A Series of Unfortunate Events
A Tweaked Nose and a Coffee House Brawl ∙ An Incident on Boston Neck ∙ The Escapades of John Mein ∙ Tyranny or Chains ∙ The Storied Career of John Wilkes ∙ The MacDougall Affair ∙ The Brawl on Golden Hill ∙ The Saga of Lillie and Richardson ∙ A Martyr’s Funeral
A Tweaked Nose and a Coffee House Brawl
The end of 1769 and the first months of 1770 saw escalating tensions and confrontations between the opposing sides of the ‘Liberty Fiasco’; these opposing sides weren’t just redcoats versus citizens but also citizens versus citizens, as those loyal to King and Parliament stood against the hotheaded radicals preaching treasonous doctrines. The simmering tensions that lie at the root of the verbal invectives and the occasional scuffles of the past year of British occupation began bubbling over. Blood would be spilled, martyrs would be born, and ‘the American Cause’ would receive its greatest boom yet in the so-called Boston Massacre. Several episodes, both in Boston and New York, can be strung together like beaded pearls to form a necklace – or, one might argue, a noose – that glistened on the neck of colonial travails. There were confrontations between patriots and loyalists, such as the fistfight between James Otis and John Robinson and the rioting against the customs official Ebenezer Richardson, and confrontations between redcoats and rebels, such as a nerve-wracking encounter on Boston Neck and the brawl on New York’s Golden Hill. The first mortal victim of these encounters would be the eleven-year-old son of a German immigrant, whose blood was spilled not by redcoats but by an ex-Ranger caught on the wrong side of a patriot mob. That boy’s death would galvanize the populace and make the bubbling kettle steam, and a series of gruff fistfights and scuffles between Bostonians and redcoats would culminate in the infamous ‘Boston Massacre’ of 5 March 1770. Months before multiple citizens were killed in the snow in front of the Boston customs house, James Otis was seething at what he perceived to be gross injustices thrust upon him by loyalist crown officials. Otis, though never a beacon of calm and rationality, hadn’t taken the redcoat occupation well. He became increasingly erratic and
conspiratorial, to the point that even John Adams, who had once looked upon him as a mentor, detested his never-idle chatter. Adams quipped that Otis ‘left no elbow room’ in conversation as he dovetailed into epithets and tirades against the redcoats and his Tory detractors. When Otis read the letters of royal officials secured by Samuel Adams, his ire settled on two customs commissioners who had defamed him as a person ‘inimical to the rights of the Crown, and disaffected by his Majesty.' Otis’ cauldron of rage focused on John Robinson, an unpopular customs commissioner who’d played a leading role in the drama of Hancock’s sloop Liberty a year and a half before. Otis demanded ‘satisfaction’ from Robinson for dragging his name through the mud; because dueling was illegal, such ‘satisfaction’ could only be procured by the swift exchange of fists. Robinson ignored Otis – as many at this point, including patriots, were wont to do – and on 4 September 1769 Otis hoped to draw him out by publishing a threat in the Gazette. Robinson should know, he wrote, that ‘if he “officially” or in any other way misrepresents me [to the British government] I have a natural right if I can get no other satisfaction to break his head.’
The next day Otis moved to carry threat into action. Having heard that Robinson had bought a heavy walking stick – and knowing, too, that Robinson was an able-bodied man who had no need of a crutch – Otis purchased his own cane. That evening he strode to the British Coffee House, a popular watering hole on King Street whose clientele consisted of loud-mouthed Tories and British civil and military officers. Robinson had become a usual customer, moving table-to-table and building relationships with the higher-ups of the British command. When Otis stepped off the street and pushed his way inside, the tavern went quiet. Otis’ eyes swept table-to-table, searching for his quarry; his fiery countenance was matched by the steel glares of redcoat officers and crown officials who knew very well how the man standing in the entryway thought of them. Robinson had not yet arrived, so Otis confidently crossed the tavern, the eyes of his opponents sizing him up. He stopped at the bar to wait. The hush that had fallen over the tavern began to subside, though it resumed when Robinson entered. The customs collector would’ve been confused at the quiet greeting his arrival, at least until he saw Otis standing tall at the bar, the brute walking stick in his hands. Those gathered knew of the ongoing quarrel between Otis and Robinson, for Otis made sure to drench the patriot papers with his own brand of justice, and they were eager to see how the encounter played out. Robinson, noting that Otis carried no sword, removed his, setting it atop a table. He approached Otis, who demanded, yet again, the satisfaction of flying fists.
‘I am happy to do it,’ Robinson gleamed.
‘Then come with me,’ Otis snarled, making to step past Robinson and making for the door. He wanted to fight outside, in the street, rather than in the coffee house teeming with Robinson’s supporters – but before Otis could get past him, Robinson grabbed him by the nose and did the unthinkable: he tweaked it. This may seem childish to us today, but in the 18th century it was a humiliating affront. Otis slapped Robinson’s hand from his face and delivered a petulant blow with his cane. At this the redcoat officers and civil authorities jumped up from their tables and moved in for the kill. Robinson intervened: if satisfaction was what Otis wanted, then satisfaction is what he would get. Redcoat officers disarmed both of the men, ensuring a fair fight, and then Otis got his wish: fists started flying.
It didn’t go the way Otis wanted it to go.
Were he left one-on-one with Robinson, perhaps he could’ve stood his ground; but the redcoats, eager to join the fray against one of the town’s leading patriots, couldn’t control themselves. Several leaped into the scuffle on Robinson’s behalf. Two redcoats pinned Otis’ arms behind him, and Robinson gaily delivered a suckering punch square into Otis’ jaw – and he followed that one with another, and another, and another, until Otis’ face looked like bloodied cauliflower. The tavern erupted with catcalls and jeers; the sounds flooded out onto King Street, and a young passerby named John Gridley stepped off the street to see what was about. He happened to be friends with Otis, and when he saw the patriot being beaten without any hope of defending himself, he barreled through the tavern’s door and grabbed at Robinson, ripping his coat to the pockets. Robinson whirled around, shocked at the interloper, and then redcoat officers turned their attentions on the newcomer. The more the merrier! A fist struck Gridley in the head, and something – perhaps a bottle or a tin cup – cut across his forehead. Bloodpoured down his face, pooling in his eyesand dripping from the bridge of his nose. He staggered this way and that, blinded by the blood in his eyes, groping for the door. Someone brought a cane down on his wrist with such force that it broke his arm. Wailing and screeching, Gridley managed to totter out onto King Street, while behind him he heard ‘Kill him! Kill him!’ Whether the commands were directed at him or Otis, who knew? By this point a crowd, drawn by the bedlam, had gathered in the street. Among the crowd was Benjamin Hallowell, the customs official who’dbeen beaten by patriot mobs during the Liberty riots; his own experience didn’t motivate him to revenge but to lend a helping hand. He rushed past the half-blind Gridley, leaped into the melee, and managed to free Otis from the grip of the redcoats. He escorted the bloodied, beaten patriot out of the tavern, leaving the redcoats laughing and a sweat-slicked Robinson gloating.
Otis may have lost the brawl in the coffee house, but his best battles were fought not with fists but with pen and ink. The next day, much to the shock of his friends, he was up and about, despite being covered with gruesome welts and blue-black bruises. He wrote a narrative of the event and published it in the Gazette. He pictured Gridley and himself manning a stalwart defense against a horde of revenue officers. ‘The people’ were heroic, too, arriving just in time to save the patriot champions and to send Robinson and his crew fleeing out the backdoor in panic for their lives. The patriots belabored the event with propaganda – conveniently ignoring how Otis had foolishly brought the debacle upon himself – and emphasized how soldiers, ‘the agents of British tyranny and the enemies of colonial liberties,’ had inserted themselves into a civil dispute. For Otis to seek satisfaction, and for he and Robinson to duke it out with fists, was a matter of honor, regardless of which man remained standing at the end; but it was quite another thing for the redcoats to intervene. Otis decried the encounter as ‘a premeditated, cowardly and villainous attempt [to] assassinate me.’ Even Colonel Dalrymple, commander of the British troops in Boston, admitted to Gage in New York that ‘Mr. Robinson beat [Mr. Otis] most excessively.’
The patriots wanted their own measure of blood, and because the redcoats were protected, they focused their ire on William Browne of Salem. Browne, as a member of the Great and General Court, had voted in favor of rescinding the Massachusetts Circular Letter; this marked him as a Tory, and rumors spread that Browne had been present in the coffee house (as was his custom most evenings) and that he had been the one to break Gridley’s arm with a cane. Well-meaning friends warned Browne to keep an eye over his shoulder, and when a patriot mob approached the coffee house one evening, he tried to hide inside. The mob managed to sniff him out, and they dragged him to Faneuil Hall for a hearing before the justices of the peace. Browne was charged with ‘assaulting, beating, and wounding’ Gridley. The justice of the peace, James Murray, was booed and abused by those who felt this matter with Browne was going too far; someone even dared to snatch the wig off his head while others attempted to kick his legs out from under him to make him sprawl out on the floor. Patriots and Tories shouted at one another in Faneuil Hall, and cooler heads prevailed: before another scuffle could break out, both Murray and Browne were sent hurrying on their way. The ultimate ending of the affair was rather anticlimactic: though Otis sued Robinson and recovered two thousand pounds in damages, the patriot refused to accept any of it when Robinson confessed himself in the wrong and asked pardon for his offense. From the very beginning this had been a matter of honor, and Otis – no doubt glad that he had received his satisfaction – felt his honor had been rectified. He granted Robinson’s pardon.
An Incident on Boston Neck
Shortly after Captain Molesworth and his comrades beat a high-tailed retreat down Boston Neck, a Tory newspaper editor named John Mein made his own panicked retreat into the safety of Boston Harbor. The Scottish John Mein immigrated to Boston in 1764 and opened a store advertising English and Scottish prayer books; to bring in extra coin, he also sold Scottish beer. His aspirations ran higher, however, so he opened The London Bookstore, the first circulating library in Boston, where patrons could pay small sums to borrow books (this wasn’t a free ‘public’ library, after all). In December 1767 he started a Tory newspaper, The Boston Chronicle, and inaugurated the paper by publishing London articles critical of William Pitt. This didn’t earn him much favor from his neighbors, as Pitt was beloved in the colonies. As the colonial crisis deepened, so, too, did the fiery rhetoric of The Boston Chronicle. It was, one could say, the ying to the Gazette’s yang, and the two papers made a habit of tradingnasty slurs.
In January 1768 Otis, writing under the pen name ‘Americanus,’ attacked Mein as ‘stained with the blackest infamy.’ Mein couldn’t stomach this, so he marched to the Gazette’s headquarters and demanded to know who had made the accusation. When the editor Benjamin Edes refused to divulge the information, Mein lashed out at another editor, John Gill, with his cane. News of the barefaced attack spread, and he became the focal point of patriot ire. Letters from both friend and foe warned that him his life was suspect. He made it a point to carry a loaded pistol wherever he went, and he asked Hutchinson – then Lieutenant Governor – for a measure of protection. Hutchinson said he could do no such thing on the basis of rumors; if Mein wanted protection, he needed good reason for it – and that meant action. As if to bring about his prophesied fate, Mein ramped up his rhetoric against the patriots and the so-called ‘American Cause.’ He referred to patriot heavyweights by cunning nicknames: Thomas Cushing was ‘Tommy Trifle Esq.’; James Otis was ‘Muddlehead’ (no doubt because of his irascible nature); and John Hancock was ‘Johnny Dupe Esq., alias the Milch Cow,’ a not-so-subtle dig at Hancock’s funding of the Sons of Liberty. Hancock received particular condemnation in February 1769 when Mein characterized him as ‘a good natured young man with long ears – a silly grin on his countenance – a fool’s cap on his head – a bandage tied over his eyes – richly dressed and surrounded with a crowd of people, some who are stroking his ears, others tickling his nose with straws, while the rest are employed riffling his pockets.’ He presented the Sons of Liberty as money-hungry grubbers placating Hancock and putting him on a pedestal simply to dig through his pockets, and Hancock came across as a youngling too naïve to notice he was being manipulated. With words such as these, Mein likely knew a confrontation was inevitable.
And yet he escaped unscathed. This only emboldened him, and when Boston stood alone in nonimportation after the rumored repeal of the Townsend Acts (except, of course, for the duty on tea), Mein railed against nonimportation. In October 1769 – the same month Captain Molesworth’s guard was assaulted on the Neck – he published the names of phony supporters of the nonimportation agreement who were, behind the Sons of Liberty’s back, privately violating the terms. He wrote that he uncovered the names in the local customs house records, and he leveled his most heinous charge on his favorite punching-bag, John Hancock. Hancock, of course, denied the charge that he’d imported British linen, which was proscribed by the nonimportation regulations, but admitted to importing Russian duck – a cotton or linen cloth – which was entirely legal. Whether Hancock was guilty of secretly undercutting the nonimportation agreement is a mystery to history, but what’s clear is that this time, Mein went too far. Patriot blood was up, and the battle of words between the Chronicle and the Gazette crept towards physical confrontation.
Two days after making his charge against Hancock, late in the afternoon on 28 October, ten or twelve patriots – some of ‘considerable rank’ – encircled Mein on King Street. One gave him a bloody cut with his cane (perhaps calling out vengeance for John Gill), at which point Mein frantically drew his loaded pistol and held off the crowd. The patriots tightened their cordon, demanding blood: ‘Kill him! Knock him down!’ Mein shouldered his way to the nearest redcoat guard-post, and as he turned to scale the steps to the guard-room, one of his detractors rushed up behind him, wielding a shovel. He aimed the blow at the back of Mein’s head, but the difference in height due to the steps played in Mein’s favor: the shovel missed his head but tore his coat, waistcoat, and shirt. One of Mein’s friends, also at the guard-house, panicked and fired a pistol.
Reports that Mein had fired on a citizen spread like kudzu through Boston, and that evening more than a thousand men gathered on King Street. They couldn’t reach Mein, who was sequestered in the guard-post, so they hunted down George Gailer, a customs official who reportedly informed on Hancock’s Liberty. He was accosted, stripped naked, and tarred and feathered. The patriots tossed him in a cart and drove him to the Liberty Tree, calling out to the residents en route to illuminate their windows ‘for the cause of liberty.’ Another crowd formed outside Mein’s print shop. He’d ordered the place barricaded, fearing that they would attempt to deface it, and his apprentice had done as ordered – but he hadn’t beaten a retreat in time. The young apprentice was caught in the belly of the print shop as the crowd shattered windows with thrown rocks. The apprentice loaded a blank charge and fired out one of the broken windows, hoping to frighten off the mob, but this only incensed them. The rioters threw themselves against the door, breaking it down despite the barricades, and ransacked the print shop – though, surprisingly, they left his printing presses and font types untouched (the same couldn’t be said for his vast collection of books, which were defaced, and he suffered two guns stolen).
The patriots knew that Mein was in the guard-post, and he knew they’d be keeping a wary eye out for his departure. He sent messages to the now acting-governor Hutchinson for assistance, but Hutchinson again declined: Mein was on his own. The besieged Tory convinced the soldiers to grant him a redcoat uniform, and dressed as a British private, he confidently left the guard-post and strode to Colonel Dalrymple’s personal lodgings. Hutchinson joined them when summoned by Dalrymple, and Mein seethed at the now acting-governor for depriving him of assistance back at the guard-post. Hutchinson was apologetic, but his hands were tied: had he given Mein a redcoat escort, it would’ve led to a major confrontation. Mein knew that he couldn’t walk the streets without receiving even worse treatment than the tarred, feathered, and humiliated George Gailer, so he brokered transportation to a British warship anchored in Boston Harbor and sailed to England that November.[1]
Hutchinson wrote to Lord Hillsborough of the affair and defended his decision not to call upon British troops. Though such a maneuver might have been fruitful in Ireland, where soldiers were traditionally called upon to support civil authorities, such a move would’ve lit a fuse on the Boston powder keg. ‘In the present state of the colonies,’ he told Hillsborough, ‘I could not think it advisable.’ Both Hutchinson and Dalrymple had ominous forebodings for what lie just over the next hill; Dalrymple mused, ‘Authority here is at a very low ebb, indeed it is rather a shadow that a substance… The crisis I have long expected comes on very fast, and the temper of the times is such that if something does not happen of the most disagreeable kind, I shall with pleasure give up my foresight.’
Tyranny or Chains
As the new year approached, so, too, did Boston's elections. The town’s selectmen requested acting-governor Hutchinson to move the British garrison to Castle William in the harbor so that the redcoats wouldn’t interfere in the elections. Whether the patriots feared the redcoats would do so is unknown; equally possible is that the very thought of interference could be used as propaganda – and Hutchinson played into their hands (though he, too, likely knew of the patriot schemes). While he couldn’t shift the occupation force into the harbor, leaving Boston absent any redcoat boots, he offered a compromise: he could order them to remain in their quarters during the voting process. The patriots didn’t like this compromise, and the Massachusetts House of Representatives petitioned Hutchinson to change his mind. Hutchinson again insisted that he couldn’t do it; though theoretically he could, for the English government put the soldiers under civilian management, to do so would set precedent and incur ill-will from Gage in New York and Parliament across the sea. Hutchinson was already hated by one camp, so why double his troubles by being hated by the other, too? Samuel Adams, in letter after letter in the Gazette, dwelled on the ‘aggravated tyranny’ imposed on Boston: ‘Was not an army of placemen and pensioners sufficient, who would eat us up as they eat bread, but an array of soldiers must be stationed in our very bowels.’ He decried the dissolution of Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights, deploring how his fellow countrymen had been reduced to an alarming choice: ‘To resist this Tyranny, or Submit to chains.’
In England, Parliament was grappling with its own homegrown ‘Liberty Fiasco’ prompted by the storied career of Parliamentarian John Wilkes. Wilkes had supported William Pitt and the Seven Years War, but his stomach soured at the favor Lord Bute showed to France in the 1763 Treaty of Paris. Wilkes saw this coming when the Scottish Lord Bute came to power in 1762, and Wilkes began publishing The North Briton to attack him in an anti-Scots tone (North Briton was a common reference to Scotland). Because Bute was Scottish, and France and Scotland had been on friendly terms for hundreds of years before Scotland was incorporated into Great Britain in the early 18th century, Wilkes could sow seeds of doubt about Bute’s true loyalties and schemes: perhaps, one might think, his generosity towards France was in the interests of Scotland and at the expense of England? Wilkes ran full-fledged against Bute and his staunchest supporters, and in Issue 12 he dragged Earl Talbot, a Bute fan-boy, over the coals. Talbot, desperate to cling to his honor, challenged Wilkes to a duel. Wilkes accepted, and they fired their pistols; neither was hit, and the two shared a bottle of claret at a nearby inn.
 |
| The English politician John Wilkes |
When Parliament opened in April 1763, the first order of business was charging Wilkes with ‘seditious libel’ for criticizing George III’s speech endorsing the Treaty of Paris (though everyone knew Bute authored it). The parliamentary hearing focused on his assaults in Issue 45 of The North Briton, and ‘45’ was apt, for it was synonymous with the Jacobite Rising of 1745 (known colloquially as ‘The 45’) in which the Jacobites attempted to overthrow the Hanoverian dynasty and reestablish the Stuart line. Popular perceptions associated the Scottish Bute with Jacobitism, and the bighearted peace terms with France were seen by many as further evidence of his secret opposition to the Hanoverian dynasty and, beyond that, England’s welfare. Wilkes didn’t miss a beat in playing on these conspiracy theories, regardless of whether the accusations had any basis in reality. The hearing didn’t go well for Wilkes, and at the end of the month, George ordered general warrants for Wilkes’ arrest as well as those ‘conspiring’ with him. Forty-nine people, including Wilkes, were clapped in irons, but because the populace loathed general warrants, Wilkes found increased support as he clamored over the unconstitutional measures taken against him and his friends. At his next court hearing, he claimed protection from libel charges based on parliamentary protection. The Lord Chief Justice agreed, and Wilkes was freed and restored to his seat in Parliament. Wilkes then turned around and sued his arrestors for illegally arresting him. Amid all this, his supporters were increasing in both size and boldness, chanting, ‘Wilkes, Liberty, and Number 45!’ An unsettled Parliament, infuriated at being outmaneuvered, moved to remove parliamentary protection of MPs from arrest for writing or publishing ‘seditious libel.’
When Lord Bute resigned in 1763, Wilkes opposed his successor George Grenville. In November that year, a supporter of the king named Samuel Martin challenged Wilkes to a duel. This time Wilkes was shot in the stomach, but he survived with his honor intact. Wilkes and his friend Thomas Potter wrote a racy poem entitled ‘An Essay on Woman’ (a parody of Alexander Pope’s ‘An Essay on Man’), and when Wilkes’ chief detractor John Montagu, the Earl of Sandwich, came upon a copy, he sought to use it as ammunition against his foe. The two had an ongoing rivalry, but Montagu felt that Wilkes had gone too far at a séance with the Hellfire Club. The club was a secretive society catering to the rich and powerful of England’s elite and were rumored to be bastions of immorality and wickedness. Both Wilkes and Montagu had been present at a séance, and Wilkes had pulled a prank that frightened Montagu senseless and embarrassed him. Montagu replied to the prank by reading Wilkes’ ‘An Essay on Woman’ before the House of Lords; the Lords declared the appalling poem obscenely blasphemous and motioned to expel Wilkes from Parliament. Wilkes, caught with his pants down around his ankles, fled to Paris before he could be expelled or tried. Parliament expelled and tried him for obscene and seditious libel in absentia, and he was declared an outlaw on 19 January 1764.
Parliamenttook the side of the troops and expelled Wilkes from his parliamentary seat in February 1769. They argued that although the charge of outlawry had been overturned, it had been present when Wilkes returned to England and when he’d been elected to represent Middlesex; thus his election dated before the charge was dropped, and he was thus unable to take his seat. Wilkes refused to slow down, and despite being imprisoned he managed to become an Alderman of London (such was his popularity). His campaign was supported by the Society for the Supporters of the Bill of Rights, and he managed to convince Parliament to expunge the resolution barring him from sitting in Parliament. Parliament, not wishing to incite popular sentiment, concurred. When Wilkes was released from prison in March 1770, he was appointed sheriff in London. In Parliament Wilkes hotly opposed England’s rough-shod policy towards the American colonies during the coming American Revolution.
As far back as the end of 1769 and the beginning of 1770, Wilkes had acquired a large fan base in the American colonies. He became a poster-child for the Sons of Liberty and was praised as much as the colonists had praised William Pitt in the tumultuous days of the Stamp Act. Wilkes became a hero on both sides of the Great Pond, with ‘Wilkes and Liberty!’ chanted in waterfront New York taverns and in smoky tea houses on London’s avenues. Wilkes’ struggles in England convinced many that a corrupt British ministry was adroitly subverting the British constitution, not in America but also at home. Looking forward in time, historians detect Wilkes’ influence on the establishment of the right to Freedom of the Press in the United States Constitution, and his experiences factored into United States constitutional provisions preventing Congress from rejecting legally elected members and from issuing warrants for their arrest.
The MacDougall Affair
Midway through December 1769, the New York Assembly, under the thumb of Lieutenant Governor Cadwallader Colden who was, in turn, under the thumb of Parliament, finally submitted to the controversial Quartering Act that had caused such a stir two years earlier. The news of their submission burned like gall in patriot throats: now all soldiers would be given adequate housing and provisions when barracks weren’t available, private liberties be damned. One of the most outspoken patriots of New York was the merchant Alexander MacDougall, a member of the New York chapter of the Sons of Liberty. He penned a furious broadside against the New York assembly, Governor Colden, and the DeLanceys (a prominent Tory family who carried a lot of weight in the assembly) for bowing to the Quartering Act. He pasted it around New York City on the 17th and 18th of December, and he did so in a unique way to hide his identity as the author: he hired a brute Son of Liberty to carry what looked like a lantern box on a pole, but inside the pole was a small boy; when the Son leaned against a brick wall, ostensibly to take a break from carrying the lantern box, the boy opened a paneled aperture and pasted the broadside to the wall. Once the boy closed the aperture, the Son shouldered his duty and casually sauntered to the next wall destined to be adorned with patriot sentiments.
MacDougall’s broadside became the talk of the town, and for good reason, for he minced no words and spared no expense: 'In a day when the minions of tyranny and despotism in the mother country, and the colonies, are indefatigable in laying every snare that their malevolent and corrupt hearts can suggest, to enslave a free people; when this unfortunate country has been striving under many disadvantages for three years past, to preserve their freedom; which to an Englishman is as dear as his life… It might justly be expected, that in this day of constitutional light, the representatives of this colony, would not be [so] lost to all sense of duty to their constituents… as to betray the trust committed to them.’ The broadside argued that the assembly had indeed betrayed the trust of their constituents in bowing before Parliament’s orders, by which act the assembly members had ‘implicitly’ acknowledged ‘the authority that enacted the Revenue-Acts, and their being obligatory upon us.’ By their actions, the assembly had abandoned the ‘American Cause.’ His broadside closed with an exhortation: ‘My countrymen, rouse! Will you suffer your liberties to be torn from you by your own representatives? Tell it not in Boston; publish it not in the streets of Charleston!’ The remedy to this pernicious development was to ‘besiege’ the assembly and demand a reverse of their vote; and what if the assembly refused? In that case, New York’s patriots must make it known ‘to the whole world’ the true sentiments of New Yorkers as opposed to the actions of ‘a cowardly and servile legislature.’
The assembly chafed against being labeled as treasonous towards their constituents, and when they learned that MacDougall had authored the broadside, they wasted no time in charging him with scandalous libel and tossing him in jail – and it promptly backfired. Because the words of their indictment echoed those leveled against John Wilkes in publishing Issue 45 of The North Briton, the patriots painted MacDougall as a ‘new Wilkes.’ The number 45 became a signpost in the patriot newspapers detailing the injustices this fighter for liberty suffered: 45 Sons of Liberty visited him in jail where they dined on 45 steaks cut from 45 steers, all 45 months old. This was followed by a visit from 45 liberty-loving virgins (who were, according to some, all 45 years old); these virgins sang 45 patriotic songs. MacDougall also received 45 tradesmen and 45 bottles of Madeira wine, as well as 45 bottles of ale from two Presbyterian ministers, and 45 candles gave light to his cell. As MacDougall evolved into a folk hero, the Sons of Liberty didn’t relent in assaulting Colden and the assembly in the newspapers. The assembly, they declared, was no assembly at all, for ‘all power was lodged in the people,’ and the people had every right to disband the assembly and elect in its place one that was actually willing to represent their interests (this was the Social Contract Theory boiled down to local grievances). The patriots attempted to get a grand jury to free MacDougall, and the patriot lawyer John Morin Scott became MacDougall’s defender. The sheriff ignored patriot entreaties for jury-rigging and chose a jury more amenable to Parliament and royal authority; this jury included ‘the most impartial, reputable, opulent, and substantial gentlemen in the city,’ and they indicted MacDougall. When the constables led MacDougall from the jail to the court so he could enter his plea, ‘two or three hundred of the rabble of the town,’ according to one Tory, ‘headed by some of the most zealous partisans of the republican [i.e. patriot] faction’ escorted him in a tour de force. The grand jury may have had it out for MacDougall, but the trial ended up being a disaster for the prosecution: the printer who informed on MacDougall, and whom the prosecution made their star witness, had been run out of town before the trial by the Sons of Liberty (he shacked up with the British forces in Boston to escape patriot reprisals and then fled to England); and James Parker, the owner of the print-shop that had manufactured the broadside, was of ‘republican’ leanings and flatly refused to testify against his comrade. The trial was thus delayed, and Parker’s death a few months later left the government without a witness. The New Wilkes walked out a free man, singing liberty from his lips.
By the time MacDougall breathed free air outside the confines of his New York cell, the city had gone through another tumultuous event known as the Battle of Golden Hill (though it was less of a ‘battle’ than a street brawl between patriots and British soldiers). Some historians argue that the MacDougall Affair fostered tensions that boiled over into the coming brawl, but a more significant factor was the deep-seeded resentment between the city’s sailors and artisans and the British troops. As happened in Boston, poorly-paid soldiers sought to supplement their wages via employment in menial labor. Because they didn’t need to pay for food and boarding, as these were provided by the crown – and, more recently, by New York’s citizens following submission to the Quartering Act – the soldiers hired themselves out at cut-rate wages. Artisans and sailors, who didn’t have room and board provided, needed higher wages, and employers – then as now – opted to save pennies by hiring soldiers over citizens;thus city unemployment for run-of-the-mill citizens continually increased, and in waterfront taverns and smoky inns these out-of-work civilians brooded over the state-of-affairs.
Though the New York assembly had submitted to the Quartering Act on 16 December, it remained to be seen how much would actually be allotted to providing the soldiers’ needs. On 23 December the assembly announced it had approved 1800 pounds towards provisions, far less than that which the troops deemed sufficient. This was a bitter gall to swallow – was there no end to the conniving of the assembly? – and on 13 January embittered soldiers attempted to cut down New York’s ‘Liberty Pole’ on the Common. This was the fourth such pole, and the redcoats’ determination to demolish it was nothing new. Ever since August 1765, the redcoats and patriots had been in a tug-of-war over the Liberty Pole. Patriots erected the first ‘Liberty Pole’ on 4 June 1776 in a field later known as the Common to celebrate King George III’s birthday and the Stamp Act’s repeal. This ‘pole’ was a ship’s mast with twelve tar barrels affixed to its top and twenty-five cords of firewood at the base; the cords were lit, and the patriots cheered as the royal standard burned like a celebratory bonfire. Later that day, they threw up a second pole bearing the inscription King, Pitt, and Liberty; this second pole echoed the pike held by Rome’s Libertas, Goddess of Freedom, and was considered New York’s first Liberty Pole (though, as we have seen, it was truly the second). Patriots would gather under the Liberty Pole, and in the tumultuous days of the assembly’s refusal to abide by the 1765 Quartering Act, British troops – quartered in New York, as it was the headquarters of British troops in the Americas – hacked down this ‘symbol of colonial oppression’ in August 1765. The patriots built another in its place, but the redcoats tore it down, too. Towards the end of September a third Liberty Pole was constructed, but Governor Moore used his civil authority over royal troops to put a stop to redcoat reprisals before they could repeat their demolition a third time. On 18 March the next year, when patriots gathered in the Common around the Liberty Pole to celebrate the anniversary of the repeal of the Stamp Act, angry soldiers defied Moore’s orders and hacked down the pole. The patriots responded by erecting a fourth Liberty Pole, and they secured this one with iron bands. When soldiers tried to dismantle it, the iron bands foiled them. They then attempted to use gunpowder at night to overpower the fortifications, but that failed, too. Three more attempts were made, but each was opposed and ultimately spoiled by the Sons of Liberty. A patriot newspaper fueled ire by railing, ‘As mankind were made for society, every person who willfully annoys or disturbs that society without any pretense but purely evil, ought to be held in the utmost detestation as a common enemy. And, as in the present case, the cutting this post down can only be done to affront all the Sons of Liberty… The perpetrators would do well to consider the consequences… for they may know that such a body of the people who would not yield to be enslaved by the most august body on earth, will not tamely submit to such a mean, low-lived insult on their liberty… and if ever the perpetrator is discovered, he may be almost assured New York will be too hot to hold him long.’
Flashing forward to January 1770, the redcoats’ attempted nighttime dismantling of the Pole on 13 January was discovered. What happened next was reported on 5 February in the New York Gazette and Weekly Postboy by ‘An Impartial Observer’: ‘[The soldiers] were discovered sawing the spurs [of the Liberty Pole] by some persons that were crossing the fields [of the Common], who went into Mr. Montayne’s [tavern house] and reported it to sundry persons in the house . . . Captain White was attacked near the house by a soldier who drew his bayonet on him and threatened to take his life if he alarmed the citizens; upon which the soldier returned to his companions at the pole …The people at Mr. Montayne’s came out and called out fire in order to alarm the inhabitants. Soon after a fire was seen at the pole, which proved to be a fuse that the soldiers had put in it in order to communicate fire to a cavity … filled with powder … The fuse did not communicate the fire, nor do the execution that was expected.’ The soldiers, frustrated at the failure of their scheme to dismantle the iron-hooped Liberty Pole, drew their swords and fixed bayonets and forced their way into Montayne’s Tavern, the headquarters of the Sons of Liberty chapter in New York. They hurled epithets and curses at those inside and trashed the place before departing in a frenzy.
Reports of their villainous treatment of the tavern spread through New York, and two days later, an unnamed ‘Brutus’ published in the New York Gazette: ‘Whoever seriously considers the impoverished state of this city, especially many of the poor inhabitants of it, must be greatly surprised at the conduct of such as employ soldiers, when there are a number of the former that want employment to support their distressed families … This might, in a great measure be prevented, … if the employers of labourers would attend to it with that care and benevolence that a citizen owes to his neighbor, by employing him.’ Brutus skillfully twisted the events in Montayne’s Tavern so that they reverberated with the city’s unemployed working class, an unveiled attempt to ‘stir the pot’ of colonial resentment. That same night, the soldiers made a second attempt on the Liberty Pole with gunpowder, but they managed only to split the mast. On 16 January they made real headway and were able to tear it down. To humiliate the Sons of Liberty and send a potent message, they sawed the pole into cordwood and piled it in front of Montayne’s Tavern. The patriots read the message loud and clear, and the next day three thousand citizens gathered at the base of the dismembered Liberty Pole to build a fifth one. While there they made two resolves, building upon the sentiments fired up by Brutus in the Gazette: first, they agreed that ‘we will not employ any soldier, on any terms whatsoever.’ Second, and with more than a bit of treasonous flair, they agreed that if ‘any soldier shall be found in the night having arms (except sentinels and orderly sergeants) or out of the barracks after the roll is called, such as are found even without arms, and behave in an insulting manner, shall be treated as enemies of the peace of the city.’ Battles lines were being drawn.
The troops couldn’t bite their tongues with this provocation – but, after all, who could? – so on 19 January they responded by posting a handbill around the city signed ‘the Sixteenth Regiment.’ In it they declared that ‘an uncommon and riotous disturbance prevails throughout this city’ that was the work of ‘some of its inhabitants, who style themselves the S—s of L—y, but rather may be more properly called real enemies to society.’ In the wake of the destruction of their Liberty Pole, the soldiers gloated that ‘we have reason to laugh at [these] great heroes [who] thought their freedom depended in a piece of wood.’ The handbill decried the ‘Liberty Boys’ as ‘Murderers, robbers, traitors… who have nothing to boast of but flippancy of tongue.’ The handbill ended with a warning: if the radicals in New York wanted a fight, the soldiers would be delighted to oblige. The handbill enflamed colonial agitation, and mobs roamed the streets looking to pick a fight with redcoats. Several Sons of Liberty led by the patriot Isaac Sears came across two soldiers at work posting the handbill; they overpowered the redcoats and dragged them to the mayor’s home office. While inside, news of the soldiers’ kidnapping reached the barracks, and a squad of soldiers besieged the house. The besieged patriots, armed with clubs and staves and led by a Captain Richardson, kept the soldiers at bay until the redcoats gathered reinforcements. The soldiers, armed with cutlasses and bayonets, joined the fray. The desperate patriots tore up fences and pieces of wood from carts and sleighs to barricade the house, and a bloody brawl was poised, quite literally, on the mayor’s doorstep. The mayor, playing upon his authority over the soldiers due to English law, regained order and commanded the soldiers to return to their barracks. The soldiers had no choice but to obey, and they could only curse and spit at the mayor’s doors and windows as they shouldered their weapons and headed back towards their barracks.
As the soldiers retreated, a mob of patriots marched after them, catcalling and taunting them to turn and face them like men. Though out of sight of the mayor, they didn’t dare oblige, for they were vastly outnumbered – at least until reinforcements reached them as they climbed to the top of Golden Hill, one of the tallest hills of Manhattan. The reinforcements met them around the intersection of John and William streets, on a narrow path between shoulder-to-shoulder buildings. The densely-packed crowd mobbed at their heels, but now the redcoats had enough men to make a stand and oblige. The commander, perhaps believing he now had enough men to return to the mayor’s house and free the detained soldiers, ordered his men to draw bayonets, do a 180, and ‘cut your way through the mob!’ The crowd, which had grown steadily and was jostling shoulder-to-shoulder in the narrow street, didn’t expect the redcoats to turn around in rank, bayonets fixed to their muskets. The redcoats lowered their bayonets and began marching towards the crowd. The mob hadn’t been expecting this, and they turned tail to run – but they were so tightly packed that flight was difficult and slow.
A record from 31 January records what happened next: ‘Those few that had the sticks maintained their ground in the narrow passage in which they stood, and defended their defenceless fellow citizens… against the furious and unmanly attacks of armed soldiers, until one of them… in a stroke made at one of the assailants, lost his stick, which obliged the former to retreat… the soldiers pursued him down to the main street; one of them made a stroke, with a cutlass at Mr. Francis Field… standing in an inoffensive posture in the doorway, at the corner; and cut him on the right cheek… This party that came down to the main street cut a tea-water man driving his cart… in short they madly attacked every person that they could reach… besides cutting a sailor’s head and finger… they stabbed another with a bayonet… so badly, that his life was thought in danger… Two of them followed a boy going for sugar, into Mr. Elsworth’s house, one of them cut him on the head with a cutlass, and the other made a lung[e] with a bayonet at the woman in the entry… Capt. Richardson was violently attacked by two of the soldiers, with swords, and expected to have been cut to pieces; but was so fortunate as to defend himself with a stick for a considerable time, ’till a halberd was put into his hands, with which he could have killed several of them; but he made no other use of it, than to defend himself, and his naked fellow-citizens.’ A chair-maker’s apprentice, Michael Smith, arrived at the height of the brawl and, armed with a chair leg, caught a soldier off guard and beat him so pitilessly that the grenadier surrendered. Smith stripped the soldier of his musket, bayonet, belts, and cartridge box; he carried them triumphantly through the crowd, leaving the stripped and red-cheeked grenadier fuming. These accoutrements would become family heirlooms passed down the Smith line for generations.
The scuffle ended only when more redcoat reinforcements arrived. The British officers, mortified at what was happening, shouted over the din for the soldiers to return to their barracks. It took a minute for order to be restored, and the officers speedily marched the soldiers back to the barracks. In the days after the event, some patriot newspapers incorrectly reported that a man was killed in the scuffle and again the next day in a resurgent clash between soldiers and unemployed sailors on the waterfront. Historians, however, believe these were either outright fabrications to play upon colonial agitation or, at best, unverified reports. If one or even two men were killed in the ‘fighting,’ they would’ve been praised as martyrs – such as what would happen with young Christopher Seider in Boston next month (though he was killed by a Tory rather than a redcoat) and, to a more heightened degree, with those slain on 5 March before Boston’s customs house. As it stands, there’s no evidence beyond fragmentary propaganda that any lives were lost in the ‘Battle of Golden Hill.’
The trickle-down affect of the scuffle resulted in scattered redcoat reprisals that night, in which soldiers reportedly sliced a lamplighter on the head and kicked the ladder out from underneath another. The next day three more incidents took place: one with a sailor, one with a woman out shopping at the market, and a third at a gathering on the Common. In each, mobs responded to the harassment and forced the soldiers to retreat to their barracks. A fifth – and what would be the last – Liberty Pole was erected on 6 February 1770 on a small piece of land near where the fourth Liberty Pole had stood; though they’d wanted to build on the site of the old one, the governor and his council denied them the privilege for fear of inciting further unrest. The patriots sunk this last Liberty Pole deep into the ground and encased two-thirds of its height with iron bands and riveted hoops. A gilt vane bearing the inscription Liberty and Property surmounted the Pole.
The Saga of Lillie and Richardson
220 miles north of New York City, Boston’s patriots were heavily enforcing its nonimportation agreement. In January 1770 the merchant leaders tasked with enforcing nonimportation – known as ‘the Body’ – discovered that two sons of acting governor Thomas Hutchinson were importing tea in defiance of the ban. Given that these were sons of the loathed Hutchinson, the exuberant Body was eager to strike. They ordered the Hutchinson sons to abandon the imported tea and cease ‘illegal’ trading. The sons refused to abide by the demands of what they saw as a raucous mob absent jurisdiction, but when a pugnacious crowd threatened to destroy one of their warehouses, Thomas Hutchinson intervened and declared that neither of his sons would violate the town’s nonimportation.
The Hutchinson boys didn’t stand alone in opposing Boston’s nonimportation: while most merchants signed the agreement (or were coerced into it when threatened with strutting the streets like a chicken), other merchants were made of hardier stock. On 8 February William Jackson, a merchant who flaunted his defiance of nonimportation, had his storefront singled out by a board painted with IMPORTER that was affixed to a town pump. It was a Market Day, in which the town was inundated with farmers and during which schoolboys had half-days, and farmers and boys insulted his customers, hissing and pelting them with clods of dirt and manure. Jackson attempted to dismantle the signs, but protesters wielding clubs and staves barred him from doing so. He could only glower as his customers were harassed and his windows smeared with mud and dung. Jackson’s encounter was just the beginning of many: all week long, different merchants in violation of nonimportation were targeted. Patriots hung signs on or around their shops, mutilated their storefronts, and jeered at the owners, employees, and customers. These demonstrations were supplemented with parades in which effigies of importers, customs commissioners, and British officials were dragged through the streets before being lynched on the Liberty Tree. Four soldiers of the 14th Regiment tried to remove the lynched effigies but were beaten off; one was gravely injured.
On 22 February, Theophilus Lillie had the choice honor of being the mob’s target. The demonstrations and parades of the preceding week had served to rouse citizens into a shark-like frenzy, and Lillie had incurred a particular wrath. On 10 January he’d published in the Boston News-Letter his reasons for defying nonimportation, writing that it seemed ‘strange that men who are guarding against being subject to laws [to] which they never gave their consent in person or by their representative, should at the same time make laws, and in the most effectual manner execute them upon me and others to which laws I am sure I never gave my consent either in person or by my representative.’ A stinging rebuke, to be sure, given its truthfulness. He went even further in his denunciation, stating that the charges of slavery against the royal government were misplaced: ‘I had rather be a slave under one Master; for if I know who he is, I may, perhaps, be able to please him, than a slave to a hundred or more, who I don’t know where to find, nor what they will expect of me.’ The patriots didn’t like their authority being compared – truthfully, if we are honest – to the very authority they railed against, and they sought to make an example of Lillie. The 22nd of February was a Thursday and a Market Day, and a crowd of mainly adolescent boys fresh from a half-day at school carried a sign to Lillie’s store identifying him as an importer. One of Lillie’s neighbors, the fifty-two-year-old Ebenezer Richardson, enraged the crowd by attempting to tear down the sign. Richardson was more unpopular than Lillie, for he’d snitched on fellow merchantmen to the Customs office and earned the mocking title ‘Knight of the Post,’ a term of scorn reserved for contemptible informers. Some radical newspapers called him ‘the most abandoned wretch in America.’ Richardson tried to reason with a passing farmer on a horse and cart to overrun the sign, knocking it down; when the farmer refused, Richardson solicited the same from a charcoal carter. The carter refused as well, so Richardson commandeered his cart by force and tried to run over the sign. The crowd pelted him with dirt, sticks, and stones. Richardson retreated to his nearby house, calling out to two Sons of Liberty, ‘By the eternal God, I’ll make it too hot for you before night!’
The crowd abandoned Lillie’s storefront and followed him home. They pressed up against his house, calling on him to face them. One patriot demanded, ‘Come out, you damn son of a bitch! I’ll have your heart out, your liver out!’ Richardson cracked open his front door, shook a stave at them, and swore that if they didn’t leave him alone, he’d ‘make a lane’ through them. He was soon joined by his friend George Wilmot, who’d commanded a company of Rangers during the French and Indian War. He promised Richardson that he’d stand with him against the mob, and he asked for a gun. Someone in the house – likely Wilmot – threw out a brickbat. An older man in the mob picked it up and returned it through a closed window. At the shattering of the glass, the boys who’d contented themselves with hurling rotten fruit, dirt, and eggs decided to amp up their game and hefted stones. A few adults in the crowd tried to get them to put down the rocks, but other adults egged them on. More windows were broken, and Richardson’s wife was struck by a stone that came shattering through a window. This was too much for Richardson: he barreled his way to a broken window on the second floor, thrust out an unloaded musket, and aimed at the crowd. Seeing the barrel pointed down at them, the mob began throwing themselves against the front door. Wilmot joined him at the window with his own musket – this one loaded – and placed the gun on the windowsill. With the cool finesse of an experienced Ranger who fought against the French and Indians, he aimed into the crowd and fired.
Richardson and Wilmot were escorted to Faneuil Hall where they stood before Ruddock and the patriot judges Richard Dana, Edmund Quincy, and Samuel Pemberton. Witnesses gave testimony to what had transpired, painting a bleak portrait of the ruthless slaughter of an eleven-year-old boy. Both men were charged with ‘firing off and discharging a gun loaded with gun powder and swan shot at one Christopher Seider thereby giving him a very dangerous wound.’ They were ordered jailed, and as they were hauled from Faneuil Hall, the growing crowd demanded again that they be hanged. Men from the crowd seized the two men from the constables and threw ropes around the prisoners’ heads. Leading patriots intervened once more, removing the nooses and passing the men back to the constables. No doubt both Richardson and Wilmot breathed easier when they were finally safe and sound in the jail cell.
At nine that night, the wounded Christopher Seider died.
Dr. Joseph Warren, a 29-year-old leading patriotwho was considered the best doctor in town, performed the autopsy. The coroner’s jury examined the body and declared that the boy had died as a result of having been ‘wilfully and feloniously shot by Ebenezer Richardson’ (though historians believe it’s likelier that Wilmot had fired the fatal shot). Richardson’s indictment was changed to murder – and the boy became Boston’s first ‘patriot martyr.’
Samuel Adams, ever the propagandist, slaved day and night to make Seider’s funeral an event to remember. When the day of the funeral came, the city lay under a deep blanket of snow; nonetheless, it seemed that the whole town turned out to pay their respects. One observer noted that the funeral procession, which began at five in the evening at the Liberty Tree, was ‘the largest perhaps ever known in America.’ A sign covered with biblical passages had been affixed to the Liberty Tree: ‘Thou shalt take no satisfaction for the life of a MURDERER – he shall surely be put to death’ and ‘Though Hand join in Hand, the Wicked shall not pass unpunished’ served as foreboding warnings to the jailed Richardson, who could hear the procession from his cell. Four hundred schoolboys walked two-by-two in front of the coffin, which was inscribed with a Latin quotation referring to murdered innocence and carried by six boys. Two thousand mourners followed the coffin, and they were in turn followed by thirty carriages and chaises. The procession extended half a mile. The former slave Phillis Wheatley, a famed black poet, wrote a memorial poem, claiming that ‘the Tory chiefs’ made the boy ‘ripe for destruction.’
John Adams rode into town from Braintree as the procession was forming. He stopped at John Rowe’s house to warm himself from the numbing cold before joining the funeral. He wrote in his diary that night, ‘My eyes never beheld such a funeral. This shows there are many more lives to spend if wanted in the service of their country. It shows, too, that the faction is not yet expiring – that the ardor of the people is not to be quelled by the slaughter of one child and the wounding of another.’ The historian Robert Middlekauff notes, ‘The size of [the funeral procession] revealed more than the horror felt at a boy’s death; it testified to the extent of popular revulsion from the British measures.’ It’s ironic that Seider’s death had nothing to do with the redcoats or British tyranny; it was the result of a riotous mob rattling too many nerves in their ‘punishment’ of those defying mob-orchestrated nonimportation. This fact eluded patriots or was downright ignored by them. Though historians often blame Samuel Adams for turning Seider’s death into a casualty of the ‘war against tyranny,’ the fact that his more levelheaded cousin John shared these sentiments indicates that that Samuel’s convictions may have been more widespread as a result of the growing enmity between Bostonians and British troops. Nevertheless Thomas Hutchinson hit the nail on the head when he remarked that, given the ‘inconceivable impression’ produced by the funeral, if the Sons of Liberty could’ve resurrected Seider, they ‘would not have done it, but would have chosen the grand funeral.’
[1] Mein left Boston saddled with two thousand pounds of debt. Upon reaching England, he contacted Lord Dartmouth and briefed him on the situation in Massachusetts. Afterwards he spent a year in King’s Bench Prison because of his debt. Upon release he contributed to London newspapers by writing vitriolic editorials against the patriot movement. He returned to Boston in 1770 and was jailed there for his debts. John Hancock, represented by John Adams, sued Mein for two thousand pounds; the court ruled in Hancock’s favor, and Mein was left bankrupt – leaving Hancock to gloat in his victory over his detractor.
Comments
Post a Comment