The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 (45 page)

About this time the courts began taking an increasingly severe line on soldiers haled before it. There were several fights in the summer and autumn that produced judicial action and then further ugly brawls. The first began as a straightforward fistfight between Private John Riley and a victualer from Cambridge, Jonathan Winship. Afterwards Winship swore out a complaint; Riley was arrested, fined, and when he did not pay, ordered to jail. Getting him there proved difficult as grenadiers from the 14th rescued him from the constable who was taking him off. Before that struggle ended, Lieutenant Alexander Ross of the regiment made his appearance either to stop or to encourage the rescue and riot -- the evidence does not make his intentions clear -- only to be arrested himself. Eventually Ross and four of his men were convicted and fined. No one seems to have been satisfied by these verdicts, and the soldiers understandably enough came to feel that the judicial system they were charged to strengthen had it in for them.
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A second case which began in October reinforced this impression.

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The details of the case, an attack on the guard on Boston Neck, though interesting may be passed over except for three notable details: the first, the command of Captain Molesworth, given as the guard pushed its way back into Boston, to "put your bayonet" through "any man [who] strikes you"; the second, the obvious bias of Judge Dana, who addressed several soldiers in the preliminary bearing in these terms: "Who brought you here? Who sent for you? By what authority do you mount guard, or march in the streets with arms? It is contrary to the laws of the Province, and you should be taken up for so offending. We want none of your guards. We have arms of our own, and can protect ourselves. You are but a handful. Better take care not to provoke us. If you do, you must take the consequences"; the third, the explosiveness of the crowd on Boston Neck that had attacked the soldiers and now in the courtroom responded to questions about bail for the British officer in charge with the cry "Bail him with a rope."
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Such episodes involving the local courts exposed the weakness of the army in Boston. The courts and most of the justices had set their faces against the army, and the civil authorities most likely to support it did not. The Council by this time was in popular hands; the town meeting had long been; and the governor felt unable to order the army into action. Lacking the support of the civil government, the army writhed under the goadings of a hostile populace.

Bernard had admitted the hopelessness of his and the army's situation by leaving for England on August 1, 1769. His departure set off a raucous celebration -- the newspapers published a final series of denunciations, this time in derisive verse. The militia companies fired their cannon, bonfires were lit, and Bernard had to listen to the church bells peal for joy as the ship carrying him set sail.
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A month after Bernard's departure, his old tormentor, James Otis, received the thrashing Bernard had long wanted to deliver. Those remarkable signs of an erratic and uncontrolled temperament had grown stronger in the tension of the occupation of Boston. Otis had always had a propensity to abuse those he disliked; after listening to one such outburst, Peter Oliver had remarked of Otis that "If Bedlamism is a Talent he has it in Perfection."
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Now facing the troops and the Customs commissioners who hid behind the army's bayonets, he grew frantic in his inability to strike them effectively.
Helping put together the newspaper assault

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apparently was not enough. He talked incessantly, rambling through one story after another, leaving, as John Adams who detested his chatter said, no elbow room in the conversation. One of the objects of his hatred, John Robinson, became one of his partners in conversation early in September. Otis sought out Robinson to accuse him of writing defamatory letters to the home government about Otis's character and activities. Not surprisingly Otis received no satisfaction from these talks and grew more and more indignant at Robinson.

The atmosphere in Boston in these last days of summer can only be described as poisonous. While the newspapers did their bit to foul the air, the two sides -- Adams, Otis, and company, and the Customs commissioners, printer John Mein, and Tory officials and sympathizersbreathed in their own dark rumors of conspiracies and plots. When Otis felt that he could stand it no longer he published a threat in the Gazette of September 4 that John Robinson should know that "if he 'officially' or in any other way misrepresents me [to the British government] I have a natural right if I can get no other satisfaction to break his head." This statement, the broadest extension of the natural rights theory of the year, was undoubtedly meant to be witty and not to be taken seriously.
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Just how seriously it was taken became apparent the following evening in the British Coffee House, a watering spot and a refuge on King Street for Tories and British civil and military officers. Whatever else it was, the British Coffee House was not a center of admiration for James Otis. Robinson lifted a glass there evenings with his friends, many of whom were present when Otis entered looking for Robinson on the night of September 5. Robinson arrived almost immediately after, whereupon Otis demanded "a Gentleman's satisfaction," that is, that Robinson fight him with his fists since dueling was against the law. Apparently Otis thought the fight should occur in the streets, a more friendly arena than the coffee house, and was turning to leave when Robinson took him by the nose. Having one's nose tweaked was particularly humiliating to an eighteenth-century gentleman, and Otis pushed Robinson's hand away, perhaps with a blow. The fight thus began inside the coffee house. Others joined in, evidently trying to strike Otis. Before this ruckus subsided at least one friend from outside came to Otis's rescue, young John Gridley, who absorbed a good deal of punishment himself. Otis emerged from the enemy's camp with a deep gash on his head and

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several bruises. The only damage Robinson suffered seems to have been to his coat which split to the pockets.

Otis lost the fight in the coffee house, but he and his friends won the struggle that followed in the newspapers. The
Gazette
of course made the most of the opportunity, picturing Otis and Gridley putting up a "manly Defence" against the horde of revenue officers who hung out in the coffee house. "The People" were equally heroic, arriving at just the right moment, saving their champions, and sending John Robinson and friends scurrying out the back door in ignominious retreat.
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Robinson was an inviting target but probably not as dangerous in the radicals' eyes as his friend John Mein, the printer of the
Boston Chronicle
. One of the things that enraged Otis and his colleagues at this time was the assault Mein mounted almost single-handedly in his paper against nonimportation. His method was devastating: he published names of ostensible supporters of the nonimportation agreement who in private were violating its terms. He found the names, he reported, in the local customshouse records. On the list appeared the name of John Hancock, who denied the charge that he had brought in British linen, a proscribed item, but admitted importing Russian duck, a cotton or linen cloth, which was legal. Mein did not rest with reprinting what he found in records but, as was common practice, soon resorted to personal attack. His inventiveness stung: Thomas Cushing was "Tommy Trifle Esq"., Otis was rendered as "Muddlehead," and Hancock as "Johnny Dupe Esq., alias the Milch Cow", a play on Hancock's role as the source of money for the group. If this tag was not clear enough, Mein described Hancock as "A good natured young man with long ears -- a silly conceited grin on his countenance -- a fool's cap on his head -- a bandage tied over his eyes -- richly dressed and surrounded with a crowd of people, some of whom are stroking his ears, others tickling his nose with straws, while the rest are employed riffling his pockets."
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Two days afterwards John Mein discovered that he had gone too far. Late on the afternoon of October 28, he was attacked on King Street by a crowd that had been waiting for him. He escaped, first by hiding in the main guard, the barracks and headquarters of British troops, and then by dressing as a British private and making his way to Colonel Dalrymple's house.
That night another crowd vented its anger by tarring

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and feathering one George Gailer, widely believed to be an informer in the pay of the customshouse. Mein knew that he would probably receive worse than tar and feathers if apprehended, and in November he sailed for England on a British warship.

These activities were understood in Boston as responses of a beleaguered people, the victims of a parasitic revenue service and an occupying army. The violence of the crowds did not relieve this feeling, and as the new year began passions and violence intensified.

Nonimportation and the British army continued to arouse most of the popular emotion. In January of the new year the "Body," as the merchant leaders of nonimportation were called, discovered that two sons of Thomas Hutchinson were engaged in importing tea in defiance of the ban. The Body must have relished the opportunity of striking anyone with the name Hutchinson. At any rate they demanded that the teaimporting sons give up the goods and stop the business. The Hutchinsons refused until a crowd threatened to destroy a warehouse owned by the family. At that point Thomas Hutchinson caved in.

It was difficult not to be intimidated by a crowd, especially at a time when it had attained such skill in the gentle art of tarring and feathering. Nevertheless, a merchant occasionally proved recalcitrant, at least to the point of refusing to sign the nonimportation agreement. One, Theophilus Lillie, published his reasons in the
Boston News-Letter
early in January. It seemed "strange," Lillie wrote, "that men who are guarding against being subject to Laws [to] which they never gave their consent in person or by their representative, should at the same time make Laws, and in the most effectual manner execute them upon me and others to which Laws I am sure I never gave my consent either in person or by my representative." That statement may have caused particular unease for the truth it told. Lillie's conclusion was even more infuriating. The charges of slavery against the royal government, he said, seemed misplaced: A had rather be a slave under one Master; for if I know who he is, I may, perhaps, be able to please him, than a slave to a hundred or more, who I don't know where to find, nor what they will expect of me."
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Lillie marked himself by this public challenge to Boston's unofficial governors.
Although clear evidence is lacking that the Samuel Adams