“We have now the Stamped Papers in our own Hands”

As related yesterday, on the evening of 5 Nov 1765, Lt. Gov. Cadwallader Colden handed New York’s supply of Stamp Act paper over to the city government.

Colden reported:

They were carried to the City Hall, and remained safe with a very triffling Guard indeed upon them. The Mob dispersed immeadiately and remain quiet. Can anything give a stronger suspicion who they were that composed the Mob, and under whose direction they acted?

That was the same building (shown here) where the Stamp Act Congress had met the previous month.

Colden’s remark about the crowd was a typical assumption of friends of the royal government, seeing “the Mob” as raised and directed by local politicians rather than the people having wills of their own.

In fact, the city’s political activists were hustling to make sure the populace accepted the compromise they had made with Colden and kept the peace. The next morning, this note was posted at the city’s main coffee house:

To the Freeholders & Inhabitants of the City of New York

Gentlemen

We have now the Stamped Papers in our own Hands, so that there is a Prospect of our enjoying Peace once more; all then that we have to do is to promote this Peace; to do which we are under many Obligations; of which what follows will be a Proof;

1st We have entirely accomplish’d all we wanted in rescuing the Stamps from the Hands of our inveterate Enemy; to proceed any farther then would only hurt the good Cause in which we are engaged.

2dly As we have promised, both for ourselves & by our Representatives whom we ourselves have chosen, that if the Stamps were lodged in the Hands of these our Representatives (as they now are) we would be quiet & no Harm should be done, the Honour & Credit of the City lie at Stake, & shall we ruin our own Credit? I am persuaded no one would be so infatuated as to attempt it.

Let us then as we have joined Hand in Hand in effecting the Peace that now subsists also join in preserving it. This will shew that we have Conduct as well as Courage, prove that we have acted, not as a Mob, but as Friends to Liberties & be as strong an Argument as we can use to obtain a Repeal of the Stamp Act.

At the end of the day, that paper was taken down and delivered to Colden, who then sent it with his report to London. But it had done its work.

One week later, on 13 November, Sir Henry Moore, the long-expected new royal governor, arrived in New York from Britain. Colden “had the pleasure of delivering up the Administration,” and the attending headaches, to Moore “in as much quietness as could be expected in the present situation of the public affairs.”

There were, however, two new complications. Moore’s ship had also brought:

• nine more big boxes of stamped paper for New York and Connecticut.
• Colden’s grandson Peter De Lancey, Jr., with the proud news that the royal government had appointed him stamp inspector for Quebec, Nova Scotia, and New Hampshire.

So I expect we’ll be coming back to New York for more sestercentennial updates.

How the New Yorkers Came to a Deal

On 5 Nov 1765, Lt. Gov. Cadwallader Colden of New York sent a report to London about how an angry crowd was besieging him inside Fort George with the province’s stamped paper.

In his letter to the Marquess of Granby, Colden wrote, “I expect the Fort will be stormed this night—everything is done in my power to give them a warm reception.”

Capt. John Montresor of the Royal Artillery, who had been busy strengthening the fort, wrote in his journal that 5th of November:

Advertisements and many papers placarded throughout this city declaring the storming of the Fort this Night under cover of burning the Pope and pretender unless the Stamps were delivered.

But in fact there was a compromise in the works. The next day Colden updated his messenger on the developments:

In the forenoon yesterday the Common Council of the City presented an Address to me Requesting that in order to restore Peace to the City & to prevent the effusion of Blood, I would deliver the Stamp’d Paper into the care of the Corporation, who in that case undertook to protect them. I was surprised at the Proposition, but upon their adding a Clause whereby the Mayor & Corporation became engaged for the full amount of the Paper &c and Duty, in case they were lost, destroyed or carried out of the Province, I consented to take the advice of his Majesty’s council upon it.

Colden was worried about the slippery slope: “The delivering the stamp’d Papers on the threats of a Mob, who may still make further demands greatly affects the dignity of his Majesty’s Government; & may have a tendency to encourage perpetual mobish proceedings hereafter.”

New York’s provincial Council advised that “the City appeared to be in perfect annarchy, and the power of Government either Military or Civil insufficient—that the defense of the Fort would involve the destruction of the City.” Those gentlemen recommended taking the deal. Colden then asked Gen. Thomas Gage for his advice as commander of the king’s army in North America, and he concurred. Colden had thus covered himself bureaucratically as much as he could.

Therefore, on the evening of 5 November the lieutenant governor turned the stamped paper in Fort George over to a committee led by Mayor John Cruger (shown above), who had participated in the Stamp Act Congress the previous month.

Cruger signed this receipt:

Received of the Honble. Cadwallader Colden, Esq. his Majesty’s Lt. Govr. and Commander in Chief of the Province of New York, Seven Packages containing Stamp’d Paper & Parchment all marked No. 1, J. McE., New York which I promise in behalf of the Corporation of the City of New York to take charge & care of, and to be accountable in case they shall be destroyed, or carried out of the Province as particularly set forth and declared in the Minutes of the Common Council of the said Corporation of this Day. Witness my hand in the City of New York this fifth day of November 1765.

TOMORROW: Was that enough to calm the populace?

Lt. Gov. Colden’s Unsafe Situation

As November 1765 began, New York acting governor Cadwallader Colden was holed up in Manhattan’s Fort George (on the far left of the map above) with a contingent of the king’s military forces and the stamped paper for three colonies. Outside was a crowd of thousands of men convinced that the Stamp Act was tyrannical and determined to keep it from taking effect.

Maj. Thomas James commanded some men from the Royal Artillery inside the fort. That, and his contemptuous remarks, had caused the crowd to tear apart the mansion he was renting in town on the night of 1 November. 

Capt. Archibald Kennedy had sent “Lieutenant Owen & twenty four Marines” to the fort to support Colden. However, he added, “by doing this I leave the Ships without Marines, & as most of our men are imprest there is a great risque of their deserting.” But he declined to take charge of the stamps, lest the crown attack his home and property.

Colden asked the military engineers how they would strengthen Fort George. On 2 November, Capts. Harry Gordon (d. 1787), Thomas Sowers, and John Montresor delivered their report:

The most necessary & Expeditious way of putting this Fort in an immediate posture of defence.

A Number of Barrells Boxes or such Instruments as will contain a sufficient quantity of earth to make them Musquet proof to be put on the Salient Angles of the Bastions to form a Lodgement for 12 Men each, filld with earth 4 ft. 6 in. high. The Earth for filling them to be taken from the inside of the parapet leaving only a Banquet inside of the Barrells Boxes &c. A piece of artillery behind those lodgements towards the shoulders of the Bastions.

Two Pieces of light artillery covered with their mantelets &c. to be mounted on each Flank & the shoulders rais’d to cover them.

A Howitzer to be mounted on each Curtin towards the Town

The Crows feet to be scetterd to the Gate, Sorties and other practicable Avenues to the Fort.

All the Remainder of the Chevaux des frises to be fix’d and ready to plant along the places where the parapet remains en harbet and to be steadied by some Earth thrown against them

A Lodgment of Mattresses or Bedding or any thing proper to make a Covering a top of the large House for a Serjeant & 12 good men who have been practised to firing.

One hundred hand Grenades to be lodg’d at each Curtin & forty near each small lodgment on the Points of the Bastions to be loaded & ready to be lighted & thrown.

The Gate to be Barricaded within at Night as fast as possible & two pieces of large artillery to be planted against it, & two light pieces at some distance behind the Chevaux des frises.

The several Fronts of the Fort to be disencumbered from the Buildings &c

’Twould be necessary for the defence of the Fort if Capt. Kennedy’s House was taken possession of as it commands two Fronts the most accessible of the Fort.

Proper Instruments & Workmen for the defence should be immediately provided and a sufficient number of Men at least three hundred.

Notwithstanding the above Improvements for the defence of the place, its still under great inconveniences arising principally from the want of proper cover within, & being commanded by the Circumjacent Buildings.

In other words, even with at least 300 men, plenty of weapons, Kennedy’s full cooperation, and a lot of hard work, Fort George would still be vulnerable. It had been built to protect the city from attack by sea, not to withstand a siege by land. And was there time to do all those things anyway?

The next morning, a paper was found inside an oyster shell at the gate of Fort George, addressed to Colden himself:

Sir

As one who is an enemy to Mischief of all kinds, & a Well wisher to you & your Family, I give you this Notice that Evil is determined against you & your Adherents & will in all human Probability take Effect, unless Speedily prevented by your public Declaration upon Oath, That you will never, in any Manner, countenance, or assist, in the Execution of the Stamp Act, or anything belonging to it; and also, that you will, to the utmost of your Power, endeavour to get it repealed in England, and meanwhile prevent its taking Effect here. Your Life may depend upon the Notice you take of this Advice.

Benevolus

P.S. I well know the Guides of the People would only shew you that they may dare also; but don't incense them, for God’s Sake, by an unpolitical Contempt! You are not safe at Flushing.

Flushing was where Colden had his country estate. He was probably wishing he were there.

TOMORROW: Reaching a compromise. 

Capt. Kennedy and the Stamped Paper

On the night of 1 Nov 1765, after the Stamp Act was supposed to take effect, a New York mob signaled its disapproval of that development by burning the coach and other vehicles of Lt. Gov. Cadwallader Colden. Then some of that crowd destroyed the estate being rented by Maj. Thomas James, the commander of the fort protecting Colden and the stamped paper.

The acting governor responded with a public announcement early on the morning of 2 November that he was suspending enforcement of the new law until the new royal governor arrived. That calmed the immediate situation.

Colden also sent a letter to Capt. Archibald Kennedy (c. 1723-1794, shown here), the highest-ranking officer in the Royal Navy at New York, aboard his ship Coventry. The acting governor asked the captain if he was willing to take over the protection of the stamps:

The Gentlemen of the Council are desirous that the Stamp’d papers now in the Fort, should be put on board one of the Men of War—and I desire to know as soon as possible from you whether or not you will order them to be received on board—

Capt. Kennedy quickly wrote back to Colden:

I have this Instant received yours of this date informing me it is the desire of the Council that the Stamp’d paper should be sent on board one of the Kings Ships,

as they are already lodged in Fort George which is a place of security sufficient to protect them from any attempt the Mob can possibly make to destroy them. cannot see any plausable reason for moving them, and indeed the very attempting to move them must be attended with much greater risque than they can possibly be exposed to while there,

I shall ever be ready when necessity requires to give you all the assistance in my power

Though it seems clear Kennedy wasn’t assisting at all at that moment.

Aboard his warship, Kennedy was safe from any angry crowds, but his property wasn’t. The captain’s father had been a major businessman in New York, he had earned a lot of money from naval prizes in the wars against France, and he had married a Schuyler sister. Through inheritance, investments, and marriage, Kennedy owned a whole lot of New York real estate, including his own mansion at 1 Broadway.

The lieutenant governor explained that to British officials the next month:

Kennedy absolutely refused to receive them [the stamps], & with good reason, for he was aware of their design to force Him to deliver them by Threatning to destroy the Houses he was possesst of in the City, of which he had in his own & his wife’s Right more than perhaps any one Man in it.

I sense that Colden might have been more exasperated at his Council for suggesting this unrealistic solution than at Kennedy for resisting it. But Parliament didn’t like Kennedy’s action, or inaction, and recalled him to Britain over it. Of course, Kennedy didn’t need the navy’s salary, so he retired.

TOMORROW: Lt. Gov. Colden assesses his defenses.

The New Yorkers’ “private Unnatural and Brutal Revenge”

When New Yorkers were demonstrating against the Stamp Act on the night of 1 Nov 1765, they knew that the colony’s supply of stamped paper was inside Fort George. And they knew that the man in charge of Fort George’s defenses was Maj. Thomas James of the Royal Artillery.

In the words of the New-York Gazette, Maj. James “had unfortunately incurred the resentment of the public, by expressions imputed to him” during the dispute over the stamps.

Specifically, James later stated he’d been accused of the following:

• “I threatened to cram the Stamps down their Throats with the End of my Sword”
• “If they attempted to rise I [said I] would drive them all out of the Town for a pack of Rascals, with four and twenty men”
• “I had in Contempt to the Gentlemen thrown an Almanack into the Fire that had not been stampt”
• “I had turnd some Ladies and Gentlemen off the Ramparts of Fort George, because they should not see the Works I was carrying on”
• “I had been over Officious in my Duty”

When Parliament asked him about those accusations the next year, he “answer’d in the Affirmative.” The legislators wouldn’t let him go on to say that, even so, “it was no Sanction for their [the protesters’] private Unnatural and Brutal Revenge or an Indemnification for their Insults upon Government.”

Unfortunately for the major, though he was safe inside Fort George, his property was not. That’s because, with the British military making New York its base for North American operations, he had rented a mansion called Vaux Hall, beside the Hudson River near King’s College.

The New-York Gazette continued:

It is said he had taken a Lease of the house for three years, and had obliged himself to return it in the like good order as he received it; it had been lately fitted up in an elegant manner, and had adjoining a large handsome garden stored both with necessaries and curiosities,—and had in it several summer houses; the house was genteely furnished with good furniture; contained a valuable library of choice books, papers, accounts, mathematical instruments, draughts, rich clothes, linen, &c. and a considerable quantity of wine and other liquors.—

The multitude bursting open the doors, proceeded to destroy every individual article the house contain’d,—the beds they cut open and threw the feathers abroad, broke all the glasses, china, tables, chairs, desks, trunks, chests, and making a large fire at a little distance, threw in every thing that would burn—drank or destroy’d all the liquor—and left not the least article in the house which they did not destroy—after which they also beat to pieces all the doors, sashes, window frames and partitions in the house, leaving it a meer shell; also destroyed the summer houses, and tore up and spoiled the garden.

All this destruction was compleated by about 2 o’clock [A.M.]. The imagined cause of resentment operated so powerfully, that every act of devastation on the goods of this unhappy gentleman was consider’d as a sacrifice to liberty.—Many military trophies, even the colours of the royal regiment, were taken and carried off triumphantly.

New York’s anti-Stamp demonstration thus ended as Boston’s and Newport’s had done, with the destruction of a house. And not necessarily the house of the man designated to collect the new tax, but the house of a royal official who spoke up for enforcing the law.

TOMORROW: Naval support?

“The effigy of a man who had been honoured by his country”

On 1 Nov 1765, New York had its first classic Stamp Act protest. This was the day the law was supposed to take place, and many other North American colonies had already seen such political disturbances.

James McEvers’s preemptive resignation as a stamp master meant that New Yorkers hadn’t had a good target for their demonstrations. Until, that is, Lt. Gov. Cadwallader Colden made it clear that as the highest royal authority in the colony he would try to enforce the new law.

As reported in the Boston Post-Boy, reprinting news from New York, the anti-Stamp demonstration on 1 November followed the usual lines:

About 7 o’clock in the evening two companies appeared, one of them in the fields, where a moveable gallows was erected, on which was (suspended the effigy of a man who had been honoured by his country with an elevated station, but whose public conduct supposed to aim at the introduction of arbitrary power, and especially in his officiously endeavouring to enforce the Stamp Act, universally held by his Majesty’s faithful and loyal subjects in America, to be unconstitutional and oppressive) has unhappily drawn upon himself the general resentment of his country.

The figure was made much to resemble the person it was intended to represent. In his hand was a stamped paper, which he seem’d to court the people to receive;—at his back hung a drum, on his breast a label, supposed to allude to some former circumstances of his life. By his side hung, with a boot in his hand, the grand deceiver of mankind, seeming to urge him to perseverance in the cause of slavery.

According to other sources, the label identified the effigy as “The Rebell Drummer of 1715,” suggesting that Lt. Gov. Colden had supported the Stuart Pretender’s uprising that year. Colden had in fact been back in Britain as a young physician in 1715; he had even gotten married there. According to him, however, he had “carried above 70 Volunteers into Kelso” to support the Hanoverian forces under Lord Jedburgh. It appears men of Scottish descent like Colden remained vulnerable to accusations of Jacobite disloyalty, even fifty years later.

Back to the New York protest:

While the multitude gathered round these figures, the other party with another figure representing the same person, seated in a chair, and carried by men, preceeded and attended by a great number of lights, paraded through most of the public streets in the city, increasing as they went, but without doing the least Injury to any house or person. They proceeded in this order to the coach-house at the fort, from whence they took the Lieut. Governor’s coach, and fixing the effigy upon the top of it, they proceeded with great rapidity towards the fields.

About the same time the other party was preparing to move to the fort, with the gallows as it stood erect on its frame, and lanthorns fix’d on various parts of it. When the two parties met, and every thing was in order, a general silence ensued, and proclamation was made that no stones should be thrown, no windows broken, and no injury offered to any one,—and all this was punctually observed.

The whole multitude then returned to the fort, and though they knew the guns were charged, and saw the ramparts lined with soldiers, they intripidly marched with the gallows, coach, &c. up to the very gate, where they knocked, and demanded admittance, & if they had not been restrained by some humane persons, who had influence over them, would doubtless have taken the fort, as I hear there were 4 or 500 seamen, and many others equally intrepid, and acquainted with military affairs.

But as it seems no such extremities were intended, after they had shewn many insults to the effigy, they retired from the fort gate to the bowling green, the pallisades of which they instantly tore away, marched with the gallows, &c. into the middle of the green, (still under the muzzles of the fort guns) where with the pallisades and planks of the fort fence, and a chaise and 2 sleys, taken from the governor’s coach house, they soon reared a large pile of wood round the whole, to which setting fire, it soon kindled to a great flame, and reduced the coach, gallows, man, devil, and all to ashes.

All classic anti-Stamp demonstrations involved burning an effigy like that. By adding four of Colden’s vehicles to the fire, the crowd got more fuel. But they hadn’t destroyed anyone’s house.

TOMORROW: Yet.

Protesting the Stamped Papers inside Fort George

As I noted back here, the designated Stamp Tax collector for New York, James McEvers, resigned that post on 26 Aug 1765, after hearing about how Bostonians had smashed up Andrew Oliver’s house.

Acting governor Cadwallader Colden insisted on enforcing the law nonetheless. Because the British military had made New York its base at the end of the Seven Years’ War, there was a sizable contingent of soldiers in the city, as well as Royal Navy ships and marines. Colden thus didn’t have the problem that stymied Gov. Francis Bernard in Massachusetts—that he could not rely on the militia to stop a mob when the mob was made up of the militiamen.

Colden asked the navy, under the command of Capt. Archibald Kennedy, to intercept the ships carrying stamped paper and carry that precious cargo to Fort George, there to be protected by the Royal Artillery under Maj. Thomas James.

That didn’t sit well with the city’s inhabitants, as reported in the New-York Gazette of 7 Nov 1765 and reprinted eleven days later in the Boston Post-Boy:

On the 23d of October, by Capt. Davis, arrived a parcel of the stamps, which immediately raised a spirit of general uneasiness in the town;—they were put under convoy of a man of war, landed and deposited in the fort. The Governor had very injudiciously, some time before the arrival of the stamps, made a great shew of fortifying the fort, providing it with mortars, guns, ammunition, and all the necessaries for the regular attack of an enemy—and it was given out that he threatened to fire on the town if the stamps were molested (which greatly exasperated the people). Representations against these measures were made to him; and they were, I believe, discontinued, but resumed again upon the arrival of the stamps.

From this time several papers appear’d stuck up in public places about the town, threatening every person that should deliver or receive a stamp. The preparations at the fort were continued with greater vigour, and the people grew more uneasy and enflamed. On the 31st of October, the merchants had a meeting, where they enter’d into an obligation that none of them should order any goods from England till the stamp act was repeal’d, that the orders already sent (and not executed) should be countermanded, (except grindstones, &c. for such ships as were there belonging to this place) and that they should accept no goods on commissions, or assist in the sale of any sent here. This was subscribed by upwards of two hundred merchants.

The shopkeepers also obliged themselves to purchase no goods sent here contrary to the above articles, till the stamp act was repealed. That evening a large company suddenly assembled and marched to the walls of Fort George, and from thence thro’ several streets in the city. The magistrates appeared, and endeavoured to disperse them, but in vain. After a short time they suddenly dispersed of themselves without doing any mischief. It was rumour’d about town a much larger concourse would assemble the next night, and their visit was by some expected, while others thought they would meet no more.

The map above shows Fort George, courtesy of the Library of Congress. The big round spot at the bottom is the Bowling Green with a statue of King George III in the center. (ADDENDUM: The statue was installed in 1770.) It’s currently the site of the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House.

TOMORROW: The day the Stamp Act was supposed to take effect.

Two Gentlemen Who Couldn’t Possibly Take Charge of Connecticut’s Stamped Paper

When the British government instituted the Stamp Act for North America, one of the first steps was to buy a lot of paper. With the tax added, that paper was budgeted to bring in over £100,000 from the thirteen colonies that became the U.S. of A. alone. The untaxed cost of that paper was less, but it was still a substantial investment for the government.

The paper was also a substantial chunk of government property to take care of. Naturally, most colonial officials didn’t want to take any more responsibility for that than they had to.

On 9 Sept 1765, as the anti-Stamp protests heated up in Connecticut, designated stamp master Jared Ingersoll asked a favor of Cadwallader Colden (1688-1776, shown here), the acting governor of New York:

the Stampt papers intended for this Colony are Expected to arrive Soon at N. York & were to have been forwarded to me who am appointed the Distributer here, but the unaccountable rage & fury of the Mob is at present So high against Stamp Officers & papers that I do not think it Safe to have the later Sent here as yet

I have therefore to desire of you to protect the Same when they Shall arrive by placing them in the Fort, or otherwise as you shall be Able, until Some further Steps may be taken . . .

my Duty to the King obliges me to give You this trouble

I am Sr
Yr Most Obedt & Most Humbl. Servt.…

On 14 September, Colden responded:

I have yours of the 9th desiring me to take care of the stamp Paper for your Colony when they arrive. In my opinion they may be put more safely & with greater ease on board one of the Men of War at this Place, & more easily conveyed from thence to your Colony, than by placeing them in this Fort, where it is too probable there will be a necessity of placeing those designed for this Colony. This Fort at present is crowded with Men & military Stores. It may be proper for you or some Person for you to be in this place to take care of your Stamp’d Papers, as my hands are too full with the affairs peculiar to this Province. . . .

I am with great Regard, Sir,…

Ingersoll publicly resigned his post as stamp master on 19 September, as described starting here. He therefore told Colden that the papers were really no longer his charge:

by the time that your favour of the 14th reached my house, I had been Compelled in a most Extraordinary manner to declare I would not directly or indirectly intermeddle with the Stampt papers intended for this Colony—at present therefore when all the Springs of Government are broken I can do no more than recommend to you to take the best Care you Can of those Stampt papers for the Crown until you shall have further directions concerning them from the Commissioners of Stamps, or from me

I am
Yr. Most Obedt. Humb Servt.…

When the stamps for Connecticut actually arrived, Gov. Colden silently disregarded that request and had his son David (1733-1784) take up the correspondence on 28 October:

The Gover. Orders me to inform you that Captn. Davis has brought over three Packages of Stamp’d Papers Marked for Connecticut, which are now lodged in the Governor’s House in the Fort. The Gaspey Cutter is now here & is a very fitt vessell for carrying the Papers to you if you can prevail upon Captn. [Archibald] Kennedy to order her to do it. We hear more Stamped Paper is on board three Ships daily expected here.

I am with great Regard, Sir,…

Ingersoll replied directly to the acting governor on 31 October:

Yesterday I received your favour of the 28th advising me of the Safe arrival of part of the Stamp papers intended for this Colony. I immediately advised with the Governour [Thomas Fitch] on the Subject & for Answer have to Say, that as the people of this Colony have with impunity offered the most high handed violence to my person on account of my having undertaken to be Distributor of Stamps And still Continue their threats to me in case I shall intermeddle with the Stamp papers, as also the destruction of the papers themselves, and as the house of Representatives of this Colony have lately voted the Act of Parliament itself unprecedented & unconstitutional whereby the peoples Spirits are kept up, and as we have no Strong hold wherein to place the papers, I Cannot think it Safe for me or the papers or prudent to bring them into the Colony & have therefore only to thank you for your past goodness & to repeat to you my request that you will be So good as to keep & protect the papers that have or shall arrive at N.York until you Shall receive further directions about the Same.

I am Sr
Yr. Most Obedt. Humble Servt.…

I like how the complimentary closes to those letters give an “Alphonse and Gaston” tone to this exchange.

By the time Colden received Ingersoll’s last letter, the situation in New York had become dire. Connecticut’s paper was the least of his troubles.

Josiah Quincy for the Defense

Yesterday we left tobacconist John Willson on trial for the murder of a shoemaker named David Murray in 1771. That was on 6 September, slightly less than a month after Murray had turned up dead on the shore of Boston Neck.

The facts weren’t in Willson’s favor. People had seen the two men leave Castle William in a boat together, and Willson didn’t tell a coherent story of what happened. Though there were no witnesses, it seemed pretty clear that the two men had gotten into a fistfight.

The law was also not on Willson’s side. If the jury decided he killed Murray in a fight, British rules of the time didn’t offer much leeway in evaluating whether he deserved to die. He would have had to prove the circumstances of manslaughter or self-defense. There were no prisons as an alternative to the gallows.

Courtroom records from the 1770s are quite sparse, with the exception of the trials that followed the Boston Massacre. But we have Josiah Quincy, Jr.’s speech defending Willson. That appears in Joseph Hawley’s commonplace book, recently digitized by the New York Public Library.

After quoting from a couple of legal authorities, Quincy challenged the jury to live up to those standards since “our crown law is with justice supposed to be more nearly advanced to perfection.”

Finally he addressed the specifics of this case:

One doubt in this case is whether the dec[ease]d. was killed by any man.—another doubt there certainly will be, whether he was killed by the prisoner. But if he was so killed, will any one say that the prisoner was guilty of murder? a Crime at which human nature starts, and which is almost universally punished with death. . . .

It will be said, perhaps, if you are fully convinced, that the prisoner killed the decd[,] every circumstance to justify or excuse such killing must be proved by the prisoner. This no doubt is good law. But here it is impossible; none being present but the prisoner and the decd.

Can it be supposed to be law, reason, or christianity to oblige a prisoner to prove impossibilities, or lose his life? how astonishing to suppose reason so little to prevail at the formation of our laws, and under the formalities of justice, that weak equivocal evidence, nay surmise and suspicion, should ever be thought sufficient proof—for crimes, the most atrocious in their nature, the most deliberate in their commission, and therefore the most improbable, as if it were the interest of the laws and the judges, and for the good of society, not to enquire with charity and candor, but to prove the crimes: as if there was not greater risk of condemning any person when the probability of his guilt is less. . . .

If a man be found suddenly dead in a room, and another be found running out in hast with a bloody sword; the blood, the weapon, the hasty flight, are all the necessary concomitants of such horrid facts.—here are deficient the weapon—the blood on such weapon, and above all the hasty flight. Did the prisoner fly, did he ever attempt to secrete himself?

or In some cases presumptive evidences go far to prove a person guilty, tho there be no express proof of the fact to be committed by him, but then it must be warily pressed (and surely as cautiously believed) so as to convict em. For it is better that 10 guilty persons escape unpunished than one Innocent person should die. &c

The 12 Sept 1771 Boston News-Letter reported the outcome of Quincy’s argument:

At the Superior Court held here, on Friday last, John Willson was tried for the Murder of David Murray, who was found dead on the Neck, mentioned in this Paper of the 15th of August last: The Jury brought in their Verdict, Not Guilty.

Not simply not guilty of murder, but not guilty of all charges.

The fact that Hawley copied Quincy’s argument into his commonplace book suggests that the attorneys of Massachusetts thought it was a remarkable case.

The Life and Death of David Murray

On 10 Apr 1755, shoemaker David Murray and Mary Fitzgerald married at the New South Meetinghouse, having announced their intention the previous October.

Soon afterward, Boston employee Robert Love visited them at their home on Blowers’s Wharf in the South End, according to Cornelia Hughes Dayton and Sharon H. Salinger in their study Robert Love’s Warnings: Searching for Strangers in Colonial Boston.

Over the next fifteen years the Murrays had children, but David remained a journeyman, never doing well enough at making shoes to open his own shop.

Then, on 12 Aug 1771, the Boston Evening-Post carried this item:

Last Thursday Afternoon [i.e., 8 April] David Murray, a Shoemaker belonging to this Town, was found dead on the Beach near the Neck, an some Marks of Violence appearing on several Parts of his Body, and the Jury of Inquest being of Opinion that his Death was occasioned by some violent Blows, one Willson, a Tobacconist, who had been with him in  a Boat to the Castle, and came off with him from thence the Evening before, was taken up and examined, and telling many contradictory Stories relative to the Affair he was the next Day committed to Goal on a strong Suspicion of being the Means of his untimely End.

The indictment accused Willson of beating Murray to death with his fists. Within a month, Willson was on trial for murder. His attorney: Josiah Quincy, Jr.

TOMORROW: Quincy’s plea to the jury.

“Glass Branches” for the Old North

This week Bryan McQuarrie of the Boston Globe reported on the return of an eighteenth-century chandelier to the Old North Church in Boston’s North End.

The five-armed glass chandelier first came to the church as half of a matched pair. According to Hannah Mather Crocker’s Reminiscences and Traditions of Boston, written in the 1820s:

The chandeliers were given by Capt Gruchy. They were taken near the close of the Spanish War. They were made for one of their cathedrals, but were way laid by a privateer belonging to him and thus brought to Boston to be hung up in the North Church since remembrance.

In Rambles in Old Boston, New England (1887), the Rev. Edward G. Porter quoted this item from the Christ Church (North Church) records:

June 16, 1746. Whereas Messrs. Mr. Robert Jenkins, Capt. Grushia, Mr. Hugh McDaniel, Mr. Jno. Gould, Mr. Jno. Baker, oners of the Priveter Queen of Hungary, hath made a present to Christ Church in Boston of 4 cherubims and 2 glass branches taken by ye said Vessell, Voted, That the branches be hung in ye body of the church and ye cherubims placed on ye top of the Organ.

Thomas James Gruchy was a privateer captain during King George’s War, now known as the War of the Austrian Succession or more fondly as the War of Jenkins’s Ear. He commanded the Queen of Hungary, sharing ownership with those other men.

Gruchy reportedly captured a French ship on its way to Québec. Its cargo included those two chandeliers (the “glass branches”) and four carved wooden angels. Gruchy apparently led the choice to donate those to Christ Church, where he was a junior warden.

By 1830, that North Church—soon to be the “Old North”—had refurbished its interior. The carved wooden angels were moved to a new spot, but the chandeliers were put outside in the courtyard. A former church official was founding an Episcopal mission in the western Massachusetts town of Otis, and he took one chandelier out for its new building. The other disappeared.

That church in Otis is now defunct, the building up for sale. Episcopal officials packed up some of its furnishings, including the chandelier, and sent them back east. The National Park Service is now analyzing the pulpit and prayer desk for clues to their age, and Old North is looking for a place to hang its new, old glass chandelier.

Hawley, Adams, Gridley, and Otis, Attorneys at Law

Going back to the newly digitized Joseph Hawley Papers at the New York Public Library, one noteworthy item is Hawley’s commonplace book.

A commonplace book was a notebook in which a (usually) gentleman copied out passages from books or documents that he found interesting, thoughts he wanted to explore, and other material. For example, Hawley’s starts with “Thoughts on various Subjects” and extracts from Cicero “of the Principles of the Stoics.”

Then comes something very meaty for historians of the Revolution: a summary of Jeremiah Gridley’s argument for the Crown in the February 1761 writs of assistance case, followed by the much longer rebuttal from James Otis, Jr. (shown here).

Late in life, and resentful of all the attention Patrick Henry and Virginia were getting, John Adams argued that that court case was the real beginning of the American Revolution. “Then and there the Child Independence was born,” he told William Tudor in 1817. Not coincidentally, almost all the information we have about that event was supplied by John Adams, sometimes with an extra helping of courtroom drama.

Hawley’s commonplace book contains, I understand from Mark Boonshoft’s essay at the Junto blog, the most complete rendering of those arguments to survive. Adams probably wrote out those texts from his notes between the argument in February and 3 Apr 1761, when he showed a copy to Col. Josiah Quincy. Compared to his later description, they are less dramatic but more reliable, though still a long way from a true transcript.

Interestingly, Adams’s own manuscript of these arguments doesn’t exist. Instead, he gets credit for having written the textual ancestor of several overlapping versions that do survive, including Hawley’s. On 29 Apr 1773 the Massachusetts Spy printed Otis’s speech, sparking more interest in it. That August, the Massachusetts Committee of Correspondence sent the Gridley and Otis arguments to the Connecticut legislature. Joseph Hawley was on that committee, so that’s probably how he got to make a copy of his own.

Meeting the Quincy Women, 12 Nov.

In January 1759, John Adams paid a call to Col. Josiah Quincy’s house in Braintree (shown here).

There the young lawyer found his host’s daughter Hannah (1736–1826) and her first cousin Esther Quincy (1738–1810).

Referring to Hannah Quincy as “O.” in his diary, Adams compared the two young ladies:

O. thinks more than most of her Sex. She is always thinking or Reading. She sitts and looks steadily, one way, very often, several minutes together in thought. E. looks pert, sprightly, gay, but thinks and reads much less than O. . . .

O. makes Observations on Actions, Characters, Events, in Popes Homer, Milton, Popes Poems, any Plays, Romances &c. that she reads and asks Questions about them in Company. What do you think of Helen? What do you think of Hector &c. What Character do you like best? Did you wish the Plot had not been discovered in Venice preserved? These are Questions that prove a thinking Mind. E. asks none such.

But really they were both flummoxing him: “I talk to Hannah and Easther about the folly of Love, about despizing it, about being above it, pretend to be insensible of tender Passions, which makes them laugh.”

Hannah Quincy married Dr. Bela Lincoln of Hingham the next year. Esther Quincy married Adams’s friend and fellow lawyer Jonathan Sewall in 1764. That same year, Adams married Abigail Smith, whose mother was a Quincy.

On Thursday, 12 November, Nancy Carlisle will speak at Old North Church in Boston on the topic “From the Revolution to the Close of the Nineteenth Century, the Remarkable Women of the Quincy Family.”

In a family where six successive generations of Quincy men held prominent public roles in the civic life of Boston and New England, the women in the family have long been overshadowed. But in reality it is because of them that we know as much as we do about their husbands, fathers, and brothers. When we shine a light on the lives of the Quincy wives and daughters we learn about the role that intelligent, articulate, and engaged women played in the political and cultural life of the region.

Carlisle is the Senior Curator of Collections for Historic New England. For the past three years she has focused on the Quincy House and its inhabitants as part of a major reinstallation.

This talk is scheduled to start at 6:30 P.M. It is free, but Old North asks people to reserve seats through this site. There will be a reception afterwards.

Poking through the Joseph Hawley Papers

Harvard University isn’t the only institution digitizing Revolutionary-era documents, of course.

The New York Public Library ended up with a bunch of significant papers from Massachusetts, including Samuel Adams’s papers and the correspondence of the Boston Committee of Correspondence. It too has been scanning lots of documents and making them available to the world for free as part of its Early American Manuscripts Project.

I’ll start with the Joseph Hawley Papers. Hawley was an attorney in Northampton, respected by all Massachusetts Whigs for his legal knowledge and judgment. He was quite active in the Massachusetts legislature leading up to the Revolutionary War.

This is Hawley’s copy of the text of a letter that William Brattle sent to Gen. Thomas Gage in late August 1774 warning about rumblings of military preparation in the countryside. Gage responded by removing gunpowder from the provincial powderhouse in what is now Somerville. The rural militia mobilized in what became known as the “Powder Alarm.” That event signaled how Massachusetts farmers had become more confrontational than Bostonians.

Here’s a letter from a man in Boston on 27 Feb 1775 worrying that the Massachusetts Provincial Congress has given too much power to its Committee of Safety to call out the militia again:

when once the Soldiers are mustered by order of the Committee they will suppose it their duty to fight, and for fear of being Impeached for Cowardice, it is more than probable they will Commence Hostilities…

Who wrote that letter? The page with the signature doesn’t appear to have survived. But the handwriting looks a lot like that in this July 1775 letter from Thomas Cushing—Boston merchant, speaker of the Massachusetts house, and delegate to the Continental Congress.

Later in July Cushing wrote again with news that the Congress had chosen Hawley to help negotiate with Native American nations in the northern theater. Hawley’s papers also include a commission signed by John Hancock. There follow a few letters from the other commissioners, asking why they hadn’t heard from Hawley. Finally he wrote to the Congress saying he couldn’t take on the job because of this health—quite possibly the beginning of a long depression that curtailed his political activity.

Hawley appears to have remained active in local affairs, at least at times. His papers include an August 1775 document in which a bunch of British prisoners signed onto the terms of their parole within the town of Northampton. Here are notes on how Hawley’s town voted to pay “nine-month men” enlisting in the Continental Army, and here’s the list of some men who signed up on those terms.

Digging through Harvard’s Digital Papers

I rather like my segue yesterday from the Stamp Act confrontation unfolding 250 years ago to Harvard’s new Colonial North American Project.

As the university announced, its archivists are digitizing all the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century documents in several different collections. With 2,400 objects documents available for viewing, the project is still in an early stage.

For example, here’s a notebook of Prof. John Winthrop’s meteorological observations for the mid-1740s. The professor kept those up to his death in 1779, meaning we have detailed weather records from just outside Boston for all the important days of the pre-Revolutionary turmoil and the siege of Boston. But the later notebooks don’t appear to be digitized yet.

Winthrop’s astronomical studies probably explain why the papers of him and his wife Hannah, who were firm establishment Whigs, include almanacs from the Loyalist printers John Mein and John Fleeming. But maybe they were just intrigued by the scientific reports on the covers of those publications, about giants in South America and a furious wild beast in France.

There’s a lot of other visual material in the online collection, more easily reproduced that way than in print. Harvard students learned how to take surveys and sketch buildings as part of their mathematics courses, so more than one left a plan of Cambridge common,

William Tudor, Jr.’s mathematics notebook shows him using “Genl. Warren’s monument on Bunker Hill” to calculate heights in 1795, illustrated above. A couple of decades later, Tudor helped to organize the initial drive to create today’s Bunker Hill Monument on the same hilltop.

“Make Application before the said first Day of November”

Here’s a glimpse of Ames’s Almanack for 1766. Usually almanacs were published at the end of the preceding year, sometimes reprinted in the first couple of weeks of the year they covered.

The 1766 almanacs, however, would then fall under the provisions of the Stamp Act, taking effect on 1 Nov 1765. Some printers therefore moved up their publishing schedules so they could sell copies without needing stamped paper.

Richard and Samuel Draper advertised this almanac in early September issues of their Boston News-Letter. Its second page summarized the part of the Stamp Act that applied to almanacs and then warned:

Those Persons who are desirous of being furnished with this Almanack, are requested to make Application before the said first Day of November, as the Price after that Time will be more than double what it is now.

(Incidentally, the author of this almanac wasn’t Dr. Nathaniel Ames of Dedham, despite its title. Instead, it was probably Joseph Willard [1738-1804] credited as “a late Student of Harvard-College.” Ames had published with the Draper family in the past, but this year he either didn’t like being rushed or chose to go with other printers, so the Drapers just pirated his name. But hey—they were taking a moral stand against the Stamp Act!)

Harvard professor John Winthrop (or his wife Hannah, but I think it was John) bought a copy of this almanac, presumably before November. It became part of the couple’s papers in the collections of Harvard University.

And now that university is digitizing this almanac and all its seventeenth- and eighteenth-century documents to create the Colonial North American Project at Harvard University, as reported here. The Winthrops’ artifacts are also part of a new exhibit at the Pusey Library called “Opening New Worlds.” And both the online resource and the exhibit are free to all.

“As regular as a military Corps”

As I read the accounts of anti-Stamp Act demonstrations from late 1765, I’ve been struck by their emphasis on the crowd’s military discipline.

After the 1 November procession, Gov. Francis Bernard reported to London: “[Ebenezer] MackIntosh is a noted Captain of a Mob & has under him 100 or 150 men trained as regular as a military Corps.”

And in more detail:

To show how fully this Town is in the hands of the mob, I will add that Capt. Mackintosh (now called Genl. Mackintosh) who took the care of the Town, after the Militia had refused to muster under my order, & the Council advised me to discharge the Order, & who professes to have 150 or 200 men trained under him; on the 1 of November marshalled at least 2,000 men, & marched in regular order.

What is more surpising is, that one of the Council, Col. [William] Brattle, walked with him, arm in arm, along the Streets, complimented him on the Order kept & told him his Post was one of the highest in the Government. This Councellor conducted him round the Town House whilst both the Houses were sitting; before which regular Huzza’s were made.

Brattle (shown above) was a high-ranking militia officer, on his way to becoming a general, so his praise for Mackintosh meant a lot. As did skipping out on a Council meeting to march around with the working-men outside.

Mackintosh wasn’t really a captain or general, of course. He gained his informal title from leading the South End gang during Pope Night processions and brawls in the early 1760s. But Mackintosh was a veteran of the previous war, and he and nearly every other young man in Boston trained with their militia companies each season, so they knew how to march in step and obey military command.

In fact, they were extremely disciplined. And that worried the royal authorities as much as riots and disorder. Judge Peter Oliver later wrote of Mackintosh:

He dressed genteelly; & in Order to convince the publick of that Power with which he was invested, he paraded the Town with a Mob of 2000 Men in two Files, & passed by the Stadthouse, when the general Assembly were sitting, to display his Power. If a Whisper was heard among his Followers, the holding up his Finger hushed it in a Moment: & when he had fully displayed his Authority, he marched his Men to the first Rendevouz, & order'd them to retire peacably to their several Homes; & was punctually obeyed.

The implication of such discipline, of course, is that with a flick of the same finger Mackintosh could order those same hundreds of men to attack.

“The union was established in a very ceremonial manner”

So what did the “Union” of North End and South End gangs on the fifth of November 1765 look like?

As the Massachusetts Historical Society quoted in 2009, chronicler James Freeman described the day this way:

the disorders which had been committed from time to time induced several gentlemen to try a reconciliation between the 2 parties; accordingly the chiefs met on the 1st of this inst. [i.e., of November], & conducted the affair in a very orderly manner. In ye even’g the commander of ye N. & [S.] after making general overtures they reciprocally engaged in an Union, & the former distinctions to subside, at the same time the chiefs with their assistants engaged their honour no mischief should arise by their means, & that they would prevent any disorders on ye 5th.

When the day arrived about noon the pageantry representing the Pope, the Devil, & several other effigies signifying tyranny, oppression, slavery, &c. were brought on stages from the N. & S. & met in Kings Str. where the union was established in a very ceremonial manner, & having given three huzzas, they interchanged ground, the S. marched to ye N. & the N. to the S. parading thro’ ye streets until they again met near ye Court House.

The whole then proceeded to Liberty tree, under the shadow of which they refreshed themselves for a while, & then returned to ye Northward agreeably to their plan. They reached Cop’s hill before 6 o’clock, where they halted, & having enkindled a fire, the whole pageantry was committed to the flames & consumed.

That was actually a lot like the way smaller New England ports celebrated Pope Night every year: with a single procession, a big bonfire, and public refreshments. So in 1765 the Boston gangs got to enjoy those things without the violence, while getting extra praise and other goodies.

In 2011 the M.H.S. added some remarks from the merchant Isaac Winslow (1743-1793): “There were no disguises of visages, but the two leaders, [Ebenezer] M’cIntosh of the South, and [Henry] Swift of the North, (the same who was so badly wounded last year[)], were dress’d out in a very gay manner”.

Those men’s outfits were military-style coats that town gentlemen had given to the “chiefs with their assistants” of the two gangs—reflecting their self-conferred titles of “captains and lieutenants.” A couple of years later, the artist Pierre Eugéne du Simitière sketched those coats on gang leaders, as shown above. (Du Simitière’s notes preserve the detail that the coats were blue with red trim.) I suspect that by that year Mackintosh and Swift had passed their roles, and those coats, on to younger men.

TOMORROW: The military discipline of the “mob.”

The Danger of Pope Night in 1765

As I described earlier in the week, Boston’s civic leaders were very nervous that the fifth of November in 1765 would bring on a riot. As it usually did.

On that date young British males traditionally observed Guy Fawkes Day or Pope Night by carting around effigies of the nation’s political and religious villains and burning them. Boston’s youth took that patriotic display two steps further than anyone else by dividing into South End and North End gangs and having a big brawl after sunset.

In 1764, one of the Pope Night carts ran over and killed a little boy named Brown, described by different sources as five to nine years old. That happened early in the day, and the holiday proceeded anyway, including the brawl. Tradition, you know.

In the following August, Pope Night rituals spread into the town’s anti-Stamp Act protests: twin effigies hanged and burned, processions through the center of town, bonfires. But instead of just threatening to break windows if householders didn’t treat them well, the crowds broke into three or four mansions and smashed all the furniture.

Sheriff Stephen Greenleaf detained the captain of the South End gang, a shoemaker named Ebenezer Mackintosh, after the riot against Lt. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson on 26 August. But then the town authorities worried that arrest would only rile up the rioters, so they set Mackintosh free. He was prominent in the anti-Stamp demonstrations at Liberty Tree in the following months. But what would he, his comrades, and their cross-town rivals do on Pope Night?

Mackintosh seems to have enjoyed his new role as a political leader and the respect that went with it. He probably appreciated the town leaders’ concerns about keeping Boston’s reputation safe. He definitely appreciated what they offered the gangs if they behaved well.

So Mackintosh made a deal with Henry Swift, captain of the North End gang. The young printer John Boyle described the result: “A Union established between the South and North End Popes. Capt. McIntosh on the Part of the South, and Capt. Swift, on the Part of the North. . . . This Union and one other more extensive [the Stamp Act Congress?], may be looked upon as the only happy Effecte arising from the Stamp Act.”

TOMORROW: A new way to celebrate the fifth of November.

Conversations at Washington’s Headquarters

It’s not every day we get a chance to discuss George Washington’s policy decisions at one of his military headquarters.

This month, the Supervisory Park Ranger at Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site in Cambridge, Garrett Cloer, will host two discussions of the commander-in-chief’s correspondence on important issues.

Open to anyone, these informal sessions are designed to be “a fun way to learn more about the general, the process of historical investigation, and perhaps a little about ourselves.” The topics are:

Thursday, 5 November, 6:30 P.M.
“Creating an Army: George Washington Reacts to New England”

Thursday, 19 November, 6:30 P.M.
“A Look at Washington’s Evolving Views on Slavery”

The discussions will take place in the carriage house at the rear of the site. Each participant will receive copies of the Washington letters to be analyzed. For the staff to know how many handouts to make, they ask for all participants to reserve a space in advance by email or calling 617-876-4491.

John Huske on “an inland tax” for North America

As shown yesterday, on 1 Nov 1765 Bostonians hung an effigy of John Huske from Liberty Tree. Most histories say this was based on the mistaken notion that Huske had proposed the Stamp Act in Parliament when in fact he had opposed it.

I’ve found two profiles of Huske online, one built around his political career in Britain and the other in the Franklin Papers and thus more focused on his links back to America.

A lot of Bostonians knew Huske. He was a son of Ellis Huske, postmaster of Boston and chief justice of New Hampshire. He was named for an uncle who became a prominent general. After being born in Portsmouth, the young Huske moved to Boston for schooling and to begin his career in business.

In 1748 Huske headed to London to make his fortune. He seems to have done that in several ways over the next two decades, losing his money an equal number of times. He also went into politics, attaching himself to Charles Townshend. His campaigning in the district of Hull in 1757 prompted a letter to a duke that said:

Mr. Huske finding that he could make no impression even upon the mob which I had secured, and which he expected great matters from, thought it yesterday most prudent to retire which saved us the trouble of throwing him into the Humber

In 1763, Huske finally got elected to the House of Commons from Maldon.

As a native of America and a merchant doing business with the colonies, Huske often spoke in Parliament about American policy. Some people were more impressed than others. Horace Walpole called him “a wild, absurd man.” He had a lot of ideas, but he wasn’t close enough to the Grenville administration for most people to pay attention to them.

In March 1764, George Grenville and his ministers first proposed a Stamp Tax for North America. Charles Garth, an agent for South Carolina, reported on Huske’s response:

The chancellor of the Exchequer at first proposed it as a measure to take place this sessions, but Mr. Alderman [William] Beckford and Mr. Huske signifying their wish to have the colonies apprized of the intention of Parliament, Mr. Grenville readily acquiesced, declaring it was far from his inclination to press any measure upon any part of the dominions without giving them time to be heard, should they have objections thereto.

Thus, rather than proposing the Stamp Act, Huske actually helped to delay it for a year.

In August 1764, Huske sent a letter to his brother-in-law Edmund Quincy, Jr. (1726-1782), who published it in the 29 Oct 1764 Boston Gazette. It was a reply to “the Committee of Merchants in Boston” who had addressed him about the state of trade the previous February, and was long enough to take up a full page of the paper.

In that letter Huske lamented the Sugar Act and warned that a Stamp Act was likely to pass in Parliament’s upcoming session. He asked the Massachusetts merchants to send any him information he could use to argue against it: “why the provincial stamp did not succeed with you and at New-York;…with every reason you can assign against the establishment of a general stamp duty throughout America.”

Huske blamed “the indiscreet conversation of some Americans, who deny the rights of Kings, Lords and Commons, to impose such a tax on America.” Raising that argument had forced the ministry’s hand, he suggested; the only way for them to confirm Parliament’s sovereignty across the whole Empire now was to enact just such “an inland tax.”

Huske then went to grumble about “the principal author and abettor of this mushroom policy” becoming known “as the person to whom the colonists are indebted for the postponing of the Stamp duty.” He wrote opaquely about “the other undiscerning American he has drawn into the adoption of his sentiments,” and of yet “another Gentleman” whom Americans saw “as their honestest, ablest, firmest, and most successful friend.” All that suggests there was a lot of jockeying, and some backstabbing, among the men in London who claimed to represent American interests. Huske obviously wanted his Massachusetts correspondents to give him more credit for the Stamp Act’s delay.

However, Huske had apparently made his own proposal for raising revenue in North America. According to James Harris’s notes on parliamentary speeches, on 31 Jan 1764 Huske had “proposed an entire new bill of his own—a capitation tax, I think—to be extended through Scotland, Ireland and America.” That’s another term for a poll tax, and it would have hit every free adult male on top of the colonies’ own poll taxes. A few days after that speech, someone wrote to Boston warning that Huske was not “standing an advocate for his injured Country” but had “officiously proposed…a tax on the Colonies.”

Thus, although John Huske was an opponent of the Stamp Act, he was a proponent of imperial taxes on American colonists. Indeed, his proposal would have directly affected more householders than the Stamp Act. Bostonians were receiving contradictory messages from Huske and other correspondents in London, which might have reinforced an existing idea that he was an ambitious, devious man who could play to both sides.

So was it fair or unfair for Bostonians to hang Huske in effigy from Liberty Tree?

“There’s that Villain H—k”

On 1 Nov 1765, Bostonians hung two men in effigy from Liberty Tree. One was George Grenville, the prime minister who had sponsored the Stamp Act.

The other was identified in the newspapers as “J–hn H–sk–” or “J—n H—k” and in a word balloon in Paul Revere’s engraving (shown here) as “that Villain H—k.”

On that effigy hung this label:

Quest. What, Brother H—sk this is bad?
Ans. Ah indeed! I am a wicked Lad;
My Mother always thought me wild,
The Gallows is thy Portion Child
She often said, behold ’tis true,
And now the Dog must have his due;
For idle Gewgaws, wretched Pelf,
I sold my County—d–m’d my self;
And for my great unequal’d Crime,
The D——l take H—sk before his Time.
But if some Brethren I could Name,
Who shar’d the Crime, should share the Shame,
This glorious Tree tho’ big and tall,
Indeed would never hold ’em all.

Which doesn’t often a whole lot of clues.

But back on 9 Apr 1764, the Boston Evening-Post had published a letter sent from London that February which warned the ministry was planning “Stamp Duties” for North America. It went on to say:

What is most unlucky for us, is, there is one Mr. HUSKE, who understands America very well, and has lately got a seat in the House of Commons; but instead of standing an advocate for his injured Country (for he is an American born, and educated at Boston) he has officiously proposed in the House of Commons, to lay a tax on the Colonies, which will amount to £500,000 per ann. sterl. which he says they are well able to pay; and was heard by the House with great joy and attention.

We can thus identify “J–hn H–sk–” as John Huske (1724-1773), a Member of Parliament born in New Hampshire who had begun his career as a merchant in Boston. And some folks in Boston thought he was responsible for the Stamp Act.

TOMORROW: But what was Huske’s connection to the Stamp Act?

“The day the stamp-Act was to take Place”

The Stamp Act was scheduled to take effect on the first day of November in 1765. After that date, all courts in British North America were supposed to reject filings that weren’t on stamped paper. All ships leaving American ports on or after that date were supposed to have Customs forms on stamped paper, and the Royal Navy was empowered to stop ships to check. Newspapers published after that date were required to appear on stamped paper.

And yet in the most populous British colonies on the continent, from New Hampshire to South Carolina, stamp masters had been intimidated into resigning. In many of those places the royal authorities were keeping the stamped paper under wraps lest it be stolen or destroyed. So the big question was whether judges, Customs officers, and other royal appointees would insist on following the law or let business go on without stamps.

In Boston, the Whigs kept up their anti-Stamp campaign by reprising the opening act: hanging effigies on the elm they had named Liberty Tree. Here’s a report that appeared in the newspapers of 4 November:

Last Friday being the day the stamp-Act was to take Place, the Public were not much alarmed or displeased at the Morning’s being ushered in by the Tolling of Bells in several Parts of the Town, and the Vessels in the Harbour displaying their Colours half mast high, in token of Mourning: and tho’ some previous Steps had been taken by Authority to prevent any Pageantry, fearing lest Tumult and Disorder might be the Consequence yet the People were soon informed that the Great Tree at the South part of the Town (known by the Name of the Tree of Liberty ever since the memorable 14th of August) was adorned with the Effigies of the two famous or rather infamous enemies of American Liberty; G—ge G—nv—e and J–hn H–sk–.

The Figures continued suspended without any Molestation till about 3 o’clock in the Afternoon, when they were cut down in the View and amid the Acclamations of several Thousand People of all Ranks, and being placed in a Cart, were with great Solemnity and Order followed by the Multitude, formed into regular Ranks, to the Court House, where the Assembly was then sitting; from thence proceeding to the North End of the Town and then returning up Middle Street, they pass’d back thro’ the Town to the Gallows on the Neck, where the Effigies were again hung up, and after continuing some Time were cut down, when the Populace, as a token of their utmost Detestation of the Men they were designed to represent, tore them in Pieces and flung their Limbs with Indignation into the Air.—

This being done, three Cheers were given, and every Man was desired to repair to his Home, which was so punctually performed, that the Evening was more remarkable for Peace and Quietness than common; a Circumstance that would at any Time redound to the Honour of the Town, but was still more agreeable, as the Fears of many were great least it should prove another 26th of August; for the horrid Violences of which Night we hope the good Order of this will in some measure atone, as it is a Proof such Conduct was not agreeable to the Sentiments of the Town, but was only the lawless Ravages of some foreign villains, who took Advantage of the over heated Temper, of a very few people of this place, and drew them in to commit such violences and disorders as they shuddered at with horror in their cooler hours.

No, Boston’s leaders didn’t want “another 26th of August,” when mobs had attacked royal officials’ houses, culminating in the near-destruction of Lt. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson’s mansion in the North End. That event sullied the reputation of Boston, its political leaders, and the whole anti-Stamp Act movement.

And getting through the first of November wasn’t enough. As the 4 November issue of the Boston Gazette makes clear, the town was looking forward with great anxiety to the following day:

Notwithstanding the Insinuations of those who would represent the Inhabitants of this Town as Mobbish, it has no doubt given Pleasure to the General Assembly now sitting, to find it quite otherwise; and that the spirited Endeavours of those who would picture the Betrayers of their invaluable Liberties in a just and ridiculous View, are attended with the greatest Order and Decorum. . . .

We are well assured, and we have Reason to think, that the Inhabitants are satisfied in it, that if any Exhibitions are made, as usual, on the 5th of the Month, the same unexceptionable Behaviour will be observed; those true Sons of Liberty having agreed to unite as Brethren, in preventing Disorders of every Kind, and in promoting the COMMON CAUSE.

In other words, the North-End and South-End gangs should not take advantage of a historic anniversary to have a series of brawls testing who was tougher and more patriotic, no matter how fun that tradition was.

TOMORROW: “G—ge G—nv—e” was George Grenville, but who was “J–hn H–sk–”?