The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 (39 page)

The governor was frightened, however, by these rumblings and said so in a series of despairing letters home. A "trained mob," he reported, controlled the town. He felt himself to be between "two fires," the mob, which would blame him if he requested troops, and the British authorities, who would blame him if he did not. A few days after writing he decided to ask the Council to join him in a request for troops and received the reply be expected -- a unanimous "no."
Deeply depressed,

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he wailed to Barrington, "it is all over now," unaware that things would soon look darker.
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In the summer the Otis-Adams group may have exuded a confidence that they did not feel. There were stories circulating that troops were on the way, and troops would at least temporarily strengthen the hands of Bernard and the commissioners. To keep up popular enthusiasm for the cause, Otis and Adams kept the presses screaming and on August 15, the anniversary of the Oliver riot, put on a lavish celebration complete with cannon firing, music (including the "American Song of Liberty"), a great parade, and fourteen toasts, ending with one to the "Glorious NINETY-TWO." Then more cannon were fired, and the gentlemen present repaired to the Greyhound Tavern in nearby Roxbury for a "frugal but elegant" dinnei. More toasts followed, and after the Liberty Tree in Roxbury was consecrated, the entire group returned to Boston.
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Governor Bernard hated such expressions of the "popular" will, but his nerve held until early September, when an article in the
Gazette
, "containing a System of Politicks, exceeding all former Exceedings," forced him into a strategic mistake. The article, actually a series of queries by "Clericus Americanus", purported to deal with the various grievances long discussed by Americans. What caught Bernard's eye was the answer to "Sidney's" question: What shall we do if troops are sent to Boston? Clericus Americanus answered with horrifying bluntness: the colonies must declare their independence. Bernard had received word on August 27 that troops had been dispatched to Boston. Dreading an "insurrection" should they arrive unannounced -- and convinced by Clericus Americanus that the situation would be explosive -- on September 9 he leaked the information he had of the troops' coming and thereby made more trouble for himself. For on telling what he knew, he gave the popular leaders time to prepare. An unannounced arrival surely would have gone unopposed and just as surely would have deprived the faction of its opportunity to organize a good deal of barely latent hostility. As it was, the popular leaders used the troops' coming both before and after their actual arrival to organize outlying towns. In seeking to forestall opposition, Bernard helped spread it.
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Boston's town meeting gave Bernard an inkling that he had miscalcu-

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lated by sending a committee to see him to ask officially about his knowledge of the coming of troops; it also requested that he call the legislature. The governor replied immediately that his information was "of a private nature" and that he had no authority to call another assembly until he received orders from the king. Bernard has been accused of lying in both these statements, a severe accusation but not as strained as his reading of his instructions from Hillsborough.
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The town simply refused to be denied. If it could not have the legislature, it would call a convention of towns to consider the crisis at hand. The selectmen also dredged up an old statute-"a good and wholesome law of this Province" -- providing that every soldier and householder should have a musket and ammunition and urged compliance. Their reasons: the "prevailing apprehension, in the minds of many, of an approaching war with France," a grim joke substituting France for England, but not amusing to the governor. To ensure that no one missed the point, the selectmen brought four hundred muskets into the meeting, where they lay on display.
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A little more than a week later, on September 22, the convention of towns met in Boston. Otis, Cushing, Samuel Adams, and John Hancock represented Boston; Cushing was chosen to preside and Adams to serve as clerk. The convention opened with seventy representatives from sixty-six towns and several districts in attendance, and before it closed on September 27 representatives from another thirty towns arrived. A contemporary observer, the Reverend Andrew Eliot of Boston, reported that the convention was divided into three "parties": one, fearing that it was illegal, wished it to disband; another willing to trust the people without any restraints; and a third wishing to sit until the troops arrived and then to take things-presumably the government -- into their own hands. The actions of the convention suggest that moderates eventually controlled its deliberations, however divided its delegates.
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The first order of business was a skirmish with the governor, set off by a petition to that worthy. The convention denied in its opening shots that it had any claim to "authoritative or governmental Acts," but it also pointed out that its members came from all over the province, a fact, it suggested, which indicated that anxiety was widespread. To case the people's fears, the governor should call the legislature, which

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could then deliberate on how to meet the threat of a standing army and request a redress of grievances. The governor refused to receive this petition and urged the convention to break up, hinting in a brief note that the delegates might face criminal action if it did not. This brought a stiff message from Thomas Cushing asking "wherein the Criminality of our Proceedings consists." Bernard again refused to receive any communication from the convention, and it went into secret session. What came out of these meetings was a "Result of the Convention" and a petition to the king. These documents did not advance colonial constitutional theory, nor did they threaten to oppose the landing of troops with force. After reviewing the recent history of colonial affairs, the "Result" simply made plain the convention's desire for a meeting of the legislature.
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This demand was less important for the development of colonial resistance than the fact that the convention met at all. It was not a criminal body, nor was it illegal; yet it did mark an extension of defiance of royal authority. There seems to have been little disposition among its members to fight the British army. Otis apparently said little; Adams may have spoken more, but he did not demand the use of force; Cushing opposed armed resistance, though he did recommend that Bernard and Hutchinson be driven from the colony. But Boston was not Massachusetts, and the hatred, the tensions, and the awareness of the threat to political liberty posed by the troops were all less intense in the towns and on the farms of the interior than in Boston.
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The day after the convention ended, transports carrying troops from Halifax, elements of the 14th and 29th Regiments, began entering Boston harbor. More arrived the next day accompanied by warships. On October 1 they disembarked under the guns of men-of-war all in a line.
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The governor may have felt relief, but he confessed to pessimism about the future of royal government in the province. The Sons of Liberty seem to have shared this feeling but were happy. There was no reason to be happy -- Bernard's ordeal was not yet complete, and Boston's and America's had not yet really begun.

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British troops did not end Boston's disaffection; they simply gave it another focus -- themselves. The immediate problem they faced was the refusal of town and provincial authorities to pay for their housing. Governor Bernard blustered and threatened in an unsuccessful attempt to extract money from the legislature; Colonel Dalrymple spoke coolly but to no purpose; and General Gage arrived from New York only to discover that he could accomplish nothing. For a short time, the "Manufactory House," a building the province sometimes used to house a spinning school and a linen-making works, seemed available but just as Dalrymple was about to quarter some of his men there, several dozen poor families took up residence -- and refused to be moved. Otis, Adams, and company probably "encouraged" these families to claim the building, in any case Dalrymple recognized that evicting the poor would bring him more grief than space.
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While all these little conflicts were enacted, a part of the troops pitched tents on the common, some went into Faneuil Hall, still others resorted to Castle William. Before too long Gage and Bernard authorized the use of royal funds for the renting of several large warehouses which were then converted to rough barracks. The owners of these buildings encountered little if any public enmity -- taking British money apparently did not compromise one's opposition to the quartering of troops.

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Such transactions might not have been understood elsewhere in the colonies. They were not widely known but news of the troops' arrival in Boston soon was. The coming of the soldiers topped off a summer of ferment and virtually assured that the Massachusetts appeal in the Circular Letter would receive powerful support.

Hillsborough prepared the way for colonial action; some colonists said that he left them no choice. For in April, when he sent Governor Bernard orders which eventually produced the smashing anti-rescinding vote, be also dispatched his own circular letter to the other colonial governors instructing them to inform their assemblies that no notice was to be taken of the letter from Massachusetts. Should the assemblies ignore this command, the governors were to dissolve them.
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