“By words and actions, endeavoured to discourage the people”

On 4 Feb 1777, seven months after the Continental Congress issued the Declaration of Independence, the Massachusetts General Court enacted “An Act for Preventing or Punishing Crimes that May Be Committeed against the Public Safety, Below the Degree of Treason and Misprision of Treason.”

In other words, the legislators outlawed some behavior that they knew couldn’t be prosecuted as treason but still saw as threatening the newly independent state.

The law read:

WHEREAS the Congress of the United Colonies of America, in order to preserve the inhabitants thereof from that ruin and misery to which they were destined by the avarice and cruelty of Great Britain, did, upon the fourth day of July, one thousand seven hundred and seventy-six, declare the said colonies to be free states, independent of all people and nations; and whereas, some evil-minded persons within this state, have, at divers times, by words and actions, endeavoured to discourage the people thereof from supporting said declaration, as also in their opposition to those acts and measures of the king and parliament of Great Britain, which induced the Congress to make such declaration,

Be it therefore enacted by the Council and House of Representatives in General Court assembled, and by the authority of the same,

That if any person shall make use of any expressions, in preaching or praying, or in public or private discourse or conversation, with an apparent design to discourage the people of this state, measures taken or any of them, from supporting said declaration, or that shall by by the king or words or actions, directly or indirectly, endeavour to support or justify the measures taken by the king and parliament of Great Britain against the American States, or shall dissuade the people of this state, or any of them, from supporting their opposition to s’d measures, or shall endeavour, by any ways or means, to prevent the Continental Army from being raised, or the Continental Navy from being manned, or, with an evident design to prevent the raising said army or manning said navy, shall dissuade or endeavour to prevent any person or persons from inlisting in the army or navy of the United States, or either of them, or shall use any means to hurt or distroy the credit of the public bills of the United States of America, or of this state; each person so offending, and being thereof convicted, shall pay a fine, to the use of the town or plantation where such offence is committed, not exceed’g fifty pounds, nor less than twenty shillings, at the discretion of the court before whome the conviction shall be, and shall recognize for his good behaviour, as such court shall order, and stand committed untill sentence be performed.

And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid,

That any justice of the peace, upon complaint made to him of such offence, and finding presumptive evidence that the same is true, shall order such offender to find surities for his appearance at the next court of general sessions of the peace to be held in the county where such offence is committed, and, in default thereof, to commit such offender to the common goal; and all sheriffs, constables, grand jurors and tythingmen are directed and enjoined to make presentment and complaint of all such offences as shall come to their knowledge, respectively.

Obviously, this law limited people’s freedom to speak and even pray as they chose. But there was a war on, and wartime governments almost always restrict their own citizens’ liberties.

Four years later, on 5 Mar 1781 (a Massacre anniversary), the General Court deemed that “the Penalty in said Act is insufficient to deter from the Commission of said Crimes.” Even a £50 fine didn’t mean as much anymore, given the inflation of Continental and state currency.

The legislature therefore revised the earlier act this way:

That if any Person or Persons shall be convicted of any of the Crimes described in said Act, such Person or Persons so convicted, shall, at the Discretion of the Court before whom the Person or Persons may be convicted, pay a Fine not exceeding the Sum of Five Hundred Pounds, in Gold or Silver, at the Rates established by Law, or in Bills of Credit current within this Commonwealth equivalent thereto, nor less than Thirty Pounds, in Gold and Silver as aforesaid, or Bills of Credit equivalent thereto, to be applied as is provided in said Act, or be whipped at a public Whipping-Post, not exceeding Thirty-nine Stripes, nor less than Ten, or stand in the Pillory one Hour at least, or be confined on board some Ship of War belonging to this Commonwealth or the United States, not exceeding the Term of Three Years, nor less than One Year; there to do Duty as directed by the Commander of the Ship of War, or be confined within some Fort or Garrison, not exceeding the Term of Three Years, nor less than One Year; to be subject to the Commander of such Fort or Garrison:

And if any Person or Persons so convicted and confined, shall desert said Ship of War, Fort or Garrison, he or they so deserting, shall be tried before a Court-Martial; and upon Conviction, shall suffer the Pains and Penalties which Deserters from the Continental Army are, by the Rules and Regulations of said Army, liable to suffer.

The state had grown more harsh, now threatening these less-than-treasonous offenders not just with fines but corporal punishment, confinement, forced military labor, and, if people sought to escape the last fate, possible execution.

“America shall suffer Calamities still more wasting”

On 3 July 1776, John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail from Philadelphia.

That letter is most often quoted for John’s prediction that the country would celebrate the anniversary of the preceding day, when the Continental Congress voted for independence.

While predicting the type of celebration, John Adams was wrong about the date, not foreseeing that the date placed on top of the public Declaration the Congress was still working on would determine what anniversary Americans thought was significant.

In fact, as I’ve already noted, by 4 July 1777 the Congress and Adams were publicly celebrating the Fourth.

The conclusion of John Adams’s letter doesn’t get quoted so often. It looked both backward and forward, and its predictions were pretty dire:

When I look back to the Year 1761, and recollect the Argument concerning Writs of Assistance, in the Superiour Court, which I have hitherto considered as the Commencement of the Controversy, between Great Britain and America, and run through the whole Period from that Time to this, and recollect the series of political Events, the Chain of Causes and Effects, I am surprized at the Suddenness, as well as Greatness of this Revolution.

Britain has been fill’d with Folly, and America with Wisdom, at least this is my judgment.—Time must determine. It is the Will of Heaven, that the two Countries should be sundered forever.

It may be the Will of Heaven that America shall suffer Calamities still more wasting and Distresses yet more dreadfull. If this is to be the Case, it will have this good Effect, at least: it will inspire Us with many Virtues, which We have not, and correct many Errors, Follies, and Vices, which threaten to disturb, dishonour, and destroy Us.—The Furnace of Affliction produces Refinement, in States as well as Individuals. And the new Governments we are assuming, in every Part, will require a Purification from our Vices, and an Augmentation of our Virtues or they will be no Blessings.

The People will have unbounded Power. And the People are extreamly addicted to Corruption and Venality, as well as the Great. But I must submit all my Hopes and Fears, to an overruling Providence, in which, unfashionable [as] the Faith may be, I firmly believe.

In the copy of this letter he kept for himself, Adams also included the sentence “I am not without Apprehensions from this Quarter” in the last paragraph after the word “Great.”

Even as Adams was achieving his goal of a united independence, Adams’s deep-seated pessimism and mistrust was surfacing. And since royal officials like Thomas Hutchinson no longer held authority, he directed those feelings at the new American people as a whole.

Walks and Talks from Historic Deerfield in July

For the next two Sundays, 9 and 16 July (weather permitting), Historic Deerfield will offer an evening walking tour on the topic “Deerfield in the American Revolution.”

The event description says:

Enjoy a special guided evening walking tour along Old Main Street that explores life in a small town during the American Revolution. Incorporating music and stories from the period, this special tour looks at the experience of Revolution in lives of ordinary people, both Patriot and Loyalist. It highlights the experience of women, enslaved people, and others often left out of the story of the Revolution.

As one Deerfielder lamented, “all nature seems to be in confusion; every person in fear of what his neighbor will do to him. Such times were never seen in New England.”

(That Deerfielder was Elihu Ashley, a young doctor in training from a Loyalist family. No wonder he didn’t like how things were heading. Still, Deerfield was notable in having a stronger Loyalist contingent than many Massachusetts towns, producing more political conflict.)

It looks like each walking tour takes about half an hour, starting from the Visitor Center at Hall Tavern. The first will depart at 5:00 P.M., and the next fifteen or thirty minutes after that.

Walking tour tickets cost $10 and must be purchased in advance through the Historic Deerfield website or, on each Sunday until 4:30 P.M., at the Flynt Center.

Ticket purchasers can also dine in Champney’s Restaurant and Tavern at the Deerfield Inn with a 20% discount on the entrees. The restaurant recommends scheduling those reservations for an hour after the start of one’s tour.

In July Historic Deerfield will also host its 2023 Summer Lecture Series, this year focusing on Native communities in the region. Those talks are:

Thursday, 6 July, 7:00 P.M.
“Life and Times of the Pocumtuck”
Peter Thomas, local historian

Thursday, 13 July, 7:00 P.M.
“The 1735 Deerfield Conference: Indigenous Diplomacy in Action”
Colin Calloway, Dartmouth College

Thursday, 20 July, 7:00 P.M.
“Hiding in Plain Sight? Reconsidering Native Histories Along the Kwinitekw”
Margaret Bruchac, University of Pennsylvania

History Camp Boston Scholarships Available

History Camp Boston will take place on Saturday, 12 August, in the Suffolk University Law School building, close to the Park Street T stop.

I’ll be speaking at that event about William Dawes, Jr., and his contributions to the American Revolution beyond that truncated ride on 18-19 Apr 1775.

Many other folks have also signed up to give talks at History Camp Boston on other aspects of the American Revolution, or on other aspects of history as a whole. There are authors, professors, living historians, fiction writers, and more, united by a common interest in historical research. You can see the list of scheduled presentations here.

History Camp Boston attendees can also sign up for one of two expert tours of Salem the next day, at an extra cost.

This year, thanks to the generosity of a couple of donors, there are also a few student scholarships available. People aged 15 to 25 can apply for free registration for the Saturday event, including lunch.

That means college students interested in history can attend that Saturday without dipping into the money they’re saving over the summer. Or a high-school student and parent might attend together for the price of one registration.

The scholarship application process isn’t burdensome—just an expression of interest in History Camp Boston and history, and a commitment to attend so the opportunity isn’t kept away from another student who wants it. There are a limited number of slots, and they’ll be assigned on a first-come, first-served basis. The goal is to ensure that any student of history who hopes to enjoy this unique event can.

Meet the Washingtons in Cambridge, 1 July

On Saturday, 1 July, the Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site in Cambridge will welcome George and Martha Washington, as portrayed by experienced living-history actors John Koopman and Sandy Spector.

Back in 1775, Gen. Washington arrived in Cambridge on 2 July, taking command from Gen. Artemas Ward.

The new commander moved into the John Vassall mansion on what is now Brattle Street a couple of weeks later, around 15 July. (The best indicator of the move is a payment in the headquarters account book for cleaning the house after troops had been living inside.)

At that time Gen. Washington expected that his wife wouldn’t join him, not because he didn’t want to see Martha but because he hoped the crisis would be over by winter.

When George first wrote home about his decision to become commander-in-chief, he said: “I shall rely therefore, confidently, on that Providence which has heretofore preservd, & been bountiful to me, not doubting but that I shall return safe to you in the fall.”

George imagined that Martha would want to live somewhere besides Mount Vernon when he was away:

If it should be your desire to remove into Alexandria (as you once mentioned upon an occasion of this sort) I am quite pleased that you should put it in practice, & Lund Washington may be directed, by you, to build a Kitchen and other Houses there proper for your reception—if on the other hand you should rather Incline to spend good part of your time among your Friends below, I wish you to do so—In short, my earnest, & ardent desire is, that you would pursue any Plan that is most likely to produce content, and a tolerable degree of Tranquility as it must add greatly to my uneasy feelings to hear that you are dissatisfied, and complaining at what I really could not avoid.

As you can see, he left the decision of where to live in Virginia up to her.

Five days later, George wrote another short note, still projecting a short stay: “in full confidence of a happy meeting with you sometime in the Fall.”

By October, the general had realized that the siege of Boston was going to extend into the next year, and he couldn’t leave. George therefore wrote to Martha about joining him in Cambridge. Since almost all of their correspondence was destroyed, we don’t know what they told each other directly and how they made decisions—whether, for example, Martha asked for an invitation to join George before George asked her to join him. But she made that journey in the fall, arriving on 11 December and setting a pattern for every winter of the war.

The reenacted Washingtons’ event at Washington’s Headquarters in Cambridge will take place from noon to 4:00 P.M. on Saturday. It also includes special tours and family activities. And it’s free to all.

When Phillis Met Benjamin

On 7 July 1773, nearly two hundred fifty years ago, Benjamin Franklin wrote to his relative Jonathan Williams, Sr., in Boston:

Upon your Recommendation I went to see the black Poetess and offer’d her any Services I could do her. Before I left the House, I understood her Master was there and had sent her to me but did not come into the Room himself, and I thought was not pleased with the Visit. I should perhaps have enquired first for him; but I had heard nothing of him. And I have heard nothing since of her.

The “black Poetess” was, of course, Phillis Wheatley, in London to finalize arrangements for the publication of her Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral.

Franklin Papers editors suggest that Nathaniel Wheatley kept away from the discussion because of the previous year’s Somerset v. Stewart case. Williams later apologized for having set up the meeting if the young man was going to behave that way. I think there could be any number of other reasons for his absence; we don’t have the Wheatleys’ side of this encounter.

Regardless of any awkwardness surrounding that event, Franklin’s letter shows that he and Wheatley did meet face to face. He came away with no reason to doubt what Bostonians reported about her intelligence and poetic skill.

Debbie Weiss wrote a play inspired by that event, “A Revolutionary Encounter in London.” It was an online presentation through the Massachusetts Historical Society a couple of years ago during the plague, and there are other videos online as well.

On Saturday, 1 July, the Lexington Historical Society will host a staged reading of “A Revolutionary Encounter in London,” directed by Weiss with Cathryn Phillipe portraying Phillis Wheatley and Josiah George as Benjamin Franklin. That presentation will start at 6:30 P.M. in the Lexington Depot. Tickets are $25, available here. Society members get a discount on tickets and can stay to talk with the actors and playwright-director over tea and desserts.

Weiss, Philippe, and George will next bring the show to the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum on Thursday, 6 July, at 7:00 P.M. I think seats are included in the museum admission for that day.

Wheatley stayed in London for only about six weeks. Learning that Nathaniel’s mother Susannah Wheatley was ill, she left before her book was printed. The publisher shipped copies to Boston later in the year for her to sell.

Unfortunately, those books traveled on the Dartmouth, which also carried the first consignment of East India Company tea to reach Boston. Hence the Tea Party connection.

Joan Donovan on Political Memes at Old South, 29 June

On Thursday, 29 June, Revolutionary Spaces’ Old South Meeting House will host a conversation with Dr. Joan Donovan on “Benjamin Franklin, Rattlesnakes, and Pepe the Frog.”

This discussion will look at memes in American politics from the Founding Era to today. The event description says:

Memes—images that spread quickly through large groups—are a central part of internet culture. Not only have they have been instrumental in the rise of social media, they also have had a major influence on American political discourse.

According to leading media expert Dr. Joan Donovan, memes mirror the behavior of flags and broadsides of the American Revolution, including Benjamin Franklin’s ubiquitous Join or Die engraving and the iconic Gadsden Flag.

I’m intrigued because I’ve written about the quasi-scientific roots of American snakes as political symbols and spoken about Stamp Act protests as memes in the age of weekly newspapers.

Dr. Donovan is a public scholar specializing in media manipulation, political movements, critical internet studies, and online extremism. She is the Research Director of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy and directs the Technology and Social Change project, exploring how media manipulation helps to control public conversation, derail democracy, and disrupt society. Donovan is the co-author of Meme Wars: The Untold Story of the Online Battles Upending Democracy in America with tech journalist Emily Dreyfuss and cultural ethnographer Brian Friedberg.

Donovan will be in conversation with Matthew Wilding, Director of Interpretation & Education at Revolutionary Spaces and curator of the upcoming exhibit “Impassioned Destruction: Politics, Vandalism & The Boston Tea Party” at the Old State House.

This event will start at 7:00 P.M., with doors opening thirty minutes earlier. There will be light snacks and refreshments. Register in advance for free.

The Mystery of “Mr. Swift from the North”

I’ve been analyzing the publication of the story from Samuel Swift’s descendants that he tried to instigate an uprising against British troops inside besieged Boston before dying in the summer of 1775.

In the early twentieth century American historians did a lot of debunking. The Colonial Revival period had brought a lot of dramatic stories and traditions into print. Taking a more evidence-based approach, the next generations of authors lopped away at myths and hagiography.

The dramatic story of Samuel Swift’s martyrdom—coming from his family, unsupported by other evidence, incredible in its details—was the sort of lore that debunking authors tried to clear out of reliable histories.

But Samuel Swift’s reputation as a strong Patriot survived into the mid-1900s.

That’s because of a conjunction of sources. First, back on 7 Nov 1765 the Boston News-Letter reported about that year’s tightly controlled 5th of November celebration:

The Leaders, Mr. McIntosh from the South, and Mr. Swift from the North, appeared in Military Habits, with small Canes resting on their Left Arms…

(Pierre Eugène du Simitière’s sketch of leaders of the 1767 Pope Night parades, with canes and speaking trumpets, appears above.)

In the nineteenth century the authors Caleb Snow, Samuel A. Drake, and Francis S. Drake reprinted or paraphrased that 1765 news story, including the name “Swift.”

In 1891, the editors of the Jeremy Belknap Papers from the Massachusetts Historical Society identified Samuel Swift as “one of the Committee of Safety, and a prominent man at the North End.”

The “Committee of Safety” reference probably derives from a line in Samuel Swift’s 2 Oct 1774 letter to John Adams: “The Committee of Safety by me pay their best Regards to you.” But there was no formal “committee of safety” at the time. The town of Boston hadn’t named Swift to its committee of correspondence. He wouldn’t even be on the larger committee named on 7 December to enforce the Continental Congress’s Association boycott. It appears Swift was passing on regards from other men.

As for being “a prominent man at the North End,” Swift wasn’t a member of the North End Caucus. He didn’t hold high political office or militia rank. He was a justice of the peace from 1741 to 1760, but wasn’t reappointed under George III. As an attorney, Swift wasn’t a big employer, like shipyard owner John Ruddock.

I suspect the mention of “Mr. Swift from the North” in the 1765 newspapers caused those Belknap editors to identify that leader of the North End gang as Samuel Swift, thus making him “a prominent man” in that neighborhood.

Certainly that’s where George P. Anderson stood when he presented his ground-breaking paper “Ebenezer Mackintosh: Stamp Act Rioter and Patriot” to the Colonial Society of Massachusetts in 1924:

The leaders—Mackintosh of the South End and Samuel Swift of the North End—appeared in military habits, with small canes resting on their left arms, having music in front and at flank.

For decades after that, historians identified Samuel Swift as the leader of the North End gang. After all, well respected scholarly sources said so. 

But that never made sense. The Pope Night gangs were composed of young men and older boys from the working classes. Samuel Swift, a genteel fifty-year-old lawyer in 1765, was the sort of man they begged money from, not the sort to lead their raucous street processions.

In The Boston Massacre (1970), Hiller B. Zobel noted that Samuel Swift didn’t even live in the North End. The Thwing database shows he owned a house on Pleasant Street in the South End.

But among the people indicted for rioting after the 1764 Pope Night disturbances, Zobel reported, was a teen-aged shipwright named Henry Swift. Following his lead, many authors since 1970 have identified Henry Swift as the North End captain.

References to Samuel Swift as a politically active North End leader survive, however, including in the footnotes of older volumes digitized at Founders Online. He was an interesting character, but he wasn’t a militant in either 1765 or 1775.

“This scheme was revealed to General Gage”

Yesterday I analyzed the untenable claim that John Adams told descendants of Samuel Swift how the man had tried to spark an uprising inside besieged Boston.

So let’s set aside the claim that Adams was the source of this claim. How does the story itself stand up on its own?

The version published in The Memoirs of Gen. Joseph Gardner Swift (1890) stated:

the zeal and resolution of Samuel Swift…caused many Bostonians to secrete their arms when Gov. [Thomas] Gage offered the town freedom if arms were brought in to the arsenal; and that Mr. Swift presided at a freemason’s meeting where it was covertly agreed to use the arms concealed, and, in addition, pitchforks and axes, if need be, to assail the soldiery on the common; which scheme was betrayed to Gage, causing the imprisonment of Swift and others.

That wording has led some authors to state that Swift died in jail. In fact, we have jailhouse diaries from John Leach and Peter Edes covering the period when he died, and they don’t mention the prominent lawyer being locked up with them.

Another version of the story, published in Teele’s History of Milton (1887) and reprinted in Roberts’s history of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, said:

This scheme was revealed to General Gage, and Mr. Swift was arrested, he was permitted to visit his family, then at Newton, upon his parole to return at a given time. At the appointed time he returned, against the remonstrance of his friends, and so high an opinion of his character was entertained by General Gage that he was permitted to occupy his own house under surveillance. From disease induced by confinement, he died a prisoner in his own house…

Again, the military authorities were locking up people like Leach, Edes, and James Lovell for lesser threats, but this tale asks us to believe that not only did they not lock up Swift, they let him leave town.

And then Swift supposedly went back into Boston. Because, according to this lore, he was willing to lead an attack on soldiers with pitchforks and axes, but not to break his promise to Gen. Gage.

Even before that, the story is hard to believe. Swift was sixty years old, had no military experience, and had never been a militant political activist. It’s true he told Adams in October 1774, “I am no Swordsman but with my Gun or flail I fear no man…,” so it’s conceivable that he made similar boasts when the townspeople discussed turning over their weapons in late April 1775. But few Bostonians would have chosen Samuel Swift to lead an armed revolt.

No contemporaneous source mentions such an uprising. Gage, John Burgoyne, Peter Oliver, and other royal appointees wrote a lot about threats from Patriots, but none of them complained about Swift and an attack with pitchforks and axes. Samuel Swift was popular in Boston’s legal and mercantile circles, and no other American credited him with proposing an assault on the troops.

From early on, Swift’s widow and descendants perceived him to be a victim of Gen. Gage. Furthermore, they complained that Swift’s death led to the disappearance of the family wealth. (Though they also blamed “the unfaithfulness of his agent” for that.) They believed the fallout of his death meant his eldest son, fifteen-year-old Francis Swift, couldn’t follow his path to Harvard College. (In fact, by 1768 Foster had dropped out of the college-prep Latin School and was attending a Writing School; he went on to train in medicine under Dr. Joseph Gardner and had a long professional career.)

We don’t know why Samuel Swift didn’t receive a pass to leave Boston while his wife and children went out to Springfield. We don’t know what health issues contributed to his death on 30 Aug 1775. But the Swift family perceived great significance in how Samuel Swift died, and, at least in later generations, they wanted it to be significant for the nation as well.

TOMORROW: A debunking derailed.

Three Ways to Misquote John Adams

There are a number of problems with the claims in The Memoirs of Gen. Joseph Gardner Swift (1890), quoted back here, about the last months of the general’s grandfather, Samuel Swift.

That book told a dramatic story of Swift starting to organize an uprising against the British troops inside besieged Boston, only to be punished by being kept from his family and dying of illness as a result. It also credited that story to John Adams, a highly respected source who definitely knew Swift.

According to the section of that book in Joseph G. Swift’s own voice, Adams told him on 8 Oct 1817 about his grandfather: “I have written to Mr. [William] Wirt my opinion of the merits of that Whig, who fell a martyr to the fury of [Thomas] Gage.”

Adams’s first letter to Wirt did indeed mention Samuel Swift. However, Adams didn’t write that letter until 5 Jan 1818, three months after J. G. Swift’s well documented visit to Quincy.

Indeed, according to this letter from Thomas Cooper to Thomas Jefferson, as of 30 September Wirt’s biography of Patrick Henry was still in press; “about 100 pages are printed.” That was one week before Swift was in Quincy, leaving not enough time for Adams to get that book, read it, and resolve to write to the author.

J. G. Swift’s memory of what Adams said (or genealogist Harrison Ellery’s rendition of that memory) must therefore have been shaped by later knowledge of Adams’s letter, which was published in 1819.

As quoted back here, the general wrote to Adams in 1824, asking for any details about his grandfather. That shows he hadn’t heard the story of the uprising by then. But there’s no evidence that Adams ever wrote back, much less sent the dramatic story printed in that family memoir. At the time Adams was busy telling stories about heroic Boston lawyers in the Revolution, yet none of his other letters includes this story about Swift, either.

The Memoirs of Gen. Joseph Gardner Swift was sloppy about citing Adams in other ways. In the genealogical section Ellery wrote that Adams called Samuel Swift “a martyr to freedom’s cause.” But the J. G. Swift memoir says Adams actually said “martyr to the fury of Gage.” The “martyr to freedom’s cause” phrase came from A. K. Teele’s History of Milton. (Neither phrase appears in the surviving Adams Papers.)

Not that Teele’s book was on more solid ground. It followed James M. Robbins’s 1862 address on the history of Milton by quoting Adams this way: “Among the illustrious men who were agents in the Revolution must be remembered the name of Samuel Swift.”

In fact, Adams’s 1818 letter to Wirt said [emphases added]:

And in imitation of your example I would introduce Portraits of a long Catalogue of illustrious Men, who were Agents in the Revolution

Jeremiah Gridley the Father of the Bar in Boston and the Preceptor of Prat Otis Thatcher Cushing and many others; Benjamin Prat Chief Justice of New York James Otis of Boston Oxenbridge Thatcher Jonathan Sewal Attorney General and Judge of Admiralty Samuel Quincy Solicitor General, Daniel Leonard, Josiah Quincy Richard Dana and Francis Dana his Son, Minister to Russia and afterwards Chief Justice, Jonathan Mayhew D.D. Samuel Cooper D.D. James Warren and Joseph Warren, John Winthrop Professor at Harvard Colledge, And Member of Counsal, Samuel Dexter the Father John Worthington of Springfield Joseph Hawley of Northampton, Governors Huchenson Hancock Bowdoin Adams Sullivan and Gerry Lieutenant Governor Oliver Chief Justice Oliver, Judge Edmund Trowbridge Judge William Cushing, and Timothy Ruggles ought not to be omitted. The Military Characters Ward Lincoln Warren Knox Brooks & Heath &c must come in of Course. Not should Benjamin Kent, Samuel Swift or John Read be forgotten.

Adams named thirty-eight prominent men, some of them Loyalists and all but one occurring to him before he came to Samuel Swift.

[I’m not going to bother adding H.T.M.L. links for all those guys.]

TOMORROW: Examining the legend itself.

“He will be in Danger of a Duplicity of Character”

On 24 June 1773, the Rev. Dr. Ezra Stiles of Newport received two visitors from Cambridge. He wrote in his diary:

Visited me Rev. Mr. Samuel Locke President of Harvard College, and Mr. [John] Marsh a Tutor. Had much Conversation together on a Variety of Things both in Politics and Literature. The President is a Gentleman of fine Understanding, clear distinguishing Mind, rather adapted for active gubernatorial Life, than for the deep Researches of Literature. He keeps a good Lookout and will pass serenely through Life. He will be in Danger of a Duplicity of Character for he is ever adjusting himself to everybody, that it is somewhat difficult to find his real Judgment on some Points. Yet he is open and vigorous against the New Divinity.

In politics he will never oppose the Governor nor Crown Interest, and will rather lean on that side the Balla[nce] and against the patriots; but he can talk strong for Patriotism. I believe he likes neither at heart; and designs to trouble himself about neither, further than as either affects the Interest of College—in which Case he will secure both parties if possible, else that which will be most beneficial. He will make no stand in politics either for or against the Liberty of his Country, and will rather divert himself with the Folly of those who are most ventersome and enterprizing on both sides.

If America should become an independent Empire, he would be for a pretty firm Government which the people could not easily overthrow. His own Dominion would make a State happy. In his hands a Tyranny would be good Government. Was Pres’t Locke at the Head of Government either in a Tyranny or Republic, his Government would be administered with Firmness, Justice, Mildness. It would be so good that the most popular Republic would never call him to an account; it would be so good that the subjects of an absolute Monarchy would forget their Chains and think themselves in the fullest possession of true Liberty.

Under the Idea and Purpose of governing well, I believe his Judgment would adopt a Theory of high and Absolute Government. But was he in any other part of the world he would forget Theory and adapt his practice to the Exigencies and Usages of Places. Neither would he suffer himself to be harrassed with laboring the surreptitious Introduction of a Theory different and very opposite to that which took place where he was called to act. He will aim at the Glory of a really useful Man. He will have but little Leisure for Reading and Contemplation. But will profit by Conversation with the Literati of every Branch of Erudition. He has a liberal Understanding, a penetrating Discernment & is capable of looking into and judging upon everything.

He has great Affection for his Pupils, and feels the Father the tender Parent towards all of them. He tells me he has about 180 Undergraduates.

He is a man in almost all respects of an excellent Character. He is in the midst of Life or rather young, I believe about aet. [i.e., age] 38, he is a good classical scholar in Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Chaldee—he made an Oration in Chaldee at the first public Commencement after his Election to the Presidency, which I heard; he is excellent in Philosophy and academical Literature—and in all Branches of Knowledge is far superior to any President of any of the American Colleges, unless Dr. [John] Witherspoon of Nassau Hall should excede him in Theology.

He is one of those Minds which will enlarge to a great Size, will grow and magnify through Life. His Morals are excellent; Piety and a holy Life set on him with a good Grace. I doubt not he is determined to live well, to act his part with Dignity, to die well, and obtain the Crown of immortal Glory. He is a firm Friend to Revelation.

Five years later, Stiles himself became president of a college, Yale. Locke had died earlier in 1778 at the age of forty-five. He had already left Harvard, as I’ll describe later this year.

“It was covertly agreed to use their concealed arms”

As I quoted yesterday, Ann Swift was convinced that her husband, Samuel Swift, was essentially “murdered” by royal authorities when they wouldn’t let him leave besieged Boston in the summer of 1775.

The Swifts’ grandson Joseph Gardner Swift inherited that idea, telling John Adams in 1824 that Samuel Swift “died in 1775 a Prisoner & Martyr under the Tyrrany of [Gen. Thomas] Gage.”

Over the course of the nineteenth century, that family tradition got into print and became more detailed and dramatic.

When Samuel and Ann Swift’s son, Dr. Foster Swift, died in 1835, the Army and Navy Chronicle’s obituary stated that the attorney had been “a distinguished Whig and martyr to the cause of Freedom while a prisoner in Boston, anno 1775.”

In the 1880s Harrison Ellery, who had married into the Swift family, assembled a genealogy that incorporated the family lore.

Ellery loaned his page proofs to local historian Albert Kendall Teele, so the first public version of the full tale of Samuel Swift, zealous Patriot, appeared in Teele’s History of Milton in 1887:

When General Gage offered the freedom of the town to Bostonians who would deposit their arms in the British Arsenal, Mr. Swift opposed the movement. He presided at a meeting where it was covertly agreed to use their concealed arms, also pitchforks and axes, to assail the soldiers on Boston Common.

This scheme was revealed to General Gage, and Mr. Swift was arrested, he was permitted to visit his family, then at Newton, upon his parole to return at a given time. At the appointed time he returned, against the remonstrance of his friends, and so high an opinion of his character was entertained by General Gage that he was permitted to occupy his own house under surveillance.

From disease induced by confinement, he died a prisoner in his own house, a martyr to freedom’s cause, Aug. 31, 1775. He was interred in his tomb, which had formerly belonged to the father of his first wife, Samuel Tyler, Esq.

Oliver Ayer Roberts relied on that account in his collection of biographies of members of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company. It contained some clear errors, such as the date of Samuel Swift’s death and the surname of his first wife.

Ellery published his genealogy in 1890 as part of The Memoirs of Gen. Joseph Gardner Swift. In the introduction to that book Ellery wrote of seeing Joseph G. Swift’s “journal,” but the chapters that follow are a retrospective narrative in the general’s voice. I can’t tell if Gen. Swift actually wrote out a memoir and Ellery called it a journal, or if Ellery himself adapted a real journal into narrative form. Either way, that’s the source on Gen. Swift’s one meeting with John Adams that I quoted back here.

The genealogical section of that volume offered Ellery’s rendering of the Samuel Swift legend:

President John Adams told his distinguished grandson, General Swift, while on a visit to his seat in Quincy in 1817 with President [James] Monroe, that Samuel Swift was a good man and a generous lawyer, and was called the widows’ friend; that he was a firm Whig whose memory the State ought to perpetuate. The same sentiments Mr. Adams expressed in a letter to William Wirt, of Virginia.

Mr. Adams also said it was owing to the zeal and resolution of Samuel Swift that caused many Bostonians to secrete their arms when Gov. Gage offered the town freedom if arms were brought in to the arsenal; and that Mr. Swift presided at a freemason’s meeting where it was covertly agreed to use the arms concealed, and, in addition, pitchforks and axes, if need be, to assail the soldiery on the common; which scheme was betrayed to Gage, causing the imprisonment of Swift and others.

This imprisonment brought on disease from which he never recovered, and he died August 30, 1775, aged 60 years, as President Adams said, “a martyr to freedom’s cause.” His remains were interred in the tomb in the stone chapel ground that had belonged to Samuel Tylly, Esq., the father of his first wife.

It’s certainly a dramatic picture, sixty-year-old lawyer Samuel Swift organizing an uprising against the British troops using guns, pitchforks, and axes. And the family’s stated source for that story was none other than President John Adams.

COMING UP: What’s wrong with this picture.

“Do what you can to forward Mr. Swift to me”

Contemporaneous sources about Samuel Swift’s last months are thin.

Swift turned sixty years old on 9 June 1775. His first wife, the former Eliphal Tyley or Tilley (1713–1757), had borne three daughters in the 1740s.

One of those daughters, Sarah, had gone to live with her husband Amos Putnam in Sutton. The other two, Ann and Eliphal, were still unmarried in 1770, but I can’t trace them further.

In October 1757 Swift had married for a second time, to Ann Foster (1729–1788). That couple had six children between 1758 and 1773, and those children were with their parents in Boston when the war began.

The Swifts were still in the besieged town two months later, during the Battle of Bunker Hill. Abigail Adams wrote to her husband on 25 June 1775:

As to Boston, there are many persons yet there who would be glad to get out if they could. Mr. [Thomas] Boylstone and Mr. [John] Gill the printer with his family are held upon the black list tis said. Tis certain they watch them so narrowly that they cannot escape, nor your Brother Swift and family.

Around that time, however, Ann Swift managed to get a pass for herself and her children from a British army officer named Handfield—probably Capt. William Handfield of the 94th Regiment, who was attached to the quartermaster’s department in June.

By the end of that month, Ann Swift and her family were in Springfield. She wrote in her diary, as printed in The Memoirs of Gen. Joseph Gardner Swift:

Here I am in the woods, Boston being so surrounded by armies that we could not enjoy our home: no school for the children, and the town forsaken by the ministers—the pillars of the land.

In the following weeks she wrote to that army officer for another favor:

Capt. Handfield, S[i]r,

Your kindness in undertaking to get a pass for me emboldens me to ask the like favor for my dear husband whom I hear is in a very weak state of health. The anxiety of my mind is great about him. A word from you would have more weight than all the arguments that he could make use of.

Could I come to him, this favor I would not ask. O, S[i]r I trust in your goodness that you will do what you can to forward Mr. Swift to me and in doing so you will greatly oblige
Your distressed friend,
ANN SWIFT.

Should be glad if he would bring out two trunks which there is clothing in that I want very much for myself and children.

Evidently the royal authorities didn’t provide a second pass. Samuel Swift remained inside Boston. Margaret Draper’s Boston News-Letter reported that he died on 30 August.

On 4 September, Mercy Warren reported to John Adams in a bald postscript: “Swift of Boston is Really Dead.”

Ann Swift put in her diary this note about that 30 August date:

Departed this life, in the 61st year of his age, my dear husband, Samuel Swift. He died in Boston, or in other words, murdered there. He was not allowed to come to see me and live with his wife and children in the country. There he gave up the ghost—his heart was broken; the cruel treatment he met with in being a friend to his country was more than he could bear, with six fatherless children (in the woods) and all my substance in Boston.

Thus began the family tradition of blaming Gen. Thomas Gage for Swift’s death—not through violence but by not letting him leave Boston when ill to rejoin his family.

Swift’s body was placed in a tomb belonging to his first wife’s family in the burying-ground beside King’s Chapel, shown above.

TOMORROW: The family legend.

“My opinion of the merits of that Whig”

In 1817, Gen. Joseph G. Swift (1783–1865), the U.S. Army’s chief of engineers, accompanied the new President, James Monroe, on a tour of fortifications and battlefields in the northern states.

On 8 July, Monroe and his company stopped in Quincy to meet former President John Adams (who was also the father of Monroe’s secretary of state).

Gen. Swift wrote in his memoir:

Mr. Adams at first mistook me for the son of his brother lawyer, Samuel Swift, and poured out his commendation, saying: “I have written to Mr. [William] Wirt my opinion of the merits of that Whig, who fell a martyr to the fury of [Thomas] Gage.”

I replied: “It was my grandfather, and you gave me my cadet’s warrant eighteen years ago,” upon which he was pleased to subjoin some civil commendation. The conversation naturally attracted the attention of the whole dinner party; and it was a scene of deep interest to hear the old man scan the days of his life in Congress, when he nominated Washington, etc.

In fact, Thomas Johnson of Maryland was the Continental Congress delegate who had nominated George Washington to be commander-in-chief. Adams told a great story about making that nomination, but the Congress’s records contradict it.

As for the mention of William Wirt, in this period Adams was on a campaign to undercut Wirt’s biography of Patrick Henry, which he felt gave too much credit for the Revolution to that legislator and Virginians as a whole. (Awkwardly enough, Wirt was President Monroe’s attorney general.) The former President was writing long letters to other authors laying out his version of history and encouraging William Tudor, Jr., son of his former law clerk, to write a biography of James Otis, Jr.

Seven years later, having retired from the army to become a civil engineer, Swift wrote back to the former President about his family:

When I had the honour to be at your residence in 1817 (while accompanying President Monroe) I was gratified by some account which you were pleased to give me, of my Grand Father Samuel Swift, formerly a Lawyer of Boston, whom you designated as a friend of yours & as the “Widows friend”—& whose name you had before mentioned, in some Printed Letters, as a distinguished Whig:—It is natural &, with just views, it is commendable in man to reflect with interest upon the conduct & character of his progenitor.—

I have heard that my G. Father was a zealous & a effective Whig—that he died in 1775 a Prisoner & Martyr under the Tyrrany of Gage,—that he was foremost & useful in Public Meetings in urging his fellow Citizens to resist oppression & especially to resist Gages call to the Bostonians to deliver up their Arms:—The premature death of their G Father led to the dilapidation & final loss of his Property while Boston was a Garrison,—This then Young family driven to various parts of this Country & made Poor, were dispersed, & thus we know little of this G. Father except from tradition.—

If you will at a leisure moment cause an amanuensis to note to me any information of the Character & Conduct of Saml. Swift & especially as touching the great struggle for Independence, it will be received as a distinguished favour,—One of my objects in taking this liberty is to be Enabled to tell my Six Sons what share their progenitor may have had in contributing to bring about that War which made a nation Free & Happy!—

If Adams wrote back over the next two years before his death, that letter doesn’t survive. But Swift’s letter certainly lays out the image of his grandfather that he wanted to confirm.

TOMORROW: Swift family sources.