“Weak in Arms Void of Virtue, Honor, or Honesty”

Here are some more of the slashing character sketches published in the 8 May 1770 Nova Scotia Chronicle in the guise of detailing a “Tragi-comic Farce” about to the published.

John Dupe, Esq; A Senator, a Man of Fortune, but not of his own acquiring---A Man of weak Capacity and like tainted Meat devoured by the Vermin about them, who drew his Money out of the Cashiers Hands Not trusting to the Loyalty of his Country Men—He is remarkably melancholy on his Loss of Lady Beaver.

Poor Iammy, a Senator, who was the Leading Man in Politicks, but disappointed in Offices of Profit—He stands now ready arm’d to kill any Person who may be mader than himself.

Maria—His Wife, a worthy virtuous good Woman, comforting her Children, and bemoaning his unhappy Fate.

Thomas Wister, an Man weak in Arms Void of Virtue, Honor, or Honesty, whose compounds has poison’d his own Body and Soul, since that he has been finding out an Art to poison the Minds—Private Confessor to Admiral Renegado.

William Town, Regulating Clerk to the Parish—Procurer of Knights of the Post, and Secretary to Admiral Renegado, and Justice Gutts; also Secretary to the Caulkers Club, and chief Compiler of the Country Parish Resolves.

I think these are allusions to merchant John Hancock, lawyer James Otis, his wife Ruth Otis, most likely Dr. Thomas Young, and Boston town clerk William Cooper, respectively.

John Mein identified Hancock as “John Dupe” in his “Key to a certain Publication,” now at the Houghton Library, so that’s an easy one.

Back in October, Mein called Otis “Counsellor Muddlehead,” but by this time people recognized that he was mentally ill. Otis’s wife was indeed known as a Loyalist.

I’m guessing the references to “compounds” and “poison” were hints that “Thomas Wister” was a physician, hence the radical Dr. Young. This page never introduced “Admiral Renegado” at all despite these two allusions to that character. But the 5 Feb 1770 Boston Chronicle had used “Admiral Renegado” as another name for William Molineux, already introduced in the Nova Scotian item as “William the Knave.”

The paragraph on “William Town” contains several pointers to William Cooper, plus a reference to the “Caulkers Club” or caucus. This might be the first publication connecting that mysterious word for a political group to the profession of caulking, and it appears to be a joke.

The article offers no explanation of “Justice Gutts,” and I can’t find the Boston Chronicle using that name anywhere. Perhaps that was an alternate name for the next entry in the article: “Richard Glutton, Esq; a regulating Magistrate.” But I’m not sure who that’s meant to be.

TOMORROW: Mysteries and questions.

“Keep the committee in play, and I will go and make a caucus”

In addition to Robert Treat Paine’s recollection quoted here, the Rev. William Gordon’s early history of the American Revolution offers another peek at the delicate political maneuverings in Salem in June 1774.

Gordon wrote:

Mr. Samuel Adams observed, that some of the committee were for mild measures, which he judged no way suited to the present emergency. He conferred with Mr. [James] Warren of Plymouth upon the necessity of giving into spirited measures, and then said, “Do you keep the committee in play, and I will go and make a caucus against the evening; and do you meet me.”

Mr. Samuel Adams secured a meeting of about five principal members of the house, at the time specified; and repeated his endeavours against the next night; and so as to the third, when they were more than thirty; the friends of administration knew nothing of the matter. The popular leaders took the sense of the members in a private way, and found that they should be able to carry their scheme by a sufficient majority.

Adams and his team came up with a two-step plan.

First, the Massachusetts House would appoint delegates to a Continental Congress, an idea raised by the Providence town meeting, the Virginia House of Burgesses, and other political allies outside of the colony. The House would also alert all its counterparts of that step and urge them to participate as well.

But then there was the age-old question of how to pay for this. Sending five gentlemen to Philadelphia would cost upwards of £500. Any legislative action involving money, even if it passed the Council, could be vetoed by Gov. Thomas Gage.

The solution was to write a bill authorizing that expenditure of £500 and then adding this clause:

Wherefore this House would recommend, and they do accordingly hereby recommend to the several Towns and Districts within this Province, that each Town and District, raise, collect and pay, to the Honorable THOMAS CUSHING, Esq; of Boston, the Sum of FIVE HUNDRED POUNDS by the Fifteenth Day of August next, agreeable to a List herewith exhibited, being each Town and District’s proportion of said Sum, according to the last Province Tax, to enable them to discharge the important Trust to which they are appointed; they upon their Return to be accountable for the same.

Adams’s unofficial caucus managed to formulate that plan without official committee member Daniel Leonard or other Loyalists catching on.

The next problem was how to pass those resolutions through the House. As Paine wrote:

it was Considered that the regular Method was for the Committee on the State of the Province to make report of these doings as their Report; eight of that Committee were then present, but the ninth [Leonard] was known to be adverse to any Such measure & therefore could not be trusted, least the whole should be defeated by the Governor;…

If Gov. Gage learned about the measures that the House was discussing, he could use his constitutional authority to shut down the legislature entirely.

TOMORROW: The Bristol feint.

When William Story Sailed to London

On 2 Oct 1771, the speaker of the Massachusetts House, Thomas Cushing, wrote a letter to that body’s lobbyist in London, Benjamin Franklin.

Though the letter enclosed some legislative news, Cushing was really writing a reference for the man who would carry it to Britain, William Story. Story is an intriguing character because for several years he worked both sides of the political divide in Boston.

In 1763 John Adams listed Story among the members of the Boston political caucus, along with his cousin Samuel, his great-uncle William Fairfield, host Thomas Dawes, John Ruddock from the North End, and other men.

But Story was also a royal appointee, deputy register of the Vice Admiralty Court. That made him a target on 26 Aug 1765, when an anti–Stamp Act protest blew up into an attack on the homes of officials who had nothing to do with that law, including Lt. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson. And William Story.

Those gentlemen asked the Massachusetts General Court to compensate them for their losses. The legislature did so only reluctantly and partially since most of the money would have gone to Hutchinson. Out of the £136 Story asked for, he received £97. Thus, he had a solid reason to resent the Boston Whigs and the General Court.

On the other hand, Story also had a grievance against the Customs Commissioners, and that was the main reason he crossed the Atlantic in the fall of 1771. Cushing’s letter to Franklin laid out the issue:

This will be handed you by William Storey Esqr. who will deliver you the Votes of the last sessions of the General Court.

He goes home to sollicit for releif from the Difficulty under which he at present labours; Natha. Wheelwright Esqr. during Mr. Storeys being Deputy Register in the Court of Admiralty had a Vessell and Cargo Seized and Condemned in said Court from which judgement he appealed; However the Vessell and Cargo were Sold at Public Auction at which Mr. Wheelwright was a Considerable purchaser.

Sometime in the early 1760s, the Customs service seized Wheelwright’s ship and goods for smuggling and put them up for auction. But Wheelwright himself was top bidder on a lot of the stuff, thus regaining ownership, perhaps at a bargain price. (Not a bargain when compared to getting away with the smuggling, but possibly still low enough to be profitable.)

Furthermore, Wheelwright made this purchase with the support of a top Customs officer:

Mr. [John] Temple the surveyer General, with a View of favouring Mr. Wheelwright as much as possible directed Mr. Storey, as he Informs me, to take Mr. Wheelwrights note of hand, in lieu of the Money, p[er?] amount of such goods as he purchased payable [as] soon as the affair of the appeal was fully determined.

At the time, Bostonians traded Wheelwright’s personal notes like cash, so it didn’t seem like a big risk for Story to accept one as payment. But in January 1765 Wheelwright went suddenly, spectacularly bankrupt, and dragged a considerable swath of Boston society down with him.

After some Time Mr. Wheelwright failed and has never been able to Discharge his Note. The Kings Advocate [Samuel Fitch?] has sued Mr. Storey for the Money. Mr. Storey thinks [torn: it would be unreaso?]nable and unjust to oblidge him to pay it, [torn: when he?] Acted in Consequence of orders received from the Surveyer General.

He has applied to the Commissioners of the Customs here, but as it was a Matter transacted before their appointment they can do nothing about it, he therefore has undertaken this Voyage in order to apply for releif to the Commissioners at home. Any assistance you may afford him by your Advise or thro your Influence with those before whom this matter may lie I shall esteem as a favor.

Temple actually was one of the Customs Commissioners from 1767 to 1771, when he sailed to Britain himself in search of even better prospects. But the other Commissioners hated and distrusted him, so they happily disavowed any promise that he had made to Story a decade before.

I would just mention that Mr. Storey was a Considerable Sufferer in the time of the Stamp Act by having his House and Furniture much Damaged by the Mob, who distroyed most of his Books and Papers amoung which there were some relative to the Seizure above mentioned, and for want of which he is fearfull he shall be a great Sufferer.

He had some Compensation made him by our General Court but as all the rest of the Sufferers at that time excepting Mr. Storey, have been Consider’d and in some way or another Compensated by the Government at home he hopes he shall have the more favourable hearing relative to this Matter.

Story was thus hoping for some cash from the royal government, as well as being shielded from the lawsuit over Wheelwright’s payment. And, even though he was carrying letters from some of Massachusetts’s leading Whigs, Story might have taken a new royal appointment as well.

TOMORROW: Samuel Adams’s doubts.

The Debate Over Newman and Pulling

The Rev. John Lee Watson was pretty relentless in arguing his claim that John Pulling, not Robert Newman, had hung the lanterns in Old North Church on 18 Apr 1775.

On 20 July 1876, Watson published his letter in the Boston Daily Advertiser. In November he sent an updated and corrected version of that letter to Charles Deane, corresponding secretary of the Massachusetts Historical Society, who endorsed his conclusion and entered the letter into the society’s Proceedings.

The following year, a pamphlet titled Paul Revere’s Signal: The True Story of the Signal Lanterns in Christ Church, Boston appeared. That reprinted Watson’s letter and the M.H.S. discussion of it. Watson published an expanded edition in 1880. (In addition to arguing for Pulling’s participation, he also disputed the mistaken belief that the signal had been sent from the Old North Meeting-House instead of what had become known as the Old North Church.)

Most of the evidence to support Pulling’s participation was indirect, based on his documented role in other Patriot activism. Pulling was a member of the North End Caucus. He was elected to town offices: clerk of the market, warden, fireward, committee to supply the poor, committee to enforce the Continental Congress’s Association. After the siege, he served on the town’s wartime “Committee of Correspondence, Safety & Inspection” alongside Paul Revere.

In 1777 Pulling was a captain and conductor or commissary of ordnance in Col. Thomas Crafts’s Massachusetts artillery regiment. Basically that regiment was how middle-aged Sons of Liberty from Boston’s mechanics class helped to fight the war. (Revere was second-in-command.) In addition, starting in 1761, Pulling intermittently attended events of the St. Andrew’s Lodge of Freemasons.

Pulling’s Whiggish work was somewhat unusual in that he was an Anglican, even at times a warden and vestryman of Christ Church. But of course his access to that church’s tall steeple would have made him valuable on 18 Apr 1775.

In 1878, a defender of the Newman family claim hit back at the pro-Pulling argument. William W. Wheildon published his History of Paul Revere’s Signal Lanterns, April 18, 1775, in the Steeple of the North Church from his press in Concord. He listed more than a dozen people who had lived in the North End before and after the war and testified that it was common knowledge that Newman had hung the signal lanterns. (Like Watson, Wheildon also spoke up for Old North Church, not Old North Meeting-House, as the source of the signals.)

There’s clear evidence that Newman was indeed the sexton at Christ Church in 1775 and for years afterward (until he was criticized for charging visitors money to see the body of Maj. John Pitcairn in the crypt). And who besides the sexton would have the church keys and knowledge of the stairs to the steeple?

In this historical debate, Newman was the inside candidate. His family had remained in the North End and first got the attention of the Christ Church rector. Though Pulling had returned to the North End after the siege, by the 1870s his descendants were more scattered.

On the other hand, the Pulling faction had the advantage of class. The Newmans didn’t publish their own accounts. Pulling’s relatives did, the most vocal being clergymen. Pulling had been a respected merchant. In contrast, church sextons like Newman were seen as poor, menial, and dependent. “Are sextons, as a class, so intelligent and so reliable as to have been chosen for and intrusted with such an important affair?” Mary Orne Jenks sniffed. In this period the M.H.S. was at its most Brahmin, and it’s no surprise that institution lined up on the Pulling side.

Both parties in the debate claimed that their man was the “friend” that Revere asked to send the signal. Neither was actually able to provide evidence for friendship aside from all three men living in the North End in the same years. But Pulling was in his late thirties, closer to Revere’s age, while Newman was only twenty-three.

Both sides had dramatic stories to tell of their man carefully hanging the lanterns on 18 April, evading the royal authorities that night, and then being hunted down. But there’s no documentary evidence from 1775 to support either of those traditions.

And in the end, this whole debate was over very little.

TOMORROW: Why the Newman-Pulling dispute really doesn’t matter.

A Blanket the British Army Left Behind

Today is Evacuation Day, the anniversary of the day in 1776 when the British military left Boston.

Back in 2013, Patrick Browne wrote on his blog Historical Digression about something the British left behind, an artifact now at the Duxbury Rural and Historical Society:

A number of British regiments were camped upon Boston Common. When they departed, they left all manner of gear strewn across that open space. We can imagine curious Bostonians picking through the debris when the British were gone. Frugal Yankees, they must have scavenged a good number of useful items.

One such Bostonian was William Hickling [1742-1790], a merchant, roughly 30 years old. He was a patriot who had been out and about on the fateful night of the Boston Massacre back in 1770, though, according to the deposition of Richard Palmes, Hickling went home before the real trouble began. Hickling had been, according to family tradition, rather more active during the Boston Tea Party in 1773 as evidenced by the tea leaves that were found in his shoes the following morning.

According to his will, quoted here, Hickling was officially a distiller, but he sold other things besides rum. His father was also a distiller named William Hickling (1704-1774), and he had a son and a nephew of the same name, so there’s opportunity for a lot of confusion.

The name of William Hickling doesn’t appear on most lists of men involved in the Tea Party, even the expansive roster in Francis S. Drake’s Tea Leaves. The family tradition that he helped to destroy the tea was nonetheless in print by 1900.

Other sources do show William Hickling as a participant in Boston’s pre-Revolutionary politics. But which William Hickling attended the Sons of Liberty dinner in Dorchester in 1769? Which was renting rooms to Pvt. James Hartigan and his new wife Elizabeth in 1770? Which was a member of the North End Caucus in 1772? I’ll play the odds and say that Palmes encountered the younger William Hickling (and his brother John) on 5 Mar 1770, and that the younger William was also the caucus member, but I won’t hazard a guess about the other questions.

The William Hickling born in 1742 was almost certainly the man who joined the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company in 1764 and served as paymaster of Col. John Brooks’s Continental Army regiment in 1777 and 1778.

But back to the spring of 1776 and Patrick Browne’s essay:

Foraging across Boston Common, Hickling probably picked up a number of things. One of them was the white woolen blanket of a British soldier. The “standard issue” blanket, bearing the royal symbol of the King’s Arrow and the initials “GR” for George Rex (or King George) eventually made its way to Duxbury, Massachusetts after William’s death when his widow moved in with her daughter [Sarah] and son-in-law, bringing a number of Hickling family objects with her. The son-in-law was Captain Gershom Bradford, a Duxbury master mariner. Fast forward to 1968, Gershom Bradford’s house, along with a vast number of family belongings, was donated to the Duxbury Rural and Historical Society by the captain’s great-grandsons.

It sounds like the blanket didn’t come with a provenance, not like the tea story. But it certainly appears to be a standard-issue British army blanket.

Caricature of a Tea Partier

Adam Colson (his family name was also spelled Collson, Coleson, and Coulson) was born in 1738. At that time his grandfather David was a Boston selectman. Adam followed his grandfather into leather-dressing, and he also became politically active.

Colson joined the St. Andrew’s Lodge of Freemasons in 1763. In 1766 the town meeting elected him as a “Clerk of the Market,” a beginner-level office. By 1773, he was also a member of the North End Caucus (and, reportedly, the “Long Room Club”).

Colson was in the second set of volunteers patrolling the wharves to make sure no East India Company tea was landed. Benjamin Bussey Thatcher’s 1835 book Traits of the Tea-Party listed him among the men who destroyed that tea on 16 Dec 1773—the earliest such list to see print. Thatcher also wrote of that night’s meeting at Old South:

Some person or persons, in the galleries, (Mr. [William] Pierce thinks Adam Colson,) at this time cried out, with a loud voice, “Boston Harbor a tea-pot this night!”—“Hurra for Griffin’s Wharf!”—and so on.

For Colson to have gotten down from the gallery during a crowded meeting and onto a tea ship would have been a feat.

In 1774 Bostonians voted Colson to be the town’s Informer of Deer, a post he held for years, and the next year he was chosen to be a Warden. In 1779, with the town hurt by shortages and price jumps, he was made an Inspector of the Market. He appears to have served only briefly in the military, patrolling the town under Col. Jabez Hatch.

During these years Colson maintained his business selling leather goods in the South End under the “Sign of the Buck and Glove” near Liberty Tree. But he also bought real estate, opening an inn and what by 1788 he called the “Federal Stable.” In 1782 he hosted the future Marquis De Chastellux, who was making a trip through the new U.S. of A.

In Boston’s 1792 state election returns, Colson garnered 7 votes for lieutenant governor, coming in third. Samuel Adams with 686 was the clear winner, and merchant Thomas Russell with 17 was second. Yet Colson was still just a tradesman and landlord, not a gentleman (he didn’t get “Esq.” after his name in the official tally). That made his relative prominence notable. So what were his post-Revolutionary politics?

In 1795 the Rev. John Silvester John Gardiner (1765-1830), future rector of Trinity Church, published a book called Remarks on the Jacobiniad through the new Federal Orrery newspaper and then the printers Weld and Greenough. It was a biting, satirical, and not entirely coherent attack on the nascent Jeffersonian party in Boston. In particular, Gardiner lampooned Thomas Edwards, Benjamin Austin, Samuel Hewes, “Justice [John] Vinal,” and Colson. Judging by a legal report in the Columbian Centinel in 1791, Gardiner must have been carrying on that feud for years.

Remarks on the Jacobiniad portrayed Colson as an illiterate veteran of the Revolutionary struggle. At what must have been some expense, the book even included caricatures of those five leading “Jacobins,” allowing us to see a version of Adam Colson, above.

Colson died in 1798, not surviving to see his party take the Presidency and hold it for six terms. He left an estate worth nearly $17,000, including $10,000 of real estate on Washington Street in the South End.

The Last Members of the North End Caucus

Last month I highlighted from the Boston News-Letter and City Record’s 1826 publication of records from the pre-Revolutionary North End Caucus.

The periodical credited “a gentleman at the North End” for sharing his knowledge of the period, and presumably sharing those documents. We know that source was not himself a member of the caucus, however, because the newspaper staff was under the impression that no members were still alive.

Then on 9 December the News-Letter added:

In the News Letter of the 25th ult. [i.e., last month] we gave a catalogue of the most conspicuous patriots of 1771, and 1772, who frequently assembled in Caucus, at the North-End, for the purpose of consulting together, and passing such resolutions, as might be deemed necessary for the preservation of the rights and liberties of the people. We were not aware, at the time of publishing this record, that Perez Morton, esq. [shown here] was the only surviving one of the whole party; but the Gazette of Thursday informs us that he is; and we are gratified in learning that this gentleman still enjoys good health, and the full possession of his rich faculties, and will probably furnish some remarks on the disposition and character of his associates in the leading events of our glorious revolution.

Then on 23 December the periodical published a letter from someone signing with the initials “O.P.”:

It was mentioned in your last “News Letter,” that there was but one member of the Old North-End Caucus, of, 71, and 72, now living, and that was the Hon. Perez Morton. We are glad, however, to learn, by the last advices from Paris, that Col. James Swan, also one of the distinguished patriots in those meetings, is still alive, and has been recently released from the Debtors’ apartments in Paris, after a detention of nearly twenty years.

It may be proper to state, that the apartments, here spoken of, unlike ours for the confinement of Debtors, are extensive and cornmodious, having a fine garden surrounding them, and the tenants at liberty to walk in them, at all hours to enjoy what amusements they please—and to indulge themselves in such a manner of living, as they may think proper, and can afford to pay for—there being within the outer walls several restorators and other places, for the disposal of provisions, liquors, fruits, and confectionary.

“Restorators” was an old term for restaurants.

That description of Swan’s comfortable confinement for debt in Paris matches a lot of other sources from the following decades. However, those sources don’t speak of Swan being released in 1826. Rather, he reportedly remained in detention until 1830, dying shortly afterward. But there are a lot of mysteries about Swan that I'm still muddling through.

“In consequence of the past misconduct”

On 5 May 1772, the North End Caucus decided to support four men as Boston’s representatives to the Massachusetts General Court, or provincial legislature: Thomas Cushing, Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and William Phillips. The next day, as I noted two days ago, the town met and elected those four men.

That slate omitted James Otis, Jr., who had represented Boston for most terms since the early 1760s and led the opposition to Gov. Francis Bernard most of that time. But since a coffee-house brawl in September 1769, people had come to see Otis as unreliable and mentally unstable.

William Phillips (1722-1804) had held many town offices over the years, including selectman and moderator of town meetings. The North End Caucus, and the men of Boston, no doubt saw him as a dependable guardian of their interests in the General Court.

So that settled the question of representation, right? Not that year. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson was maneuvering to separate Hancock from the influence of Samuel Adams and even dreamed of making him an ally. It looks like Hutchinson let it be known that if the legislature elected Hancock to the Council, or upper house, he wouldn’t veto that selection, as he and his predecessor had done in the past. That would open up another representative’s seat.

On 19 May, the North End Caucus gathered one day before another town meeting. The main items of that meeting’s agenda were instructions for the town’s new representatives and the school budget. But the caucus took up another motion:

Voted—unanimously—That in consequence of the past misconduct of —— —— Esq. this body will oppose his appointment to any office of trust of the town.

Both surviving transcriptions of the caucus’s records omit that person’s name, but I suspect it was James Otis. There were many gentlemen the North End Caucus didn’t think would be good representatives for the town, but Otis was the only one I can picture them discussing as a serious possibility if another seat in the General Court opened up soon. Caucus members wanted to forestall any thought of returning Otis to office. Boston had tried that once already, and it hadn’t worked out well for anyone.

The General Court assembled at the end of the month. As things turned out, Hancock was elected to the Council, Hutchinson approved his name, and then Hancock declined to take the seat. He stayed in the House, closer to the voters whose approval he enjoyed, and there was no need for a special election to replace him.

There are no records of a North End Caucus meeting between May 1772 and March 1773, so we don’t know how its members reacted to Samuel Adams’s controversial proposal for a standing committee of correspondence in November 1772. They probably supported it, given their usual positions. The town’s selectmen and representatives were lukewarm on the idea at best, and Adams needed the support of town-meeting diehards to get it through.

Otis was named chairman of that prominent committee, which seems like a contradiction of this caucus’s vote in May. However, there were twenty other members, and the meeting specifically assigned the responsibility of drafting its first three reports to Adams, Dr. Joseph Warren, and Dr. Benjamin Church, Jr. Otis’s role was limited to presenting those essays to the town meeting on 20 November—the last formal political responsibility granted the man who had once been the most powerful elected official in Massachusetts.

“Otis is in Confusion yet.”

On 6 May 1772, a Boston town meeting elected four men to represent the town in the Massachusetts General Court, or provincial legislature: Thomas Cushing, the House’s longtime Speaker; Samuel Adams, its Clerk; John Hancock; and William Phillips.

There were a couple of notable details about that election. One was how many votes Adams received relative to the other three men; I’ll deal with that later, around Election Day.

But the first thing to note is that James Otis, Jr. (shown here), was not on that slate of representatives. As a Boston representative, he had led the opposition to Gov. Francis Bernard through most of the 1760s.

Then in September 1769 Otis got into a coffee-house brawl with Customs Commissioner John Robinson and suffered a head injury. On 16 Jan 1770, John Adams wrote in his diary: “Otis is in Confusion yet. He looses himself. He rambles and wanders like a Ship without an Helm.”

Otis sat out the General Court election in March 1770. On the slate he was replaced by James Bowdoin, whom Gov. Bernard had pushed out of his usual seat on the Council. When the new governor, Thomas Hutchinson, let Bowdoin join the Council again, Boston had a special election and chose John Adams as its fourth representative.

Meanwhile, Otis’s behavior turned wild. On the 16th, merchant John Rowe wrote in his diary: “Mr. Otis got into a mad freak to-night, and broke a great many windows in the Town House.” On 22 April, the day after Ebenezer Richardson was convicted of murder for shooting out his window and killing a boy, Rowe wrote: “This afternoon Mr. Otis behaved very madly, firing guns out of his window, that caused a large number of people to assemble about him.” Acquaintances like John Adams had complained about Otis’s florid behavior on some private occasions, but these actions were public. Otis’s family sequestered him for more treatment.

By March 1771, Otis had recovered enough to stand for office again. (Meanwhile, John Adams was suffering health problems and souring on politics; he gave up the legislature and moved back to Braintree.) That year’s Boston representatives were once again Cushing, Adams, Hancock, and Otis.

But right away people wondered if Otis was going to be reliable.

TOMORROW: James Otis’s 1771.

New Light on the North End Caucus

As Appendix C to his two-volume 1891 biography of Paul Revere, Elbridge H. Goss printed the “Proceedings of the North End Caucus,” which he said had been provided by A. O. Crane, a Boston publisher. Those documents have since disappeared, and historians have used Goss’s transcription as their best source.

This weekend I stumbled across an earlier publication of the same documents in the 25 Nov 1826 Boston News-Letter and City Record, also available through Google Books. The newspaper credited “a gentleman at the North End” for sharing his reminiscences. (The historian Richard Frothingham saw another version of those documents while preparing his 1849 history of the siege, but didn’t publish a transcription.)

There are many small deviations between the two transcriptions, such as in italicization or spelling proper names—enough to suggest that they were separate efforts and Goss wasn’t just reprinting from a newspaper provided by Crane. I also saw three significant differences.

In the first entry, dated 22 Mar 1772, the caucus appointed a committee to inquire into the “Minovery” of the town according to the 1826 transcription. Eighteenth-century dictionaries define that word as a form of trespass “by hand,” as in cutting wood or setting traps on land one doesn’t own. In the 1891 transcription that obscure word became “Minority,” which makes more sense in a political context but still raises questions. The clause appears to be about consulting with others in Boston about when to have a town meeting and what its business should be.

On 4 May 1773, the Boston News-Letter transcription says, the North End Caucus voted “the Pleasant-street [in the far South End] be not accepted as a town-street.” That item doesn’t appear at all in the Goss transcription. Perhaps that’s connected to the fact that the North Enders’ position lost when this issue came up for a vote. At the very least, it’s significant evidence that the North End Caucus couldn’t carry the town meeting on all issues—i.e., they didn’t always represent a majority.

On 9 May 1774 the caucus voted to oppose a petition from a man named Leonard. In the News-Letter he is named as “Geo. Leonard,” and in Goss he is “Gen. Leonard.” The records of the next day’s town meeting show that Boston rejected George Leonard’s petition to build a grist mill on Fort Hill in the South End. Leonard had managed the mill beside the North End earlier, but he had shown himself to be a Loyalist. [Not the most prominent Loyalist of that name, however.]

The Goss transcription includes a couple of blanks where individuals’ names have been deliberately left out. Alas, the News-Letter transcription has blanks in the same places, indicating that they were included in the North End Caucus’s original record.

TOMORROW: But some contextual study can fill them in.

The Mystery of the Meeting “at West-Corcus in Boston”

On Friday the Journal of the American Revolution at AllThingsLiberty.com featured my article on the word “caucus,” which surfaced in Boston in 1760, became increasingly accepted over the next decade and a half, and took final form in the history that the Rev. William Gordon published in London in 1788.

People have puzzled over the origin of that word since 1763, when it was still spelled “Corcas” or “corkus.” A lot of the theories about its derivation are based on the “caucus” spelling, and though that might well be how Bostonians pronounced the word, that’s not how they saw it. Instead, we have to look for roots of “Corcas.”

Around 1940, Craigie and Hulbert’s Dictionary of American English on Historical Principles reported that an article in the 19 Aug 1745 Boston Evening-Post referred to a neighborhood in Boston called “West-Corcus.” Other language reference books have repeated that fact as a possible clue, but I don’t see any sign that their authors went to look at that reference in context. I just did. Of course, the Early American Newspapers database makes that task a lot easier today.

The newspaper item does indeed call for a meeting “at West-Corcus in Boston.” However, the whole piece appears to be one of those sarcastic eighteenth-century essays pretending to be someone on the opposite side of a controversy in order to lampoon that side’s views. That makes it very hard to parse out what details, if any, readers were supposed to recognize as relating to real life and what were obviously satirical.

In this case, the controversy was prompted by the visit of the Rev. George Whitefield (shown above, courtesy of NNDB.com) to Boston in early 1745. His “New Light” style of open-air preaching had set off a split and long debate with the “Old Lights” of traditional Congregationalism. (A century later a religious historian would dub this period “the First Great Awakening,” but at the time it seems to have felt more like people who were already religious staying up late arguing fine points of theology when what really mattered was who was in charge.)

This Evening-Post item takes the form of “A Layman” asking the publisher to run a “NOTIFICATION” that says:

WHereas the Association of Lay-Brethren, lately convened at Boston, to take into their serious Consideration the Conduct of those Reverend Clergymen, who have encouraged the Iteration [i.e., departure] of Mr. George Whitefield, whereby the Liberties of the Laity have been invaded, Peace and good Order in many of their Families destroyed, and Reason given for the Report of an unhappy spread of dangerous Doctrines and Divisions, as well as Clerical Encroachments and Usurpations; judge is highly seasonable, that all the Laymen in the Country, who lament the said Disorders, dangerous Doctrines, Divisions and Clerical Usurpations, and cordially approve of the well-known Churches Quarrel espoused, wrote by our excellent and venerable Father John Wise, Anno 1715. should have a general Meeting in order to declare their united Approbation of and Adherence to the great Truths of the Gospel, as exhibited in said Book, and recommend the same, and to consult of proper Methods to maintain them, as an happy Band of Union and special Means to prevent those Disorders, Divisions and Encroachments, and recover and preserve the Gospel Order and vital Piety they lead to; as also to make Enquiry, and bring Accounts of the State of said Ministers in the several Churches, both as to their Doctrine and Behaviour, and to bear proper Testimony against such Errors and evil Practices of theirs as may appear to have any threatening Aspect on Religion and good Order among us.

It is accordingly proposed, that there be such a general Meeting, and that it be held on the last Wednesday of September next, at WEST-CORCUS in Boston aforesaid. Published at the Desire of the abovesaid Association, by
Z. T. Clerk to the Association.

The item closed with a couple of “important Questions” for that gathering to consider:

Whether Christ, after his Resurrection, promised his Presence and Blessing to any other but ITINERANT Preachers? And if not,

Whether the standing Ministry ought not to be dismissed to make way for those Apostolical Preachers? Which will save this Province at least 50,000 per Annum.

Read literally, this item suggested doing away with all the settled ministers and meeting-houses in Massachusetts in favor of traveling preachers like Whitefield. But I don’t think the author expected folks to read the piece literally.

Rather, it’s an attempt at a reductio ad absurdum of Whitefield’s popularity over the long-established ministers of Boston and surrounding towns. The writer was basically sneering, “If all you people want to stand outside and listen to some guy who just arrived in New England last year, then maybe you don’t want to have meeting-houses at all! Maybe you’ll listen to just anyone passing through town!”

What might the phrase “at WEST-CORCUS in Boston” mean in that context? It doesn’t appear to be the real name for a Boston neighborhood, as Craigie and Hulbert assumed; there’s no other reference to such a place in the newspapers of the day. But beyond that I’m not at all sure.

• Was there already a political “Corcas” operating under that name, fifteen years before the next mention of it in the newspapers, and were its leaders known to be fans of Whitefield?
• Was “Corcus” a glancing reference to the Scottish kirk, which in 1745 might imply that Whitefield and his followers were somehow less loyal than adherents of established meetings, as well as less respectable?
• Was “West-Corcus” a reference to a tavern in the western part of town? Again, there’s no other reference to such an establishment in the newspapers.
• Was “Corcus” just a nonsense word, suggesting that anyone who’d want to attend this meeting should go to the ends of the earth?

TOMORROW: And what’s all that about “our excellent and venerable Father John Wise, Anno 1715”?

John Adams and “Uncle Fairfield”

I’ve been reviewing the Boston 1775 postings related to the caucus, starting with this one from 2008. That quoted John Adams’s 1763 description of what he’d heard about the “Caucas Clubb” that met in Thomas Dawes’s attic. His list of members was: “Uncle Fairfield, Story, Ruddock, Adams, Cooper, and a rudis indigestaque Moles of others.”

I spotted local office-holders William Story, John Ruddock, Samuel Adams, and William Cooper, but for the first name on that list all I could write was:

I haven’t identified “Uncle Fairfield,” who was presumably one of John Adams’s uncles. [How’s that for historical detective work?]

Back in 1961, the editors of the first volume of the Papers of John Adams could only guess at that relationship and wrote, “JA frequently used ‘Uncle’ or ‘Aunt’ for an older person vaguely related to himself.”

In a 1970 New England Quarterly article titled “The Caucus and Democracy in Colonial Boston,” G. B. Warden identified that man as William Fairfield (1692-1770), elected as one of Boston’s property assessors from 1742 to his death. Fairfield wasn’t John Adams’s uncle, said Warden—he was Samuel Adams’s uncle. He was a brother of Samuel Adams’s mother Mary, whose original surname is often rendered as “Fifield” or “Fyfield.”

But was that John Adams’s only relationship to “Uncle Fairfield”? On 30 May 1771 he wrote in his diary:

I rode this forenoon from little Cambridge [i.e., modern Allston-Brighton] to Brewers [tavern in Waltham], with Mr. Ruggles of Roxbury, the Butcher, and I find him my Relation.—His Mother, who is still living above 70, is Sister to my Grandmother, Aunt Fairfield, Aunt Sharp, and Aunt Ruggles of Rochester, and Parson Ruggles of Rochester, and the Butchers Father were Brothers, so that Tim and he are very near—both by fathers and Mothers side.

Decoded, that passage means that “Aunt Fairfield” and the butcher’s mother were both sisters of John Adams’s grandmother Ann (White) Boylston. And indeed, records show that in 1727 Elizabeth White (1697-1769) married William Fairfield of Boston. Thus, “Uncle Fairfield” was also John Adams’s great-uncle by marriage.

Furthermore, that conversation reveals that the butcher’s mother, “still living,” must have been Joanna (White) Ruggles (1701-1778). She had two sons, the younger one named Nathaniel—and what do you know? The Boston selectmen’s minutes show that an out-of-town butcher named Nathaniel Ruggles leased a stall in or beside Faneuil Hall market in the 1760s, and got into an ongoing dispute over whether he would sell hides to Boston tanners at a set price as his lease required.

How He Made Himself So Important

One of the more curious curios of pre-Revolutionary Boston is a broadside titled “The CONVERSATION of two Persons under a Window on Monday Evening the 23d of March.” The dialogue that follows is about a town meeting, which indicates the date of the printing: the only year when Bostonians met on Monday, 23 March, was 1767.

The dialogue focuses on a politician referred to as “Pug Sly.” One surviving copy of this broadside has a handwritten note identifying that character as Royall Tyler—not the playwright, novelist, and jurist who took that name as he came of age, but his father. The senior Royall Tyler held several respected offices in Boston, including Fireward, Overseer of the Poor, and Representative to the General Court. By 1767 he was being elected each year to the Governor’s Council, where he was one of the more radical Whig voices.

The broadside describes how “Pug Sly” built his political popularity. It’s obviously a hostile portrait, but also some of our best evidence about how politicians won elections in this period when they weren’t supposed to openly campaign. One of the broadside’s voices says:

When quite young, how did he work himself into the Corcas; and was knowing to all their transactions: and whenever he found there was to be a change of [town] officers, he would as a fawning sycophant, let them know they were to be chose in office; so as to take the merit of it to himself: that some was made to believe that “PUG’s interest alone was all the Town.”

And every one that did not sacrifice to him, he would (to use his own word) give them a trip: and at this game there is not his equal. His thirst for honor, has put him upon the most dirty actions that a reasonable being is capable of:

I once ask’d him how he made himself so important. “Why, says he, I’ll tell you. To some I cry: some I coax: to some I scold: and put on an important appearance of friendship to all. As to the mechanicks; I take my rounds, turn in about eleven o’clock; and mix in with the conversation, and nothing will take them fellows in like it. When there is to be an engine supper [i.e., banquet of a volunteer firefighting company], I lay a plan to be invited; and they fix me at the head of the table, and pay me as much homage as a demi-god: You would sometimes laugh your soul out, if you was to see how I work them poor toads.

[“]As to those in higher life, I put on a sabbady [serious, Sabbath-Day] face; frequently apply to them for advice; sometimes upon affairs of great importance. I suppose (now under the rose) I have been to fifty, to ask advice about making my will. I have taken my pipe in the evening, collected the neighbours, set an affair on foot only to see how far I could carry it; and when I have got it to the pitch I wanted it, then I lower’d, and set it down just where I found it.”

As this election year proceds, I’ll quote more political advice attributed to “Pug Sly” and the elder Royall Tyler.

An Even Earlier “Corcas”

I started my longer-than-expected series of postings about the Boston caucus with what I said was the earliest surviving written use of that word, from John Adams’s diary in 1763. I was wrong about that. So was my Oxford English Dictionary.

The word first appeared three years earlier in the form “corcas.” One usage on 12 May 1760 was spotted by Richard Frothingham in his Life and Times of Joseph Warren (1865), though he didn’t provide an exact date, and by Henry M. Brooks in the fourth volume of his Olden Time Series of miscellany from Boston’s colonial newspapers (1886). Those references bubbled up to me through some lucky Googling. Then I used the newspaper database I described back here and found an example even older—by one week.

This notice appeared in the Boston Gazette on 5 May 1760:

Whereas it is reported, that certain Persons, of the modern Air and Complexion, to the Number of Twelve at least, have divers Times of late been known to combine together, and are called by the Name of the New and Grand Corcas, tho’ of declared Principles directly opposite to all that have been heretofore known:

And whereas it is vehemently suspected, by some, that their Design is nothing less, than totally to overthrow, the ancient Constitution of our Town-Meetings, as being popular and mobbish; and to form a Committee to transact the whole Affairs of the Town for the future; which hath greatly alarmed the Minds of sober Housholders, as well Merchants as Tradesmen and others;

And whereas it is further reported, that this Combination of Twelve Strangers, having no Prospect of bringing about this ever-to-be-dreaded Revolution, without the Aid and Authority of the General Assembly, do intend to employ their whole Strength, to obtain such a Choice of Representatives, at the ensuing Election, as will best serve their grand Purpose; which can be by no Means effected, but by leaving out two Gentlemen, who they have Reason to believe will strenuously and constantly oppose, all violent Invasions of our civil or religious Rights:—

And whereas it is confidently asserted by some, and many are verily persuaded of the same, that this said new and grand Corcas, have with many Asseverations engaged, to make a Point or carrying an Election, for any Manner of Persons, and by all Manner of Ways and Means whatever, in Opposition to the two Gentlemen above refer’d to; and particularly of detering all Tradesmen, and those whom in Contempt they usually term the Low lived People, from appearing to vote against their Designs, by strict Scrutinies, by Threatnings of Arrests, by turnings out of Employ, and other Methods of Violence, too many to be here enumerated.

THIS is to give Notice, that the Committee of Tradesmen, have taken into cool and deliberate Consultation these Reports and Suspicions, and admitting that there be such a combining together, and that their Principles and Designs be such as is represented, The said Committee of Tradesmen do mutually judge and determine, their Principles to be pernicious, and their Designs and Efforts to be of no Sort of Significancy.—

And the said Committee of Tradesmen, do hereby exhort their good Friends, the Members of the old and true Corcas, who have from Time immemorial been zealously affected, to our ancient Establishment in Church and State, to behave at the ensuing Town Meeting with their usual Steadiness, and like honest Freeman to vote for WHOM THEY PLEASE.

At our Meeting at the Sign
of the Broad Ax, near
the North Star,
May 2, 1760

So as of 1760, Gazette readers were expected to recognize “Members of the old and true Corcas” as representing the interests of tradesmen, as opposed to the “new and grand Corcas.” The latter, this notice warned, was about to engage in voter-suppression efforts to win seats in the General Court for the candidates they preferred.

The issue here might have been an attempt to change Boston’s constitution from a town-meeting system to a city with a mayor and aldermen. That more efficient, more elite system of governance didn’t take hold until the early 1800s. Of course, the writer tossed in the additional incendiary issues of religion, class, and whether the advocates of a new system were “Strangers.”

A week later the committee returned to the Gazette with more sarcasm:

The Committee of Tradesmen hereby advise their Constituents and others, to set apart a decent Portion of Time (at least one Hour) previous to the Opening of the Town-Meeting To-Morrow, to shift themselves and put on their Sabbath Day Clothes; also to wash their Hands and Faces, that they may appear neat and cleanly; Inasmuch as it hath been reported to said Committee of Tradesmen, that Votes are to be GIVEN AWAY, by the delicate Hands of the New and Grand Corcas; and they would have no Offence given to Turk or Jew, much less to Gentlemen who attend upon so charitable a Design.—

Nothing of the least Significancy was transacted at a late Meeting of the said new and grand Corcas to require any further Attention of said Committee.

Again we see the custom of handing out prepared ballots with the name of one caucus’s candidates.

I’d thought that “Corkass” from March 1763 was a very rude corruption of “Caucas,” but it might be a merely slightly rude spelling of an older form of the word, “Corcas.” As Boston 1775 commenters have noted, when locals had a tendency to swallow their Rs, words can be spelled with or without them.

Putting these notices alongside the 1763 complaints about the more popularly-based caucus shows the value of this old adage (which I just thought up): When my friends and I organize to elect the candidates we like, that’s democracy in action; when our rivals organize to elect the candidates they like, that’s a grave threat to democracy that must be stopped.

I welcome even earlier appearances of “caucus,” however it’s spelled.

The North End Caucus Mobilizes Against the Tea

So yesterday the North End Caucus—a group of more than sixty politically minded Bostonians—started meeting in 1772 to choose candidates for town offices. This appears to have been an outgrowth of an earlier, smaller, wealthier “Caucas Club.” That first year, the only times the North End Caucus met were just before town meetings in March and May, when Bostonians elected their officials and representatives to the General Court. The same pattern applied in early 1773. But then in late October a dire threat to British liberties loomed on the eastern horizon: tea.

On 23 Oct 1773 the North End Caucus assembled, elected shipwright Gibbons Sharp their moderator, and then:

Voted—That this body will oppose the vending any Tea, sent by the East India Company to any part of the Continent, with our lives and fortunes.

Voted—That there be a committee chosen to correspond with any Committee chosen in any part of the town, on this occation; and call this body together at any time they think necessary.—Paul Revere, Abiel Ruddock and John Lowell the Committee.

Revere was a well connected silversmith with some talent in engraving and dentistry. Ruddock was secretary of the caucus and heir to a late shipyard owner, John Ruddock. Lowell was a young lawyer (unless that was a different John Lowell). They thus represented the cross-section of their group: a well-established craftsman, a major employer, and a professional gentleman. [ADDENDUM, Dec 2008: I now believe this John Lowell was a thirty-three-year-old merchant from a Charlestown family, not a young lawyer. He had been part of a Boston town committee to promote a tea boycott in 1770.]

The North End Caucus met again on 2 November, for the first time gathering at the Green Dragon Tavern (shown above). This building had become the property of the St. Andrew’s Lodge of Freemasons a few years before, but it continued to function as a tavern. The group chose merchant Nathaniel Holmes as their moderator and then began issuing demands:

Voted—That a committee be chosen to wait upon the Committee of Correspondence of this town, and desire their attendance here. Committee, B[enjamin]. Kent, E[dward]. Proctor, and G[abriel]. Johonnot.

Voted—That a committee be chosen to wait on John Hancock, Esq. and desire him to meet with us. Committee, John Winthrop, Capt. [John] Matchet, and G. Johonnot.

Voted—That this body are determined that the Tea shipped or to be shipped by the East India Company shall not be landed.

Voted—That a committee be chosen to draw a resolution to be read to the Tea Consignees to-morrow 12 O’Clock, noon, at Liberty Tree: and that Dr. Thos. Young and [Dr. Benjamin] Church, and [Dr. Joseph] Warren, be a committee for that purpose, and make a report as soon as may be.

To deliver its messages to town officials and rich merchants, the caucus called only on its more genteel members: other merchants and professionals.

The next day the group gathered again at noon and voted to accept the recommendation of its committee of three doctors:

And the Committee reported as follows. viz. that Thos. and Elisha Hutchinson [the governor’s sons], R[ichard]. Clark & Sons, and Benjamin Faneuil [the tea consignees appointed in London], by neglecting to give satisfaction as their fellow-citizens justly expected from them in this hour, relative to their acceptance of an office destructive to this Community, have intolerably insulted this body, and in case they do not appear, forthwith, and satisfy their reasonable expectation, this body will look upon themselves warrented to esteem them enemies to their Country; and will not fail to make them feel the weight of their just resentment.

The caucus had lined up support from other activists, the town’s standing Committee of Correspondence, and the most popular young merchant around. It had given the tea consignees a chance to resign. Now the North End Caucus took their crusade “out of doors.” Instead of meeting privately, they summoned the people of Boston to a public meeting:

Voted—That Capt. Proctor, John Lowell, G. Johonnot, James Swan, John Winthrop and T[homas]. Chase be a committee to get a flag for Liberty Tree.

Voted that Thos. Hichborn and John Boit be a committee for posting up said notification.

Boston’s Whigs had made a habit of flying a flag at Liberty Tree to gather crowds in the late 1760s, but apparently that practice had fallen into abeyance since the North End Caucus needed to roust up another flag. Thomas Chase owned the distillery under Liberty Tree, and the rest of the men on his committee were merchants and professionals. In contrast, Thomas Hichborn was a boatbuilder and John Boit a shopkeeper—probably seen as more fitting for the actual work of putting up notices for this public meeting.

The North End Caucus thus started mobilizing against tea imports in October and was calling meetings in early November—weeks in advance of the arrival of the first tea. It appears that the caucus was pushing other local groups and institutions along. In addition, the first group to patrol the wharf where a tea ship docked was led by the caucus’s Capt. Proctor, and the first four volunteers and eight of the first eleven on his list were also members of the North End Caucus.

Listening in on the North End Caucus

I’ve been tracing the development of Boston’s caucus system, and am now pleased to come to actual records from the “North End Caucus” from 1772 to 1775. A century ago these papers were in the hands of Boston publisher A. O. Crane. They were printed as Appendix C in Elbridge Henry Goss’s Life of Colonel Paul Revere, volume 2 (1891). As of today, alas, Google Books has scanned only the first volume of this biography.

Richard Frothingham had seen such documents when he wrote his History of the Siege of Boston (first published 1849), and one of his footnotes adds some details:

• The word caucus was actually spelled “caucos”—another clue to its etymology?
  
• “On the first leaf is the memorandum, ‘Began 1767—records lost.’”
• “On the cover, under the date of March 23, there is a list of sixty persons, probably the members of the caucus.”
• The documents originally extended to 17 May 1774, though the surviving transcript ends on 9 May.
  

The vote to define the duties of a secretary (quoted below) make me think the 23 Mar 1772 meeting was when the North End Caucus was founded and organized, and the 1767 date refers to an earlier or parent group. That also fits with John Eliot’s 1809 statement that the members of an existing caucus decided to expand in 1772.

The North End group’s first recorded meeting took place at the Salutation Tavern on North Street. That tavern’s sign showed two gentlemen conversing, which inspired an alternative name for the establishment: the Two Palaverers. The thumbnail picture up top shows a 1773 London print called “The Salutation Tavern,” by Henry Bunbury (1750-1811), inspired by a public house of the same name in Holburn. This print is part of the digital images collection at Yale University Libraries.

The list of sixty caucus members starts with William Molineux, Samuel Adams, Gibbons Sharp, and John Adams. Was this John Adams the lawyer, one-term town representative, and future President? At the time, he was living in Braintree, not Boston. Then again, Molineux lived on Beacon Hill (where the State House now stands) and Samuel Adams lived in the South End. So the North End Caucus wasn’t confined to men from Boston’s North End.

The family of selectman John Ruddock, which was the biggest man in the neighborhood, was represented by his son Abiel Ruddock, who became the caucus’s secretary, and his son-in-law, Dr. Elisha Story. Dr. Joseph Warren and Dr. Thomas Young were both present. Men from the Loyall Nine of 1765 included Thomas Chase, Henry Bass, and Benjamin Edes.

As far as the meeting goes, its records are about as exciting as the records of any other meeting whose goal is to build and demonstrate consensus rather than to record divisions or disagreement. The secretary noted the group’s decisions without preserving any hint of the debate or, if the vote wasn’t unanimous, saying how close it was. Thus, the first meeting’s business was:

At a meeting of the North End Caucus, Boston, held at Mr. William Campbell’s March 23, 1772. . . .
Gibbens Sharp, was Moderator.
Abiel Ruddock Secretary.

Voted—That the Secretary be desired to record the proceedings of the Caucus.

Voted—That we will use our endeavours for Oliver Wendell, Esq., to be Selectman, in the room of Dr. Jon Greenleaf, resigned.

Voted—That Capt. Cazneau and Nathaniel Barber, be a Committee to write votes for the body, and distribute them, accordingly.

Voted—That Messrs G. Sharp, N. Barber, T. Hitchborn, Capt. Pulling, H. Bass, Paul Revere, J. Ballard, Dr. Young, T. Kimball, Abiel Ruddock, and John Lowell, be a committee to examine into the Minority of the town, and report to this body. And, also, that this Committee notify the body when and where to meet.

I believe “to write votes for the body” meant writing out ballots with the names of the caucus’s preferred candidates that voters could use in a town meeting and not have to write their own. I don’t know what the “Minority of the town” might mean: the rest of town, the outvoted group, the younger set?

The North End Caucus met again on 5 May to decide their preferences for Boston’s representatives in the General Court. Unstated in that record is how James Otis, Jr., was no longer up to that job, so the caucus wished to replace him with William Phillips. Most of the time, the caucus endorsed all the incumbent office-holders.

The May meeting also appointed committees “to wait upon the South End Caucus, and let them know what we have done, and that we shall be glad of their concurrence with us in the same choice,” and the same for the “Caucus in the Middle part of the town.” Again, these caucuses springing up all over seem to have been part of the expansion that year. The North End records have more references to those other two caucuses, but so far as I know we have no documents from those groups themselves. The North End Caucus never recorded receiving messages or advice from those other groups. Perhaps it was the most influential caucus, or perhaps it was simply fast off the mark.

There are some tantalizing gaps in the record, left either by the original secretary or by someone transcribing the document later. On 19 May 1772 the caucus:

Voted—unanimously—That in consequence of the past misconduct of ——— Esq. this body will oppose his appointment to any office of trust of the tow[n]

On 9 May 1774, the caucus got into the affairs of an unidentified church:

Voted—That the prayer of the Rev. ——— Congregation’s petition be supported.

Most of the few other non-election items seem mundane. On 4 May 1773, the caucus agreed “That this body will use their influence to have Kilby st. paved, if they petition according to the ancient custom of the town.” That looks like ordinary neighborhood politics. But when the caucus decided on 9 May 1774, “That this body oppose letting the granery being appropriated to another purpose than it is at present,” I bet that refers to the possibility that the government-owned granary (where Park Street Church now stands) might be turned into barracks for the troops that the London government had ordered into Boston.

In his Biographical Dictionary John Eliot recalled that the expanded caucus “always had a mechanick for moderator.” Gibbons Sharp was a shipwright, though also respectable enough to be a church deacon. However, the group chose insurance broker Nathaniel Barber, merchant Nathaniel Holmes, and physician Thomas Young as moderators on other days. Eliot wrote, “After the destruction of the tea, the place of assembling was known, and they met at the Green Dragon in the spring of 1775.” The North End Caucus actually met at the Green Dragon Tavern first in November 1773, before the Boston Tea Party, and returned to the Salutation Tavern for one meeting in March 1774. So Eliot must have been working off people’s memories rather than the written records.

TOMORROW: The North End Caucus and the Boston Tea Party.

Boston’s Caucus Expands in 1772

One of Boston’s political changes in the years leading up to the Revolutionary War, according to John Eliot’s A Biographical Dictionary (1809), was an expansion of the caucus to include craftsmen as well as genteel officials and businessmen.

In his entry on Dr. Joseph Warren, Eliot (1754-1813) wrote:

From the year 1768 [actually much earlier], a number of politicians met at each other’s houses to discuss publick affairs, and the settle upon the best methods of serving the town and country. Many of these filled publick offices. But the meetings were private, and had a silent influence upon the publick body.

In 1772 they agreed to increase their number, to meet in a large room, and invite a number of substantial mechanicks to join them, and hold a kind of caucus, pro bono publico. They met in a house near the north battery, and more than 60 were present at the first meeting. Their regulations were drawn up by Dr. Warren and another gentleman, and they never did any thing important without consulting him and his particular friends.

It answered a good purpose to get such a number of mechanicks together; and though a number of whigs of the first character in the town were present, they always had a mechanick for moderator, generally one who could carry many votes by his influence. It was a matter of policy likewise to assemble at that part of the town. It had the effect to awake the north wind, and stir the waters of the troubled sea.

By this body of men the most important matters were decided—they agreed who should be in town offices, in the general court, in the provincial congress, from Boston. Here the committees of publick service were formed, the plan for military companies, and all necessary means of defence. They met about two years steadily at one place. After the destruction of the tea, the place of assembling was known, and they met at the Green Dragon in the spring of 1775, with as many more from the south end, and the records of their proceedings are still preserved.

The writer of these memoirs has been assured by some of the most prominent characters of this caucus, that they were guided by the prudence and skilful management of Dr. Warren, who, with all his zeal and irritability, was a man calculate to carry on any secret business; and that no man ever did manifest more vigilance, circumspection and care.

In every country there are politicians, who are the mere cymbals of the mob, and answer some good purpose, when they are not left to themselves. In this country, through all stages of the revolution, we had many such, who, to their own imagination, appeared to direct the affairs of the publick. Such men were never admitted to be members of the caucus here mentioned; many of them never knew the secret springs, that moved the great wheels, but thought themselves very important characters, because they were sons of liberty, and excelled others in garulity, or made a louder cry upon the wharves, or at corners of streets.

Eliot seems to have had someone in mind when he wrote the last paragraph. I just wish I knew who it was.

TOMORROW: Actual minutes from colonial caucus meetings.

Jemmy’s in the Caucas, and Jemmy’s with the Reps

Yet another early mention of the Boston caucus! As the 1765 Massachusetts General Court elections approached, James Otis, Jr., was in political trouble. He’d been the Boston merchants’ most aggressive advocate and representative since 1761, when he argued the writs of assistance case. But in early 1765 his father had received a royal appointment, and Otis suddenly toned down his rhetoric.

Otis’s apparent flip-flopping was too easy a target for his old critic Samuel Waterhouse to pass by. The 13 May 1765 issue of the Boston Evening-Post included “Jemmibullero: A Fragment of an Ode of Orpheus,” ostensibly by “Peter Minim, Esq.” With a title alluding to the popular song “Lillibullero,” the verse went a little something like this:

II.
And Jemmy is a lying dog, and Jemmy is a thief,
And Jemmy is a jury-mouther,—Jemmy spouts his brief,
And Jemmy is a grammar-smith, and Jemmy is a grub,
And Jemmy is a Cooper’s vessel—Jemmy is a tub.

Sing tititumti, tumtititi tititumti, tee,
And tumtititi, tititumti, tumtiprosodee.

III.
And Jemmy’s a town-meeting man, & Jemmy makes a speech,
And Jemmy swears that LIBERTY and LIBERTY he’ll preach,
And Jemmy’s in the CAUCAS, and Jemmy’s with the REPS,
And all who’d rise as Jemmy rose must tread in Jemmy’s steps.

Sing tititumti, tumtititi tititumti, tee,
And tumtititi, tititumti, tumtiprosodee. . . .

VII.
As Jemmy is an envious dog, and Jemmy is ambitious,
And rage and slander, spite and dirt to Jemmy are delicious,
So Jemmy rail’d at upper folks while Jemmy’s DAD was out,
But Jemmy’s DAD has now a place, so Jemmy’s turn’d about.

Sing tititumti, tumtititi tititumti, tee,
And tumtititi, tititumti, tumtiprosodee.

VIII.
Now Jemmy varies scrawl and talk, as answers Jemmy’s ends,
And MARTIN’s far-stretcht LIBERTY, COURT JEMMY reprehends,
And Jemmy is of this mind, & Jemmy is of that,
And Jemmy’d fain make something out, but Jemmy can’t tell what.

Sing tititumti, tumtititi tititumti, tee,
And tumtititi, tititumti, tumtiprosodee.

The name Orpheus might allude to an odd episode in Otis’s college days, thought to be his first episode of irrationality, when he compared himself to the legendary Greek musician. “Cooper’s vessel” probably refers to William Cooper, Boston’s town clerk. I don’t get the second line of verse VIII at all.

This attack on Otis actually seems to have benefited him. According to John Adams, writing in 1818, the Boston Whigs had been ready to withhold their support from Otis.

The public opinion of all the friends of their country was decided. The public voice was pronounced in accents so terrible, that Mr. Otis fell into a disgrace, from which nothing but Jemmibullero saved him.

The poem made Otis sympathetic again, and probably convinced voters that he would never find a home among friends of the royal government.

After yet another Evening-Post attack on Otis in 1766, he wrote to his sister, Mercy Warren (shown above), ostensibly addressing a concern of her husband, James (even though she was just as politically savvy):

Tell him to give himself no concern about the scurrilous piece in Tom Fleet’s paper; it has served me as much as the song did last year. The Tories are all ashamed of this as they were of that. The author is not yet certainly known, tho’ I think I am within a week of detecting him for certain. If I should, shall try to cure him once for all by stringing him up, not bodily, but in such a way as shall gibbet his memory to all generations in Terrorem.

It’s thought that the 1766 attack, like “Jemmibullero,” came from Samuel Waterhouse.