Redcoats in Boston
The First Troops Arrive ∙ The Manufactory House ∙ The Repeal of the Townsend Acts (Minus Tea) ∙ Nonimportation: Boston Stands Alone ∙ An Uneasy Winter ∙ Redcoats and Lobster Backs ∙ The Journal of the Times ∙ Boston Gets a New Governor ∙ The Liberty Song ∙ A British Conspiracy ∙ Lord North as Prime Minister
The First Troops Arrive
On 28 September 1768, the vitriolic Massachusetts Convention was in full swing as the first British troop carriers, supported by men-of-war under full canvas and bristling with cannon, sailed into Boston Harbor. John Mein, the Tory editor of the Boston Chronicle, the ying to the patriots’ Gazette yang, sneered that the delegates ‘broke up and rushed out of town like a herd of scalded hogs,’ apparently lacking the mettle to make good on their threats of armed resistance against the incoming troops. The transports carried red-coated soldiers of the 14th West Yorks and 29th regiments out of Nova Scotia, and as the men-of-war anchored in the harbor, they presented the town with their broadsides. This disposition, with the cannon facing the town, had been authorized by Thomas Gage. Such dispositions were employed when armed opposition could be expected or when broadsides would be used in support of an assault; though provocative, the arrangement adopted in Boston Harbor reflected Gage’s conviction that the British troops were entering a cauldron of opposition that teemed with ‘mutinous desperadoes’ guilty of ‘sedition.’
Four thousand troops had been ordered to debark in Boston (about one soldier for every four citizens), and they would arrive in two waves: the first wave in September and the second in November [1]. Parliament hoped the troops would ‘overawe’ the 16,000 cantankerous Bostonians; indeed, this was a show of force, for the British commanders knew that in the event of any real contest of arms, the troops – unless heavily reinforced – would be bottled up in Boston and become de jure hostages to colonial firebrands. Historian Page Smith notes:
The dispatching of troops, on the surface such an obvious response to the rioting and disorders, not only revealed the flimsiness of English policy – or, as has been said, the lack of it – but also demonstrated quite vividly the basic British misunderstanding of the problem of colonial resistance. If that resistance was the work of a few agitators and mobbers concentrated in the seaport towns, as the letters of most of the royal governors and customs commissioners suggested, or, more commonly, stated to be a fact, then it was not unreasonable to dispatch a few thousand soldiers to assist the civil authorities in maintaining order. But if the ‘riots’ were a crude expression of the sentiments of a substantial number of the most respectable and loyal English colonists wherever they might be found, the quartering of soldiers in the colonies was a measure that could only have disastrous results.
Because the British had grossly misread the scope of colonial dissent, the presence of professional soldiers wouldn’t silence the loud-mouthed firebrands but fuel the very dissent they wished to head off.
On the first of October, barges and small boats ferried the soldiers to Boston’s large wharf where they assembled in companies before marching up King Street with ‘drums beating, fifes playing, and colours flying.’ Each regiment was marked by two standards, large silk banners attached to ten-foot-high poles. The first standard displayed the king’s colors, and the second displayed the regimental colors with the regiment’s number on a red field encircled by roses and thistles. The professional soldiers were known as ‘redcoats’ because of their bright red coats with cross straps freshly whitened with pipe clay. The bayonets capping their muskets glistened as they paraded past taverns, inns, homes, and shops; citizens – both Patriot and Tory – ogled out of windows and stood rooted in place on the sides of the cobbled roads as the soldiers marched past. The line infantry wore black, tricornered hats trimmed with white lace, and though these are the soldiers whom our minds instantly drum up when we think of the 18th century British army, the grenadiers received the most sidelong looks. These were special troops chosen for size and strength, the cream of the army’s crop. They wore miter-shaped bearskin caps with red fronts that bore the white horse badge of the House of Hanover and the inscription Nec aspera terrent (‘they fear no difficulty’). Grenadier officers’ hats were embroidered in gold and silver gorgets; they also had crimson sashes, swords, and spontoons that were half-baton and half-pike. Most shocking to the Bostonians watching the debarkation parade were the yellow-uniformed drummer boys of the 29th Regiment, who were black; most black men in Boston were slaves.Mercy Warren, a political writer and propagandist of the American Revolution, as well as wife to James Warren, future president of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and Paymaster of the Continental Army, witnessed the landing of the troops. She later wrote:
The American war may be dated from the hostile parade of this day; a day which marks with infamy the councils of Britain. At this period the inhabitants of the colonies almost universally breathed an unshaken loyalty to the King of England, and the strongest attachment to a country whence they derived their origin. Thus was the astonishment of the whole province excited, when to the grief and consternation of the town of Boston several regiments were landed, and marched sword in hand through the principal streets of their city, then in profound peace.
The lawyer John Adams, who had moved to Boston from Braintree to practice law and taken up residence on Brattle Square where redcoats would parade each morning, wrote, ‘Their very appearance in Boston was a strong proof to me that the determination of Great Britain to subjugate us was too deep and inveterate ever to be altered by us: for everything we could do was misrepresented and nothing we could say was credited.’
Despite the threats given at the latest convention, the soldiers received no opposition as they marched through the city streets. Though patriots loathed their presence, Tories breathed a sigh of relief and hoped the redcoats would put an end to the Sons of Liberty and bring a sense of normalcy back to the town. When Captain Ponsonby Molesworth of the 29th stepped out of ranks to observe his company pass by, the fifteen-year-old Susanna Shaeffe, daughter of the customs collector William Shaeffe, stepped onto the balcony of her father’s house across the street. Molesworth, stunned by her beauty, turned to a fellow officer and declared, ‘That girl seals my fate.’ No doubt he felt that garrison duty in Boston might be a boom to his romantic endeavors, but he would find himself in hot water soon enough. The 29th Regiment decamped on the Boston Common, pitching their camps where cattle would graze and in full view of John Hancock’s mansion on Beacon Hill. The 14th Regiment took over Faneuil Hall – the site of so many patriotic meetings – and slept on straw pallets laid over the floors. The next day Governor Bernard opened the town house for them; thus the place of meeting for the governor’s council and the House of Representatives became a de facto barracks for some of the 14th.
Housing for the troops still needed to be procured, and Gage had no choice but to scatter the redcoats throughout the town. By the end of October, the 29th had evacuated Boston Common, the 14th had abandoned both the town house and Faneuil Hall, and soldiers began moving into rented warehouses and other buildings. William Molineux, a patriot in cohorts with James Otis and Samuel Adams, leased a warehouse to quarter the troops; James Murray, a recent arrival from South Carolina, rented out a large sugar warehouse; several stores opened their doors for soldiers to ‘camp out’ in stockrooms and storage areas. While the run-of-the-mill soldiers decamped in warehouses, inns, and storefront stockrooms, officers fared better, as there were enough Tories to offer hospitality to the ‘gentlemen’ officers. Gage, fed up with the whole fiasco, authorized two cannon placed on King Street with their muzzles pointing toward the town house, a direct ‘middle finger’ to the civilian authorities who had foiled his planned dispositions [3].
In November the second wave of troops arrived from Nova Scotia. The 64th and 65th had crossed three thousand miles of Atlantic ocean from Ireland to debark in Boston. Commodore Samuel Hood of the Royal Navy also arrived from Halifax, Nova Scotia. However, the transport ship Raven, carrying Colonel Alexander Mackay – who was slated to take over Colonel Dalrymple’s temporary command – and three companies of foot had been blown off course in a squall and laid up in the West Indies. Dalrymple would be in command for longer than anticipated. He reassured Gage that he was up to the job. Gage, who returned to New York on 24 November, felt that much had been done to curb ‘the licentious and seditious spirit, which has so long prevailed in [Boston]… and it appears very necessary for His Majesty’s service that both his land and sea forces should be strong in North America for some time to come.’
Governor Bernard had written to his friend Lord Barrington of Massachusetts’ latest convention – the one that had been brought to a premature close by the arrival of British troops – and reported that the convention had been a ‘wild attempt to create a revolt and take the government of this province out of the king’s and in their own hands.’ He claimed the delegates had concocted a plan to ‘seize the governor and lieutenant governor and take possession of the treasury and then set up their standard.’ He argued that this was the perfect occasion for ‘the Supreme Power to reform the Constitution of this subordinate government [the Massachusetts Charter].’ He insisted that punishment be meted out upon the most hotheaded delegates and that those who orchestrated the convention be ‘disqualified by an Act of Parliament from sitting in the assembly or holding any place of office during His Majesty’s pleasure.’ He even went so far as to secure a sworn affidavit from a Richard Silvester declaring that Samuel Adams, Thomas Chase, and Dr. Benjamin Church had denounced the sending of British troops to the colony, had abused Parliament and King George III, and had expressed their determination to resist armed occupation with arms themselves (but because the affidavit records all the patriot leaders saying the same thing verbatim, Silvester’s honesty is dubious). Bernard sent this affidavit to England, which would only inflame further prejudices against the colonies.
But were Silvester’s accusations far off the mark? A Boston Tory named George Mason reported to a friend that ‘the conversation I have lately had with the Sons of Liberty leaves me under no doubt that they are actually ripe for rebellion, and they don’t scruple to declare their wishes for a revolt.’ The more militant patriots toyed with the idea of armed revolt, and though most radicals bucked against this – for what they were really after wasn’t ‘independence’ but a return to the normalcy they’d enjoyed in days gone bye – such radical leanings were indeed spreading. A deacon of the Medford church reported that ‘the revolution principles were gaining ground daily,’ and he added that he didn’t doubt but ‘we should have a blessed form of government in which no tyrants would be allowed to oppress the people.’ When news of the Boston convention, supplemented by Bernard’s own letters and the sworn affidavit, reached England, the reaction was incendiary. Many Englishmen wanted the Bostonian patriot leaders to be tried for high crimes and misdemeanors, if not treason. Lord Barrington argued that James Otis, ‘together with the selectmen of Boston who signed the letters convoking the convention, should be impeached. This would convey terror to the wicked and factious spirits all over the continent, and show that the subjects of Great Britain must not rebel with impunity anywhere.’
When Parliament met for the 1768-1769 session, they had two issues to tackle in regards to the American colonies: ‘What do we do about the Boston convention?’ and ‘What do we do about the Townsend Acts?’ Regarding the first, the Duke of Bedford suggested that the leading Bostonian firebrands be arrested under the terms of a half-buried and much-forgotten law dating back to the days of Henry VIII and be brought to England to stand trial for treason. Bedford likely had Samuel Adams in mind, for in English eyes, as Smith notes, ‘it was clearly Massachusetts, and more specifically Boston, that nurtured the egg of sedition, and it was Samuel Adams who seemed determined to hatch that egg into full-fledged revolution.’ Though this idea gained traction with many parliamentarians, it met fierce opposition from Burke, Barre, Pownall, and Dowdeswell. Grenville, who was staunchly opposed to the rhetoric seeping from the colonies, blamed the situation on Pitt’s permissiveness and other ministers sympathetic to the whiney, spoiled colonists; he brandished a copy of John Dickinson’s Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, read a few passages, and declared it ‘libelous throughout.’ Nevertheless, when it came to reviving a centuries-old law and exporting the firebrands to England to stand trial, Grenville balked; he insisted the very idea was ‘sheer madness,’ and Parliament dropped the proposal. At the end of the day, there wasn’t enough evidence to prosecute Adams, and even if they did have such evidence and were able to bring him to England for trial, such a move would simply steam the kettle.
The main subject of debate was what to do about the Townsend Acts. The colonial nonimportation agreements were in full swing and harming British manufacturers and the export trade; meanwhile, the Townsend duties that were actually collected brought in a measly revenue. In the first year after its passage, American customs agents brought in only 295 pounds (about a thousand modern dollars); meanwhile, the cost of sending the 64th and 65th regiments from Ireland to Boston – in order to back up Governor Bernard and his customs officials in their tax collection – cost a whopping 170,000 pounds. At the same time, English exports to America had dried up: 2,378,000 pounds in 1768 was reduced to 1,634,000 pounds in 1769 due to nonimportation. The numbers were clear: the Townsend Acts weren’t working, and the colonial response vastly negated any positives to be had even if the Townsend duties were enforced. On top of this, even if the duties were strictly enforced, colonists could easily evade the collectors. Hundreds of harbors and ports, rivers and creeks, streams and inlets peppered the Atlantic seacoast from Quebec in the north to Georgia in the south; in the 1760s and 1770s, only 45 to 50 customs districts served to collect duties. Any merchants who wanted to avoid customs districts could easily find hidden, out-of-the-way spots to load and unload cargo. In 1770 John Williams, inspector general of Customs for the Chesapeake, noted that ships from all over Europe and the West Indies plied their trade along the Potomac far out of reach of any Customs officer.
When Pownall motioned that the Townsend Acts should be repealed, London merchants hurt by nonimportation seconded him. Edmund Burke and Colonel Isaac Barre, unabashed in their support of the colonists, again reiterated that Parliament had no right to tax the colonies in the first place, so repealing the Townsend Acts was simply the moral thing to do. They were joined by Lord Cornwallis (yes, the very same Cornwallis who, fifteen years later, would surrender the British forces under his command to General George Washington at Yorktown); Cornwallis spearheaded criticisms of Lord Hillsborough’s bungling attempt to get the Massachusetts Great and General Court to disavow its Circular Letter. Lord North, chancellor of the exchequer, couldn’t stomach the thought of repealing the Townsend Acts. ‘America must fear you before she can love you,’ he declared, ‘[and] I am against repealing the last act of Parliament, securing to us a revenue out of America; I will never think of repealing it until I see America prostrate at my feet!’ Colonel Isaac Barre, whose speech had shut many mouths years earlier when he opposed the passing of the Stamp Act, replied to North in another moving speech:
To effect this is not so easy as some imagine; the Americans are a numerous, a respectable, a hardy, a free people. But were it ever so easy, does any friend to his country really wish to see America thus humbled? In such a situation, she would serve only as a monument of your arrogance and your folly. For my part, the America I wish to see is America increasing and prosperous, raising her head in graceful dignity, with freedom and firmness asserting her rights at your bar, vindicating her liberties, pleading her services, and conscious of her merit. This is the America that will have spirit to fight your battles, to sustain you when hard pushed by some prevailing foe, and by her industry will be able to consume your manufactures, support your trade, and pour wealth and splendor into your towns and cities. If we do not change our conduct towards her, America will be torn from our side… Unless you repeal [the Townsend Acts], you run the risk of losing America.
Though Barre’s speech moved many a parliamentarian, Lord Hillsborough countered it. ‘We shall grant nothing to the Americans,’ he determined, ‘except what they may ask with a halter round their necks!’ Another parliamentarian retorted, ‘[The American colonists] are a race of convicted felons, and they ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging.’
All sentiment aside, the crux of the matter, as Beckford pointed out, was that the Townsend duties simply weren’t working; even more, the colonial response was hurting the economy. Any pragmatist could see that repealing the duties in order to lift nonimportation was the only way forward. Even Lord North, who opposed repealing the acts, acknowledged that ‘prudence and policy’ determined it to be the right course of action; nevertheless, he was unwilling to change course because of American sensitivities. He feared setting further precedence by cowing to their demands. The conundrum was clear: if Parliament maintained the Townsend Acts, colonial trade would be destroyed, and the whole purpose of the duties – to raise revenue – would be negated; but if they repealed the duties, this would be interpreted by the colonies as a second retreat and be praised as a colonial victory. On the one hand, then, repeal would fuel rebellious sentiments, douse the morale of those charged with maintaining crown authority overseas, and make it nigh impossible for Parliament to impose any future taxes on the colonies; on the other hand, upholding the duties would strangle British commerce and trade. Lord North and King George suggested an odd compromise: Parliament could repeal the duties on glass, paper, and painter’s colors while retaining the tax on tea. The tea tax would be kept to preserve the principle that Parliament had the right to tax the colonies. The tea tax itself would be dropped from twelve pence a pound to three pence a pound, making the duty easier to swallow for colonial merchants. It was inconceivable that colonial merchants, themselves hurt by nonimportation, would keep up their boycott over a measly three-pence-a-pound duty on tea. Nonimportation would break and Parliament would save face.
Many Parliamentary members resisted retaining the tea tax. Beckford did the math and showed that the tea duty would bring in a mere 300 pounds to the British treasury; Lord Beauchamp asked whether making enemies of the colonists was worth such a measly sum. Many Parliamentary heavy-hitters such as Grafton, Camden, Conway, Burke, Barre, and Dowdeswell expressed opposition to retaining the tea duty and argued that the whole principle of ‘parliamentary taxation’ in the colonies be given up. When the time came to vote, the compromise passed, but only by a single vote; Parliament was, then, truly divided on Lord North’s suggestion. North, however, believed that keeping the tea tax would ‘put the well-disposed against the seditious’ and bring about the collapse of the nonimportation agreements. To his credit he was half-right.
Lord Hillsborough believed the compromise would suit the colonists, and while it was being hotly debated, he wrote to the colonies and informed them that Parliament was in the process of repealing the Townsend Acts and that they were ‘well disposed to relieve the colonies from all “real” grievances arising from the late acts of revenue.’ Though ‘the present ministers have concurred in the opinion of the whole legislature, that no means ought to be taken which can derogate from legislative authority of Great Britain over the colonies’ (a blatant lie, as there were many in Parliament arguing the exact opposite!), they wished to assure the colonies that ‘at no time [had they] entertained a design to propose any further taxes upon America for the purpose of a revenue.’ He keyed them in to the compromise, writing that Parliament planned to remove the duties on glass, paper, and colors, believing them to be ‘contrary to the true principles of commerce,’ leaving only the tea tax to maintain the principle of Parliament’s right to tax. Hillsborough hoped his letter would soothe colonial agitation, but it was received in the spirit of offense. Patriot leaders could read between the lines: Parliament was trying to drive a wedge between the merchants and the patriots. The merchants would want to break nonimportation; not to do so would be to strangle themselves on their principles. At the same time, patriot leaders – whose main beef was the Parliamentary principle highlighted by the retention of the tea tax – would want nonimportation to continue. How, then, would it play out?
Patriot leaders called a meeting in Boston to scrutinize Hillsborough’s letter and to hammer out their response. The meeting, in the firm grip of the most radical patriots, agreed to uphold nonimportation. Three committees were created to enforce nonimportation: one committee would remind Bostonians not to buy British goods imported into Massachusetts, and another would examine the cargo manifests of all vessels entering the harbor and would publish the names of merchants who refused to deliver their goods into the hands of a third committee designed to receive them. These committees styled themselves a colonial ‘Board of Trade.’ The patriots planned a campaign of intimidation and harassment against those who balked at nonimportation; any Bostonian merchants who didn’t comply would be ‘coerced’ into doing so or run out of town. Outside Massachusetts, however, nonimportation found itself on shakier ground. When news of the repeal reached New York, the patriots attempted to keep nonimportation afloat; but the New York merchants conducted a ‘public poll,’ going house-to-house to determine the public’s feelings, and after reporting that the public opposed a continuance of nonimportation – after all, most of the duties had been repealed, so job well done! – the merchants claimed to ‘bow’ to public pressure in reviving trade with Great Britain (of course, they used ‘public sentiment’ as a scapegoat to keep their reputations untarnished; they didn’t like losing money to nonimportation and were more than happy to drop the whole thing). Philadelphia, which had been an outlier in nonimportation from the start, revived trade, as well. A domino effect swept the colonies, and as towns and cities resumed trade with Great Britain, only the tetchy Boston stood firm on nonimportation.
An Uneasy Winter
Boston slipped into an uneasy winter. The redcoats settled into the daily rhythms of duty in their new ‘garrison town.’ Though American histories tend to paint the occupying redcoats as ruthless brigands, in reality they didn’t behave badly according to the standards of the time. They saw themselves in a garrison town and behaved accordingly. Where discipline was lax, it is only right for the Bostonians to take a measure of blame, as their actions resulted in the troops being scattered all through the town so that the commanders had a more difficult time keeping a tight leash on the troops.
Many soldiers grafted themselves into the town’s social fabric. Captain Molesworth – the same who had been smitten by fifteen-year-old Susanna Shaeffe – and Captain Jeremiah French were members of the Masonic Order, and they were elected officers in Boston’s Grand Lodge. During meetings they jointed in the ceremonies alongside patriot leaders such as Dr. Joseph Warren, Thomas Crafts, and Paul Revere. Because they made little coin, many redcoats took up odd jobs and manual labor around town; nevertheless, according to Samuel Adams, their ‘principal employment seemed to be to parade in the streets, and by their merry-andrew tricks to excite the contempt of women and children.’ When not patrolling or on sentry duty, redcoats spent their time drinking rum and enjoying the prostitutes that swarmed the city to ply their trade. Though Boston, despite its Puritanical morality, had already become notorious for prostitution (as seaport towns tended to be), the presence of British troops attracted more, and whores crawled the streets and wooed clients in inns and taverns. Rum came cheap in Boston, and a parson named Andrew Eliot reported that the soldiers were ‘in raptures’ at its low cost. They tended towards drunkenness, but this wasn’t out-of-the-ordinary for 18th century soldiers. On more than one occasion drunken soldiers got into bloody brawls with unemployed sailors among the waterfront taverns, and some soldiers lacking coin to purchase rum or women turned to stealing. Boston’s petty theft, burglary, and armed robberies skyrocketed. The lower-class patriot George Robert Twelve Hewes, a shoemaker who became a key member of the Sons of Liberty, and who would witness the Boston Massacre in 1770 and the Boston Tea Party in 1773, reported that redcoats stopped him after curfew, demanding he share his rum before continuing with his travels. One redcoat swindled him out of a pair of shoes, and he saw another robbing a woman ‘of her bonnet, cardinal muff, and tippet.’ Women suffered far more than theft: rapes, assaults, and (more commonly) lewd suggestions and cat-calls became a facet of everyday life. Some drunken soldiers couldn’t help but antagonize the populace. In one instance, the drunken Captain John Wilson encountered a group of black slaves on the street. ‘Go home!’ he commanded loudly, ‘and cut your masters’ throats! I’ll treat your masters, and come to me to the parade, and I will make you free. And if any person opposes you, I will run my sword through their hearts!’ This didn’t help the relations between soldiers and civilians, but not all civilians opposed the presence of troops. The Tories liked having them around, and they were profitable for business. Some historians estimate they squandered up to 250 pounds a week (though, admittedly, most of this went towards rum and women). Traders, tavern-keepers, victualers, and bakers enjoyed rising profits.
But the ultimate issue, of course, was the mere presence of British troops on Boston’s streets. Samuel Adams published a series of letters as ‘Vindex’ where he argued that to keep up ‘a standing army within the kingdom in time of peace, without the consent of Parliament, was against the law; that the consent of Parliament necessarily implied the consent of the people, who were always present in Parliament, either by themselves or by their representatives; and that the Americans, as they were not and could not be represented in Parliament, were therefore suffering under military tyranny over which they were allowed to exercise no control.’ The historian Robert Middlekauff writes, ‘What set Boston teeth on edge more than any of these crimes – or the soldiers’ behavior – was the military presence. Having to stomach a standing army in their midst, observe the redcoats daily, pass by troops stationed on Boston Neck who occupied a guardhouse on land illegally taken it was said from the town, and having to receive challenges by sentries on the streets, their own streets, affronted a people accustomed to personal liberty, fired their tempers, and gnawed away at their honor.’
Dalrymple ordered sentries and guards to keep watch at barracks and warehouses, officers’ quarters in the homes of loyal Tories, and to stand guard over public houses such as the town house and Faneuil Hall. Come dusk, sentries challenged citizens as they walked home from work. People who crossed the ferry to Charlestown were stopped, searched, and questioned, along with all those passed in and out of town via the narrow Boston Neck. As a matter of honor, most citizens refused to respond to soldiers’ inquiries, and sometimes irritated guards seized citizens for not showing due respect; citizens who resisted such seizure could expect a musket butt or even a bayonet against their throats. This colonial ‘stop and frisk’ became a hot-button issue, and the Boston Gazette acknowledged that while troops might have a legal right to challenge citizens, that didn’t mean citizens were legally required to answer. An unnamed ‘freeman’ wrote, ‘I would never quarrel with the guards for asking me the question, nor should they ever quarrel with me with impunity, for despising their question and passing by in silence.’ The redcoats found ways to snipe back at the population. Not least of all, they took an odd pleasure in disturbing holy Sundays. The regimental bands played their fifes and drums with an extra dose of enthusiasm on Sunday mornings, and their racket was ‘very displeasing’ to the pious. The citizens politely requested that the troops change their drill schedule so that ‘there might be no disturbance to the religious assemblies, during public worship.’
Given soldiers’ measly pay and gruesome discipline, it isn’t surprising that desertion ran rampant among British troops. Within the first two weeks of the British occupation, between forty and seventy soldiers deserted, seeking refuge deeper in the colonies; more slipped away each night. The army’s commanders blamed citizens for enticing soldiers to desert, and Dalrymple posted guards around town, especially at access roads, to catch any redcoats trying to slip away. Smith captures the irony: ‘British troops had been sent to establish order in Boston. They had hardly arrived before the attractions of colonial life proved so compelling that they began to join the ranks of the colonists they had been sent to police.’ When Dalrymple ordered sentries to increase their ‘stop and frisk’ policies, they received silence or verbal abuse from the colonists – and sometimes even rocks and brickbats. Irritated soldiers and disgruntled colonists did not a good mixture make, so Dalrymple relaxed the rules and ordered soldiers at most posts to make no challenge. Thomas Gage, infuriated by the rapid desertions, hoped to curb them in another way, by making an example out of a caught deserter. A deserter named Ames was sentenced to death. He was dressed in white and paraded across the Common before the assembled rank-and-file; after a short ceremony, he was blindfolded and met his end at the wrong end of a firing squad. The troops filed by the body to soak in the sight. Though this may have had an eye-opening affect on the troops, as Gage intended, it had the same affect on the Bostonians who witnessed it. Those with strong feelings against the redcoats had their suspicions confirmed, while many of those sympathetic to the soldiers began to question their sympathies.
Desertions slowed with the posting of sentries and the execution of Ames, but come winter when the rivers froze over and deserters could escape across the ice, the number of deserters rose again. Gage came up with the idea of sending soldiers dressed as civilians into the countryside to capture deserters, but these incognito groups suffered hostility from the colonists. Colonists mortified by the fate of Ames made it their duty to harbor and hide deserting redcoats. On many occasions the round-up parties captured deserters, but before they could return to Boston, they were surrounded by mobs of colonists and forced, upon pain of death and dismemberment, to turn over their prize. Thus they skulked into Boston discouraged and empty-handed.
The presence of troops in Boston was, in many peoples' eyes, a ticking time bomb. Connecticut Governor Jonathan Trumbull captured the colonial view of the garrisoning soldiers: ‘The mischief, rapine, and villainy commonly prevalent among troops, who are kept in idleness, are such as will be intolerable in the colonies and has a tendency to destroy the morals of the people, and raise a distrust of the good intentions of the governors in the better sort, and stir up strife and contention among the whole…’ Trumbull feared that as altercations between redcoats and colonists increased, strife and contention among the whole would follow suit. This process was aided by patriots who, beginning in October 1768 just weeks after the redcoats’ arrival, published news stories about conflict and squabbles between the soldiers and citizens. Because publishing such ‘episodes of merit’ could be considered seditious libel, the patriots recorded the episodes, sent them to New York, and in New York they were published ‘with glosses, exaggerations, and additional circumstances.’ The New York publications were reprinted in Boston in a weekly pamphlet entitled The Journal of the Times, the whole point of which was to stir up ‘strife and contention among the whole.’ Lieutenant Governor Hutchinson mused after the fact, ‘Many false reports, which had been confuted, were mixed with true reports, and some pretended facts of an enormous nature were published… This paper had a very great effect. A story of a fictitious quarrel incensed the lower part of the people, and brought on a real quarrel.’ He added that these lies ‘in the cause of liberty’ were ‘a scurvy trick at best.’
In May 1769, after a relatively easy winter absent any feared outbursts of violence, rumor leaked that Gage had ordered two regiments evacuated from Boston. Parliament needed more troops in Ireland, where the Irish were in a state approaching armed rebellion; in a shuffling of troops, the 64th and 65th would be relocated to New York. Parliament felt that two regiments rather than four would be adequate for keeping the radicals in check, and in June and July the 64th and 65th regiments departed for Halifax, leaving the 14th and 29th on garrison duty. The citizens of Boston believed the other two regiments would evacuate soon, as well; when it became clear they were there to stay, the mood in town would sour. More welcome news that spring was that the much-loathed Governor Bernard had been ordered back to England to debrief on the situation in Boston. He’d accumulated quite a lot of hate over the last few months, evidenced in an anti-Bernard riot in Cambridge in which the mob stormed Harvard Hall and rioters stabbed a portrait of the governor through the heart. Bernard welcomed the news, as well, for he’d been eager to depart the chaos. When he sailed for England on 1 August 1769 aboard the H.M.S. Rippon, citizens rejoiced: bells rang, patriots fired guns from Hancock’s wharf, and militia companies fired off their cannons. Flags festooned the Liberty Tree, and a great bonfire fed by effigies of the late governor burned bright on Fort Hill, observable to Governor Bernard aboard ship in harbor as he waited for a favorable wind to ferry him to England . In the next issue of the Gazette, Samuel Adams wrote that Boston was finally free of ‘a scourge to this province, a curse to North America, and a plague on the whole Empire of Britain.’
Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson became acting governor in Bernard’s absence, and he would be officially appointed governor in the spring of 1770. Parliament hoped that Hutchinson, as a Massachusetts native, would be more amicable to the Bostonians. They banked on the fact that he had been a beloved staple of the colony, admired and praised for his learning and accomplishments. He’d been elected to one office after another in a lightning-storm succession, and he’d curried the peoples’ favor until the rough-and-tumble days of the Stamp Act. Though Hutchinson had tried to convince Grenville to abandon the Stamp Act, he felt bound to enforce the Act when it became law. In this it became evident that he believed in the British doctrine of Parliament’s supremacy, and the people condemned him as a Tory. Public sentiment turned against him, deriding him as a turncoat and traitor, ‘a thankless dog withal, whose ruling passing was avarice.’ It’s no surprise, then, that he suffered the most during the infamous Stamp Act riots that turned Boston into a firestorm.
With Bernard gone and the British troops in Boston halved, patriots found a new vigor and arrogance. Liberty Picnics became a common occurrence, in which hundreds of patriots met under sailcloth awnings near a friendly tavern, singing John Dickinson’s Liberty Song and sharing tankards of ale and rum. Dickinson’s Liberty Song was set to the tune of Hearts of Oak, the Royal Navy’s anthem; it was first published on 7 July 1768 in two colonial newspapers – the Pennsylvania Journal and the Pennsylvania Gazette – and quickly became the hottest barroom song in the thirteen colonies. The lyrics include the earliest known publication of the phrase paralleling ‘united we stand, divided we fall,’ a slogan that’s been a patriotic staple throughout United States history. The version sung at the Liberty Picnics in 1769 would’ve gone like this:
Come, join hand in hand, brave Americans all,
And rouse your bold hearts at fair Liberty's call;
No tyrannous acts shall suppress your just claim,
Or stain with dishonor America's name.
In Freedom we're born and in Freedom we'll live.
Our purses are ready. Steady, friends, steady;
Not as slaves, but as Freemen our money we'll give.
Our worthy forefathers, let's give them a cheer,
To climates unknown did courageously steer;
Thro' oceans to deserts for Freedom they came,
And dying, bequeath'd us their freedom and fame.
Their generous bosoms all dangers despis'd,
So highly, so wisely, their Birthrights they priz'd;
We'll keep what they gave, we will piously keep,
Nor frustrate their toils on the land and the deep.
The tree their own hands had to Liberty rear'd;
They lived to behold growing strong and revered;
With transport they cried, "Now our wishes we gain,
For our children shall gather the fruits of our pain."
Swarms of placemen and pensioners soon will appear
Like locusts deforming the charms of the year;
Suns vainly will rise, showers vainly descend,
If we are to drudge for what others shall defend.
Then join hand in hand, brave Americans all,
By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall;
In so righteous a cause let us hope to succeed,
For heaven approves of each generous deed.
All ages shall speak with amaze and applause,
Of the courage we'll show in support of our Laws;
To die we can bear, but to serve we disdain.
For shame is to Freedom more dreadful than pain.
This bumper I crown for our Sovereign's health,
And this for Britannia's glory and wealth;
That wealth and that glory immortal may be,
If She is but Just, and if we are but Free.
In 1770, a new version was printed in which the first stanza as well as the chorus were changed. The first stanza was changed as reprinted below, along with the chorus following:
Come swallow your bumpers, ye Tories, and roar,
That the sons of fair freedom are hampered once more;
But know that no cut-throats our spirits can tame,
Nor a host of oppressors shall smother the flame.
In Freedom we're born, and, like sons of the brave,
Will never surrender, But swear to defend her;
And scorn to survive, if unable to save.
The lawyer John Adams, who participated in some of these Liberty Picnics, noted bitterly in his diary that James Otis and his cousin Samuel Adams were ‘promoting these festivals, for they singe the minds of the people [and] impregnate them with the sentiments of liberty.’
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It was during the spring of 1769 that that patriots discovered a legal way to ‘fight back’ against the occupation force: soldiers who harassed civilians or committed minor offenses could be tried by civilian courts where patriot judges like Richard Dana or Timothy Ruddock could pass sentence. These judges gave charged redcoats a standard lecture: ‘What brought you here? Who sent for you? And by what authority do you mount guard, it is contrary to the laws of the province, and you should be taken up for so offending.’ Charged soldiers would be fined, and failure to pay could result in imprisonment. Because weightier offenses were passed to higher courts more amicable to the soldiers, lower-court judges began increasing the fines for minor offenses. Regimental funds were used to pay the fines, but as the fines increased, the regimental funds decreased. When unlucky soldiers were informed that the regimental funds couldn’t cover their fines, they either had to cough up the money themselves or face indentured servant-hood until they worked off what they owed. When news of this scheme reached Gage in New York, he lost his temper. ‘I can hardly write with patience of this infamous affair,’ he seethed, and he encouraged commanders to smuggle accused soldiers aboard royal ships anchored in the harbor. The run-of-the-mill soldiers were understandably embittered, and this made it all the more difficult for commanders to keep their men restrained. The fines stirred the pot of rising tensions between redcoats and colonials, and the kettle was close to screeching.
The fact that civilian courts had such a pull on the redcoats is striking, but these laws were wrapped up in the fabric of English tradition. Since the days of the Stuart kings, Englishmen believed that there ought to be a measure of civilian control over military forces, particularly in times of peace. Not only the colonists but also the royal soldiers, Parliament, and King George himself understood that redcoats couldn’t be called out against civilians except by order of civilian officials. It followed, then, that no soldier could open fire on civilians, no matter how intense the provocation. Soldiers could only open fire by the command of an officer, and officers couldn’t give that command without the written authority of the civil authorities or in cases in which their lives were blatantly threatened. These stipulations all but tied the hands of the redcoats, and as citizens came to understand this, they were emboldened and ramped up their provocations. A guerilla war ensued in which verbal and physical abuse stopped just short of threatening soldiers’ lives. Protesters learned that rocks of certain size and weight could bruise and wound without threatening mortal injury; in some situations they could employ clubs and staves, but this was risky business that must be skillfully applied. As long as they restrained themselves, the ‘chained beasts’ couldn’t bite back. As Smith notes, ‘The temptation to torment a bound giant is usually irresistible. The chained dog is a magnet for the bully or for the incompetent sadist… The British troops were just such a bound giant or, perhaps better, chained bulldog, snarling and growling but unable to chew up his tormentors.’ Ironically, the most radical patriot leaders opposed the beating of the chained dog; they wanted to avoid the ‘mob mentality’ that had accompanied the Stamp Act riots, and they worked diligently to diffuse tempered crowds.
In September 1769, Samuel Adams managed to procure copies of letters that Bernard, Gage, Commodore Hood, and customs commissioners had written to London. At a town meeting on 4 October, patriots decided to publish ‘An APPEAL to the WORLD, or a VINDICATION of the Town of Boston from Many False and Malicious Aspersions.’ The pamphlet included choice sections of these letters, carefully chosen to communicate the desired narrative, and the pamphlet spread throughout the colonies and resulted in greater distrust for crown officials. Many colonists suspected that royal officials were engaged in a conspiracy, according to historian Samuel B. Griffith II, ‘to oppress them and deprive them of their liberties.’
Across the Atlantic, Parliament assembled in November for the opening shots of its 1769-1770 sessions. Bernard had debriefed Hillsborough, and King George declared Boston to be ‘in a state of disobedience to all law and government.’ Parliament confirmed that they were more than happy to consider ‘just’ complaints from the colonies, but they didn’t mince words in declaring their determination ‘to maintain the supreme authority of the British legislature over every part of the British Empire.’
The House – the lower house of Parliament – declared Boston’s late convention in September 1768 (in which patriot leaders decried the pending arrival of troops, some even going so far as to denounce kingship and swear armed resistance) as ‘illegal, unconstitutional, and calculated to excite sedition and insurrection.’ In their eyes, the convention had been ‘subversive, and evidently manifesting a design… to set up a new and unconstitutional authority independent of the Crown.’ The House requested that the governor of Massachusetts – at this point in time, acting governor Hutchinson – provide a detailed report on the comings and goings of any Bostonians who might be guilty of treason or even hiding the treason of others, to arrest them immediately, and to send them to England for trial. Hutchinson, of course, never followed through, likely because the instructions were meant to leak from the official press and intimidate the radicals. It’s unlikely Parliament expected, or even wanted, the arrests and deportations to take place, for they knew that if the instructions were obeyed, it could result in armed rebellion.
As Parliament’s sessions began, the Grafton ministry came under biting attack by an anonymous ‘Junius,’ whose spiteful articles in the Public Advertiser became supremely popular in England. The man (or woman) behind the pseudonym has never been identified, but this person railed against Grafton (despite the fact that it was Lord North who, in actuality, held the reigns). Junius, after a panoramic overlook of Great Britain’s current chaotic climate, declared that ‘we are governed by councils, from which a reasonable man can expect no remedy but poison; no relief but death… If by immediate interposition of Providence it were possible for us to escape a crisis so full of terror and despair, posterity will not believe the history of the present times. They will either conclude, that our distresses were imaginary, or that we had the good fortune to be governed by men of acknowledge integrity and wisdom: they will not believe it possible that their ancestors could have survived, or recovered, from so desperate a condition, while a Duke of Grafton was prime minister, a Lord North chancellor of the exchequer, a Weymouth and a Hillsborough secretaries of state, a Granby commander in chief, and a Mansfield chief criminal judge of the kingdom.’
Grafton’s incompetence during the Townsend Acts had resulted in lost confidence, and the king began sniffing around for a replacement. Grafton’s supporters fell by the wayside as he struggled to regain control. When the Earl of Chatham, braving a journey from his isolation in Bath, denounced Grafton’s ministry in a speech to the Lords (the Upper House of Parliament), Grafton could take no more. Chatham’s knife to the gut led him to inform the king that he couldn’t continue as Prime Minister. News of Grafton’s departure prompted Junius to write, ‘Retire, then, my lord, and hide your blushes from the world; for with such a load of shame, even black may change its colour. A mind such as yours, in the solitary hours of domestic enjoyment, may still find topics of consolation. You may find it in the memory of violated friendship; in the afflictions of an accomplished prince whom you have disgraced and deserted; and in the agitations of a great country, driven, by your counsels, to the brink of destruction.’
The king had a hard time finding Grafton’s replacement, and though he wasn’t his first choice, he eventually settled on Lord North, chancellor of the exchequer. At the end of January 1770, King George proposed the task to North. North accepted, and on 10 February he became Great Britain’s new Prime Minister. England breathed a sigh of relief: at home they were facing strikes, riots, and infighting over John Wilkes; and abroad they were facing a crisis in the American colonies. They hoped Lord North could usher in an era of peace, but when it came to the American crisis, he didn’t have a great track record. He’d voted for the Stamp Act and against its repeal; he strongly advocated the writs of assistance, the Quartering Act, and the Townsend duties. As Smith notes, ‘George III could not have picked a man more suitable to his purposes, nor one who by temperament and principle was better equipped to be the king’s coadjutor in severing the American colonies from the mother country.’ North would serve until 1782, making him the Prime Minister during the breadth of the American War of Independence.
End Notes:
[1] Though four thousand troops were ordered to Boston, some histories record it as around three thousand. This may be due to the fact that a regiment’s strength on paper was rarely met in actuality ‘in the field’ due to desertion, sickness, vacancies, etc. The lower numbers of soldiers in Boston may reflect ‘field’ reality rather than ‘paper’ reality.
[2] William Dalrymple joined the British Army in 1752 as an ensign in the 52nd Regiment of Foot. He became a lieutenant in 1759 before being promoted to a captain in the 91st Regiment in 1760. He fought as a major in the Seven Years War, participating in the successful 1762 Anglo-Spanish invasion of Portugal against Spain and France. In 1764 he was appointed to the 14th Regiment, and next year he was promoted to lieutenant colonel. He served in Halifax, Nova Scotia between 1766 and 1768; when Gage ordered two regiments to Boston, he placed Dalrymple in command of the two regiments (the 14th and 29th). After troops in his command participated in the so-called ‘Boston Massacre,’ acting governor Thomas Hutchinson ordered him to remove his troops to Castle William in Boston Harbor. As tensions heated up in the colonies, Dalrymple was promoted to major general and commanded a force that captured St. Vincent in the West Indies. When the American War of Independence broke out in 1775, he returned to North America and served as quartermaster general from 1779 to 1783, being promoted first to brigadier general and then to major general.
[3] The 14th had barracks in Murray’s sugar house off Dock Square. The 29th had been scattered among a number of buildings along Water Lake and Atkinson Street; being more spread out and vulnerable, soldiers of the 29th suffered a ‘double dose’ of harassment. Hutchinson described the 29th as being ‘in general such bad fellows that it seems impossible to restrain them from firing upon an insult or provocation.’ That they were largely scattered throughout town would have dire consequences.
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