The “Rally, Mohawks” Song of the Tea Party

In an address titled “Reminiscences of the Green Dragon Tavern,” delivered to the St. Andrew’s Lodge in 1864 and published in 1870, Charles W. Moore stated:

I have looked in vain for a copy of an old revolutionary song said to have been written and sung as a “rallying song” by the “tea party” at the Green Dragon. The following fragment, though probably not in all respects an exact transcript of the original, will indicate its general character:—

Rally, Mohawks!—bring out your axes!
And tell King George we’ll pay no taxes
On his foreign tea!
His threats are vain—and vain to think
To force our girls and wives to drink
His vile Bohea!
Then rally boys, and hasten on
To meet our Chiefs at the Green Dragon.

Our Warren’s there, and bold Revere,
With hands to do and words to cheer
For Liberty and Laws!
Our country’s “Braves” and firm defenders,
Shall ne’er be left by true North-Enders,
Fighting Freedom’s cause!
Then rally boys, and hasten on
To meet our Chiefs at the Green Dragon.

I regret not being able to give the balance of this song, but perhaps some curious antiquary may hereafter discover it, if it ever appeared in print. I am inclined to think, however, that it was a doggerel made for the occasion, and passed away when it ceased to be of use, or appropriate. The two stanzas I have re-produced, are given as nearly as my memory serves, as they were often recited more than a third of a century ago, by the late Bro. Benjamin Gleason, who, born near the time, was curious in gathering up interesting reminiscences of the revolutionary period of our history.

No other verses ever surfaced, nor any earlier printed source. Nonetheless, these lyrics were reprinted in Drake’s Tea Leaves, Goss’s Revere, Porter’s Rambles in Old Boston, and many later books to this day.

But are they authentic? Moore could trace them only to “more than a third of a century ago,” or about 1830—still more than fifty years separated from the Tea Party. Moore’s source, Benjamin Gleason, was a Grand Lecturer for the Freemasons. He was born in Boston in 1777—four years after the Tea Party. So what we have here is at least third-hand, passed on orally.

The internal evidence gives good reason to doubt that the men involved in destroying the tea sang these words that night. Why would people before or shortly after committing an illegal act declaim where they were meeting (“at the Green Dragon”) and who their leaders were (Dr. Joseph Warren and Paul Revere)?

There are more anachronisms:

• As I wrote back here, it took years for Americans to make “Mohawks” the standard label for the tea destroyers.
• In the Revolutionary turmoil, Boston’s political leaders tried to tamp down rivalries between different parts of the town, so they would discourage mentioning “true North-Enders” alone.
• The American Patriots didn’t treat “King George” as their main villain until 1776.

The lyrics strongly hint that they were written decades after the Revolution, when Warren and Revere’s memory had eclipsed those of William Molineux, Dr. Thomas Young, and other street leaders of 1773. The Freemasons in the Green Dragon Tavern had particular reason to honor Warren and Revere, who had been leaders of their lodge.

As shown by John Johnson’s picture of the Green Dragon above, Boston’s post-Revolutionary Freemasons celebrated the link between their lodge and the destruction of the tea. Older members of that lodge knew Warren, and even younger men like Gleason probably knew Revere, who lived to 1818. And I think one of those men composed this song to honor their forebears’ actions—not to rally men behind them in 1773.

Reactions to Gov. John Hancock’s Death

The 14 Oct 1793 Boston Gazette reported this response to Gov. John Hancock’s unexpected death on the 8th:

Tuesday last, agreeably to previous orders, the several Independent Companies and the several Companies of Militia in this Town, paraded early in the Morning, in complete Uniform, in order for Inspection, &c. But immediately upon the Death of His Excellency being announced, counter-orders were issued by the Commander in Chief, to the Major General, and the several companies were dismissed, some on their march to the common, and others at their place of parade.—

This measure gave general satisfaction to the Citizens of Boston, who willingly gave up the pleasures which they previously anticipated, and with countenances fully expressive of the sorrow of their hearts, retied, to mourn the lose of Governor HANCOCK,

Their Country’s Savior, and Columbia’s pride,
The Orphan’s father, and the widows’ friend.
May future HANCOCKS Massachusetts guide;
HANCOCK!—The name alone with time shall end.

The “Commander in Chief” who called off that militia muster was the new acting governor, Samuel Adams. After bumping heads during and after the war, the two pre-Revolutionary colleagues had allied on a political ticket in 1787.

Bostonians were thus all excited for a big militia parade when they heard about Hancock’s death, and then they had to go home. I suspect that was an additional reason for the big turnout at his funeral six days later. If they couldn’t march one week, then they could march the next.

The community quickly began to respond to the governor’s passing. The next day, the Suffolk County court, “on motion of Judge [Thomas] Crafts, adjourned till after the Funeral.”

In Thursday the news reached Portland, Maine. The Eastern Herald reported, “The colours of all the vessels in the harbour were immediately placed half mast high, and the bell was tolled from that time till the close of the day.”

Then the town government acted:

At a legal Meeting of the Inhabitants of this Town on Friday last, to take into consideration the measures proper to be taken by them, for attending the Funeral of His Excellency JOHN HANCOCK, that every mark of respect may be paid by his fellow-citizens to the remains of so illustrious a Patriot and Friend to Mankind; the following Votes passed unanimously, viz.

In order to pay that respect to the funeral solumnities of his Exellency the late Governor HANCOCK, which is suitable to the feelings of the Inhabitants on the occasion,

Voted, That it be recommended to the Inhabitants, that they shut their Stores and Shops, at One o’Clock, P.M. on Monday next, and continue the same shut until the Funeral Solemnities shall be performed.

Voted, That the Selectmen be requested to cause the Carriages, Trucks, and other Obstructions, to be removed from State Street and other Streets where the Procession may be on Monday Afternoon.

That was as close to declaring an official holiday as a town of that time could do.

In his 2000 biography of Hancock, Harlow Unger wrote that Gov. Adams declared the day of the funeral to be a holiday, and other books have repeated that statement since. I don’t see any evidence for that, however. A gubernatorial proclamation would have been an official, widely published document—like the Thanksgiving proclamation that ran in the 9 October Columbian Centinel. (That announcement, dated 28 September, was still in Hancock’s name.) So I don’t think Hancock’s funeral day was an official state holiday.

TOMORROW: But no work got done that day.

(The picture above is a 1797 engraved portrait of Samuel Adams based on a painting that John Johnson had made two years earlier. The painting itself was destroyed in a fire a few years after that.)

Wright on “Pedagogues and Protesters” in Boston, 20 June

On Tuesday, 20 June, Conrad E. Wright will speak at the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston about the confrontation at the heart of his new book, Pedagogues and Protesters: The Harvard College Student Diary of Stephen Peabody, 1767-1768.

The publisher explains:

On April 4, 1768, about one hundred angry Harvard College undergraduates, well over half the student body, left school and went home, in protest against new rules about class preparation. Their action constituted the largest student strike at any colonial American college.

Many contemporaries found the cause trivial and the students’ decision inexplicable, but in the undergraduates’ own minds it was the culmination of months of tensions with the faculty.

Pedagogues and Protesters recounts the year in daily journal entries by Stephen Peabody, a member of the class of 1769. The best surviving account of colonial college life, Peabody’s journal documents relationships among students, faculty members, and administrators, as well as the author’s relationships with other segments of Massachusetts society.

To a full transcription of the entries, Conrad Edick Wright adds detailed annotation and an introduction that focuses on the journal’s revealing account of daily life at America’s oldest college.

Peabody (1741-1819) was in his late twenties in this academic year while most undergraduates of the time were in their mid- to late teens. Peabody was also six feet tall, recalled as “large and commanding.” (Here’s his portrait in 1809, painted by John Johnson because Gilbert Stuart was too expensive.) So it’s no wonder he was one of the leaders of the students’ protest.

Conrad Wright is the Worthington C. Ford Editor and Director of Research at the Massachusetts Historical Society. Among his duties there is editing Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, a series of detailed biographical profiles of every person to be admitted to Harvard in the seventeenth and (so far) eighteenth centuries. He’s also the author of Revolutionary Generation: Harvard Men and the Consequences of Independence, a study of the men who left the college in the crucial war years. Wright is thus a prime source of information about life at Harvard during the tumult of the Revolution.

This event will begin at 5:30 P.M. with a reception. Wright will speak at 6:00 and sign books afterward. The talk is free, but the M.H.S. asks people to register in advance.

Dispatch from the Green Dragon

I’m typing this in a coffee house in Carlsbad, California. But not just any coffee house—the one attached to the Green Dragon Tavern and Museum.

I reported on the plans for this complex and its opening last year. So when I made plans for a convention in San Diego, I included time to drive forty minutes up the coast to south Carlsbad and check it out for myself.

I went thinking I’d find something fairly kitschy: a replica of the original Green Dragon (as depicted by John Johnson) tacked onto a California strip mall.

And in fact the site is in an area of strip malls. Next door is a car wash with a lovely Southwestern tile roof, as seen in the background of this photo. The first thing one sees getting off that exit from I-5 is a giant windmill attached to a motel.

But the Green Dragon Tavern and Museum is a more extensive and substantive enterprise than I’d expected. In size, it’s not just part of a strip mall—it’s an entire strip mall’s worth of structures. The part made to look like the original tavern is the main restaurant dining room, two levels high, and the coffee shop and bookstore. On the far side are a series of meeting rooms for special dinners.

And in between is a museum devoted to the owner’s interests in New England history, particularly the Revolution but starting in Plymouth Colony and including the Salem Witch Trials. The displays include replicas of significant documents and many original artifacts bearing the signatures of famous historical figures: legal documents signed by Samuel Sewall, Thomas Hutchinson, John Adams, and Robert Treat Paine, for example.

Throughout the building are framed copies of early American newspapers, mostly from the last two decades of the eighteenth century. And by throughout, I mean throughout. The hall to one set of restrooms, for example, includes a 1783 issue of the Providence Gazette and two issues of Benjamin Russell’s Columbian Centinel from the early 1790s. In another issue of the Centinel I spotted a big advertisement from Samuel Gore, one of “my guys.”

Amidst those genuine period documents are reproductions of nineteenth-century popular art, posters of the most famous Founders, postcard photographs of national monuments, and so on. So there’s definitely the potential for hagiographic kitsch. But the quotations on those Founder posters all have citations to particular documents (which is more than some folks can provide). There’s a display clearly explaining the eighteenth-century long s to visitors. Some of the labels discuss how American historiography or commemoration has changed over time.

I quibble with some of the historical statements I see in the displays or literature. I don’t think of the Sons of Liberty as a “secret society” but rather an amorphous political label like “Tea Party” or “Occupy Movement.” I don’t think “Paul Revere departed the Green Dragon Tavern for his famous ride,” though he definitely spent a lot of time there. But for me the list of quibbles is small.

The bookstore attached to the coffee shop includes a lot of popular titles for both kids and adults, focusing mostly on the Founders (and including some I think are flawed). However, the selection includes ground-breaking biographies from academics, including Woody Holton on Abigail Adams and Jill Lepore on Jane Mecom. And I can’t complain about any store carrying Reporting the Revolutionary War, with two essays by me.

The restaurant has wood paneling and a fireplace, but it’s not trying to be a period site (at least at lunchtime). There are multiple televisions tuned to sports channels. The menu may have sandwiches named after Boston Revolutionaries, but they’re all California cuisine, heavy on the avocado.

Overall, the Green Dragon Tavern and Museum is a solid little private museum with a significant number of print artifacts to examine, particularly newspapers. In its emphasis on the most prominent Founders, their signatures, and genealogy, its sensibility is old-fashioned, but within that sensibility the standards are high. The site is a very short drive off I-5, so I feel confident recommending it to folks traveling between San Diego and Los Angeles and seeking a genuine taste of the Revolutionary Era (as well as California cuisine).

William Dawes Tells a Good Story

On 17 June 1875, Harriet Newcomb Holland wrote down the stories she’d heard about her grandfather, William Dawes (shown here in a portrait by John Johnson).

Holland had heard those tales from her mother, Dawes having died ten years before she was born. Her recounting was published by her son Henry Ware Holland in a book printed in limited numbers for members of the family—in other words, not a critical audience.

Holland’s description of William Dawes’s ride on the night of 18-19 Apr 1775 was brief though, she said, “specific”:

I do not remember ever hearing that he was made a prisoner; but I know he thought himself pursued by two horsemen who were following him, and rode rapidly up to a farm-house, slapping his leather breeches, and stopping so suddenly that his watch was thrown from his pocket, and shouting “Halloo, my boys! I’ve got two of ’em.”

His pursuers turned their horses and rode off; but he did not stop to pick up his watch, though he found it there some days afterwards in safe keeping.

It’s a great story, and it fits right into a beloved American narrative of fooling the British through clever tricks. For that reason, I wondered whether Dawes might have constructed that story for his relatives’ entertainment. I wanted it to be true, but I had to wonder.

I was therefore pleased to find that on 3 May 1775 Isaiah Thomas’s Massachusetts Spy (P.D.F. available through Teach US History) published a report of the Battle of Lexington and Concord that included this story about the riders from Boston:

When the expresses got about a mile beyond Lexington, they were stopped by about fourteen officers on horseback, who came out of Boston in the afternoon of that day, and were seen lurking in bye-places in the country till after dark.

One of the expresses immediately fled, and was pursued two miles by an officer, who when he had got up with him presented a pistol, and told him he was a dead man if he did not stop, but he rode on until he came up to a house, when stopping of a sudden his horse threw him off; having the presence of mind to hollow to the people in the house, “Turn out! Turn out! I have got one of them!” the officer immediately retreated as far as he had pursued:

The other express after passing through a strict examination, by some means got clear.

The “other express” was, of course, Paul Revere.

Thomas had just relocated his newspaper to Worcester. Dawes must have been there as well. He settled his family in that town during the siege and was still there as a shopkeeper when British P.O.W.s passed through after Saratoga. (They complained he overcharged them.) Obviously Dawes was describing how he’d scared off his pursuers within two weeks of the ride, providing a solid basis for the family tradition.

Knox’s Oxen

Still on the broad topic of Henry Knox, Derek W. Beck has shared news of his article “No Ox for Knox?” in the July/August issue of American Revolution magazine. He writes:

My “No Ox for Knox?” article questions the famous story of Col. Henry Knox leading a team of ox-drawn sleds laden with artillery through the snowy mountains of western Massachusetts. This story is a staple of both history books and the American subconscious, and has been immortalized in at least two artworks. . . . But could it be wrong? Read the article to see my argument that Knox had no oxen after all.

I haven’t seen the magazine yet, but I assume that Derek focuses on the particular leg of Knox’s trek from Lake Champlain to Cambridge in the winter of 1775-76.

The colonel definitely used oxen to move the heavy guns south from Fort Ticonderoga, as shown by a receipt that the New England Historic and Genealogical Register published in 1876:

Recd. of Henry Knox twenty six dollars which Capt. John Johnson paid to different Carters for the use of their Cattle, in dragging Cannon from The Fort of Ticonderoga to the North Landing of Lake George

The heavy guns were then floated down the lake. Knox planned to use more oxen for the overland journey, as he wrote in his journal in mid-December (published at the same time):

I sent an Express to Squire [George] Palmer of Stillwater to prepare a number of Sleds & oxen to drag the Cannon presuming that we should get there, & on Wednesday the 13th he came up & agreed to provide the necessary number of sleds & oxen & they to be ready by the first snow.

17 December Knox wrote to Gen. George Washington about having “provided 80 yoke of oxen to drag them as far as Springfield where I shall get fresh cattle to carry them to camp.”

But then on 28 December, Knox recorded that Palmer and Gen. Philip Schuyler were still at odds on the price for those ox teams. Instead, the next day Schuyler “Sent out his Waggon Master & other people to all parts of the Country to immediately send up their slays with horses suitable.” Thereafter Knox’s journal mentions horses. John P. Becker’s memoir, The Sexagenary, briefly describes the ensuing trek from the perspective of an eleven-year-old driver, son of the man who supplied most of those horses.

But then Knox’s train came to Blandford, Massachusetts, on the eastern edge of the Berkshire Mountains. On 11 Jan 1776 he wrote:

At Blanford we overtook the first division who had tarried here untill we came up, and refus’d going any further, on accot. that there was no snow beyond five or six miles further in which space there was the tremendous Glasgow or Westfield mountain to go down. But after about three hours persuasion, I hiring two teams of oxen, they agreed to go.

Those teams are probably connected to the second receipt published with the journal:

Blanford Jany 13. 1776 Recd of Henry Knox eighteen shillings lawful money for Carrying a Cannon weighing 24C. 3 from this Town to Westfield being 11 Miles

That was signed by Solomon Brown (1737-1786). Above is his gravestone, courtesy of Find-a-Grave.

So Knox, contrary to his initial plans, didn’t need any oxen to get the cannon up the Massachusetts mountains, but he hired four to get them down. By then, the colonel was convinced of the value of horses. The Gilder-Lehrman Institute displays a 13 January letter in which Knox tells a colleague what to offer teamsters: “offer them 14/ York currency today for each Span of horses that is after they leave Springfield—After they get down the next Hill they will be able to travel much farther than Oxen.”

TOMORROW: Knox’s weather reports.

“Gossiping about the Gores” Now Online!

In January, I had the honor of speaking at Old South Meeting House in a series of lunchtime lectures on the Loyalists of the Revolution. My talk was “Gossiping about the Gores,” telling the stories of the family of decorative painter and paint merchant John Gore and his many children.

After participating in political protests against Parliament’s new taxes in the 1760s, John Gore sided with the Crown in 1774. As a result, he sailed away with the British military in 1776. But his wife and children stayed behind; in fact, several of the younger generation were very active Patriots. In addition to that political division, the family also had to deal with business challenges, riots, sudden death, stolen cannons, and at least one dicey marriage. Intrigued?

My talk has now been archived in audio form at the WGBH Forum. The videotape ran into technical problems, I understand, but really you didn’t miss anything. In fact, I can offer much better visuals than me talking.

Above is part of John Singleton Copley’s picture of the Gore children in the mid-1750s; John, Jr., is on the left, and Samuel on the right. The full image, including two older sisters, appears on Flickr and The Atheneum, and the original is at the Winterthur Museum in Delaware.

Below is part of the handout I prepared for the talk and alluded to a few times. It charts out John and Frances Gore’s many children and their spouses. Clicking on the image should take you to a larger version. Download and follow along!

Sneaking a Peek at the Green Dragon

In 1765, the St. Andrew’s Lodge of Freemasons in Boston bought the Green Dragon Tavern on Union Street to use as a meeting-place. (Of course, they kept the liquor license. Starting in 1771, the bartender was Benjamin Burdick, Jr., otherwise busy as Constable of the Town-House Watch.) For a while the lodge tried to rename their building The Masons’ Arms, but the Green Dragon stuck because of the striking carved sign over the door.

Our visual image of the Green Dragon Tavern comes from a watercolor sketch by John Johnson or Johnston (c. 1753-1818), a Boston painter who served as an artillerist during the Revolutionary War. The original is owned by the American Antiquarian Society; I’m sharing a black and white thumbnail. Johnson’s most famous painting today is his portrait of William Dawes, Jr., now at the Evanston (Illinois) History Center, but he had steady work in the early republic. In the mid-1800s, I suspect, Johnson’s picture of the Green Dragon Tavern was the model for this engraving, showing the building from the same angle. The building itself disappeared in 1854.

The sketch is often dated to 1773, and for a fairly compelling reason: Johnson wrote that date on it, twice.

GREEN DRAGON TAVERN
Where we met to Plan the Consignment of afew Shiploads of Tea
Dec 16 1773
John Johnson
4 Water Street
Boston, Mass. 1773

I don’t think Johnson really painted the tavern in 1773, however. I think he tried to paint the building as he recalled it looking in that year, from the nostalgic perspective of the 1790s. My arguments:

• Johnson was only twenty in 1773, and thus not old enough to have been a member of the St. Andrew’s Lodge or involved in planning the Boston Tea Party. His caption was a collective claim.
• The Tea Party occurred eleven and a half months into 1773, leaving very little time for him to have painted the tavern in that year.
• Most important, destroying the tea was a secret, illegal action, and Johnson would have been foolhardy to caption his image with such a confession until after the war was settled.
• Boston addresses didn’t include street numbers until after the war.
• In front of the tavern Johnson drew three silhouettes in profile: a horse and chaise and two men talking. I think such silhouettes became fashionable in art as the century ended.

(Here’s a site offering a free paper model of the Green Dragon Tavern and other Revolutionary scenes—some assembly required.)