealogical Society, 1874), p. 182.

  13  See http://www.hinghamcemetery.org/_site/pages/our_history.php.

  14  George Clymer to Josiah Quincy Jr., July 29, 1773, Quincy Papers, MHS.

  15  Josiah Quincy Jr. to George Clymer, August [no date specified], 1773, Quincy Papers, MHS.

  16  Extract of a letter from New York, September 27 (1773), printed in The Massachusetts Gazette; and the Boston Post-Boy and Advertiser, Number 842, 4–11, October 1773, MHS.

  17  “Proceedings of the North End Caucus,” quoted in Triber, A True Republican, p. 92, citing Goss, Life of Colonial Revere, vol. 2, app. C, p. 641.

  18  “IN consequence of a conference with the committees of correspondence for the towns in the vicinity of Boston, November 23, 1773,” Broadside, MHS.

  19  Rowe, Letters and Diary, November 2, 1773, p. 252.

  20  Egerton Collection, November 2, 1773, MHS.

  21  Rowe, Letters and Diary, November 29, 1773, p. 255.

  22  Abigail Adams to Mercy Otis Warren, December 5, 1773, Adams Papers, MHS.

  Chapter 19: Tea, That Baneful Weed

    1  Rowe, Letters and Diary, November 29, 1773, p. 255.

    2  Quoted in Les Standiford, Desperate Sons (New York: HarperCollins, 2012), p. 207, relying on Boston Town Records, 1770–1777.

    3  John Rowe Diary, December 8, 1773, p. 257; The fourth vessel, the William, owned by the Clarke family, foundered off the coast and would never arrive in Boston; the tea would be off-loaded from the vessel as it lay stuck on a reef.

    4  Ibid., p. 256.

    5  Thomas Hutchinson to Israel Maudit, December 1773, extracted in “Tea Party Anniversary,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, vol. 13 (Boston: MHS, 1875), p. 170.

    6  Boston Gazette, December 13, 1773, MHS; and see Triber, A True Republican, p. 94.

    7  Quincy, Memoir of the Life of Josiah Quincy, p. 125.

    8  Ibid.

    9  Allan, John Hancock: Patriot, p. 139, citing B. B. Thatcher, Traits of the Tea Party, pp. 177–178.

  10  Charles Augustus Goodrich, Travels and Sketches in North and South America (Hartford: Case, Tiffany, 1852), p. 78; see also Nathaniel Philbrick, Bunker Hill (New York: Viking Penguin, 2013), p. 100. Although Rowe had scribbled into his diary that he “being a little Unwell” was home on the evening of December 16, there are many who speculate that he added the sentences in to protect himself and that in fact he was present and was overheard speaking about the mixture of tea and salt water.

  11  “The Command at the Battle of Bunker Hill, as Shown in the Statement of Major Thompson Maxwell,” New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. 22 (1868), p. 58.

  12  John Adams to Joseph Warren, December 17, 1773, Adams Papers, MHS.

  13  Abigail Adams to Mercy Otis Warren, December 5, 1773, Adams Papers, MHS.


  14  John Hancock, Letter Book, December 21, 1773, quoted in Baxter, House of Hancock, p. 283, 11n.

  15  Diary of John Adams, vol. 2, December 18, 1773, Adams Papers, MHS.

  16  Letter of the Boston Committee of Correspondence, sent to Plymouth and Sandwich, quoted in “Tea Party Anniversary,” p. 173.

  17  Letter to Boston from Medford, MA, published in the Boston Gazette, December 20, 1773, MHS.

  18  Unger, John Hancock: Merchant King, p. 173.

  19  “How the Landing of Tea Was Opposed in Philadelphia by Colonel William Bradford and Others in 1773,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 15, no. 4 (1891): 390–391.

  20  Diary of John Adams, vol. 2, December 17, 1773, Adams Papers, MHS.

  21  Ibid.

  22  Abigail Adams to Mercy Otis Warren, December 5, 1773, Adams Papers, MHS.

  23  Samuel Adams to Arthur Lee, January 25, 1774, quoted in John Ferling, Independence: The Struggle to Set America Free (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2011), p. 52.

  24  Diary of Josiah Quincy Jr., reprinted in Albert Bushnell Hart and John Gould Curtis, eds., American History Told by Contemporaries, vol. 2, Building of the Republic (New York: Macmillan, 1919), p. 400.

  25  Diary of John Adams, vol. 2, December 18, 1773, Adams Papers, MHS; Boston Gazette, December 27, 1773, MHS.

  26  Josiah Quincy Jr. as “Marchmont Nedham,” December 20, 1773, Boston Gazette, MHS.

  27  John Trumbull to Samuel Quincy, September 11, 1773, Quincy Family Papers, MHS.

  28  Isaac Smith Jr., to Mary Cranch, October 20, 1774, Adams Papers, MHS.

  Chapter 20: Rocks and Quicksands on Every Side

    1  Last Will and Testament of Josiah Quincy Jr., Quincy Family Papers, MHS.

    2  Quincy, Memoir of the Life of Josiah Quincy, p. 293.

    3  Josiah Quincy Jr. as “Nedham’s Remembrancer,” Boston Gazette, January 10, 1774, and as “Marchmont Nedham,” Boston Gazette, February 7, 1774, MHS.

    4  “Extract of a Letter from London,” Boston Evening Post, February 15, 1774, MHS.

    5  Boston Gazette, May 2, 1774, MHS.

    6  Diary of John Adams, vol. 2, February 28, 1774, Adams Papers, MHS.

    7  Ibid.

    8  Samuel Quincy to Andrew Oliver, January 31, 1774, Quincy Family Papers, MHS.

    9  John Hancock, An Oration, March 5 1774, Hancock Family Papers, MHS.

  10  Diary of John Adams, vol. 2, March 5, 1774, Adams Papers, MHS.

  11  John Hancock, An Oration, March 5, 1774, Hancock Family Papers, MHS.

  12  Diary of John Adams, vol. 2, March 5, 1774, Adams Papers, MHS.

  13  John Hancock, An Oration, March 5, 1774, Hancock Family Papers, MHS.

  14  Ibid.

  15  Diary of John Adams, vol. 2, March 5, 1774, Adams Papers, MHS.

  16  Thomas Hutchinson, Diary and Letters, vol. 1, p. 130.

  17  Adams, Diary and Autobiography, vol. 3, pp. 299–300.

  18  Ibid.

  19  Ibid., p. 302.

  20  Papers of John Adams, vol. 2, February 24, 1774, Adams Papers, MHS.

  21  Rowe, Letters and Diary, May 10, 1774, p. 269.

  22  Henry Steele Commager and Milton Cantor, eds., Documents of American History, (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1998), p. 71.

  23  John Adams to Abigail Adams, May 12, 1774, Adams Papers, MHS.

  24  John Hancock, An Oration, March 5, 1774, Hancock Family Papers, MHS.

  25  Samuel Quincy to Josiah Quincy Jr., June 1, 1774, Quincy Family Papers, MHS.

  26  Josiah Quincy Jr., Observations on the Act of Parliament Commonly Called the Boston Port-Bill; With Thoughts on Civil Society and Standing Armies (Boston: Edes and Gill, in Queen-Street, 1774), pp. 1, 80–81.

  27  Ibid., p. 82.

  28  Ibid., p. 2.

  29  Ibid., p. 82.

  Chapter 21: Punishment and Indignation

    1  Rowe, Letters and Diary, June 1, 1774, p. 273.

    2  Ibid., May 17, 1774, pp. 270–271.

    3  John Andrews, Letters of John Andrews, Esq., 1772–1776 (Cambridge, MA: John Wilson and Sons, 1866), May 18, 1774, p. 15.

    4  Ibid.

    5  John Adams to Abigail Adams, June 29, 1774, Adams Papers, MHS.

    6  Ibid., June 25, 1774.

    7  John Adams to Abigail Adams, June 23, 1774, Adams Papers, MHS.

    8  John Adams to Abigail Adams, July 1, 1774, Adams Papers, MHS.

    9  Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, vol. 12 (Boston: MHS, 1873), p. 47.

  10  Ibid.

  11  Ashley Bowen, The Journals of Ashley Bowen (1728–1813) of Marblehead, ed. Philip Chadwick Foster Smith (Boston: Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 1973), p. 404.

  12  Boston Gazette, June 27, 1774, MHS.

  13  Ellen Douglas Larned, History of Windham County, Connecticut, 1760–1880 (Worcester, MA: Charles Hamilton, 1880), p. 125.

  14  See Bowen, John Adams and the American Revolution, pp. 443–444.

  15  John Dickinson to Josiah Quincy Jr., June 20, 1774, Quincy Family Papers, MHS.

  16  Diary of John Adams, vol. 2, Monday, June 20, 1774, Adams Papers, MHS.

  17  Adams, The Works of John Adams, vol. 4, p. 8.

  18  Ibid.

  19  Ibid.

  20  John Adams to Abigail Adams, July 7, 1774, Adams Papers, MHS.

  21  Samuel Quincy to Josiah Quincy Jr., June 1, 1774, Quincy Family Papers, MHS.

  22  William Palfrey to Samuel Adams, September 1774, quoted in Allan, John Hancock: Patriot, p. 175, citing First Corps Cadets Papers.

  23  Essex Gazette, September 6–13, quoted in T. H. Breen, American Insurgents, American Patriots (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2010), p. 83.

  24  Peter Force, American Archive: A Documentary History of the English Colonies in North America, series 4, vol. 1, hereafter (Washington, DC: M. St. Clair Clarke and Peter Force, 1848), p. 749.

  25  Essex Gazette, August 23–30, quoted in Breen, American Insurgents, p. 89.

  26  Description of “outrages” found in Force, American Archives, vol. 1, pp. 1260–1263, quoted in Philip McFarland, The Brave Bostonians (New York: HarperCollins, 1998), p. 84.

  27  John Andrews to William Barrell, August 10, 1774, Letters of John Andrews, p. 26.

  28  Abigail Adams to John Adams, August 19, 1774, Adams Papers, MHS.

  29 Ibid.

  30  Ibid.

  31  Abigail Adams to John Adams, August 19, 1774, Adams Papers, MHS.

  32  John Adams to Abigail Adams, August 28, 1774, Adams Papers, MHS.

  Chapter 22: Grand Object of Their View

    1  Josiah Quincy Jr. to Abigail Phillips Quincy, November 24, 1774, Memoir of the Life of Josiah Quincy, p. 205.

    2  Dr. Charles Chauncy to Dr. Thomas Amory, September 13, 1774, Quincy, Memoir of the Life of Josiah Quincy, p. 159; James Lovell to Josiah Quincy Jr., November 25, 1774, ibid., p. 180.

    3  Josiah Quincy Jr. to John Dickinson, August 20, 1774, Quincy Family Papers, MHS.

    4  Reverend Charles Chauncy to Samuel Adams, August 26, 1774, Quincy Family Papers, MHS.

    5  Josiah Quincy Jr. to John Dickinson, August 20, 1774, Memoir of the Life of Josiah Quincy, p. 150.

    6  Boston Gazette, May 16, 1774, MHS; See Benton John Lossing, Our Country: A Household History of the United States for All Readers, vol. 2 (New York: James A. Bailey, 1895), p. 707.

    7  Josiah Quincy Jr. to John Dickinson, August 20, 1774, Quincy Family Papers, MHS.

 

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