THOMAS HUTCHINSON.
Born in Boston, Sept. 9, 1711. Governor of Massachusetts 1771-4. Died in London
June 3, 1780.

THE
LOYALISTS OF MASSACHUSETTS
AND
THE OTHER SIDE OF
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

BY

JAMES H. STARK

"History makes men wise."—Bacon.
W. B. CLARKE CO.
26 Tremont Street
Boston

COPYRIGHTED 1907
BY
JAMES H. STARK
To
The Memory of the Loyalists
of
The Massachusetts Bay
WHOSE FAITHFUL SERVICES AND MEMORIES ARE NOW FORGOTTEN
BY THE NATION THEY SO WELL SERVED, THIS
WORK IS DEDICATED BY THE
AUTHOR

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT.

The author wishes to acknowledge the great assistance he has received from the New England Historic Genealogical Society, of which he has been a member for twenty-eight years,—whose library consisting of biographies and genealogies is the most complete in America. Other authorities consulted, have been the "Royalist" records in the original manuscript preserved in the archives of the State of Massachusetts, the Record Commissioners' Reports of the City of Boston, the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and the numerous town histories, and ancient records published in recent years, to the most important of which he has acknowledged his obligations in the reference given, and also to the Boston Athenaeum for the use of their paintings and engravings, in making copies of same.

He also wishes to acknowledge the assistance rendered him by his daughter, Mildred Manton Stark, in preparing many of the biographies, also the assistance rendered by Mr. Thomas F. O'Malley, who prepared the very copious index to this work, which will, he thinks be appreciated by all historical students who may have occasion to use same.

ILLUSTRATIONS.

INTRODUCTION.

At the dedication of the monument erected on Dorchester Heights to commemorate the evacuation of Boston by the British, the oration was delivered by that Nestor of the United States Senate, Senator Hoar.

In describing the government of the colonies at the outbreak of the Revolution, he made the following statement: "The government of England was, in the main, a gentle government, much as our fathers complained of it. Her yoke was easy and her burden was light; our fathers were a hundred times better off in 1775 than were the men of Kent, the vanguard of liberty in England. There was more happiness in Middlesex on the Concord, than there was in Middlesex on the Thames."[1] A few years later Hon. Edward B. Callender, a Republican candidate for mayor of Boston, in his campaign speech said: "I know something about how this city started. It was not made by the rich men or the so-called high-toned men of Boston—they were with the other party, with the king; they were Loyalists. Boston was founded by the ordinary man—by Paul Revere, the coppersmith; Sam Adams, the poor collector of the town of Boston, who did not hand over to the town even the sums he collected as taxes; by John Hancock, the smuggler of rum; by John Adams, the attorney, who naively remarked in his book that after the battle of Lexington they never heard anything about the suits against John Hancock. Those were settled."[2]

These words of our venerable and learned senator and our State Senator Edward B. Callender, seemed strangely unfamiliar to us who had derived our history of the Revolution from the school text-books. These had taught us that the Revolution was due solely to the oppression and tyranny of the British, and that Washington, Franklin, Adams, Hancock, Otis, and the host of other Revolutionary patriots, had in a supreme degree all the virtues ever exhibited by men in their respective spheres, and that the Tories or Loyalists, such as Hutchinson, the Olivers, Saltonstalls, Winslows, Quincys and others, were to be detested and their memory execrated for their abominable and unpatriotic actions.

This led me to inquire and to examine whether there might not be two sides to the controversy which led to the Revolutionary War. I soon found that for more than a century our most gifted writers had almost uniformly suppressed or misrepresented all matter bearing upon one side of the question, and that it would seem to be settled by precedent that this nation could not be trusted with all portions of its own history. But it seemed to me that history should know no concealment. The people have a right to the whole truth, and to the full benefit of unbiased historical teachings, and if, in an honest attempt to discharge a duty to my fellow citizens, I relate on unquestionable authority facts that politic men have intentionally concealed, let no man say that I wantonly expose the errors of the fathers.

In these days we are recognizing more fully than ever the dignity of history, we are realizing that patriotism is not the sole and ultimate object of its study, but the search for truth, and abiding by the truth when found, for "the truth shall make you free" is an axiom that applies here as always.

Much of the ill will towards England which until recently existed in great sections of the American people, and which the mischief-making politician could confidently appeal to, sprung from a false view of what the American Revolution was, and the history of England was, in connection with it. The feeling of jealousy and anger, which was born in the throes of the struggle for independence, we indiscriminately perpetuated by false and superficial school text-books. The influence of false history and of crude one-sided history is enormous. It is a natural and logical step that when our children pass from our schoolroom into active life, feelings so born should die hard and at times become a dangerous factor in the national life, and it is not too much to say that the persistent ill will towards England as compared with the universal kindliness of English feeling towards us, is to be explained by the very different spirit in which the history of the American Revolution is taught in the schools of one country and in those of the other.

THE LOYALISTS OF MASSACHUSETTS

AND THE OTHER SIDE OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

CHAPTER I.

THE FIRST CHARTER.

A nation's own experience should be its best political guide, but it is not certain that as a people we have improved by all the teachings of our own history, for the reason that our "patriot" writers and orators mostly bound their vision in retrospect by the revolutionary era. And yet, all beyond that is not dark, barren, and profitless to explore. It should be known that the most important truths on which our free forms of government now rest are not primarily the discoveries of the revolutionary sages.

Writing of the Revolution, Mr. John Adams, the successor of Washington, declared that it was his opinion that the Revolution "began as early as the first plantation of the country," and that "independence of church and state was the fundamental principle of the first colonization, has been its principle for two hundred years, and now I hope is past dispute. Who was the author, inventor, discoverer of independence? The only true answer must be, the first emigrants." Before this time he had declared that "The claim of the men of 1776 to the honor of first conceiving the idea of American independence or of first inventing the project of it, is ridiculous. I hereby disclaim all pretension to it, because it was much more ancient than my nativity."

It was the inestimable fortune of our ancestors to have been taught the difficulties of government in two distinct schools, under the Colonial and Provincial charters, known as the first and second charters. The Charter government as moulded and modelled by our ancestors, was as perfect as is our own constitution of today. It was as tender of common right, as antagonistic to special privilege to classes or interests, and as sensitive, too, to popular impulses, good or evil. And it is thus in all self-governing communities, that their weal or woe, being supposedly in their own keeping, the freest forms of delegated government written on parchment are in themselves no protection, but will be such instruments of blessing or of destruction as may best gratify the controlling influences or interests for the time being.

In tracing the origin and development of the sentiment and the desires, the fears and the prejudices which culminated in the American Revolution, in the separation of thirteen colonies from Great Britain, it is necessary to notice the early settlement and progress of those New England colonies in which the seeds of that Revolution were first sown and nurtured to maturity. The Colonies of New England were the result of two distinct emigrations of English Puritans, two classes of Puritans, two distinct governments for more than sixty years—one class of these emigrants, now known as the "Pilgrim Fathers," having first fled from England to Holland, thence emigrated to New England in 1620 in "the Mayflower," and named their place of settlement "New Plymouth." Here they elected seven governors in succession, and existed under a self-constituted government for seventy years. The second class was called "Puritan Fathers." The first installment of their immigrants arrived in 1629, under Endicott, the ancestor of Mr. Joseph Chamberlain's wife. They were known as the "Massachusetts Bay Company," and their final capital was Boston, which afterwards became the capital of the Province and of the State.

The characteristics of the separate and independent governments of these two classes of Puritans were widely different. The one was tolerant, non-persecuting, and loyal to the King, during the whole period of its seventy years' existence; the other was an intolerant persecutor of all religionists who did not adopt its worship, and disloyal, from the beginning, to the government from which it held its Charter, and sedulously sowed and cultivated the seeds of disaffection and hostility to the Royal government until they grew and ripened into the harvest of the American Revolution.

English Puritanism, transferred from England to the head of Massachusetts Bay in 1629, presents the same characteristics which it developed in England. In Massachusetts it had no competitor, it developed its principles and spirit without restraint; it was absolute in power from 1629 to 1689. During these sixty years it assumed independence of the government to which it owed its corporate existence; it made it a penal crime for any immigrant to appeal to England against a local decision of courts or of government; it permitted no oath of allegiance to the King, nor the administration of the laws in his name; it allowed no elective franchise to any Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Baptist, Quaker or Papist. Every non-member of the Congregational church was compelled to pay taxes and bear all other Puritan burdens, but was allowed no representation by franchise, nor had he eligibility for any public office.

When the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Company emigrated from England, they professed to be members of the Church of England, but Endicott, who had imbibed views of church government and of forms of worship, determined not to perpetuate here the worship of the Established Church, to which he had professed to belong when he left England, but to establish a new church with a new form of worship. He seemed to have brought over some thirty of the immigrants to his new scheme, but a majority either stood aloof from, or were opposed to his extraordinary proceeding. Among the most noted adherents of the old Church of the Reformation were two brothers, John and Samuel Brown, who refused to be parties to this new and locally devised church revolution, and resolved for themselves, their families, and such as thought with them, to continue to worship God according to the custom of their fathers.

It is the fashion of many American historians, as well as their echoes in England, to apply epithets of contumely or scorn to these men. Both the Browns were men of wealth, one a lawyer, the other a private gentleman, and both of them were of a social position in England much superior to that of Endicott. They were among the original patentees and first founders of the colony; they were church reformers, but neither of them a church revolutionist. The brothers were brought before the Governor, who informed them that New England was no place for such as they, and therefore he sent them both back to England, on the return of the ships the same year.

Endicott resolved to admit of no opposition. They who could not be terrified into silence were not commanded to withdraw, but were seized and banished as criminals.[3]

A year later John Winthrop was appointed to supersede Endicott as Governor. On his departure with a fleet of eleven ships from England an address to their "Fathers and Brethren of the Church of England" was published by Winthrop from his ship, the Arbella, disclaiming the acts of some among them hostile to the Church of England, declaring their obligations and attachment to it. He said: "We desire you would be pleased to take notice of the principles and body of our Company as those who esteem it an honor to call the Church of England, from whence we rise, our dear Mother, and cannot part from our native countrie, where she especially resideth, without much sadness of heart and many tears in our eyes." It might be confidently expected that Mr. Winthrop, after this address of loyalty and affection to his Father and Brethren of the Church of England, would, on his arrival at Massachusetts Bay, and assuming its government, have rectified the wrongs of Endicott and his party, and have secured at least freedom of worship to the children of his "dear Mother." But he did nothing of the kind; he seems to have fallen in with the very proceedings of Endicott which had been disclaimed by him in his address.

Thus was the first seed sown, which germinated for one hundred and thirty years, and then ripened in the American Revolution. It was the opening wedge which shivered the transatlantic branches from the parent stock. It was the consciousness of having abused the Royal confidence, and broken faith with their Sovereign, of having acted contrary to the laws and statutes of England, that led the Government of Massachusetts Bay to resist and evade all inquiries into their proceedings; to prevent all evidence from being transmitted to England, and to punish as criminals all who should appeal to England against any of their proceedings; to claim, in short, independence and immunity from all responsibility to the Crown for anything they did or might do. This spirit of tyranny and intolerance, of proscription and persecution, caused all the disputes with the parent Government, and all the bloodshed on account of religion in Massachusetts, which its Government inflicted in subsequent years, in contradistinction to the Governments of Plymouth, Rhode Island, Connecticut and even Maryland.

The church government established by the Puritans at Boston was not a government of free citizens elected by a free citizen suffrage, or even of property qualification, but was the "reign of the church, the members of which constituted but about one-sixth of the population, five-sixths being mere helots bound to do the work and pay the taxes imposed upon them by the reigning church but denied all eligibility to any office in the Commonwealth." It was indeed such a "connection between church and state" as had never existed in any Protestant country; it continued for sixty years, until suppressed by a second Royal Charter, as will appear in the next chapter.

The Puritans were far from being the fathers of American Liberty. They neither understood nor practiced the first principles of civil and religious liberty nor the rights of British subjects as then understood and practiced in the land they had left "for conscience sake."

The first Charter obtained of Charles I. is still in existence, and can be seen in the Secretary's Office at the State House, Boston. A duplicate copy of this Charter was sent over in 1629 to Governor Endicott, at Salem, and is now in the Salem Athenæum.

If the conditions of the Charter had been observed the colonists would have been independent indeed, and would have enjoyed extraordinary privileges for those times. They would have had the freest government in the world. They were allowed to elect their own governor and members of the General Court, and the government of the Colony was but little different from that of the State today, so far as the rights conferred by the charter were concerned. The people were subjects of the Crown in name, but in reality were masters of their own public affairs. The number of the early emigrants to New England who renounced allegiance to the mother church was exceedingly small, for the obvious reason that it was at the same time a renunciation of their allegiance to the Crown. A company of restless spirits had been got rid of, and whether they conformed to all the laws of church and state or not, they were three thousand miles away and could not be easily brought to punishment even if they deserved it, or be made to mend the laws if they broke them. The restriction of subjecting those who wished to emigrate to the oaths of allegiance and supremacy did not last long. Those who chose "disorderly to leave the Kingdom" did so, and thus what they gained in that kind of liberty is a loss to their descendants who happen to be antiquaries and genealogists.

Under the charter they were allowed to make laws or ordinances for the government of the plantation, which should not be repugnant to the laws of England; all subjects of King Charles were to be allowed to come here; and these emigrants and their posterity were declared "to be natural-born subjects, and entitled to the immunities of Englishmen." The time of the principal emigration was auspicious. The rise of the civil war in England gave its rulers all the work they could do at home. The accession of Oliver Cromwell to the Protectorate was regarded very favorably by the colonists, who belonged to the same political party, and they took advantage of this state of affairs to oppress all others who had opinions different from their own. The Quakers, both men and women, were persecuted, and treated with great severity; many were hung, a number of them were whipped at the cart's tail through the town, and then driven out into the wilderness; others had their ears cut off, and other cruelties were perpetrated of a character too horrible to be here related. It was in vain that these poor Quakers demanded wherein they had broken any laws of England. They were answered with additional stripes for their presumption, and not without good reason did they exclaim against "such monstrous illegality," and that such "great injustice was never heard of before." Magna Charta, they said, was trodden down and the guaranties of the Colonial Charter were utterly disregarded.

The following is a striking example of the very many atrocities committed by the authorities at that time: "Nicholas Upshall, an old man, full of years, seeing their cruelty to the harmless Quakers and that they had condemned some of them to die, bothe he and Elder Wiswell, or otherwise Deacon Wiswell, members of the church in Boston, bore their testimony in publick against their brethren's horrid cruelty to said Quakers. And Upshall declared, 'That he did look at it as a sad forerunner of some heavy judgment to follow upon the country.'... Which they took so ill at his hands that they fined him twenty pounds and three pound more at their courts, for not coming to this meeting and would not abate him one grote, but imprisoned him and then banished him on pain of death, which was done in a time of such extreme bitter weather for frost, and snow, and cold, that had not the Heathen Indians in the wilderness woods taken compassion on his misery, for the winter season, he in all likelihood had perished, though he had then in Boston a good estate, in houses and land, goods and money, as also wife and children, but not suffered to come unto him, nor he to them."[4]

After the death of Oliver Cromwell, Charles II. was proclaimed in London the lawful King of England, and the news of it in due time reached Boston. It was a sad day to many, and they received the intelligence with sorrow and concern, for they saw that a day of retribution would come. But there was no alternative, and the people of Boston made up their minds to submit to a power they could not control. They, however, kept a sort of sullen silence for a time, but fearing this might be construed into contempt, or of opposition to the King, they formally proclaimed him, in August, 1661, more than a year after news of the Restoration had come. Meanwhile the Quakers in England had obtained the King's ear, and their representations against the government at Boston caused the King to issue a letter to the governor, requiring him to desist from any further proceedings against them, and calling upon the government here to answer the complaints made by the Quakers. A ship was chartered, and Samuel Shattock, who had been banished, was appointed to carry the letter, and had the satisfaction of delivering it to the governor with his own hand. After perusing it, Mr. Endicott replied, "We shall obey his Majesty's command," and then issued orders for the discharge of all Quakers then in prison. The requisition of the king for some one to appear to answer the complaints against the government of Boston, caused much agitation in the General Court; and when it was decided to send over agents, it was not an easy matter to procure suitable persons, so sensible was everybody that the complaints to be answered had too much foundation to be easily excused, or by any subterfuge explained away. It is worthy of note that the two persons finally decided upon (Mr. Bradstreet and Mr. Norton) were men who had been the most forward in the persecutions of the Quakers. And had it not been for the influence which Lord Saye and Seale of the king's Council, and Col. Wm. Crowne, had with Charles II., the colony would have felt his early and heavy displeasure. Col. Crowne was in Boston when Whalley and Goffe, the regicides, arrived here, and he could have made statements regarding their reception, and the persecution of the Quakers, which might have caused the king to take an entirely different course from the mild and conciliatory one which, fortunately for Boston, was taken. Having "graciously" received the letter from the hands of the agents, and, although he confirmed the Patent and Charter, objects of great and earnest solicitude in their letter to him, yet "he required that all their laws should be reviewed, and that such as were contrary or derogatory to the king's authority should be annulled; that the oath of allegiance should be administered; that administration of justice should be in the king's name; that liberty should be given to all who desired it, to use the Book of Common Prayer; in short, establishing religious freedom in Boston." This was not all—the elective franchise was extended "to all freeholders of competent estates," if they sustained good moral characters.

LANDING OF THE COMMISSIONERS AT BOSTON, 1664.
The Royal Commissioners were appointed to hold Court and correct whatever errors and abuses they might discover.

The return of the agents to New England, bearing such mandates from the king, was the cause of confusion and dismay to the whole country. Instead of being thankful for such lenity, many were full of resentment and indignation, and most unjustly assailed the agents for failing to accomplish an impossibility.

Meanwhile four ships had sailed from Portsmouth, with about four hundred and fifty soldiers, with orders to proceed against the Dutch in the New Netherlands (New York), and then to land the commissioners at Boston and enforce the king's authority. The Dutch capitulated, and the expedition thus far was completely successful. The commissioners landed in Boston on Feb. 15th, 1664, and held a Court to correct whatever errors and abuses they might discover. The commission was composed of the following gentlemen: Col. Richard Nichols, who commanded the expedition; Sir Robert Carr, Col. Geo. Cartwright and Mr. Samuel Maverick. Maverick had for several years made his home on Noddle Island (now known as East Boston), but, like his friends, Blackstone of Beacon Hill and other of the earliest settlers, had been so harshly and ungenerously treated by the Puritan colonists of Boston that he was compelled to remove from his island domain. An early adventurous visitor to these shores mentions him in his diary as "the only hospitable man in all the country." These gentlemen held a commission from the king constituting them commissioners for visiting the colonies of New England, to hear and determine all matters of complaint, and to settle the peace and security of the country, any three or two of them being a quorum.

The magistrates of Boston having assembled, the commissioners made known their mission, and added that so far was the king from wishing to abridge their liberties, he was ready to enlarge them, but wished them to show, by proper representation of their loyalty, reasons to remove all causes of jealousy from their royal master. But it was of no avail; the word loyalty had been too long expunged from their vocabulary to find a place in it again. At every footstep the commissioners must have seen that whatever they effected, and whatever impressions they made, would prove but little better than footprints in the sand. The government thought best to comply with their requirements, so far, at least, as appearances were concerned. They therefore agreed that their allegiance to the king should be published "by sound of trumpet;" that Mr. Oliver Purchis should proclaim the same on horseback, and that Mr. Thomas Bligh, Treasurer, and Mr. Richard Wait, should accompany him; that the reading in every place should end with the words, "God save the King!" Another requirement of the commissioners was that the government should stop coining money; that Episcopalians should not be fined for non-attendance at the religious meetings of the community, as they had hitherto been; that they should let the Quakers alone, and permit them to go about their own affairs. These were only a part of the requirements, but they were the principal ones. Notwithstanding a pretended acquiescence on the part of the government to the requests of the commissioners, it was evident from the first that little could be effected by them from the evasive manner in which all their orders and recommendations were accepted. At length the commissioners found it necessary to put the question to the Governor and Council direct, "Whether they acknowledged his Majesty's Commission?" The Court sent them a message, desiring to be excused from giving a direct answer, inasmuch as their charter was their plea. Being still pressed for a direct answer, they declared that "it was enough for them to give their sense of the powers granted them by charter, and that it was beyond their line to determine the power, intent, or purpose of his Majesty's commission." The authorities then issued a proclamation calling upon the people, in his Majesty's name (!), not to consent unto, or give approbation to the proceedings of the King's Commission, nor to aid or to abet them. This proclamation was published through the town by sound of trumpet, and, oddly enough, added thereto "God save the King." The commissioners then sent a threatening protest, saying they thought the king and his council knew what was granted to them in their charter; but that since they would misconstrue everything, they would lose no more of their labor upon them; at the same time assuring them that their denial of the king's authority, as vested in his commission, would be represented to his Majesty only in their own words. The conduct of Col. Nichols, at Boston, is spoken of in terms of high commendation; but Maverick, Carr and Cartwright are represented as totally unfitted for their business. It is, however, difficult to see how any commissioners, upon such an errand, could have given greater satisfaction; for a moment's consideration is sufficient to convince any one that the difficulty was not so much in the commissioners, as in their undertaking.

After the return of the commissioners to England the government continued their persecutions of the Quakers, Baptists, Episcopalians, and all others who held opinions differing from their own. The laws of England regulating trade were entirely disregarded; the reason alleged therefor being, "that the acts of navigation were an invasion of the rights and privileges of the subjects of his Majesty's colony, they not being represented in Parliament."

Again the king wrote to the authorities of Boston, requiring them not to molest the people, in their worship, who were of the Protestant faith, and directing that liberty of conscience should be extended to all. This letter was dated July 24th, 1679. It had some effect on the rulers; but they had become so accustomed to what they called interference from England, and at the same time so successful in evading it, that to stop now seemed, to the majority of the people, as well as the rulers, not only cowardly, but an unworthy relinquishment of privileges which they had always enjoyed, and which they were at all times ready to assert, as guaranteed to them in their charter. However, there was a point beyond which even Bostonians could not go, and which after-experience proved.

RANDOLPH THREATENED.
This Royal Commissioner reported that he was in danger of his life, and that the authorities resolved to prosecute him as a subverter of their government.

Edward Randolph brought the king's letter to Boston, and was required to make a report concerning the state of affairs in the colony, and to see that the laws of England were properly executed; but he did not fare well in his mission. He wrote home that every one was saying they were not subject to the laws of England, and that those laws were of no force in Massachusetts until confirmed by the Legislature of the colony.

Every day aggravated his disposition more strongly against the people, who used their utmost endeavors to irritate his temper and frustrate his designs. Any one supporting him was accounted an enemy of the country.

His servants were beaten while watching for the landing of contraband goods. Going on board a vessel to seize it, he was threatened to be knocked on the head, and the offending ship was towed away by Boston boats. Randolph returned to England, reporting that he was in danger of his life, and that the authorities were resolved to prosecute him as a subserver of their government. If they could, they would execute him; imprisonment was the least he expected. Well might the historian exclaim, as one actually did, "To what a state of degradation was a king of England reduced!" his commissioners, one after another, being thwarted, insulted and obliged to return home in disgrace, and his authority openly defied. What was the country to expect when this state of affairs should be laid before the king? A fleet of men-of-war to bring it to its duty? Perhaps some expected this; but there came again, instead, the evil genius of the colony, Edward Randolph, bringing from the king the dreaded quo warranto. This was Randolph's hour of triumph; he said "he would now make the whole faction tremble," and he gloried in their confusion and the success which had attended his efforts to humble the people of Boston. To give him consequence a frigate brought him, and as she lay before the town the object of her employment could not be mistaken. An attempt was made, however, to prevent judgment being rendered on the return of the writ of quo warranto. An attorney was sent to England, with a very humble address, to appease the king, and to answer for the country, but all to no purpose. Judgment was rendered, and thus ended the first charter of Massachusetts, Oct. 23rd, 1684.

CHAPTER II.

THE SECOND CHARTER.

Charles II. died Feb. 6th, 1685, and was succeeded by his brother, James II. News of this was brought to Boston by private letter, but no official notification was made to the governor. In a letter to him, however, he was told that he was not written to as governor, for as much as now he had no government, the charter being vacated. These events threw the people of Boston into great uncertainty and trouble as to what they were in future to expect from England. Orders were received to proclaim the new king, which was done "with sorrowful and affected pomp," at the town house. The ceremony was performed in the presence of eight military companies of the town, and "three volleys of cannon" were discharged. Sir Edmund Andros, the new Royal Governor, arrived in Boston Dec. 20th, 1686, and, as was to be expected, he was not regarded favorably by the people, especially as his first act after landing was a demand for the keys of the Old South Church "that they may say prayers there." Such a demand from the new governor could not be tolerated by the now superseded governing authority of Boston, and defy it they would. The Puritan oligarchy stoutly objected to being deprived of the right to withhold from others than their own sect the privileges of religious liberty. To enjoy religious liberty in full measure they had migrated from the home of their fathers, but in New England had become more intolerant than the church which they had abandoned, and became as arbitrary as the Spanish inquisition. Under direction of the king, Andros had come to proclaim the equality of Christian religion in the new colonies. Too evidently this was not what was wanted here.

At last came the news of the landing of the Prince of Orange in England and the abdication of James the Second. The people of Boston rose against Andros and his government and seized him and fifty of his associates and confined them in the "Castle" until February, 1690, when they were sent to England for trial; but having committed no offence, they were discharged. Andros was received so favorably at home that under the new administration he was appointed governor of Virginia and Maryland. He took over with him the charter of William and Mary college, and later laid the foundation stone of that great institution of learning.

PROCLAIMING KING WILLIAM AND QUEEN MARY, 1689.
This is said to have been the most joyful news ever before received in Boston.

Andros has never received justice from Massachusetts historians. Before his long public career ended he had been governor of every Royal Province in North America. His services were held in such high esteem that he was honored with office by four successive monarchs.

It is gratifying to notice that at last his character and services are beginning to be better appreciated in the provinces over which he ruled, and we may hope that in time the Andros of partisan history will give place, even in the popular narratives of colonial affairs, to the Andros who really existed, stern, proud and uncompromising it is true, but honest, upright and just; a loyal servant of the crown and a friend to the best interests of the people.

Not only were the governor and all of his adherents arrested and thrown into jail, but Captain George, of the Rose frigate, being found on shore, was seized by a party of ship carpenters and handed over to the guard.

So strong was the feeling against the prisoners that it was found necessary to guard them against the infuriated people, lest they should be torn into pieces by the mob. The insurrection was completely successful, and the result was that the resumption of the charter was once more affirmed. A general court was formed after the old model, and the venerable Bradstreet was made governor. Nothing now seemed wanting to the popular satisfaction but favorable news from England, and that came in a day or two. On the 26th of May, 1689, a ship arrived from the old country with an order to the Massachusetts authorities to proclaim King William and Queen Mary. This was done on the 29th, and grave, Puritanical Boston went wild with joy, and all thanked God that a Protestant sovereign once more ruled in England. This has been said to have been the most joyful news ever before received in Boston.

May 14, 1692, Sir William Phipps, a native of Massachusetts, arrived in Boston from England, bringing with him the new Charter of the province, and a commission constituting him governor of the same. Unfortunately he countenanced and upheld the people in their delusion respecting witchcraft, and confirmed the condemnation and execution of the victims. The delusion spread like flames among dry leaves in autumn, and in a short time the jails in Boston were filled with the accused. During the prevalence of this moral disease, nineteen persons in the colony were hanged, and one pressed to death. At last the delusion came to an end, and the leaders afterwards regretted the part they had taken in it.

The new Charter of Massachusetts gave the Province a governor appointed by the Crown. While preserving its assembly and its town organization, it tended to encourage and develop, even in that fierce democracy, those elements of a conservative party which had been called into existence some years before by the disloyalty and tyranny of the ecclesiastical oligarchy.

Thus, side by side with a group of men who were constantly regretting their lost autonomy, and looking with suspicion and prejudice at every action of the royal authorities, there arose another group of men who constantly dwelt upon the advantages they derived from their connection with the mother country. The Church of England also had at last waked up to a sense of the spiritual needs of its children beyond the seas. Many of the best of the laity forsook their separatist principles and returned to the historic church of the old home. This influence tended inevitably to maintain and strengthen the feeling of national unity in those of the colonists who came under the ministration of the church. In all the Royal Provinces there was an official class gradually growing up, that was naturally imperial rather than local in its sympathy. The war with the French, in which colonists fought side by side with "regulars" in a contest of national significance, tended upon the whole to intensify the sense of imperial unity.

"The people of Massachusetts Bay were never in a more easy and happy situation than at the conclusion of the war with France in 1749. By generous reimbursement of the whole charge of £183,000 incurred by the expedition against Cape Breton, the English government set the Province free from a heavy debt by which it must otherwise have remained involved, and enabled by it to exchange a depreciating paper medium, which had long been the sole instrument of trade, for a stable medium of gold and silver. Soon the advantage of this relief from the heavy burden of debt was apparent in all branches of their commerce, and excited the envy of other colonies, in each of which paper was the principal currency."[5]

The early part of the eighteenth century was filled with wars: France, England and Spain were beginning to overrun the interior of North America. Spain claimed a zone to the south, and France a vast territory to the north and west of the English colonies. Each of the three countries sought aid from the savage to carry on its enterprises and depredations. While the English colonies were beset on the north by the French, on the south by the Spaniards, on the west by native Indians along the Alleghany Mountains, and were compelled to depend on the "wooden walls of England" for the protection of their coasts, they were then remarkably loyal to the Crown of England. Their representative assemblies passed obsequious resolutions expressing loyalty and gratitude to the King, and the people; and erected his statue in a public place. This feeling of loyalty remained in the minds of a large majority of the people down to the battle of Lexington.

In May, 1756, the English government, goaded by the constantly continued efforts of the French to ignore her treaty obligations in Acadia, and her ever-harrassing, irritating "pin-pricks" on the frontiers of the English colonies, declared war against France. Long before this official declaration the two countries had been, on this continent, in a state of active but covert belligerency. Preparations for an inevitable conflict were being made by both sides. French intrigue and French treachery were met with English determination to defend the rights of the mother country and of her children here. Money was pledged to the colonies to aid in equipping militia for active service, and the local governments and the inhabitants of every province became as enthusiastic as the home government in the prosecution of war.

On the northern and western borders of New England and of New York, along the thin fringe of advanced English settlements bordering Pennsylvania and Virginia, Indians had long been encouraged or employed in savage raids, and in Nova Scotia, which, by the treaty of Utrecht had been ceded to England, systematic opposition to English occupation was constantly kept up.

Intriguing agents of the French government, soldiers, priests of the "Holy Catholic" church—all were active in a determined effort to check and finally crush out the menacing influence and prosperity of the growing English colonies.

The ambushing and slaughter of Braddock's force on the Monongahela, the removal of Acadians from Annapolis Valley, the defeat of Dieskau at Crown Point, the siege and occupation of Fort Beausejour, all occurred before the formal declaration of war. Clouds were gathering. Men of fighting age of the English colonies volunteered in thousands; British regiments, seasoned in war, were brought from the old country to the new, and with them and after them came ships innumerable. A fight for life of the English colonies was at hand. The brood of the mistress of the seas must not be driven into the ocean. France must be compelled to give pledges for the performance of her treaty engagements or find herself without a foothold in the country.

With the hour came the man. Under the direction of the greatest war minister England had ever seen, or has since seen, William Pitt, the "Great Commoner," war on France was begun in earnest.

At first a few successes were achieved by the French commanders. Fort William Henry, with its small garrison, surrendered to Montcalm, and Abercrombie's expedition to Fort Ticonderoga was a disastrous failure. But the tide of battle soon turned.

The beginning of the end came in 1758. Louisbourg, the great fortress which France had made "The Gibraltar of the West," became a prize to the army and navy of Britain. New England soldiers formed a part of the investing force on land, and their record in the second capture of Louisbourg was something to be proud of. Fort Frontenac, on Lake Ontario, was taken, together with armed vessels and a great collection of stores and implements of war. Fort Duquesne, a strongly fortified post of the French, whose site is now covered by the great manufacturing city of Pittsburgh, surrendered to a British force. For many years after it was known as Fort Pitt, so called in honor of the great minister under whose compelling influence the war against France had become so mighty a success.

In 1759, General Wolfe, who had been the leading spirit in the siege of Louisbourg, was placed in command of an expedition for the capture of Quebec. Next after Louisbourg, Quebec was by nature and military art the strongest place in North America. The tragic story of the capture of Quebec has been so often told that it is not necessary for us to repeat it here.

Of the long, impatient watch by Wolfe, from the English fleet, for opportunity to disembark his small army, drifting with the tides of the St. Lawrence, passing and repassing the formidable citadel, the stealthy midnight landing at the base of a mighty cliff, the hard climb of armed men up the wooded height, and the assembly, in early morning mist, on the Plains of Abraham, are not for us to write of here. In the glowing pages of Parkman all this is so thrillingly described that we need not say more of the most dramatic and most pathetic story in all American history, than that Quebec fell, and with it, in short time, fell the whole power of France in North America.

In the following year (September 8, 1760), Montreal, the last stronghold of the French in Canada, capitulated to Sir Jeffrey Amherst, who had ascended the St. Lawrence with a force of about 10,000 men, comprising British regiments of the line artillery, rangers and provincial regiments from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. The provincial contingent numbered above four thousand.

With the fall of Montreal the seven years' fight for supremacy was ended.

Such a defeat to proud France was a bitter experience, and definite settlement of the terms of peace, which Great Britain was able to dictate, was not made until, on the 10th of February, 1763, the treaty of Paris was signed.

By this treaty to Great Britain was ceded all Canada, Nova Scotia, Cape Breton and the West India Islands of Dominica, St. Vincent, Tobago and Grenada. Minorca was restored to Great Britain, and to her also was given the French possession of Senegal in Western Africa. In India, where the French had obtained considerable influence, France was bound by this treaty to raise no fortifications and to keep no military force in Bengal. To remove the annoyance which Florida had long been to the contiguous English colonies, that province of Spain was transferred to the English in exchange for Havana, which had been only recently wrested from the occupation of Spain by the brilliant victory of Pocock and Albamarle.

And so 1763 saw the British flag peacefully waving from the Gulf of Mexico to the northern shores of Hudson's Bay. The coast of the Atlantic was protected by the British navy, and the colonists had no longer foreign enemies to fear.

For this relief the colonists gave warm thanks to the king and to parliament. Massachusetts voted a costly monument in Westminster Abbey in memory of Lord Howe, who had fallen in the campaign against Canada. The assembly of the same colony, in a joyous address to the governor, declared that without the assistance of the parent state the colonies must have fallen a prey to the power of France, and that without money sent from England the burden of the war would have been too great to bear. In an address to the king they made the same acknowledgment, and pledged themselves to demonstrate their gratitude by every possible testimony of duty and loyalty. James Otis expressed the common sentiment of the hour when, upon being chosen moderator of the first town meeting held in Boston after the peace, he declared: "We in America have certainly abundant reason to rejoice. Not only are the heathen driven out, but the Canadians, much more formidable enemies, are conquered and become fellow subjects. The British dominion and power can now be said literally to extend from sea to sea and from the Great River to the ends of the earth." And after praising the wise administration of His Majesty, and lauding the British constitution to the skies, he went on to say: "Those jealousies which some weak and wicked minds endeavored to infuse with regard to these colonies, had their birth in the blackness of darkness, and it is a great pity that they had not remained there forever. The true interests of Great Britain and her plantation are mutual, and what God in his providence has united, let no man dare attempt to pull asunder."

In June, 1763, a confederation, including several Indian tribes, suddenly and unexpectedly swept over the whole western frontier of Pennsylvania and Virginia. They murdered almost all the English settlers who were scattered beyond the mountains, surprised every British fort between the Ohio and Lake Erie, and closely blockaded Forts Detroit and Pitt. In no previous war had the Indians shown such skill, tenacity, and concert, and had there not been British troops in the country the whole of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Maryland would have been overrun.

The war lasted fourteen months, and most of the hard fighting was done by English troops, assisted by militia from some of the Southern colonies. General Amherst called upon the New England colonies to help their brethren, but his request was almost disregarded. Connecticut sent 250 men, but Massachusetts, being beyond the zone of immediate danger, would give no assistance. After a war of extreme horror, peace was signed September, 1764. In a large degree by the efforts of English soldiers Indian territory was rolled back, and one more great service was rendered by England to her colonies, and also the necessity was shown for a standing army.[6]

The "French and Indian War," as it was commonly called, waged with so much energy and success, doubled the national debt of England and made taxation oppressive in that country. The war had been waged mainly for the benefit of the colonists, and as it was necessary to maintain a standing army to protect the conquered territory, it was considered but reasonable that part of the expense should be borne by the Americans. This was especially so in view that the conquest of Canada had been a prime object of statesmen and leading citizens of the colonies for many years.

It has been said on good authority that Franklin brought about the expedition against Canada that ended with Wolfe's victory on the Plains of Abraham. In all companies and on all occasions he had urged conquest of Canada as an object of the utmost importance. He said it would inflict a blow upon the French power in America from which it would never recover, and would have lasting influence in advancing the prosperity of the British colonies. Franklin was one of the shrewdest statesmen of the age. After egging England on to the capture of Canada from the French, and then removing the most dreaded enemy of the colonies, he won the confidence of the court and people of France, and obtained their aid to deprive England of the best part of a continent. He was genial, thrifty, and adroit, and his jocose wisdom was never more tersely expressed than when he advised the signers of the Declaration of Independence to "hang together or they would hang separately."

At the conclusion of the Peace of Paris in 1763, Great Britain had ceased to be an insular kingdom, and had become a world-wide empire, consisting of three grand divisions: the British Islands, India, and a large part of North America. In Ireland an army of ten or twelve thousand men were maintained by Irish resources, voted by an Irish Parliament and available for the general defence of the empire. In India a similar army was maintained by the despotic government of the East India Company. English statesmen believed that each of these great parts of the empire should contribute to the defence of the whole, and that unless they should do so voluntarily it was their opinion, in which the great lawyers of England agreed, that power to force contributions resided in the Imperial Parliament at Westminster, and should be exercised. It was thought that an army of ten thousand men was necessary to protect the territory won from France and to keep the several tribes of American Indians in subjection, especially as it was believed that the French would endeavor to recapture Canada at the first opportunity.

Americans, it should be remembered, paid no part of the interest on the national debt of England, amounting to one hundred and forty million pounds, one-half of which had been contracted in the French and Indian war. America paid nothing to support the navy that protected its coasts, although the American colonies were the most prosperous and lightly taxed portion of the British Empire. Grenville, Chancellor of the Exchequer, asked the Americans to contribute one hundred thousand pounds a year, about one-third of the expense of maintaining the proposed army, and about one-third of one percent of the sum we now pay each year for pensions. He promised distinctly that the army should never be required to serve except in America and the West India islands, but he could not persuade the colonists to agree among themselves on a practical plan for raising the money, and so it was proposed to resort to taxation by act of Parliament. At the time he made this proposal he assured the Americans that the proceeds of the tax should be expended solely in America, and that if they would raise the money among themselves in their own way he would be satisfied. He gave them a year to consider the proposition. At the end of the year they were as reluctant as ever to tax themselves for their own defence or submit to taxation by act of Parliament. Then the stamp act was passed—it was designed to raise one hundred thousand pounds a year, and then the trouble began that led to the dismemberment of the empire. Several acute observers had already predicted that the triumph of England over France would be soon followed by a revolt of the colonies. Kalm, the Swedish traveller, contended in 1748 that the presence of the French in Canada, by making the English colonists depend for their security on the support of the mother country, was the main cause of the submission of the colonies. A few years later Argenson, who had left some of the most striking political predictions upon record, foretold in his Memoirs that the English colonies in America would one day rise against the mother country, that they would form themselves into a republic and astonish the world by their prosperity. The French ministers consoled themselves for the Peace of Paris by the reflection that the loss of Canada was a sure prelude to the independence of the colonies, and Vergennes, the sagacious French ambassador at Constantinople, predicted to an English traveller, with striking accuracy, the events that would occur. "England," he said, "will soon repent having removed the only check that would keep her colonies in awe. They stand no longer in need of her protection; she will call upon them to contribute towards supporting the burden they have helped to bring on her, and they will answer by striking off all dependence."[7]

It is not to be supposed that Englishmen were wholly blind to this danger. One of the ablest advocates of the retention of Canada was Lord Bath, who published a pamphlet on the subject, which had a very wide influence and a large circulation.[8] There were, however, some politicians who maintained that it would be wiser to restore Canada and to retain Guadaloupe, St. Lucia, and Martinique. This view was supported with distinguished talent in an anonymous reply to Lord Bath.

This writer argued "that we had no original right to Canada, and that the acquisition of a vast, barren, and almost uninhabited country lying in an inhospitable climate, and with no commerce except that of furs and skins, was economically far less valuable to England than the acquisition of Guadaloupe, which was one of the most important of the sugar islands. The acquisition of these islands would give England the control of the West Indies, and it was urged that an island colony is more advantageous than a continental one, for it is necessarily more dependent upon the mother country. In the New England provinces there are already colleges and academies where the American youths can receive their education. America produces or can easily produce almost everything she wants. Her population and her wealth are rapidly increasing, and as the colonies recede more and more from the sea, the necessity of their connection with England will steadily diminish. They will have nothing to expect, they must live wholly by their own labor, and in process of time will know little, inquire little, and care little, about the mother country. If the people of our colonies find no check from Canada they will extend themselves almost without bounds into inland parts. What the consequences will be to have a numerous, hardy, independent people, possessed of a strong country, communicating little, or not at all, with England, I leave to your own reflections. By eagerly grasping at extensive territory we may run the risk, and that, perhaps, in no distant period, of losing what we now possess. The possession of Canada, far from being necessary to our safety, may in its consequences be even dangerous. A neighbor that keeps us in some awe is not always the worst of neighbors; there is a balance of power in America as well as in Europe."[9]

These views are said to have been countenanced by Lord Hardwicke, but the tide of opinion ran strongly in the opposite direction; the nations had learned to look with pride and sympathy upon that greater England which was growing up beyond the Atlantic, and there was a desire, which was not ungenerous or ignoble, to remove at any risk the one obstacle to its future happiness. These arguments were supported by Franklin, who in a remarkable pamphlet sketched the great undeveloped capabilities of the colonies, and ridiculed the "visionary fear" that they would ever combine against England. "This jealousy of each other," he said, "is so great that, however necessary a union of the colonies has long been for their common defence and security against their enemies, yet they have never been able to effect such a union among themselves. If they cannot agree to unite for defence against the French and Indians, can it reasonably be supposed there is any danger of their uniting against their own nation, which protects and encourages them, with which they have so many connections and ties of blood, interest, and affection, and which it is well known, they all love much more than they love one another."[10]

Within a few years after Franklin made this statement he did more than any other man living to carry into effect the "visionary fear" which he had ridiculed.

The denial that independence was the object sought for was constant and general. To obtain concessions and to preserve connection with the empire was affirmed everywhere. John Adams, the successor of Washington to the presidency, years after the peace of 1783 went farther than this, for he said, "There was not a moment during the Revolution when I would not have given everything I possessed for a restoration to the state of things before the contest began, provided we could have had a sufficient security for its continuance."

In the summer of 1774, Franklin assured Chatham that there was no desire among the colonists for independence. He said: "Having more than once travelled almost from one end of the continent to the other, and kept a variety of company, eating and conversing with them freely, I have never heard in any conversation from any person, drunk or sober, the least wish for a separation or a hint that such a thing would be advantageous to America."

Mr. Jay is quite as explicit: "During the course of my life," said he, "and until the second petition of Congress in 1775, I never did hear an American of any class or of any description express a wish for the independence of the colonies."

Mr. Jefferson affirmed: "What eastward of New York might have been the disposition towards England before the commencement of hostilities I know not, but before that I never heard a whisper of a disposition to separate from Great Britain, and after that its possibility was contemplated with affliction by all."

Washington in 1774 fully sustains their declarations, and in the "Fairfax County Resolves" it was complained that "malevolent falsehoods" were propagated by the ministry to prejudice the mind of the king, particularly that there is an intention in the American colonies to set up for independent state.

Mr. Madison says: "It has always been my impression that a re-establishment of the colonial relations to the mother country, as they were previous to the controversy, was the real object of every class of the people till they despaired of obtaining redress for their grievances."

This feeling among the revolutionists is corroborated by DuPortail, a secret agent of the French government. In a letter dated 1778 he says: "There is a hundred times more enthusiasm for the revolution in a coffee-house at Paris than in all the colonies united. This people, though at war with the English, hate the French more than they hate them; we prove this every day, and notwithstanding everything that France has done or can do for them, they will prefer a reconciliation with their ancient brethren. If they must needs be dependent, they had rather be so on England."

Again, as late as March, 1775, only a month before the outbreak of hostilities at Lexington, John Adams wrote: "That there are any that hunt after independence is the greatest slander on the Province."

This feeling must have arisen from gratitude for the protection afforded by the mother country, or at least satisfaction with the relations then existing. It is true, as has been shown in a previous chapter, that for some years before the English Revolution, and for some years after the accession of William and Mary, the relations of the colonies to England had been extremely tense, but in the long period of unbroken Whig rule which followed, most of the elements of discontent had subsided. The wise neglect of Walpole and Newcastle was eminently conducive to colonial interests. The substitution in several colonies of royal for proprietary government was very popular. There were slight differences in the colonial forms of government, but everywhere the colonists paid their governor and their other officials. In nearly every respect they governed themselves, under the shadow of British dominion, with a liberty not equalled in any other portion of the civilized globe; real constitutional liberty was flourishing in the English colonies when all European countries and their colonies were despotically governed. The circumstances and traditions of the colonists had made them extremely impatient of every kind of authority, but there is no reason for doubting that they were animated by a real attachment to England. Their commercial intercourse, under the restructions of the navigation laws, was mainly with her. Their institutions, their culture, their religion, their ideas were derived from English sources. They had a direct interest in the English war against France and Spain. They were proud of their English lineage, of English growth in greatness, and of English liberty. On this point there is a striking answer made by Franklin in his crafty examinations before the House of Commons in February, 1766. In reply to the question, "What was the temper of America towards Great Britain before the year 1763?" he said, "The best in the world. They submitted willingly to the government of the crown, and paid their courts obedience to the Acts of Parliament. Numerous as the people are in the several old provinces, they cost you nothing in forts, citadels, garrisons, or armies to keep them in subjection, they were governed by this country at the expense only of a little pen, ink, and paper; they were led by a thread. They had not only a respect, but an affection for Great Britain, for its laws, its customs, and manners, and even a fondness for its fashions that greatly increased the commerce. Natives of Britain were always treated with particular regard; to be an 'Old England' man was of itself a character of some respect and gave a kind of rank among us." In reply to the question, "What is their temper now?" he said, "Very much altered." It is interesting to inquire what happened during the three years intervening to change the temper of the colonists.

CHAPTER III.

CAUSES THAT LED TO THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

One of the principal causes that led to the American Revolution was the question of what was lawful under the constitution of the British empire, and what was expedient under the existing circumstances of the colonies. It was the contention of the American Whigs that the British parliament could not lawfully tax the colonies, because by so doing it would be violating an ancient maxim of the British constitution: "No taxation without representation."

On the contrary, many of the profoundest constitutional lawyers of America as well as of England, both rejected the foregoing contention, and at the same time admitted the soundness and the force of the venerable maxim upon which the contention was alleged to rest, but the most of them denied that the maxim was violated by the acts of parliament laying taxation upon the colonies. Here everything depends on the meaning to be attached to the word "representation"—and that meaning is to be ascertained by examining what was understood by the word in England at the time when this old maxim originated, and in subsequent ages during which it had been quoted and applied. During this whole period the idea was that representation in parliament was constituted not through any uniform distribution among individual persons, but rather through a distribution of such privileges among certain organized communities, as counties, cities, boroughs, and universities. Very few people in England then had votes for members of the house of commons—only one-tenth of the population of the entire realm. Such was the state of the electoral system that entire communities, such as the cities of Leeds, Halifax, Birmingham, Manchester, and Liverpool, communities which were as populous and as rich as entire provinces in America, and yet they had no vote whatever for members of parliament. The people of these several communities in England did not refuse to pay taxes levied by act of parliament, because of that reason. It is still a principle of parliamentary representation that from the moment a member is thus chosen to sit in parliament, he is the representative of the whole empire, and not of his particular constituency. He "is under no obligation, therefore, to follow instructions from the voters or the inhabitants of the district from which he is chosen. They have no legal means of enforcing instructions. They cannot demand his resignation. Moreover, members of the house of lords represent, in principle, the interest of the whole empire and of all classes, as truly as the Commons."[11] Therefore the historic meaning of the word "representation," as the word has always been used in English constitutional experience, seemed to justify the Loyalist contention that the several organized British communities in America, as an integral part of the British empire, were to all intents and purposes represented in the British parliament, which sat at the capital as the supreme council of the whole empire and exercised legislative authority coextensive with the boundaries of that empire. The Loyalists admitted that for all communities of British subjects, both in England and America, the existing representation was very imperfect; that it should be reformed and made larger and more uniform, and they were ready and anxious to join in all forms of constitutional agitation under the leadership of such men as Chatham, Camden, Burke, Barre, Fox and Pitt, to secure such reform, and not for a rejection of the authority of the general government, nullification, and disruption of the empire. Accordingly, when certain English commoners in America at last rose up and put forward the claim that merely because they had no votes for members of the house of commons, therefore that house did not represent them, and therefore they could not lawfully be taxed by parliament, this definition of the word "representation" up to that time had never been given to it in England or enjoyed by commoners in England. Nine-tenths of the people of England did not vote. Had not those British subjects in England as good a right as these British subjects in America to deny they were represented in parliament, and that they could not be lawfully taxed by parliament? It was the right and duty of the imperial legislature to determine in what proportion the different parts of the empire should contribute to the defence of the whole, and to see that no one part evaded its obligation and unjustly transferred its part to others. The right of taxation was established by a long series of legal authorities, and there was no real distinction between internal and external taxation. It now suited colonists to describe themselves as apostles of liberty and to denounce England as an oppressor. It was a simple truth that England governed her colonies more liberally than any other country in the world. They were the only existing colonies which enjoyed real political liberty. Their commercial system was more liberal than that of any other colony. They had attained under British rule to a degree of prosperity which was surpassed in no quarter of the globe. England had loaded herself with debt in order to remove one great danger to their future; she cheerfully bore the whole burden of their protection by sea. At the Peace of Paris she had made their interests the very first object of her policy, and she only asked them in return to bear a portion of the cost of their own defence. Less than eight millions of Englishmen were burdened with a national debt of 140,000,000 pounds. The united debt of about three millions of Americans was now less than 800,000 pounds. The annual sum the colonists were asked to contribute was less than 100,000, with an express condition that no part of that sum should be devoted to any other purpose than the defence and protection of the colonies, and the country which refused to bear this small tax was so rich that in the space of three years it had paid off 1,755,000 pounds of its debt. No demand could be more moderate and equitable than that of England. The true motive of the resistance was a desire to pay as little as possible and to throw as much as possible upon the mother country. Nor was the mode of resistance more honorable—the plunder of private houses, and custom-houses, and mob violence, connived at and unpunished. This was the attitude of the colonies within two years after the Peace of Paris, and these were the fruits of the new sense of security which British triumphs in Canada had given to the colonists.

This is a brief statement and a fair one of the principal arguments of the Loyalists. Certainly the position taken by them was a very strong one. A learned American writer upon law, one of the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, in referring to the decision of Chief Justice Hutchinson sustaining the legality of the writs of assistance, gave this opinion: "A careful examination of the question compels the conclusion that there was at least reasonable ground for holding, as a matter of mere law, that the British parliament had power to bind the colonies."[12] This view has been sustained by the highest English authorities upon British constitutional law, from the time of Lord Mansfield to the present. "As a matter of abstract right," says Sir Vernon Harcourt, "the mother country has never parted with the claim of ultimate supreme authority for the imperial legislature. If it did so, it would dissolve the imperial tie, and convert the colonies into foreign and independent states." It is now apparent that those Americans who failed in their honest and sacrificial championship of measures that would have given us political reform and political safety, but without civil war, and without an angry disruption of the English-speaking race can justly be regarded as having been, either in doctrine or in purpose, or in act, an unpatriotic party, and yet even at the present time it is by no means easy for Americans, if they be descended from men who fought in behalf of the Revolution, to take a disinterested attitude, that is an historical one towards those Americans who thought and fought against the Revolution.

No candid historian, however, now contends that the government of England had done anything prior to the commencement of the Revolutionary War that justified a Declaration of Independence; for, as previously stated, the amount of taxes required by Parliament was moderate, the money was needed for a proper purpose, and it seemed there was no other way of obtaining it.

Another important factor in the causes of the American Revolution was the so-called "Quebec Act." This act John Adams asserted constituted a "frightful system," and James Rowdoin pronounced it to be "an act for encouraging and establishing Popery." The policy of this legislation may be doubted. Of its justice there can be no doubt. The establishment of the Catholic clergy in Canada and their resultant domination has entailed many disadvantages upon the governing powers of the dominion. But at the time the law was passed it was a simple act of justice. Had Parliament refused to do this it would have been guilty of that tyranny charged against it by the Revolutionists, and today the dominion would not be a part of the British Empire. To the student of American history it at first seems very strange and unaccountable why at the outbreak of the Revolution, the recently conquered French provinces were not the first to fly to arms, especially as their mother country, France, had espoused the cause of the Revolutionists. Instead of this the French Canadians remained loyal to their conqueror and resisted by force of arms all attempts to conquer Canada. The explanation of this curious state of affairs is the "Quebec Act."

By this act the French Canadians were to retain their property, their language, their religion, their laws, and to hold office. In fact, they were allowed greater liberty than they had when subject to France. All this was allowed them by the British Parliament, and this was resented by the English colonists, for they were not allowed to confiscate their lands and drive out the inhabitants as the New Englanders did when they conquered Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island. They also claimed that by the laws of the realm Roman Catholics could not vote, much less hold office. At a meeting of the first Continental Congress, held October 21, 1774, an address to the people of Great Britain was adopted, setting forth the grievances of the colonies, the principal one of which was as follows:

"Nor can we suppress our astonishment that a British Parliament should ever consent to establish in that country a religion that has deluged your island in blood and dispersed impiety, bigotry, persecution, murder and rebellion through every part of the world, and we think the legislature of Great Britain is not authorized to establish a religion fraught with such sanguinary and infamous tenets."

This act also granted the Catholic clergy a full parliamentary title to their old ecclesiastical estates, and to tithes paid by members of their own religion, but no Protestant was obliged to pay tithes. It provided for a provincial governing council in which Catholics were eligible to sit, and it established the Catholic clergy securely in their livings. There were then in the Province of Quebec two hundred and fifty Catholics to one Protestant[13]. Surely it would have been a monstrous perversion of justice to have placed this vast majority under the domination of this petty minority, it would have degraded the Catholics into a servile caste and reproduced in America, in a greatly aggravated form, the social conditions which existed in Ireland, but those determined sticklers for freedom of conscience and "the right of self-government," those clamorers for the liberty of mankind, the disunion propagandists, were horrified at the bestowal of any "freedom" or "right" upon a people professing a religion different from their own. "The friends of America" in England, Chatham, Fox, Burke, Barre and others, joined them in their denunciation of the act, the last named especially deprecating the "Popish" measure.

On February 15, 1776, it was resolved that a committee of three, "two of whom should be members of congress," be appointed to pursue such instructions as shall be given them by that body.[14] Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Chase and Chas. Carroll were chosen for this purpose, and John Carroll, a Jesuit, who afterwards became the first Roman Catholic Archbishop of the United States, accompanied them. The two Carrolls were chosen because they were Catholics, but they were not justified in joining an expedition that might kindle the flame of religious war on the Catholic frontier. The commissioners carried with them an "Address to the Inhabitants of the Province of Quebec"[15] from Congress, which for cool audacity and impertinence can scarcely be paralleled. It commenced with "We are too well acquainted with the liberality of sentiment distinguishing your natures to imagine that difference of religion will prejudice you against a hearty amity with us," etc.

The address from the Continental Congress was translated into French and was very favorably received. They then begged the translator, as he had succeeded so well, to try his hand on that addressed to Great Britain. He had equal success in this, and read his performance to a numerous audience. But when he came to that part which treats of the new modelling of the province, draws a picture of the Catholic religion and Canadian manners, they could not restrain their resentment nor express it except in broken curses. "O the perfidious, double-faced Congress! Let us bless and obey our benevolent prince, whose humanity is consistent and extends to all religions. Let us abhor all who would seduce us from our loyalty by acts that would dishonor a Jesuit, and whose address, like their resolves, is destructive of their own objects."

While the commissioners were applying themselves with the civil authorities, Rev. Mr. Carroll was diligently employed with the clergy, explaining to them that the resistance of the united colonies was caused by the invasion of their charter by England. To this the clergy replied that since the acquisition of Canada by the British government its inhabitants had no aggression to complain of, that on the contrary the government had faithfully complied with all the stipulations of the treaty, and had in fact sanctioned and protected the laws and customs of Canada with a delicacy that demanded their respect and gratitude, and that on the score of religious liberty the British government had left them nothing to complain of.

And therefore that when the well-established principle that allegiance is due to protection, the clergy could not teach that even neutrality was consistent with the allegiance due to such ample protection as Great Britain had shown the Catholics of Canada. The judicious and liberal policy of the British government to the Catholics had succeeded in inspiring them with sentiments of loyalty which the conduct of the people and the public bodies of some of the united colonies had served to strengthen and confirm. Mr. Carroll was also informed that in the colonies whose liberality he was now avouching, the Catholic religion had not been tolerated hitherto. Priests were excluded under severe penalties and Catholic missionaries among the Indians rudely and cruelly treated.

John Adams, who was a member of the congress that sent the commissioners to Canada, in a letter to his wife, did not state the true reason for sending a Jesuit priest there, and also warned her against divulging the fact that a priest had been sent, for fear of offending his constituents[16]

He wrote as follows:—

"Mr. John Carroll of Maryland, a Roman Catholic priest and a Jesuit, is to go with the committee, the priests of Canada having refused baptism and absolution to our friends there. Your prudence will direct you to communicate the circumstances of the priest, the Jesuit, and the Romish religion, only to such persons as can judge of the measure upon large and generous principles, and will not indiscreetly divulge it."[16]

John Adams also wrote: "We have a few rascally Jacobites and Roman Catholics in this town (Braintree), but they do not dare to show themselves."[17]

KILLING AND SCALPING OF FATHER RASLE AT NORRIDGEWOCK
By Massachusetts scalp hunters, £100 bounty was offered for the scalp of a male Indian, and £50 for that of women or children.

To any statesman who looked into the question inquiringly and with clear vision, it must have appeared evident that, if the English colonies resolved to sever themselves from the British Empire, it would be impossible to prevent them. Their population was said to have doubled in twenty-five years. They were separated from the mother country by three thousand miles of water, their seaboard extended for more than one thousand miles, their territory was almost boundless in its extent and resources, and the greater part of it no white man had traversed or seen. To conquer such a country would be a task of greatest difficulty and stupendous cost. To hold it in opposition to the general wish of the people would be impossible. The colonists were chiefly small and independent freeholders, hardy backwoodsmen and hunters, well skilled in the use of arms and possessed of all the resources and energies which life in a new country seldom fails to develop. They had representative assemblies to levy taxes and organize resistance. They had militia, which in some colonies included all adult freemen between the ages of sixteen and fifty or sixty, and, in addition to Indian raids, they had the military experience of two great wars. The first capture of Louisburg, in 1745, had been mainly their work. In the latter stages of the war, which ended in 1763, there were more than twenty thousand colonial troops under arms, ten thousand of them from New England alone, and more than four hundred privateers had been fitted out in colonial harbors.[18]

There were assuredly no other colonies in the world so favorably situated as these were at the close of the Seven Years' War. They had but one grievance, the Navigation Act, and it is a gross and flagrant misrepresentation to describe the commercial policy of England as exceptionally tyrannical. As Adam Smith truly said, "Every European nation had more or less taken to itself the commerce of its colonies, and upon that account had prohibited the ships of foreign nations from trading with them, and had prohibited them from importing European goods from any foreign nation," and "though the policy of Great Britain with regard to the trade of her colonies has been dictated by the same mercantile spirit as that of other nations, it has, upon the whole, been less illiberal and oppressive than any of them."[19]

There is, no doubt, much to be said in palliation of the conduct of England. If Virginia was prohibited from sending her tobacco to any European country except England, Englishmen were prohibited from purchasing any tobacco except that which came from America or Bermuda. If many of the trades and manufactures in which the colonies were naturally most fitted to excel were restrained or crushed by law, English bounties encouraged the cultivation of indigo and the exportation to England of pitch, tar, hemp, flax and ship timber from America, and several articles of American produce obtained a virtual monopoly of the English market by their exemption from duties which were imposed on similar articles imported from foreign countries.

The revenue laws were habitually violated. Smuggling was very lucrative, and therefore very popular, and any attempt to interfere with it was greatly resented. The attention of the British government was urgently called to it during the war. At a time when Great Britain was straining every nerve to free the English colonies from the incubus of France, and when millions of pounds sterling were being remitted from England to pay colonists for fighting in their own cause, it was found that French fleets, French garrisons, and the French West India Islands were systematically supplied with large quantities of provisions by the New England colonies. Pitt, who still directed affairs, wrote with great indignation that this contraband trade must be stopped, but the whole community of the New England seaports appeared to favor or was partaking in it, and great difficulty was found in putting the law into execution.[20]

From a legal point of view, the immense activity of New England was for the most part illicit. In serene ignorance the New England sailor penetrated all harbors, conveying in their holds, from the North, where they belonged, various sorts of interdicted merchandise, and bringing home cargoes equally interdicted from all ports they touched. The merchants, who since 1749, through Hutchinson's excellent statesmanship, had been free from the results of a bad currency, greatly throve. The shipyards teemed with fleets, each nook of the coast was the seat of mercantile ventures. It was then that in all the shore towns arose the fine colonial mansions of the traders along the main streets, that are even admired today for their size and comeliness. Within the houses bric-a-brac from every clime came to abound, and the merchants and their wives and children were clothed gaily in rich fabrics from remote regions. Glowing reports of the gaiety and luxury of the colonies reached the mother country.[21] The merchants and sailors were, to a man, law-breakers. It was this universal law-breaking, after the fall of Quebec, that the English ministry undertook to stop over its extended empire. This caused friction, which gave rise to fire, which increased until the ties with the mother land were quite consumed.

As early as 1762 there were loud complaints in Parliament of the administration of custom houses in the colonies. Grenville found on examination that the whole revenue derived by England from the custom houses in America amounted only to between one and two thousand pounds a year, and that for the purpose of collecting this revenue the English exchequer was paying annually between seven and eight thousand pounds. Nine-tenths, probably, of all the tea, wine, fruit, sugar and molasses consumed in the colonies, were smuggled. Grenville determined to terminate this state of affairs. Several new revenue officers were appointed with more rigid rules for the discharge of their duties. "Writs of assistance" were to be issued, authorizing custom house officers to search any house they pleased for smuggled goods. English ships of war were at the same time stationed off the American coast for the purpose of intercepting smugglers.

Adam Smith, writing in 1776, says:

"Parliament, in attempting to exercise its supposed right, whether well or ill-grounded, of taxing the colonies, has never hitherto demanded of them anything which even approached to a just proportion to what was paid by their fellow subjects at home. Great Britain has hitherto suffered her subjects and subordinate provinces to disburden themselves upon her of almost the whole expense."

The colonists had profited by the successful war incomparably more than any other British subjects. Until the destruction of the French power, a hand armed with a rifle or tomahawk and torch seemed constantly near the threshold of every New England home. The threatening hand was now paralyzed and the fringe of plantations by the coast could now extend itself to the illimitable West in safety. No foreign foe could now dictate a boundary line and bar the road beyond it. The colonists were asked only to bear a share in the burden of the empire by a contribution to the sum required for maintenance of the ten thousand soldiers and of the armed fleet which was unquestionably necessary for the protection of their long coast line and of their commerce.

James Otis started the Revolution in New England by what Mr. Lecky calls an "incendiary speech" against writs of assistance, and if half of what Hildreth asserts and Bancroft admits in regard to smuggling along the coast of New England is true, there is no reason to wonder that such writs were unpopular in Boston. James Otis, whose father had just been disappointed in his hopes of obtaining a seat upon the bench, was no doubt an eloquent man and all the more dangerous because he often thought he was right. That it is always prudent to distrust the eloquence of a criminal lawyer we have ample proof, in the advice he gave the people on the passage of the Stamp Act. "It is the duty," he said, "of all, humbly and silently to acquiesce in all the decisions of the supreme legislature. Nine hundred and ninety-nine in a thousand of the colonists will never once entertain a thought but of submission to our sovereign and to authority of Parliament, in all possible contingencies. They undoubtedly have the right to levy internal taxes on the colonies."

In private talk he was more vigorous than in his formal utterance. "Hallowell says that Otis told him Parliament had a right to tax the colonies and he was a d—— fool who denied it, and that this people would never be quiet till we had a council from home, till our charter was taken away and till we had regular troops quartered upon us."[22]

John Adams wrote in his diary, under date of January 16, 1770, concerning Otis, as follows: "In one word Otis will spoil the club. He talks so much and takes up so much of our time and fills it with trash, obsceneness, profaneness, nonsense and distraction that we have none left for rational amusements or inquiries. I fear, I tremble, I mourn for the man and for his country. Many others mourn over him with tears in their eyes."

Again John Adams says, after an attack upon him by Otis: "There is a complication of malice, envy and jealousy in the man, in the present disordered state of his mind, that is quite shocking."[23] On the 7th of May, 1771, Otis, who at this time had recovered his reason was elected with John Hancock to the assembly. They both left their party and went over to the side of the government. John Adams wrote "Otis' change was indeed startling. John Chandler, Esq., of Petersham gave me an account of Otis' conversion to Toryism, etc." Hutchinson writing to Governor Bernard, says, "Otis was carried off today in a post-chaise, bound hand and foot. He has been as good as his word—set the Province in a flame and perished in the attempt."

In Virginia the revolutionary movement of the poor whites or "crackers," led by Patrick Henry, was against the planter aristocracy, and Washington was a conspicuous member of the latter class. In tastes, manners, instincts and sympathies he might have been taken as an admirable specimen of the better class of English country gentlemen, and he had a great deal of the strong conservative feeling which is natural to that class. He was in the highest sense a gentleman and a man of honor, and he carried into public life the severest standard of private morals.

It was only slowly and very deliberately that Washington identified himself with the disunionist cause. No man had a deeper admiration for the British constitution, or a more sincere desire to preserve the connection, and to put an end to the disputes between the two countries. From the first promulgation of the Stamp Act, however, he adopted the conviction that a recognition of the sole right of the colonies to tax themselves was essential to their freedom, and as soon as it became evident that Parliament was resolved at all hazards to assert its authority by taxing the Americans, he no longer hesitated. Of all the great men in history he was the most invariably judicious, and there is scarcely a rash word or action of judgment related of him. America had found in Washington a leader who could be induced by no earthly motive to tell a falsehood or to break an engagement or to commit a dishonorable act.

In the despondency of long-continued failure, in the elation of sudden success, at times when his soldiers were deserting by hundreds, and when malignant plots were formed against his reputation; amid the constant quarrels, rivalries and jealousies of his subordinates; in the dark hour of national ingratitude and in the midst of the most universal and intoxicating flattery, he was always the same calm, wise, just and single-minded man, pursuing the course which he believed to be right, without fear, favor or fanaticism.

In civil as in military life he was pre-eminent among his contemporaries for the clearness and soundness of his judgment, for his perfect moderation and self-control, for the quiet dignity and the indomitable firmness with which he pursued every path which he had deliberately chosen.

READING THE STAMP ACT IN KING STREET: OPPOSITE THE STATE HOUSE.

As previously stated, the heart of the Old Dominion was fired by Patrick Henry, one of the most unreliable men living. Byron called him a forest-born Demosthenes, and Jefferson, wondering over his career, exclaimed: "Where he got that torrent of language is inconceivable. I have frequently closed my eyes while he spoke and, when he was done, asked myself what he had said without being able to recollect a word of it." He had been successively a storekeeper, a farmer and a shopkeeper, but had failed in all these pursuits and became a bankrupt at twenty-three. Then he studied law a few weeks and practiced a few years. The first success he made in this line was in an effort to persuade a jury to render one of the most unjust verdicts ever recorded in court. Finally he embarked on the stormy sea of politics. One day he worked himself into a fine frenzy, and in a most dramatic manner demanded "Liberty or Death," although he had both freely at his disposal. He was a slaveholder nearly all his life. He bequeathed slaves and cattle in his will, and one of his eulogists brags that he would buy or sell a horse or a negro as well as anybody.

John Adams of Braintree, now Quincy, was a graduate of Harvard College, and a lawyer by profession. He ranks next to Washington as being the most prominent of the Revolutionary leaders. He was the son of a poor farmer and shoemaker. He married Abigail Smith, the daughter of the Congregational minister in the adjoining town of Weymouth. Much disapprobation of the match appears to have been manifested, for Mr. Adams, the son of a poor farmer, was thought scarcely good enough to be match with the minister's daughter, descended from many of the shining lights of the colony.[24]

John Adams was a cousin of Samuel Adams. He joined the disunionists, probably, because he saw that if the Revolution was successful there would be great opportunity for advancement under the new government. This proved to be the case, for he was the first minister to Great Britain, the successor of Washington as second president of the United States. His eldest son became the sixth president, and his grandson, Charles Francis Adams, ably represented his country as minister to Great Britain during the Civil War of 1861.

The Stamp Act received the royal assent on March 22, 1765, and it was to come into operation on the first day of November following. The "Virginia Resolutions," through which Patrick Henry first acquired a continental fame, voted by the House of Burgess in May following, denied very definitely the authority of Parliament to tax the colonies. At first men recoiled. Otis was reported to have publicly condemned them in King street, which was no doubt true, for, as we have seen, he fully admitted the supremacy of Parliament.

The principal objection made by the colonists to the Stamp Act was that it was an internal tax. They denied the right of Parliament to impose internal taxation, claiming that to be a function that could be exercised only by colonial assemblies. They admitted, however, that Parliament had a right to levy duties on exports and imports, and they had submitted to such taxation for many years without complaint.

In order to soften the opposition, and to consult to the utmost of his power the wishes of the colonists, Grenville informed the colonial agents that the distribution of the stamps should be confided not to Englishmen but to Americans. Franklin, then agent for Pennsylvania, accepted the act and, in his canny way, took steps to have a friend appointed stamp distributor for his province. This made him very unpopular and the mob threatened to destroy his house.

The Stamp Act, when its ultimate consequences are considered, must be deemed one of the most momentous legislative acts in the history of mankind.

A timely concession of a few seats in the upper and lower houses of the Imperial Parliament would have set at rest the whole dispute. Franklin had suggested it ten years before, anticipating even Otis, Grenville was quite ready to favor it, Adam Smith advocated it. Why did the scheme fail? Just at that time in Massachusetts a man was rising into provincial note, who was soon to develop a heat, truly fanatical, in favor of an idea quite inconsistent with Franklin's plan. He from the first claimed that representation of the colonies in Parliament was quite impracticable or, if accepted, would be of no benefit to the colonies, and that there was no fit state for them but independence. His voice at first was but a solitary cry in the midst of a tempest, but it prevailed mightily in the end.

This sole expounder of independence was Samuel Adams, the father of the Revolution. Already his influence was superseding that of Otis, in stealthy ways of which neither Otis nor those who made an idol of him were sensible, putting into the minds of men, in the place of the ideas for which Otis stood, radical conceptions which were to change in due time the whole future of the world. "Samuel Adams at this time was a man of forty-two years of age, but already gray and bent with a physical infirmity which kept his head and hands shaking like those of a paralytic. He was a man of broken fortunes, a ne'er-do-well in his private business, a failure as a tax collector, the only public office he had thus far undertaken to discharge."[25] He had an hereditary antipathy to the British government, for his father was one of the principal men connected with Land-Bank delusion, and was ruined by the restrictions which Parliament imposed on the circulation of paper money, causing the closing up of the bank by act of Parliament and leaving debts which seventeen years later were still unpaid.

It appears that Governor Hutchinson was a leading person in dissolving the bank, and from that time Adams was the bitter enemy of Hutchinson and the government. Hutchinson in describing him says, "Mr. S. Adams had been one of the directors of the land bank in 1741 which was dissolved by act of Parliament. After his decease his estate was put up for sale by public auction, under authority of an act of the General Assembly. The son first made himself conspicuous on this occasion. He attended the sale, threatened the sheriff to bring action against him and threatened all who should attempt to enter upon the estate under pretence of a purchase, and by intimidating both the sheriff and those persons who intended to purchase, he prevented the sale, kept the estate in his possession and the debts to the land bank remained unsatisfied. He was afterwards a collector of taxes for the town of Boston and made defalcation which caused an additional tax upon the inhabitants. He was for nearly twenty years a writer against government in the public newspapers. Long practice caused him to arrive at great perfection and to acquire a talent of artfully and fallaciously insinuating into the minds of readers a prejudice against the characters of all he attacked beyond any other man I ever knew, and he made more converts to his cause by calumniating governors and other servants of the crown than by strength of reasoning. The benefit to the town from his defence of their liberties, he supposed an equivalent to his arrears as their collector, and prevailing principle of the party that the end justified the means probably quieted the remorse he must have felt from robbing men of their characters and injuring them more than if he had robbed them of their estates."[26]

In a letter written by Hutchinson about this time he thus characterizes his chief adversary:

"I doubt whether there is a greater incendiary in the King's dominion or a man of greater malignity of heart, who has less scruples any measure ever so criminal to accomplish his purposes; and I think I do him no injustice when I suppose he wishes the destruction of every friend to government in America."[27]

In a letter dated March 13, 1769, Adams petitioned the town, requesting that he be discharged from his indebtedness to the town for the amount that he was in arrears as tax collector. He states that the town treasurer, by order of the town, had put his bond in suit and recovered judgment for the sum due £2009.8.8. He stated that his debts and £1106.11 will fully complete the sum which he owes and requests "that the town would order him a final discharge upon the condition of his paying the aforesaid sum of £1106.11 into the province treasury." This letter of Adams to the town of Boston fully confirms the statement made by Hutchinson that he was a defaulter, for it appears from this letter that during the several years he was collector of taxes for the town, that he did not make a proper return for the taxes which he had collected, and it was only after suit and judgment had been obtained against his bondsmen that restitution was made, his sureties having to pay over $5000 in cash and the balance was made up of uncollected taxes.[28]

Adams was poor, simple, ostentatiously austere; the blended influence of Calvinistic theology and republican principles had indurated his whole character. He hated monarchy and the Episcopal church, all privileged classes and all who were invested with dignity and rank, with a fierce hatred. He was the first to foresee and to desire an armed struggle, and he now maintained openly that any British troops which landed should be treated as enemies, attacked and if possible destroyed.

CHAPTER IV.

BOSTON MOBS AND THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE REVOLUTION.

After the adoption in Massachusetts of Patrick Henry's resolves, the people, brooding over the injuries which Adams made them believe they were receiving under the Stamp Act, became fiercer in temper. Open treason was talked, and many of the addresses to the Governor, composed by Adams, were models of grave and studied insolence. The rough population which abounded about the wharves and shipyards grew riotous, and, with the usual indiscrimination of mobs, was not slow to lift its hands against even the best friends of the people. "Mob law is a crime, and those who engage in mobs are criminals." This is a fundamental axiom of orderly government that cannot be denied.

The first great riot was in anticipation of the arrival of the stamps. On the morning of August 14, 1765, there appeared, at what is now a corner of Washington and Essex streets, two effigies, hanging on an elm tree, representing Andrew Oliver, the stamp agent, and Lord Bute, the former prime minister. In the evening these images were carried as far as Kilby street, where there was a new unfinished government building, wrongly supposed to have been erected for use as a stamp office. This the mob completely demolished, and, taking portions of its wood-work with them, they proceeded to Fort Hill, where a bonfire was made in front of the house of Mr. Oliver, burning the effigy of Lord Bute there, and committing gross outrages on Oliver's premises, which were plundered and wrecked.

A few nights later riots recommenced with redoubled fury, the rioters turning their attention to the house of Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson, who was also chief justice, and kinsman of Oliver. Hutchinson was not only the second person in rank in the colony, but was also a man who had personal claims of the highest kind upon his countrymen. He was an American, a member of one of the oldest colonial families, and, in a country where literary enterprise was very uncommon, he had devoted a great part of his life to investigating the history of his native province. His rare abilities, his stainless private character, and his great charm of manner, were universally recognized. He had at one time been one of the most popular men in the colony, and although Hutchinson was opposed to the Stamp Act, the determined impartiality with which, as Chief Justice, he upheld the law, soon made him obnoxious to the mob.

ANDREW OLIVER, STAMP COLLECTOR ATTACKED BY THE MOB.
His beautiful mansion on Oliver street, Fort Hill, was wrecked and he narrowly escaped with his life.

When the mob surrounded his house in Garden Court street, they called for him to appear on his balcony, to give an account of himself as to the Stamp Act. He barred the doors and windows and remained within. One of his neighbors, alarmed, no doubt, as to the safety of his own property, told the mob that he had seen Hutchinson drive out just at nightfall, and that he had gone to spend the night at his country house at Milton. On hearing this the mob dispersed, having done no other damage than the breaking of windows.

The popular fury had now become so ungovernable and perilous that Governor Bernard took refuge in the Castle, leaving Hutchinson to bear the brunt of this vehement hostility. Shortly after the governor's retreat, on the 26th of August, occurred a riot as disgraceful as any on record on either side of the Atlantic. It commenced at dusk with a bonfire on King street. One of the fire-wards attempted to extinguish it, but he was driven from the ground by a heavy blow from one of the mob which had assembled. The fire was doubtless kindled as a signal for the assembling of a ruffianly body of disguised men, armed with clubs and staves. They first went to the house of the register of the admiralty court, broke into his office in the lower story, and fed the fire hard by with the public archives in his keeping, and with all his own private papers. Next they went to the house of the comptroller of customs in Hanover street, tore down his fence, broke his windows, demolished his furniture, stole his money, scattered his papers, and availed themselves of the wine in his cellar as a potent stimulant to greater excesses.

They then proceeded to Hutchinson's house, the finest and most costly in Boston. He had barely time to escape with his family, otherwise murder would no doubt have put a climax to the criminal orgies of the night. The rioters hewed down the doors with broad axes, destroyed or stole everything of value, including important historical data which he had spent years in collecting, papers which, if preserved to his countrymen, would be worth many times their weight in gold; and still further maddened by the contents of the cellar, the incendiary crowd broke up the roof and commenced tearing down the wood-work of the mansion.

There exists competent evidence that the municipal authorities had timely notice of the pendency of this riot. They held a town meeting next day, denounced the rioters by unanimous vote, in which many who had been foremost in the affair gave assent to their own condemnation, but nothing was done towards punishing the perpetrators of the outrages, and it was evident that the prevailing feeling was with the rioters. Those who were arrested and committed for trial were released by a formidable body of sympathizers, undoubtedly fellow criminals, who went by night to the jail, forced the jailer to deliver up the keys, and released the culprits.

The Custom House was selected for assault and pillage on the following night. The collector somehow gained information of this purpose. He had in his custody about four thousand pounds in specie, which could not be removed so secretly as to elude the espionage of eyes intent on rapine and plunder. The governor, at the urgent demand of the collector, called out the cadets, who constituted his special guard. The mob assembled. The commanding officers addressed them, first with persuasion, then with threats, but in vain. Driven to extremity he ordered his company to prime and load, and then begged the rioters to retire. They remained immovable until the order was given to "aim," when a hurried retreat of the tumultuous rabble ensued.

There were, subsequently, various public demonstrations of a disorderly character; effigies of unpopular members of the home and provincial governments were hanged and burned, and there were frequent displays of violent hostility to the administration; but it was not till June, 1768, that there was another dangerous and destructive riot. In this there cannot be the slightest doubt that the mob had on their side as little moral justification as legal right. The sloop "Liberty," belonging to John Hancock, a leading merchant of the patriot party, arrived at Boston, laden with wine from Madeira, and a custom-house officer went on board to inspect the cargo. He was seized by the crew and detained for several hours, while the cargo was landed, and a few pipes of wine were entered on oath at the Custom House as if they had been the whole. On the liberation of the customs' officers the vessel was seized for a false entry, and in order to prevent the possibility of a rescue it was removed from the wharf to the protection of the guns of a man of war. A mob was speedily collected, and as the rabble could not get possession of the sloop, they attacked the revenue officers for doing their duty in properly seizing the vessel for false entry and smuggling. The collector, his son, and two inspectors, received the most barbarous treatment, were badly bruised and wounded, and hardly escaped with their lives. The mob next went to the house of the inspector-general, and to that of the comptroller of customs, and broke their windows. They then dragged the collector's boat to the Common and burned it there.

When we consider the lawless condition of Boston, there cannot be any question that Governor Bernard was fully authorized to seek the presence of troops. The crown officers were in a rightful possession of their offices, and it would have been cowardly for them to desert their posts and sail for England, and thus to leave anarchy behind them. Meanwhile their lives were in peril, and they had an unquestionable right to demand competent protection. This they could have only by sending out of the province for it. The colonial militia could not be relied upon, for the mob must have been largely represented in its ranks. Nor could dependence be placed on the cadets, for Hancock, in whose behalf the last great riot had been perpetrated, was an officer of that corps. The only recourse was to the importation of royal troops—a measure which legal modes of remonstrance by patriots worthy of the name would never have rendered necessary or justifiable.

Two regiments, the 14th and 29th, of about five hundred men each, arrived on Sept. 28, 1768. These soldiers were, of course, a burden and annoyance. They could not have been otherwise. Individually they were not gentlemen, and they could not have been expected to be so. Yet had their presence been desired or welcome, there is no reason to suppose that there would have been any unpleasant collision with them.

The first token of resentment on the part of the populace occurred eleven days after their arrival. The colonel of one of the regiments had ordered a guard-house to be built on the Neck. The site was visited in the night by a mob, who tore down the frame of the building and cut it in pieces, so that no part of it could be put to further use. From that time on there were perpetual quarrels and brisk interchanges of contumely, abuse, and insult between the soldiers and the inhabitants, in which gangs of ropemakers bore a prominent part. There was undoubtedly no lack of ill-blood on either side, but, after patiently reading the contemporary record of what took place, we are inclined to adopt the statement of Samuel G. Drake, whose intense loyalty as a loving citizen of Boston no one can question, and who writes "That outrages were committed by the soldiers is no doubt true; but these outrages were exaggerated, and they probably, in nine cases out of ten, were the abused party."[29]

Passing over intervening dissensions and tumults, we now come to the so-called "Boston Massacre," on the 5th of March, 1770, an occasion on which loss of life was inevitable, and the only question was whether it should be among the soldiers or their assailants. The riot was evidently predetermined, as one of the bells was rung about eight o'clock, and immediately afterwards bands of men, with clubs, appeared upon the streets. Early in the evening there had been some interchange of hostilities, chiefly verbal, between the soldiers and town people, but an officer had ordered his men into the barrack-yard, and closed the gate. The "main guard," for that day's duty, was from the 29th regiment.

About nine o'clock a solitary sentinel in front of the custom-house on King street, now known as State street, was assailed by a party of men and boys, who pelted him with lumps of ice and coal, and threatened him with their clubs. Being forbidden by the rules of the service to quit his post, he called upon the "main guard," whose station was within hearing. A corporal and seven soldiers were sent to his relief. They were followed by Captain Preston, who said, "I will go there myself to see that they do no mischief." By that time the crowd had become a large one, intensely angry, and determined on violence. The mob supposed the soldiers were helpless and harmless; that they were not permitted to fire unless ordered by a magistrate. The rioters repeatedly challenged the soldiers to fire if they dared, and the torrent of coarse and profane abuse poured upon the soldiers is astonishing even in its echoes across the century, and would furnish material for an appropriate inscription on the Attucks monument. The soldiers stood on the defensive while their lives were endangered by missiles, and till the crowd closed upon them in a hand-to-hand conflict. The leader of the assault was "Crispus Attucks," a half Indian and half negro, who raised the blood-curdling war-whoop, the only legacy save his Indian surname and his strength and ferocity, that he is known to have received from his savage ancestry. He knocked down one of the soldiers, got possession of his musket, and would, no doubt, have killed him instantly had not the soldiers fired at that moment and killed Attucks and two other men, two more being fatally wounded. There is no evidence that Captain Preston ordered the firing, though if he did he certainly deserved no blame, as the shooting was, for the soldiers, the only means of defence. There is no doubt that the mobs on these occasions were set in movement and directed by some persons of higher rank and larger views of mischief than themselves.

Gordon, the historian of the American Revolution, informs us that the mob was addressed, in the street, before the firing, by a tall, large man, in a red cloak and white wig, and after listening to what he had to offer in the space of three or four minutes, they huzza for the "main guard" and say, "We will do for the soldiers." He also said, "But from the character, principles, and policies of certain persons among the leaders of the opposition, it may be feared that they had no objection to a recounter that by occasioning the death of a few might eventually clear the place of the two regiments."

This avowal, which, coming from such a source, has all the weight of premeditation, chills us with its deliberate candor, and begets reflections on the desperate means resorted to by some of the leaders of the populace in those trying times, which historians generally have shrunk from suggesting.

Hutchinson fulfilled at this time, with complete adequacy, the functions of chief magistrate. He was at once in the street in imminent danger of having his brains dashed out,[30] expostulating, entreating, that order might be observed. His prompt arrest of Preston and the squad which had done the killing was his full duty, and it is to the credit of the troops that the officer and his men, in the midst of the exasperation, gave themselves quietly into the hands of the law.

In the famous scenes which followed, the next day, Samuel Adams and other leading agitators, as representatives of the people, rushed into the presence of Hutchinson, and rather commanded than asked for the removal of the troops. Hutchinson hesitated. He was not yet governor—Bernard was in England. The embarrassment of the situation for the chief magistrate was really appalling. He knew that their removal would, under the circumstances, be a great humiliation to the government and a great encouragement to the mob. On the other hand, if the soldiers remained it was only too probable that in a few hours the streets of Boston would run with blood. He consulted the council, and found, as usual, an echo of the public voice. He then yielded, and the troops were sent to Fort William, on Castle Island, three miles from the town.

Although, from that day to this, it has been held that the British uniform was driven with ignominy out of the streets of Boston, they deserve no discredit for their submission to the Governor and his council. They were two weak regiments, together amounting to not more than eight hundred effective men, isolated in a populous province which hated them, and were in great peril of life. It does not appear that they showed the white feather at all, but rather that they were law-abiding. Probably few organizations in the British army have a record more honorable. The 14th was with William III. in Flanders; it formed, too, one of the squares of Waterloo, breasting for hours the charges of the French cuirassiers until it had nearly melted away. The 29th was with Marlboro at Ramillies, and with Wellington in the Peninsula; it bore a heavy part, as may be read in Napier, in wresting Spain from the grasp of Napoleon. To fight it out with the mob would no doubt have been far easier and pleasanter than to yield; for brave soldiers to forbear is harder than to fight, and one may be sure that in the long history of those regiments few experiences more trying came to pass than those of the Boston streets.

Few things contributed more to commence the American Revolution than this unfortunate affray. Skillful agitators perceived the advantage it gave them, and the most fantastic exaggerations were dexterously diffused. It, however, had a sequel which is extremely creditable to the citizens of Boston.

It was determined to try the soldiers for their lives, and public feeling ran so fiercely against them that it seemed as if their fate was sealed. The trial, however, was delayed for seven months till the excitement had in some degree subsided. Captain Preston very judiciously appealed to John Adams, who was rapidly rising to the first place among the lawyers and the popular party of Boston, to undertake his defence. Adams knew well how much he was risking by espousing so unpopular a cause, but he knew also his professional duty, and though violently opposed to the British Government, he was an eminently honest, brave, and humane man. In conjunction with Josiah Quincy, a young lawyer who was also of the popular party, he undertook the invidious task, and he discharged it with consummate ability. Three years afterwards he wrote in his diary: "The part I took in defence of Capt. Preston and the soldiers procured me anxiety and obloquy enough. It was, however, one of the most gallant, generous, manly, and disinterested acts of my whole life, and one of the best pieces of service I ever rendered my country. Judgment of death against those soldiers would have been as foul a stain upon this country as the execution of the Quakers or witches, anciently. As the evidence was, the verdict of the jury was exactly right."

These noble words and his actions in this matter are sufficient alone to prove that John Adams was a fit successor to President Washington. He was entirely just in the estimate he put upon his conduct in these frank terms. His defence of the soldiers was one of the most courageous acts that a thoroughly manly man performed, and his summing up of the matter just quoted, is perfectly accurate. If John Adams showed himself here a man of sense and a hero, as much cannot be said of his cousin, Samuel Adams, who undoubtedly was one of the leaders who incited the mob to attack the soldiers, as hinted at by Gordon. And, again, in the vindictive persecution which followed, in the attempt to arouse in England and America indignation against the soldiers, by documents based on evidence hastily collected in advance of the trial, from wholly unreliable witnesses, and in the attempt to precipitate the trial while passion was still hot, the misbehavior of the people was grave. In all this no leader was more eager than Samuel Adams, and in no time in his career, probably, does he more plainly lay himself open to the charge of being a reckless demagogue, a mere mob-leader, than at this moment.

Captain Preston and six of the soldiers, who were tried for murder, were acquitted; two of the soldiers, convicted of manslaughter, were branded on the hand and then released. The most important testimony in the case was that of the celebrated surgeon, John Jeffries, who attended Patrick Carr, an Irishman, fatally wounded in the affray. It is as follows: "He said he saw many things thrown at the sentry; he believed they were oyster shells and ice; he heard the people huzza every time they heard anything strike that sounded hard. He then saw some soldiers going down towards the custom-house; he saw the people pelt them as they went along. I asked him whether he thought the soldiers would fire; he said he thought the soldiers would have fired long before. I then asked him if he thought the soldiers were abused a great deal; he said he thought they were. I asked him whether he thought the soldiers would have been hurt if they had not fired; he said he really thought they would, for he heard many voices cry out, 'Kill them!' I asked him, meaning to close all, whether he thought they fired in self-defence or on purpose to destroy the people; he said he really thought they did fire to defend themselves; that he did not blame the man, whoever he was, that shot him. He told me he was a native of Ireland; that he had frequently seen mobs, and soldiers called to quell them. Whenever he mentioned that, he called himself a fool; that he might have known better; that he had seen soldiers often fire on people in Ireland, but had never in his life seen them bear so much before they fired."

John Adams, in his plea in defence of the soldiers, said: "We have been entertained with a great variety of phrases to avoid calling this sort of people a mob. Some called them shavers, some called them geniuses. The plain English is, they were probably a motley rabble of saucy boys, negroes, mulattoes, Irish teagues, and outlandish Jack-tars, and why we should scruple to call such a set of people a mob, I can't conceive, unless the name is too respectable for them."

Chief-Justice Lynde, eminent for his judicial integrity and impartiality, said on the announcement of the verdict: "Happy am I to find, after much strict examination, the conduct of the prisoners appears in so fair a light, yet I feel myself deeply affected that this affair turns out so much to the disgrace of every person concerned against them, and so much to the shame of the town in general."

In 1887, at the instigation of John Boyle O'Reilly and the negroes of Boston, the Legislature passed a bill authorizing the expenditure of $10,000 for the purpose of erecting a monument to the memory of the "victims of the Boston Massacre." The monument was erected on Boston Common, notwithstanding the fact that the Massachusetts Historical Society, and the New England Historic Genealogical Society, voted unanimously against it. "That it was a waste of public money, that the affray was occasioned by the brutal and revengeful attack of reckless roughs upon the soldiers, while on duty, who had not the civilian's privilege of retreating, but were obliged to contend against great odds, and used their arms only in the last extremity; that the killed were rioters and not patriots, and that a jury of Boston citizens had acquitted the soldiers." A joint committee, composed of members of both societies, presented the resolutions to Governor Ames, and requested him to veto the bill. He admitted that "the monument ought not to be erected, but if he vetoed the bill it would cost the Republican party the colored vote." When the monument was erected and uncovered, it presented such an indecent appearance that the City Council immediately voted $250 for a new capstone. It now represents an historical lie, and is a sad commentary on the intelligence and art taste of the citizens of Boston. To be sure monuments of stone will not avail to perpetuate an error of history, as witness the monument erected to commemorate the Great Fire of London. The inscription on that monument, embodying a gross perversion of history, was effaced in 1831, after it had stood there one hundred and fifty years, but the just resentment, the ill-feeling, the grief and shame which it engendered during that period, had been evils of incalculable magnitude. The time will surely come when the monument on Boston Common will be removed for the same reason.

On the 18th of March, 1766, the Stamp Act was repealed. It had remained in force but one year, and was then repealed in an effort to pacify the colonists. A duty was placed on tea and other imports which the colonists had always admitted to be a valid act of the Parliament. Whatever might be said of the Stamp Act, the tea duty was certainly not a real grievance to Americans, for Parliament had relieved the colonists of a duty of 12d. in the pound which had hitherto been levied in England, and the colonists were only asked, in compensation, to pay a duty of 3d. in the pound on arrival of the tea in America. The measure, therefore, was not an act of oppression, but of relief, making the price of tea in the colonies positively cheaper by 9d. per pound than it had been before. But the turbulent spirits were not to be satisfied so easily. They organized an immense boycott against British goods and commercial intercourse with England, and appointed vigilance committees in many communities to see that the boycott was rigidly enforced. Hutchinson, in describing them, says: "In this Province the faction is headed by the lowest, dirtiest, and most abject part of the community, and so absurdly do the Council and House of Representatives reason, that they justify this anarchy, the worst of tyranny, as necessary to remove a single instance of what they call oppression; they have persecuted my sons with peculiar pleasure." August 26, 1770, he wrote to William Parker, of Portsmouth: "You certainly think right when you think Boston people are run mad. The frenzy was not higher when they banished my pious great-grandmother, when they hanged the Quakers, when they afterwards hanged the poor innocent witches, when they were carried away with a Land Bank, or when they all turned "New Lights," than the political frenzy has been for a twelve-month past."[31]

In December, 1773, three ships laden with tea, private property of an innocent corporation, arrived at Boston, and on the 16th of that month, forty or fifty men, disguised as Mohawk Indians, under the direction of Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and others, boarded the vessels, posted sentinels to keep all agents of authority off at a distance, and flung the three cargoes, consisting of three hundred and forty-two chests, into the harbor. How can we, law-abiding citizens, applaud the "Boston Tea Party" and condemn the high-handed conduct of strike-leaders of the present time? In this transaction some respectable men were engaged, and their posterity affects to be proud of it. But they were not proud of it at the time. In their disguise as Indians they were not recognized, and the few well-known names among them were not divulged till the rebellion became a successful revolution. It probably made no "patriots." We have proof that it afterwards turned the scales against the patriot cause with some who had sympathized with it and taken part in it.

Looking back to those times during later years, John Adams wrote: "The poor people themselves, who, by secret manoeuvres, are excited to insurrection, are seldom aware of the purposes for which they are set in motion or of consequences which may happen to themselves; and when once heated and in full career, they can neither manage themselves nor be managed by others."

BOSTONIANS PAYING THE EXCISEMAN, OR TARRING AND FEATHERING.
A cartoon published in London in 1771, showing how the authority of the government was wholly disregarded in Boston.

The illegal seizure of the tea was in a certain sense parallel to the so-called "respectable" mob which on the 11th of August, 1834, destroyed the Charlestown convent, and, a year later, nearly killed Garrison and made the jail his only safe place of refuge. Had slavery triumphed, that mob would at this day be the object and the subject of popular glorification; every man who belonged to it, who was present abetting and encouraging it, would claim his share of the glory, and a roll of honor would have been handed down for a centennial celebration in which every slaveholder in the land would have borne a part. But now that slavery is dead, and the statue of Garrison has its place in the fashionable avenue of Boston, there is no longer any merit in the endeavor to buttress the fallen cause. Had the Revolution failed, the disgrace of the men who threw the tea overboard would never have been removed, and the best that history could say of them would be that, like the Attucks mob, they were enthusiasts without reason.

John Hancock, one of the principal leaders of the Tea Party Mob, and the owner of the sloop "Liberty," which was seized for smuggling, and later the first to sign the Declaration of Independence, inherited £70,000 from his uncle, who had made a large part of it by importing from the Dutch island of St. Eustacia great quantities of tea, in molasses hogsheads, and, by the importation of a few chests from England, had freed the rest from suspicion, and not having been found out, had borne the reputation of a "fair trader." Partly by inattention to his private affairs, and partly from want of sound judgment, John Hancock became greatly involved and distressed, and his estate was lost with much greater rapidity than it had been acquired by his uncle.[32]

John Adams had very positive opinions concerning the mobs of the Revolution. In a letter to his wife he says:

"I am engaged in a famous cause. The cause of King of Scarborough versus a mob that broke into his house and rifled his papers and terrified him, his wife, children and servants, in the night. The terror and distress, the distraction and horror of this family, cannot be described in words, or painted upon canvas. It is enough to move a statue, to melt a heart of stone, to read the story. A mind susceptible of the feelings of humanity, a heart which can be touched with sensibility for human misery and wretchedness, must relent, must burn with resentment and indignation at such outrageous injuries. These private mobs I do and will detest."[33]

Concerning the Loyalists, he says: "A notion prevails among all parties that it is politest and genteelest to be on the side of the administration, that the better sort, the wiser few, are on one side, and that the multitude, the vulgar, the herd, the rabble, the mob, only are on the other."[34]

As regards his own actions towards the Loyalists, he writes in his later years as follows:

"Nothing could be more false and injurious to me than the imputation of any sanguinary zeal against the Tories, for I can truly declare that through the whole Revolution, and from that time to this, I never committed one act of severity against the Tories."[35]

At the time of the shedding of the first blood at Lexington, Hancock was respondent, in the admiralty court, in suits of the crown to recover nearly half a million of dollars, as penalties alleged to have been incurred for violation of the statute-book. It was fit that he should be the first to affix his name to an instrument which, if made good, would save him from financial ruin.

One-fourth of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were bred to trade or to the command of ships, and more than one of them was branded with the epithet of "smuggler."[36]

In 1773 John Hancock was elected treasurer of Harvard college. "In this they considered their patriotism more than their prudence." The amount of college funds paid over to him was upwards of fifteen thousand and four hundred pounds, and, like his friend, Samuel Adams, he, too, proved to be a defaulter. For twenty years the corporation begged and entreated him to make restitution. They threatened to prosecute him and also to put his bond in suit, as Adams' was, but it was all of no avail. He turned a deaf ear to their entreaties, and it was only after his death, in 1793, that his heirs made restitution to the college, when a settlement was made, in 1795, in which the college lost five hundred and twenty-six dollars interest.

Josiah Quincy, the president of Harvard college, in referring to this matter, says:

"From respect to the high rank which John Hancock attained among the patriots of the American Revolution, it would have been grateful to pass over in silence the extraordinary course he pursued in his official relation to Harvard college, had truth and the fidelity of history permitted. But justice to a public institution which he essentially embarrassed during a period of nearly twenty years, and also to the memory of those whom he made to feel and to suffer, requires that these records of unquestionable facts which at the time they occurred were the cause of calumny and censure to honorable men, actuated in this measure solely by a sense of official fidelity, should not be omitted. In republics, popularity is the form of power most apt to corrupt its possessor and to tempt him, for party or personal interests, to trample on right to set principle at defiance. History has no higher or more imperative duty to perform than, by an unyielding fidelity, to impress this class of men with the apprehension that although through fear or favor they may escape animadversion of contemporaries, there awaits them in her impartial record, the retribution of truth."[37]

The action of the tea mob was the culmination of mob violence in Boston. It brought the king and parliament to decide that their rebellious subjects in Boston must be subdued by force of arms, and that mob violence should cease. General Thomas Gage was to have at his command four regiments and a powerful fleet. He arrived at Boston, May 13, 1774, and was appointed to supersede Governor Thomas Hutchinson, as governor, who had succeeded Governor Sir Francis Bernard in 1771. General Gage was now in the prime of life. He had served with great credit under several commanders, at Fontenoy and Culloden, and had fought with Washington, under Braddock, at Monongahela, where he was severely wounded, and carried a musket ball in his side for the remainder of his life as a memento of that fatal battle. An intimacy then existed between him and Washington, which was maintained afterwards by a friendly correspondence, and which twenty years later ended regretfully when they appeared, opposed to each other, at the head of contending armies, the one obeying the commands of his sovereign and the other upholding the cause of his people. How many cases similar to this occurred, eighty-six years later, when brother officers in arms faced each other with hostile forces, and friendship and brotherly love were changed to deadly hatred.

The claim has been set up by American historians, and accepted as true by those of Great Britain, that hostilities were commenced at Lexington and by the British commander. This is not so. The first act of hostilities was the attack upon the government post of Fort William and Mary at Newcastle, in Portsmouth harbor, New Hampshire. The attack was deliberately planned by the disunion leaders, and executed by armed and disciplined forces mustered by them for that purpose.[38] The fort contained large quantities of government arms and ammunition, and being garrisoned by but a corporal's guard, it was too tempting a prize to be overlooked by Samuel Adams and his colleagues.

Sir John Wentworth, governor of New Hampshire, tells us that the raiding party was openly collected by beat of drum in the streets of Portsmouth, and that, being apprised of their intent to attack a government fort, he sent the chief justice to warn them that such an act "was short of rebellion," and entreated them not to undertake it, "but all to no purpose." They embarked in three boats, sailed to the fortress and "forced an entrance in spite of Captain Cochrane, the commander, who defended it as long as he could. They then secured the captain triumphantly, gave three cheers, and hauled down the king's colors."[38]

Thomas Coffin Amory, in his "Military Service of General Sullivan," says (p. 295) that "the raiding force consisted of men whom Sullivan had been drilling for several months; that they captured 97 kegs of powder and a quantity of small ammunition which were used against the British at Bunker Hill."

The attack on this fort is worthy of far more consideration than has been given to it, for not only did it occur prior to the conflict at Concord, but was the direct cause of that conflict. It was as much the commencement of the Revolutionary war as was the attack on Fort Sumpter by the disunionists, in 1861, the commencement of the Civil War, and had precisely the same effect in each case. When the news reached London that a government fort had been stormed by an organized force, its garrison made prisoners and the flag of the empire torn down, the ministers seem to have become convinced that it was the determination of the colonists to make war upon the government. To tolerate such a proceeding would be a confession that all law and authority was at an end. Some vindication of that authority must be attempted. An order was dispatched to General Gage to retake the munitions that had been seized by the disunion forces, and any other found stored that might be used for attacking the government troops; surely a very mild measure of reprisal. It was in obedience to this order that the expedition was dispatched to Concord, that brought about the collision between the British and colonial troops and the so-called "Battle of Lexingon."

In Rhode Island, a revenue outrage of more than common importance occurred at this time. A small schooner named the Gaspee, in the government service, with a crew of some 25 sailors, commanded by Lieutenant Duddingston, while pursuing a suspected smuggler on June 6, 1772, ran aground on a sand-bar near Providence, and the ship which had escaped brought the news to that town. Soon after a drum was beat through the streets, and all persons who were disposed to assist in the destruction of the king's ship were summoned to meet at the home of a prominent citizen. There appears to have been no concealment or disguise, and shortly after 10 at night eight boats, full of armed men, started with muffled oars on the expedition. They reached the stranded vessel in the deep darkness of the early morning. Twice the sentinel on board vainly hailed them, when Duddingston himself appeared in his shirt upon the gunwale and asked who it was that approached. The leader of the party answered with a profusion of oaths that he was the sheriff of the county, come to arrest him, and while he was speaking one of his men deliberately shot the lieutenant, who fell, badly wounded, on the deck. In another minute the "Gaspee" was boarded and taken without any loss to the attacking party. The crew was overpowered, bound and placed upon the shore. Duddingston, his wounds having been dressed, was landed at a neighboring house. The party set fire to the "Gaspee," and while its flames announced to the whole county the success of the expedition, they returned, in broad daylight to Providence. Large rewards were offered by the British government for their detection, but though they were universally known, no evidence could be obtained, and the outrage was entirely unpunished. It is to be observed that this act of piracy and open warfare against the government was committed by the citizens of a colony that had no cause for controversy with the home government, and whose constitution was such a liberal one that it was not found necessary to change one word of it when the province became an independent republic.

General Gage, being informed that powder and other warlike stores were being collected in surrounding towns for the purpose of being used against the government, he sent, on Sept. 1, 1774, two hundred soldiers up the Mystic river, who took from the powder house 212 barrels of powder, and brought off two field-pieces from Cambridge. On April 18, 1775, at 10 o'clock at night, eight hundred men embarked from Boston Common and crossed the Charles river in boats to the Cambridge shore. At the same time Paul Revere rowed across the river, lower down, and landed in Charlestown, and then, on horseback, went in advance of the troops to alarm the country. He was pursued, and with another scout named Dawes, was captured by the troops. At the dawn of day Lexington was reached, 12 miles distant from Boston, where the troops were confronted on the village green by the Lexington militia, which was ordered by the commander of the British expedition to disperse, but failing to do so they were fired on by the troops, and several of them killed. The militia dispersed without firing a shot.

The troops gave three cheers in token of their victory, and continued their march to Concord, their objective point, where they were informed munitions of war were being collected. They arrived there at 9 o'clock, and after destroying the stores collected there, they took up their march for Boston. But now the alarm had spread through the country. The troops had hardly commenced marching, when, crossing the North Bridge they were fired upon by the Americans; one soldier was killed and another wounded.[39]

Captain Davis and Abner Hosmer, two Americans, were killed by the British fire. On the march towards Boston the troops were met by the fire of the Americans from the stonewalls on either side of the highway, along the skirt of every wood or orchard, and from every house or barn or cover in sight. The troops, exposed to such a galling attack in flank and rear, must have surrendered had they not been met with reinforcements from Boston. This very emergency had been anticipated, and General Gage had sent out a brigade of a thousand men, and two field-pieces, under Earl Percy. The forces met at Lexington about 2 o'clock in the afternoon. After a short interval of rest and refreshment, the troops took up their line of march for Boston. At every point on the road they met an increasing number of militia, who by this time had gathered in such force as to constitute a formidable foe. It was a terrible march. Many were killed, on both sides, and it was with the greatest difficulty that Lord Percy was able at last, about sunset, to bring his command to Charlestown Neck under cover of the ships of war. The troops lost that day in killed, wounded, and missing, 273; the Americans, 93. The war of the Revolution had commenced. The fratricidal struggle was entered into, between men of the same race and blood who had stood shoulder to shoulder in many a hard-fought field; brothers, fathers and sons, were to engage in a deadly struggle that should last for years, and which, eighty-six years afterwards, was to be repeated over again in the war between the North and South.

CHAPTER V.

THE LOYALISTS OF MASSACHUSETTS.

At the outbreak of the American rebellion the great majority of men in the colonies could be regarded as indifferent, ready to stampede and rush along with the successful party. Loyalty was their normal condition; the state had existed and did exist, and it was the disunionists who must do the converting, the changing of men's opinion to suit a new order of things which the disunionists believed necessary for their welfare. Opposed to the revolutionists were the crown officials, dignified and worthy gentlemen, who held office by virtue of a wise selection. Hardly to be distinguished from the official class were the clergy of the Established Church, who were partially dependent for their livings upon the British government. The officers and clergy received the support of the landowners and the substantial business men, the men who were satisfied with the existing order of things. The aristocracy of culture, of dignified professions and callings, of official rank and hereditary wealth, was, in a large measure, found in the Loyalist party. Such worthy and talented men of high social positions were the leaders of the opposition to the rebellion. Supporting them was the natural conservatism of all prosperous men. The men who had abilities which could not be recognized under the existing regime, and those that form the lower strata of every society and are every ready to overthrow the existing order of things, these were the ones who were striving to bring about a change—a revolution.

The persecution of the Loyalists by the Sons of Despotism, or the "Sons of Liberty," as they called themselves, was mercilessly carried out; every outrage conceivable was practiced upon them. Freedom of speech was suppressed; the liberty of the press destroyed; the voice of truth silenced, and throughout the colonies was established a lawless power. As early as 1772 "committees of correspondence" had been organized throughout Massachusetts. Adams exclaimed in admiration: "What an engine! France imitated it and produced a revolution."[40] Leonard, the Loyalist, with "abhorrence pronounced it the foulest, subtlest and most venomous serpent ever issued from the egg of sedition."[41] Insult and threat met the Loyalist at every turn. One day he was, perhaps, set upon a cake of ice to cool his loyalty,[42] and was then informed that a certain famous liberty man had sworn to be his butcher. Next he was told that he might expect a "sans benito" of tar and feathers, and even an "auto da fe." The committee sent "Patriot" newspapers and other propaganda to the wavering or obstinate, but seldom failed to follow this system of conversion with a personal interview if the literature failed. Such were the means that were used by the "Sons of Despotism" to bring over the mass of the people to the disunion cause.

In the courts of law, not even the rights of a foreigner were left to the Loyalist. If his neighbors owed him money he had no legal redress until he took an oath that he favored American independence. All legal action was denied him. He might be assaulted, insulted, blackmailed or slandered, though the law did not state it so boldly, yet he had no recourse in law. No relative or friend could leave an orphan child, to his guardianship. He could be the executor or administrator of no man's estate. He could neither buy land nor transfer it to another; he was denied his vocation and his liberty to speak or write his opinions. All these restrictions were not found in any one place, nor at any one time, nor were they always rigorously enforced. Viewed from the distance of one hundred years, the necessity of such barbarous severity is not now apparent.

When this ostracism was approved by a large majority of the inhabitants of a town the victim was practically expelled from the community. None dared to give him food or comfort. He was a pariah, and to countenance him was to incur public wrath.

On January 17, 1777, Massachusetts passed an Act punishing with death the "Crime of adhering to Great Britain." The full extent of this law was not carried into effect in Massachusetts, but it was in other colonies. The "Black List" of Pennsylvania contained the names of 490 persons attainted of high treason. Only a few actually suffered the extreme penalty. Among these were two citizens of Philadelphia—Mr. Roberts and Mr. Carlisle. When the British army evacuated Philadelphia, they remained, although warned of their danger. They were at once seized by the returning disunionists and condemned to be hanged. Mr. Roberts's wife and children went before congress and on their knees supplicated for mercy, but in vain. In carrying out the sentence the two men, with halters around their necks, were walked to the gallows behind a cart, "attended with all the apparatus which makes such scenes truly horrible." A guard of militia accompanied them; but few spectators.[43]

At the gallows Mr. Roberts' behavior, wrote a loyal friend, "did honor to human nature," and both showed fortitude and composure.

Roberts told his audience that his conscience acquitted him of guilt: that he suffered for doing his duty to his sovereign; that his blood would one day be required at their hands. Turning to his children he charged and exhorted them to remember his principles for which he died, and to adhere to them while they had breath. "He suffered with the resolution of a Roman," wrote a witness.

After the execution, the bodies of the two men were carried away by friends and their burial was attended by over 4000 in procession.[44]

Some of the more heartless leaders of the rebellion defended this severity of treatment and thought "hanging the traitors" would have a good effect and "give stability to the new government." "One suggested that the Tories seemed designed for this purpose by Providence."[44] The more thoughtful leaders, however, denounced the trial of Loyalists for treason, and Washington feared that it might prove a dangerous expedient. It was true, he granted, that they had joined the British after such an offence had been declared to be treason; but as they had not taken the oath, nor entered into the American service, it would be said that they had a right to choose their side. "Again," he added, "by the same rule that we try them may not the enemy try any natural-born subject of Great Britain taken in arms in our service? We have a great number of them and I, therefore, think we had better submit to the necessity of treating a few individuals who may really deserve a severer fate, as prisoners of war, than run the risk of giving an opening for retaliation upon the Europeans in our service."[45]

American writers never fail to tell of the "brutal and inhuman treatment" of the American prisoners by the British in the prisons and prison-ships at New York, where about five thousand prisoners were confined. We are informed that their sufferings in the prison-ships were greater than those in the prisons on land; that "every morning the prisoners brought up their bedding to be aired, and after washing the decks, they were allowed to remain above till sunset, when they were ordered below with imprecations and the savage cry, "Down, rebels! Down!" The hatches were then closed, and in serried ranks they lay down to sleep," etc.[46] That many died from dysentery, smallpox and prison fever, there is no doubt; but there is not any record that they were starved to death. Compare the above treatment of prisoners by the British with that of the Loyalists by the disunionists! In East Granby, Connecticut, was situated an underground prison which surpassed the horrors of the Black Hole of Calcutta. These barbarities and inhumanities were the portion of those who had been guilty of loyalty to their country, a social class distinguished by both their public and private virtues. It seemed almost incredible that their fellow-countrymen should have confined them in a place unfit for human beings.

This den of horrors, known as "Newgate Prison," was an old worked-out copper mine, sixty feet under ground, in the hills of East Granby. The only entrance to it was by means of a ladder down a shaft which led to the caverns under ground. The darkness was intense; the caves reeked with filth; vermin abounded; water trickled from the roof and oozed from the sides of the cavern; huge masses of earth were perpetually falling off. In the dampness and the filth the clothing of the prisoners grew mouldy and rotted away, and their limbs became stiff with rheumatism.

During the Revolutionary war Loyalists of importance were confined in this place of horrors, then of national importance, although now but seldom referred to by American writers. Loyalists were consigned to it for safe keeping by Washington himself. In a letter dated December 11, 1775, addressed to the Committee of Safety, Simsbury, Conn., he informed them that the "charges of their imprisonment will be at the Continental expense," and "to confine them in such manner so that they cannot possibly make their escape."[47]

"Driven to desperation the Loyalists rose against their guards. About 10 o'clock at night, on the 18th of May, 1781, when all the guards but two had retired to rest, a wife of one of the prisoners appeared, to whom permission was given to visit her husband in the cavern. Upon the hatches being removed to admit her passing down, the prisoners who were at the door, and prepared for the encounter, rushed up, seized the gun of the sentry on duty, who made little or no resistance, and became master of the guard-room before those who were asleep could be aroused to make defence. The officer of the guard who resisted was killed, and others wounded. The guard was easily overcome, a few sought safety in flight, but the greater number were disarmed by the prisoners. The prisoners, numbering twenty-eight persons, having equipped themselves with the captured arms, escaped, and, with few exceptions avoided recapture."[48]

The heart sickens at the recital of the sufferings of the Loyalists, and we turn in disgust from the views which the pen of faithful history records.

After the legislation of 1778 every grievance the colonists had put forward as a reason for taking up arms had been redressed, every claim they had presented had been abandoned, and from the time when the English parliament surrendered all right of taxation and internal legislation in the colonies, and when the English Commissioners laid their propositions before the Americans, the character of the war had wholly changed. It was no longer a war for self-taxation and constitutional liberty. It was now an attempt, with the assistance of France and Spain, to establish independence by shattering the British empire.

There were brave and honest men in America who were proud of the great and free empire to which they belonged, who had no desire to shirk the burden of maintaining it, who remembered with gratitude that it was not colonial, but all English blood that had been shed around Quebec and Montreal in defence of the colonies. Men who with nothing to hope for from the crown were prepared to face the most brutal mob violence and the invectives of a scurrilous press; to risk their fortunes, their reputation, and sometimes even their lives, in order to avert civil war and ultimate separation. Most of them ended their days in poverty and exile, and, as the supporters of a beaten cause, history has paid but a scanty tribute to their memory. But they comprised some of the best and ablest men America has ever produced, and they were contending for an ideal which was at least as worthy as that for which Washington fought.

It was the maintenance of one great, free, industrial, and pacific empire, comprising the whole British race, holding the richest plains of Asia in possession, blending all that was most venerable in an ancient civilization with the abundant energies of a youthful social combination likely in a few generations to outstrip every commercial competitor, and to acquire an indisputable ascendency among the nations. Such an ideal was a noble one, and there were Americans who were prepared to make any personal sacrifice to realize it. These men were the LOYALISTS of the Revolution. Consider what the result would be today had not this "Anglo-Saxon Schism," as Goldwin Smith calls it, taken place. There would be a great English-speaking nation of 130,000,000 that could dominate the world. They would in all substantial respects be one people, in language, literature, institutions, and social usages, whether settled in South Africa, in Australia, in the primitive home, or in North America.

Because the Revolution had its origin in Massachusetts, and the old Bay State furnished a large part of the men and the means to carry it to a successful issue,[49] it seems to have been taken for granted that the people embraced the popular side almost in a mass.

A more mistaken opinion than this has seldom prevailed. At the evacuation of Boston, General Gage was accompanied by eleven hundred Loyalists, which included the best people of the town. Boston at that time had a population of 16,000. "Among these persons of distinguished rank and consideration there were members of the council, commissioners, officers of the customs, and other officials, amounting to one hundred and two; of clergymen, eighteen; of inhabitants of country towns, one hundred and five; of merchants and other persons who resided in Boston, two hundred and thirteen; of farmers, mechanics and traders, three hundred and eighty-two."[50]

Cambridge lost nearly all her men of mark and high standing; nearly all the country towns were thus bereft of the very persons who had been the most honored and revered. With the exiles were nearly one hundred graduates of Harvard college.

Among the proscribed and banished were members of the old historic families, Hutchinson, Winthrop, Saltonstall, Quincy, the Sewells, and Winslows, families of which the exiled members were not one whit behind those that remained, in intelligence, social standing and moral worth.

At the evacuation of New York and Savannah no fewer than 30,000 persons left the United States for Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. From northern New York and Vermont the Loyalists crossed over into Upper Canada, and laid the foundations of that prosperous province under the vigorous leadership of Governor Simcoe, who, during the war, commanded a regiment of Loyalist rangers which had done efficient service. Many of the Southern Loyalists settled in Florida, the Bahamas and the West India Islands.

Familiar New England names meet one at every turn in the maritime provinces, especially Nova Scotia. Dr. Inglis, from Trinity church, New York, was the first bishop, and Judge Sewell, of Massachusetts, the first chief justice there. The harshness of the laws and the greed of the new commonwealth had driven into exile men who could be ill spared, and whose absence showed itself in the lack of balance and of political steadiness which characterized the early history of the republic, while the newly-founded colonies, composed almost exclusively of conservatives, were naturally slow, but sure, in their development. The men who were willing to give up home, friends and property, for an idea, are not men to be despised; they are, rather, men for us to claim with pride and honor as American—men of the same blood, and the same speech as ourselves; Americans who were true to their convictions and who suffered everything except the loss of liberty, for their political faith. We look in vain among the lists of voluntary and banished refugees from Massachusetts for a name on which rests any tradition of disgrace or infamy, to which the finger of scorn can be pointed. Can this be said of the Revolutionary leaders of Massachusetts, the so-called patriots, to whom the Revolution owes its inception? If the reader has any doubts on this subject, then let him compare the lives of the Loyalists, as given in this work, with those of Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and other Revolutionary leaders. The Loyalists were generally people of substance; their stake in the country was greater, even, than that of their opponents; their patriotism, no doubt, fully as fervent. "There is much that is melancholy, of which the world knows but little, connected with this expulsion from the land they sincerely loved. The estates of the Loyalists were among the fairest, their stately mansions stood on the sightliest hill-brows, the richest and best-tilled meadows were their farms; the long avenue, the broad lawn, the trim hedge about the garden, servants, plate, pictures, for the most part these things were at the homes of the Loyalists. They loved beauty, dignity and refinement." The rude contact of town meetings was offensive to their tastes. The crown officials were courteous, well-born and congenial gentlemen.

"The graceful, the chivalrous, the poetic, the spirits over whom these feelings had power, were sure to be Loyalists. Democracy was something rude and coarse, and independence to them meant a severance of those connections of which a colonist ought to be proudest.

"Hence when the country rose, many a high-bred, honorable gentleman, turned the key in his door, drove down his tree-lined avenue with his refined dame and carefully-guarded children at his side, turned his back on his handsome estate, and put himself under the shelter of the proud banner of St. George. It was a mere temporary refuge, he thought, and he promised himself a speedy return when discipline and loyalty should have put down the rabble and the misled rustics.

"But the return was never to be. The day went against them; they crowded into ships, with the gates of their country barred forever behind them. They found themselves penniless upon shores sometimes bleak and barren, always showing scant hospitality to outcasts who came empty-handed, and there they were forced to begin life anew. Consider the condition of Hutchinson, Apthorp, Gray, Clarke, Faneuil, Sewell, Royal, Vassall, and Leonard, families of honorable note bound in with all that was best in the life of the Province." "Who can think of their destiny unpityingly."[51]

A man suspected of loyalty to the crown was not left at peace, but was liable to peremptory banishment unless he would swear allegiance to the "Sons of Liberty," and if he returned he was subject to forcible deportation, and to death on the gallows if he returned a second time.

One of the first acts of the revolutionary party when they returned to Boston after the British evacuation, was to confiscate and sell all property belonging to Loyalists and apply the receipts to supply the public needs. The names and fate of a considerable proportion of these Loyalists and those that preceded and succeeded the Boston emigration, will be found in succeeding pages. Most of them went to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and St. John, New Brunswick, where they endured great privation. Many, however, subsequently went to England and there passed the remainder of their lives. We find seventy or more of the Massachusetts Loyalists holding offices of greater or less importance in the provinces, and many of them were employed in places of high trust and large influence in various parts of the Empire. They and their sons filled for more than half a century the chief offices in the Nova Scotia and New Brunswick judiciary, and they and their descendants must have contributed in a degree not easily estimated to the elevation and progress of those provinces.

Men whose fathers, mocked and broken
For the honor of a name,
Would not wear the conqueror's token,
Could not salt their bread with shame.
Plunged them in the virgin forest
With their axes in their hands,
Built a Province as a bulwark
For the loyal of the lands.

Won it by the axe and harrow,
Held it by the axe and sword,
Bred a race with brawn and marrow,
From no alien over-lord.
Gained the right to guide and govern;
Then with labor strong and free
Forged the land a shield of Empire,
Silver sea to silver sea.
—Duncan C. Scott.

In this way the United States, out of their own children, built upon their borders a colony of rivals in navigation and the fisheries, whose loyalty to the British crown was sanctified by misfortune. It is impossible to say how many of these Loyalists would have been on the Revolutionists' side had the party opposed to the crown been kept under the control of its leaders. But they were, most of them, of the class of men that would have the least amount of tolerance for outrage and rapine, and when we consider how closely they were identified with the institutions of their native province, and how little remains on record of anything like rancor or malignity on their part, there can be little doubt that a considerable proportion of them would have been saved for the republic but for the very acts which posterity has been foolish enough to applaud, and for their loss Massachusetts was appreciably the poorer for more than one or two generations.

It is also admitted by those who are authorities on the subject, that if it had not been for the brutal and intolerant persecution of the Loyalists, the ruthless driving of these unfortunate people from their homes, with the subsequent confiscation of property, the attempt to throw off the authority of Great Britain at the time of the Revolutionary War would not have succeeded; that is, people entirely or at least reasonably content with the previous political condition were terrorized into becoming patriots by the fear of the consequences that would follow if they remained Loyalists.

The fact is, that, as far as the Americans were in it, the war of the Revolution was a civil war in which the two sides were not far from equality in numbers, in social conditions, and in their manners and customs. The Loyalists contended all through the war that they were in a numerical majority, and if they could have been properly supported by British forces, the war might have ended in 1777, before the French alliance had given hope and strength to the separatist party. Sabine computes that there were at least 25,000 Americans in the military service of the King, at one time or another, during the wars. In New York, New Jersey, the Carolinas, and Georgia, the Loyalists outnumbered the Revolutionists. Even in New England, the nursery of the Revolution, the number was so large and so formidable, in the opinion of the Revolutionary leaders, that in order to suppress them there was established a reign of terror, anticipating the famous "Law of the Suspected" of the French Revolution. An irresponsible tyranny was established, of town and country committees, at whose beck and call were the so-called "Sons of Liberty." To these committees was entrusted absolute power over the lives and fortunes of their fellow citizens, and they proceeded on principles of evidence that would have shocked and scandalized a grand inquisitor.[52]

The rigorous measures adopted by the new governments in New England States, and the activity of their town committees, succeeded in either driving out these Loyalist citizens, or reducing them to harmless inactivity. In New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, the Carolinas and Georgia, they remained strong and active throughout the war, and loyalty was in those states in the ascendancy.

If the Loyalists were really a majority, as they claimed to be, the disunionists were determined to break them up. Loyalists were tarred and feathered and carried on rails, gagged and bound for days at a time; stoned, fastened in a room with a fire and the chimney stopped on top; advertised as public enemies, so that they would be cut off from all dealings with their neighbors; they had bullets shot into their bedrooms, their horses poisoned or mutilated; money or valuable plate extorted from them to save them from violence, and on pretence of taking security for their good behavior; their houses and ships burned; they were compelled to pay the guards who watched them in their houses, and when carted about for the mob to stare at and abuse, they were compelled to pay something at every town. For the three months of July, August and September of the year 1776, one can find in the American archives alone over thirty descriptions of outrages of this kind, and all this done by so-called "patriots" in the name of liberty! In short, lynch law prevailed for many years during the Revolution, and the habit became so fixed that it has never been given up. It was taken from the name of the brother of the man who founded Lynchburgh, Virginia.

Wherever the disunionists were most successful with this reign of terror, they drove all the judges from the bench, and abolished the courts, and for a long time there were no courts or public administration of the law, notably in New England.

To the mind of the Loyalists, all this lynching proceeding were an irrefragible proof not only that the disunionist party were wicked, but that their idea of independence of a country free from British control and British law were silly delusions, dangerous to all good order and civilization. That such a people could ever govern a country of their own and have in it that thing they were crying so much about, "liberty," was in their opinion beyond the bounds of intelligent belief. A recent American writer says: "The revolution was not by any means the pretty social event that the ladies of the so-called 'patriotic' societies suppose it to have been. It was, on the contrary, a rank and riotous rebellion against the long-established authority of a nation which had saved us from France, built us up into prosperity, and if she was ruling us today would, I am entirely willing to admit, abolish lynch-law, negro burning, municipal and legislative corruption, and all the other evils about which reformers fret." The same writer also says: "All that saved this country from complete annihilation was the assistance after 1778 of the French army, fleet, provisions, clothes, and loans of money, followed by assistance from Spain, and, at the last moment, by the alliance of Holland, and even with all this assistance the cause was, even as late as the year 1780, generally believed to be a hopeless one."[53] "In fact, Washington, at this time, was prepared to become a guerilla." In case of being further pressed, he said: "We must retire to Augusta County, in Virginia. Numbers will repair to us for safety, and we will then try a predatory war. If overpowered, we must cross the Allegheny Mountains."[54]

The question will naturally be asked why, if they were so numerous, were they not more successful, why did they yield to popular violence in New England, and desert the country while the contest was going on, Why did they not hold the Southern States, and keep them from joining the others in the Continental Congresses, and in the war?

In the first place, a negative attitude is necessarily an inactive one, and in consequence of this, and the fact that they could not take the initiative in action, the Loyalists were put at a disadvantage before the much better organization of the Revolutionary leaders. Though these were few in number in the South, they were of families of great social influence, and in the North were popular agitators of long experience. They manipulated the committee system so carefully that the colonies found themselves, before they were aware of the tendency of the actions of their deputies, involved in proceedings of very questionable legality, such as the boycotting agreement known as the "American Association," and other proceedings of the Continental Congress.[55] In regard to the subject of legal attainder and exile, Mr. Sabine remarks, very moderately and sensibly: "Nor is it believed that either the banishment or the confiscation laws, as they stood, were more expedient than just. The latter did little towards relieving the public necessities, and served only to create a disposition for rapacity, and to increase the wealth of favored individuals. Had the estates which were seized and sold been judiciously or honestly managed, a considerable sum would have found its way to the treasury; but, as it was, the amount was inconsiderable. Some of the wisest and purest Whigs of the time hung their heads in shame because of the passage of measures so unjustifiable, and never ceased to speak of them in terms of reprobation. Mr. Jay's disgust was unconquerable, and he never would purchase any property that had been forfeited under the Confiscation Act of New York."[56]

Judge Curwen, a Salem Loyalist, says: "So infamously knavish has been the conduct of the commissioners, that though frequent attempts have been made to bring them to justice and to respond for the produce of the funds resting in their hands, so numerous are the defaulters in that august body, the General Court, that all efforts have hitherto proved in vain. Not two pence on the pound have arrived to the public treasury of all the confiscation."[57]

"The Loyalists, to a great extent, sprung from and represented the old gentry of the country. The prospect of seizing their property had been one great motive which induced many to enter the war. The new owners of the confiscated property now grasped the helm. New men exercised the social influence of the old families, and they naturally dreaded the restoration of those whom they had dispossessed."

At the close of the war, the Revolutionists committed a great crime. Instead of repealing the proscription and banishment acts, as justice and good policy required, they manifested a spirit to place the humbled and unhappy Loyalists beyond the pale of human sympathy. Hostilities at an end, mere loyalty should have been forgiven. When, in the civil war between the Puritans and the Stuarts, the former gained the ascendancy, and when at a later period the Commonwealth was established, Cromwell and his party wisely determined not to banish nor inflict disabilities on their opponents, and so, too, at the restoration of the monarchy, so general was the amnesty act in its provisions that it was termed an act of oblivion to the friends of Charles, and of grateful remembrance to his foes. The happy consequences which resulted from the conduct of both parties, and in both cases, were before the men of their own political and religious sympathies, the Puritans of the North and the Cavaliers of the South in America, but neither of them profited by it, at that time; but since then the wisdom of it has been exemplified by the happy consequences which have resulted to both parties engaged in the war of secession, where the United States wisely determined not to banish, confiscate, or inflict any disabilities on their opponents in the late seceded states.

The crime having been committed, thousands ruined and banished, new British colonies founded, animosities to continue for generations made certain, the violent Revolutionists of Massachusetts, New York and Virginia, were satisfied: all this accomplished and the statute-book was divested of its most objectionable enactments, and a few of the Loyalists returned to their old homes, but by far the greater part died in banishment.

No one who studies the history of the American Revolution can fail to be convinced that the persecution of the Loyalists had for its final result the severance of the North American continent into two nations. The people who inhabited Nova Scotia prior to the Revolution were largely New England settlers, who dispossessed the Acadians, and who for the most part sympathized with the revolutionary movement. But for the banishment of the Loyalists, Nova Scotia would have long continued with but a very sparse population, and certainly could never have hoped to obtain so enterprising, active, and energetic a set of inhabitants as those who were supplied to it by the acts of the several states hostile to the Loyalists. The same can also be said of Upper Canada. The hold of the British government upon the British provinces of North America which remained to the crown, would have been slight indeed, but for the active hostility of the Loyalists to their former fellow-countrymen. They created the state of affairs which consolidated British power on this continent, and built it up into the Dominion of Canada, which in another century will probably contain one hundred million inhabitants.

The treaty of peace with Great Britain, like other documents of its kind, contained provisions of give and take. After signature by the commissioners in Paris it was ratified with due consideration by the Continental Congress. The advantages which it secured were not merely of a sentimental nature, but material. It was justly regarded by enlightened citizens of the states as a triumph of diplomacy. The credit of Britain in the bargain was more of the heart than of the head. She was willing to concede substantial and important benefits in order to secure the lives and property of the Loyalists who had clung to her and had sustained her arms. Looking at the matter now, in a cool light, she blundered into sacrifices that were altogether needless, even with this aim in view, and knowledge of the knavery that was to follow.

The game was played, and she had lost. North America, in the eyes of her statesmen, was a strip of eastern seaboard; the great lakes were but dimly understood; the continent beyond the Mississippi was ignored. She gave much more than she needed to have given both in east and west, to attain her honorable end, and what was more immediately distressing, she received little or no value in return for her liberal concession.

"That each party should hold what it possesses, is the first point from which nations set out in framing a treaty of peace. If one side gives up a part of its acquisitions, the other side renders an equivalent in some other way. What is the equivalent given to Great Britain for all the important concessions she has made? She has surrendered the capital of this state (New York) and its large dependencies. She is to surrender our immensely valuable posts on the frontier, and to yield to us a vast tract of western territory, with one-half of the lakes, by which we shall command almost the whole fur trade. She renounces to us her claim to the navigation of the Mississippi and admits us to share in the fisheries even on better terms than we formerly enjoyed. As she was in possession, by right of war, of all these objects, whatever may have been our original pretensions to them, they are, by the laws of nations, to be considered as so much given up on her part. And what do we give in return? We stipulate that there shall be no future injury to her adherents among us. How insignificant the equivalent in comparison with the acquisition! A man of sense would be ashamed to compare them, a man of honesty, not intoxicated with passion, would blush to lisp a question of the obligation to observe the stipulation on our part."[58] In return for these advantages which Hamilton informs us Great Britain gave to the States, Congress had most solemnly undertaken three things, and people, wearied by the sufferings of our eight years' war, would have gladly purchased the blessings of peace at a much higher price. The first of these conditions was that no obstacle or impediment should be put in the way of the recovery of debts due to British subjects from the citizens of the Republic; the second that no fresh prosecution or confiscation should be directed against Loyalists; the third, that Congress should sincerely recommend to the legislatures of the various states a repeal of the existing acts of confiscation, which affected the property of these unfortunate persons. On the last no stress could be laid, but the first and second were understood by every man, honest or dishonest, in the same sense as when peace was joyfully accepted. The American states took the benefits of peace which the efforts of Congress had secured to them, they accepted the advantages of the treaty which their representative had signed, they watched and waited until the troops of King George were embarked in transports at New York for England, and then proceeded to deny, in a variety of tones, all powers in the central government to bind them in the matter of the quid pro quo. It was not a great thing which Congress had undertaken to do, or one which could be of any material advantage to their late enemy. All their promises amounted to was that they would abstain from the degradation of a petty and personal revenge, and this promise they proceeded to break in every particular.

As Hamilton wisely and nobly urged, the breach was not only a despicable perfidy, but an impolitic act, since Loyalists might become good citizens and the state needed nothing more urgently than population. But no sooner was danger at a distance, embarked on transports, than the states assumed an attitude of defiance. The thirteen legislatures vied with one another in the ingenuity of measures for defeating the recovery of debts due to British creditors. They derided the recommendation to repeal oppressive acts, and to restore confiscated property, and proceeded, without regard either for honor or consequences, to pass new acts of wider oppression and to order confiscation on a grander scale. There was a practical unanimity in engaging in fresh persecutions of Loyalists, not merely by the enactment of oppressive civil laws, but by even denying them the protection afforded by a just enforcement of the criminal laws. In many districts these unfortunate persons were robbed, tortured, and even put to death with impunity, and over a hundred thousand driven into exile in Canada, Florida and the Bahamas.

Measures were passed amid popular rejoicing to obstruct the recovery of debts due to British merchants and to enable the fortunate Americans to revel unmolested in the pleasure of stolen fruits. It is remarkable how at this period public opinion was at once so childish and rotten, and one is at a loss whether to marvel most at its recklessness of credit or its unvarnished dishonesty; it was entirely favorable to the idea of private theft, and the interest of rogues was considered with compassion by the grave and respectable citizens who composed the legislatures of the various states. It was the same spirit which had violated the Burgoyne convention at Saratoga, the same which in later days preached the gospel of repudiation, greenbackism, silver currency, violated treaties with the Indians, that produced a "Century of Dishonor."

Meanwhile the policy of breach of faith was producing its natural crop of inconvenience. Dishonest methods were not the unmixed advantages which these adherents had supposed, when they engaged upon them in a spirit of light-hearted cunning. For in spite of all the ill-feeling, a large demand arose for British goods. For these, specie had to be paid down on the nail in all cases where wares or material were not taken in exchange, since no British merchant would now give one pennyworth of credit, out of respect to the measures of the various states for the obstruction of the payment of British debts. It was true that Britain was in no mood to embark upon a fresh war for the punishment of broken promises. She had surrendered the chief hostage when she evacuated her strategical position at New York, but she declined to hand over the eight important frontier posts which she held upon the American side of the line between Lake Michigan and Lake Champlain. These posts were much in themselves, and as a symbol of dominion to the Indian tribes. They were much also as a matter of pride, while their retention carried with it the whole of the valuable fur trade, which consequently, until 1795, when they were at last surrendered, brought considerable profits to British merchants.

To the short-sighted policy which banished the Loyalists may be traced nearly all the political troubles of this continent, in which Britain and the United States have been involved. "Dearly enough have the people of the United States paid for the crime of the violent Whigs of the Revolution, for to the Loyalists who were driven away, and to their descendants, we owe almost entirely the long and bitter controversy relative to our northeastern boundaries, and the dispute about our right to the fisheries in the colonial seas."

CHAPTER VI.

THE REVOLUTIONIST.

The American Revolution, like most other revolutions, was the work of an energetic minority who succeeded in committing an undecided and fluctuating majority to courses for which they had little love; leading them, step by step, to a position from which it was impossible to recede. To the last, however, we find vacillation, uncertainty, half measures, and, in large classes, a great apparent apathy. There was, also, a great multitude, who, though they would never take up arms for the king; though they, perhaps, agreed with the constitutional doctrines of the revolution, dissented on grounds of principle, policy, or interest, from the course they were adopting.

That the foregoing is a correct presentation of the case is shown by a letter written by John Adams, when in Congress, to his wife. He says:

"I have found this congress like the last. When we first came together, I found a strong jealousy of us from New England, and the Massachusetts in particular—suspicions entertained of designs of independency, an American republic, Presbyterian principles, and twenty other things."[59]

It was an open question with many whether a community liable to such outbreaks of popular fury did not need a strongly repressive government; and especially when the possibilities of a separation from the mother country was contemplated, it was a matter of doubt whether such a people were fit for self-government. Was it not possible that the lawless and anarchical spirit which had of late years been steadily growing, and which the "patriotic" party had actively encouraged, would gain the upper hand, and the whole fabric of society would be dissolved?

In another letter of John Adams to his wife at this time, he gives us an idea of what the opinion was of the Loyalists concerning the doctrines taught by the disunionists, and which, he says, "Must be granted to be a likeness." "They give rise to profaneness, intemperance, thefts, robberies, murders, and treason; cursing, swearing, drunkenness, gluttony, lewdness, trespassing, mains, are necessarily involved in them. Besides they render the populace, the rabble, the scum of the earth, insolent and disorderly, impudent and abusive. They give rise to lying, hypocrisy, chicanery, and even perjury among the people, who are drawn to such artifices and crime to conceal themselves and their companions from prosecution in consequence of them. This is the picture drawn by the Tory pencil, and it must be granted to be a likeness."[60]

There are several passages in the writings of John Adams that seem to indicate that he at times had doubts of the righteousness of the course he had pursued. They were written in his later years, though one refers to an incident alleged to have occurred during his early manhood. In a letter to a friend in 1811, he thus moralizes: "Have I not been employed in mischief all my days? Did not the American Revolution produce the French Revolution? And did not the French Revolution produce all the calamities and desolations to the human race and the whole globe ever since?" But he justifies himself with the reflection: "I meant well, however; my conscience was as clear as crystal glass, without a scruple or doubt. I was borne along by an irresistible sense of duty." In his diary Mr. Adams recalls to mind one incident which occurred in 1775. He mentions the profound melancholy which fell upon him in one of the most critical moments of the struggle, when a man whom he knew to be a horse-jockey and a cheat, and whom, as an advocate, he had often defended in the law courts, came to him and expressed the unbounded gratitude he felt for the great things which Adams and his colleagues had done. "We can never," he said, "be grateful enough to you. There are now no courts of justice in this province, and I hope there will never be another." "Is this the object," Adams continued, "for which I have been contending? said I to myself. Are these the sentiments of such people, and how many of them are there in the country? Half the nation, for what I know; for half the nation are debtors, if not more, and these have been in all the countries the sentiments of debtors. If the power of the country should get into such hands—and there is great danger that it will—to what purpose have we sacrificed our time, health and everything else?"[61]

Misgivings of this kind must have passed through many minds. To some may have come the warning words of Winthrop, the father of Boston, uttered one hundred and fifty years before these events occurred, in which he said: "Democracy is, among most civil nations, accounted the meanest and worst of all forms of government, and histories record that it hath always been of least continuance and fullest of trouble."[62]

There was a doubt in the minds of many people, which we have often heard uttered in recent times, with reference to the French people in their long series of revolutions, and equally so with the Spanish-American republics with their almost annual revolutions, whether these words of Winthrop were not correct, and that the people were really incapable of self-government. It was a doubt which the revolution did not silence, for the disturbing elements which had their issue in the Shay Rebellion, The Whiskey Insurrection and the mutiny of the Pennsylvania Line, in 1781, were embers of a fire, smothered, not quenched, which rendered state government insecure till it was welded into the Federal Union. There was a widespread dislike to the levelling principles of New England, to the arrogant, restless and ambitious policy of its demagogues; to their manifest desire to invent or discover grievances, foment quarrels and keep the wound open and festering.[63]

Those who rebelled in good faith did so because they feared that the power of Parliament to tax them moderately to raise money for their own defence might be used sometime in the future for a less worthy purpose, and then they would all be "slaves." Their argument led to mob rule and anarchy, till the adaption of the Federal Constitution, after the close of the Revolutionary War.