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Authors: Nathaniel Philbrick
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enough to convince the British Parliament to repeal the act. Instead of compliance, they wanted nothing less than a complete boycott of British goods—not just in Boston and Massachusetts but throughout all thirteen colonies.
With the creation of the new committee containing Rowe and other merchants operating as a smoke screen, Adams proceeded to do exactly as he wanted. A motion was passed that the Committee of Correspondence should “dispatch messengers with all possible speed to the other colonies and the several towns in this province, charged with the letters [that] they have wrote relative to shutting up this harbor.” Then came the coup de grace: a motion was passed in support of the assertion that a boycott of British imports and exports “will prove the salvation of North America and her liberties.”
Rowe assumed that the motion simply stated the mood of the meeting, and in the days ahead he worked with the committee to articulate what was supposed to be the town’s official response to the Boston Port Act. But it was all for nothing—the committee never delivered a recommendation. In the meantime, the Boston Committee of Correspondence’s May 13 letters stating the need for a boycott had long since been sent. The impression broadcast throughout Massachusetts and America was that Boston unanimously supported a boycott and expected the other colonies to follow suit. Bostonians, however, were far from agreed as to what to do about the Port Bill.
—
At noon on Tuesday, May 17, four days after his arrival at Castle Island, Lieutenant General Thomas Gage landed at Boston’s Long Wharf. A third of a mile long, lined with more than fifteen warehouses and shops (one of which had once been the boyhood home of the painter John Singleton Copley), Long Wharf was a wide and inviting platform of commerce that gestured toward the harbor and the ocean beyond like an opened hand.
Five and a half years before, during the fall of 1768, Long Wharf had been the arrival point of the soldiers that had ultimately made the Boston Massacre an inevitability. Now, with the arrival of General Gage and the knowledge that at least four regiments of British soldiers were on the way, the town was being forced to relive that nightmare even as it prepared to suffer an altogether new ordeal.
But there was at least one consolation. Governor Thomas Hutchinson, the most reviled man in all of Massachusetts, was to depart soon for England, and General Gage was said to be a most reasonable man, with an American wife.
Gage was met at Long Wharf by a delegation that included the upper chamber of the General Court, known as His Majesty’s Council; the town selectmen; and a host of other officials, including the province’s secretary, Thomas Flucker. Preceding this august group were the Independent Company of Cadets, the elite of Boston’s militia, who were responsible for accompanying the royal governor at official functions. Dressed in red coats with blue facings, patterned on the uniforms worn by the British Foot Guards, the cadets were the governor’s official bodyguards and were commanded by John Hancock.
If Samuel Adams was the guru of the patriot cause, Hancock, thirty-seven, was its uncrowned king. Handsome, with the stubble of a beard visible on his clean-shaven cheeks, he’d recently scored a major success in March with a surprisingly well-delivered Massacre Day Oration, an annual event held in the Old South Meetinghouse that provided Bostonians with a stirring reminder of the evils of a standing army. No one in America had lived a more privileged life than John Hancock, and yet there was a profound difference between him and the man whom it was now his sworn duty to protect, Lieutenant General Thomas Gage. Gage’s family had lived on their estate in the Sussex town of Firle since the fifteenth century. His status as British gentry was something that he and everyone he knew took for granted. Hancock’s wealth, on the other hand,
With the creation of the new committee containing Rowe and other merchants operating as a smoke screen, Adams proceeded to do exactly as he wanted. A motion was passed that the Committee of Correspondence should “dispatch messengers with all possible speed to the other colonies and the several towns in this province, charged with the letters [that] they have wrote relative to shutting up this harbor.” Then came the coup de grace: a motion was passed in support of the assertion that a boycott of British imports and exports “will prove the salvation of North America and her liberties.”
Rowe assumed that the motion simply stated the mood of the meeting, and in the days ahead he worked with the committee to articulate what was supposed to be the town’s official response to the Boston Port Act. But it was all for nothing—the committee never delivered a recommendation. In the meantime, the Boston Committee of Correspondence’s May 13 letters stating the need for a boycott had long since been sent. The impression broadcast throughout Massachusetts and America was that Boston unanimously supported a boycott and expected the other colonies to follow suit. Bostonians, however, were far from agreed as to what to do about the Port Bill.
—
At noon on Tuesday, May 17, four days after his arrival at Castle Island, Lieutenant General Thomas Gage landed at Boston’s Long Wharf. A third of a mile long, lined with more than fifteen warehouses and shops (one of which had once been the boyhood home of the painter John Singleton Copley), Long Wharf was a wide and inviting platform of commerce that gestured toward the harbor and the ocean beyond like an opened hand.
Five and a half years before, during the fall of 1768, Long Wharf had been the arrival point of the soldiers that had ultimately made the Boston Massacre an inevitability. Now, with the arrival of General Gage and the knowledge that at least four regiments of British soldiers were on the way, the town was being forced to relive that nightmare even as it prepared to suffer an altogether new ordeal.
But there was at least one consolation. Governor Thomas Hutchinson, the most reviled man in all of Massachusetts, was to depart soon for England, and General Gage was said to be a most reasonable man, with an American wife.
Gage was met at Long Wharf by a delegation that included the upper chamber of the General Court, known as His Majesty’s Council; the town selectmen; and a host of other officials, including the province’s secretary, Thomas Flucker. Preceding this august group were the Independent Company of Cadets, the elite of Boston’s militia, who were responsible for accompanying the royal governor at official functions. Dressed in red coats with blue facings, patterned on the uniforms worn by the British Foot Guards, the cadets were the governor’s official bodyguards and were commanded by John Hancock.
If Samuel Adams was the guru of the patriot cause, Hancock, thirty-seven, was its uncrowned king. Handsome, with the stubble of a beard visible on his clean-shaven cheeks, he’d recently scored a major success in March with a surprisingly well-delivered Massacre Day Oration, an annual event held in the Old South Meetinghouse that provided Bostonians with a stirring reminder of the evils of a standing army. No one in America had lived a more privileged life than John Hancock, and yet there was a profound difference between him and the man whom it was now his sworn duty to protect, Lieutenant General Thomas Gage. Gage’s family had lived on their estate in the Sussex town of Firle since the fifteenth century. His status as British gentry was something that he and everyone he knew took for granted. Hancock’s wealth, on the other hand,
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