“I wish for a happy Harmony in the Legislature”

As the Boston Whigs held a simulation of Election Day ceremonies on 30 May 1770, the real thing was going on across the river in Cambridge.

At nine o’clock the recently elected members of the Massachusetts General Court met in the chapel of Harvard Hall. The Council chosen a year before sat upstairs in the “Philosophy Chamber”—the room where Harvard College kept its advanced scientific instruments (such as the half-hour and hour glasses shown here).

The representatives of all the towns in the province (the towns that had chosen to send representatives, that is) showed their credentials and swore the Oath of Abjuration, promising allegiance to the Protestant Hanoverian dynasty instead of the Catholic Stuarts.

The house chose its clerk. Every member voted for Samuel Adams. Not only did that job grant Adams some sway over the business of the house, but it also provided the income that let him maintain his family in genteel style.

Next the house chose its speaker. Again the vote was unanimous, reelecting Thomas Cushing. He had served since 1766, a strong Whig but not a radical. Still, the acting governor had the power to nix that choice.

Back in April, Cushing had been ill, and the previous house had to choose a temporary replacement. The legislators voted for John Hancock. Hutchinson vetoed him. (The house then chose James Warren of Plymouth, who was acceptable and would also become the speaker in his own right in the summer of 1775.)

On this day, the Boston Gazette reported:

About Ten o’Clock His Honor the Lieutenant-Governor [Thomas Hutchinson], being escorted by his Troop of Guards from his Seat at Milton, arrived at Harvard-College, and being in the Chair, a Committee of the House presented the Speaker elect to his Honor, who afterwards sent a Message in Writing, agreeable to the Royal Explanatory Charter, that he approved of their choice.

People were thus in a more agreeable mood when they recessed. At eleven o’clock everybody walked over to the town’s main meetinghouse, “preceded by the first Company in Cambridge of the Regiment of Militia, commanded by the Hon. Brigadier [William] Brattle.”

The Rev. Samuel Cooke, minister out in the western village of Menotomy, preached a sermon titled The True Principles of Civil Government. He worked from 2 Samuel 23:3-4, beginning: “HE that ruleth over Men, must be just, ruling in the fear of GOD.” Unlike the Rev. Dr. Charles Chauncy, who spoke in Boston that same morning, Cooke didn’t speak about the most incendiary issues of the day, such as the Boston Massacre. He criticized a royal governor, but it was Edmund Andros, ousted in 1692.

Nonetheless, Cooke ventured onto controversial ground by raising a new issue:

I trust, on this occasion, I may, without offence—plead the cause of our African slaves; and humbly propose the pursuit of some effectual measures, at least, to prevent the future importation of them.

Difficulties insuperable, I apprehend, prevent an adequate remedy for what is past.

Let the time past more than suffice, wherein we, the patrons of liberty, have dishonored the christian name,—and degraded human nature, nearly to a level with the beasts that perish.

Ethiopia has long stretched out her hands to us—Let not sordid gain, acquired by the merchandize of slaves, and the souls of men—harden our hearts against her piteous means.

All the officials then went back to Harvard Hall for midday dinner—“an Entertainment,” the Gazette said. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the servants who prepared or served that dinner were enslaved.

In the afternoon, the house became more confrontational. It approved a remonstrance to the acting governor for convening the legislature in “any Place, other than the Town-House in Boston.” A committee headed by Hancock went to deliver it. They came back and reported that “his Honor was not in the Chair.” Hutchinson had left the building.

Under formal protest, the house proceeded to choose the new Council in the usual way. They invited the sitting Council to come down to the chapel, and then as a body the men voted for eighteen Councilors from the old Massachusetts Bay colony, four from the old Plymouth colony, four from Maine, and two at large. This list included all eleven men that Gov. Francis Bernard had vetoed the previous year.

The next morning, 250 years ago today, the house convened again. Lt. Gov. Hutchinson was back, so Hancock’s committee got to deliver their remonstrance. The house then presented its list of Councilors for the acting governor’s approval.

Hutchinson approved all the elected Councilors but two: Hancock and Jerathmeel Bowers of Gloucester. One member, Joseph Gerrish of Newbury, declined to serve. Those three men remained in the house. Some members elected to the house, such as James Bowdoin and James Otis, Sr., now departed for the Philosophy Chamber, perhaps pleasantly surprised at the governor’s assent. Eleven towns, including Boston, would have to hold new elections.

Both legislative houses for the upcoming year now complete, Lt. Gov. Hutchinson called all the members upstairs. He delivered a speech about the priorities of reducing the public debt and heading off unimportant petitions. The acting governor concluded:

I wish for a happy Harmony in the Legislature, and I will most readily concur with you in every Measure you shall propose, as far as can consist with my Duty to the King, and the Regard I bear to the Interest of the Province.

Of course, there was still the matter that the General Court was meeting in Cambridge, not Boston.

TOMORROW: The response to the remonstrance.

A New Biography of the Rev. Jonas Clarke

This season has brought a new biography of the Rev. Jonas Clarke, the Lexington minister who was hosting John Hancock and Samuel Adams on 19 Apr 1775 as British regulars marched toward that town.

Clarke wielded a lot of influence in Lexington. People recalled that he drafted many of the town’s resolutions objecting to new Crown measures in the 1760s and 1770s. His published sermon on the first anniversary of the outbreak of war is not only a significant historical source on the event but also helped to shape its meaning for the people of Massachusetts.

The Patriot Parson of Lexington, Massachusetts: Reverend Jonas Clarke and the American Revolution is the latest book by Richard P. Kollen, a history teacher who has served as the historian for the Lexington Historical Society. The work was supported by that society, custodian of the Clarke-Hancock House where the minister lived and of his papers, and by the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati.

Kollen’s research seems very thorough, running from Clarke’s birth in Newton in 1730 to his death in 1805. As an educated man, the minister documented his life in sermons, letters, and three surviving volumes of journals. His family and community ensured the preservation of those sources, and Kollen—already author of several other books on Lexington history—has mined them for all they’re worth. It’s hard to imagine a more detailed picture of Jonas Clarke.

The Patriot Parson is thus reminiscent of early-19th-century clerical biographies, which likewise extolled their subjects’ values and long careers in detail. I’m sure Kollen didn’t set out to write a Congregationalist hagiography like so many of those volumes. It’s just that Clarke doesn’t seem to have had notable faults or been involved in many juicy controversies (aside from, you know, the split with Britain). Lexington didn’t go through the theological or political arguments of other, larger communities nearby.

Kollen doesn’t shy from noting difficult parts of Clarke’s life. For example, the minister’s older brother, Thomas Clarke, suffered from some sort of mental illness. Kollen quotes from a letter that Jonas wrote in 1753 about Thomas’s “roving mind” and tracks Thomas from the house of the family’s one surviving sister back to Jonas’s household after the war. But the sources simply don’t provide Kollen with grounds for much more than speculation about this aspect of family life.

Another potential area of controversy is slavery. It was common for New England ministers to have an enslaved household servant or two. Clarke’s predecessor, the Rev. John Hancock, owned a man named Jack, and his Concord contemporary, the Rev. William Emerson, owned a man named Frank. Indeed, in smaller New England towns the only slaveholder might be the town minister. On the other side of the issue, such ministers as the Rev. Samuel Cooke of Menotomy, who was stepfather to Clarke’s wife, preached in 1770 that slavery “degraded human nature nearly to the level of the beasts” and urged the Massachusetts General Court to outlaw the transatlantic slave trade.

There’s no evidence that Clarke ever owned anyone. Kollen quotes records of the minister hiring day laborers before his sons grew old enough to work the fields. The book suggests that it is “not unlikely” that Clarke agreed with Cooke. However, Kollen has to acknowledge, Clarke left no statement about slavery, making his personal choice opaque. (The topic of slavery, a focus of so many historians these days, doesn’t even appear in the book’s index.)

The Patriot Parson will be the authoritative book on Clarke for a long time to come. People writing about him or eighteenth-century Lexington in the future will have to consult this book as a source. At the same time, the lack of evident internal and community conflict in Clarke’s life limits the book’s wider appeal. But history doesn’t guarantee that being near the center of a dramatic event means that one leaves behind a dramatic life story.

The Patriot Parson comes from the History Press, so it follows that publisher’s standard design: a paperback of slightly more than 200 packed pages. There are many black and white photographs throughout the book, good notes, and a basic index.