Spreading the News of the Spread of a Fire

We can see the spread of news in the spring of 1775 through articles on the fire in Boston on the night of 17–18 May 1775.

The first printed report appeared in Samuel Hall’s Cambridge-based New-England Chronicle on 18 May, in the middle of other local news:

A terrible Fire broke out in Boston about 9 o’Clock last Evening, and raged a long Time. We hear it began just above the Draw Bridge, and burnt along the Town-Dock. A great Number of Buildings are doubtless consumed; but it is not possible to collect the Particulars for this Paper.

That same dire but vague paragraph was reprinted in Hartford on 22 May, Portsmouth on 26 May, and Philadelphia on 29 May.

Ebenezer Watson’s Connecticut Courant of Hartford confirmed that report in the 22 May issue by also quoting “a Letter from a Gentlemen in Cambridge…dated May 18”:

They had a great Fire in Boston last Night---it appeared to be between King-Street and the Market---it continued all night, and is not yet extinguished. What has really happened, is to us uncertain, as yet.

James Rivington chose to run the latter item in his 25 May New-York Gazetteer.

Meanwhile, on 22 May Solomon Southwick’s Newport Mercury offered an extract from “a manuscript account of the fire which happened in Boston last Wednesday night”:

The fire began in the barracks, under the arch formerly improved by Benjamin Davis, about half after eight o’clock, 17th May.—The soldiers were receiving some cartridges, by which means one took fire, and communicated to many more, which immediately set fire to the room.

That account then listed many property owners starting with John Hancock and including “a cooper’s shop, owned by Eliakim Hutchinson, adjoining the town dock, improved for barracks.” It concluded:

Instead of ringing the bells as usual, the soldiers beat to arms, by which means the people were in great confusion, not being used to such signals in time of fire.

N.B. The inhabitants took particular care to save the goods in Mr. Hancock’s store.

Curiously, in his 26 May New-Hampshire Gazette Daniel Fowle printed a version of that same detailed report on page 1 even as on page 3 he ran the New-England Chronicle’s first story saying it was “not possible to collect the Particulars for this Paper.”

John Holt put the “manuscript account” in his New-York Journal on 1 June with the dateline “CAMBRIDGE, May 12”—an obvious error since the fire hadn’t yet occurred then. Presumably Holt’s shop should have printed 19, 21, or 22 May, getting one digit wrong or transposing them.

No newspaper was published in Cambridge on those dates, suggesting Holt indeed took that text from a manuscript, not from a preceding newspaper. In addition, that text never appeared in the New-England Chronicle, the only newspaper then published out of Cambridge.

That strongly suggests that the Patriot authorities in Cambridge, perhaps Boston town officials in exile, sent their own quasi-official report on the fire out to newspapers in other colonies.

TOMORROW: A more pointed description.

“The 65th lost their Arms, Cloathing, and everything”

Yesterday I quoted the first newspaper account of the fire at the 65th Regiment’s barracks on the Town Dock, rented from the Loyalist merchant Benjamin Davis.

Here are some more accounts from the town, starting with Lt. John Barker’s journal entry for 18 May:

About 9 oclock last night a fire broke out in the Barracks of the 65th Regt. on a Wharf near the Market: every house on the Wharf, amounting to 41, was burnt to the Ground, and most of the things in them; the 65th lost their Arms, Cloathing, and everything; and the 47th has lost 4 Companies cloathing; the loss altogether is considerable as they were all stores on the Wharf and full of Goods. – A chest of Bullets was found in [John] Hancock’s store.

Coll. [James] Abercrombie Adjt. Genl., lately arrived from England, going up Cambridge river this morning in a Man of War’s Boat was fired upon by several of the Rebels from the Banks; several balls went thro’ the boat but nobody was hurt; they made the best of their way back, and I don’t hear that he has been as fond of reconnoitring since.

Detachments from the different Corps were sent to extinguish the fire, which had began to break out again; in 4 or 5 hours they effected it.

Merchant John Rowe put in his journal:

17 May … About Eight of Clock A Terrible Fire Broke Out in the Barracks on Treats Wharff Occupied by the 65th Regiment. it was Occasiond by Accident or rather from Great Carelessness — it destroyd 33 Stores on Dock Square — Mine was in Great Danger I thought it So & therefore removd Great part of my Effects — from thence. it continued untill half past One with Progress — The Officers Behavd Very Well

The Cloathing of 4 Companies belonging to the 47th. Regimt was burnt & Some Fire Arms Lost

18 May Thursday Warm Weather W So. W — The People in General very Busy in Collecting the Effects that were Sav'd Out of the Fire

Rumors were more dire, as usual. From Salem, Nathaniel Appelton wrote: “There has been a very great fire at Boston last night don’t yet learn the particulars but in generall that it broke out near draw-bridge & consumed many buildings; some say 30, some say 100, oh poor Boston!”

In fact, this fire appears to have been confined to a central business district. Although lots of warehouses and stores were destroyed, along with the goods inside them, no private homes were lost—just the 65th Regiment’s quarters.

TOMORROW: Newspaper coverage.

“A fire broke out in the barracks of the 65th regiment”

When the British army returned to central Boston in 1774, Benjamin Davis, Sr., rented his store on the south side of the Town Dock as a barracks.

Davis later told the Loyalists Commission that he “put his own goods in a Cellar” to make room for the redcoats. That turned out to be a costly decision.

On 24 May 1775, Isaiah Thomas’s Massachusetts Spy reported that on 17 May:

a fire broke out in the barracks of the 65th regiment on the south side of the Town-Dock, occasioned by a serjeant of said regiment delivering cartridges to the men by candle-light, a spark from the candle falling amongst them, set fire thereto and immediately the building was in a blaze.

Upon discovery of the fire the troops immediately beat to arms, which being unusual upon such occasions, caused great consternation amongst the inhabitants, and but few dared to leave their habitations; some that did repaired to the engine houses as usual, but to their surprize were told, the engines were not to be delivered without an order from the General [Thomas Gage] (he having a few days before taken the engines under his care, information being given to him, as he said, that when the inhabitants had removed some desperate people, purposely left, were to set fire to the town;)

by this delay the fire got to so great a height, as put it out of the power of the people to stop its progress speedily: It raged with uncommon fury till near three o’clock next morning, in which time all the barracks on the Dock, with a number of stores adjoining, near thirty buildings in the whole, were entirely consumed, with merchandize to a great amount.

The merchandize was chiefly taken out of the stores and put upon the wharf, and might have been saved had not the Admiral [Samuel Graves] some time before taken every boat from the town, and at the time of the fire cruelly refused any assistance.

It was the opinion of the inhabitants, that had the engines been in their hands as formerly, or could they have got them in any season, the fire might have been stopped at the first barrack.

Earlier in the occupation, redcoats and locals had worked together to stop a fire. But with the town besieged and the military commanders on edge, there was more finger-pointing than cooperation.

TOMORROW: Eyewitness reports.

Benjamin Davis, Jr., at the Boston Massacre

On 4 Apr 1756, Trinity Church in Boston recorded the baptism of “Benjamin Davis, Son of Benj. & [blank].”

Benjamin, Jr.’s mother was Elizabeth (Phillips) Davis, a convert to the Church of England. She bore a third child in 1757 but must have died in the few years following.

Presumably Benjamin, Jr., was baptized a few days after birth, meaning he was born in the spring of 1756. However, when he died on 28 Dec 1836, Boston newspapers reported that he was eighty-one, so it’s also possible his baptism was delayed a few months.

In 1762 Benjamin, Sr., married a second time, to Anstis Greenleaf, daughter of Suffolk County sheriff Stephen Greenleaf. She died in 1764, after giving birth, and Benjamin, Sr., remarried again to Alice Whipple of Rhode Island—and we all know how that turned out.

As a teenager, Benjamin, Jr., was present at the shooting on King Street in March 1770. He was called to testify at the soldiers’ trial, identified as “son to Mr. Davis a former witness.”

Here, as taken down by John Hodgson, is what Benjamin, Jr., experienced:

On the evening of the 5th March last, near the bottom of Royal exchange-lane, I saw a mob by Mr. [John] Greenleaf’s, I went right along into King street, I saw the Sentinel [Hugh White]; a barber’s boy [Edward Garrick] was there crying, and said the Sentry had struck him, and asked him what business he had to do it:

I went home and staid at the gate in Green’s lane some time,

Samuel Gray (one of the persons killed that night in King-street) came along, and asked where the fire was?

I said there was no fire, it was the soldiers fighting, he said, damn it, I am glad of it, I will knock some of them on the head; he ran off, I said to him, take heed you do not get killed in the affray yourself, he said, do not fear, damn their bloods.

Q. Had he a stick in his hand?

A. He had one under his arm.

Q. What sort of a stick was it?

A. I did not take notice.

Q. How long was this before the firing?

A. I do not suppose he could have got into King-street two minutes before the firing.

Benjamin’s father was also observing the action from a different angle, and his uncle Edward’s family had a clear view across the street at the Customs office. They were all defense witnesses at various trials.

TOMORROW: Fire!

(Based on Benjamin’s quick description, I’m guessing he first spotted the crowd near John Greenleaf’s apothecary store, which survived into the late 1800s as the Old Feather Store at Dock Square, shown above.)

“We went to see Mr. Davis in Jail”

As I wrote back here, the lore in Benjamin Davis’s family was that his third wife, Alice, left him soon after their marriage in 1768 because she couldn’t stand how he worshipped with the Sandemanians.

Reportedly the men of the sect agreed that Davis could remarry if he chose. In a profile of Davis written for the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Henry H. Edes said:

If Mr. Davis married a fourth wife, it is probable that she was Katharine Overlick, whose Intention of Marriage with Benjamin Davis was entered 24 April, 1773, but as we find no record of a marriage, and do find that Catharine Overlick,—presumably the same woman—entered her Intention of Marriage with John Clows 10 November, 1774, it is doubtful if Mr. Davis made another matrimonial alliance.

Alice (Whipple) Davis died in Cranston, Rhode Island, in 1795.

When captured on the Peggy sailing from Halifax to New York in July 1776, Benjamin Davis was accompanied only by his son and an enslaved man. In contrast, a couple of other merchants on the same ship were traveling with their wives, most notably Robert and Mary Semple, formerly Mary Wheat of Lincoln.

In her journal, published by the Essex Institute in 1868, Mary Holyoke (1737–1802, shown above) of Salem wrote:

July 28. Mr. Ben. Davis taken and put into Jail at Boston, and on the 31st Mrs. Davis spent the day with us at Mrs. Minott’s; we went to see Mr. Davis in Jail.

It appears that this “Mrs. Davis” wasn’t Benjamin Davis’s wife but a friend and/or relative of Mary Holyoke whom she mentioned many other times. But this Mrs. Davis could also have been related to Benjamin, giving him a courtesy call.

Life in the Boston jail wasn’t easy. The mates on the British transport ship Anne, James Young and John M’Kurdy, escaped from custody in Massachusetts and provided this intelligence on 24 August:

That Mr. Benjamin Davis, and several others were passengers, and that they treated Mr. Davis very ill. That they do not give the prisoners sufficient provisions, but offer them good wages to enter on board their privateers, and that many do enter.

The captain of the Peggy, James Kennedy, even petitioned the Massachusetts Council on 13 August for release on the grounds that he didn’t deserve to be associated with his passenger:

As your Petitioner had a Man on Board by the Name of Davis whose Character he did not know till he was brought into this Place, he beleives is the Occasion of his receiving different punishment from other Masters of Vessells.

Kennedy was indeed let out of the jail. According to the Naval Documents of the American Revolution editors, four other men gained release through “similar petitions.”

TOMORROW: Junior.

Listening to Abigail Adams on Paper

A comment about yesterday’s quotation from Abigail Adams has prompted me to veer off into some linguistic digging.

Referring to Benjamin Davis, apparently notorious for taking gingerbread from refugees, Adams wrote: “How many little ones can say I was an Hungry & you gave me no Bread, but inhumanely took what little I had from me.”

The Massachusetts Historical Society shared a scan of this letter, so we can confirm she spelled the words that way.

As a minister’s daughter, Adams knew her Christian scripture. But she wasn’t quoting the King James Bible exactly. Matthew 25:42 says: “For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat:…” According to linguists, “an” was a form of the prefix “a,” as in “times’s a-wasting,” adapted to go before an H.

Adams instead used the form “an hungry,” which this linguistic website defines in its single-word form as “an obsolete word for hungry that is allowed to stay in Webster's Third New International Dictionary because it shows up in Shakespeare (Coriolanus I:i:209).” Did Adams misremember the Biblical verse? Or were people in the mid-1700s people reading the phrase that way?

Discussing Abigail Adams’s expressions leads me to Susan Walsh and Christopher S. Davis’s Adams Letters and Language podcast, hosted on YouTube. Walsh portrays Adams, along with being a librarian and educator. Davis is a historical dialect coach who studied 18th-century New England speech for the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum.

On Saturday I heard their presentation at History Camp Boston, which will become a future podcast episode. Each episode includes a reading of John and Abigail Adams’s in period style “as well as discussion of the history, themes, and linguistics revealed by the letters.”

Since I’ve been impressionistically opining on how people really spoke in Revolutionary America since 2008, I look forward to hearing a more expert discussion.

“The Women from the Windows asking Davis whether he wanted any Gingerbread”

Massachusetts ships captured the Peggy on its voyage from Halifax to New York on 22 July 1776, as described yesterday.

The civilians aboard that ship were taken to Marblehead, then to Boston under guard. Word spread quickly that one of them was Benjamin Davis, a merchant who had left town months before.

On 28 July, Joseph Ward wrote to John Adams from Boston about the ship: “There are many Tories on board, among whom is the noted Benjamin Davis.”

The next day, Ezekiel Price put in his diary: “Brought to town Benjamin Davis and a number of other Tories, who were committed to jail.”

Why was Davis being singled out? He’d made himself notorious in some way, and we have a couple of hints about how.

David Cobb wrote to Robert Treat Paine on 29 July:

Just now the Tories were Landed at the Long Wharf from Marblehead & were attended from thence to the Prison by 2 thousand people; the Women from the Windows asking Davis whether he wanted any Gingerbread, refering to his treatment of the little Chreldren when they were going out of Town last Year. I wish the Devil had ’em.

Abigail Adams alluded to the same scuttlebut in her letter to John the same day:

we have taken a vessel from Halifax bound to New York, which we should call a prize but that it containd about 14 Tories among whom is that infamous Wretch of a Ben Davis the Ginger Bread Robber. How many little ones can say I was an Hungry and you gave me no Bread, but inhumanely took what little I had from me. I wish the Sea or any other Element had them rather than we should be tormented with them.

The editors of the Adams and Paine Papers weren’t sure what to make of those remarks about gingerbread.

I can’t find any sources providing a definite answer, but here’s my guess. At the start of the war, many families sought to leave Boston. Gen. Thomas Gage didn’t want refugees to take out food, which his army needed, or weapons, which the provincial army needed. So the governor set up a system of passes and inspections using both military and civilian administrators.

In the 5 June 1775 Boston Gazette, Benjamin Edes published an open letter addressed “To the perfidious, the truce breaking THOMAS GAGE” and signed “Massachusettensis.” (This was not, presumably, the Loyalist political writer.) Among its complaints about Gage was:

Nay, have not you, and your associates by your orders, been mean enough to steal rum and sugar from a poor teamster, half a cake of gingerbread, a nutmeg, and half a bisket from a poor woman who was flying half famished out of Boston from your low lived tyranny and oppression?

That item was reprinted in several other Massachusetts and Connecticut newspapers over the next couple of weeks. It’s the one gingerbread-related complaint I could find from the period.

That complaint shows that people working for the royal government were confiscating food from folks trying to leave Boston, even mundane food like gingerbread, even from “a poor woman.”

I suspect that Benjamin Davis had agreed to work for Gage’s royal government as some sort of inspector or administrator. At some point that spring, he took gingerbread from a family or two trying to leave town. Children may have cried. That incident didn’t get into the newspapers, but it made him notorious enough that citizens yelled at “Ben Davis the Ginger Bread Robber” more than a year later.

And, unlike Hopestill Capen, few people in Boston minded seeing Davis locked up.

(The picture above shows the Pennsylvania politician Joseph Galloway, not mentioned anywhere in this posting. In September 1774 John Adams wrote in his diary that he was “introduced to Mr. Galloway, the Speaker of the House in Pensylvania. He looks like Ben. Davis the Sandimanian.”)

“Fell in with two Arm’d Schooners”

Yesterday I wrote about Benjamin and Edward Davis, two brothers who were mercantile partners in Boston until religion and Revolutionary politics split them apart.

Benjamin became a Sandemanian, devoutly guided not to oppose British Crown policies by, for instance, signing on to the non-importation boycotts.

Edward remained an Anglican, attending Trinity Church. By late 1774 the Whigs coopted him into helping to enforce their strongest boycott, the Continental Association.

Both brothers remained in Boston during the siege. But when the British military evacuated, Edward stayed while Benjamin sailed away to Halifax, Nova Scotia. In April 1776 the Patriot authorities ordered magistrates to question Edward about his loyalty, but evidently he passed muster.

Around the start of July, Benjamin Davis boarded the ship Peggy, headed for New York. Along with him came his son Benjamin, Jr., who turned twenty that year; an enslaved man; half a dozen other Loyalist men; and a few Loyalist women.

Evidently those refugees saw business opportunities supplying the huge British and Hessian army assembling at New York. The Peggy was loaded with provisions, including 2,648 “mutton hams,” 311 “tierces salted beef,” fish, flour, snuff, cloth, stockings, and a large quantity of alcohol in various forms.

The Peggy also carried six 3-pounder and two 2-pounder cannon. It sailed in convoy with dozens of other merchant ships and troop transports, all escorted by two Royal Navy warships. The sea voyage probably seemed safe.

We have the ship captain’s account of what happened next:

I James Kennedy, Master of the Ship Peggy, in the Merchant Service, declare that I left Hallifax about the first Inst. [i.e., of this month] under Convoy of the Renown of Fifty Guns, with a Fleet of sixteen [torn] Transports containing the 42nd & 71 Scotch Regiments & Fraziers new rais’d Regiment, about 3000 in all, & three Large Ships with Hessian Troops on board, about 600 in all, & one Ship with 5 companys of English foot Guards, & four Victualling Ships, the whole Fleet bound for New York.

Off Nantucket Shoals we fell in with the Flora Frigate of Thirty Guns & four Transports with Highland Troops, these had been in Boston Bay, where they got information from a Fisherman that the Town was Evacuated, on which they Stood for Hallifax untill they met with us, they then joyn’d our Fleet for New York.

The Scotch Troops were all to be of Coll [Archibald] Campbells division (of the Grand Army in America, the whole of which Army I was informd, would by the last of July, amount, to 50,000.) the Hessian Troops left England about the 12th of May, some of the Officers informd me they came out with 304 Sail under the Command of Commodore Hawtham [William Hotham], on board of whom were 10,000 Foreign Troops & some English Troops (number unknown).

last Fryday sennight [19 July] in a gale of wind & thick weather I lost the Fleet & on monday [22 July] I fell in with two [American] Arm’d Schooners, Capts. [John] Skimmer & [Samuel] Tucker, to whom I surrendered after a short engagement, in which I had only one man Wounded.

The day after the Fleet left Hallifax, I saw from my Deck forty Sail of Ships standing in for that Harbour, & which I suppose to be part of the Fleet under Commodore Hawtham.

Skimmer commanded the Franklin and Tucker the Hancock, schooners originally launched under the authority of the Continental Army commander. They were now sailing for Massachusetts.

The Patriot authorities who took Capt. Kennedy’s deposition were evidently pumping him for intelliegence on what other British ships and troops were out there rather than details of his engagement with the schooners.

For Benjamin Davis, all that mattered now was that he was a prisoner of the state he’d left four months before.

TOMORROW: The gingerbread man.

“The extraordinary self-denials and usages of the Sandemanians”

Hopestill Capen wasn’t the only Sandemanian clapped into the Boston jail in the summer of 1776, as discussed yesterday.

Another merchant who had joined that sect, Benjamin Davis (1729–1805), had been locked up since 26 July.

Like Capen, Davis was from an old New England family. For years he and his brother, Edward Davis (1730–1811), ran a mercantile firm located on the “South Side of the Town Dock.”

Among the European goods Benjamin and Edward Davis advertised for sale were coal, ale, cheese, snuff, salt, and stoneware. In return, they offered farmers money for flaxseed and potash.

Family sources say the Davis brothers’ partnership came apart during the non-importation campaign of 1768–70. Indeed, as of May 1771 the shop on “the South Side the Dock” was “Benj. Davis’s Store.” Having advertised their firm for many years, the brothers’ names appeared in only one more newspaper notice together: in August 1772 they offered “Two new Copper Stills & Worms,” perhaps their last joint property.

The Davis brothers definitely started to split politically in those years. On 28 Oct 1769, Edward was one of three angry merchants who confronted printer John Mein about how he was printing Customs house records. Mein stated, “Davis first made a push at me with his Cane which struck me on the left side of the belly.”

On 5 Mar 1770, Benjamin Davis was out in the evening about nine o’clock as locals faced off against soldiers at the Customs office. According to Robert Treat Paine’s notes from Capt. Thomas Preston’s trial, Davis testified: “Some body clap’d me on sholder and asked me if I would go and help fight the Soldiers. I said no.” He was a defense witness in the Boston Massacre trials.

Meanwhile, Edward Davis was watching the dispute with other merchants from the stoop of Edward Payne’s house, opposite the Customs office. At a bail hearing for Edward Manwaring in April and then at Manwaring’s trial, Davis and members of his family testified that they had seen no guns fired from the Customs building. In fact, Davis said that “soon after the firing he saw two women standing in the chamber of the Custom-house…with their hands under their aprons, in the posture of spectators.”

After the death of his wife, the former Ruth Vassall, in January 1774, Edward became a more active Whig. By the end of the year he was serving on Boston’s committee to enforce the Continental Association boycott.

In contrast, once Benjamin joined the Sandemanians in the 1760s, he appears to have sworn off actions to resist the royal government. In October 1774, John Andrews reported, “Ben Davis has let his Store on the Dock for the use of the troops.” He signed the usual Loyalist addresses and protests.

The mercantile house wasn’t the only partnership Benjamin Davis gave up for his faith. He married his third wife, Alice Whipple, daughter of a former lieutenant governor of Rhode Island, in 1768. According to family lore published by the Colonial Society of Massachusetts:

The lady’s amour propre was offended and her philosophy over-taxed by the extraordinary self-denials and usages of the Sandemanians. Following the example of the early Christian Church, it was their custom to hold a love-feast on Sunday at one another’s houses, at which only Sandemanians were present. The wives who were not members of the Sect, naturally did not take kindly to their exclusion from their own tables, and, at last, the third Madam Davis felt constrained to return to her family, thus, practically, deserting her husband.

A legal divorce being then unobtainable, the Sandemanians took the matter under consideration and concluded to sanction another matrimonial alliance on the part of Mr. Davis, declaring his to be one of those cases where voluntary abandonment by the wife justifies the dissolution of the marriage tie in the sight of Heaven.

Benjamin Davis didn’t actually remarry, though.

Unlike Capen, Davis chose to sail away to Nova Scotia with the British military in March 1776. But then he got on a ship headed to New York, presumably to help supply or administer Britain’s reinvasion.

TOMORROW: Captured at sea.

(The John S. Copley portrait above shows Anstice [Greenleaf] Davis, Benjamin’s second wife, courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum. She died in 1764, only two years after their marriage.)

Hopestill Capen from the Cornfields to the Jail

On 6 Aug 1776, 250 years ago today, authorities in Boston locked merchant Hopestill Capen (1731–1807) in jail for “aiding and abetting those called enemies to the Colonies.”

For decades Capen had run his dry goods business at the sign of the Cornfields in a building he owned, now known as the Union Oyster House. He served as a militia officer and held minor town offices.

Late in 1769 Capen took on Benjamin Thompson as an apprentice, but that arrangement didn’t last long. The merchant later reportedly told the teenager’s mother “he oftener found her son under the counter, with gimblets, knife, and saw, constructing some little machine, or looking over some book of science, than behind it, arranging the cloths or waiting upon customers.”

from 1771 until just before the war, one of Capen’s tenants in the building was the Whig printer Isaiah Thomas.

During that time, Capen had become known as a mild Loyalist. He signed the complimentary addresses to Gov. Thomas Hutchinson and Gen. Thomas Gage, and he joined the protest against the Solemn League and Covenant.

Capen chose not to evacuate with the British military in 1776, however. Unlike many Loyalists, he had deep family roots in Massachusetts, and all his property was there.

In April 1776 the Massachusetts House directed the Suffolk County justices and sheriff to detain and question dozens of individuals suspected of disloyalty. Capen was fifth on that list, showing his prominence in town.

But it wasn’t until the summer, after Massachusetts had declared independence from the Crown, that the Council ordered those authorities to lock Capen up. No one ever appears to have ever produced evidence of him “aiding and abetting” Crown forces, but he did refuse to pledge allegiance to the new state.

Capen presented himself as a conscientious objector, motivated by religion. In the 1760s he had joined Boston’s small Sandemanian sect, and he said that his faith required him to stay out of the war.

Some analysts have described the Sandemanians as pacifist because of statements like Capen’s. But he wasn’t opposed to military action in principle. He’d been an active member of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company as well as the colonial militia, and during the siege he became a sergeant in a Loyal Associated Volunteers under Capt. Adino Paddock.

Rather, the Sandemanian creed said believers should be loyal to the government in control on the grounds that it must be divinely ordained. With the war still going on, and thus divine will not yet clear, Capen insisted that he couldn’t promise his allegiance to the U.S. of A.

“Transmitted to us, their Posterity, a fair and rich Inheritance”

The American Scholar just published Robert A. Gross’s essay “Gratitude Isn’t Everything,” considering the start of the American Revolution in contrast to Vice President J. D. Vance’s one-way demands for gratitude.

American Patriots felt obligations to their ancestors who established the colonies, and to their further ancestors who established the British constitution as they understood it. But to them those obligations called for resistance to Parliament’s new laws, not simple loyalty to the government.

In the Revolutionary movement it was a mark of militancy to appeal to the ancestors in protests against British policies. Such statements rehearsed the history of New England from the Puritans’ first settlements down to the latest generation.

Lexington elaborated on this narrative in January 1773. The saga opened as the Puritans fled the tyranny of Charles I and Archbishop Laud, made the hazardous Atlantic crossing, and carved out new homes in the American wilderness. “Our worthy ancestors … [endured] many Struggles with their Enemies in the Face of every Danger and at the expence of much Treasure and Blood,” the Lexington town meeting declared. They thereby “secured to themselves, & transmitted to us, their Posterity, a fair and rich Inheritance, not only of a pleasant fertile Land, but also of Invaluable Rights & Priviledges both as Men & Christians, as stated in the Royal Charter of this Province, and … [guaranteed] by the Faith of the British Crown & Kingdom.” So precious a legacy came as a sacred trust. It was the townspeople’s duty to protect and preserve this birthright of liberty and pass it on intact to the next generation. To do otherwise would betray their very character as a people.

The rhetoric of filial duty became ubiquitous in 1774–75 and with good reason. To punish the Bay Colony for the Tea Party and to curb what royal officials deemed a disorderly democracy, Britain effectively revoked the revered 1691 Massachusetts Charter. Under the Massachusetts Government Act (MAGA), the Crown took over the hiring and firing of all judicial officials and excluded the assembly from its previous role in choosing the provincial council, the upper chamber of the general court. Most important, the new law barred town meetings without the governor’s consent, except for an annual session to elect municipal officials.

MAGA was a direct attack on local autonomy and on popular influence in government. To the inhabitants, these arbitrary changes, imposed from above, amounted to disinheritance, and as worthy heirs of virtuous forefathers, they rose up in outrage.

One result of Parliament’s overreach, Gross argues, was to spur the Patriots into adopting a broader view of their cause, not linked to one nation’s history. The article quotes Dr. Joseph Warren’s praise for a “universal enquiry into the rights of mankind in general” as well as the rights of British subjects.

Eventually that produced the natural-rights argument of the Declaration of Independence, which could inspire many later movements, not bound to Britain or the limits of eighteenth-century society.

The current administration may invoke the Founding, but in disregarding the natural rights of anyone who’s not an American citizen, that administration is showing contempt for the philosophy the Founders came to champion.

Back to Philadelphia for “The Road to Independence” in September

In April, I went to Philadelphia to help lead the Pursuit of History Weekend on “The Road to Independence,” nearly three full days of exploring the city and the Continental Congress’s move to breaking from Britain.

That was so much fun that we’re offering a similar program on 18–20 September. The anniversary of the Declaration of Independence has passed, of course, but we can dig deeper into its history in this Sestercentennial year. In fact, we have the chance to take in new material and historic spaces not available in the spring.

This time our base will be the Arch Street Meetinghouse, commissioned by Quakers in 1803–04 and shown above. We’ll also visit Carpenters’ Hall, Independence Hall, the controversial Presidents’ House site, the Arch Street Burying-Ground, the Museum of the American Revolution, the American Philosophical Society Museum, and other places in scenic Philadelphia.

One addition to this session is the First Bank of the United States, which just reopened after a major refurbishment. We’ll visit that on Sunday, our “extra” day when we go outside the period of our main focus.

Our speakers this time around will be:

• Jane E. Calvert, Ph.D., author of Penman of the Founding and founding director of the John Dickinson Writings Project.
• Christina R. Carrick and James P. McClure, Ph.D., editors at the Papers of Thomas Jefferson.
• Shawn David McGhee, Ph.D., author of No Longer Subjects of the British King: The Political Transformation of Royal Subjects to Republican Citizens, 1774–1776.
• Samuel A. Forman, M.D., M.P.H., author of Joseph Warren and Ill-Fated Frontier, and a native of Philadelphia.
• Richard Vague, author of The Banker Who Made America: Thomas Willing and The Rise of the American Financial Aristocracy, 1731–1821.
• J. L. Bell, program director and author of The Road to Concord.

We’re expecting this session to be smaller than the one in the spring, but still looking for two to three dozen folks interested in Revolutionary history.

For more information about what’s included, costs, and registration for “The Road to Independence,” please visit the Pursuit of History website.

(Meanwhile, I’m also working on the program for a new Pursuit of History Weekend in November.)

“So disagreeable that one half of the Congress withdraw”

Delving into the newly published John Dickinson letters also led me back into the notes of the Continental Congress during 1775.

The official record that secretary Charles Thomson kept for eventual publication was often anodyne. The delegates made themselves into a committee of the whole to avoid going on the record, and of course Thomson was politic about what he recorded.

But some delegates kept their own notes. In this period Silas Deane kept busy summarizing arguments and then grading the speakers.

Neither Dickinson nor John Adams came off in Deane’s notes as so composed and effective as they would have liked.

In his memoir Adams described himself as “not having ever been remarkable for very long Harrangues.” But on 15 May Deane described the Massachusetts man’s remarks as “lengthy, and argumentative.”

Dickinson felt he was guiding the Congress to a safe middle course. That same day Deane wrote that the Pennsylvanian “argues smoothly but Sophistically on the Subject and gives rather disgust.”

And here’s the delegates’ interactions on 24 May:

Mr. Dickinson in his old Way lengthy, and concludes in his old Way with a Fable

Mr. [Thomas] Mifflin animadvests[?] with spirit on him and exposes his reasoning &c

Mr. [Thomas] Johnson, on a reconciling plan and offers a Motion.

Col. [Richard Henry] Lee for a different mode of expression in ye Motion and is severe on Dickenson

Mr. Jno. Rutledge against any Concession whatever, that Lord North has given Us his Ultimatum with which We cannot agree. Treats Dickinsons plan with the upmmost Contempt. and is so severe that [Samuel] Chase rises to explain himself.

Col. Lee up again

Mr. [Thomas] Stone of Maryland so disagreeable that one half of the Congress withdraw

Deane’s 1775 notes were published in Letters of Delegates to Congress, and they can easily be found online at From the Page and American Founding.

Meanwhile, the Congress’s official record of 24 May 1775 is:

Peyton Randolph, President, returned to Virginia where he was Speaker of the Assembly. John Hancock was unanimously chosen President.

Samuel Ward reported that the committee of the whole had made progress in the business of the state of America, but not having come to a conclusion, requested permission “to sit again.”

Adjourned till to Morrow at 9 o’Clock.

Deane’s notes show what was really behind that “progress.”

“Dependant upon the Imperial Crown of Great Britain”?

In 1775, John Adams and John Dickinson held the same basic position about the best course for the British Empire and its large North American colonies:

• There must be a new understanding of the relationship between those colonies and the central government in London.
• But those colonies need not become independent.

The problem was that the two men defined “independent” differently.

On 15 May, Silas Deane made these notes on the Continental Congress’s debate:

Mr. Jno Ruttlidge…insists it previously some that points must be settled, such as do We aim at independancy, or do we only ask for a Restoration of Rights & putting of Us on Our old footing. speaks long & well

Mr. Robt. R Livingston Succeeds him in the same way. short

Mr. Jno. Adams lengthy, and argumentative. independance on Parliamant is absolutely to be avowd. in the Americans, but a dependance on the Crown is what We own

Adams thus declared himself in favor of “independance” only from Parliament, not the entire British system (“the Crown”). How exactly that would work he didn’t say.

Two months later, in his letter to James Warren that fell into British hands, Adams went into more detail:

We ought to have had in our Hands a Month ago, the whole Legislative, Executive and Judicial of the whole Continent, and have compleatly moddelled a Constitution, to have raised a Naval Power and opened all our Ports wide, to have arrested every Friend to Government on the Continent and held them as Hostages for the poor Victims in Boston. And then opened the Door as wide as possible for Peace and Reconcilliation

Adams still didn’t use the term “independance.” He still held out the prospect of “Reconcilliation.”

To Dickinson, however, Adams’s wish list amounted to “a total Independence, & the Establishment of a Commonwealth.” The term “commonwealth” recalled the English protectorate of the mid-1600s, which Adams’s Puritan ancestors had applauded but most British subjects remembered with distrust.

Adams never saw the material that Dickinson sent to David Barclay in Britain in August 1775. In fact, hardly anyone in the history of the world saw those documents until they were just published in the William & Mary Quarterly. With his letter Dickinson included draft legislation he hoped would calm the crisis by resetting the imperial relationship to how it had been back before Parliament started raising tariffs in 1763.

But Dickinson prefaced part of that legal repeal with this language:

Whereas it is essential to the good Government & Prosperity of every Sosciety [sic] or State, that an undisputed Supreme superintending Power & Authority should exist within it; And whereas this Power & Authority hath always been vested in & exercised by Parliament; and whereas the respective local legislatures of distinct Colonies are in many Instances incompetent; be it therefore further enacted by the Authority aforesaid, that when any of the said Colonies shall by an Act of Assembly acknowledge & recognize & declare the said Colony to be dependant upon the Imperial Crown of Great Britain, and that the Kings most excellent Majesty by & with the Advice & Consent of the Lords Spiritual & temporal & Commons in Parliament assembled had hath & of Right ought to have full Power & Authority to make Statutes to bind the People of the said Colonies, where the general Wellfare of the Whole Empire shall require the Exercise of such a Supreme superintending Power & Authority, as especially to make Statutes for regulating the Trade & Navigation of the Whole Dominion of the Imperial Crown of Great Britain…

To Adams, Dickinson’s concession would have amounted to accepting dependence on Parliament.

Ironically, both men claimed that the disclosure of Adams’s letter was useful because it showed how far he wanted to go. Dickinson felt those words should make politicians in Britain realize that some Americans sought de facto independence. Adams felt the same words emboldened more Americans to adopt his position.

In fact, none of the documents I’ve been discussing—Adams’s intercepted letter, Dickinson’s two letters to Barclay and his draft legislation—made any difference in London. On 23 August, before those papers could cross the Atlantic, King George III issued a proclamation written by Lord Dartmouth that the North American colonies were in “open and avowed rebellion” and his forces should “use their utmost endeavours to withstand and suppress such rebellion.”