CHAPTER VII.

AMERICAN AFFAIRS IN EUROPE-THE BRITISH

MINISTRY-THE PARLIAMENT AND THE AMERICANS-JAMES OTIS DISABLED-TROOPS IN BOSTON-INTERFERENCE WITH POPULAR RIGHTS RESENTED-DISTURBANCE IN NEW YORK-VIOLATION OF NON-IMPORTATION AGREEMENTS AND CONSEQUENCES-AFFRAY WITH ROPE-MAKERS-BOSTON MASSACRE-AFTER-ACTION OF THE PEOPLE-FUNERAL OF THE VICTIMS-EFFECTS OF THE MASSACRE-A TRIUMPH-UNWISE ACTION OF THE BRITISH MINISTRY-FEELINGS OF THE AMERICANS-IMPORTATIONS RENEWED.

ITS

A

T the beginning of 1770, the quarrel between Great Britain and her American colonies was a chief topic for discussion and speculation in European court-circles. The French were watching the course of events with intense interest. Du Chatelet, in London, was keeping Choiseul well informed of every political movement bearing upon American affairs; and the sentiment of wise men on the continent, as well as the middling-classes of Great Britain, was rapidly drifting in favor of the really persecuted colonists. The British cabinet had not been in perfect unity for some time on the American question, and had just been recast. The Duke of Grafton, at whom "Junius" was then hurling his keenest shafts, had retired from the premiership, and Lord North had become prime minister of England, with a good working majority in Parliament. The Opposition in Parliament were bold, bitter, and defiant. Sir George Saville, in debate, charged the House of Commons with an invasion of the rights of the people; when a ministerial member said: "In times of less licentiousness, members have been sent to the Tower for words of less offence." Saville instantly replied: "The mean consideration of my own safety shall never be put in the balance against my duty to my constituents. I will own no superior but the laws; nor bend the knee to any but to Him who made me." Lord North well knew the strength of the popular will behind these brave words, and bore the reproach quietly. By adroit management he stilled the rising tempest of indignation that was agitating the majority. In the House of Lords, Chatham, whose voice had been silent a long time, spoke warmly in favor of being just toward the Americans. "Let us save the constitution, dangerously invaded at home," he said; "and let us extend its benefits to the remotest corners of the empire. Let slavery exist no

CHAP. VII.

THE ASSAULT ON JAMES OTIS.

677

where among us; for whether it be in America, or in Ireland, or here at home, you will find it a disease which spreads by contact, and soon reaches from the extremity to the heart." These words from both houses of Parliament went over the sea as pledges of hope for the Americans, for lately they had received only frowns from the national legislature. The colonists were irritated but calm, because they were conscious of their innate strength and the righteousness of their cause. Their just anger was controlled by wise judgment and marvellous sagacity. The bond of their union was growing stronger every hour because of common danger.

Boston was then the focus of rebellious thought and action in America. Samuel Adams and his compatriots were longing for independence, and boldly prophesying the birth of a new nation in America; but his brave and fiery coadjutor, James Otis, had lately been disabled by the violence of a crown-officer, to which allusion has already been made. Mr. Robinson, one of the commissioners of customs, had misrepresented Otis in England. The latter made a severe attack upon Robinson in a Boston newspaper. For this the commissioner attempted to pull Otis's nose in a coffee-house. A fracas ensued, when Otis was so severely beaten that he never fairly recovered. His brain was disturbed by a blow on the head from a heavy His great usefulness at that crisis was hopelessly impaired. John Adams, in his diary for January, 1770, gives a melancholy account of the patriot's mental condition: "Otis," he wrote, "is in confusion yet; he loses himself; he rambles and wanders like a ship without a helm; attempted to tell a story which took up almost all the evening; the story may, at any time, be told in three minutes with all the graces it is capable of, but he took an hour. I fear he is not in his perfect mind. The nervous, the concise and pithy were his character till lately; now the verbose, the roundabout, and rambling and long-winded. In one word, Otis will

cane.

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 and inquiries. He mentioned his wife; said she was a good wife, too good for him; but she was a tory [she had married her daughter to a British officer], a high tory; she gave him such curtain-lectures, etc. In short, I never saw such an object of admiration, reverence, contempt, and compassion, all at once, as this. I fear, I tremble, I mourn, for the man and his country; many others mourn over him, with tears in their eyes." Poor Otis! He lived, disabled, until the great Revolution (in the earlier stages of which he had borne the most conspicuous part) was almost ended in the independence of his country. Late in May, 1782, while he was standing in the door of a friend at Andover

during a thunder-shower, he was instantly killed by a stroke of lightning-—a method of dying for which he had often expressed an earnest desire.

The troops in Boston were a source of constant irritation. "They must be removed to the Castle," said the good citizens. "They shall remain," said the crown-officers; and Hutchinson, in obedience to an order from Hillsborough, prorogued the Massachusetts Assembly till the middle of March, while some of them were on their way from a distance to hold a session in Boston. This arbitrary act inflamed the indignation of the people,

and stirred the ire of all the colonies. It was immediately followed by violations of the nonimportation agreement by a few covetous Boston merchants, who coalesced with the crown-officers. Among them were Hutchinson's sons, who were his agents. They secretly sold tea. A meeting of patriotic merchants was held, and in a body they went to the lieutenant-governor's house to treat with his sons, who had violated the agreement. He treated them as incipient insurgents, and would not allow them to enter. He sent the sheriff into an adjourned meeting of merchants to order them to disperse. The troops. were furnished with ball-cartridges, and Colonel Dalrymple was ready to shed blood in defence of the royal prerogative. The meeting sent a respectful letter to the governor, written by John Hancock, telling him plainly that their assemblage was lawful, and they should not disperse. Hutchinson, made wiser by past experience with an exasperated people, submitted to circumstances, and was quiet.

Bobbett

Meanwhile the insolence and aggressive acts of the soldiery in New York had aroused the people there to resistance. Although it was winter, the Sons of Liberty frequently gathered around the Liberty-Pole, which had stood defiantly since it was iron-bound in 1767. At midnight in Jan

CHAP. VII.

PATRIOTIC BOSTON WOMEN.

679

uary (1770), some armed men went stealthily from the barracks with chisels and axes, cut down the pole, sawed it in pieces, and piled the fragments in front of Montague's, the rendezvous of the Sons of Liberty. The perpetrators of the act were discovered at dawn. The bell of St. George's Chapel, in Beekman street, was rung as if there were a great conflagration, and at an early hour on the 17th of January, full three thousand people stood around the stump of the consecrated pole. By resolutions they declared their rights, and contempt of the soldiers as enemies to the Constitution. The soldiers posted an insulting placard about the town. For about three days the most intense excitement prevailed. In affrays with the citizens, the soldiers were generally defeated, and on one occasion several of them were disarmed. Quiet was restored at length. The people erected another Liberty-Pole upon private ground purchased for the purpose upon Broadway, near the present Warren street; and not long afterward the soldiers departed for Boston, where bloodshed had occurred.

In spite of the threatening attitude of the citizens, four or five Boston merchants continued to import and sell tea, the specially proscribed article. The women of Boston protested against this violation of a sacred pledge. The mistresses of three hundred families subscribed their names to a league, binding themselves not to drink any tea until the revenue act was repealed. Three days afterward the maidens of Boston were gathered in convention in the home of an opulent merchant, and there signed their names to the following pledge: "We, the daughters of those patriots who have and do now appear for the public interest, and in that principally regard their posterity as such, do with pleasure engage with them in denying ourselves the drinking of foreign tea, in hopes to frustrate a plan which tends to deprive a whole community of all that is valuable in life.”

The recusant merchants were unmoved, and Theophilus Lillie announced his intention to import and sell tea in spite of public opinion. That opinion soon appeared embodied in a little mob, composed chiefly of half-grown boys, who set up a wooden post in front of Lillie's store, with a rudely carved head upon it, and a hand pointing to the merchant's door as a place to be avoided. Lillie was exasperated, but dared not interfere. A neighboring merchant of his stripe, named Richardson, a rough, stout man, having more courage, tried to get a farmer, who was passing in his cart, to knock down the post with his hub. The man was a patriot and refused, when Richardson rushed out and attempted to pull it down with his own hands. He was pelted with dirt and stones. In violent anger, he came out of Lillie's house, into which he had been driven by the mob, with a shotgun, and discharged its contents, without aim, into the little mob. A lad

named Samuel Gore was slightly wounded, and another, named Christopher Snyder, was killed. He was the son of a poor German widow. The mob seized Richardson and an associate and hurried them to Faneuil Hall, where the citizens speedily assembled to the number of two or three hundred. Richardson was tried and found guilty of murder, but Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson refused to sign the death-warrant. After he had lain in prison two years, the king pardoned the offender.

The murder of Snyder produced a profound sensation in the public mind throughout the colonies, as a prophecy of coming war. In Boston his

It

funeral was made the occasion of a solemn pageant. His coffin was covered with inscriptions. One of these was: "Innocence itself is not safe." was borne to Liberty Tree, where a very large concourse of citizens of every class assembled, and followed the remains to the grave. In that procession nearly five hundred children took part. The pall was carried by six of the victim's school-mates. Relatives and friends and almost fifteen hundred citizens followed. The bells of the city and of the neighboring towns tolled while the procession was moving; and in the newspapers, and by the lips of grave speakers in the pulpit and on the rostrum, little Christopher