the house and heading for the cellars, where they helped themselves to the stores of liquor. Upstairs, rioters found the family’s looking glass, which was reputed to be the largest in North America. They left it in shards and went on to break furniture and scatter the Oliver silverplate throughout the house. The patriots insisted later that no one made off with anything valuable.
At his office, Governor Bernard demanded that the militia send out drummers to beat an alarm. His officers told him that it was impossible—the drummers were part of the mob. Sometime before midnight, Thomas Hutchinson collared Sheriff Greenleaf and demanded that they go together to Oliver’s house and force the rioters to disperse. All his life Hutchinson had been giving orders, but tonight he had barely begun to speak to the crowd when a shout went up: “To your arms, my boys!” Hutchinson and Greenleaf were pelted with stones and forced to retreat. The dismantling of Oliver’s house went on for another hour.
The next morning, Bostonians were talking about nothing else. In the Boston Gazette , anonymously written articles treated the destruction lightheartedly, but Governor Bernard was offering a hundred-pound reward for the apprehension of the demonstration’s leaders. He was also promising amnesty to anyone in the mob who came forward with information, an offer that could prove embarrassing to Samuel Adams and his friends. They may not have intended that Oliver’s house be destroyed; that was probably a boozy afterthought by the mob. But otherwise, the entire protest had followed the patriots’ script as surely as any Town Meeting had ever done.
—
Samuel Adams’ legions did not all come from the Caucus. The Loyal Nine was a social club that met in Boston’s Hanover Square, and its members included several distillers, a jeweler and a sea captain. One of the nine, Henry Bass, was Samuel Adams’ cousin, and Adams was always a welcome guest at their meetings. He also had friends among the Masons, although he preferred smaller and more political groups; even a Tory like Andrew Oliver could be a Mason. To rally support against the Stamp Act, Adams had been speaking with workers from the docks and the ropewalks—those covered arcades where rope was braided—and at the Green Dragon Tavern in Union Street, the tavern in Salvation Alley and the Bunch of Grapes in King Street. These were the same men, or their sons, who had supported Deacon Adams and the Land Bank, and their resentment against the Hutchinsons and the Olivers was greater even than their outrage against the stamps. On Wednesday night, these new Sons of Liberty had supplied the muscle, but the planning had come from the second floor of Chase and Speakman’s distillery in Hanover Square, not far from the elm where the effigies were hung. In their drawing rooms, the Tories laughed at the patriots for meeting in taverns and distilleries. They claimed that the rabble depended on barrels of rum to give them courage, and they took to calling Samuel Adams “Sam the Publican.”
Adams’ political sense warned him that his opponents must not be allowed to make a martyr out of Andrew Oliver. The parade and the bonfire could be excused as legitimate protests by an oppressed people. But he sensed that the ransacking of Oliver’s househad provoked deep misgivings, even among his allies. Not that rioting was a novelty in America. During the years of bad crops, Virginia and Maryland had seen tobacco revolts, and in the midst of a food shortage the people of Massachusetts had risen up to stop the exporting of meat and grain. Bostonians had razed whorehouses, and about thirty years earlier they had blackened their faces and gone out one night to burn down a barn that was blocking a proposed public road.
But everyone understood that the violence against Oliver’s property had been more serious. Boston’s leading citizens had seen a spark of anarchy and were determined to snuff it
At his office, Governor Bernard demanded that the militia send out drummers to beat an alarm. His officers told him that it was impossible—the drummers were part of the mob. Sometime before midnight, Thomas Hutchinson collared Sheriff Greenleaf and demanded that they go together to Oliver’s house and force the rioters to disperse. All his life Hutchinson had been giving orders, but tonight he had barely begun to speak to the crowd when a shout went up: “To your arms, my boys!” Hutchinson and Greenleaf were pelted with stones and forced to retreat. The dismantling of Oliver’s house went on for another hour.
The next morning, Bostonians were talking about nothing else. In the Boston Gazette , anonymously written articles treated the destruction lightheartedly, but Governor Bernard was offering a hundred-pound reward for the apprehension of the demonstration’s leaders. He was also promising amnesty to anyone in the mob who came forward with information, an offer that could prove embarrassing to Samuel Adams and his friends. They may not have intended that Oliver’s house be destroyed; that was probably a boozy afterthought by the mob. But otherwise, the entire protest had followed the patriots’ script as surely as any Town Meeting had ever done.
—
Samuel Adams’ legions did not all come from the Caucus. The Loyal Nine was a social club that met in Boston’s Hanover Square, and its members included several distillers, a jeweler and a sea captain. One of the nine, Henry Bass, was Samuel Adams’ cousin, and Adams was always a welcome guest at their meetings. He also had friends among the Masons, although he preferred smaller and more political groups; even a Tory like Andrew Oliver could be a Mason. To rally support against the Stamp Act, Adams had been speaking with workers from the docks and the ropewalks—those covered arcades where rope was braided—and at the Green Dragon Tavern in Union Street, the tavern in Salvation Alley and the Bunch of Grapes in King Street. These were the same men, or their sons, who had supported Deacon Adams and the Land Bank, and their resentment against the Hutchinsons and the Olivers was greater even than their outrage against the stamps. On Wednesday night, these new Sons of Liberty had supplied the muscle, but the planning had come from the second floor of Chase and Speakman’s distillery in Hanover Square, not far from the elm where the effigies were hung. In their drawing rooms, the Tories laughed at the patriots for meeting in taverns and distilleries. They claimed that the rabble depended on barrels of rum to give them courage, and they took to calling Samuel Adams “Sam the Publican.”
Adams’ political sense warned him that his opponents must not be allowed to make a martyr out of Andrew Oliver. The parade and the bonfire could be excused as legitimate protests by an oppressed people. But he sensed that the ransacking of Oliver’s househad provoked deep misgivings, even among his allies. Not that rioting was a novelty in America. During the years of bad crops, Virginia and Maryland had seen tobacco revolts, and in the midst of a food shortage the people of Massachusetts had risen up to stop the exporting of meat and grain. Bostonians had razed whorehouses, and about thirty years earlier they had blackened their faces and gone out one night to burn down a barn that was blocking a proposed public road.
But everyone understood that the violence against Oliver’s property had been more serious. Boston’s leading citizens had seen a spark of anarchy and were determined to snuff it
Similar Books
