Forging a Future

Prospect Hill Forge in Waltham, Massachusetts, is having its “Grand Opening Bash” from 6:00 to 10:00 P.M. this evening, Thursday, 17 May, and every evening through Sunday, 20 May, at the same time. This forge offers classes in “The Rudiments of Blacksmithing,” “Flint and Steel,” and other ferrous arts.

Of course, I’ve already taken my blacksmithing class, at Old Sturbridge Village. And I have a couple of rather poor iron nails to show for it. But to observe the public opening of this forge, I looked in my library for material on blacksmiths from the Revolutionary era. Here’s a passage from William C. Nell’s Colored Patriots of the American Revolution (1855):

JAMES EASTON, of Bridgewater, was one who participated in the erection of the fortifications on Dorchester Heights, under command of Washington, which the next morning so greatly surprised the British soldiers then encamped in Boston.

Mr. Easton was a manufacturing blacksmith, and his forge and nail factory, where were also made edge tools and anchors, was extensively known, for its superiority of workmanship. Much of the iron work for the Tremont Theatre and Boston Marine Railway was executed under his supervision. Mr. Easton was self-educated. When a young man, stipulating for work, he always provided for chances of evening study. He was welcome to the business circles of Boston as a man of strict integrity, and the many who resorted to him for advice in complicated matters styled him “the Black Lawyer.” His sons, Caleb, Joshua, Sylvanus, and Hosea, inherited his mechanical genius and mental ability.

The family were victims, however, to the spirit of color-phobia, then rampant in New England, and were persecuted even to the dragging out of some of the family from the Orthodox [i.e., Congregationalist] Church, in which, on its enlargement, a porch had been erected, exclusively for colored people.

After this disgraceful occurrence, the Eastons left the church. They afterwards purchased a pew in the Baptist church at Stoughton Corner, which excited a great deal of indignation. Not succeeding in their attempt to have the bargain cancelled, the people tarred the pew. The next Sunday, the family carried seats in the waggon. The pew was then pulled down; but the family sat in the aisle. These indignities were continued until the separation of the family.

In colonial and early republican New England, families with enough money bought pews in their churches, passing them down or selling them like other property. But churches still tried to enforce who could sit where through a tradition called “seating the meeting,” with the best pews assigned according to wealth and social status—and, in this community, race.

George R. Price and James Brewer Stuart’s article in the Massachusetts Historical Review adds some specifics to Nell’s account. James Easton was born in Middleborough in 1754 to a free couple who probably had both African and Native ancestors. He may have grown up in a nearby community of Christian Indians. Easton served in Gamaliel Bradford’s 14th Massachusetts regiment in the late 1770s. He returned from the war to set up a home in North Bridgewater, now Brockton, and married in 1783, according to Bradford Kingman’s History of North Bridgewater, Plymouth County, Massachusetts.

The Easton family’s first recorded action against segregation appears in the records of Bridgewater’s Fourth Church of Christ in 1800. James Easton was then in his mid-forties and established as a businessman. But the congregation, having enlarged their meeting-house, wanted to reseat him and his family in a new “Negro gallery.” Easton moved to a Baptist church, at a time when Baptists were protesting how taxes went to the Congregationalist hierarchy, but he experienced discrimination there, too.

James Easton’s son Hosea became a minister, and his writings have been collected in To Heal the Scourge of Prejudice. Easton also had a daughter named Sarah who, in 1813, became the second wife of Robert Roberts, author of The House Servant’s Directory. In 1850, their son Benjamin unsuccessfully sued the Boston school committee to integrate the city schools on behalf of his young daughter Sarah. So this blacksmith produced a series of rights activists in the early republic.

Ebenezer Stevens on the Boston Tea Party

Back in February I spent an afternoon in the New York Public Library, a trip that produced some material on the legend of George Washington’s Hanukkah. But my real find that day was the original publication of Ebenezer Stevens’s recollection of the Boston Tea Party. I’d found that material quoted in many places, from Francis S. Drake’s Tea Leaves to Edith Wharton’s memoir A Backward Glance (she was a Stevens descendant). But I hadn’t found its earliest manifestation, even in Stevens family papers at the New-York Historical Society.

But it turned up in a small volume called Biographical Sketch of Ebenezer Stevens, Lieut.-Col. of Artillery in the Continental Army, by John Austin Stevens. Though this book doesn’t have a date, internal evidence shows it was prepared after 1877 (i.e., it mentions someone dying that year). It was apparently printed for members of the family, and a copy ended up at the N.Y.P.L. [ADDENDUM: I’ve since discovered that this material was first published in The Magazine of History in 1877, then reprinted on its own in 1900.]

The book discusses Stevens’s service in Boston’s prewar militia artillery company, commanded by Adino Paddock. Then the tea ships arrived, producing a split in the company, as the author describes:

Paddock’s company was called upon...to guard the tea and prevent its landing. Paddock, whose sympathies were with the Royal authorities, refused his consent, but at a company meeting the charge was accepted and undertaken by them, First Lieut. Jabez Hatch taking the command. Stevens was among those who volunteered on this service.

That squares with the minutes of the tea meetings kept by town clerk William Cooper, which describe militia companies patrolling the wharf where the first ship docked. Indeed, those notes list one of the early volunteers as “Benjamin Stevens,” which could have been a mistake for Ebenezer. It also squares with how the artillery company broke apart in 1774, with Paddock reaffirming his loyalty and many of his men joining the provincials.

Stevens told his family that he was also at the big public gathering in Old South Meeting-House on the night of 16 Dec 1773, when word came that the governor had refused to let the tea ships depart without unloading. This is Stevens’s “own recollection of the affair, as taken from his words at a later period by one of his sons”:

I went from the Old South Meeting House just after dark; the party was about seventy or eighty. At the head of the wharf [Griffin’s wharf] we met the detachment of our company on guard, who joined us.

I commanded with a party on board the vessel of which [Alexander] Hodgdon was mate, and as he knew me, I left that vessel with some of my comrades, and went on board the other vessel which lay at the opposite side of the wharf; numbers of others took our places on board Hodgdon’s vessel.

We commenced handing the boxes of tea on deck, and first commenced breaking them with axes, but found much difficulty, owing to the boxes of tea being covered with canvass—the mode that this article was then imported in. I think that all the tea was discharged in about two hours. We were careful to prevent any being taken away; none of the party were painted as Indians, nor, that I know of disguised, excepting that some of them stopped at a paint shop on the way and daubed their faces with paint.

In the past I’ve expressed skepticism about family accounts published long after the fact without contemporaneous documentation (as in the case of Sybil Ludington). But I’m inclined to believe this account. Why?

First, there’s earlier support for Stevens’s participation in the tea destruction. His name is on the earliest list of Tea Party participants, published in 1835. That list includes a lot of artillerists, and his account helps to explain why. Among those men was John Crane; he and Stevens left Boston shortly afterwards and set up a carpentry business in Rhode Island before returning to greater Boston as provincial artillery officers.

Second, Stevens’s story contains a detail that isn’t really important to the event, may even be a little embarrassing, and smacks of how real life works: as he started to board the Dartmouth, he found that its mate was Alexander Hodgdon, brother of the woman he was courting. Rather than risk being identified or compromising his future in-law, Stevens quickly took his squad to another ship. On 11 Oct 1774, Ebenezer Stevens and Rebecca Hodgdon married, and ten years moved into the the New York mansion shown above a hard century later (courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York). Alexander later became treasurer of Massachusetts.

Finally, when Stevens’s account goes against the established story of the Tea Party, it doesn’t do so in a way that makes him appear more heroic or romantic. In fact, it denies the most picturesque aspect of the event: that the tea destroyers dressed as Indians. Stevens told his son of improvised disguises instead. I think newspapers emphasized the notion that the men were indistinguishable from “Mohawks” in the weeks that followed as a way to discuss the event without acknowledging who had really done it. The many artists who depicted the event after the war up to now also seized on that striking visual detail, and who can blame them?

Dean Dillopolis Takes On John Hancock

The Superhero Historians blog is tackling the Boston Tea Party as its topic of the month. I’ve peeked in on this blog before, and have never been sure what to make of it. I like the idea of helping kids explore historical events in depth, of course. But the vocabulary and especially the syntax of some of these little essays seem rather advanced for readers who like cartoon animal superheroes like, um, Dean Dillopolis here. (Apparently he’s an armadillo.)

Some of the blog’s historical remarks seem a little overenthusiastic, as superheroes are apt to be. About John Hancock, Mr. Dillopolis says, “He also smuggled glass, lead, and tea on his ships.” We don’t actually know that, I think. The best documented smuggling accusation against Hancock—the Liberty case, involving wine—was eventually dropped by the Crown.

There’s incontrovertible evidence for smuggling by other merchants among the Massachusetts Whigs, such as Capt. Daniel Malcom, William Molineux, and Richard Derby, Sr., of Salem. Some shippers even bought insurance for trips to Holland or other forbidden zones. Some were caught by the Customs service and successfully prosecuted. So we can certainly say there was a lot of smuggling into Boston harbor. John Hancock’s fortune was undoubtedly based in part on smuggling, but that’s because his uncle engaged in the practice.

I think it’s likely that Hancock and his captains occasionally skirted Customs rules, too, but he doesn’t seem to have been desperate enough, or to have had the good business sense, to go into smuggling in a big way. Many writers on the Revolution have assumed otherwise, figuring that where there’s any smoke there must be fire. So it’s not surprising that Mr. Dillopolis would write so confidently.

As another example of a poor connection, Superhero Historian Barley Hugg told readers, “The Green Dragon Tavern is a working tavern today.” There’s indeed a tavern of that name in downtown Boston, but it has even less connection to the famous Freemasons’ lodge than the Cheers bar in Quincy Market has to the tavern Sam Malone owned; at least Cheers has an official merchandising license. The original Green Dragon fell to the wreckers two centuries ago. The present-day business is an Irish pub (hence the green), and Irishmen weren’t as populous or popular in colonial Boston.

The great thing about blogs, though, is that they can always change. Just in the last week, Superhero Historians took a big step by going without a favorable review that had come saddled with punctuation, spelling, and usage errors. (“Are you smarter than a 5th grader? Well you’re kids will be if they check this site out as their homepage.”) I’m all for quoting good reviews. [Another History Blog on Boston 1775: “Read it and you’ll see why I like J. L. Bell: he's not only smart and well-read, he can make anything interesting.”] But the editor in me insists that grammatical blurbs reflect better on the site that displays them. So now I plan to keep checking out Superhero Historians.

ADDENDUM: Pierce Hawking’s executive assistant at Superhero Historians, Mr. Norrett, alerts me that he’s clarified the blog’s description of the modern Green Dragon Tavern. Again, that’s what’s great about history on pixels—so easy to add updates. Like this here.

365 Days of Boston 1775

This is the anniversary of Boston 1775, so I’ve taken a look back at the first month (well, two and a half weeks) of postings.

Some of those entries have stood up to internet time better than others. The New Yorker took down its article about a supposed portrait of an eighteenth-century black sea captain—so I just added a better link from N.P.R.

I still haven’t found an image of the Boston Athenæum’s portrait of John Adams by Mather Brown to link to in “John Adams: the many faces.” But through 13 July it’s no longer confined to an upstairs board room but available to visitors as part of the institution’s “Acquired Tastes” exhibit. Also on display are a Gilbert Stuart portrait of Adams, a Houdon bust of Lafayette, and a battle painting by John Trumbull.

May 2006 also saw the start of some series of postings:

• about Col. Jeduthan Baldwin, a Massachusetts artillery officer who had most of his clothes stolen from his tent.
• about Newton Prince, a free black man in Boston who witnessed the Boston Massacre, lobbied for an end of slavery, and eventually retired in England.
• about the intertwined fates of Customs informer Ebenezer Richardson and young household servant Christopher Seider.

I managed a couple of book reviews that month; I’ve meant to write more but haven’t gotten around to them.

One of my bigger surprises about how this blog has developed is that the individual with the most entries is George Washington. Of course I expected to write about Washington since he was so important and interesting, but he wasn’t a Bostonian and probably spent less than two years total in New England over his lifetime. But you know what Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee would have written about Washington if he’d had better internet access: “first in war, first in peace, and first in the blog topic index.”

A Parody of a Parody of a Rewrite of a Traditional Song

In a comment on yesterday’s posting, a long-time Boston 1775 reader gave a link to the Amazon page for this album: Music of the American Revolution: The Birth of Liberty. Since that link is so long, I’m not sure people will be able to see it and use it, so I’m repeating it here. And here’s a link direct from the record company, New World.

This CD contains “The New Massachusetts Liberty Song” under the title “Song on Liberty.” There are audio samples at both sites. Perhaps revealing where his political sympathies lie, the commenter referred to those lyrics as the “Patriot burlesque” on the original “British Grenadiers.” That’s certainly true as far as chronology goes, but the word “burlesque” implies some parody, and the Massachusetts rewrite is so deadly serious. The grenadiers were having much more fun to begin with.

It’s interesting to note that “The New Massachusetts Liberty Song” itself was parodied even before it was printed (or at least before any surviving printed versions). The Historical Society of Pennsylvania reportedly owns a manuscript dated April 1770 and titled “Massachusetts Liberty Song Parodized.”

Who could have made fun of such noble sentiments? Paul Revere later suspected Dr. Benjamin Church, Jr., of this deed. In the same 1798 letter in which he described his ride on 18-19 April 1775, Revere wrote of Church:

He was esteemed a very capable writer, especially in verse; and as the Whig party needed every Strength, they feared, as well as courted Him. Though it was known, that some of the Liberty Songs, which We composed, were parodized by him, in favor of the British, yet none dare charge him with it.

I was a constant and critical observer of him, and I must say, that I never thought Him a man of Principle; and I doubted much in my own mind, wether He was a real Whig.

Revere had been happy to add Church’s quickly-composed verse to the bottom of at least one of the political cartoons he engraved, and left no expression of doubt about the doctor before the war. But after Church was caught in secret correspondence with the enemy in late 1775, the silversmith became suspicious.

Musically, American Whigs and Tories seem to have gone at each other like two modern rappers enjoying a marketable feud. In 1768, someone in Boston took John Dickinson’s “Liberty Song” and parodied it like this:

Come shake your dull noddles, ye pumpkins, and bawl
And own you’ve gone mad at fair Liberty’s call;
No scandalous conduct can add to your shame
Condemned to dishonor, inherit the fame,

In folly you’re born and in folly you’ll live
To madness still ready, and stupidly steady,
Not as men, but as monkeys, the tokens you give.

The first newspaper to print that parody said it came from “a garret at Castle William,” pointing the finger at the Customs Commissioners holed up in that island fort. But some people suspect Dr. Church. Ironically, some people also give Church credit for the Whigs’ answer song in the same style, called “The Parody Parodized”:

Come swallow your bumpers, ye tories, and roar
That the Sons of fair Freedom are hamper’d once more;
But know that no cut-throats our spirits can tame,
Nor a host of oppressors shall smother the flame.

In freedom we’re born, and, like sons of the brave,
Will never surrender, but swear to defend her,
And scorn to survive, if unable to save.

Everybody join in!

Dr. Joseph Warren Rewrites "The British Grenadiers"

In June 1769, Josiah Flagg (1738-95) advertised the last musical concert of his season at Boston’s Concert Hall. It featured a small orchestra made up of local musicians and men drawn from the army’s 29th and 64th Regiments. The evening closed with the song “The British Grenadiers,” arranged for four voices, with the audience probably singing along:

Some talk of Alexander, and some of Hercules
Of Hector and Lysander, and such great names as these.
But of all the world’s great heroes, there’s none that can compare.
With a tow, row, row, row, row, row, to the British Grenadiers.

Those heroes of antiquity ne'er saw a cannon ball,
Or knew the force of powder to slay their foes withal.
But our brave boys do know it, and banish all their fears,
Sing tow, row, row, row, row, row, for the British Grenadiers.

Whene’er we are commanded to storm the palisades,
Our leaders march with fusees, and we with hand grenades.
We throw them from the glacis, about the enemies’ ears.
Sing tow, row, row, row, row, row, for the British Grenadiers.

The next February, Flagg advertised that his concert would include “The New Massachusetts Liberty Song.” The title of that song was clearly inspired by the popular “Liberty Song,” written by Pennsylvania’s John Dickinson to the traditional melody “Heart(s) of Oak.” As for the music—well, “The New Massachusetts Liberty Song” would have sounded quite familiar to Flagg’s audience.

That Seat of Science Athens, and Earth’s great Mistress Rome,
Where now are all their Glories, we scarce can find their Tomb;
Then guard your Rights, Americans! nor stoop to lawless Sway,
Oppose, oppose, oppose, oppose,—my brave America.

Proud Albion bow’d to Caesar, and num’rous Lords before,
To Picts, to Danes, to Normans, and many Masters more;
But we can boast Americans! we never fell a Prey;
Huzza, huzza, huzza, huzza, for brave America.

We led fair Freedom hither, when lo the Desart smil’d,
A paradise of pleasure, was open’d in the Wild;
Your Harvest, bold Americans! no power shall snatch away,
Huzza, huzza, huzza, huzza, for brave America.

Torn from a World of Tyrants, beneath this western Sky,
We form’d a new Dominion, a Land of liberty;
The World shall own their masters here, then hasten on the Day,
Huzza, huzza, huzza, huzza, for brave America.

God bless this maiden Climate, and thro’ her vast Domain,
Let Hosts of Heroes cluster, who scorn to wear a Chain;
And blast the venal Sycophant, who dares our Rights betray.
Preserve, preserve, preserve, preserve my brave America.

Lift up your Heads my Heroes! and swear with proud Disdain,
The Wretch that would enslave you, Shall spread his Snares in vain;
Should Europe empty all her force, wou'd meet them in Array,
And shout, and shout, and shout, and shout, for brave America!

Some future Day shall crown us, the Masters of the Main,
And giving Laws and Freedom, to subject France and Spain;
When all the Isles o’er Ocean spread shall tremble and obey,
Their Lords, their Lords, their Lords, their Lords of brave America.

Tradition credits Dr. Joseph Warren with this lyrical rewrite, though there doesn’t seem to be firm evidence for that. Less than month after the song’s premiere, actual British grenadiers fired into a violent crowd on King Street—the event known as the Boston Massacre. That no doubt increased the local popularity of the new lyrics over the old.

You can hear the “British Grenadiers”/“New Massachusetts Liberty Song” music at Contemplator.org—but don't touch that link yet! It's one of those sites that starts making noise as soon as you peek in. With RealAudio you can also download and hear a fully orchestrated version from Canada’s Virtual Gramophone.

Life and Legend at Longfellow House

I just got back from a fine slide talk by Carol Bundy based on her book The Nature of Sacrifice: A Biography of Charles Russell Lowell, Jr., 1835-64. This event was hosted by the Friends of the Longfellow House in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Bundy is a collateral descendant of Lowell, a Union Army administrative and cavalry officer during the Civil War. Twenty years ago she came across some unpublished, unarchived letters by him and started to research his life. The family library included a book that described the man in very complimentary terms, and as she researched Bundy kept expecting to find a point when that book had veered away from documented facts and started printing legend. But she didn’t. The story of Lowell and his circle makes for quite an affecting saga of a generation facing a national crisis.

A previous lecture by Bundy, along with an interview, is archived here at WGBH.org. She’ll speak at Carlisle Barracks in September.

Since The Nature of Sacrifice is about the U.S. Civil War, it has nothing to do with New England in the American Revolution (even though Bundy did have an image of a man named Paul Revere—the silversmith’s grandson, mortally wounded at Gettysburg).

So to offer some arguably apropos content, here’s a fresh-off-the-card photo of one of Cambridge’s hidden treasures: the restored colonial-revival garden behind Longfellow House. This garden is available for people to visit every day, from dawn to dusk, though the mansion itself won’t open to drop-in visitors under 1 June.

I Am Intrigued

The Historic Site Management Professional Affinity Group (don’t you love phrases made up almost entirely of nouns?) of the New England Museum Association and Historic New England (that’s S.P.N.E.A. for diehards) are co-sponsoring a one-day conference next month called “Beyond Desperate Housewives: Inconvenient Truths at Historic Sites.”

Now the house where I live has just turned (wait for it) eighty years old. Yes, it goes all the way back to the Coolidge administration. I think the most historic thing about it are the piles of magazines I have yet to read, and I’m not about to display them to the public. But I love inconvenient truths!

This session takes place on Monday, 4 June 2007, at H.N.E.’s Spencer-Peirce-Little Farm in Newbury, Massachusetts. Here’s the write-up:

Do you feel that your site glosses over the harsh realities of life in the past? Do personal details shared with the public threaten to dishonor the legacy of your donors? What happens when a story that needs to be told clashes with American iconography, or simply with popular perceptions of a simpler, kinder—and thus more alluring—past? What if your site is built on a lie?

10:00 A.M. Welcome
PAG Co-chairs: Elaine Clements, Director, Andover Historical Society, and Bethany Groff, Northern Regional Site Manager, Historic New England

10:15 A.M. Keynote: Public Image vs. Private Reality
An overview of the issues involved in integrating intimate history, whether it be sexuality, interactions across class and culture lines, illness, death and dying, etc., into our interpretation, with sensitivity and in context. This is a subtle and complex topic that is relevant to all museums.
[Especially subtle is the lack of a name for the keynote speaker.]

11:00 A.M. Slaves in the Gallery
Christine Baron, Director of Education, The Old North Church
Learn about the research currently being done at the Old North Church, including sources for uncovering information about the slave population and the process involved in adding a new dimension of interpretation to this National Landmark.

12:00 P.M. Lunch

12:45 P.M. Body Servants - Intimate Lives Across Class and Race
Jennifer Pustz, Historian for Historic New England
Join us for an exploration of images and realities in the lives of servants in the home. Sign-up for a future planning session for historic sites that would like to incorporate their servant stories in their interpretation.

1:45 P.M. Roundtables (choose two)
• Interpretation plans – strategies for updating
• Training interpreters to share new information
• Exhibit labels – rewriting with sensitivity
• Marketing – striking the right balance

Registration Fee for NEMA members who want lunch or non-members who’ll bring their own is $45. NEMA members can save $10 by bringing their own food while non-members can reserve a lunch by adding $10. Registration Deadline: 25 May 2007.

Edmund Burke Supports the Troops

In the years leading up to the American Revolution, Edmund Burke (1729-1797) was part of a small faction in Parliament called the “Rockingham Whigs,” after his patron, the Marquess of Rockingham. This made Burke one of a handful of voices arguing against plans by various ministers to impose new revenue laws and enforcement measures on the North American colonies.

In late 1774 London was gradually realizing that almost all the army regiments in North America were effectively bottled up inside Boston, with armed rebellion looming if it hadn’t already started. The ministers in power demanded a forceful response, and in fact won reelection on that platform. On 20 Dec 1774 Burke, confirmed in the minority, concluded a speech in the House of Commons this way:

I cannot sit down without saying a word or two on the solicitude the honourable member on my left hand [fellow Rockingham Whig David Hartley] has expressed for the situation of General [Thomas] Gage, and the troops under his command.

It is, I confess, most humiliating and mortifying; and it is difficult to say, whether those who have put them into it deserve most our compassion or our ridicule. It is, indeed, an absurdity without parallel; a warlike parliament, and a patient forbearing general.

I would not be understood to reflect on the gentleman, who I understand is a very worthy, intelligent, deserving man; no, sir, it is those who have sent him on such an errand that are to blame. The order of things is reversed in this new system. The rule of government now is to determine hastily, violently, and without consideration, and execute indecisively, or rather not execute at all.

And have not the consequences exactly corresponded with such a mode of proceeding? They have been measures, not practicable in themselves in any event, nor has one step been taken to put them into execution.

The account we have is, that the general is besieging and besieged; that he had cannon sent to him, but they were stolen; that he himself has made reprisals of a similar nature on the enemy; and that his straw has been burnt, and his brick and mortar destroyed.

It is painful to dwell on such monstrous absurd circumstances, which can be only be a subject of ridicule, if it did not lead to consequences of a very serious and alarming nature. In fine, sir, your army is turned out to be a mere army of observation; and is of no other use but as an asylum for magistrates of your own creating.

Basically, Burke accused the current government of trying to pacify Massachusetts for bad reasons, in haste, with poor preparation and feeble execution. The best way to serve the nation’s troops, he argued, would be to pull back from those measures and find a reasonable accommodation with the king’s subjects in North America, who in his view merely sought to govern themselves.

Benjamin Franklin Loses a Friend

At a meeting of writers last night, one person shared a story about Benjamin Franklin learning to swim. That reminded me of this anecdote from the great man’s Autobiography, in which a 1724 episode which must have been riotously funny to a bunch of rowdy teenaged apprentices becomes a Serious Lesson for Us All. But then that’s the way the Autobiography works.

There was another bookish lad in the town [Boston], John Collins by name, with whom I was intimately acquainted. We sometimes disputed, and very fond we were of argument, and very desirous of confuting one another, which disputatious turn, by the way, is apt to become a very bad habit, making people often extremely disagreeable in company by the contradiction that is necessary to bring it into practice. . . .

I had caught it by reading my father’s books of dispute about religion. Persons of good sense, I have since observed, seldom fall into it, except lawyers, university men, and men of all sorts that have been bred at Edinborough.

Collins helped Franklin run away from his older brother and master. Franklin established himself as a journeyman in Philadelphia, and sent such happy reports home that Collins, by then “a clerk in the post-office,” decided to join him. But their relationship wasn’t the same.

While I liv’d in Boston most of my hours of leisure for conversation were spent with him, and he continu’d a sober as well as an industrious lad; was much respected for his learning by several of the clergy and other gentlemen, and seemed to promise making a good figure in life. But, during my absence, he had acquir’d a habit of sotting with brandy; and I found by his own account, and what I heard from others, that he had been drunk every day since his arrival at New York, and behav’d very oddly.

He had gam’d, too, and lost his money, so that I was oblig’d to discharge his lodgings, and defray his expenses to and at Philadelphia, which prov’d extremely inconvenient to me. . . .

We proceeded to Philadelphia. Collins wished to be employ’d in some counting-house, but, whether they discover’d his dramming by his breath, or by his behaviour, tho’ he had some recommendations, he met with no success in any application, and continu'd lodging and boarding at the same house with me, and at my expense. . . .

His drinking continu’d, about which we sometimes quarrell’d; for, when a little intoxicated, he was very fractious. Once, in a boat on the Delaware with some other young men, he refused to row in his turn. “I will be row’d home,” says he.

“We will not row you,” says I.

“You must, or stay all night on the water,” says he, “just as you please.”

The others said, “Let us row; what signifies it?”

But, my mind being soured with his other conduct, I continu’d to refuse. So he swore he would make me row, or throw me overboard; and coming along, stepping on the thwarts, toward me, when he came up and struck at me, I clapped my hand under his crutch [i.e., crotch], and, rising, pitched him head-foremost into the river.

I knew he was a good swimmer, and so was under little concern about him; but before he could get round to lay hold of the boat, we had with a few strokes pull’d her out of his reach; and ever when he drew near the boat, we ask’d if he would row, striking a few strokes to slide her away from him. He was ready to die with vexation, and obstinately would not promise to row.

However, seeing him at last beginning to tire, we lifted him in and brought him home dripping wet in the evening.

We hardly exchang’d a civil word afterwards, and a West India captain, who had a commission to procure a tutor for the sons of a gentleman at Barbadoes, happening to meet with him, agreed to carry him thither. He left me then, promising to remit me the first money he should receive in order to discharge the debt; but I never heard of him after.

When we consider the older Benjamin Franklin and his lessons, it’s often wise to consider what the younger Benjamin Franklin would have thought of them. Probably something like this.

Making of America: Another Delightful Digital Database

Back in January, David Parker at Another History Blog described the value of the Making of America database. (Thanks also to Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub for laying the trail of crumbs.) And I’ve been meaning to express my gratitude to the University of Michigan for creating it.

Now this database doesn’t go all the way back to the 1700s. But it’s still valuable for folks studying eighteenth-century history because it archives:

• Some volumes of documents from the founding era that were transcribed and published in the mid- and late 1800s.
• Histories written around the Centennial, showing what Americans then thought of the Revolution.

Among the former, don’t miss the volumes mysteriously catalogued under the series title “John Watts DePeyster Publication Fund.” Those are the Collections of the New-York Historical Society. And the Making of America version provides both page views (like Google Book) and crude transcriptions.

Volume 14, for example, reprints the journals of Capt. John Montresor, the British army’s top engineer in North America. (That’s him above, as painted by John S. Copley.) Here are some of the captain’s notes on his Boston 1774-75 experience, apparently written as he sailed back to England (and perhaps prepared to make a claim for promotion or reward):

I attended Lord Percy from Boston towards the Battle of Lexington. My advancing some miles in front of his Corps with four volunteers, and securing the Bridge across Cambridge River, 19th April, 1775; which prevented his Body from going the Watertown Road, whereby the Light Infantry and Grenadiers were not cut off, my having sent one Volunteer back to his Lordship; the town of Cambridge in arms, and I galloped through them.

During part of Gen. Gage’s Command at Boston [i.e., in late 1774], the Garrison were distressed for want of Specie, and also Carpenters; which I undertook to remedy, by supplying it £6,ooo in gold, and got it sent on board the “Asia,” and so to us at Boston.—Government insuring it.

I was twice attempted to be assassinated for supporting the honor and credit of the Crown during my Command in the course of the Rebellion.—1st., near Brattle Square, at Boston, by means of Rebel Doctor [Samuel] Cooper; and, 2nd, near the South end of Boston, by Samuel Dyer, when I saved General [Samuel] Cleaveland’s Life, Commanding Officer of Artillery. This man was sent off by the Sheriffs of London, Messrs. [William] Lee and [Stephen] Sayre, to murther Lt.-Col. [George] Maddison of the 4th Regiment.

I know nothing about Montresor’s accusation of the Rev. Dr. Cooper, minister of the Brattle-Street Meeting, and this remark isn’t mentioned in Charles W. Akers’s modern biography.

Montresor is correct that he and Cleaveland were nearly killed by a sailor named Samuel Dyer on 18 October 1774. That was, as far as I can tell, the first time in the Revolutionary conflict that someone in Boston tried to fire a gunshot at someone from the royal government or military. And Montresor actually blamed American-born politicians back in London for it. Eighteenth-century paranoia is wonderful to behold.

The Fife as a Cause of Travels and Disasters

I spent yesterday afternoon at the Lexington Fife & Drum Muster (shown above during the “F Troop” congregation of members from all the units present, led somewhat casually by members of the host group). So it seemed appropriate to share John Greenwood’s memoir of becoming a fifer, and what that led him into.

About this period [1770] I commenced learning to play upon the fife, and, trifling as it may seem to mention the circumstance, it was, I believe, the sole cause of my travels and disasters.

I was so fond of hearing the fife and drum played by the British that somehow or other I got possession of an old split fife, and having made it sound by puttying up the crack, learned to play several tunes on its sufficiently well to be fifer in the militia company of Captain Gay. This was before the war some years, for I think I must have been about nine or ten years old. The flag of the company was English; so were they all then.

The captain must have been coppersmith Martin Gay (1726-1809). Gay’s politics are interesting because he was obviously torn. In December 1770, he hosted a spinning-bee, generally a Whig activity. But in 1774 he affirmed his loyalty to the Crown, and left Boston with the British troops in 1776. Then he returned to Massachusetts in the late 1780s, rejoined his old meeting-house, and eventually died at home.

But back to young John Greenwood:

At the age of thirteen I was sent eastward to a place called Falmouth (Portland), 150 miles from Boston, to live with my father’s only brother, whom I was named after. . . .

My uncle was lieutenant of an independent [militia] company (the Cadets), and of course I was engaged to play the fife while they were learning to march, a pistareen an evening for my services keeping me in pocket-money. Being thus early thrown into the society of men and having, as it were, imbibed the ardor of a military spirit; being moreover the only boy who knew how to play the fife in the place, I was much caressed by them.

Moving on! In April 1775, word of the Battle of Lexington and Concord reached Maine. John, who turned fifteen on 17 May, decided to return to Boston to see his parents, whom he was already missing. He left secretly early one Sunday morning when his uncle and everyone else was in meeting.

As I traveled through the different towns the people were preparing to march toward Boston to fight, and as I had my fife with me—yes, and I was armed likewise with a sword—I was greatly caressed by them. Stopping at the taverns where there was a muster, out came my fife and I played them a tune or two; they used to ask me where I came from and where I was going to, and when I told them I was going to fight for my country, they were astonished such a little boy, and alone, should have such courage. Thus by the help of my fife I lived, as it were, on what it usually called free-quarters nearly upon the entire route.

John managed to reach the Charles River, only to find that there was no way into besieged Boston. Charlestown was still intact; it wouldn’t be burned down until the Battle of Bunker Hill. But there were no families around.

Charlestown was at the time generally deserted by the inhabitants, and the houses were, with few exceptions, empty; so, not knowing what to do nor where to go and without a penny in my pockets, if I remember rightly, I entered a very large tavern that was filled with all descriptions of people.

Here I saw three or four persons whom I knew, and, my fife sticking in the front of my coat, they asked me, after many questions, to play them a tune. I complied forthwith, but although the fife is somewhat of a noisy instrument to pay upon, it could hardly be heard for the din and confusion around.

After I had rattled off several tunes, there was one Hardy Pierce who, with Enoch Howard and three or four others, invited me to go up to Cambridge to their quarters, as they called it. When there they tried to persuade me to enlist as a fifer, telling me it was only for eight months, and that I would receive eight dollars a month and be found in provisions; moreover, they calculated to quickly drive the British from Boston, when I would have an opportunity of seeing my parents.

Thus John Greenwood became fifer for Capt. T. T. Bliss’s company.

Phillis Wheatley Gathers Testimonials

In 1772 the Wheatley family announced that a volume of their enslaved servant Phillis’s poetry would soon be published. I’ve seen it written that the Wheatleys were “unable to get her poems published in Boston,” with the possible implication that the town was hostile to them.

But I suspect the real problem was how volumes of poetry got published in the eighteenth-century British Empire. Poets had to pay their own printing bills. They could either be wealthy to begin with, attract wealthy patrons to subsidize them, or sign up lots of subscribers before publication. And Americans weren’t as interested in books of poetry as the wealthy top of British society.

Phillis’s ode to the late Rev. George Whitefield had attracted the admiration of Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon, and other evangelicals in England. They encouraged her to send her poems to be printed in London instead of Boston. But while New Englanders had been seeing Phillis’s poems in newspapers for six years, and Bostonians probably knew her by sight, Londoners didn’t know her—and many didn’t believe that a young black woman could write poetry.

Merchant John Andrews described the problem and Phillis’s solution in a letter to a relative in Philadelphia:

In regard to Phillis’s poems they will originate from a London press, as she was blamd by her friends for printg them here & made to expt [expect] a large emolument if she sent ye copy home, which induced her to remand yt of ye printer & dld [delivered] it Capt Calef, who could not sell it by reason of their not crediting ye performance to be by a Negro, since which, she has had a paper drawn up & signd by the Govr. Council, Ministers & most of ye people of note in this place, certifying the authenticity of it; which paper Capt Calef carried last fall, thefore we may expect it in print by the spring ships

(My reading of this letter differs from the standard transcription from the Massachusetts Historical Society. But hey, I don’t hold it against them.)

That “paper drawn up & signd” is evidence that Boston’s establishment didn’t stand in Phillis’s way. The eighteen men who signed it were the establishment, from both sides of the political divide, and they testified about her genuine talent:

• Gov. Thomas Hutchinson, Lt. Gov. Andrew Oliver, Treasurer Harrison Gray, and other royal appointees
• Council members James Bowdoin and James Pitts, selectman John Hancock, and other Whigs
• most of the town’s Congregationalist ministers, including the Rev. Dr. Samuel Cooper, the Rev. Dr. Charles Chauncy (both Whigs), and the Rev. Dr. Mather Byles, Sr. (a friend of the royal government)

In the language of modern book marketing, Phillis Wheatley had the best “blurb” Boston could provide, on top of the countess’s financial support. Those men’s names appeared at the front of her Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, when it was printed in London in 1773.

Phillis Wheatley Writes about Christopher Seider

Both in the 1770s and now, one of the most famous inhabitants of Revolutionary Boston was Phillis Wheatley. Sold into slavery in West Africa, she arrived in Massachusetts in 1761 at the age of about seven (to judge by the baby teeth she was missing). The tailor John Wheatley purchased the little girl as a servant for his wife Susannah, who renamed her Phillis. She learned to read so quickly that the family started to provide more lessons and books. In 1767 Phillis published her first poem in a Newport newspaper. In 1773 the Wheatleys legally emancipated her, after the publication of a collection of thirty-seven of her poems in London.

Wheatley wrote a lot of her verse in response to events of the day: the death of the Rev. George Whitefield, the death of someone’s child, the Boston Massacre, &c. She wrote odes to famous men, from the Earl of Dartmouth, Britain’s Secretary of State, to George Washington, commander of the army that opposed Dartmouth. She wrote lots of pious pronouncements. This wasn’t a period for introspective, personal poetry, and Wheatley wasn’t a particularly introspective, personal poet. (Her letters are more revealing.)

Among the subjects Wheatley chose was the boy Christopher Seider, killed by a Customs officer on 22 Feb 1770. That poem didn’t appear in the 1773 collection, probably because it was too tied to Boston events for a wider audience and perhaps because it was too controversial. But a manuscript remained, and it was published in The New England Quarterly in 1970. It now appears in Wheatley’s Collected Works.

On the death of Mr Snider
Murder’d by Richardson

In heavens eternal court it was decreed
How the first martyr for the cause should bleed
To clear the country of the hated brood
He whet his courage for the common good
Long hid before, a vile infernal here
Prevents Achilles in his mid career
Where’er this fury darts his Poisonous breath
All are endanger’d to the Shafts of death.
The generous Sires beheld the fatal wound
Saw their Young champion gasping on the ground
They rais’d him up. but to each present ear
What martial glories did his tongue declare
The wretch appal’d no longer can dispise
But from the Striking victim turns his eyes
When this young martial genius did appear
The Tory chiefs no longer could forbear.
Ripe for destruction, see the wretches doom
He waits the curses of the age to come
In vain he flies, by Justice Swiftly chaced
With unexpected infamy disgraced
Be Richardson for ever banish’d here
The grand Usurpers bravely vaunted Heir.
We bring the body from the wat’ry bower
To lodge it where it shall remove no more
Snider behold with what Majestic Love
The Illustrious retinue begins to move
With Secret rage fair freedoms foes beneath
See in thy corse ev’n Majesty in Death

Wheatley spelled the boy’s name “Snider,” as it appeared in some newspapers (but not in the family baptismal records). The praise for Seider as a martyr also came right out of the newspapers, and even the phrase “martial genius” reflects their comment on what was found in the boy’s pockets. All in all, it’s a remarkably overblown bit of verse.

Wish I Could Be There in Princeton, New Jersey

For those not already committed to events on Sunday morning, 6 May, there will be a free walking tour of Princeton, New Jersey, battlefield led by Brandeis professor David Hackett Fischer. His book Washington’s Crossing, about the 1776-77 campaign in New Jersey, won the Pulitzer Prize for history a couple of years back.

This tour is sponsored by the Princeton Battlefield Society, which asks people to register at the site at 9:30 A.M. for the tour that begins at 10:00. The Clarke House museum and its collection of firearms will be open as well. Donations are welcome.

Princeton Battlefield State Park is a mile and a half south of downtown Princeton. I have relatives in that area, so I walked around the site a couple of summers ago without a guide, trying to piece together events through plaques and signs, some created by an enterprising Eagle Scout. The image above represents the “Mercer Oak,” said to be the tree under which Gen. Hugh Mercer lay after being bayoneted during this battle. That tree died seven years ago, so you get to see a stump and a sapling planted to replace it.

Black Drummers of the 29th Regiment

Roger Fuller at Minute Man National Historical Park alerted me to this online image of a small exhibit at England’s Worcester City Museum on the black drummers of the British army’s 29th Regiment of Foot. And here’s an article about that regiment’s tradition of recruiting drummers of African descent; its pictures come from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but it names the drummers going back to Revolutionary times, as compiled by John Ellis.

Now “tradition” and “recruited” might not be the right words for the practice in 1768-70, when the 29th was in Boston. According to other sources, Admiral Edward Boscawen bought the first “eight or ten boys” to serve as drummers in 1759 and gave them to his brother George, who was colonel of the 29th. So those boys most likely arrived as slaves, not of their free will, and the tradition was only about a decade old.

Or are those other sources accurate? Ellis’s study notes three drummers who retired from the regiment with years of service dating from before 1759, at least two of them middle-aged by that year:

• John Charloe—born on St. Kitts, 1710; served 1751-80
• John Bacchus—born on Jamaica, 1726; served 1752-80
• Joseph Provence—born on Santo Domingo; served 1755-90

Perhaps the 29th had some black drummers before 1759, but the Boscawens decided to employ only black men. Perhaps the term “boys” was inaccurate, and a bit pejorative. A later commander of the 29th, John Enys, stated that when he joined in 1775, at least three of the original ten black drummers were still serving, which matches with the data above.

Bacchus was the drummer for Capt. Ponsonby Molesworth’s company in 1769, according to muster rolls. Cpl. William Wemms (or Wemys), one of the Boston Massacre defendants, came from that company.

Ellis’s research lets us identify the other drummers of the 29th’s time in Boston as Robert Baird (born 1738, discharged 1792), Lushington Barrett (died 1787), Thomas Othello (Capt. Archibald Campbell’s company in 1770, died 1777), John Rufael (deserted 1770), John Archer, Thomas Walker, and possibly John Blenheim.

The best documented of that group is Thomas Walker, who got caught up in the fight at the ropewalk on the Friday before the Boston Massacre. He left a deposition about his experience, and Justice John Hill mentioned the “tall negro drummer” in his own testimony. Walker served in Capt. Thomas Preston’s company. Ellis found that he was with the regiment in 1765 and 1774, and might be the drummer “Samuel Walker” listed as dying in 1781 but otherwise unknown.

In the British army (as later in the Continental Army), drummers were responsible for whipping men convicted of crimes. The Worcester City Museum website says, “recruits were sometimes deterred by the thought of being flogged by a black man, and the citizens of Boston even wrote to the commanding officer about it.” That refers to protests like this, from an October 1768 dispatch that the Whigs sent to newspapers in other colonies:

In the forenoon one Rogers, a New-England man, sentenced to receive 1000 stripes, and a number of other soldiers, were scourged in the Common by the black drummers, in a manner, which however necessary, was shocking to humanity; some gentlemen who had held commissions in the army, observing, that only 40 of the 170 lashes received by Rogers, at this time, was equal in punishment to 500, they had seen given in other regiments.

The locals’ main point was how British military punishments far exceeded what the local courts doled out, even when corporal punishment was standard. But the Whigs made sure to slip in the detail about the drummers being black, which could rile up people. As the Boston Evening-Post expressed it on 6 Oct 1768: “To behold Britons scourged by Negro drummers was a new and very disagreeable spectacle.”

Another dispatch from the same series shows a drummer himself being punished the same way in Feb 1769:

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.

It appears that even if these drummers arrived as slaves, they enjoyed a respectable standing within the regiment and retired as free men—but they had to get through the discipline of British military service first.

Mayday at Valley Forge, 1778

When the U.S. of A. became independent, its citizens recognized that they needed new national holidays, not simply those derived from British culture (and especially not those celebrating the king or other aspects of that culture they were fighting against).

Here’s a description of one such attempt, from the Continental Army encampment at Valley Forge in 1778. In late April, the men had received word of the country’s formal alliance with France, which augured more success in the war. In addition, Gen. Washington’s soldiers seem to have achieved a higher level of military discipline and cohesion over the preceding winter. And the winter was over. So they had lots to celebrate.

This description of the day comes from the Military Journal of George Ewing (1754-1824). I think the young officer’s closely written text achieves a sort of poetry:

May
1st Last Evening May poles
were Erected in everry Regt in
the Camp and at the Revelie
I was awoke by three cheers
in honor of King Tamany

The day was spent in mirth
and Jollity the soldiers parading
marching with fife & Drum
and Huzzaing as they passd the
poles their hats adornd with
white blossoms

The following was the procession
of the 3d J[ersey] Regt on the aforesaid day

first one serjeant drest in an
Indian habit representing
King Tamany

Second Thirteen Sergeants
drest in white each with a bow
in his left hand and thirteen
arrows in his right

Thirdly thirteen Drums & fifes

Fourthly the privates in
thirteen Plattons thirteen
men each—

The Non Commissiond
Officcers and Soldiers being
drawn up in the afforsaid
manner on the Regimental
Parade gave 3 Cheers at their
own Pole and then Marchd
of to Head Quarters to do Honor
to his Excellency but just
as they were descending the
hill to the house an Aid
met them and informd
them that the Genl was
Indisposd and desird them
to retire which they did
with the greatest decency
and regularity—

they then returnd and
marchd from right to
left of Lord Stirlings Division
Huzzaing at every Pole

they pasd and then retird
to their Regimental parade
taking a drink of whiskey
which a Generous contribution
of their officers had procurd
for them they dismisd
and each man retird to
his own hut without any
accident hapning throughout
the whole day the whole
being carried on with the
greatest regularity—

in the evening the Officers
of the aforesaid Regt assembld
and had a song and dance
in honour of King Tamany
about 12 O Clock we dismissd and
retird to rest.

We just don’t celebrate like this anymore. The number thirteen symbolized the states, of course. Tammany was a Native chief, thus a symbol of the New World instead of the Old. Whiskey was whiskey.

William Alexander, Lord Stirling, was an American general who claimed a Scottish earldom. The House of Lords disagreed, that that didn’t stop Americans from addressing him with the aristocratic title. The same army was also pleased to welcome a Prussian-born baron of some dubious claims, Gen. Frederick William von Steuben, and the very legitimate Marquis de Lafayette. Republican sentiment melted in the presence of actual European aristocrats.

Maypoles seem to have been unpopular in eighteenth-century America, or at least I couldn’t find mentions of them a couple of years ago. I suspect they became tainted by their association with the Stuart kings after the Restoration. So there’s another irony in seeing them sprout again in the new republic. Then again, when you’re celebrating on the first of May, how else are you going to do it?

What People Read About the “Liberty Tree Flag”

Last Friday, I posted a baker’s dozen contemporaneous reports on flags at Boston’s Liberty Tree in the 1760s. Two of those quotes turn out to be particularly significant, I think, and I’ll return to them later. But now I’m going to jump ahead to when the Bostonian Society’s “Liberty Tree Flag” is definitely documented.

The red and white banner came to the society in 1893 from John C. Fernald. Earlier in that year he had loaned it to the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, where the official catalogue of items in the U.S. Government Building listed it as:

10. Liberty Tree Flag—
Part of the original flag which waved over the Liberty Tree on Boston Common in 1775. Loaned and collected by John C. Fernald, Boston, Mass.

In the same display were several weapons said to have been carried in the Battle of Bunker Hill and the sword of Col. James Barrett, senior provincial officer during the fight at Concord.

Fernald told the Bostonian Society that he’d purchased the flag from a granddaughter of a wireworker named Samuel Adams, who had died in 1855 at the age of ninety-six. Apparently the statement that it had flown on Liberty Tree had come down through the generations of that family.

How reliable was Fernald’s information? In some ways, it clearly wasn’t. Liberty Tree was never “on Boston Common”—it was at the corner of modern Washington and Boylston Streets. There were thousands of army troops in Boston throughout 1775, making a mass meeting of Sons of Liberty very unlikely in that year. But those details might have been mistaken assumptions about Revolutionary Boston, off by just a few blocks and a few years.

The Chicago catalogue’s statement that the cloth was only “Part of the original flag” implies that Fernald thought the original was larger, probably much larger. Does that support the theory that the banner originally had thirteen stripes? Or is this more likely another mistaken assumption, distorted by hindsight?

Who was Samuel Adams, wireworker? I haven’t unearthed any information about him, but I’ve just started digging. If the information about his death is correct, then he was born in 1759 and still a teenager in 1775, when Liberty Tree was chopped down. That would make him an unlikely guardian of the Patriots’ flag, but perhaps he inherited the cloth from his father or master.

I did find one curious passage in Charles Francis Adams’s 1871 biography of his grandfather, John Adams:

in the town meeting or the body meeting,...all assembled on an equal footing. And Samuel Adams, the journeyman wireworker, living on perhaps fifty cents earned every week-day, was entitled to his say as freely, though he might not be heard so readily, as his namesake whilst engaged in combining the far more important wires of the corresponding committees.

The Samuel Adams who died in 1855 would have been too young to speak in town meetings when the more famous Samuel Adams was managing the town’s Committee of Correspondence. So was this mention of a wireworker with that name just a literary coincidence?

I think that information published in the late 1800s might be very significant to understanding the “Liberty Tree Flag.” Those publications were the lens through which people viewed the past. They determined what people expected in Revolutionary artifacts.

Which brings me to those two particular quotations from Friday. Most came from newspapers. While those newspapers survived in Massachusetts libraries, I don’t think they’d yet been collected in complete runs (much less turned into a digital database). Few, if any, historians had read through all the issues of the late 1760s to find all mentions of Liberty Tree. As for the two quotes from John Rowe’s diary, that document wasn’t published until 1895.

So that leaves two items from my Friday list: the reports to London from Gov. Francis Bernard and the Customs Commissioners, describing “a Flag-Staff, which went through the Tree, and a good deal above the Top of the Tree,” and “a red flag.” Those documents were printed in 1769, having been leaked in London. The resulting pamphlet remained in Boston’s archives, much easier to find and read than the newspapers.

The historian Richard Frothingham drew on that source for his 1865 Life and Times of Joseph Warren. On page 61, he wrote, “A red flag was now hoisted above Liberty Tree,” and, “there was a larger assemblage at Liberty Tree, over which still waved the red flag, than had ever been seen in the town.” Though Frothingham noted Union flags at other Whig demonstrations, that page contains his only description of a flag at Liberty Tree. George H. Preble’s History of the Flag of the United States (1872) offered the same information, probably based on Frothingham.

Thus, the best-informed Americans during the Centennial of 1876 and through 1893 probably all thought that the flag at Liberty Tree was red—not, as in most of the newspaper reports from the 1760s, a British Union flag. Which certainly made it easier to believe that a certain red-and-white, seven-feet-by-thirteen banner was that flag.

Liberty Tree at the Theater in 1857

Boston 1775 interrupts its meditation on the Liberty Tree Flag for a commercial announcement—well, a commercial for a play that was touring Massachusetts venues like the “Boston Museum” in 1857. Or, in the words of its broadsides, the troupe offered a:

Great Local Patriotic Play of the Revolution, in three acts, called the
LIBERTY
TREE
or the
BOSTON TEA PARTY!

This might have been an update of the 1832 play The Liberty Tree, or Boston Boys of ’76; both contain a Yankee character named “Bill Ball,” originally played by Boston playwright Joseph Stevens Jones (1811-1877). However, that character plays only a small role in the action, according to the broadsides’ summary, so this might be a new play written to capitalize on memories of its predecessor.

The major characters are:

• among the Americans, “Gordon, a Patriot”; “Nat Hinge, an old Northender”; “Peter Gummery, Gordon’s Negro”; and “McJig, an Irish Serjeant.”
• among the “English” (as the broadside labels them), “Elton, a Government Officer”; “Colonel Worston”; and “Pilky, a Tory.”

Like a lot of American entertainment before World War 2 (and perhaps afterward), The Liberty Tree seems to depend on ethnic stereotypes. The characterization gets particularly bigoted around the Peter Gummery character, including the racist terms of the time. Yet that same character pops up so often in the summary that many in the audience must have come to see him. That interest in ethnicity dovetails with the post-Revolutionary obsession with explaining how Americans are different from British, directly opposite the message Boston’s Liberty Tree was originally supposed to convey.

But without further ado, here is the “Programme of Scenery and Incidents” for The Liberty Tree:

Part First—Scene 1—Shipyard at North End Discontent of the People. Peter’s opinion of things in general. Nat Hinge and his chest of Tools. A spy well treated. Scene 2--Old Triangular Warehouse in Dock Square. The British Soldiers and the Yankee Printer. The uses and abuses of a Leg Mutton. Loss of Uniforms. The First Retreat. Scene 3—House of Mr. Gordon. Opinion of an American Patriot. “This town, Boston, where the Tree of Liberty flourishes, emblem of its name, shall give the word, at which all shall rise who own the name of Freeman, and pluck the bright jewel America, from the Crown of England.” Scene 4—Interior of Hinge’s House. Cutting the crown off. “Darn these Buttons.”—Scene 5—Elton’s House. The American Patriot and the British Subject. Scene 6—THE LIBERTY TREE! Assembling of the people. The plan and the RESOLVE. Scene 7--GRIFFIN’S WHARF! Resolution of the people. ”The work’s begun, Americans, complete it!!” THE BOSTON TEA PARTY.

Part Second—Scene 1—Apartment at Colonel Worston’s. British tuition and Yankee politeness. “Where did you come from?” “Concord and Lexington.” The disguise and the ESCAPE. Scene 2—Gordon’s House. The father and his child. Scene 3—Apartment. The American women at work for their patriot husbands and fathers. Gummery’s opinion of matrimony subjects. “The Boston Boys have heard drums and guns too, and are not much scared at either.” PATRIOTIC SONG—Hinge—“Our Country is our Ship.” Scene 5--OLD SOUTH CHURCH, seen from Milk Street. Boston Boys going to work. The ROGUE’S MARCH. The Tory’s Ride. Scene 6--SHIP YARD.—In the distance, Charlestown in Flames. The attack and retreat. The Tory treated to a coat of TAR and FEATHERS.

Part Third—Scene 1—Street in Boston. Peter Gummery and his Irish Friend, McJig. “The greatest Nigger in the World—I’se General Washington’s Nigger.” SONG—Gummery—“Old George and de Boston Tea Party” Scene 2—Colonel Worston’s House. The consultation. Respect your enemies. Scene 3—Room in Hinge’s House. “Bad news! no dinner to-day, the guns have frightened all the fish—true American fish won’t bite while there’s a red coat in town.” “There’s a Yankee wife for somebody.” Scene 4—PILKEY’S HOUSE. Preparations for breakfast. How about that Cow? Pilkey’s illness. The doctor and his prescription. Knowledge of anatomy. Scene 6—DOCK SQUARE. The assault. The rescue. The forced retreat.—Scene 5—Room in GORDON’S HOUSE. GRAND PANORAMA! Entrance of WASHINGTON! HIS STAFF AND AMERICAN ARMY TO THE GOOD OLD TOWN OF BOSTON. Tableau.

And curtain.

Newspapers on the Flag at Liberty Tree

In my last posting, I promised a look at what Boston’s colonial newspapers said about flags at Liberty Tree. This was my contribution to Monday’s discussion of the “Liberty Tree Flag” at the Old State House Museum (though museum director Rainey Tisdale uncovered one of the crucial quotes below).

Boston Evening-Post, 16 Sept 1765:

At the South Part of the Town the Great Trees for which many have so great Veneration, were decorated with the Ensigns of Loyalty, and the Colours embroidered with several Mottos.

Boston Post-Boy, 19 May 1766:

On the Tree of Liberty waves the British Standard

Boston Evening-Post, 26 May 1766:

The Tree decorated with flags and Streamers, and all round the Town, on the Tops of Houses, were displayed Colours and Pendants

Boston Gazette, 23 Mar 1767:

the venerable Elm of Liberty was variegated with a Multitude of Streamers most beautifully disposed among it’s Branches

Merchant John Rowe’s diary, 14 Aug 1767:

This day the Colours were displayed on the Tree of Liberty & ab[out] Sixty People Sons of Liberty met at One of Clock & Drank the Kings Health.

Customs Commissioners’ report to the Treasury in London, 15 June 1768:

a red flag was hoisted yesterday in the afternoon at Liberty Tree, and continued flying this morning, and that about 10 o’clock this morning a great number of people, supposed to be near 2000, met, and after choosing a moderator adjourned to Faneuil Hall ’till 3 o’clock in the afternoon.

Gov. Francis Bernard’s report to the Earl of Hillsborough, Secretary of State, 16 June 1768:

In August last, just before the Commencement of the present Troubles, they erected a Flag-Staff, which went through the Tree, and a good deal above the Top of the Tree. Upon this they hoist a Flag as a Signal for the Sons of Liberty, as they are called. . . .

Upon this Staff the Flag was flying early in the Morning on Tuesday; at the Time appointed there were assembled they say at least 4,000 Men, many having come out of the Country for that Purpose; some of the principal Gentlemen of the town attended in order to engage the lower People to concur in Measures for Peace and Quiet.

These two confidential reports and some others were later leaked back to Boston by people in London sympathetic to the Massachusetts Whigs. (A leak of similar letters from Gov. Thomas Hutchinson and others came through Benjamin Franklin in 1774, derailing both men’s careers.) Boston printers published those documents in a pamphlet and newspapers, convincing many people that the governor and Customs officials were indeed hostile to local liberties and dishonest about their intentions. But I digress.

Boston Post-Boy, 20 June 1768:

Early on Tuesday Morning the Colours were flying on Liberty Tree; and at the Hour appointed, vast Numbers of Inhabitants appeared at and near the Hall; but the Weather being wet and uncomfortable in the Streets, they adjourned to Faneuil-Hall

Boston Evening-Post, 22 Aug 1768:

At the Dawn, the British Flag was displayed on the Tree of Liberty

The Boston Whigs’ ”Journal of the Times” dispatches for newspapers in other towns, 20 Mar 1769:

The British flag was displayed on Liberty Tree, and at noon a number of gentlemen met in the hall under the same, and the greatest order and decorum observed by the company.

John Rowe’s diary again, 1 Aug 1769:

The Flag hoisted on Liberty Tree—the Bells Ringing—Great Joy to the People.

New York Gazette, 7 Aug 1769, probably quoting a newspaper from Boston:

The Union Flagg was displayed from LIBERTY-TREE, where it was kept flying ’till Friday—Colours were also flung out from most of the Vessels in the Harbour—And from the Tops of the Houses in Town.

New York Gazette, 28 Aug 1769, again probably a quoted report:

Monday last being the 14th of August, the Anniversary was celebrated by the Sons of Liberty: In the morning the British flag was displayed on Liberty Tree, under the shade of which at noon the true-born Sons met, and fourteen toasts were drunk

So contemporaneous sources confirm that Whig organizers would fly a flag from the pole near Liberty Tree on celebratory occasions and to summon public meetings. But none of those sources describe a red and white striped flag like the Bostonian Society’s “Liberty Tree Flag.”

Instead, almost every source that describes the flag at or around Liberty Tree says it was a British or Union flag—a symbol of the Empire. The Customs Commissioners wrote of “a red flag” in June 1768, but I wonder if they didn’t mean a “Union Flag with a red field” or red ensign, which other sources confirm was displayed in the colonies before the Revolution. I doubt it was an all-red flag; Boston required such a banner to be flown outside of houses where people had smallpox, so that would hardly be an effective way to summon people.

Flying a symbol of Great Britain from Liberty Tree fits the American Whigs’ political platform through 1775. They weren’t saying, “We’re Americans, and the British are oppressing us”—that message wouldn’t come until the war had started. No, the Whigs were shouting as loud as they could, “We’re British, and a few corrupt politicians in London are oppressing us!” By hoisting the British or Union flag, they proclaimed their loyalty to the king and claimed their rights as British subjects.

COMING UP: What people read about the flag at Liberty Tree in the late 1800s.