US History/US History (Bureau Development Inc.)(1991).ISO/dp/0013/00136.txt

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$Unique_ID{USH00136}
$Pretitle{11}
$Title{Our Country:  Volume 3
Chapter LVI}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Lossing, Benson J., LL.D.}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{boston
general
new
congress
gage
committee
massachusetts
york
assembly
governor}
$Volume{Vol. 3}
$Date{1905}
$Log{}
Book:        Our Country:  Volume 3
Author:      Lossing, Benson J., LL.D.
Volume:      Vol. 3
Date:        1905

Chapter LVI

     General Gage Appointed Governor - Hutchinson and His Friends - The Sons
of Liberty Active - Gage in Boston - Doings of a Town-Meeting - Action of the
Virginia Assembly - A General Congress Advocated - Governor Gage and the
Assembly - Port of Boston Closed - Suffering and Patriotism - Bold Proceedings
of the People - Preparations for a General Congress - Doings in New York -
Minute-Men - Gage and the People - Dreadful Rumors from Boston - Bold Measures
of a Convention.

     THE Boston Port Hill reached Massachusetts early in May, 1774.  It was
preceded a few days by a commission sent to New York, for General Gage as
governor of Massachusetts to succeed Hutchinson, who was recalled.  The latter
was mortified and alarmed.  His recall seemed to be a pointed rebuke at that
juncture, and be justly feared the resentment of the people whom be had
misrepresented and misruled.  He left Boston before Gage arrived, and remained
in seclusion at his country-house at Milton until an opportunity offered for
him to take refuge in Castle William.  Hutchinson had many political as well
as personal friends in Massachusetts.  It must be remembered that the
patriotic zeal which animated the Sons of Liberty was not universally felt,
even in Boston.  Those leaders were radicals, and were compelled to meet
cold-hearted and hard-hearted conservatism at every turn.

     Hutchinson had many political sympathizers; and when he was about to
depart for England, whither he fled from the frowns of his countrymen, more
than a hundred merchants in Boston, and a number of lawyers, magistrates and
men of property there and in the neighborhood, signed an address to him, in
which they expressed their entire approbation of his public acts, and
affectionate wishes for his personal happiness.  These "addressors became
objects of intense dislike.  Many of them, yielding to popular clamor,
retracted.  Those who would not retract, felt compelled to leave the colony,
and became the first of the host of Loyal Refugees who peopled British
provinces after the war that ensued.

     It was the 10th of May when tile Port Bill reached Boston.  It was
already in tile hands of the Sons of Liberty in New York, carried thither by
another ship from London.  These patriots had waged a steady warfare with the
conservative and aristocratic elements in society there, bearing the obloquy
of many in the easy walks of life, but sustained and honored by those in the
paths of toil the bone and sinew of a state," Scott, Sears, Lamb and McDougall
- these were the trusted leaders.  They perceived not only the infamy of the
Boston Port Bill, but the danger to their own liberties foreshadowed by it.
They called a meeting of their associates at Hampden Hall, and there resolved
that the only safeguard for the freedom of the American colonies was in a
General Congress of deputies - a hint, as we have seen, thrown out by Pownall
in debate, to insure unity of action.  They resolved to stand by Boston in its
hour of distress; and by a letter dated the 14th of May, they entreated the
patriots there to stand firm in support of their opposition measures.  Their
resolutions and the letter were sent by express to Boston by John Ludlow, who
rode swiftly with them, on a black horse, toward the New England capital.  He
told their import as he coursed through Connecticut and Rhode Island.  Near
Providence on the edge of a wood that was just receiving its summer foliage,
by a cool spring, he met Paul Revere riding express on a large gray horse,
bearing to New York and Philadelphia assurances of the faith and firmness of
the Bostonians, and to invoke sympathy and cooperation. Revere also carried a
large number of printed copies of the act, made sombre by heavy black lines,
and garnished with the picture of a crown, a skull and cross-bones,
undoubtedly engraved by Revere himself.  These he scattered through the
villages on his way, where they were carried about the streets with the cry of
"Barbarous, cruel, bloody, and inhuman murder!  Revere and Ludlow took a hasty
lunch together at the spring, and then pressed forward on their holy mission.
New York had first suggested a General Congress.  The suggestion was echoed
back with approval from every colony.  So originated the famous First
Continental Congress in 1774.

     Ludlow found Boston quiet but firm.  Gage had arrived from New York by
sea, attended only by his staff, though he had taken the precaution to order
additional regiments to Massachusetts.  He had remained a few days at the
Castle, in conference with Hutchinson and he had landed at the Long Wharf on
the 17th of May, without any military display.  There he was courteously
received as their governor by a large crowd of citizens, and was escorted to
the State-House by a militia company under John Hancock, where a loyal address
was presented to him, and where he read his commission.  After that he was
entertained at a public dinner in Faneuil Hall.  He believed that an era of
reconciliation through submission was at hand.  That night an effigy of
Hutchinson was burned in front of Hancock's house, and the new governor was
somewhat disturbed by grave doubts.

     Meanwhile a town-meeting had been called for the next day after the
arrival of the act, and the advent at the Castle of the crown-officer who was
to enforce it.  The Boston Committee of Correspondence had invited the
committees of nine towns in the vicinity to a conference on the critical state
of public affairs."  They had come with alacrity, and with hundreds of the
yeomanry had joined the citizens of Boston in that town-meeting over which
Samuel Adams had presided.  That meeting, largely composed of those who would
be most injured by the closing of the port, had resolve to stand firmly by
their rights, whatever might befall them.  They had addressed a Circular
Letter to all the colonies, proposing a more stringent non-importation league
than any before; confessing that "singly they must find their trial too
severe," and imploring the sympathy and support of the other provinces, each
of whose being, as a free people, depended upon the issue. "We think the
archives of Constantinople [synonymous with despotic rule] might be searched
in vain for a parallel," they said.  To reason upon such an act would be
idleness.  You will doubtless judge every British American colony deeply
concerned in it, and contemplate and determine upon it accordingly."  This was
the Circular Letter which Paul Revere was bearing to New York and
Philadelphia, whose Sons of Liberty forwarded it to the more southern
colonies.

     The responses to the appeal from Boston and a letter from New York
proposing a General Congress were marvelous for unanimity of sentiment.  The
action of the Virginia House of Burgesses was a fair type of the general
indication of public sentiment.  When the circulars and the Port Bill reached
that body, all other business was at once suspended, that the documents might
be discussed.  They adopted strong resolutions of condolence with the citizens
of Boston, and appointed the first day of June, when the Port Bill was to go
into operation, as a fast.  The royal governor (Lord Dunmore) was officially
offended, and the next day he dissolved the Assembly.  The delegates, eighty-
nine in number, reassembled in the Apollo room at the Raleigh tavern in
Williamsburgh, organized themselves into a voluntary convention and prepared
an address to their constituents, in which they declared that an attack upon
one colony was an attack upon all.  They also recommended a General Congress
as suggested by New York, and adopted other measures of resistance to
oppression.  They recommended a meeting of the burgesses in convention at
Williamsburgh on the first of August, and then adjourned.  Twenty-five of the
delegates remained to participate in the services of the fast-day.

     There was a very full attendance of the burgesses at the Apollo-room on
the day appointed.  They adopted a stringent agreement concerning
non-exportation as well as non-importation, and recommended the cultivating of
crops for manufacturing purposes, and improvements in the breed of sheep.  On
the 5th, they appointed seven delegates to represent Virginia in the General
Congress to meet at Philadelphia early in September, as had been proposed by
Massachusetts.  They then adjourned, each pledging himself to do all in his
power to effect results contemplated in their proceedings.  The Apollo-room,
in the Raleigh tavern, was ever afterward regarded as the Virginia "cradle of
liberty."

     In the meantime the other colonies were all aglow with enthusiasm, and
full of sympathy for suffering Boston.  From the forum, the pulpit, and
legislatures, as well as through the newspapers all over the land, the Port
Bill was denounced, and a General Congress was advocated.  At the head of some
of the newspapers reappeared the device used during the stamp-act excitement -
a disjointed snake, with the words JOIN or DIE.  The cause of Boston was the
cause of all the colonies.

     At near the close of May, the Massachusetts legislature chose the
councillors for the governor for the ensuing year, as usual.  Governor Gage
used his prerogative, and rejected thirteen of them.  The remainder were not
much more satisfactory; for they, too, were stirred by the spirit of liberty
around them.  The Assembly asked the governor to appoint a day for fasting;
but he refused, because, he wrote to Dartmouth, "the request was only to give
an opportunity for sedition to flow from the pulpit."  Perceiving that the
inhabitants of Massachusetts had lost one tyrant only to be supplied with
another, Samuel Adams was about to offer a proposition for a General Congress,
when the governor prorogued the Assembly, to meet after ten days at Salem.  In
anticipation of this act, the Assembly appointed Samuel Adams and James Warren
a committee to act for them during the interim, as the exigencies of the case
might require.  When the Assembly met at Salem, these active patriots were
ready with a plan for a General Congress; for non-importation; for providing
munitions of war and funds, and for arousing the other colonies to immediate
action.

     The port of Boston was closed at meridian on the 1st of June.  At that
hour, muffled church-bells in Philadelphia and other places tolled a funeral
knell. The day had been appointed as a fast in many regions, and the churches
were crowded with worshippers, who devoutly implored Heaven's mercies for the
inhabitants of Boston, and strength and liberty for themselves.  The law was
rigorously enforced.  Not a vessel of any kind was allowed to be used in the
harbor.  Not a pound of hay, nor a sheep or calf, could be brought in a boat
from the islands, nor a stick of lumber, or package of merchandise, could be
taken by water from wharf to wharf.  Not a parcel of goods could be ferried
across to Charlestown and business of every kind was immediately paralyzed. A
cordon of vessel-of-war inclosed the town, and several regiments that soon
arrived made Boston an immense garrison.  Orders came to Gage from England, to
order his soldiers to shoot I any citizens who should not be docile, and he
was assured, for his comfort, that, by the provisions of a recent law, all
trials of officers and troops for homicide in America would be removed to
Great Britain.  Gage had orders to arrest, when he should deem it prudent to
do so, Samuel Adams, John Hancock and Dr. Joseph Warren, and send them to
England to be tried for treason.  Adams knew this and with the halter almost
about his neck, he said of his beloved and stricken Boston: "She suffers with
dignity; and rather than submit to the humiliating terms of an edict,
barbarous beyond precedent under the most absolute monarchy, she will put the
malice of tyranny to the severest test.  An empire is rising in America and
Britain, by her multiplied oppressions, is accelerating that independency
which she dreads.  We have a post to maintain, to desert which would entail
upon us the curses of posterity."

     The utter prostration of all business in Boston soon produced widespread
suffering.  All classes felt the scourge of the unnatural oppressor.  With
faith that deliverance would come, they bore the severe chastisement with
wonderful equanimity.  Soldiers to enslave then, appeared at every turn and
cannon to overawe them soon menaced their lives and property from every
eminence on the peninsula; yet no rash act incited by anger or suffering,
marred the dignity of their fortitude.  The sympathy of the people everywhere
was warmly excited.  The Press and the Pulpit suggested the sending of relief
to the smitten inhabitants, and very soon money, grain, flour and live-stock
were on their way toward Boston, accompanied by letters of condolence.  This
food for the suffering poor seemed like relief sent to a beleaguered garrison,
on whose existence a great cause depended.  Hold on and hold out to the last;
as you are placed in the front rank, if you fail all will be over," said a
letter accompanying a substantial gift.  Don't pay for an ounce of the damned
tea," wrote Christopher Gadsden of Charleston, when, at the middle of June, he
shipped the first contribution of rice from the Carolina planters.  Georgians
sent sixty barrels of rice; and from the more northerly colonies went grain
and sheep and beeves, with money.  The city of London, in its corporate
capacity, sent three-quarters of a million dollars for the relief of the poor
of Boston.  The people of Marblehead and Salem offered the free use of their
wharves and stores to the Boston merchants, for they scorned to profit by the
mid fortunes of their neighbors.

     When the Massachusetts Assembly met at Salem on the 7th of June, there
was a very full attendance.  Samuel Adams cautiously sounded the opinions of
the members, and ascertained that a large majority were republicans.  Then he
presented the plan for future action, which he and James Warren had perfected.
The few loyalists in that body were amazed at the audacity of tile
propositions, and one of them, feigning sickness, got leave of absence. He
hastened to the governor (then living near Salem) and acquainted him with the
seditious proceedings of the legislature.  Gage immediately sent a
proclamation by his secretary, Thomas Flucker, commanding the Assembly to
dissolve.  The governor was outgeneraled.  When the secretary came, the door
of the Assembly was locked, and the key was n Samuel Adams's pocket.  Flucker
was not permitted to enter the room, so he read the proclamation on the
stairs, near the door, but to dull ears within, for the patriots would not
listen to it.  They proceeded to adopt a "Solemn League and Covenant"
concerning nonimportations; and agreeing with New York in the proposition for
a General Congress, they appointed James Bowdoin, Samuel Adams, John Adams,
Thomas Cushing and Robert Treat Paine to represent Massachusetts in the
proposed General Congress.  Pursuant to a request of the New York Committee of
Correspondence, the Assembly fixed the time and place for the meeting of the
Congress.  They named Philadelphia as the place, and the beginning of
September next ensuing as the time; and in a circular which they sent to the
other colonies, the time and place were mentioned.  After carrying out the
other measures proposed in the plan of Adams and Warren, the Assembly
adjourned indefinitely.  So ended the last session of the Assembly of
Massachusetts under a royal governor.

     On the same day an immense town-meeting, presided over by John Adams, was
held in Faneuil Hall.  The inhabitants by vote refused to make any provision
for paying the East India Company for its tea destroyed, because they were
surrounded by bayonets and ships-of-war.  They ratified the acts of the
Assembly, and assumed an absolutely defiant attitude.

     The proceedings of the Assembly, and of the people, greatly irritated
Gage. He had troops at his back, but had resolved not to use them excepting in
an extremity.  He issued flaming proclamations from time to time, which
excited the ridicule of the patriots.  One of these was burlesqued in the
Massachusetts Spy, a newspaper published in the midst of British bayonets,
which was commenced as follows: "Tom Gage's Proclamation, Or blustering
Denunciation, (Replete with Defamation,) Threatening Devastation And speedy
Jugulation Of the New English Nation, Who shall his pious ways sheen" It
closes with "Thus graciously the war I wage, As witnesseth my hand"-TOM GAGE,
By command of Mother Carey, Thomas Flucker Secretary."

     The proposition for a General Congress to be held in September, in
Philadelphia, contained in the Massachusetts Circular, received universal
assent, and before the close of the summer of 1774, twelve of the thirteen
British American colonies had chosen delegates to attend it.  Rhode Island has
the honor of first speaking out publicly on the subject after New York
suggested it.  A General Congress was proposed at a town-meeting held in
Providence on the 17th of May.  Four days afterward (21st) a committee of a
town-meeting held in Philadelphia recommended such a measure; and on the 23rd,
a town-meeting in the city of New York did the same.  We have seen that the
meeting of the burgesses of Virginia at the Raleigh tavern warmly recommended
the measure, on the 27th of May; and on the 3 1st, a Baltimore county-meeting
took action in favor of a General Congress.  On the 6th of June, a
town-meeting at Norwich, Connecticut, approved of a General Congress; and on
the 11th, a county-meeting at Newark, New Jersey, did the same.  The action of
the Massachusetts Assembly at Salem and the town-meeting at Faneuil Hall,
which urged the measure, did so on the 17th of June.  On the 29th, a
county-meeting at New Castle, Delaware, approved the measure and on the 6th of
July, the Committee of Correspondence at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, expressed
their approbation.  A general province-meeting was held on the 6th, 7th and
8th of July, at Charleston, and they urged the necessity of such a Congress;
and a district-meeting at Wilmington, North Carolina, held on the 21st of
July, heartily responded affirmatively to the Massachusetts Circular. Only
Georgia remained silent.

     The state of political society in New York, at this juncture, was
peculiar. The professed republicans were divided by political distractions and
social differences, and were designated by the respective titles of Patricians
and Tribunes.  The former were composed of the merchants and gentry, and the
latter were mostly the mechanics.  The former, who were conservative, joined
with the loyalists in attempts to check the influence of the radical democrats
of Hampden Hall.  With these conservatives were found most of the leading
merchants, who, as a class, were (as usual) averse to popular commotions which
disturbed trade.  They were not ready to enter into nonimportation agreements
again hastily; and the letter which the Hampden Hall patriots sent by Ludlow,
to Boston, alarmed them and the conservative republicans.  A meeting was
called at a public-house, "to consult on the measures to be pursued in
consequence of the late extraordinary advices received from England."  At that
meeting a Committee of Fifty were nominated as representatives of public
sentiment in New York."  A few of the radicals were placed upon the committee;
and at another meeting held on the 19th of May, the nomination was ratified
and one more added to the committee, making the number Fifty-one.  Concerning
this movement, Governor Morris wrote to a friend:


"The heads of the nobility grow dangerous to the gentry, and how to keep them
down is the question.  While they correspond with the other colonies, call and
dismiss popular assemblies, make resolves to bind the consciences of the rest
of mankind, bully poor printers, and exert with full force all their
tribunitial powers, it is impossible to curb them.  But art sometimes goes
further than force, and, therefore, to trick them handsomely, a Committee of
Patricians was to be nominated, and into their hands was to be committed the
majority of the people, and the highest trust was to be reposed in them by a
mandate that they should take care quod republica, non capiat injuriam. The
Tribunes, through the want of good legerdemain in the senatorial order,
perceived the finesse, and yesterday I was present at a grand division of the
city, and there I beheld my fellow-citizens very accurately counting their
chickens, not only before they were hatched, but before one-half of the eggs
were laid.  In short, they fairly contended about the future form of our
government - whether it should be founded on aristocratic or democratic
principles."


     The grand Committee of Fifty-one publicly repudiated the strong letter
sent to Boston by the radicals on the 14th of May.  They received Paul Revere
courteously, but did not agree with the proposal of the Bostonians to revive
non-importation or non-intercourse agreements.  They sent a letter to Boston
(supposed to have been written by John Jay) expressing their dissent, but
heartily approving of a General Congress; and in another letter on the 7th of
June, they requested the Massachusetts Committee of Correspondence to name a
time and place for the holding of a General Congress.  The people of the other
colonies approved non-intercourse, and New York, as represented by the Grand
Committee, stood alone in opposition to a stringent non-importation league.
The loyalists rejoiced, and a writer in Rivington's Royal Gazette exultingly
exclaimed: "And so, my good masters, I find it no joke, For York has stepped
forward and thrown off the yoke Of Congress, Committees, and even King Sears,
Who shows you good nature by showing his ears."

     But the "Committee of Vigilance," appointed by the Hampden Hall patriots,
were not awed by the acts of the Grand Committee.  They called a mass-meeting
of citizens in The Fields on the 19th of June, when, by resolutions, the
lukewarmness of the Committee of Fifty-one was denounced; sympathy with, and a
determination to support the Bostonians were expressed, and the appointment of
delegates to the General Congress, instructed to advocate non-intercourse with
Great Britain, was urged.  Nothing further was done to excite public attention
until many days afterward, when the Committee of Fifty-one met on the evening
of the 4th of July, and on motion of Alexander McDougall, five deputies to the
General Congress were nominated.  These were Philip Livingston, John Alsop,
Isaac Low, James Duane, and John Jay.  McDougall proposed to submit the
nominations (which were approved) to the Tribunes, or Committee of Mechanics,
for their concurrence.  The proposition was rejected.  McDougall was offended,
and the next day a handbill, doubtless prepared by him, appeared throughout
the city, inviting the people to a meeting in The Fields at six o'clock in the
evening of the 6th.  An immense gathering was there, for they were called "to
hear matters of the utmost importance to their reputation and security as
freemen."  It was ever afterwards known as The Great Meeting in ice Fields.
McDougall was called to the chair, and a series of strong resolutions, among
others one in favor of a stringent nonintercourse league, were adopted.

     On that occasion, a notable event occurred.  In the crowd was a delicate
boy, girl-like in personal grace and stature, about seventeen years of age,
who was a student in King's (now Columbia) College, and known as the "Young
West Indian."  This boy had been often seen walking alone under the shadows of
great trees on Dey Street, sometimes musing, and sometimes talking, in low
tones, to himself.  Some of the residents in that neighborhood had,
occasionally, engaged him in conversation, and had been impressed with his
wisdom and sagacity.  When they saw him in the crowd they urged him to address
the meeting, but he modestly refused.  After listening to several speakers,
and finding that important considerations had been overlooked by them, he
summoned courage to present himself before the people.  It was then almost
sunset.  The great multitude were hushed into silence at the appearance of the
slender boy.  Overawed by that multitude, he hesitated and faltered," says a
recent writer but as he proceeded, almost unconsciously, to utter his
accustomed reflections, his mind warmed with the theme - his energies were
recovered.  After a discussion, clear, cogent and novel, of the great
principles involved in the controversy, he depicted in the glowing colors of
adult youth the long-continued and long-endured oppressions of the
mother-country.  Insisting upon the duty of resistance, he pointed to the
means and certainty of success, and described the waves of rebellion sparkling
with fire, and washing back on the shores of England the wrecks of her power,
of her wealth, and her glory.  The breathless silence ceased when he closed,
and a whispered murmur It is a collegian it is a collegian - was lost in loud
expressions of wonder and applause at the extraordinary eloquence of the young
stranger."

     The orator was Alexander Hamilton, a native of the Island of Nevis, in
the West Indies, who then first entered upon that extraordinary, useful and
brilliant career in public life, for thirty years afterward, which placed him
in the front rank among the statesmen of our country.

     The Committee of Fifty-one were alarmed by the great demonstration in The
Fields.  They submitted the nominations of deputies to the Tribunes, but
neutralized the effect of their concession by declaring that the resolutions
passed by the great meeting were seditious.  This offended several of the
staunch republicans of the committee, and eleven of them instantly withdrew.
It was not long before that aristocratic body disappeared as an organization,
and the Hampden Hall Sons of Liberty became the tribunes of the people.  The
city of New York elected the nominees.  Neighboring counties chose four
others, and the delegation from the province of New York were nine in number.

     While the leading patriots were preparing for the Grand Council of
deputies, the people, everywhere, were preparing for impending war.  They
armed themselves, and practiced military tactics almost every day.  Men of all
stations in life might be found in the ranks for discipline.  Deacons of
churches were often captains, having more than half of the young men of the
congregations with whom they worshipped as their followers.  There was seldom
any military organization besides a company, but they were ready to fall into
regiments and brigades when called for.  Boys imitated their elders, and
trained with sticks.  Blacksmiths were kept busy all of the summer and autumn
of 1774, forging swords, guns and bayonets, and other men were compounding
gunpowder, and making bullets of lead.  When the Congress at Philadelphia had
closed late in the autumn, the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts voted to
enroll twelve thousand of these patriots under the general title of
Minutemen - volunteers who would be ready at a minute's warning to take the
field with arms in their hands.  Rhode Island and Connecticut were invited to
do likewise.  They did so; and when the time came for armed resistance nearly
all New England was disciplined, in a degree, for the struggle.  The example
was contagious.  Other colonies followed, and in Virginia the Minute-men were
of special service to the patriot cause at a critical juncture.  As the summer
of 1774 wore away, Gage found himself greatly perplexed by his peculiar
situation.  Early in August he received official copies of the several acts of
Parliament, which completely subverted the Charter of Massachusetts.  Gage was
made a ruler irresponsible to the people.  He proceeded to form a council of
thirty-six members, by a mandamus - a positive command to serve - and most of
those so appointed accepted the honor.  They soon felt the peltings of the
pitiless storm of popular indignation so keenly, that twenty of them resigned,
and the remainder sought protection under the troops in Boston.  These
"Mandamus Councillors," as they were called, were treated with scorn
everywhere, and sometimes with personal indignities, mild in form but severe
in effect, as in the case of a respected citizen of Plymouth.  On the Sunday
after he accepted the appointment, as soon as he took his seat in the house of
worship, his neighbors and friends all put on their hats and walked out of the
house.  As they passed his pew, he hid his face by leaning his head over his
cane.  This public disapproval by those whom he loved, he could not bear, and
immediately resigned.

     Gage was puzzled more by the forbearance of the people, than by their
defiance.  Nobody committed any overt acts of treason or sedition that might
justify him in using power for administering punishment, and yet the air was
full of the spirit of insurrection.  He was helpless in a vortex of irritating
words and acts that were ominous of evil.  There were inflammatory handbills,
newspapers, and tongues all around him exciting the people to rebel, but
nobody stepped over the confines of law.  Several times he was on the point of
executing his discretionary orders to arrest Hancock and other leaders, but
unoffended law bade him be cautious.  Squibs, epigrams, sonnets, parables and
dialogues of remarkable pith filled the whig journals, not only in Boston, but
elsewhere, in which logic and argument were contained in a nut-shell, as in
the following example from a New York newspaper:


     "THE QUARREL WITH AMERICA FAIRLY STATED.  Rudely forced to drink tea,
Massachusetts in anger Spills the tea on John Bull - John falls on to bang
her; Massachusetts, enraged, calls her neighbors to aid And give Master John a
severe bastinade.  Now, good men of the law, pray who is in fault, The one who
begins or resists the assault?"


     Gage saw ominous menaces on every side; and late in the summer he re-
established the seat of government in Boston, and prepared to cast up
fortifications across the Neck."  His orders for this purpose exasperated the
patriots.  They saw, in these warlike measures, prophecies of their absolute
enslavement.  The Boston carpenters, though suffering through compulsory
idleness, would not work on the fortifications at any price, and the popular
voice applauded their patriotism.  At about the same time, Gage, taking
counsel of his fears, sent out some troops to seize gunpowder belonging to the
province, at Charlestown and Cambridge.  The indignation of the people rose to
fever-heat because of this act, and a large number of them gathered at
Cambridge with the intention of attacking the British troops in Boston, but
were persuaded to remain quiet.  This was followed, a few days afterward, by a
rumor that went over the land, even to the Connecticut River and beyond, that
war had begun in Boston; that the British ships there were bombarding the
town, and that British troops were murdering the patriotic inhabitants. The
tale of horror created a fearful excitement and a cry for vengeance.  The
Minute-men everywhere, though not organized, seized their arms, and marched in
squads for Boston.  Within thirty-six hours the whole country, for almost two
hundred miles from the New England capital, had heard the dreadful tidings.
Young men and old men seized their firelocks, and matrons and maidens buckled
on their well-filled knapsacks and sent them away with the blessings of
patriotic hearts.  The roads were soon swarming with armed men, most of them
on foot; but many men on horseback - a strange cavalcade - queer-looking men
and queer-looking horses of all colors, ages and condition - some of the
latter saddled and bridled, and some without either bit or stirrup. The host
were intent upon the salvation of their brethren, and the destruction of the
enemy; and they halted not until satisfied that the story was untrue, when the
angry tide slowly ebbed.  It is believed that the rumor was started by some of
the leading patriots, to produce an uprising of the people that should overawe
General Gage and his troops.  Full thirty thousand men, it was estimated, had
started for Boston.  It was a lesson for Gage, but he did not heed it.

     On the 6th of September (1774), a convention of delegates representing
the towns in the county to which Boston belonged, resolved that the late acts
of Parliament were not entitled to obedience; recommended that collectors of
taxes and other officers holding public money should retain the funds in their
hands until the privileges of the charter should be restored declaring that
those who had accepted seats in the council should resign or be considered
public enemies; recommended the people to seize and keep as hostages any
crown-officers who might fall in their way after any patriot should be
arrested for a political offence; and adopted an address to General Gage, in
which they complained of the fortifications begun by the soldiers in Boston
Neck as an act of hostility.  They had resolved that they would not commence
war, but act on the defensive only so long as just reason required; and they
told Gage frankly that they would not submit to any of the late acts of
Parliament concerning the Americans.

     These were bold words uttered by brave men.  Gage denounced the
convention as treasonable, and he declared that he should adopt such measures
as he pleased to protect his troops, and that the cannon which he had placed
in battery on the Neck should be used for that purpose.  He had already broken
up the eight military companies in the town composed of citizens, and
dismissed John Hancock from the command of a corps known as "The Governor's
Independent Cadets."  That body, indignant because of this treatment of their
beloved commander, had sent a committee to the governor at Salem, to surrender
their flag into his hands, and acquaint him that they had disbanded
themselves.  Gage, who never had a conciliatory word for irritated citizens,
gave vent to his angry feelings and berated the committee roundly, whereupon
the bold Massachusetts Spy published the following as a sample of
gubernatorial eloquence, as lately exhibited to the company of cadets:


"Your Colonel, H-n-k, by neglect Has been deficient in respect As he my
sovereign toe ne'er kissed, 'Twas proper he should be dismissed; I never was
and never will, - By mortal man be treated ill.  I never was nor ever can, Be
treated ill by mortal man.  O had I but have known before That temper of your
factious corps, It should have been my greatest pleasure To have prevented
that bold measure.  To meet with such severe disgrace - My standard flung into
my face - Disband yourselves!  so cussed stout O had I, had I, turned you
out!"