A Guide to the “Powder Alarm” and More

The sestercentennial of the “Powder Alarm” is coming up on 2 September, and American Heritage revisits the event with “The Revolution Could Have Started Here,” an excerpt from Bob Thompson’s book Revolutionary Roads.

Here’s a taste:

Today, 42 Brattle houses the Cambridge Center for Adult Education. In 1774, as tensions between Great Britain and New England neared an all-time high, it was home to William Brattle, a 68-year-old gentleman farmer and Massachusetts militia general who had kicked off the September craziness by writing the governor a letter. Composed in late August, it informed [Thomas] Gage, who was his boss, that gunpowder was starting to disappear from the Powder House. Gage took the hint. Before dawn on September 1, longboats ferried some 250 Boston-based British soldiers three miles up the Mystic River, where they got out and marched another mile to their destination. Removing hobnailed boots, lest a spark blow them to kingdom come, they collected the remaining powder in the tower; a few went to Cambridge to confiscate a couple of artillery pieces, as well. All were safely back in Boston by noon, and the governor was a happy man.

Not for long, though.

Later that day, Gage’s enemies somehow got their hands on Brattle’s letter. A crowd of local protesters showed up outside his house, but, by then, the owner was gone. “He went into Boston,” Bell said, “and never saw Cambridge again.” Unsatisfied, the crowd reassembled half a mile up the street, at the home of a colonial official named Jonathan Sewall, whose wife said he wasn’t home. The protesters didn’t believe her and tried to break in. Someone inside fired a pistol—accidentally, it was claimed—which sobered everybody up, and the crowd dispersed.

You may have noticed the name “Bell” in there. I was Thompson’s tour guide along Brattle Street nearly a decade ago. This article also profiles me, in case you were curious.

“Throw himself on the justice of his country”

Josh Marshall, who earned a doctorate in American history before founding the Talking Points Memo political website, recently quoted Thomas Jefferson on the question of whether the responsibilities of U.S. Presidents put them above the law.

I think the Founders would have been aghast at the idea that any government officials weren’t subject to the rule of law. That was the whole point of founding a republic without a monarch or a hereditary nobility with its own separate court system.

Until recently, only a small fraction of people disagreed with that notion, most of them with deep personal interests at stake—like Richard Nixon.

As a former chief executive Jefferson had experience with the choice of acting for what he perceived as the public good or staying strictly within defined law.

In a letter to John B. Colvin dated 20 Sept 1810, Jefferson wrote:

Whether circumstances do not sometimes occur which make it a duty in officers of high trust to assume authorities beyond the law, is easy of solution in principle, but sometimes embarrasing in practice. a strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen: but it is not the highest. the laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. to lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to written law, would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property & all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the end to the means.

But once a President or other high officials make such a decision, Jefferson went on to say, they also have the responsibility to subject themselves to public inquiry, including in the courts.

the officer who is called to act on this superior ground, does indeed risk himself on the justice of the controuling powers of the constitution, and his station makes it his duty to incur that risk. but those controuling powers, and his fellow citizens generally, are bound to judge according to the circumstances under which he acted. they are not to transfer the information of this place or moment to the time & place of his action: but to put themselves into his situation. . . .

it is incumbent on those only who accept of great charges, to risk themselves on great occasions, when the safety of the nation, or some of it’s very high interests are at stake. an officer is bound to obey orders: yet he would be a bad one who should do it in cases for which they were not intended, and which involved the most important consequences. the line of discrimination between cases may be difficult; but the good officer is bound to draw it at his own peril, & throw himself on the justice of his country and the rectitude of his motives.

If an executive’s reasons were really so good, Jefferson felt confident in saying, he’d be able to “throw himself on the justice of his country” and make a case for himself.

Isaac Bissell and My “More Plausible Scenario”

Earlier this week the Journal of the American Revolution published my article “The Story of Isaac Bissell—and the Legend of Israel Bissell.”

With the sestercentennial of the Battle of Lexington and Concord coming up next spring, I thought it was high time to put on record the evidence that the name of the man who carried Joseph Palmer’s alert from Watertown was Isaac Bissell, not (as the name was first misspelled by people copying it in a hurry) Israel Bissell.

That core identification was made years back by Lion G. Miles, and I give him full credit in the article, as I have in my talks on the topic.

I also felt obligated to add something new to the story if I could. That led me into digging up new material on the close but secret relations between the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and the government of Connecticut, an earlier note sent by Palmer, and the details of Connecticut’s alert.

But still, the core of this article is Isaac, not Israel, Bissell.

The first footnote ends:

As of this writing, Wikipedia includes entries for both Isaac Bissell and Israel Bissell, the latter supposedly taking over in Worcester from a man with a nearly identical name. This article presents a more plausible scenario.

The same situation pertains today. It’s hard to correct hallowed traditions, even if replacing the name of one young Connecticut farmer for another makes little difference to most people today.

If during next spring’s anniversary more commemorations and articles name Isaac Bissell, I’ll feel this study has fulfilled its purpose.

We can thank Israel Bissell for his brief military service in 1776 and acknowledge that lauding him for the last century was literally a typographical error.

“In free countries the Law ought to be the King”

For Independence Day I’m going back before the Declaration to a text published at the end of 1775 which paved the way for blaming everything on King George III.

These passages are from Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, advocating both independence from Britain and a republican form of government—meaning he set out to convince people who had lived under a monarch their whole lives that that figure wasn’t necessary.

The powers of governing still remaining in the hands of the king, he will have a negative [i.e., veto] over the whole legislation of this continent. And as he hath shewn himself such an inveterate enemy to liberty, and discovered such a thirst for arbitrary power; is he, or is he not, a proper man to say to these colonies, You shall make no laws but what I please?

And is there any inhabitant in America so ignorant, as not to know, that according to what is called the present constitution, that this continent can make no laws, but what the king gives leave to: and is there any man so unwise, as not to see, that (considering what has happened) he will suffer no law to be made here, but such as suits his purpose? . . .

BUT where, say some, is the King of America? I will tell you, friend, he reigns above, and does not make havock of mankind like the Royal Brute of Great Britain. Yet that we may not appear to be defective even in earthly honours, let a day be solemnly set apart for proclaiming the charter; let it be brought forth, placed on the divine law, the word of God; let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far we approve of monarchy, that in America, THE LAW IS KING.

For as in absolute governments the King is Law, so in free countries the Law ought to be the King; and there ought to be no other. But left any ill use should afterwards arise, let the crown, at the conclusion of the ceremony, be demolished, and scattered among the people, whose right it is.

A GOVERNMENT of our own is our natural right; and when a man seriously reflects on the precariousness of human affairs, he will become convinced, that it is infinitely wiser and safer, to form a constitution of our own in a cool deliberate manner, while we have it in our power, than to trust such an interesting event to time and chance. If we omit it now, some Massanello may hereafter arise, who, laying hold of popular disquietudes, may collect together the desperate and the discontented, and by assuming to themselves the powers of government, may sweep away the liberties of the continent like a deluge.

When Paine republished Common Sense in London in 1791, some lines in these passages still constitutied lese-majeste. The printer left blank spaces at those spots instead. In the copy scanned for Google Books, someone has gone through and inserted the original text by hand.

For and Against the Committee of Correspondence

During Boston’s town meeting session on 27 June 1774, town clerk William Cooper didn’t record who spoke.

But the merchant John Rowe did.

In his diary, Rowe listed the defenders of the standing committee of correspondence as:

• Samuel Adams.
• Dr. Joseph Warren.
• William Molineux.
• Josiah Quincy, Jr.
• Dr. Thomas Young.
• Benjamin Kent (1708–1788), a lawyer. He was a Whig, but he had Loyalist relatives and after the war he actually moved to Canada to be with his children.

Aside from Kent, those names are familiar to Boston 1775 readers. They were most of the town’s most visible Whig leaders. All but Kent had been named to the committee of correspondence back in 1772.

Speaking “against the Behaviour of the Committee” were:

• Harrison Gray (1711–1794, shown here), treasurer of Massachusetts, merchant.
• Thomas Gray (1721–1774), merchant, elected to the General Court for one term in 1764, half-brother to Harrison Gray.
• Samuel Elliot (1739–1820), merchant, later president of the Massachusetts Bank.
• Samuel Barrett (1722–1798), merchant, occasional town official, later a justice of the peace.
• John Amory (1728–1803), merchant, owner of a distillery.
• Edward Payne (1721-1788), merchant, shot during the Boston Massacre, later in marine insurance.
• Francis Green (1742–1809), merchant, British army veteran.
• Ezekiel Goldthwait (1710–1782), insurance broker, former town clerk, clerk of the courts, registrar of deeds.

Those men were evidently representing Boston’s merchants, not the friends of the royal government. Most of them weren’t politically active. Only Harrison Gray, Green, and Goldthwait had signed the addresses to the royal governors that spring. Gray and Goldthwait did have major government appointments, but they tried to present themselves as moderate centrists serving both the people and the Crown.

We don’t know what paths Thomas Gray would have chosen when war broke out and when the British military left Boston because he died after a carriage accident in November 1774. But we do known the political choices of all the other men.

Harrison Gray, Amory, and Green left Boston with the redcoats, becoming Loyalists. Amory and Green eventually returned to Massachusetts, however.

Elliot, Barrett, Payne, and Goldthwait stayed in Massachusetts, some serving in civic offices under the new republican order. Barrett appears to have thrown in with the Patriots just a couple of months after this town meeting, participating in the Suffolk County Convention and taking on wartime tasks for the state. In contrast, Goldthwait retired from public life.

The argument of this group was likely that, while it was important to stand up for liberty and protest unjust laws, the Boston committee of correspondence’s methods had been too confrontational and led the town into trouble. It was time to back off, settle accounts for the Tea Party, and reopen for business.

John Rowe himself wrote privately: “the Committee are wrong in the matter. The Merchants have taken up against them, they have in my Opinion exceeded their Power.” But he didn’t speak up in the meeting himself.

COMING UP: Mutual resentments.

“On the Conduct of the Comittee of Correspondence”

On Monday, 27 June 1774, the political argument over Boston’s committee of correspondence came to a head.

Merchants and friends of the royal government felt that the committee was wielding too much power, dragging the entire community into a costly and treasonous confrontation with the Crown.

Parliament’s Boston Port Bill was stifling every Bostonian’s livelihood, but that problem could go away at the (admittedly significant) cost of £9,660.

The committee’s Solemn League and Covenant boycott was going further than any non-importation measure so far, not only proscribing more goods from Britain and making people pledge not to do any business with people who did import goods. Was that going too far for the country folk?

The Boston Whigs, who had established the standing committee of correspondence back in November 1772, stuck to their position that for the people to make any retreat or compromise would be giving up their British constitutional rights.

The Boston town meeting resumed in Faneuil Hall at 10:00 A.M. His work with the Massachusetts General Court in Salem done (since the Massachusetts General Court in Salem was done), Samuel Adams was once again in the chair.

A motion passed that the meeting should review all the letters the committee of correspondence had written to other towns and colonies about the Port Bill.

But then came another motion: “that this Meeting be adjourned to the Old South Meeting House, the Hall not being sufficient to contain all the Inhabitants assembled.”

The committee chosen to go to Old South and ask if the town could use that space consisted of William Molineux, town clerk William Cooper, and Dr. Benjamin Church, Jr.—all radical Whigs. That alone signaled that their party had the votes to control the meeting. But what if more people came for one side or the other?

In Old South, the meeting reaffirmed its earlier vote to review the correspondence. Cooper began to read the letters aloud. After a while the crowd became bored, and they amended their earlier vote to cover only the Solemn League and Covenant, the letter sent out with that proposal, and “any other Letters that may be particularly called for.”

Eventually someone moved “that some Censure be now passed By the Town on the Conduct of the Comittee of Correspondence; and that said Committee be annihilated.” That would be a total repudiation of the committee and its work.

Adams stated that “he had the Honor of being a Member” of that committee, so someone else should moderate that discussion. By stepping away from the podium for a while, Adams not only made a point of being scrupulously fair but also allowed himself to speak, since the moderator usually didn’t express opinions on motions.

As the temporary chair, the meeting chose Thomas Cushing—merchant, speaker of the House, and another member of the Boston Whigs (though in the moderate set). Again, that showed how that group was in control of this body.

Nonetheless, the debate went on until dark, and still the opponents of the committee said “they had farther to offer.” The meeting voted to adjourn until the next morning at 10:00 A.M.

TOMORROW: The speakers and the vote.

“Deliberating upon the Steps to be taken on the present Exigencies”

On 17 June 1774, as Samuel Adams was orchestrating what would be the last session of the Massachusetts General Court under royal rule, his cousin John took the chair of Boston’s town meeting.

In Faneuil Hall, the first item of business was a report from the committee on ways and means.

The Adams family physician, Dr. Joseph Warren, stood up and said “they thought it best to defer making Report, till they had heard from the other Governments.” So enough of that.

Then the meeting got to the article stated in the warrant—i.e., the official reason for this meeting:

To consider & determine what Measures are proper to be taken upon the present Exigency of our public Affairs, more especially relative to the late Edict of the British Parliament for Blocking up the Harbour of Boston, & annihilating the Trade of this Town

Town clerk William Cooper recorded that there were “very serious Debates” on that very broad question. He also put on paper that only one brave voter (his name not recorded) dissented from this resolution:

That the Comittee of Correspondence be enjoined forthwith to write to all the other Colonies, acquainting them that we are not idle, that we are deliberating upon the Steps to be taken on the present Exigencies of our public Affairs; that our Brethren the landed Interest of the Province, with an unexampled Spirit and Unanimity, are entring into a NonConsumption agreement; And that we are waiting with anxious Expectation for the Result of a Continental Congress; whose Meeting we impatiently desire, & in whose Wisdom & Firmness we can Confide, & in whose Determinations we shall chearfully acquiesce

The meeting then broke for midday dinner, reconvening at 3:00 P.M.

The afternoon session, John Adams still in the chair, the gathering authorized the committee of correspondence to send thanks to other towns and colonies for their support, and then thanked the committee itself.

Some of those towns and colonies were sending donations for the Boston poor. The meeting delegated the distribution of that aid to the elected Overseers of the Poor “in Concert with the Comittee lately appointed by this Town for the Consideration of the Ways & Means of Employing the Poor.”

Finally, the meeting ordered Cooper to “Publish the Proceedings,” paying the town’s chosen printers, Edes and Gill, to issue a broadside based on his record.

All those afternoon actions were obviously designed to show support for the standing committees, validating them in defying the Crown and refusing to seek a compromise.

By the end of the month, there would be pushback.

TOMORROW: The same town meeting continues, ten days later.