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

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863

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It was about noon when the Lieutenant-Governor received the committee of
the town at the Council-Chamber, the Council being in session. I have
found no details of what was said by the committee at this interview, in
urging a compliance with the demand. Hutchinson said he was not prepared
to reply, but would give an answer in writing, when the committee
withdrew into another room; and he gives glimpses of what then occurred.
"I told the Council," he says, "that a removal of the troops was not
with me; and I desired them to consider what answer I could give to
this application of the town, whilst Colonel Dalrymple, who had the
command, was present." Some of the members, who were among the truest
Patriots, urged a compliance, when the Lieutenant-Governor declared that
"he would upon no consideration whatever give orders for their removal."
The result reached this morning was an advice for the removal of one
regiment, in which the commanding officer concurred. As Hutchinson rose
from this sitting, he declared that "he meant to receive no further
application on the subject."

Things wore a gloomy aspect during the interval between the session of
the Council and the time of the afternoon meeting; for the natural
effect of the unbending tone of the crown officials was to give firmness
to the determined spirit of the people. There were consultations between
members of the Council, the popular leaders, and the commanding
officers; and now the very men who were branded as incendiaries, enemies
of Great Britain, and traitors, were again seen quietly endeavoring to
prevent a catastrophe. Hutchinson, in his History, says it was intimated
to members of the Council, that, though the commanding officer should
receive no authoritative order to remove all the troops, yet the
expression of a desire by the Lieutenant-Governor and Council that it
should be done would cause him to do it; and on this basis Hutchinson
was prevailed upon to meet the Council in the afternoon. This was a
great point gained for the popular cause.

At three o'clock, Faneuil Hall was filled to overflowing with the
excited population assembled in legal town-meeting. Thomas Cushing was
again chosen the Moderator; but the place would hold only about thirteen
hundred, and the record reads, "The Hall not being spacious enough to
receive the inhabitants who attended, it was voted to adjourn to Dr.
Sewall's meeting-house,"--the Old South. The most convenient way for the
people would be to pass into King Street, up by the Council-Chamber, and
along what is now Washington Street, to the church. As they went, no
mention is made of mottoes or banners or flags, of cheers or of jeers.
Thomas dishing said his countrymen "were like the old British commoners,
grave and sad men"; and it was said in the Council to Hutchinson, "That
multitude are not such as pulled down your house"; but they are "men of
the best characters," "men of estates and men of religion," "men who
pray over what they do." With similar men, men who feared God and were
devoted to public liberty, Cromwell won at Marston Moor; and so striking
was the analogy, that at this hour it virtually forced itself on the
well-read Hutchinson: for men of this stamp had once made a revolution
in Boston, and as he looked out on this scene, perhaps scanned the
concourse who passed from Faneuil Hall to the Old South, and read in
their faces the sign of resolute hearts, he judged "their spirit to be
as high as was the spirit of their ancestors when they imprisoned
Andros, while they were four times as numerous." As the burden of
official responsibility pressed heavily on him, he realized that he had
to deal with an element far more potent than "the faction" which
officials had long represented as composing the Patriot band, and that
much depended on dealing with it wisely. This was not a dependent and
starved host wildly urging the terrible demand of "Bread or blood"; nor
was it fanaticism in a season of social discontent claiming
impossibilities at the hand of power: the craving was moral and
intellectual: it was an intelligent public opinion, a people with
well-grounded and settled convictions, making a just demand on arbitrary
power. Was such public opinion about to be scorned as though it were but
a faction, and by officials who bore high the party-standard? And were
men of such resoluteness of character and purpose about to be involved
in a work of carnage? or would the wielders of British authority avoid
the extremity by concession? Boston, indeed America, had seen no hour of
intenser interest, of deeper solemnity, of more instant peril, or of
truer moral sublimity; and as this assembly deliberated with the sounds
of the fife and drum in their ears, and with the soldiery in their
sight, questions like these must have been on every lip,--and they are
of the civil-war questions that cause an involuntary shudder in every
home.

The Old South was not large enough to hold the people, and they stood in
the street and near the Town-House awaiting the report of the committee
of fifteen, chosen in the morning. The Lieutenant-Governor was now at
the Council-Chamber, where, in addition to Colonels Dalrymple and Carr,
there had been summoned Captain Caldwell of the Rose frigate; and
Hutchinson would, he says, have summoned other crown officers, but he
knew the Council would not consent to it. He took care to repeat to the
committee, he says, the declaration which he had made in the morning to
the Selectmen, the Justices, and the Council,--that "the ordering of the
troops did not lie with him." As the committee, with Samuel Adams at the
head, appeared on the Town-House steps, the people were in motion, and
the word passed, "Make way for the committee!" Adams uncovered his head,
and, as he went towards the church, he bowed alternately to those on
each side of the lane that was formed, and repeated the words, "Both
regiments or none." The answer of the Lieutenant-Governor to the morning
demand for a total removal of the troops was read to the meeting in the
church. It was to the effect, that he had conferred with the commanders
of the two regiments, who received orders from the General in New York,
and it was not in his power to countermand these orders; but the Council
desired their removal, and Colonel Dalrymple had signified that because
of the part which the Twenty-Ninth Regiment had taken in the differences
it should be placed without delay in the barracks at the Castle, and
also that the main guard should be removed; while the Fourteenth
Regiment should be so disposed and laid under such restraint that all
occasion for future differences might be prevented. And now resounded
through the excited assembly, from a thousand tongues, the words, "Both
regiments or none!"

A short debate occurred, when the answer was voted to be unsatisfactory.
Then another committee was chosen. It was resolved that John Hancock,
Samuel Adams, William Molineaux, William Phillips, Joseph Warren, Joshua
Henshaw, and Samuel Pemberton be a committee to inform the
Lieutenant-Governor that it was the unanimous opinion of the people that
the reply was by no means satisfactory, and that nothing less would
satisfy them than a total and immediate removal of the troops. This
committee was one worthy of a great occasion. Hancock, Henshaw, and
Pemberton, besides being individually of large and just influence from
their ability, patriotism, worth, and wealth, were members of the Board
of Selectmen, and therefore represented the municipality; Phillips, who
had served on this Board, was a type of the upright and liberal
merchant; Molineaux was one of the most determined and zealous of the
Patriots, and a stirring business-man; Warren, ardent and bold, of
rising fame as a leader, personified the generous devotion and noble
enthusiasm of the young men; Adams, though not the first-named on the
committee, played so prominent a part in its doings, that he appears as
its chairman. He was so widely and favorably known now that he was
addressed as "the Father of America." Of middling stature, plain in
dress, quiet in manner, unpretending in deportment, he exhibited nothing
extraordinary in common affairs; but on great occasions, when his deeper
nature was called into action, he rose, without the smallest
affectation, into an upright dignity of figure and bearing,--with a
harmony of voice and a power of speech which made a strong impression,
the more lasting from the purity and nervous eloquence of his style and
the logical consistency of his argument. Such were the men selected to
speak and act for Boston in this hour of deep passion and of high
resolve.

The committee, about four o'clock, repaired to the Council-Chamber. It
was a room respectable in size and not without ornament and historic
memorials. On its walls were representatives of the two elements now in
conflict,--of the Absolutism that was passing away, in full-length
portraits of Charles II. and James II. robed in the royal ermine, and of
a Republicanism which had grown robust and self-reliant, in the heads of
Belcher and Bradstreet and Endicott and Winthrop. Around a long table
were seated the Lieutenant-Governor and the members of the Council with
the military officers,--the scrupulous and sumptuous costumes of
civilians in authority, gold and silver lace, scarlet cloaks, and large
wigs, mingled with the brilliant uniforms of the British army and navy.
Into such imposing presence was now ushered the plainly attired
committee of the town.

At this time the Lieutenant-Governor, a portion of the Council, the
military officers, and, among other officials now in the Town-House,
though not in the Council, the Secretary of the Province, were sternly
resolved to refuse compliance with the demand of the people. On the vote
of the meeting being presented to the Lieutenant-Governor, Adams
remarked at length on the illegality of quartering troops on the
inhabitants in time of peace and without the consent of the legislature,
urged that the public service did not require them, adverted with
sensibility and warmth to the late tragedy, painted the misery in which
the town would be involved, if the troops were suffered to remain, and
urged the necessity of an immediate compliance with the vote of the
people. The Lieutenant-Governor, in a brief reply, defended both the
legality and the necessity of the troops, and renewed his old assertion
that they were not subject to his authority. Adams again rose, and
attention was riveted on him as he paused and gave a searching look at
the Lieutenant-Governor. There was in his countenance and attitude a
silent eloquence that words could not express; his manner showed that
the energies of his soul were roused; and, in a tone not loud, but deep
and earnest, he again addressed himself to Hutchinson, "It is well
known," he said, "that, acting as Governor of the Province, you are, by
its Charter, the Commander-in-Chief of the military forces within it,
and, as such, the troops now in the capital are subject to your orders.
If you, or Colonel Dalrymple under you, have the power to remove one
regiment, you have the power to remove both; and nothing short of their
total removal will satisfy the people or preserve the peace of the
Province. A multitude, highly incensed, now wait the result of this
application. The voice of ten thousand freemen demands that both
regiments be forthwith removed. Their voice must be respected,--their
demand obeyed. Fail, then, at your peril, to comply with this
requisition. On you alone rests the responsibility of the decision; and
if the just expectations of the people are disappointed, you must be
answerable to God and your country for the fatal consequences that must
ensue. The committee have discharged their duty, and it is for you to
discharge yours. They wait your final determination." As Adams, while
speaking, intently eyed Hutchinson, he says, "I observed his knees to
tremble; I saw his face grow pale; and I enjoyed the sight."

A spell of silence followed this appeal. Then there was low
conversation, to a whisper, between the Lieutenant-Governor and Colonel
Dalrymple, who, in the spirit of the unbending soldier, was for
resisting this demand, as he had been for summary proceedings in the
case of the meetings. "It is impossible for me," he had said this
afternoon, "to go any further lengths in this matter. The information
given of the intended rebellion is sufficient reason against the removal
of His Majesty's troops." But he now said in a loud tone, "I am ready to
obey your orders," which threw the responsibility on Hutchinson. All the
members of the committee urged the demand. "Every one of them,"
Hutchinson says, "deliberately gave his opinion at large, and generally
gave this reason to support it,--that the people would most certainly
drive out the troops, and that the inhabitants of the other towns would
join in it; and several of the gentlemen, declared that they did not
judge from the general temper of the people only, but they knew it to be
the determination, not of a mob, but of the generality of the principal
inhabitants; and they added, that all the blood would be charged to me
alone, for refusing to follow their unanimous advice, in desiring that
the quarters of a single regiment might be changed, in order to put an
end to the animosities between the troops and the inhabitants, seeing
Colonel Dalrymple would consent to it." After the committee withdrew,
the debates of the Council were long and earnest; and, as they went on,
Hutchinson asked, "What protection would there be for the Commissioners,
if both regiments were ordered to the Castle?" Several said, "They would
be safe, and always had been safe." "As safe," said Gray, "without the
troops as with them." And Irving said, "They never had been in danger,
and he would pawn his life that they should receive no injury." "Unless
the troops were removed," it was said, "before evening there would be
ten thousand men on the Common." "The people in general," Tyler said,
"were resolved to have the troops removed, without which they would not
be satisfied; that, failing of other means, they were determined to
effect their removal by force, let the act be deemed rebellion or
otherwise." As the Council deliberated, the people were impatient, and
the members were repeatedly called out to give information as to the
result, This at length was unanimity. This body resolved, that, to
preserve the peace, it was absolutely necessary that the troops should
be removed; and they advised the Lieutenant-Governor to communicate that
conclusion to Colonel Dalrymple, and to request that he would order his
whole command to Castle William.

The remark of Dalrymple, as well as the decision of the Council, became
known to the people, and the word passed round, "that Colonel Dalrymple
had yielded, and that the Lieutenant-Governor only held out." This
circumstance was communicated to Hutchinson, and he says, "It now lay
upon me to choose that side which had the fewest and least difficulties;
and I weighed and compared them as well as the time I had for them would
permit. I knew it was most regular for me to leave this matter entire to
the commanding officer. I was sensible the troops were designed to be,
upon occasion, employed under the direction of the civil magistrate, and
that at the Castle they would be too remote, in most cases, to answer
that purpose. But then I considered they never had been used for that
purpose, and there was no probability they ever would be, because no
civil magistrate could be found under whose directions they might act;
and they could be considered only as having a tendency to keep the
inhabitants in some degree of awe, and even this was every day
lessening; and the affronts the troops received were such that there was
no avoiding quarrels and slaughter." Still he hesitated substantially to
retract his word; for now a request from him, he knew, was equivalent to
an order; and before he determined, he consulted three officers of the
crown, who, though not present in the Council, were in the building, and
the Secretary, Oliver. All agreed that he ought to comply with the
advice of the Council. He then formally recommended Colonel Dalrymple to
remove all the troops, who gave his word of honor that he would commence
preparations in the morning for a removal, and that there should be no
unnecessary delay in quartering both regiments at the Castle.

It was dark when the committee bore back to the meeting the great report
of their success. It was received with expressions of the highest
satisfaction. What a burden was lifted from the hearts of the Patriots!
They did not, however, regard their work as quite done. They voted that
a strong watch was necessary through the night, when the committee who
had waited on the Lieutenant-Governor tendered their services to make a
part of the watch, and the whole matter was placed in their hands as "a
committee of safety." They were authorized to accept the service of such
inhabitants as they might deem proper. The meeting, then dissolved. A
few days after, the two regiments were removed to the Castle.

The withdrawal of the troops caused great surprise in England, and long
deliberations by the Ministry. "It is put out of all doubt," Governor
Bernard wrote Hutchinson, "that the attacking the soldiers was
preconcerted in order to oblige them to fire, and then make it necessary
to quit the town, in consequence of their doing what they were forced to
do. It is considered by thinking men wholly as a manoeuvre to support
the cause of non-importation." The Opposition termed it an indignity put
upon Great Britain, and called upon the Ministry to resent it upon a
system, or to resign their offices. Lord Barrington, who approved of the
soldiers' retiring to the Castle, said, that, "where there was no
magistracy there should be no soldiers; and if they intended to have
soldiers sent there again, they should provide for a magistracy, which
could not be done but by appointing a royal Council, instead of the
present democratical one." The Government were perplexed; but the
expectation was general, that General Gage, without waiting for orders
from the Government, would send a reinforcement to Boston, and order the
whole of the troops into the town. "Every one," Governor Bernard wrote,
"without exception, says it must be immediately done. Those in
opposition are as loud as any. Lord Shelburne told a gentleman, who
reported it to me, that it was now high time for Great Britain to act
with spirit." The Governor advised Hutchinson, that, should it turn out
that he had been successful in preventing Captain Preston from being
murdered by the mob, "Government might be reconciled to the removal of
the troops." There was much outside clamor, and those who indulged in it
could not reconcile to themselves "six hundred regular troops giving way
to two or three thousand common people, who, they say, would not have
dared to attack them, if they had stood their ground"; and this class
regarded the affair "as a successful bully." Colonel Barre, in the House
of Commons, disposed of the question in a few words: "The officers
agreed in sending the soldiers to Castle William; what Minister will
dare to send them back to Boston?"

These events stirred the public mind in the Colonies profoundly. The
Spirit evinced by the people of Boston in the whole transaction raised
the town still higher in the estimation of the Patriots; annual
commemorative orations kept alive the tragic scene; and thus the
introduction of the troops, the question involved in their removal, and
the massacre and triumph of the people, contributed powerfully to bring
about that change in affections and principles which finally resulted in
American Independence.

* * * * *

WET-WEATHER WORK.

BY A FARMER.

IV.

We are fairly on English ground now; of course, it is wet weather. The
phenomena of the British climate have not changed much since the time
when the rains "let fall their horrible pleasure" upon the head of the
poor, drenched outcast, Lear. Thunder and lightning, however, which
belonged to that particular war of the elements, are rare in England.
The rain is quiet, fine, insinuating, constant as a lover,--not wasting
its resources in sudden, explosive outbreaks.

During a foot-tramp of some four hundred miles, which I once had the
pleasure of making upon English soil, and which led me from the mouth of
the Thames to its sources, and thence through Derbyshire, the West
Riding of Yorkshire, and all of the Lake counties, I do not think that
the violence of the rain kept me housed for more than five days out of
forty. Not to say that the balance showed sunshine and a bonny sky; on
the contrary, a soft, lubricating mist is the normal condition of the
British atmosphere; and a neutral tint of gray sky, when no wet is
falling, is almost sure to call out from the country-landlord, if
communicative, an explosive and authoritative, "Fine morning, this,
Sir!"

The really fine, sunny days--days you believed in rashly, upon the sunny
evidence of such blithe poets as Herrick--are so rare, that, after a
month of British travel, you can count them on your fingers. On such a
one, by a piece of good fortune, I saw all the parterres of Hampton
Court,--its great vine, its labyrinthine walks, its stately alleys, its
ruddy range of brick, its clipped lindens, its rotund and low-necked
beauties of Sir Peter Lely, and the red geraniums flaming on the
window-sills of once royal apartments, where the pensioned dowagers now
dream away their lives. On another such day, Twickenham, and all its
delights of trees, bowers, and villas, were flashing in the sun as
brightly as ever in the best days of Horace Walpole or of Pope. And on
yet another, after weary tramp, I toiled up to the inn-door of "The
Bear," at Woodstock; and after a cut or two into a ripe haunch of
Oxfordshire mutton, with certain "tiny kickshaws," I saw, for the first
time, under the light of a glorious sunset, that exquisite velvety
stretch of the park of Woodstock, dimpled with water, dotted with
forest--clumps, where companies of sleek fallow-deer were grazing by the
hundred, where pheasants whirred away down the aisles of wood, where
memories of Fair Rosamond and of Rochester and of Alice Lee
lingered,--and all brought to a ringing close by Southey's ballad of
"Blenheim," as the shadow of the gaunt Marlborough column slanted across
the path.

There are other notable places, however, which seem--so dependent are we
on first impressions--to be always bathed in a rain-cloud. It is quite
impossible, for instance, for me to think of London Bridge save as a
great reeking thoroughfare, slimy with thin mud, with piles of umbrellas
crowding over it, like an army of turtles, and its balustrade steaming
with wet. The charming little Dulwich Gallery, with its Bonningtons and
Murillos, I remember as situated somewhere (for I could never find it
again of my own head) at a very rainy distance from London, under the
spout of an interminable waterfall. The guide-books talk of a pretty
neighborhood, and of a thousand rural charms thereabout; I remember only
one or two draggled policemen in oil-skin capes, and with heads slanted
to the wind, and my cabby, in a four-caped coat, shaking himself like a
water-dog, in the area. Exeter, Gloucester, and Glasgow are three great
wet cities in my memory,--a damp cathedral in each, with a damp-coated
usher to each, who shows damp tombs, and whose talk is dampening to the
last degree. I suppose they have sunshine in these places, and in the
light of the sun I am sure that marvellous gray tower of Gloucester must
make a rare show; but all the reports in the world will not avail to dry
up the image of those wet days of visit.

Considering how very much the fair days are overbalanced by the dirty,
thick, dropping, misty weather of England, I think we take a too sunny
aspect of her history: it has not been under the full-faced smiles of
heaven that her battles, revolutions, executions, and pageants have held
their august procession; the rain has wet many a May-day and many a
harvesting, whose traditional color (through tender English verses) is
gaudy with yellow sunshine. The revellers of the "Midsummer Night's
Dream" would find a wet turf eight days out of ten to disport upon. We
think of Bacon without an umbrella, and of Cromwell without a
mackintosh; yet I suspect both of them carried these, or their
equivalents, pretty constantly. Raleigh, indeed, threw his velvet cloak
into the mud for the Virgin Queen to tread upon,--from which we infer a
recent shower; but it is not often that an historical incident is so
suggestive of the true state of the atmosphere.

History, however, does not mind the rain: agriculture must. More
especially in any view of British agriculture, whether old or new, and
in any estimate of its theories or progress, due consideration must be
had for the generous dampness of the British atmosphere. To this cause
is to be attributed primarily that wonderful velvety turf which is so
unmatchable elsewhere; to the same cause, and to the accompanying even
temperature, is to be credited very much of the success of the
turnip-culture, which has within a century revolutionized the
agriculture of Kugland; yet again, the magical effects of a thorough
system of drainage are nowhere so demonstrable as in a soil constantly
wetted, and giving a steady flow, however small, to the discharging
tile. Measured by inches, the rain-fall is greater in most parts of
America than in Great Britain; but this fall is so capricious with us,
often so sudden and violent, that there must be inevitably a large
surface-discharge, even though the tile, three feet below, is in working
order. The true theory of skilful drainage is, not to carry away the
quick flush of a shower, but to relieve a soil too heavily saturated by
opening new outflows, setting new currents astir of both air and
moisture, and thus giving new life and an enlarged capacity to lands
that were dead with a stagnant over-soak.

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