Paul Revere’s Crispus Attucks as a Man of Color

People often say that Paul Revere’s print of the Boston Massacre leaves out Crispus Attucks.

I’ve questioned that received wisdom, pointing to copies of the print in which a particular face in the lower left appears to be painted a shade darker than all the other faces. Often that figure is also painted with two bleeding chest wounds, matching Dr. Benjamin Church’s description of Attucks’s body. (The figure is lying supine on the ground, mostly hidden by the crowd, with his face shown upside-down.)

Earlier this year I ran across the digital copy of Revere’s print that belongs to the Free Library of Philadelphia. Here’s the corner of that print showing the wounded and the crowd.

In this print, the figure in question clearly has brown skin and two wounds on his chest. Thus, at least some Revere Massacre prints, and perhaps quite a number, were colored to depict Attucks as an individual man of color.

That conclusion brings up other questions. Was that figure deliberately painted differently in different prints? If so, was that the artists’ choice or the customers’?

“A More Circumstantial Account” of the Massacre

After describing what he saw on King Street during and after the shooting that became known as the Boston Massacre, William Palfrey’s 13 Mar 1770 letter to John Wilkes (shown here) continued:

The return of morning exhibited a most shocking spectacle; the gutters of the street running with blood, & the snow on the ground dyed crimson with the blood & brains of our fellow citizens.

I went the next morning to view one of the bodies; when I was call’d upon a jury of inquest. In the course of the examination many witnesses were sworn, which enables me to give you a more circumstantial account of the matter than you may possibly receive from others, unless they had the same advantage.

At that point Palfrey’s description of events shifted from what he experienced firsthand to what he’d heard other people say. His story became the Boston Whigs’ official line, what they wanted British sympathizers to understand about the event. But there were still some interesting statements reflecting what locals believed.

For example:

It appear’d by the oaths of credible witnesses that Soldiers had been to the houses of some of their friends the Sunday Evening before this tragical event happen’d, and desir’d them, as they tender’d their own safety, to keep out of the way the two nights following: that there would be more blood shed then, than ever was known since the country had been settled.

While these stories were meant to show a premeditated attack, they also show how soldiers had made “friends” in Boston.

As for stationing a sentinel in front of the Customs office:

This has been Customary since the Regiments were quarter’d here. The town have ever since kept a strong military watch, not only to prevent a rescue of the prisoners which was threatened by the soldiers, but also to prevent the lower sort of our own people from making any attempt to revenge the murder of their brethren.

Genteel Whigs like Palfrey were willing to cast the common people as prone to rioting—as long as they could blame outside forces like lawless soldiers for provoking those riots.

The centinel at the Custom house door on seeing the lads approach loaded his piece, which they seeing gatherd near and laugh’d at him without offering any other insult.

Actual eyewitnesses said that Pvt. Hugh White had loaded his musket, pounding the butt on the street, after the barbers’ apprentices had started to bother him. Throughout his letter, Palfrey insisted that locals had given the soldiers no reason to be nervous.

Having reported that Capt. Thomas Preston had ordered his men to fire, Palfrey still had a good word for him:

I cannot leave this subject without doing justice to Capt. Preston so far as to inform you that before this unfortunate event, he always behav’d himself unexceptionably & had the character of a sober, honest man & a good officer,—but Influence, fatal influence!

The letter also tells us how locals watched the removal of soldiers from town:

The 29th have since been sent down [to Castle William], & the embarkation of the 14th begins this day. We shall soon get rid of our Military inmates, & I hope the town will thereby be restor’d to its former state of tranquility.

In this striking passage, Palfrey raised the possibility of the Massacre provoking armed rebellion.

The people, tho’ drove almost to despair by this act of violence, and ready to take immediate vengeance on the offenders, were however restrain’d by the example & persuasion of many of those very men who have been on your side the water branded as incendiaries, & enemies of Great Britain. If there had ever been any intention in the Colonies to rebel, what a fair opening was here made! The military, without the least provocation, slaughtering the unarm’d, defenceless & innocent citizins. The Country for a great distance round was alarm’d & prepar’d themselves to join the people in Boston upon the first signal, & however despicable an opinion Collo. Dalrymple or his associates may entertain of the Bostonians, I assure you, Sir, forty thousand men could have been brot into the gates of this city at 48 hours warning.

Finally, Palfrey noted a rumor that the Crown would appoint Col. William Dalrymple as successor to the departed governor, Francis Bernard:

I have just heard that Collo. Dalrymple is a candidate for our Government. I pray God most heartily we may never be govern’d by a Scotchman, & above all by a Military Scotchman.

Palfrey’s correspondent, Wilkes, had of course made his political name attacking Scottish influence on the British government in his North-Britain magazine, so he would have responded well to badmouthing Scotchmen.

William Palfrey at the Boston Massacre

William Palfrey (1741-1780, shown here) was an apprentice and business protégé of Nathaniel Wheelwright, one of Boston’s leading merchants in the early 1760s. Wheelwright’s personal notes circulated like currency in the Boston economy.

In January 1765, Wheelwright suddenly went bankrupt. Palfrey apparently lost his savings and ended up having to take a job as manager of John Hancock’s shop—a big comedown in a society that expected gentlemen not to work for anyone else.

Palfrey made his way back up the ladder, soon managing a lot of Hancock’s transatlantic trade and also much of the Boston Whigs’ correspondence with like-minded British politicians, most notably John Wilkes.

On 5 Mar 1770, Palfrey was writing a letter to Wilkes when he was distracted by a noise outside his house. It took eight days before Palfrey resumed writing the letter, explaining:

I was oblig’d to break off the above by the alarm of ringing a Bell which I at first imagin’d to be for fire, & being not quite recovered of my late illness did not quit the house but sent my servant to see where it was.

He very soon return’d & told me there was no fire but that some of the inhabitants & soldiers were fighting near King Street. I immediately ran out towards the scene of action & had just got to the East end of the Court house [the Town House] which makes the front of King Street, when I heard the discharge of six or seven musquetts.

I ran with many others towards the place, where I was witness to one of the most shocking scenes that ever was exhibited in a Christian Country. Three unhappy victims lay weltering in their gore; two others mortally wounded, & six others dangerously.

This inhuman piece of barbarity was perpetrated by a party of eight men under the command of one Capt. Thos. Preston of the 29th Regiment. All the bells in Town were immediately rung. The inhabitants gather’d. Some in attempting to remove the dead & wounded were threaten’d & wounded by the soldiers.

The Governor [Thomas Hutchinson] met his Council the same night, & he requested the people to disperse and promis’d they should have justice done them. They very justly urg’d to His Honor that the course of justice had been always hitherto evaded or obstructed in favor of the soldiery, and they were determin’d not to disperse till Capt. Preston was committed. Accordingly at three o’clock in the morning he was taken into custody & committed.

This is the transcription published by the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1863. The letter is now at Harvard’s Houghton Library, and Taylor Stoermer shared a slightly different, probably more accurate transcription of part of the letter here.

TOMORROW: Palfrey on the morning after.

“Paul Revere’s Pictures of the Massacre” in Boston, 9 Mar.

On Saturday, 9 March, I’ll speak to the Daughters of the American Revolution, Paul Revere Chapter, about “Paul Revere’s Pictures of the Boston Massacre.”

Here’s the description we came up with:

Paul Revere’s engraving of the Boston Massacre is famous, but he didn’t design that image. He did, however, produce three additional visual depictions of what happened on March 5, 1770. This talk will dive deep into Revere’s pictures of the fatal violence on King Street and explore what they tell us about the event and its political implications.

Here, as a taste, is the first picture that Revere produced to illustrate the Massacre: a “woodcut” of four coffins representing the first four deaths, carved for the Edes and Gill print shop and used in the Boston Gazette and broadsides.

Revere must have made this image after Crispus Attucks’s real initials became known; in the first week that big corpse was called “Michael Johnson.”

The scythe, hourglass, and “Æ. 17” on Samuel Maverick’s coffin signal his youth—he was only seventeen when he was killed, cut down too soon.

This D.A.R. chapter meeting will take place at the Fenway Community Center, 1282 Boylston Street in Boston. The gathering will start at 11:00 A.M., and I’m scheduled to speak at noon. People who aren’t D.A.R. or S.A.R. members are welcome (but might expect to be recruited as potential members). There will be refreshments and books for sale afterward.

Ripples from the Boston Massacre

Normally around the 5th of March I write about the Boston Massacre, the events that led up to it and its aftermath. But I’ve been recounting a criminal trial from 1785 which is unconnected—or is it?

Several of the figures in that burglary trial have links to the Massacre, showing the small size of pre-industrial Boston and the big impact of the violence on King Street.

Robert Treat Paine, the Massachusetts attorney general in 1785, was a special prosecutor in the Massacre trials. The town of Boston hired him when the royal attorney general, Jonathan Sewall, was looking reluctant.

James Lovell, the victim of the 1784 robbery, was the first man invited by Boston to orate on the Massacre, in April 1771. (Dr. Thomas Young had spoken on the anniversary of the killing at the Manufactory, but that was unofficial. The town took up the idea and ran with it until 1783.)

Defense attorney William Tudor was one of John Adams’s clerks during the Massacre trials. He delivered the anniversary oration in 1779.

Bartholomew Broaders was an elected constable in 1784 who helped to investigate the burglary. Back in 1770, he was one of the barber’s apprentices who got into an argument with Pvt. Hugh White in front of the Customs office, the incident that ballooned into the shooting.

Archibald McNeal, a witness to the burglary in 1784, might also have been a witness to the events of 1770. An Archibald McNeil, Jr., testified for the town report:

that on Saturday the third instant, about half an hour after four in the afternoon, the deponent with two apprentices were spinning at the lower end of Mr. McNeil’s ropewalk, three stout grenadiers, armed with bludgeons, came to them, and addressing the deponent said, You damn’d dogs, don’t you deserve to be kill’d? Are you fit to die?

However, there was at least one other Archibald McNeal in pre-Revolutionary Boston, a baker who evacuated with the British troops in 1776, so this may not be the same man.

As for shopkeeper John Fullerton, also burglarized in 1784, he was one of the victims of the Great Fire of 1760. (Yes, I’ll get back to that story, too.)

A Trial till Half Past One in the Morning

On 3 Mar 1785, the state of Massachusetts brought Thomas Archibald and William Scott to trial for burglarizing the home of James Lovell, a former Continental Congress delegate. Although the burglars took cash, it looks like Lovell was most upset about losing some Continental loan certificates.

The trial took place in the state’s top court. Chief Justice William Cushing, later a U.S. Supreme Court justice, presided. The prosecutor was attorney general Robert Treat Paine, another former Continental Congress delegate.

The court appointed lawyers for the defendants, who had few connections in town and little money. (Another early example of the tenet that people accused of serious crimes deserve strong legal representation, even if the job might be distasteful.)

It’s possible that each man had his own defense attorney. One was William Tudor, a former clerk of John Adams and the first judge advocate general of the Continental Army.

The other was John Silvester Gardiner (1737-1793), who had quite an interesting career. He was born in Boston, son of the prominent surgeon and apothecary Silvester Gardiner. He went to Scotland for schooling and then built a legal career in London, Wales, St. Kitts, and Paris before returning to Boston in 1783. His father was still exiled from Massachusetts as a Loyalist, but John S. Gardiner was fine with that since they didn’t get along.

Gardiner quickly became one of Boston’s leading attorneys, but he practiced for only a couple of years before souring on the local bar. In 1786 he moved again, to land he inherited in Maine. Soon he won a seat in the Massachusetts General Court and used that as his platform for advocating favorite causes: reforming state law, legalizing theater, making Maine a separate state. He was also influential in turning King’s Chapel Unitarian. In The Gardiners of Massachusetts, T. A. Milford summed up the man’s career (on page 1, yet) by writing, “Gardiner was a pest.”

At the trial, the prosecution’s witnesses told the story I summarized over the last two days. The crucial testimony came from Nero Faneuil, saying he was Archibald and Scott’s accomplice turned state’s evidence.

Then came witnesses for the prisoners—or rather for Scott. Archibald doesn’t seem to have put up much of a defense. Scott and his attorney tried to make the case that he was sleeping somewhere else during the crime. Hannah Nelson testified, “I have seen Scot the Tuesday night before thanksgiving he came to our house lodged all Night.” She recalled giving birth around that time, but couldn’t specify the day. Sarah Bond corroborated Scott’s visit, but then another witness, Abigail Willet, testified that “Sally Bond [had] bad Character.”

The result was a flimsy alibi. Imaginatively, one of the defense attorneys argued, “Mrs. Nelson might have Cook’d up a Story for both as well as one”—i.e., if she was just making up a thin story to save Scott from conviction, why didn’t she claim that both men had been at her house?

Another defense argument was “no part of the Property found on any but Nero,” and “Was it not strange that Nero should be trusted with the money”? In other words, Faneuil might be lying to cast blame on Archibald and Scott. Gardiner might have tried to make that personal; Paine’s notes on the case include the line, “I have known these blks., no credit to be given to them.”

In the end, both Tudor and Gardiner fell back on the position that any doubt in the prosecution’s case should lead the jury to acquit the two defendants, or at least lead the judges to spare them from the death penalty.

According to Paine’s diary, the “Trial ended 1/2 past 1 next morning.” The jury returned a verdict of guilty on capital counts for both Archibald and Scott.

On 9 March, the justices sentenced the two men to hang. The execution finally took place on 5 May. The Massachusetts Spy reported: “They had heretofore behaved in a manner unbecoming their unhappy condition, but on that morning appeared penitent, and suitably affected with their situation.”

What about Nero Faneuil, whose got me into this story? As described back here, he pled guilty to a different robbery and been bound to work for the victim for seven years, or until 1792. He may not have outlived that sentence. Town records show that on 29 July 1792, the Rev. Thomas Baldwin of the Second Baptist Meeting married Flora Fanniel to Magguam Eben.

Questioning the Suspects

Yesterday we watched three men—William Scott, Thomas Archibald, and Nero Faneuil—burgle the home of James Lovell in the early morning of 23 Nov 1784. Then they split up, Scott and Archibald taking the coins while Faneuil took care of the paper currency.

Scott and Archibald had talked about laying low outside of Boston. A man named John Vicker testified that they showed up at his house—I can’t tell where—about daybreak on 24 November. The men “wanted liquor,” three pennies worth, and “asked me to let them lay down 3 hours.” Vicker thought they seemed “worried in mind.” They also “ask’d for a Sling,” presumably to carry something away.

Thursday, 25 November, was a Thanksgiving holiday in Massachusetts, so nothing much happened.

Archibald and Scott were back on Boston on Friday, 26 November. Somehow Archibald provoked the suspicion of a man named Goodbread. John Ingersol, perhaps a tavern keeper, took both Goodbread and Archibald to the Lovells’ house.

As James Lovell recalled, Goodbread accused Archibald of the burglary. The suspect insisted “he lay in a Haybarn with a N. Engld. man Tuesday night.” But he couldn’t provide details about ”when he breakfasted, where he worked.” He mentioned how a ”Negro had helped him to work.”

Lovell fetched others. His neighbor Archibald McNeal came, looked at Archibald, and “took him to be the man” he’d seen during the nighttime robbery. Bartholomew Broaders, an elected constable, searched Archibald and “found a bag of 1/2 Crowns” in his footwear. Archibald insisted “he brought ’em from Phila[delphia].” But he gave inconsistent answers about how long he’d been in Boston. Broaders reminded the suspect “he had said he had no money wn. he came to Town.” Archibald then changed his story to say ”a blk man lent him the money.” That was all suspicious enough for the authorities to commit Archibald to jail.

That evening, Broaders “catched [William] Scot tapping at Nero [Fanueil]’s window 11 oClock.” John Middleton Lovell, the Continental agent’s son (shown above in a later portrait by Ralph Earl), and a man named Benjamin Homans recalled spotting Scott behind Faneuil’s house that afternoon as well.

The authorities found coins on Scott and questioned him. At first he too insisted that he had brought the money from Philadelphia. He said he “had pd. for a W[eek’]s. board, brough 6 or 7 doll[ar]s into Town, & had been 2 or 3 Women parted the value of 4 or 5 dolls out of his Fob 5 1/2 Crowns.”

But Scott got too clever. As Broaders kept questioning him, Scott “said he would not tell unless he could be an Evidence [i.e., witness] and then he would bring out the whole.” John M. Lovell recalled “he would not tell any thing unless he cd. receive some advantage.” Instead, Scott went into the jail for the night, too.

The next morning, it appears, James Lovell went to the jail and demanded that the suspects tell him where his papers were. He heard Scott answer that “the negro was the only person who could give me informn. of my papers.”

The Lovells visited Nero Faneuil, who recalled that “Mr. Lovel told me if I wd. Confess I should be a Witness.” So Faneuil started to cooperate. According to the younger Lovell, “Nero carried me to the place where the money was & confessed he took it.” The case was solved.

John M. Lovell also reported, “Scot found fault that he was not called out instead of the Negro”—which sounds like he regretted not cooperating at the first opportunity. Both Archibald and Scott tried to point the authorities to Faneuil, a black man, but he had the advantage of being known in town.

The following Monday, according to the newspapers, officials found evidence from the robbery of John Fullerton’s shop and charged Nero Faneuil with that crime. It’s conceivable that Faneuil had confessed and told people where to find the stolen goods. Curiously, Fullerton was also a witness at the trial for the robbery of Lovell’s house, testifying about finding coins on one of the suspects.

The state brought Archibald and Scott to trial on 3 March 1785.

TOMORROW: A last-ditch defense.

“If I would go with them to commit this Robery”

As I said yesterday, the only reason we know more than perfunctory details about the trial of two men for stealing a chest from James Lovell in 1784 is because Massachusetts attorney general Robert Treat Paine took notes.

Those notes aren’t word-for-word transcriptions of the testimony, and they leave lots of mysteries. Which makes me all the more grateful for the scholars behind the Massachusetts Historical Society’s publication of Paine’s papers. I mean, just look at the handwriting in his notes from a 1780 trial.

Here’s my best recreation of how the burglary took place, based on the testimony at the February 1785 grand jury session and the 3 March trial.

Thomas Archibald and William Scott appear to have been strangers to Boston. A woman named Flora Fanueil testified that “abt. a Week before the Theft they were at our house.” This was probably Nero Faneuil’s wife, and her remark shows that the black couple had their own residence.

About seven o’clock on the evening of Monday, 22 November, James Lovell made an accounting of the Continental notes and loan certificates entrusted to him. He filed those papers in a large chest, a yard long and weighing 168 pounds. Then he “threw in money half Crowns French” and his pocket book. Mary Capen, likely a maid in the Lovell house, said, “I barr’d that window where the chest was & locked it, I went to bed abt. 11 oClock.”

Meanwhile, Archibald and Scott had returned to Nero and Flora Faneuil’s house, as confirmed by witnesses Prince Hitchborn and Jack Austin. Hitchborn had probably been enslaved by the Hichborn family. There was also a rich white family in Boston named Austin, and Jack Austin might have served them—or he might have been unrelated. About eight o’clock, Flora Fanueil said, Archibald and Scott went away.

Nero Faneuil testified:

they asked me if I would go with them to commit this Robery, they said they would come again at 11 oClock or 12. I went to bed abt. 11; got up & saw them about the house: at 12 oClock we were by Mr. Lovels & it struck 12.

Archebald opned the Window as high as he could lift, he pressed & found the bar, he pushed it in with his foot he pulled off his shoes & got in, Scot came to the Window and told Scot to come in, Scot pulld off his Shoes & got it, the Clock struck one…

A neighbor named Archibald McNeal, living about “170 yds. off,” reported that “abt. 2 oClock [he] heard a strange noise like stroks of a Maul.” Looking outside, he saw men “kept coming & going.” When “sparks of fire” threw light on the scene, he could make out one person who “had no hat on & short hair [and] chest thick.“

Archibald, Scott, and Faneuil carried the heavy chest away “to the new house,” the latter said. Then ”Archiebald got my ax [and] pryed open the chest.” Inside the men found some “hard money,” which Scott put “into his hat.” As for the papers, Archibald and Scott “said they would Separate the Bank bills & burn the rest.” According to Faneuil, his confederates

told me to take care of them [the bills] till the noise was over, they wd. go to Providence stay 2 or 3 mo. & then come back again

they tarried at my house till the Clock struck 6. they then went off.

On the morning of 23 November, Lovell stated, “abt. 7 oClock I found my Window open Shutters on the floor.” He was struck by the fact that “my plate was in the room, [but] they did not touch it.”

Outside, it appears, McNeal came across more evidence of the crime: ”next morning before sunrise I saw the Letters, Baggs marked wth. Mr. Lovells Name & the Chest marked.” But the money and, more important to Lovell, the official papers were missing.

TOMORROW: Returning to the scene of the crime.

The Trial of Nero Faneuil

Nero Faneuil was a black man who petitioned for an end to slavery in Massachusetts in 1777, as quoted here. It’s unclear whether he was enslaved at the time or advocating for the many other people who were.

Seven years later, Nero Faneuil (his surname pronounced and often spelled as “Funnel”) was locked up on suspicion of two robberies in Boston: of a chest containing important papers and cash from the house of Continental official James Lovell, and of dry goods from the shop of John Fullerton.

Of the two crimes, the first was far more serious. As the 2 Dec 1784 Massachusetts Spy said:

It is reported that two persons are taken up in Boston, and committed to gaol, on suspicion of breaking open the house of the Hon. James Lovell, Esq; Continental Treasurer, in this State, and robbing him of 25,000 dollars in Loan-Office certificates, &c. 

Faneuil was charged with that crime alongside two white men, Thomas Archibald and William Scott. For the other crime, of stealing from Fullerton’s shop, Faneuil was charged alone.

The attorney general of Massachusetts was Robert Treat Paine (shown above). His papers, as published by the Massachusetts Historical Society, are our fullest source on what happened next. At the grand jury proceedings in February 1785, all three men pled not guilty, and their trial was scheduled for 3 March.

Prospects looked bleak for Nero Faneuil. He was charged with two thefts instead of just one. Testimony established that “no part of the Property [from Lovell was] found on any but Nero.” And he was the only black man arrested.

But I think Faneuil also had an important asset: he was local. People in town knew him. According to Paine’s notes, Benjamin Hichborn testified, “Nero’s Character for Truth good.” [I think Hichborn was a slippery character himself, but he was a genteel, well-connected lawyer.] In contrast, Archibald and Scott had recently drifted into town from the south.

In addition, Faneuil seized an opening. Lovell was anxious to locate his stolen papers. He asked Scott on “the day after they were cmtted” where those were, and recalled that Scott answered “that the negro was the only person who could give me informn.” Lovell then went to Faneuil, who testified, “Mr. Lovel told me if I wd. Confess I should be a Witness.” Faneuil therefore turned state’s evidence against Archibald and Scott.

But first, Faneuil pled guilty to the Fullerton theft. The court sentenced him to be branded on the forehead with the letter “B” for “burglar.” It also ordered him to restore Fullerton’s goods and pay £84 as treble damages, which everyone must have known was beyond his means. Faneuil declared that he couldn’t pay, and the court sentenced him to serve Fullerton for seven years. He was thus thrown back into servitude.

TOMORROW: At the trial.

A Break-in at James Lovell’s House

On 29 Nov 1784, the American Herald newspaper of Boston carried this crime report from the previous week:

The House of the Hon. JAMES LOVELL, Esq; was, on Tuesday night last [23 November], broke open, and an iron Chest, containing some valuable papers, and a little cash stolen.

And, the next Friday, three villains, viz. William Scott, Thomas Archbald and Nero Funnel, Negro, were apprehended, and the money being found upon them, they were committed to goal.

Lovell was an important man in Boston. Before the war he was an usher, or assistant teacher, under his father at the South Latin School, but then after the Battle of Bunker Hill the military authorities locked him up and then took him to Canada. That suffering provided the credentials for Massachusetts to elect Lovell to the Continental Congress in 1778. He was a delegate until 1782, at some points basically running American foreign policy because no one else was so interested.

In 1784 Lovell became collector of Continental taxes in Massachusetts. Thus, the “valuable papers” he had in a trunk in his home could have been quite valuable indeed.

The 1 December Massachusetts Centinel provided additional information that “part of the papers were recovered, tho’ a large amount are supposed to have been burnt.”

That newspaper also had this report about a related crime:

On Monday a quantity of dry goods were found concealed in a barrel near Mr. Calf’s tan yard; upon examination it appears that they were stolen from Mr. [John] Fullerton’s shop, by a negro fellow called Nero Funnel, one of the villains that stole Mr. Lovell’s chest.

The three suspects were kept in jail until the court session began in February.

TOMORROW: In court.

“A People not insensible of the sweets of rational freedom”

On 13 Jan 1777, the Massachusetts legislature considered a petition from eight black men on behalf of “a great number of Negroes who are detained in a state of Slavery in the Bowels of a free and Christian Country.”

That petition drew on the natural-rights philosophy that underlay the Declaration of Independence and similar documents in the preceding years. The authors wrote:

That your Petitioners apprehend that they have, in common with all other Men, a natural and unalienable right to that freedom, which the great Parent of the Universe hath bestowed equally on all Mankind, and which they have never forfeited by any compact or agreement whatever—But they were unjustly dragged, by the cruel hand of Power, from their dearest friends, and some of them even torn from the embraces of their tender Parents, from a populous, pleasant and plentiful Country—and in Violation of the Laws of Nature and of Nation and in defiance of all the tender feelings of humanity, brought hither to be sold like Beasts of Burden, and like them condemned to slavery for Life—Among a People professing the mild Religion of Jesus—A People not insensible of the sweets of rational freedom—Nor without spirit to resent the unjust endeavors of others to reduce them to a State of Bondage and Subjection.

Your Honors need not to be informed that a Life of Slavery, like that of your petitioners, deprived of every social privilege, of every thing requisite to render Life even tolerable, is far worse than Non-Existence—In imitation of the laudable example of the good People of these States, your Petitioners have long and patiently waited the event of Petition after Petition by them presented to the legislative Body of this State, and can not but with grief reflect that their success has been but too similar.

They can not but express their astonishment, that it has never been considered, that every principle from which America has acted in the course of her unhappy difficulties with Great-Britain, pleads stronger than a thousand arguments in favor of your Petitioners.

The ask was for a law to free all adults enslaved in Massachusetts, and to ensure the liberty of all enslaved children when they reached the age of twenty-one (essentially treating them as apprentices).

The legislature didn’t enact such a law. The Massachusetts courts eventually made the first big step to making slavery unenforceable in the state.

Here are the signatures and marks of the eight men who submitted the petition, as shown in its digital form, courtesy of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery and Anti-Segregation Petitions project.

The most famous of those men was Prince Hall. Others joined with Hall in the first African-American Freemasons lodge.

Today I’m focusing on the sixth man, whose given name was Nero. I’ve seen his surname transcribed as Funelo, Funilo, and even Suneto. I posit that that surname was Funels, a phonetic spelling of Faneuils, and that this man had been enslaved by one of the Faneuil family.

TOMORROW: Nero Faneuil in court.

The Marketplace of Ideas about Faneuil Hall

Earlier this month, Boston mayor Marty Walsh and the city’s Community Preservation Committee proposed spending projects under the state’s Community Preservation Act, including two focused on Revolutionary sites in downtown Boston:

• $350,000 to help with major repairs to HVAC and other systems at the Old State House, one of the oldest and most visited sites on the Freedom Trail.
• $315,000 to restore 17th and 18th century artifacts from beneath Faneuil Hall showing Boston's role in the transAtlantic slave trade, works of local artisans, and an emerging global marketplace.

Though these are relatively small grants on the list, which includes restoring entire buildings, the results would be very visible because of the number of visitors to those sites.

People are presuming that the restored archeological artifacts would be displayed at the city-owned Faneuil Hall as part of or in conjunction with a memorial to slavery, an idea Walsh has also endorsed. Such a memorial would acknowledge how that form of human exploitation was embedded in Boston’s economy for over two centuries. The town dock, which was near Faneuil Hall before landfills, is known to have been one site where slavers sold people.

Last year Steve Locke, one of the city’s artists in residence and a teacher at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, proposed a memorial design. It too would require approval by a specialized board and the city council.

The Boston Globe reported that Locke’s “Auction Block Memorial”

will include two bronze plates embedded in the brick of the plaza, one representing the auctioneer, the other the people being sold into slavery. A map will illustrate the Triangular Trade route of goods and human chattel. The bronze representing slaves will be heated to a constant 98.6 F in order, says Locke’s proposal, to make “touching the work an intimate and reverent experience as if you are touching a living person.”

I think the design might be tweaked to be more closely tied to Boston; it currently illustrates the “Triangular Trade” with a map of one voyage of one Newport ship, and Boston’s trade of cod, firewood, and molasses with the Caribbean seems more pertinent. But the concept of the embedded, heated brass plate is striking.

The merchant who bequeathed Boston the money to build Faneuil Hall, Peter Faneuil, was a slave owner and an investor in slaving voyages. Like all Boston merchants, he participated in an economy that depended on supplying the deadly slave-labor plantations of the West Indies. That has prompted some people to call for Faneuil’s name to be removed from Faneuil Hall.

I don’t think renaming would produce the most powerful statement about slavery. Faneuil Hall is famous in American culture, particularly as a “cradle of liberty” because the building hosted town meetings and other public gatherings, including orations by abolitionists. In contrast, the honor still accruing to Peter Faneuil is very faint.

Showing people that “Faneuil Hall,” a historic landmark they’ve learned to revere, was closely linked to the buying and selling of humans seems like a powerful way to make people recognize the long history of slavery in America. In effect, it would make the famous Faneuil Hall itself in part a memorial to American slavery.

Introducing Capt. Samuel Dashwood

The merchant captain Samuel Dashwood is one of the more dramatic characters in Revolutionary Boston, with a name out of an eighteenth-century novel to match his behavior. I’m a little surprised I’ve never mentioned him before, but I’m bringing him onto the stage now.

Dashwood was born in 1729 or so. In 1785 he told a British government commission that “He was formerly before the Mast with Sir Peter Warren”—i.e., he served as a seaman in the Royal Navy under the naval commander at the 1745 Louisbourg siege (shown here). Dashwood didn’t mention serving in that particular campaign, however.

Dashwood settled in Boston, marrying Ann Rustin (or possibly Rushton) in December 1756. But at first “settled” simply meant using Boston as his home base while he continued to sail across the Atlantic on trading voyages.

We can glimpse Dashwood’s comings and goings in the newspapers’ shipping news: arriving from London in Newbury harbor in January 1759, sailing for Britain in convoy with other captains that November, arriving in Boston in October 1764, and so on.

In addition, on 8 June 1767, the decorative painter and political activist Thomas Crafts advertised in the Boston Gazette:

JUST imported from LONDON, in Captain Dashwood, and to be Sold by
Thomas Crafts, jun’r.
At his Shop at Raphael’s Head, opposite the Hon. Samuel Welles, Esq; Near LIBERTY-TREE, Painters Oyls and Colours, &c—&c— by Wholesale or Retail, cheap for Cash. Carpet and all Sorts of Painting.

In those same years the captain and his wife Ann, whom everyone knew as Nancy, started a family. They bought a house from her relatives in 1760. Their son Samuel, Jr., was born on 29 Sept 1761 but not immediately baptized. Perhaps Dashwood was at sea at the time. He joined the New South Meetinghouse in December, and little Samuel was baptized there on 3 January.

More children followed, steadily at first and then with increasing rapidity:

• Rushton, baptized 18 Mar 1764
• John, baptized 5 Oct 1766
• William, baptized 28 Feb 1768 and dying young
• William, baptized 24 Dec 1769
• Nancy, baptized 9 June 1771
• Pigge (presumably called Peggy), baptized 17 May 1772
• Hannah, baptized 26 Sept 1773

The Dashwood household also included enslaved people. One was a girl or young woman named Jenney, named in the will of the free black man John Fortune who died on 13 Nov 1764. In July 1767, Dashwood offered for sale “A likely Negro Boy of about 13 Years of Age, sold for no Fault, only for want of Employment.”

Dashwood doesn’t appear in Boston’s merchant-dominated politics in the early and mid-1760s. He may have been away too often, or he may have felt no beef with the royal government. In December 1768 he sailed into Boston harbor carrying a letter from “a Gentleman in London,” later printed in several newspapers, counseling Bostonians to drop their opposition to the Townshend Act.

In the harbor, Dashwood met the Royal Navy ship Senegal, then commanded by the baronet Sir Thomas Rich. Under a previous captain, some Senegal officers had been involved in a killing in Rhode Island, as described in this fine article. The ship was then part of the fleet that carried troops from Halifax to Boston in September 1768.

Sir Thomas was leaving Boston when Dashwood’s ship came in, and he wanted a full crew. The merchant John Rowe recorded in his diary on 5 December what happened next:

Be it remembered that Sir Thos. Rich of the Senegall pressed all Capt. Dashwood’s hands.

By impressing an inbound crew, Rich didn’t stop Dashwood’s ship from completing its trip, which would have infuriated all the Boston merchants involved. Even Gov. Francis Bernard had protested that behavior. But the impressment did force Dashwood to recruit a new crew for his next trip. And, having served “before the Mast” himself, he might have felt pity for his sailors, not allowed to land in Boston and forced to serve in the navy.

Whether or not this particular incident radicalized him, over the next couple of years Samuel Dashwood became one of the most active, militant, and forceful members of the Boston Whigs.

Looking at “Leslie’s Retreat”

Today Salem commemorates “Leslie’s Retreat” on 26 Feb 1775, so I’m highlighting Donna Seger’s Streets of Salem posting about that event. She explores three points, to which I’ll add my thoughts.

“How many damn cannon(s) were there in Salem?”

Seger concludes that the most reliable number comes from Samuel Gray, as I quoted it here. Now I adore this account for preserving the forthright experience of a nine-year-old boy, but I don’t trust all the details. Young Samuel may not have been told accurate information, and he may not have remembered it exactly decades later.

I think the best source for the number of cannon involved in the incident at Salem is a small green notebook deposited at the Massachusetts Historical Society. David Mason used that notebook as he was gathering cannon for the Massachusetts Provincial Congress. Mason arranged for blacksmith Robert Foster to build carriages for the cannon tubes he collected from town fortifications, the Derby family, and other sources.

On one page of the notebook Mason totaled his own charges for the congress, including for “paint’g 17 Carridges Limbers &c.” On another page he wrote, “fosters acct. 17 field Pieces” [though that figure could also be read as 19]. So I think the most likely number of cannon in Foster’s smithy on the morning of 26 Feb 1775 was seventeen.

But the cannon Mason had collected in north Salem were only one part of what the Provincial Congress amassed in late 1774 and early 1775. That rebel government had artillery pieces in Worcester, Concord, and perhaps other towns. What’s more, some towns acquired cannon of their own. I wrote a whole book about Massachusetts’s effort to arm itself for war, and I still can’t say exactly how many damn cannon there were.

“Major Pedrick was a Tory!”

Quite definitely. According to many Salem historians, John Pedrick fooled Lt. Col. Alexander Leslie into letting him carry a warning about the redcoats marching in from Marblehead. But all contemporaneous sources show Pedrick favored the Crown.

Pedrick’s daughter Mehitable told stories about her family’s brave feats in the Revolution. Even some of her descendants didn’t believe those tales, but her daughter Elizabeth did, and she spread them to local historians. I discussed those family legends in the last chapter of The Road to Concord.

“‘Anniversary History’ was alive and well in 1775.”

Seger notes how newspaper reports of Leslie’s expedition appeared in New England newspapers alongside remarks about the anniversary of the Boston Massacre. With redcoats marching on the streets of Boston and Marshfield, and popping up on a Sunday in Marblehead and Salem, the threat of another confrontation ending in death was very real.

A year later, the date of the Massacre determined when the Continental Army moved soldiers and cannon onto Dorchester Heights. In the cannonade that provided cover for that operation, just a year and a few days after “Leslie’s Retreat,” David Mason was wounded by a bursting mortar.

Alexander’s 18th-Century Fashion Advice in Boston, 27 Feb.

On Wednesday, 27 February, Kimberly Alexander will speak at the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston on “You Are What You Wear?: Navigating Fashion & Politics in New England, 1760s–1770s.”

Alexander is a guest curator of the society’s “Fashioning the New England Family” exhibit, which I recommended back here (and which closes on 6 April).

This talk takes up the themes of the exhibit:

Our guest curator will explore the social values placed on luxury and thrift in New England in the late 18th century. What messages were telegraphed by a person’s clothing and how were these understood? Did everyone in society read these messages the same way or were there statements only meant to be understood by a select few?

Alexander is a professor at the University of New Hampshire. She is author of Treasures Afoot:
Shoe Stories from the Georgian Era and maintains the Silk Damask blog.

This event starts with a reception at 5:30 P.M., with the talk at 6:00. Admission is $10 per person, with no charge for M.H.S. Fellows and Members or E.B.T. cardholders. Register for a seat here.

“A concert hall is again opened to all”

At the end of January 1769, the Boston Whigs told newspapers in other towns, British army officers behaved so badly at a musical concert that the hosts canceled all further scheduled performances.

But on 6 Feb 1769, the Whig-leaning Boston Gazette and Boston Evening-Post ran this advertisement:

The Subscribers to the Concert,
which was to have been on Wednesday Evening the 8th Instant, are hereby notified that it will be on Friday the 10th, at Concert-Hall; and after that will be continued every other Wednesday, during the Season.

So the biweekly musical assemblies were back on, with just a two-day delay that week.

In their “Journal of Occurrences,” the Boston Whigs tried to spin the resumption of concerts in their favor on 16 February:

A concert hall is again opened to all who have, or may commence subscribers to such musical entertainments. We are told proper concessions have been made Mr. [Stephen] D[e]bl[oi]s, and that G[eneral] [John] P[omero]y, has engaged that the o—ff[ice]rs of his core, shall for the future behave with decency, and agreeable to the regulations of such assemblies.

And there was no further commotion. On 29 May, the Boston Chronicle announced:

The Subscribers to the Wednesday-Night CONCERT, are hereby notified, that said Concert will end, Wednesday next.

N.B. Any Gentlemen who are not Subscribers and Ladies, will be admitted to said Concert, at Concert-Hall, paying half a Dollar each.

The Concert begins at half after Seven.

No Subscribers will be admitted without delivering his Ticket.

The season thus passed without giving the Whigs anything further to complain about.

Concert Hall wasn’t the only venue offering musical entertainment that winter, and I’m not talking about James Joan’s “Music Hall.” On 17 February the Whigs ran another dispatch:

There has been within these few days a great many severe whippings; among the number chastised, was one of the negro drummers, who received 100 lashes, in part of 150, he was sentenced to receive at a Court Martial,—It is said this fellow had adventur’d to beat time at a concert of music, given at the Manufactory-House.

The drummers of the 29th were black, bought or recruited in the Caribbean. At first Bostonians had viewed them as a curiosity, then as a threat to the regular social order since drummers were tasked with carrying out the whippings and other corporal punishments in a regiment. But here, when a drummer was receiving punishment, the Whigs were mildly sympathetic to him.

It’s unclear why a regimental drummer would be punished for playing at a concert. Soldiers were allowed to earn money by taking jobs in their off-hours, and other sources show regimental musicians giving private concerts. Indeed, it’s possible that much of the band at the subscription concerts had come from the army. Perhaps this drummer played the concert when he was supposed to be on duty, or had been expressly told not to play at the Manufactory given its recent history as a battleground between army and locals. The Whigs might have neglected to include such a detail.

This news item is another odd link, after Pvt. William Clarke’s play The Miser, between the Manufactory building or its tenants the Browns and popular entertainment. Perhaps as immigrants the Browns just didn’t share Boston’s traditional resistance to such public frivolities. But any “concert of music” at the Manufactory was probably meant for a lower-class audience than the assemblies at Concert Hall.

“They grew noisy and clamorous”

Yesterday left us inside the 25 Jan 1769 musical assembly at Boston’s first Concert Hall (shown here in a photo almost a century later, after the building had been expanded).

Following the concert, some army officers wanted to dance. Organizers told them that Gov. Francis Bernard had asked military gentlemen to refrain from that activity out of deference to local manners and political feelings. The officers didn’t like that.

According to the Boston Whigs:

they then called out to the band to play the Yankee Doodle tune, or the Wild Irishman, and not being gratified they grew noisy and clamorous; the candles were then extinquished, which, instead of checking, completed the confusion; to the no small terror of those of the weaker sex, who made part of the company.—

The old honest music master, Mr. [Stephen] D[e]bl[oi]s, was roughly handled by one of those sons of Mars; he was actually in danger of being throatled, but timously rescued by one who soon threw the officer on lower ground than he at first stood upon;

the inoffensive Bartholomew Gr[ee]n, who keeps the house for the [Customs] Commissioners, presuming to hint a disapprobation of such proceedings, was, by an officer, with a drawn sword, dragged about the floor, by the hair of his head, and his honest Abigail, who in a fright, made her appearance without an head dress, was very lucky in escaping her poor husband’s fate.

Whether our G[overno]r will so resent this behaviour of the military, as to collect affidavits, and make it a subject of representation to Lord H[il]ls[borou]gh, cannot as yet be determined;

be this as it may, Mr. D[ebloi]s has acted in character, having delivered up the room, which he held from the Commissioners, returned the subscription money, and wisely determined not to give another concert, until he should again have it in his power to preserve order and decency in such an assembly.

The Whigs resented how Gov. Bernard had sent reports on the Liberty riot and other disorder to his superiors in London. They therefore delighted in any chance to portray the men of the British military as the real source of lawless violence.

TOMORROW: Will there ever be another concert in Boston again?

A Concert “turned topsy turvy”

Though the Boston Whigs sneered that few young ladies attended the 22 Dec 1768 musical assembly at Concert Hall (as quoted yesterday), the 29 December Boston News-Letter gave the event more respectful coverage:

Thursday evening, the Assembly for the winter began at Concert Hall; at which, were present, the Honourable the Commissioners of the Custom, Commodore [Samuel] Hood, Brigadier General [John] Pomeroy, and most of the Gentlemen of the army and navy, &c. &c.

The commodore is shown here in a portrait from fifteen years later, after he had become an admiral and a baronet. (Eventually Hood was made a viscount.)

The next subscription or “private Concert,” a Boston News-Letter advertisement clarified on 12 January, was scheduled for the 25th.

In the meantime, the pro-Crown newspapers advertised another musical event:

A grand CONCERT
of Vocal and Instrumental Musick
To be performed at Concert-Hall,
On FRIDAY the 13th

People could buy tickets for half a dollar at the newspapers’ printers or “the London Book-Store in King street,” which was run by John Mein, also co-owner of the Boston Chronicle.

That concert also got positive reviews from the pro-Crown press, as in the 16 January Boston Post-Boy:

Last Friday Evening there was a grand Concert of Vocal and Instrumental Music at Concert Hall, at which were present a very polite Company.

James Joan was the main performer, if not the only one.

According to the Whigs, however, audience members weren’t so polite at Joan’s concert, and they behaved even worse at the first subscription concert on 25 January:

The court concert of the last evening was it seems, turned topsy turvy, as Joan the Italian’s was a week or two before—

Some officers of the army were for a little dancing after the music, and being told that G[overno]r B[ernar]d did not approve of their proposal, they were for sending him home to eat his bread and cheese, and otherwise treated him as if he had been a mimick G[overno]r; they then called out to the band to play the Yankee Doodle tune, or the Wild Irishman, and not being gratified they grew noisy and clamorous…

Gov. Francis Bernard had evidently asked the military officers to tone down their festivities in deference to local tastes. Even though he wasn’t at the assembly, the Whigs nonetheless managed to tie the disorder to him.

TOMORROW: And what disorder it was!

“A sort of an assembly at Concert Hall”

Yesterday we left the Boston Whigs in mid-December 1768 crowing over the failure of pro-Crown officials and army officers to pull off a dancing assembly.

That triumph didn’t last, however, and on 23 December the Whigs had to report:

It may now be said that the G[overno]r and C[om]m[issione]rs have the last night had a sort of an assembly at Concert Hall;

Never were the gentlemen concern’d more liberal in their invitations, even those ladies who declin’d subscribing, had their cards; the neighbouring towns were reconnoitred for females, and the good natured S——r [Solicitor Samuel Fitch?] of the B[oar]d of C[om]m[issione]rs was so complaisant as to offer to go as far as Salem to bring two damsels from thence; their efforts were finally so successful, as to procure from among themselves and their connections, about ten or twelve unmarried ladies, whose quality and merits have been since related with the spritely humour of a military gallant.—

The ball was opened by Capt. [John] W[illso]n,—a gentleman who has been already taken notice of in this Journal; There was indeed a numerous and blazing appearance of men, but the ladies of all ages and conditions so few, that the most precise Puritan could not find it in his heart to charge said assembly with being guilty of the crime of mixt dancing.—

A sick burn indeed.

At this point the recently arrived music and dance master James Joan was no longer advertising his own events in the home he had dubbed “Music Hall.”

The Deblois family who owned Concert Hall had advertised series of musical performances in previous years:

• Boston Gazette, 23 Sept 1765: “A CONCERT OF MUSICK is propos’d to be carry’d on at Concert-Hall for the ensuing Season. The Articles of Agreement may be seen by applying to Mr. Deblois at Said Hall: If a sufficient Number of Gentlemen subscribers, it will be opened the first Tuesday in October next.”
• Boston News-Letter, 2 Oct 1766: “Public Notice is hereby given, That a Concert of Musick is intended to be opened on Tuesday next, being the 7th of October, to be continued every Tuesday Evening for Eight Months. Any Gentlemen inclining to be Subscribers may know the Terms by applying to Stephen Deblois, at the Concert-Hall in Queen street.”

Stephen Deblois (1699-1778) was a professional musician, father of merchants Lewis and Gilbert Deblois (the latter shown above in a post-evacuation portrait by John Singleton Copley, courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts).

There were no such ads from Concert Hall in the fall of 1767 or 1768. One possibility is that the concerts were so popular that there was no need to advertise them in the newspapers. More likely, the Debloises hadn’t been able to sell enough season tickets in 1766 to make the events worthwhile.

The arrival of the British army regiments in October 1768 changed that. But even then the demand for concerts and balls probably wasn’t big enough to support two series in Concert Hall and Music Hall. Instead, it appears that in 1769 James Joan allied with the Deblois family to offer concerts in their building.

TOMORROW: The night it all went horribly wrong.

“A weekly and brilliant assembly at Concert Hall”?

It was no coincidence that James Joan moved from Halifax to Boston in October 1768, just as the 14th and 29th Regiments made the same journey. In fact, the same sloop that brought Joan and his family, Nehemiah Soanes’s Ranger, might well have carried soldiers’ families.

The market for Joan’s services as a performing musician, ball host, and instructor in dancing, fencing, and French depended on a good supply of young men of genteel habits and ambitions. So it made sense for him to follow the army officer corps.

Joan advertised his second “Concert of MUSIC” at his dwelling on Brattle Street on 5 December in the Boston News-Letter, Boston Chronicle, and Boston Post-Boy—the three newspapers closest to the Crown.

Soon, however, Joan’s “Music Hall” faced competition. Boston already had a largish building known as “Concert Hall,” built by the Deblois family in 1754. The first Debloises in Boston were musicians in the entourage of Gov. William Burnet; they played the organs at King’s Chapel and Christ Church. But by the 1760s brothers Lewis and Gilbert Deblois weren’t professional performers like Joan. They were substantial import merchants. They sold musical scores and instruments, but only as a small part of a much wider assortment of goods. (Lewis’s 1757 trade card appears above, courtesy of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts.)

The Debloises rented out Concert Hall, and in 1768 the Commissioners of Customs used that space for meetings. Apparently the Debloises spoke with those high officials about hosting weekly music and dancing assemblies during the winter, no doubt catering to the same crowd of army officers and local gentility who supported James Joan’s concerts.

Naturally, that prospect gave the the Boston Whigs something to complain about in their “Journal of the Times” for 10 December:

While the friends of their country are recommending and countenancing by their example, the strictest economy, C[om]m[issione]r [Charles] P[a]x[to]n and Company are endeavouring to establish a weekly and brilliant assembly at Concert Hall; where their Board is again held in the day time, and a centinel placed for their guard:

One of their livery boatmen has waited upon the gentlemen and ladies of the town with the proposals and a subscription paper; which to use a courtly phrase has been almost universally treated with the contempt it deserves,—

C[om]m[issione]r [John] R[obinso]n, in order to throw a splendor upon office, and so to dazzle with its brightness, the eyes of Americans, that they might not perceive the incomparable insignificancy of his person, nor how ridiculously the fruits of their industry are bestowed; intends soon to make his appearance in a suit of crimson velvet, which will cost him a sum that would have been a full support to some one of the families, that are almost reduced to poverty themselves; who are yet obliged, not indeed by the laws of Christianity, but by that Revenue Act, to feed the hungry and cloth the naked C[om]m[issione]rs, not barely with what is convenient and necessary, but with all the luxury and extravagance of high life.

On 14 December the Whigs claimed that those plans had been foiled, at least temporarily, by Boston’s patriotic young women:

The Commissioners expected they would have been able this evening with the countenance of the military gentlemen, to have opened an assembly at Concert Hall, for the winter season; but the virtue and discreetness of the young ladies of the town, occasioned a disappointment; It is probable they may have one the next week, with a small number of matrons of their own core: It must ill become American ladies to dance in their fetters.

The Whigs could thus stir together old anti-aristocratic Puritan traditions, current feelings of economic anxiety, and resentment of army troops, and then blame the whole mess on those extravagant and tyrannical Customs Commissioners.