Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 by Various

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When the executive functions devolved on Hutchinson, it had been
semi-officially announced that the Ministry, wholly out of commercial
considerations, intended to propose, at the next session of Parliament,
a repeal of a portion of the revenue acts; and the Patriots were
pressing, with more zeal than ever, the non-importation agreement, in
the hope of obtaining, as matter of constitutional right, a total
repeal. To enforce this agreement, the merchants had held a public
meeting in Faneuil Hall, adopted a series of spirited resolves, and
adjourned to a future day; and Hutchinson's first important
gubernatorial decision had reference to this meeting. He had urged the
necessity of troops to sustain the authority of the Government. He had
awarded to them the credit of preventing a great catastrophe. He had
written that they would make the Boston saints as tame as lambs. It was
his settled conviction that the Americans never would set armies in the
field against Great Britain, and if they did, that "a few troops would
be sufficient to quell them." He was now importuned to use the troops at
his command to disperse the merchants' meeting at its adjournment. He
held that this meeting was contrary to law. He characterized its
resolves as contemptuous and insolent, and derogatory to the authority
of Parliament. He never grew weary of holding up to reprobation the
objects which the merchants had in view. And his political friends now
asked him to make good his professions by acts. But he declined to
interfere with this meeting. The merchants proceeded to a close with
their business. Hutchinson's explanation of his course to the Ministry,
on this occasion, applies to the popular demonstrations which took
place, at intervals, down to the military crisis. "I am very sensible,"
are his words, "that the whole proceeding is unwarrantable; but it is so
generally countenanced in this and in several of the Colonies, and the
authority of Government is so feeble, that an attempt to put a stop to
it would have no other effect than still further to inflame the minds of
the people. I can do no more than represent to your Lordship, and wait
for such instructions as may be thought proper." And he continued to
present these combinations of the merchants as "a most certain evidence
of the lost authority of Government," and as exhibiting "insolence and
contempt of Parliament." But he complains that they were not so much
regarded in England as he expected they would be, and that he was left
to act on his own judgment. He soon saw pilloried in the newspapers the
names of a son of Governor Bernard and two of his own sons, in a list of
Boston merchants who "audaciously counteracted the united sentiments of
the body of merchants throughout North America by importing British
goods contrary to agreement."

The Lieutenant-Governor again kept quiet, as a town-meeting went on,
which he watched with the keenest interest, freely commented on in his
letters, and which is far too important to be overlooked in any review
of these times. William Bollan, the Colonial Agent in London, sent to
the popular leaders a selection from the letters of Governor Bernard,
General Gage, Commodore Hood, and others, bearing on the introduction of
the troops, which were judged to have aspersed the character, affected
the rights, and injured the interests of the town. Their publication
made a profound impression on the public mind, and they became the theme
of every circle. At one of the political clubs, in which the Adamses,
the Coopers, Warren, and others were wont to discuss public affairs,
Otis, in a blaze of indignation, charged the crown officials with
haughtiness, arbitrary dispositions, and the insolence of office, and
vehemently urged a town-meeting. One was soon summoned by the Selectmen,
which deliberated with dignity and order, and made answer to the
official indictment in a strong, conclusive, and grand "Appeal to the
World," and appointed, as a committee to circulate it, Thomas Cushing,
Samuel Adams, Joseph Warren, Richard Dana, Joshua Henshaw, Joseph
Jackson, and Benjamin Kent,--men of sterling character, and bearing
names that have shed lustre on the whole country. Reason and truth,
thus put forth, exerted an influence. Hutchinson felt the force of this.
"We find, my Lord, by experience," he advised Lord Hillsborough, October
19, 1769, "that associations and assemblies pretending to be legal and
constitutional, assuming powers that belong only to established
authority, prove more fatal to this authority than mobs, riots, or the
most tumultuous disorders; for such assemblies, from erroneous or
imperfect notions of the nature of government, very often meet with the
approbation of the body of the people, and in such case there is no
internal power which can be exerted to suppress them. Such case we are
in at present, and shall probably continue in it until the wisdom of
Parliament delivers us from it."

It would be difficult to say what power the people now assumed that
belonged only to established authority; they assumed only the right of
public meeting and of liberty of discussion, which are unquestionable in
every free country; but the ruling spirit of Hutchinson is seen in this
fine tribute to the instrumentality of the town-meeting, for he regarded
the American custom of corporate presentation of political matters as
illegal, and the power of Parliament as sufficient to meet it with pains
and penalties. As the committee already named sent forth the doings of
the town, they said, (October 23, 1769,) "The people will never think
their grievances redressed till every revenue act is repealed, the Board
of Commissioners dissolved, and the troops removed."

A few days after this the Lieutenant-Governor was obliged to deal with a
mob, which grew out of the meanness of importers, whose selfish course
proved to be a great strain on the forbearing policy of the popular
leaders. The merchants on the Tory side, among whom were two of
Hutchinson's sons, persisted in importing goods; and he writes, with a
good deal of pride, as though it were meritorious, that since the
agreement was formed these two sons had imported two hundred chests of
tea, which they had been so clever as to sell. But such was the public
indignation at this course, that they, too, were compelled to give in to
the non-importation agreement; and Hutchinson's letters are now severer
than ever on the Patriots. He characterizes "the confederacy of
merchants" as a very high offence, and the Sons of Liberty as the
greatest tyrants ever known. But as he continually predicted a crisis,
he said, "I can find nobody to join with me in an attempt to discourage
them." He adds, "If any tumults should happen, I shall be under less
difficulty than if my own children had been the pretended occasion of
them; and for this reason Dalrymple tells me he is very glad they have
done as they have." The immediate occasion of the mob was the dealing of
the people with an informer on the twenty-eighth of October. They got
track of him about noon, and, after a long search, found him towards
evening, when they immediately prepared to tar and feather him. It was
quite dark. A formidable procession carted the culprit from one quarter
of the town to another, and threatened to break the windows of all
houses which were without lights. The Lieutenant-Governor summoned such
of the members of the Council as were at hand, and the justices of the
county, to meet him at the Council-Chamber; he requested Dalrymple to
order the force under his command "to be ready to march when the
occasion required"; and he "kept persons employed to give him immediate
notice of every new motion of the mob." Dalrymple, with a soldier's
alacrity, complied with the official request; but the mob went on its
course, for "none of the justices nor the sheriff," writes Hutchinson,
"thought it safe for them to restrain so great a body of people in a
dark evening,"--and the only work done by the soldiers was to protect
Mien, the printer, who, being goaded into discharging a pistol among the
crowd, fled to the main guard for safety. The finale of this mob is thus
related by Hutchinson:--"Between eight and nine o'clock they dispersed
of their own account, and the town was quiet."

The intrepid and yet prudent course of the popular leaders and of the
people, in standing manfully for the common cause in presence of the
British troops, was now eliciting the warmest encomiums on the town from
the friends of liberty in England and in the Colonies. The generous
praise was copied into the local journals, and, so far from being
received with assumption, became a powerful incentive to worthy action.
"Your Bostonians," a Southern letter runs, "shine with renewed lustre.
Their last efforts were indeed like themselves, full of wisdom,
prudence, and magnanimity. Such a conduct must silence every pretended
suspicion, and baffle every vile attempt to calumniate their noble and
generous struggles in the cause of American Liberty." "So much wisdom
and virtue," says a New-Hampshire letter, "as hath been conspicuous in
the Bostonians, will not go unrewarded. You will in all respects
increase until you become the glory of New England, the pride of British
kings, the scourge of tyrants, and the joy of the whole earth," "The
patriotism of Boston," says another letter, "will be revered through
every age." One of these tributes, from a Southern journal, in the
Boston papers of December 18, 1769, runs,--"The noble conduct of the
Representatives, Selectmen, and principal merchants of Boston, in
defending and supporting the rights of America and the British
Constitution, cannot fail to excite love and gratitude in the heart of
every worthy person in the British empire. They discover a dignity of
soul worthy the human mind, which is the true glory of man, and merits
the applause of all rational beings. Their names will shine unsullied in
the bright records of Panic to the latest ages, and unborn millions will
rise up and call them blessed."

This eulogy on Boston is a great fact of these times, and therefore
ought to have a place in a history of them. It was not of a local cast,
for it appears in several Colonies and in England; it was not a
manufacture of politicians, for it is seen in the private letters of the
friends of constitutional liberty which have come to light subsequently
to the events; it was not a transient enthusiasm, for the same strain
was continued during the years preceding the war. The praise was
bestowed on a town small in territory and comparatively small in
population. Such were the cities of Greece in the era of their renown.
"The territories of Athens, Sparta, and their allies," remarks Gibbon,
"do not exceed a moderate province of France or England; but after the
trophies of Salamis or Plataea, they expand in our fancy to the gigantic
size of Asia, which had been trampled under the feet of the victorious
Greeks." No trophies had been gathered in an American Plataea; there had
been no great civic triumph; there was no hero upon whom public
affection centred; nor was there here a field on which to weave a web of
court-intrigue, or to play a game of criminal ambition;--there was,
indeed, little that common constructors of history would consider to be
history. Yet it was now written, and made common thought by an
unfettered press,--"Nobler days nor deeds were never seen than at this
time."[2] This was an instinctive appreciation of a great truth; for
the real American Revolution was going on in the tidal flow of thought
and feeling, and in the formation of public opinion. A people inspired
by visions of better days for humanity, luxuriating in the emotions of
hope and faith, yearning for the right, mastering the reasoning on which
it was based, were steadily taking their fit place on the national
stage, in the belief of the nearness of a mighty historic hour. And
their spontaneous praise was for a community heroically acting on
national principles and for a national cause. Because of this did they
predict that unborn millions would hold up the men of Boston as worthy
to be enrolled in the shining record of Fame.

As the new year (1770) came in, the people were looking forward to a
meeting of the General Court, always a season of peculiar interest, and
more so now than ever, for it was certain that the debates in this body
would turn on the foremost local subject, the removal of the troops. But
the subject was no longer merely local, for it had become a general
issue, one affecting not only Boston and Massachusetts, but other towns
and Colonies, and the interest felt in the controversy was wide and
deep. "In this day of constitutional light," a New-York essay copied
into a Boston newspaper runs, "it is monstrous that troops should be
kept, not to protect the right, but to enslave the continent." While it
was thus put by the journals, the policy was meant to be of this
significance by the Ministry; and the letters printed for the first time
in this monograph attest the accuracy of the Patriot judgment. On purely
local grounds, also, the presence of the troops continued to be
deplored. "The troops," Dr. Cooper wrote, January 1, 1770, "greatly
corrupt our morals, and are in every sense an oppression. May Heaven
soon deliver us from this great evil!" Samuel Adams said, "The troops
must move to the Castle; it must be the first business of the General
Court to move them out of town"; and James Otis said. "The Governor has
the power to move them under the Constitution." Hutchinson endeavored to
conciliate the people by making arrangements with General Gage for a
removal of the main guard from its location near the Town-House, being
informed that this might satisfy the greater part of the members.

Having taken this precaution, Hutchinson was really anxious for a
meeting of the General Court. He was in great uncertainty both as to
public and private affairs. He knew now that Bernard was not to return,
but he did not know who was to be the successor; he conjectured that it
might be "that the government was to be put on a new establishment, and
a person of rank appointed Governor"; and he confessed that he was
"ignorant of the Ministerial plan" as to the Colonies. The Legislature
was appointed to convene on the tenth of January. But the November
packet from England, happening to make an uncommonly short passage,
brought him a peremptory order, which he received on the evening of the
third of January, to prorogue the time of the sitting of the General
Court; and the journals of the next morning contain his Proclamation,
setting forth that "by His Majesty's command" the Legislature was
prorogued to the second Wednesday in March. "I guess," Hutchinson
writes, "that the Court is prorogued to a particular day with an
intention that something from the King or the Parliament shall be then
laid before them." "Some of the distant members will be on their journey
before the Proclamation reaches them; and if the packet had not had a
better passage than common, my orders would have found the Court
sitting." As a consequence of this unlooked-for prorogation, the main
guard continued to be stationed near the Town-House, until a portion of
it played its tragic part on the memorable fifth of March.

The Lieutenant-Governor was apprehensive that this sudden prorogation
would cause a great clamor; but he judged that the popular leaders were
rather humbled and mortified than roused and enraged by it; and he soon
expressed the conviction that this was the right step. But the favorite
organ of the Patriots, the "Boston Gazette," in its next issue, of
January the eighth, indicates anything but humility. Through it James
Otis, John Hancock, and Samuel Adams spoke kindling words to a community
who received words from them as things. Otis, in a card elicited by
strictures on the "unmanly assault, battery, and barbarous wounding" of
himself by Robinson, declared that "a clear stage and no favor were all
he ever wished or wanted in court, country, camp, or city"; Hancock, in
a card commenting on the report that he had violated the merchants'
agreement, "publicly defied all mankind" to prove the allegation, and
pledged his cooeperation "in every legal and laudable measure to redress
the grievances under which the Province and the Continent had so long
labored"; and Samuel Adams, under the signature of "Vindex," tested the
legality of the prorogation by the terms of the Charter, and adjured
every man to make it the subject of his contemplation. "We all
remember," are his weighty words, "that, no longer ago than last year,
the extraordinary dissolution by Governor Bernard, in which he declared
he was purely Ministerial, produced another assembly, which, though
legal in all its proceedings, awaked an attention in the very soul of
the British empire." He claimed that a Massachusetts executive ought to
act from the dictates of his own judgment. "It is not to be expected
that in ordinary times, much less at such an important period as this,
any man, though endowed with the wisdom of Solomon, at the distance of
three thousand miles, can be an adequate judge of the expediency of
proroguing, and in effect of putting an end to, an American legislative
assembly."

The Lieutenant-Governor had now to meet the severest pressure brought to
bear on him by the Tory faction for the employment of the troops,
occasioned by a violation on the part of his sons of their agreement as
to a sale of goods. They had stipulated with the merchants that an
importation of teas made by them should remain unsold, and, as security,
had given to the committee of inspection the key of the building in
which it was stored. Yet they secretly made sales, broke the lock, and
delivered the teas. This was done when the non-importation agreement was
the paramount measure,--when fidelity to it was patriotism, was honor,
was union, was country,--and when all eyes were looking to see Boston
faithful. "If this agreement of the merchants," said "Determinatus" in
the "Boston Gazette," "is of that consequence to all America which our
brethren in all the other governments and in Great Britain itself think
it to be,--if the fate of unborn millions is suspended upon it, verily
it behooves not the merchants only, but every individual of every class
in city and country to aid and support them, and peremptorily to insist
upon its being strictly adhered to. And yet what is most astonishing is,
that some two or three persons, of very little consequence in
themselves, have dared openly to give out that they will vend the goods
they have imported, though they have solemnly pledged their faith to the
body of merchants that they should remain in store till a general
importation takes place." The merchants met in Faneuil Hall in a large
and commanding gathering; for it was composed of the solid men of the
town. After deliberation, they proceeded in a body to the residence of
the Lieutenant-Governor to remonstrate against the course of his sons.
Meantime, the ultra Loyalists pressed him to order the troops to
disperse the meeting; the Commissioners savagely urged, that "there
could not be a better time for trying the strength of the government";
and others said, "It were best to bring matters to extremities." The
commanding officers of the troops now expected work, and prepared for
it. Dalrymple dealt out twelve rounds of cartridges to the men. But
Hutchinson involuntarily shrank from the bloody business of this
programme. He tried other means than force. He appealed to the justices
of the peace, and through the sheriff he commanded the meeting, in His
Majesty's name, to disperse. But the intrepid merchants, in a written
paper, in Hancock's handwriting, averred that law warranted their
proceeding; and so they calmly adhered to the action that patriotism
dictated. Hutchinson at length sent for the Moderator, William Phillips,
of fragrant Revolutionary renown and of educational fame, and stipulated
to deposit a sum of money to stand for the tea that had been sold, and
to return the balance of it to the store. The concession was accepted.
In explanation of his course, and with special reference to the action
of the Commissioners in this case, Hutchinson pleaded a want of power,
under the Constitution, to comply with their demand. "They did not
consider the Constitution," he remarked, "and that by the Charter I can
do nothing without the Council, the major part of whom are against me,
and the civil magistrates, many of whom made a part of the body which
was to be suppressed; so that there could not have been a worse occasion
[to call out the troops], and I think anything tragical would have set
the whole Province in a flame, and maybe spread farther."

Thus Hutchinson, as well as Franklin, dreaded the effect of a serious
collision between the citizens and the troops. At this time the feeling
was one of sullen acquiescence in their presence. "Molineaux," he says,
February 18, 1770, "to whom the Sons of Liberty have given the name of
Paoli, and some others, are restless; but there seems to be no
disposition to any general muster of the people again." And yet the
newspapers were now crowded with unusually exciting matter, and so
continued up to the first week in March: articles about the Liberty-Pole
in New York being cut down by the military and replaced in a triumphal
procession by the people; about McDougal's imprisonment for printing
free comments on the Assembly for voting supplies to the troops; the
famous address of "Junius" to the King, in which one count is his
alienation of a people who left their native land for freedom and found
it in a desert; the details of the shooting, by an informer, of
Christopher Snider, the son of a poor German, and of the imposing
funeral, which moved from the Liberty-Tree to the burial-place. The
importers now feared an assault on their houses; whereupon soldiers were
allowed as a guard to some, while others slept with loaded guns at their
bedsides. These things deserve to be borne in mind; for they show how
much there was to exasperate, when the popular leaders were called upon
to meet a paroxysm without a precedent in the Colonies.

It seemed to the Patriots astonishing that the Ministry persisted in
keeping troops in Boston. There was no spirit of resistance to law;
there was no plot maturing to resist the Government; the avocations of
life went on as usual; the popular leaders, men of whom any community
might be proud, averred that their opposition to public measures had
been prudent and legal, and that they had not taken "a single step that
could not be fully justified on constitutional grounds"; and the demand
in the public prints was continuous to know what the troops were wanted
for, and how they were to be used. On the other hand, the ultra
Loyalists as continuously represented that the town was full of a
rebellious spirit, was a nest of disorder, and threatened the leaders in
it with transportation. Hutchinson seems to have apprehended that this
misrepresentation had been carried so far as to be suicidal; for he
advised Lord Hillsborough, that, "in matters that had no relation to the
dispute between the Kingdom and the Colonies, government retained its
vigor, and the administration of it was attended with no unusual
difficulty." This is to the point, and conclusive. This was the truth on
which the popular leaders rested; and hence it seemed to them a marvel
that the Ministry, to use the words of Samuel Adams, should employ
troops only "to parade the streets of Boston, and, by their ridiculous
merry-andrew tricks, to become the objects of contempt of the women and
children."

It would be a tedious and profitless task to go over the bickerings and
quarrels that occurred between the inhabitants and the soldiers. The
high-spirited citizens, on being challenged in their walks, could not
keep their temper; the roughs, here as in every place, would have their
say; and the coarse British soldier could not be restrained by
discipline; yet in all the brawls, for seventeen months, not a gun was
fired in an affray. Fist had been met with fist, and club with club; and
not unfrequently these quarrels were settled in the courts. The nature
of such emergency as would justify the troops in firing on the people
was acutely discussed in the newspapers, and undoubtedly the subject was
talked about in private circles and in the political clubs. "What shall
I say?" runs an article in the "Gazette." "I shudder at the thought.
Surely no provincial magistrate could be found so steeled against the
sensations of humanity and justice as wantonly to order troops to fire
on an unarmed populace, and more than repeat in Boston the tragic scene
exhibited in St. George's Fields." It was a wanton fire on an unarmed
populace that was protected against; and the protest was by men who
involuntarily shrank from mob-law as they would from the hell of
anarchy. They apprehended an impromptu collision between the people and
the troops; they knew that an illegal and wanton fire on the people
would produce such collision; the danger of this result formed,
undoubtedly, a large portion of the common talk; and the frequency and
manner in which the subject was discussed elicited from General Gage the
rather sweeping remark, that every citizen in Boston was a lawyer. Every
citizen was interested in the support of public liberty and public
order, and might well regard with deep concern the threats that were
continually made, which, if executed, would disturb both. Hutchinson, in
one of his letters, thus states the conclusions that were reached:--"Our
heroes for liberty say that no troops dare to fire on the people without
the order of the civil magistrate, and that no civil magistrate, would
dare to give such orders. In the first part of their opinion they may be
right; in the second they cannot be sure until they have made the
trial."

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