Elizabeth Freeman and the Talk of Liberty

In 1781 Elizabeth Freeman initiated a freedom suit, suing to be released from bondage to John and Hannah Ashley.

(Though John was Freeman’s legal owner, she spoke fondly of him in later years. She described Hannah, on the other hand, as tyrannical, violent, and cold-hearted to others.)

As I quoted on Tuesday, in 1838 Harriet Martineau wrote that Elizabeth Freeman filed her suit after hearing people discuss the Massachusetts constitution of 1780.

In 1853 Catharine Maria Sedgwick wrote that Freeman took action after hearing the Declaration of Independence. Sedgwick also said this happened “soon after the close of the revolutionary war,” which doesn’t match the timing of the lawsuit.

Our most recent tradition says that Freeman heard John Ashley, Theodore Sedgewick, and other Sheffield men discussing natural rights in January 1773 as they formulated resolutions for the town meeting to adopt.

So which statement of natural liberty prompted Elizabeth Freeman to act?

I think all of them did. Or to put it differently, over the years she heard many conversations in which men like Sedgewick and Ashley proclaimed their belief in liberty for all people. She may have figured out that the Massachusetts constitution had more legal weight than a town resolution and the Congress’s Declaration. But I doubt she would have gambled based on overhearing one discussion.

As many contemporaries described, and the printed record bears out, there was a lot of talk about liberty and injustice in those years. Ebenezer Fox was a farmboy in Roxbury in 1775, and in his memoir he described how he and other working boys saw parallels between the colonies’ complaints and their own:

Almost all the conversation that came to my ears related to the injustice of England and the tyranny of government. It is perfectly natural that the spirit of insubordination, that prevailed, should spread among the younger members of the community; that they, who were continually hearing complaints, should themselves become complainants. I, and other boys situated similarly to myself, thought we had wrongs to be redressed; rights to be maintained; and, as no one appeared disposed to act the part of a redresser, it was our duty and our privilege to assert our own rights. We made a direct application of the doctrines we daily heard, in relation to the oppression of the mother country, to our own circumstances; and through that we were more opposed than our fathers were.

I thought that I was doing myself great injustice by remaining in bondage, when I ought to go free; and that the time was come, when I should liberate myself from the thraldom of others, and set up a government of my own; or, in other words, do what was right in the sight of my own eyes.

Fox grabbed freedom by running away to Rhode Island. Freeman sought legal help from Sedgewick—a process that took longer but was more permanent and had far-reaching consequences.

One detail of Freeman’s story appears in both Martineau’s and Sedgwick’s accounts: she felt she had to argue for her very humanity.

• Martineau: “She replied that the ‘Bill o’ Rights’ said that all were born free and equal, and that as she was not a dumb beast, she was certainly one of the nation.”
• Sedgwick (published version): “‘I am not a dumb critter; won’t the law give me my freedom?’”

The Sheffield town meeting, and even Ebenezer Fox and his chums, didn’t have to start there.

The town of Sheffield has just recognized Elizabeth Freeman’s move toward freedom by unveiling a bronze statue of her, shown above, along with a college scholarship in her name. I understand the statue, by artist Brian Hanlon, stands on land owned by the church where the town meetings of 1773 occurred, bringing the conversation about natural liberties full circle.

“A gentleman who was addressed by the name of Curtis”

I’ve been analyzing the traditions among Obadiah Curtis’s descendants that he participated in the Boston Tea Party and that he and his wife Martha provided hard cash for Benedict Arnold’s trek to Québec.

The 1869 Curtis family history immediately followed its sentence about financing Arnold’s expedition with this one:

Mr. Curtis became so obnoxious to the British authorities, that he was obliged to remove with his family to Providence, where he remained till after the evacuation of Boston.

Readers might well infer a cause-and-effect relationship between the two sentences—i.e., that the Curtises’ donation for Arnold’s expedition (launched in September 1775) led to their leaving Boston for Rhode Island.

That book then went on to quote (imperfectly) from the memoirs of Ebenezer Fox (shown above), which were first published in 1838. But the family chronicler turned a blind eye to an important detail of that book.

Fox described himself as a boy running away from Roxbury to Rhode Island starting on the night of 18–19 Apr 1775. When he got to Providence, he spotted Obadiah Curtis:

In the course of my perambulations I went into the market-house, and while there I saw a gentleman who was addressed by the name of Curtis. He was habited according to the fashion of gentlemen of those days; a three-cornered hat, a club wig, a long coat of ample dimensions that appeared to have been made with reference to future growth; breeches with large buckles, and shoes fastened in the same manner, completed his dress.

His face appeared familiar to me, and, feeling some interest in him, I was induced to make inquiries respecting him, and found that his christian name was Obadiah; and that he had lately removed from Boston to Providence. With this gentleman an aunt of mine, a sister of my mother, had lived in Boston, and I thought it probable that she might have removed to Providence with his family.

The timing of Fox’s story means Curtis must have been settled in Rhode Island before the war broke out, and thus well before Arnold proposed his mission to Canada.

The Curtises may indeed have felt unsafe after British troops arrived in Boston in May 1774. If Curtis was really involved in the Tea Party, he might have sought a safer home in Rhode Island, as John Crane and Ebenezer Stevens reportedly did. Or Obadiah and Martha Curtis may have just seen better business opportunities in a port that Parliament hadn’t closed.

Still, the credibility of the family history would be stronger if the author hadn’t overlooked the implications of the very evidence he quoted.

TOMORROW: The Curtis family tea.

Ebenezer Fox on the Sea Serpent?

We have one more detailed memoir of life aboard the Protector, the Massachusetts navy vessel that, three of its officers later reported, encountered a sea serpent in May 1780. That memoir was written by Ebenezer Fox of Roxbury, shown here.

Fox recalled the ship’s first lieutenant, George Little. He said Lt. Little had “a powerful speaking voice,” and described him several times using a spyglass to peer at potential enemy ships.

Fox also recalled the ship’s third lieutenant, Luther Little. He described how this Lt. Little was wounded by “a charge of grapeshot [that] came in at one of our port-holes” during the ship’s fatal fight with the Admiral Duff. In an appendix he described visiting Luther Little again in Marshfield in August 1838.

Fox did not, however, mention Midn. Edward Preble, despite his later fame. It’s possible Preble just didn’t stand out. However, later biographers agree that he had a bad temper all his life. (“With advancing years, Edward Preble’s childhood temper tantrums matured into fits of uncontrolled rage…” —Christopher McKee, Edward Preble: A Naval Biography, 1761-1807.) I therefore suspect the young midshipman was simply unpopular.

In his memoir Fox clearly described how the Protector went into the harbor at Broad Bay, Maine, to leave some sick men in the care of a farmer there, just as in Luther Little’s recollections. Both the younger Little and Fox told the same anecdote about a certain sailor trying to steal a calf from that farmer, getting caught by the first lieutenant, and being severely punished.

Yet Fox’s memoir says nothing about a sea serpent. He described encountering a giant snake later on the island of Jamaica. But he didn’t discuss the giant snake that dozens of the Protector’s men saw in the water off Maine, even though it must have been the talk of the ship for days.

Why? I think two factors played into Fox’s decision. First, he shaped his manuscript for publication. In contrast, George Little put his account of the sea serpent into a private letter to a scholar. Luther Little left his story with a relative. Edward Preble told the tale to friends, apparently with care; James Fenimore Cooper wrote that he “probably saw that he was relating a fact that most persons would be disposed to doubt, and self-respect prevented his making frequent allusions to it.” None of those stories were put into print until after the men telling them had died.

Second, unlike those other three men, Fox hadn’t been an officer on the Protector; he was an ordinary seaman. The Littles and Preble all became naval captains, two of them celebrated. Fox became a grocer and town postmaster. As respectable as he was, Fox was never as solid a gentleman as the others. If the three captains were wary of writing publicly about a sea serpent, Fox probably felt even less secure and more vulnerable to ridicule. So he didn’t leave us one word about that creature in the water.

The Jersey Prison Ship Records on Ebenezer Fox

As I wrote yesterday, on 5 May 1781 two Royal Navy ships captured the pride of the Massachusetts navy, the Protector, and its crew, including young Ebenezer Fox of Roxbury. (The picture here shows him over fifty years later.)

The National Archives in London holds three volumes of bound muster rolls from the Jersey prison ship, then in New York harbor, and those confirm that men from the Protector began arriving on that hulk on 8 May. Even more were listed on 9 May. Those prisoners were credited to the two vessels that had captured the Massachusetts ship, H.M.S. Roebuck and Medea (which Fox recalled in his memoir as the Mayday).

In all, the Jersey rolls list 127 prisoners from the Protector. Only Capt. John Foster Williams is identified by rank. Junior officers like Lt. George Little and Midn. Edward Preble don’t have any special designation; they appear in the midst of the ordinary seamen—including Ebenezer Fox, signed in on 8 May.

And almost immediately those muster rolls show the Protector’s men being transferred off the prison ship, and thus off its books. The first to go were two sailors discharged to the Falmouth on 11 May, possibly having enlisted in the Royal Navy.

Williams and Little were put aboard the Rainbow on 9 June, prisoners bound for England. It’s not clear how many other men listed as discharged to the Rainbow were prisoners and how many had been drafted or enlisted as sailors. In early 1782, Williams was exchanged from the Mill Prison in Britain.

In all, men from the Protector were discharged to eight different British vessels, mostly in small numbers. In addition, one was identified as a British deserter and sent back to his army regiment, and four are listed as, I believe, “Esc[aped].” (At first I’d wondered if that notation might be “Ex[changed],” but Fox’s mention of men disappearing in the night confirms there were escapes.) By the end of June 1781, only 27 of the original 127 were still listed as receiving rations aboard the Jersey.

Ebenezer Fox was not one of those remaining names. On 30 June, the Jersey’s commander had discharged him to the 88th Regiment of the British army. Two other men enlisted in that regiment the same day; five others had already signed up, the earliest on 28 May.

Thus, Fox’s experience of the Jersey prison ship, which took up almost a quarter of his 1838 memoir of the war, lasted less than two months. To be sure, he was on that ship for more days than most of his comrades from the Protector, but he didn’t hold out for a very long time. Furthermore, while he dwelled on the unhealthy conditions in that prison, during those two months none of the Protector men is listed as dying.

Clearly Fox played up the horrors of the Jersey to justify his eventual decision to join the enemy army. In Forgotten Patriots, Edwin G. Burrows showed that some of the anecdotes Fox told in those chapters occurred after he had left the ship and must have been borrowed from other men’s memoirs.

Thus, while the Jersey’s muster rolls confirm that Ebenezer Fox was held captive aboard that notorious ship before enlisting in the 88th Regiment and heading for Jamaica, they also reveal that Fox glossed over one very important detail.

Ebenezer Fox on the Jersey

Ebenezer Fox was a teenaged sailor aboard the Massachusetts warship Protector when two Royal Navy vessels captured it off the coast of New Jersey on 5 May 1781.

In his 1838 memoir Fox told this story of what happened next:

About a third part of our ship’s crew were taken on board of their vessels, to serve in the capacity of sailors, without regarding their remonstrances; while the remainder of us were put on board of a wood coaster, to be conveyed on board the noted prison ship called the “Jersey.” The idea of being incarcerated in this floating Pandemonium filled us with horror; but the idea we had formed of its horrors fell far short of the realities which we afterwards experienced.

The next few chapters of Fox’s memoir describe life aboard the Jersey, an old hulk anchored in New York harbor. In fact, that topic takes up almost a quarter of the book (excluding appendixes). Citing other reminiscences for support, Fox painted a horrible experience for the prisoners of war confined there:

The miseries of our condition were continually increasing: the pestilence on board spread rapidly, and every day added to our bill of mortality. The young, in a particular manner, were its most frequent victims. The number of the prisoners was continually increasing, notwithstanding the frequent and successful attempts to escape: and when we were mustered and called upon to answer to our names, and it was ascertained that nearly two hundred had mysteriously disappeared without leaving any information of their departure, the officers of the ship endeavored to make amends for their past remissness by increasing the rigor of our confinement…

The British authorities kept offering a way out: enlisting in the royal military forces. Fox wrote of how he and his comrades resisted that enticement at first, but their conditions made it more appealing:

To remain an indefinite time as prisoners, enduring sufferings and privations beyond what human nature could sustain, or to make a virtue of necessity, and with apparent willingness to enlist into a service, into which we were satisfied that we should soon be impressed, seemed to be the only alternatives. . . .

…a recruiting officer came on board to enlist men for the eighty-eighth regiment, to be stationed at Kingston, in the island of Jamaica. We had just been trying to satisfy our hunger upon a piece of beef, which was so tough that no teeth could make an impression on it, when the officer descended between decks, and represented to us the immense improvement that we should experience in our condition, if we were in his Majesty’s service: an abundance of good food, comfortable clothing, service easy, and in the finest climate in the world, were temptations too great to be resisted by a set of miserable, half-starved, and almost naked wretches as we were. . . .

The recruiting officer presented his papers for our signature. We hesitated, we stared at each other, and felt that we were about to do a deed of which we were ashamed, and which we might regret. Again we heard the tempting offers, and again the assurance that we should not be called upon to fight against our government or country; and, with the hope that we should find an opportunity to desert, of which it was our firm intention to avail ourselves when offered—with such hopes, expectations, and motives, we signed the papers, and became soldiers in his Majesty’s service.

One goal for my trip to London earlier this month was to find out more about Ebenezer Fox’s experience. That included going to the British National Archives to examine the muster rolls of the Jersey, which I’d learned about from Todd Braisted’s Facebook feed.

TOMORROW: What the Jersey rolls say about Ebenezer Fox.

The Voices of British Soldiers

Folks might recognize Don Hagist’s name from the British Soldiers, American Revolution blog. He digs out details about the enlisted men who were part of the British government’s effort to hold onto those thirteen rebellious North American colonies. His research can turn some faceless redcoats into individual people.

Often that task involves paging through muster rolls, pension grants, court-martial records, and other British military documents now stored at the National Archives at Kew. Unfortunately, there’s no British equivalent to the American pension application system, which (in lieu of systematic record-keeping during the war) required veterans to provide detailed narratives of their service. That means most British soldiers are preserved as names on a few documents without a line connecting those dots.

A few redcoats left detailed personal narratives. One of Don’s earlier books was an edition of Sgt. Roger Lamb’s postwar writing that collected all his first-hand military experiences in one volume. Don’s new book, British Soldiers, American War: Voices of the American Revolution, reprints nine shorter narratives of service in the king’s army (as well as the samples of the work of two military poets, including John Hawthorn). The narratives include the information taken down by the pension office, a letter written during the war to a potential patron, a convict’s dying words, and several published memoirs.

In each case, Don has checked and filled out the soldier’s own account with contemporaneous documentation, where available. Thus, the book includes the autobiographical “Dying Speech” of Pvt. Valentine Duckett, executed for desertion on Boston Common in 1774, and the record of his court-martial. Another court-martial fills out the story of Pvt. Thomas Watson, who survived to settle in Bolton, Massachusetts.

In some chapters Don describes other British soldiers whose careers parallel the main subject. For example, chapter 9, “The Aspiring Soldier,” is about William Burke of the 45th Regiment, who deserted to the Americans for more social and economic opportunity. That chapter also mentions Pvt. Thomas Machin of the 23rd, who did the same in July 1775 and eventually became Capt. Thomas Machin of the Continental Artillery. (I also discuss Machin in the big Washington study.)

You’ve probably spotted a significant pattern in these narratives: most of the memoirists ended up becoming American. Of the nine men profiled in the book, only two retired from the British army in good standing. Six deserted to the Americans or, in the case of Ebenezer Fox of Roxbury, deserted back to the Americans. Their recollections got published because in America those men became honored relics of our War for Independence.

British society simply wasn’t that eager to read the experiences of enlisted men. That may have been due to how societies don’t like to be reminded of wars they lose. But I think it reflects the aristocratic values of Georgian Britain. We see the pattern already right after the Battle of Lexington and Concord. The Massachusetts authorities published broadsides naming all the local men killed and wounded, regardless of rank. Gen. Thomas Gage sent home reports listing the officers killed but not the enlisted men. (Granted, that would have been a much longer list.) American culture valued ordinary individuals more.

Given the social stratification in Britain, it’s no surprise that several of these redcoats saw more opportunity on the other side of the conflict. One chapter of British Soldiers, American War documents how the army encouraged soldiers to learn to read and write, valuable skills in any large organization. But even an educated enlisted man was very unlikely to rise above sergeant.

As memoirists and as defectors, most of the men who left behind recollections for British Soldiers, American War were atypical. But of course all memoirists are atypical (at least until this era of self-publishing). And these men offer a rare peek into the daily lives of British recruits. Alongside Don’s research on recruitment patterns, demographic data, &c., the book is a top-notch source on the king’s soldiers during the Revolutionary War, “ordinary” men caught up in historical change.

British Soldiers, American War is handsomely designed (though, reflecting what Georgian artists were commissioned to paint, the cover art shows British officers instead of enlisted men). The profiles include images of some of their documentary sources. Eric H. Schnitzer’s drawings and detailed captions discuss the soldiers’ likely garments, which should increase the value of the book for reenactors. Thorough notes and index round out a fine volume.

“Onboard the Prison Ship at New York”

A little more than nine months after Richard Carpenter—immigrant, barber, and former prisoner of war—resigned from the Continental Army, his wife Elizabeth had another child. That boy died young and was “Buryd in the Burying ground at the back of the Alms house” in what we now call the Granary Burying Ground.

In March 1778 the Carpenters’ older three children were “Inoculated by Doctor [Thomas] Bulfinch for the Small Pox.” In February 1780 Elizabeth Carpenter had her second daughter, Kathrine. However, she held off on the baby’s baptism at Trinity Church for over two years, until July 1782.

I suspect that was because Richard had once more left town, and she was hoping to have the ceremony when he was back. According to the memoir of Ebenezer Fox, apprenticed to another barber in Boston around 1780, there wasn’t enough hairdressing work in town. Inflation was high, and Richard Carpenter had that growing family to feed. In addition, his swimming adventures in 1775 suggest he might have been a man of bold ideas. Like Fox, Carpenter apparently signed onto a privateer or naval warship.

Carpenter’s ship was then captured by the Royal Navy (as was Fox’s). The barber’s name appears as “Richards Carpenter” on the British government’s roll of prisoners put on board the Jersey in New York harbor. That was an overcrowded, disease-ridden hulk.

The last entry on the family records page says:

Richard Carpenter Senior, Died onboard the Prison Ship at New York 6th Jany 1781 in the 35th Year of His Age

Carpenter had been caught and locked up by the British twice before, in Boston and then after escaping in Halifax. The third time he didn’t survive.

Later, someone made additions to earlier entries in the family records to say that Richard and Elizabeth’s three youngest children all got through the measles in February 1790.

An Elizabeth Carpenter married Thomas Lewis, Jr., in King’s Chapel in 1794. Another Elizabeth Carpenter married Josiah Nottage in 1796. Those brides could have been the barber’s widow or daughter, or unrelated women with the same name.

The records of King’s Chapel say that Samuel Carpenter and his wife Abigail had a son named George Washington Brackett Carpenter on 15 Feb 1801. I’m convinced Samuel was Richard’s second son, born while he was locked up in Boston jail; the little baby’s long name honors his father’s commander-in-chief and his mother’s family.

Samuel and Abigail named their other children William Dodd Carpenter and Caleb Strong Carpenter. They actually had three other boys, but the first William Dodd and Caleb Strong died within weeks of each other in 1803, so the couple named their next baby William Dodd as well. I haven’t found any more information about the family.

Individuals to Follow through the Revolution?

Yesterday Ray Raphael described a challenge he set for himself: find a bunch of individuals to follow through the Revolution whose stories could also tell the story of the founding of the U.S. of A. He chose seven people. As a proud owner of a copy of the resulting book, Founders, I can’t fault those choices. But just for fun, I can second-guess them.

Ray wrote that George Washington is virtually a given. So naturally, to be perverse, I have to question that conclusion. Henry Knox (shown here, later in life) spent nearly the whole war at Washington’s side, so it would be possible to follow the Continental Army’s top command through his eyes rather than through the commander’s. And Knox would bring some further advantages:

• He was present at the Boston Massacre and may have been a crucial informer for Paul Revere just before the war.
• After Washington’s first farewell in 1783, Knox became Secretary of War for the Confederation while the commander went home to Mount Vernon.
• Knox’s alarmist letter to Washington about Shays’ rebellion convinced the older man to throw his prestige behind a movement for a new constitution.
• Knox served as Secretary of War again under President Washington.
• Knox’s personal story from fatherless apprentice bookseller to general, large landowner in Maine, and founder of the Society of the Cincinnati exemplifies the social mobility possible in the Revolution.

Following Nathanael Greene offers some of the same possibilities: involvement in prewar conflicts (Greene was probably involved in the Gaspee incident of 1772) and social mobility. In addition, his handling of the Continental forces in the southern states was crucial to the end of the war. Greene’s support for black soldiers is interesting, as is his turn to being a southerner with his own slave-labor plantation.

Such a book would need to follow someone deeply involved in running the American government—i.e., the Continental Congress—during and shortly after the war. My perverse suggestion for that figure is James Lovell. Son and assistant of the Loyalist master of Boston’s South Latin School, he was a Whig politics newspaper essayist and orator. The British military arrested him as a spy in 1775 after officers found his letters on Dr. Joseph Warren’s body. He was reportedly taken to Halifax in chains.

After James Lovell was exchanged and returned to Massachusetts, the state elected him to the Congress. He supported Gen. Horatio Gates over Washington in 1777, and wound up virtually running American foreign policy and intelligence efforts since no one else wanted those responsibilities so badly. His father and siblings were in exile, and his illegitimate son was in the Continental Army. For added interest, in Philadelphia he reportedly roomed in a brothel while his wife and children were back home in Boston. On the down side, Lovell’s a hard man to understand—John Adams reportedly paced the floor in Holland, trying to figure out what his official instructions meant—and to sympathize with.

Another potentially exemplary character is Thomas Machin, a British veteran who ended up as a captain in the American engineering corps. He oversaw the effort to build a chain of obstacles across the Hudson River to prevent the Royal Navy from sailing too far north—a major industrial undertaking in a sparsely settled area. Later Machin was one of the artillery officers who accompanied Gen. John Sullivan on an expedition against the Crown’s Native American allies in upper New York. And, as a kicker, the standard story of Machin before joining the Continental Army in 1776 is a lie; this immigrant (or his descendants) reinvented his life in the New World.

For a southern perspective, I might consider John Laurens: son of a bigwig in Congress, young Continental Army officer, proponent of emancipation, prisoner of war, diplomat, and army officer again. Regardless of what far one concludes that Laurens went with Alexander Hamilton, the close relationship of those two young men shows how military service shaped them.

A book like this needs at least one female figure. Since most women, even those who became involved in political causes, stuck close to their homes, I’d look for candidates in the Middle and Southern states where most of the fighting was. Those women saw the most of, and suffered the most from, the war.

One possibility would be Esther Reed of Pennsylvania: wife of a Continental Congress delegate, military officer, and governor. In 1777 she had to flee from her home. Three years later she organized an effort to support the army, struggling against both wartime shortages and Washington’s expectations for women.

Another candidate is Annis Boudinot Stockton of New Jersey, who became a refugee in 1776. She wrote some political poetry, and had a close-up look at developments in the government through her brother, Elias Boudinot; son-in-law, Dr. Benjamin Rush; and husband, Richard Stockton. Unfortunately, little of her writing is very personal.

And of course a book like this needs to reflect the American enlisted man’s experience. One possibility would be to stitch together three or four people’s accounts of serving in the ranks, both to cover the waterfront and to emphasize how the army was composed of many men working together rather than individuals standing out on their own. (Yes, that goes against the very idea of focusing on individuals that Ray set out to try.)

Among the soldiers who left enough personal material to follow might be fifer and private John Greenwood, privateer sailor and prisoner of war Ebenezer Fox, and soldier’s wife and camp helper Sarah Osborn. Adding dragoon Boyrereau Brinch to that mix would mean bringing in the rarely documented African-American soldier’s experience.

Folks might notice that a lot of my choices lean toward people from greater Boston, simply because I know that region best. In addition, my list leaves out some really obvious candidates. I didn’t pick any of the people Ray Raphael followed in Founders, even if they’d be my first choices as well—which is a good clue to the names he actually picked.

Adolescent Rebellion in Revolutionary America

Yesterday I wrote about glimpses of adolescent rebellion in colonial America, particularly how apprentices rebelled against masters rather than against parents. When that society itself became rebellious in the 1760s and 1770s, what did that mean for adolescents?

I think our current culture still expects the political side of adolescent rebellion to follow the model of the 1960s, when the “youth movement” fueled profound social changes and less lasting political changes, producing widely reported generational conflicts. But that phenomenon may have been a historical aberration.

In Revolutionary Massachusetts, young people—particularly teenage boys—lent their youthful energies to the majority Whig cause. Schoolboys marched against the Stamp Act in August 1765, and in 1770 seem to have taken the lead in organizing picket lines against importers. Boys were among the first people killed when frightened servants of the Crown pushed back. But those rebellions were aimed at a small minority of royal officials and a distant government.

That Whig cause had the support of most of the fathers of those boys, and most of their local political leaders. In other words, these adolescents weren’t rebelling against their parents or the society they knew. They gladly adopted the dominant values and goals. Leading Whigs didn’t worry about opposition from the town’s youth; they worried about reining in boys lest they go too far.

That situation meant that the boys could have all the rebellious fun and excitement of being rowdy yet still see themselves (and be seen) as standing up for their rights, as Englishmen were supposed to do. Just as attacking the Pope and Pretender licensed the misrule of Pope Night, as I argued in an article for the Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife, so picketing importers’ shops gave boys license to yell and throw mud at people in the street. While their elders occasionally repudiated teenagers for their rash actions, leaders valued support from youth. In turn, participating in the Revolutionary movement helped adolescents make a place for themselves in adult society.

Boston 1775 reader Philamom wrote me about this dynamic a while back:

I think too often in YA books [i.e., novels for teenagers], kids from the past are presented as far too well-behaved, obedient, and all-out goodly! The [“From Saucy Boys to Sons of Liberty”] article also confirmed a theme I've woven into my book - how the patriots were sort of the naughty boys to England's strict father.

Indeed, both at the time and in the centuries since, Americans have viewed our Revolution as a “coming of age,” separating from the “mother country” once we outgrew her protection, as adolescents are supposed to do. In A Season of Youth, historian Michael G. Kammen notes how most of the best and most popular Revolutionary War novels are coming-of-age tales: Johnny Tremain, My Brother Sam Is Dead, &c.

It’s especially interesting to see how some Revolutionary Americans came to view their adolescent rebellions against their masters as akin to the political rebellion of 1765-1783. Benjamin Franklin, in a footnote to the passage in his autobiography that I quoted yesterday, mused about his difficult relationship to his brother and master:

I fancy his [James Franklin’s] harsh and tyrannical treatment of me might be a means of impressing me with that aversion to arbitrary power that has stuck to me through my whole life.

(The image of Benjamin working industriously above comes from the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.)

My favorite illustration of the reassuring connection between personal and political rebellions comes from Ebenezer Fox, born in 1763 and raised just outside Boston. Late in life he wrote about how he interpreted the political rhetoric all around him in the early 1770s:

With him [a farmer named Pelham] I continued five years, performing such services in the house and upon the farm as were adapted to my age and strength. I imagined however that I suffered many privations and endured much hardship; which was undoubtedly true, were my situation compared with that of many other boys of my age at that time, or in this more refined period. . . .

I had for some time been dissatisfied with my situation, and was desirous of some change. I had made frequent complaints of a grievous nature to my father; but he paid no attention to them, supposing that I had no just cause for them, and that they arose merely from a spirit of discontent which would soon subside.

Expressions of exasperated feeling against the government of Great-Britain, which had for a long time been indulged and pretty freely expressed, were now continually heard from the mouths of all classes; from father and son, from mother and daughter, from master and slave. A spirit of disaffection pervaded the land; groans and complaints, and injustices and wrongs were heard on all sides. Violence and tumult soon followed.

Almost all the conversation that came to my ears related to the injustice of England and the tyranny of government.

It is perfectly natural that the spirit of insubordination, that prevailed, should spread among the younger members of the community; that they, who were continually hearing complaints, should themselves become complainants. I, and other boys situated similarly to myself, thought we had wrongs to be redressed; rights to be maintained; and, as no one appeared disposed to act the part of a redresser, it was our duty and our privilege to assert our own rights. We made a direct application of the doctrines we daily heard, in relation to the oppression of the mother country, to our own circumstances; and through that we were more opposed than our fathers were.

I thought that I was doing myself great injustice by remaining in bondage, when I ought to go free; and that the time was come, when I should liberate myself from the thraldom of others, and set up a government of my own; or, in other words, do what was right in the sight of my own eyes.

So Fox and a friend left their masters and headed for Newport, to go to sea. Yet for all their thinking about liberty and bondage, those boys knew so little of the political situation that they didn’t realize why there was so much activity on the roads the night they chose to flee—18 April 1775.

Shaving Heads and Faces for a Living

A report on price-fixing from the New-England Courant, the newspaper owned James Franklin, on 30 Nov 1724:

Boston, Dec. 7, on Tuesday the first of this Instant [i.e., this very month] in the Evening, Thirty-two Principal Barbers of this Place, assembled at the Golden Ball [tavern], with a Trumpeter attending them, to debate some important Articles relating to their occupations; where it was propos’d, that they should raise their shaving from 8 to 10 s[hillings] per Quarter, and that they should advance [i.e., go up] 5 s, on the Price of making common Wiggs and 10 s on their Tye ones.

(Printer James's ungrateful apprentice and younger brother Benjamin had skipped town for Philadelphia the previous year.)

Half a century later, teenager Ebenezer Fox became apprentice to a barber and wigmaker, an employment he recalled in his Revolutionary Adventures, published in 1838. (Author picture above.) After the British military left the province in 1776, he recalled:

my brother and myself were sent into Boston to choose our trades and seek our employers. James found a situation in the bakery of Mr. Edward Tuckerman in the south part of the town, as an apprentice upon probation; and I found employment in the shop of Mr. John Bosson, a barber and manufacturer of wigs, upon the same conditions.

After we had been in these situations long enough for all parties to be satisfied, we were bound by my father in regular form as apprentices.

It was for such moments that The Complete Letter-Writer included a model epistle "From a young Apprentice to his Father, to let him know how he likes his Place, and goes on." Fox remembered his workload like this:

My principal employment was in the preparation of hair for the purposes of wigs, crape-cushions, &c.; being occasionally allowed to scrape the face of some transient customer, who might be reasonably expected never to call again for a repetition of the operation.

Back in August I quoted Fox's description of how he came to leave Bosson's barber-shop two years later.

Fox and Goose Story

I must be getting hungry for lunch because I feel an urge to share this culinary anecdote from The Revolutionary Adventures of Ebenezer Fox, of Roxbury, Massachusetts, published in 1838. At about age sixteen, Fox volunteered for service with the Massachusetts troops in the Revolutionary War. He and his comrades marched south to the New York theater. They did little damage to the British army, but probably didn't help relations with civilians along the way:

One afternoon some geese were discovered enjoying themselves in a pond near the road; and one of the soldiers, thinking that a little poultry would not be an unacceptable addition to our bill of fare, threw a stone among them and killed one of the largest of the flock.

The prize was secured and concealed by taking off the head of a drum and putting the goose into it, and then restoring the instrument to its former appearance. The owner of the poultry followed and complained to the commanding officer of this depredation of his property. We halted long enough to have the wagons searched, but the goose was not found; and we were allowed to march on.

When the camp fires were kindled at night, the goose was roasted, and our captain did not hesitate to eat a leg, wing, and a piece of the breast without troubling us with any questions regarding our right of possession.

Satires on Sunday Morning

Reading Philip Freneau's versification of 1782 from George III's point of view at the 18th-Century Reading Room has put me in a satirical frame of mind. But there's a major problem with most satires from the Revolutionary period: they're no longer really funny. They might have been uproarious once, but now they just seem to be trying very hard to make the same points over and over.

So here are a couple of satires of current controversies using Revolutionary history:

• The Onion spoofs Wikipedia and the print media's current hand-wringing over that user-generated free online encyclopedia with "Wikipedia Celebrates 750 Years of American Independence": "The commemorative page is one of the most detailed on the site, rivaling entries for Firefly and the Treaty Of Algeron for sheer length. Subheadings include 'Origins Of Colonial Discontent,' 'Some Famous Guys In Wigs And Three-Cornered Hats,' and 'Christmastime In Gettysburg.'" I gotta wonder what would have happened if all the professional writers who've reported or opined about Wikipedia in recent months had put the same amount of time into improving the entries where they saw flaws. Wikipedia would be better—but the writers wouldn't have gotten paid.
  
• The Some Are Boojums blog responds to the creationist Discovery Institute's "Ten Questions to Ask Your Biology Teacher" about evolution with "Ten Questions to Ask Your History Teacher" about the Revolution. "Why do some history textbooks give Alexander Hamilton’s year of birth as 1755, and others as 1757? Why do historians refuse to discuss, or even acknowledge, the controversy? Why do many textbooks even claim that this (probably imaginary) figure was killed in a duel with 'Aaron Burr'?"

One genuinely funny book about the Revolution is now available only in a CD-ROM form: The Revolutionary Adventures of Ebenezer Fox, a soldier's and privateering sailor's memoir published in 1838. Here's Fox's recollection of how he joined the Continental Army at sixteen in 1778:

My master [a barber named Bosson] was unfortunately among the number draughted [to reinforce New York]. As he did not possess a great degree of military spirit, he was much distressed at the demand thus suddenly made upon his patriotism. One day, while my fellow apprentice and myself were at work, Mr. Bosson entered the shop laboring under great agitation of mind. It was evident that something had happened to discompose his temper, which was naturally somewhat irritable. He walked rapidly about, occasionally stopped, and honing several razors that he had put in perfect order previous to his going out; and attempting to sharpen a pair of shears that at the time bore the keenest edge; he furnished us with much food for conjecture as to the cause of his strange conduct. At length, from various ejaculations, and now and then a half-smothered curse upon his ill luck, we gathered the fact, that he was enrolled among the soldiers who were soon to take up the line of march for New-York. This was an unfortunate business for him; a reality he had not anticipated. The idea of shouldering a musket, buckling on a knapsack, leaving his quiet family, and marching several hundred miles for the good of his country, never took a place in his mind. Although a firm friend to his country, and willing to do all he could to help along her cause, as far as expressing favorable opinions and good wishes availed, yet there was an essential difference in his mind between the theory and the art of war; between acting the soldier, and triumphing at the soldier’s success.

The reality of his position operated as a safety-valve to let off the steam of his patriotism, and to leave him in a state of languor well calculated to produce in him a degree of resignation for remaining at home. But what was to be done? A substitute could not be obtained for the glory that might be acquired in the service; and as for money, no hopes could be entertained of raising sufficient for the purpose. Mr. Bosson continued to fidget about, uttering such expressions as his excited feelings prompted, such as: "Hard times——don’t need two apprentices any more than a toad needs a tail;"——"If either of you had the spunk of a louse, you would offer to go for me." With this last remark he quitted the shop apparently in high dudgeon.

The truth was now evident, that he wanted somebody to take his place.