A New Voice in Boston Politics in 1748

On the morning of 12 Feb 1748, the Massachusetts house, before returning to the question of whether to rescind its vote to build a new meeting-place in Cambridge, took note of a different issue.

A member of the Council came down with that body’s complaint about:

a printed Paper called the Independent Advertiser, No. 6, published by [Gamaliel] Rogers and [Daniel] Fowle, dated the 8th of February Instant [of this year], wherein they apprehend there are many Things contained that strike at the Honour & Influence of this Legislature:

What were those “many Things”?

As I discussed back here, the Royal Navy’s impressment of Bostonians had led to three days of riots. For a while, everyone pointed fingers at everyone else. Gov. William Shirley complained that the townspeople were volatile and their elected leaders unhelpful. Bostonians complained that Shirley wasn’t protecting them from the navy. Speaker of the house Thomas Hutchinson appears to have felt both the people and the governor were behaving less rationally than they should.

Once things calmed down, most of the Massachusetts elite agreed on how to address the problem: maintain a unified front against impressment and blame social outsiders for the violence. As Chris Magra wrote this week for the University of Tennessee, “The royal governor hoped to distract attention away from deep and widespread concerns in Boston by blaming the disturbance on outsiders with no respect for law and order.”

Thus, the Massachusetts house, under Hutchinson’s leadership, passed a resolution on 19 November condemning the “tumultuous, rioting Assembling of armed Seamen, Servants, Negroes and others.” The next day, the Boston town meeting declared “That the said riotous tumultuous Assembly consisted of Foreign Seamen, Servants, Negroes, and other Persons of mean and vile Conditions.” A day after that, Gov. Shirley’s proclamation blamed “a great number of Seamen and other lewd and profligate Persons.”

That unity was fragile, however. On 14 December, the Boston Post-Boy printed two of the letters that Gov. Shirley had written during the riots complaining about the violence in Boston and how the town militia wouldn’t respond. Boston called another town meeting to object to that.

On 29 December, Shirley answered, “I am sorry for the Occasion I had to write the two Letters,” which was basically saying, ‘I regret that you people were behaving so badly I needed to point that out.’ But that was as close to a public apology as anyone could expect from a royal governor in the eighteenth century. Things calmed down again.

Then in January 1748, a new voice appeared on the scene: a two-page opinion weekly called the Independent Advertiser. One of its cofounders was the son of a Boston selectman and representative who had struggled to establish himself in business after earning an M.A. from Harvard: Samuel Adams, Jr. His descendants and scholars have credited him with some of the essays published in the Independent Advertiser, and he may have contributed others.

The front page of the first issue of the Independent Advertiser, issued on 4 Jan 1748, started right off reprinting the official “Accounts, respecting the late Riot in the Town of Boston,” from the previous two months. The third issue attacked the character of Adm. Charles Knowles. And then came issue No. 6, which prompted the Council’s complaint.

The main essay in that paper insisted that the “late Tumult” had begun justifiably with “An Assembly of People drawn together upon no other Design than to defend themselves, and repel the Assaults of a Press-Gang.” It built up to questions like these:

Whence is it then, that these unlawful Press-Gangs are permitted to rob us of our People? Whence is it, that A Resolve that there had been a notorious Riot in the Harbour of Boston [i.e., violence by the press gangs], when reported by a Committee could not pass in a certain Grand Assembly? Whence is it, that the Government have not thought proper to resent this Insult upon the People, in a Manner as strong, and as full of Spirit, as the Insult upon themselves?

Whence is it, let me ask further, that the Chief Commander of this Province should be so concerned at Mr. K——’s Threatnings? . . . Wouldn’t his Excellency’s Spirit have led him to tame this haughty Commander with something more sutable to the Dignity of his Station, than meer Entreaties and Perswasion? 

If the government couldn’t protect the people, this essay concluded, they “are really in a State of Nature; and of Consequence have an undoubted Right to use the Powers belonging to that State.”

Gov. Shirley could not have liked that article. The Council definitely didn’t like that article. And now that body was asking the house to join in taking some action against the Independent Advertiser.

Meanwhile, a second big issue was roiling Massachusetts politics.

TOMORROW: Faith and the invisible hand.

“I hear the Fury of the Mob subsided last Night”

On 19 Nov 1747, as I wrote yesterday, Gov. William Shirley was stuck at Castle William and not happy about it.

Only two years after his triumphant campaign to win Louisbourg for the British Empire, Gov. Shirley was seeing Bostonians rise up against the Royal Navy’s habit of impressment.

To force the navy into returning some young men seized for wartime service, local crowds had grabbed naval officers and government officials as their own hostages. They broke windows in the Town House and surrounded Shirley’s home and workplace.

The governor had tried to call out the Boston militia companies, but, as then-speaker of the house Thomas Hutchinson later wrote, “the drummers were interrupted.” In other words, people made sure one way or another that the signal didn’t go out.

From Castle Island in Boston harbor, Shirley wrote to the secretary of Massachusetts, Josiah Willard, on 19 November:

…finding myself without a proper force for suppressing this Insurrection, and maintaining the King’s Authority in the Town; the soldiers of the Militia there having refus’d and neglected to obey my Orders given ’em by their Officers to appear in Arms for quelling the Tumult, and to keep a Military watch at night, and there being reason to apprehend, the Insurrection was secretly Countenanc’d and encourag’d by some ill minded Inhabitants and Persons of Influence in the Town:

But I have retir’d to his Majesty’s Castle William, ’till I can assemble a sufficient force of the Province Militia from the Neighbouring regiments in the Country, to quell the Rebellious Tumult; and restore his Majesty’s Government, and the Publick Tranquillity in the Town of Boston…

Shirley told Willard to tell the legislators they should support him for the sake of “retrieving their own Honour, and my good Opinion of ’em, and preventing an infamous reproach upon the Duty and Loyalty of the Town.” Many Boston merchants hadn’t been that upset to see people rise up against naval impressment. But in response to the governor’s insinuation, the Massachusetts General Court passed resolutions condemning the riots.

At the same time, speaker of the house Thomas Hutchinson prodded Gov. Shirley to negotiate with Adm. Charles Knowles. The admiral was angry enough to talk about shelling the town. One witness quoted him as saying, “by God I’ll now see if the Kings Government is not as good as a Mob.” But Shirley persuaded him to release the local men his fleet had impressed (while keeping all the sailors from other parts of the empire).

To “assemble a sufficient force of the Province Militia from the Neighbouring regiments,” Gov. Shirley had told Willard:

I would have you forthwith issue out Orders to the Colonels of the several Regiments of the Towns of Cambridge, Roxbury and Milton, and of the Regiment of Horse, to cause the Officers and Soldiers of their respective Regiments to hold themselves in readiness to march at an hour’s warning to such place of Rendez-vous, as I shall further Order; which I hope together with such Officers and Gentlemen of the Town of Boston, upon whose Duty and Attachmt to the King’s Government I can depend, will be sufficient strength to enable me to support the Magistrates of the Town of Boston…

The admiral released the impressed men before those militia companies could muster, however. And suddenly the crisis was over. The crowd let the naval officers go back to their ships. People stopped threatening government buildings and went home.

At first Shirley couldn’t believe it. He told Willard:

I hear the Fury of the Mob subsided last Night; but I shall by no means think the King’s Peace secur’d, or that the Militia of the town of Boston have done the least Part of their Duty, ’till I see a strong military Watch kept for some Nights, in the Town.

But there was a strong military watch already. As Hutchinson later recounted:

the next day there was an uncommon appearance of the militia of the town of Boston, many persons taking their muskets who never carried one upon any other occasion, and the governor was conducted to his house with as great parade as when he first assumed the government.

One element of the informal settlement was that subsequent official pronouncements about the unrest were careful to blame malcontent sailors and other outsiders for the rioting, not locals.

The people of Boston had risen up against what they considered an unjust practice by the navy. They had forced the highest authorities in the province to answer their demand. Once satisfied, they went back to their regular, peaceful activity. They were clearly the strongest force in town. No wonder elite appointees like Shirley resented the situation.

TOMORROW: History repeats.

The Knowles Riot and the Boston Militia

In November 1747, the Royal Navy under Admiral Charles Knowles (c. 1704-1777, shown here) impressed some men in Boston. There was a war on—the War of Jenkins’ Ear or King George’s War—and the navy needed sailors to fight.

Impressment was widely unpopular in Massachusetts, though. Not only did sailors who hadn’t joined the Royal Navy prefer to keep it that way, but sea captains and merchants liked having experienced seamen to sail their ships. People felt there were laws or at least handshake agreements not to impress inhabitants of North America.

What’s more, Knowles’s impressment gangs grabbed some young men who weren’t even sailors, at least not full-time; they were carpenters living in Boston. On top of all that, there was still a man locked up in the Suffolk County jail for killing two locals in a fight over impressment in 1745.

The result was a huge riot, probably the worst popular unrest in Boston between the overthrow of Gov. Edmund Andros in 1692 and the Stamp Act protests of 1765. Yet this riot wasn’t simply destructive—the crowd had particular goals in mind.

As the merchant Samuel P. Savage wrote, this “Mob, or rather a body of Men arose, I believe with no other Motive, than barely to rescue if possible their Captivated Fr[ien]ds.” Savage’s substitution of a “body of Men” for “Mob” showed how he felt sympathy for their goals.

The crowd broke all the windows in the ground floor of the Town House, dragged a barge they thought belonged to the navy onto Boston Common and burned it, and detained a navy officer and local officials who had helped with the impressment.

Gov. William Shirley had opposed the impressment but still demanded peaceful deference to the Crown. He was able to hold off the crowd on 17 November with the help of other officials, including Thomas Hutchinson, then speaker of the Massachusetts house. But the people weren’t satisfied as long as the impressed men were still in naval custody. Crowds massed around the Town House and the Province House, Shirley’s official residence.

To pacify Boston, Shirley tried to call out the militia. As royal governor he was the legal commander-in-chief of that force. Years later Hutchinson wrote in his History of Massachusetts Bay:

The next day the governor ordered that, the military officers of Boston should cause their companies to be mustered and to appear in arms, and that a military watch should be kept the succeeding night, but the drummers were interrupted and the militia refused to appear. The governor did not think it for his honour to remain in town another night and privately withdrew to the castle.

Shirley had no other large law-enforcement force to call on—just a sheriff and a few deputies, plus some constables and watchmen who really answered to the town of Boston. Some of those officials were already intimidated by or sympathetic to the crowd. But the biggest problem for the governor was that Boston’s militia regiment consisted of the same men who were already marching in the streets, trying to help their neighbors.

Of course, the makeup of the militia wasn’t a problem for the people of Massachusetts when they were so united. Without a standing army or other armed force carrying out the orders of the royal authorities, they could stand up for their rights.

TOMORROW: The return of the militia.

Three Decades of Historical Context

The Saga of the Brazen Head started in 1730 with the first appearance of brazier James Jackson in the Boston newspapers, and it’s reached the year 1759.

What else was happening in New England in three decades? If we look at readily available timelines of Massachusetts history from FamilySearch.org or the World Atlas, we find the answer was: Nothing.

Of course, plenty did happen in those years. There weren’t dramatic changes in political constitutions, empire-ending wars, life-changing inventions, and the like, but there were events for Mary Jackson and her family to worry about and celebrate. So here, after some quick cramming, is the historical context for the saga so far.

The first of those decades occurred under the government of Sir Robert Walpole (1676-1745) in Britain and Gov. Jonathan Belcher (1682-1757, shown here) in Massachusetts. Walpole used European alliances to maintain international peace. That produced a lull in Britain’s wars with France and other Catholic powers of Europe, and thus relatively easy trade, fishing, and frontier settlement for British colonists in New England.

Belcher wasn’t as dominating as Walpole, but he was able to remain governor of both Massachusetts and New Hampshire for over a decade starting in 1729. Being a royal governor was a tough job. One answered to the Crown and its demands while feeling pressure from the colony’s politicians and people to serve their interests instead. And British society being what it was, governors also kept an eye out for their own economic well being.

Belcher had some advantages in being a Congregationalist merchant born in Boston and thus like his most wealthy constituents. But he couldn’t keep everyone happy forever. The royal government thought Belcher should do more to stop people felling New England tree trunks reserved as masts for the Royal Navy. (Some of Belcher’s friends benefited from this harvest.) In addition, the shortage of hard cash produced local pleas for more paper currency while the Crown wanted control over the money supply.

In 1739, Walpole couldn’t hold back the clamor for Britain to enter the War of Jenkins’ Ear. After three further years of declining popularity and military failures, he resigned.

That same war opened an opportunity for William Shirley (1694-1771, shown here), an Englishman who had moved to Massachusetts and become a critic of Gov. Belcher. He recruited troops for an early campaign in the Caribbean and so impressed London that the Crown made Shirley governor of Massachusetts in 1741. (Belcher eventually won the post of governor of New Jersey instead.)

Both Belcher and Shirley had to deal with the local campaign for the Massachusetts Land Bank. In 1740 the General Court overrode their opposition and authorized that private organization to issue bills of credit, which functioned as paper currency. Then Parliament outlawed the bank. With the Massachusetts economy in danger, Shirley and the legislature managed to bring about a soft landing for the former bank’s managers and creditors.

Those developments affected Mary Jackson and some of the people around her. All the dispute over paper money brought in papermaker Richard Fry, of course. And all those bills of credit meant Massachusetts currency was losing value.

Mary’s husband James died in 1735 while returning from a visit to Samuel Waldo’s development in southern Maine, which grew during that peaceful decade. Waldo also had a contract to supply masts to the Royal Navy, so he wanted Gov. Belcher to protect the navy’s exclusive rights. When that didn’t happen, Waldo started promoting Shirley for higher office. However, once war broke out, the Maine frontier became vulnerable to attack from both sea and land, and Waldo’s settlements shrank.

In the early 1740s, Britain’s war with Spain expanded beyond Jenkins’ Ear to become the War of the Austrian Succession or, as North Americans called it, King George’s War. In 1745 Gov. Shirley organized an attack on the French fortification at Louisbourg. The British army and navy gave only lukewarm support to that effort, but it succeeded—Massachusetts’s greatest military triumph. Decades later, the province’s Patriots still pointed to that moment as proof that they could defend themselves against the royal army.

Another effect of King George’s War was the Royal Navy impressing more sailors in Boston. In 1747, Commodore Charles Knowles (shown here) seized dozens of sailors, setting off days of riots. Huge crowds surrounded Gov. Shirley, twice at his house and once at the Town House in central Boston, close to the Brazen Head. He tried to call out the militia against the crowd, only to realize that the militia regiment and the crowd were the same men. The Massachusetts Council had to resolve the crisis, with Knowles releasing the sailors and the crowd releasing the naval officers they had grabbed.

When King George’s War ended in 1748, Britain returned Louisbourg to France. Massachusetts was still trying to get the royal government to reimburse the costs of its military campaign. One of the men who had funded that expedition was Samuel Waldo. He decided that Shirley wasn’t working hard enough to pay back his inflated expenses, so Waldo joined the governor’s political enemies. Among those foes were Dr. William Douglass, who decades before had opposed smallpox inoculation, and young political journalist Samuel Adams, son of a Land Bank director.

In 1749 Gov. Shirley sailed for London in order to deal with Waldo’s complaints. Shortly afterward, a large amount of gold and silver coin arrived in Boston harbor—the Crown had finally reimbursed the province with specie. Thomas Hutchinson, then Speaker of the Massachusetts House, wrote a law to use that hard cash to retire paper currency that had lost value. That put Massachusetts’s economy on a sounder footing. Henceforth, businesspeople like Mary Jackson distinguished between current pounds, which kept close to face value, and inflated “Old Tenor” money.

Gov. Shirley resumed his post as governor of Massachusetts in 1753. He seems to have been happiest as a war governor, and was soon preparing for another fight against France. After the death of Gen. Edward Braddock in 1755, Shirley was even commander-in-chief of British forces in North America for a while. But the Seven Years’ (or French and Indian) War brought the governor no military miracle like the Louisbourg expedition. He feuded with other commanders like Sir William Johnson, his own western campaign failed, and officials in London took against him. In 1756, Gov. Shirley was sacked. (Like Belcher, he did manage to become governor somewhere else—in the Bahamas.)

Also in 1756, hundreds of French Acadians came ashore in Boston, expelled from Nova Scotia. Their ships had actually arrived in the harbor in December 1755, but Gov. Shirley refused to let them land, and half those refugees died on their ships that winter. For the next decade, the population of Massachusetts contained a category of “French neutrals.”

This was also the period of religious fervor in colonial America later dubbed the “Great Awakening.” The Rev. Jonathan Edwards led revivals at his meetinghouse in Northampton starting in 1733 and published Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God in 1741. The Rev. George Whitefield preached up and down the North American coast in 1740, 1745, 1751, and 1754. Many New England Congregationalist meetings were roiled by splits between “New Light” and “Old Light” ministers and congregations. As Anglicans, the Jackson family was probably less affected by those disputes.

In 1757 a new royal governor arrived from London: Thomas Pownall (1722-1805). He had close contacts—i.e., his younger brother John—in the Secretary of State’s office, and a lot of big ideas about how the empire should run. He viewed the British constitution as subordinating the military power to the civil, even in wartime. He wanted to balance imperial needs and local rights. Pownall became a favorite of the Massachusetts merchants and Whigs but had a standoffish relationship with the man appointed lieutenant governor under him—Thomas Hutchinson.

Early in 1759, Pownall led a new campaign to conquer and settle the Penobscot region. Samuel Waldo came along and died that May, back on his Maine holdings. The previous year, British military forces had retaken Louisbourg. In July 1759, Gen. Jeffery Amherst finally took Fort Ticonderoga. In September, Gen. James Wolfe defeated Gen. Montcalm at Québec. Together with British and allied victories at Guadeloupe, Madras, Minden, and Quiberon Bay, these victories made 1759 an “annus mirabilis.” Boston celebrated along with the rest of the British Empire.

TOMORROW: Calamity at the Brazen Head.