American Spring Page 2
On the surface, these trading relationships were mutually beneficial, but they also raised issues of import duties and consumer taxation. While the causes of the revolution were many and could trace their roots back at least a decade, it was the importation and taxation of tea—and the stiff reaction of some colonials to it—that had escalated emotions throughout 1774—until this New Year’s Day, when Boston was effectively an armed camp garrisoned by British regulars.
Boston in 1775—long before massive landfills in the surrounding waters expanded its girth—lay like a craggy lobster. Its two “claws,” Barton’s Point and Hudson’s Point, reached north into the Charles River toward Charlestown. The “body” of the lobster itself was crowned by Beacon Hill, below which the broad Common occupied the westward edge along the Charles River, while the Long Wharf and numerous shorter wharves encircled Boston Harbor on the seaward, or eastern, side. Only the thin causeway at Boston Neck connected the “tail” of the lobster to the mainland. The causeway led south past the town gate to higher ground at Roxbury and Dorchester Heights. This irregular landform didn’t lend itself to a rigid grid of wide avenues but rather a helter-skelter of narrow dirt streets and alleys that jogged every which way off a main thoroughfare of cobblestones running northward from Boston Neck.
The week between Christmas and New Year’s in Boston saw the landing of the latest contingent of British troops, about six hundred Royal Marines commanded by Major John Pitcairn. They arrived aboard several men-of-war that dropped anchor in Boston Harbor and showed no sign of leaving. The marines were billeted in barracks in the north part of town within easy sight of the steeple of the Old North Church and the heights of Bunker Hill across the river to the north.
Boston definitely felt like an occupied town, but not all was tense between Bostonians and this garrison of British troops. Four days before New Year’s, on a wild and stormy afternoon, “a seafaring Lad” fell from a wharf in Boston Harbor and appeared to be drowning. A British regular from the Tenth Regiment of Foot jumped in to rescue him. “The Lad,” according to press reports, “was saved,” but the soldier himself drowned in the attempt.2
But even British regulars could not ensure holiday tranquillity in Boston. Shortly before midnight on the day after Christmas, “some well-bred Gentlemen took the Liberty of breaking my Windows in a most spirited Manner,” one John Troutbeck reported sarcastically in an advertisement in the Boston Gazette and Country Journal’s January 2 issue. “If any Person will be pleased to inform me of the Place of their Residence, (if they have any,) that I may make them a proper Acknowledgement for this publick Mark of their Civility, he shall be intitled to a Reward of Ten Dollars.”3
The same newspaper contained an announcement of a one-dollar reward for information regarding a separate incident:
“Any Person that will give information to the Printers of an old Negro Fellow named Caesar, who went away some Time since, and is suppos’d to be strolling about in some of the neighbouring Towns, walks lame and talks much about being free, shall receive the above Reward. Had on when he went away a blue Jacket.”4
The Boston News-Letter reported other tragedies of daily colonial life. An obituary mentioned the death of a Mrs. Silence Thwing, who succumbed at a sprightly ninety-three but who was recorded only as the “Relict of the late Mr. Wm. Thwing.” A person named Jeremiah Ballard was much less fortunate. He died at the age of eighteen, the victim of an accidentally self-inflicted gunshot wound. His weapon discharged while he was climbing over a fence.5
In Milton, south of Boston, “the Wife of Mr. Ebenezer Houghton”—her given name, in the manner of the time, was considered of secondary importance—was drawing a pail of water from a well when “she accidentally slipt into the Well, Head first, and was drowned.” No mention was made of her husband’s whereabouts at the time. Farther south, in Rochester, Asa Richer also met his end. He “was fixing a Ramrod into the Pipes of a loaded Gun, when it accidentally went off, and the Contents entered his Bowels; of which Wound he expired in about Half an Hour.”6
Among these grim clippings there was evidence—despite the then-current political turmoil—of just how close many in the colonies still felt to their mother country. In addition to regular reports on London politics, economics, and entertainment, a number of colonial newspapers, including the January 2 issue of the Boston Evening-Post, published a complete list of newly elected members to the House of Commons. Of the 558 members, about one hundred were freshmen. Time would tell whether these new members would carry enough weight—or inclination—to reverse the punitive legislative measures invoked by the last session against the American colonies.7
Parliament’s edicts weighed heavily on the man who was charged with enforcing them in the colonies: General Thomas Gage, longtime commander in chief of British forces in North America and, since May 1774, governor of the errant province of Massachusetts. In that capacity, Gage had moved his headquarters from New York to the increasingly tense confines of Boston. The question on many minds was what Gage thought personally about Parliament’s heavy hand and whether he might have some sympathy for the frustrations of his constituency. Among those believed to have a persuasive influence on his thinking was his American-born wife, the former Margaret Kemble of New Jersey.
One Bostonian who cared not a whit for what General Gage or Parliament thought was John Hancock, who entered the New Year his usual cocky self. Hancock had taken over his uncle’s shipping business as a young man and grown to become one of Boston’s wealthiest and most influential merchants. There were more than a few whispers that he routinely found ways to circumvent onerous customs duties, but if nothing else, the practice made for loyal and appreciative customers. His partner in intrigue against the British Crown, Samuel Adams, had chaired a town meeting at Faneuil Hall on December 30 to craft a reply to a stern missive from General Gage. Politics and business aside, Hancock was looking forward to a year that would see his wedding to the spirited Dorothy Quincy.
John Andrews, a Boston merchant of only slightly less standing than Hancock, was also looking ahead. To his brother-in-law, William Barrell, a merchant in Philadelphia, Andrews extended his New Year’s wishes “that we may have a less troublesome year than the last.” Andrews had many economic reasons to preserve relations with Great Britain, but he nonetheless hoped “Great Britain may see her error in distressing the Colonies, and restore to them their just rights and liberties; that we may once more see that harmony prevail which formerly us’d to subsist between them.”8
In Plymouth, thirty-five miles south of Boston, Mercy Otis Warren, a housewife, mother, and clandestine author, was putting the finishing touches on her latest political satire. Her anonymous writings had already attracted a following, and this effort, The Group, was a harsh condemnation of the role of mandamus councilors—those appointed by the king to carry out royal laws. Men who held such offices, Warren editorialized, had succumbed to royal bribes at the price of liberty. But Warren’s writings also had a strong secondary theme. In a culture and time that accorded women and family life a decidedly subservient role to men and their public lives, Warren compared the oppressed marital status of women with Parliament’s suppression of the assumed rights of male colonists.9
At the other extreme from Mercy Warren’s feminist viewpoints were those of a twenty-year-old New Jersey woman named Jemima Condict. Her diary musings were mostly concerned with biblical texts from church services and a hope chest that her father was in the process of procuring, despite Jemima’s pensiveness about the eventual marriage such an acquisition foreshadowed. But even in rural New Jersey, the prospect of war was not far from her daily thoughts. If people would quarrel about such a trifling thing as tea, Jemima asked in her diary, “What must we expect But war & I think or at least fear it will be so.”10
War was certainly a possibility. In Dedham, just south of Boston, the martial spirit was judged so high that a militia company of more than fifty, “several of whom [were] above 70 Years of Age
,” organized and elected a slate of officers. Most other small towns either had already formed or were in the process of forming similar local units. The British regulars who would oppose them were judged by some to be well-trained troops, but few had as yet been tested in battle. On this New Year’s Day, one British officer complained that there was “Nothing remarkable but the drunkenness among the Soldiers, which is now got to a very great pitch; owing to the cheapness of the liquor, a Man may get drunk for a Copper or two.”11
Attorney John Adams was at home in Braintree, a dozen miles south of Boston, with his wife, Abigail, and their brood of four children, which included seven-year-old John Quincy. Adams’s frequently extensive diary was silent on the occasion of New Year’s for just that reason: he was home—not traveling, as he had done that fall to Philadelphia for the First Continental Congress, or making his rounds for various legal matters. His time with fellow delegates in Philadelphia had hardened his resolve to speak out strongly—not that he had been quiet to date—against what he judged to be increasingly heavy-handed British oppression. Indeed, it is likely that Adams was already making notes for a series of letters he would soon publish in the Boston Gazette in opposition to letters from a Tory supporter who signed himself “Massachusettensis.”12
On the outskirts of the village of Lexington, some dozen miles west of Boston, Prince Estabrook, a black slave of about forty years of age, went about his chores as usual. He was owned by Benjamin Estabrook, who farmed substantial acreage and operated a gristmill on Vine Brook Road just east of the village green. Prince was a Lexington native who had been born as Estabrook family property and inherited by Benjamin from his father. Prince and Benjamin were at opposite ends of the social spectrum, but there is at least circumstantial evidence that, being about the same age, they shared bonds of friendship that went beyond their master-servant relationship. Perhaps because Benjamin was occupied with his businesses, a family of eight children, and service in a variety of town government roles, he encouraged Prince to join the local militia. Prince had been routinely drilling with the Lexington company for almost two years.13
BOSTON AND MASSACHUSETTS, WHILE THE focal point of British punishment and colonial resolve, were certainly not alone in their unease. Bostonians read in their New Year’s newspapers that the colony of Maryland had taken similar steps to train and arm local militiamen because “a well regulated militia… is the natural strength and only stable security of a free government.” The Maryland legislature went on to say, perhaps with tongue in cheek, that creating such a force on its own would “release our mother country from any expence in our protection and defence [and] will obviate the pretence of a necessity for taxing us on that account.” Consequently, it was recommended that all Maryland inhabitants between sixteen and fifty years of age “form themselves into companies of 68 men… and use their utmost endeavours to make themselves masters of the military exercise.”14
There was plenty of intrigue in New York, too. On January 2, the publishers of the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury teased readers by announcing, “In our next Paper, the Public may possibly be entertained with some little Account of a certain Spy that has lately made his Appearance in this City, and of whom all Gentlemen are requested to be on their Guard.”15
Tempers were particularly high in New York because the customs collector, Andrew Elliot, had come under verbal attack from locals for confiscating certain firearms that had been legally imported into the province from Great Britain. Elliot nonetheless seized them and secured them aboard a British man-of-war in the harbor. On December 27, Elliot received an unsigned letter that characterized his actions as an arbitrary step by which “you have declared yourself an inveterate enemy to the liberties of North-America” and advised him that the weapons’ rightful owners would soon demand their return. “Do not slight this admonition or treat it as a vain menace,” the unsigned threat continued. Elliot would find no protection against “our just revenge, which will be soon done.”16
In Virginia, a planter and member of the Virginia House of Burgesses named George Washington spent New Year’s at Mount Vernon with his wife, Martha, and an assortment of relatives. His mind was occupied by the political turmoil, but in part this was because such events had had a major impact on his business operations. A week later, Washington wrote a testy letter to a trade representative, complaining about a delay that “was never done before!” in unloading a cargo of herring from the brigantine Farmer in Jamaica. The ship sat dockside for six weeks before it could be loaded with Washington’s rum for the return journey, an expense in port that Washington was being asked to assume. He was also miffed that “the Sugar and other Articles” he had ordered had not yet arrived and that under the nonimportation measures recently enacted by the First Continental Congress he would be “obliged to return them if they arrive in Virginia after the first day of next Month.”17
But Washington was also busy giving instructions for work to be done farther west, on lands he had acquired that the British Crown now said belonged to others. “I am resolved,” he wrote an overseer, “if no unforeseen accident happens to prevent it, to have my people at work upon my lands on the Ohio, by the last day of March.”18
There was also news that faraway Georgia, which had not sent delegates to the recent Continental Congress, was falling into line with the other colonies. “By Account just received from Georgia,” the Boston News-Letter reported, “we are informed, that all Opposition to their Concurrence with the other Colonies has ceased… [and] that they have fully resolved to retrieve their late Neglect; and do heartily join in the Association of the General Congress.”19
ON THE OTHER SIDE OF the Atlantic this New Year’s Day, there was no less a general feeling of unease and apprehension. The exceptions were those staunch royalists whose intractable regard for the authority of their monarch was exceeded only by their disdain for anything having to do with the colonies. Great Britain’s right to do as George III and Parliament decreed was absolute, they said. Others in England weren’t so sure.
Save for a two-year sabbatical back in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin had spent the better part of the preceding seventeen years in London, initially as an agent for Pennsylvania business interests but increasingly as a de facto ambassador at large for greater colonial concerns. Franklin’s son, William, was the royal governor of New Jersey, and it made for a strained family relationship. In the spring of 1774, Franklin had encouraged William to resign his governorship, forewarning that if he did not do so, he would find himself “in no comfortable Situation.”20
Although Franklin did not yet know it this New Year’s Day, his son had written him on Christmas Eve to notify him of the death of Franklin’s long-suffering common-law wife, Deborah Read. Despite Franklin’s absences of many years and rumors of his extramarital liaisons, Deborah had kept the home fires burning in Philadelphia while Franklin reveled in the gaiety of London society. William gently chided his father that Franklin’s failure to return the previous year as Deborah lay dying had “preyed a good deal on her Spirits,” but the bulk of William’s letter concerned Franklin’s own political fate.
If there were any prospect of swaying those in power in Parliament to Franklin’s way of thinking, or any prospect of those of Franklin’s political persuasion coming into power, it would have happened by now, William wrote. “But as you have had by this Time pretty strong Proofs that neither can be reasonably expected and that you are look’d upon with an evil Eye in that Country, [you] are in no small Danger of being brought into Trouble for your political Conduct.…” Return to America while you are physically able, William told his soon-to-be-sixty-nine-year-old father, “where the People revere you, and are inclined to pay a Deference to your Opinions.”21
Benjamin Franklin was in fact planning to sail back to America soon, but the holidays brought one last round of political intrigue in London. It started innocently enough before Christmas, when Caroline Howe, a widow of considerable standing in London s
ociety, invited him to play chess, “fancying,” in Franklin’s words, “she could beat me.” Whether she did is unknown, but both players found the company so engaging that they quickly met a second time. Only after a few games did the social gossip turn political, and Mrs. Howe asked pointedly, “And what is to be done with this Dispute between Britain and the Colonies? I hope we are not to have a Civil War.” Franklin laughed and said they should kiss and be friends because “Quarrelling can be of Service to neither but is Ruin to both.” This appears to have been the opening Mrs. Howe was seeking, and she offered the opinion that she had long thought Franklin himself should be employed to mediate the dispute.
On Christmas Day, Franklin again called on Caroline Howe for a chess game, but she immediately asked if he would like to meet her brother Richard Howe, an admiral in the Royal Navy and a member of Parliament. Here was more than merely London social elite. Admiral Howe, his brother William, a general in the army, and sister, Caroline, who had retained her Howe surname by marrying a distant cousin, were among a faction of powerful British strongly in favor of some form of reconciliation with the colonies. Their oldest sibling, Lord George Howe, had caught the attention and admiration of colonials during the French and Indian War, when as a young brigadier he led an assault on French-held Fort Carillon in northern New York. A stray bullet cut Lord Howe down in his prime, but the surviving Howes were among those who found it difficult to contend that the liberties they took for granted in England should be denied to other Englishmen in the colonies. Perhaps Franklin was their conduit to some form of accommodation.
Franklin readily agreed to meet Richard Howe, but after hearing a flow of silken compliments from him, Franklin grew leery. They talked generally of the merits of reconciliation, and Howe asked Franklin to draft propositions upon which “a good Understanding might be obtained.” The two men agreed to meet several days later at Caroline’s home under the pretext of another game of chess.