Historic Deerfield’s “Art of the Gentleman”

On 12 Apr 2008, Historic Deerfield will host a one-day symposium on “The Art of the Gentleman: Clothing and Accessories of the Elegant Elite in 18th-Century America.”

The program will deliver a full day of lectures, presentations, and workshops, including:

• “Starting Young: Boy’s Dress Suits” – Lynn Edgar
• “Whigs in Wigs: A Mid-18th Century Wigmaker in Deerfield” – Edward Maeder
• “A Family History of Elegant Attire: The Storer Family of Boston” – Henry Cooke IV
• “From Bookseller to Library: What Colonial Gentlemen Read”
• “Genteel Accessories: Buckles & Jewelry, Swords, and Canes” – Bill Hettinger
• “The Best Stuff: Fashionable Textiles for Gentlemen” – Mark Hutter
• “Striking a Pose: Proper Posture as the Key to Sartorial Success” – Mark Hutter & Henry Cooke IV

The symposium, which costs $100, will include lunch. For an additional $65, participants can enjoy “A Genteel Assembly,” an evening of entertainment with food and music at Historic Deerfield’s Hall Tavern, from 6:00 to 9:00. Participants are encouraged to wear period attire for the entire day if they desire.

Early registration is imperative. The deadline is 8 Feb 2008. For a registration form and other information, including accommodation options, contact Julie Marcinkiewicz, Coordinator of Special Events, at (413) 775-7179.

This symposium is organized in conjunction with Historic Deerfield’s display of men’s fashions titled “Clothes Make the Man,” at the Flynt Center of Early New Life, which opens on 29 March.

An Even Earlier “Corcas”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Old North Meeting-House Pulled Down

One of the many false notes in The Patriot, the Mel Gibson movie about the Revolutionary War, was the scene of British soldiers burning a church with American civilians inside. No such atrocity took place in that war, though some American attacks on Native American towns in upstate New York became quite vicious.

However, the British army did burn one prominent house of worship in occupied Boston. On 16 Jan 1776, selectman Timothy Newell recorded the start of what he probably thought counted as an atrocity:

The Old North Meeting house, pulled down by order of Genl. [William] Howe for fuel for the Refuges and Tories.

Yes, the army burned this church only after dismantling it, with no one killed or even injured.

Old North Meeting-house is on the left in this 1768 picture, marked B. The taller, grander steeple to the right is Christ Church, which inherited the “Old North” nickname after the war and is now commonly called Old North Church.

The Old North Meeting was the second oldest in Boston, preceded only by the “Old Brick” Meeting in the center of town. By the Revolution, there were two other Congregationalist meetings in the North End. The New North meeting had split from Old North in 1714, and then the New Brick had split from New North in 1719. In the years before the war, most Bostonians called Old North “Mr. Lathrop’s meeting,” after the Rev. John Lathrop (1740-1816), who became its minister in 1768.

Decades later, the congregation ascribed the destruction of their meeting-house to a particular enmity of a British general. An 1899 church history quoted the Rev. Thomas Van Ness this way:

I am not surprised to learn that as early as 1774 Lathrop, from this pulpit, said, “Americans, rather than submit to be hewers of wood or drawers of water for any nation in the world, would spill their best blood”; nor does it seem strange that the British general, in speaking of The Second Church, should call it “a nest of traitors.”

Lathrop did indeed say in a Thanksgiving sermon in late 1774:

Americans, who have been used to war from their infancy, would spill their best blood, rather than “submit to be hewers of wood, or drawers of water, for any ministry or nation in the world.”

The latter phrase was a direct quotation from the First Continental Congress’s address to the people of Great Britain, carefully cited in the printed edition of Lathrop’s sermon. The Congress in turn alluded to the Book of Joshua. So this sentiment wasn’t particular to Lathrop.

Lathrop definitely supported the Patriot cause. In 1771, he preached a sermon on the Boston Massacre subtly titled “Innocent Blood Crying to God from the Streets of Boston.” The 1842 History of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, by Zachariah G. Whitman, stated:

In June, 1774, the Ar. Co. held their election, when the late Dr. John Lathrop delivered an excellent and patriotic discourse. It is related, that while Dr. Lathrop preached, British troops were in the vicinity, and a sentry was placed on the pulpit stairs, lest any thing rebellious should be expressed. One fact the compiler remembers, viz: to have heard Dr. L. say, when he was accused of advancing sentiments inimical to his country [i.e., the U.S. of A.], that no one certainly could doubt his patriotic spirit, for he had preached republicanism with a British sentry, armed, on the pulpit stairs, to watch what he said; but he did not mention the occasion.

As for the “nest of traitors” line, however, I haven’t found any source for that quotation earlier than the church’s 1899 history. Other writers in the same book use the phrase “nest of hornets” instead, and authors disagree about whether Gen. Howe or Gen. Thomas Gage uttered those words.

It’s possible that the British authorities really didn’t like Lathrop and the Old North Meeting. It’s also possible that those authorities pulled down the meeting-house simply because it was an old, deserted wooden building, and they needed firewood in the middle of winter. The 1 Jan 1776 Pennsylvania Packet printed a dispatch from Cambridge dated 21 December which said:

That on the 14th instant [i.e., this month] Gen. Howe issued orders for taking down the Old North Meeting House, and one hundred old wooden dwelling houses and other buildings, to make use of for fuel.

Lathrop and many of his congregants had moved out of town and were no longer in a position to object.

In 1849, the Rev. Dr. John Pierce of Brookline wrote a letter about Lathrop that was later printed in the Annals of the American Unitarian Pulpit:

In 1775, when Boston was in possession of the British army, he set out to find a refuge in his native place [Norwich, Connecticut]; but, as he was passing through Providence on his way to Norwich, proposals were made to him to supply a destitute congregation there, to which he consented.

Upon the opening of Boston, in 1776, however, he returned; and, in the mean time, the ancient house in which he had been accustomed to preach had been demolished and used as fuel. It was ninety-eight years old; but was considered, “at its demolition, a model of the first architecture in New England.”

Mr. Lathrop accepted an invitation from the New Brick Church, to aid their Pastor, Dr. [Ebenezer] Pemberton, then in a declining state. And, after Dr. Pemberton’s death in the following year, the two Societies united; and, on the 27th of June, 1779, he became their joint Pastor. In this relation he continued during the remainder of his life.

So a good thing came out of the destruction of the Old North Meeting-House: its minister and congregation doubled up with one of the nearby meetings, and eventually the two became one.

The North End Caucus Mobilizes Against the Tea

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Listening in on the North End Caucus

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Where Mark was hung in chains”

Last April I quoted some of Paul Revere’s account of his ride: “After I had passed Charlestown Neck, and got nearly opposite where Mark was hung in chains,...” I wrote parenthetically that Mark had been executed in 1755 for committing rape. Boston 1775 reader Carl Zellner, formerly of the Charlestown Historical Society, reminded me that Mark was executed for helping to kill Capt. John Codman, so I’ve corrected that entry.

Because Mark and his fellow defendant, Phillis, had been enslaved to Codman, the legal charge against them was worse than murder. It was “petit treason,” on the grounds that slaves harming their master was tantamount to subjects attacking their king. Petit treason carried worse penalties than hanging. Phillis was burned to death, a very rare legal punishment in Massachusetts. Mark was hanged, and then his body was displayed near Charlestown common as a warning to others. That’s how Revere came to know “where Mark was hung in chains” twenty years later.

In 1883 Abner Cheney Goodell, Jr., wrote a study of the case for the Massachusetts Historical Society which is available through Google Books. It prints many of the legal documents from the trial, including interrogations of the ill-fated defendants.

Boston’s Caucus Expands in 1772

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TOMORROW: Actual minutes from colonial caucus meetings.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"We Therefore Request Your Votes..."

Boston’s Caucas Club was “outed” in the spring of 1763, with Thomas and John Fleet printing satirical remarks about that political gathering in a pamphlet and in their Boston Evening-Post newspaper.

It’s interesting, therefore, to find this notice, apparently from the club itself, in the Evening-Post of 14 May 1764:

To the Freeholders, &c.
MODESTY preventing a personal Application (customary in other Places) for your Interest to elect particular Persons to be your Representatives. WE therefore request your Votes for those Gentlemen who have steadily adhered to your Interest in Times past, especially in the Affair of Trade, by sending timely Instructions, requested by our Agent, relative to the Acts of Trade late pending in Parliament.
Your humble Servants,
The CAUCAS.

N.B. Nothing further need be added here, as one of our Writers, will, as usual give something in OUR Paper of this Day, preparatory to the Election To-Morrow, shewing the Expendiency of such a Choice.

That same day, Edes and Gill’s Boston Gazette—long associated with the town’s political leaders rather than the royal government—ran a two-column article signed “Nov-Anglicanus,” which seems to be the writing this notice alluded to. That essay made one of the first public arguments that Parliament had no right to lay taxes on American colonists without the consent of their own legislatures. It also praised representatives who had wanted to instruct the colony’s agent (lobbyist) in London to argue against such expanded Customs duties:

It was indeed mov’d and urg’d by some friends to liberty in the late house of representatives, whose names, would it not give them offence, should be mentioned, and who I hope will for ever be supported by their constituents, that an humble remonstrance should be sent home, professedly to set forth, how hard these schemes would bear upon our civil constitutions and our rights as britons, as well as upon our trade—what a grievance it would be for us to be depriv’d of that inestimable privilege of taxing ourselves—

A committee was appointed and a remonstrance was drawn up in decent manly terms, and with great force of argument; but the subject truly was so delicate, that the majority of the committee it seems under pretence of touching it more more delicately in some future time, gave it the go by and never touched it at all; nor did the house that I can learn ever call upon them after—

Does this not look as if it was the disposition of the last assembly, under what influence let any man judge, instead of affording aid to our agent, to keep him in the dark and without support?

After that month’s elections there was a new Massachusetts General Court, and in October it sent Parliament a petition asking for several Customs duties to be repealed.

The 14 May Evening-Post notice above appears to be the first time the word “caucus” ever appeared in print as people thought it was really spelled (as opposed to “Corkass”). John Adams had written it the same way in his diary, with an A before the final S. That early spelling might be a hint about where the word came from: it looks less and less like a Latin derivative.

Bluster about the Boston Caucus

It’s still caucus season (at least in Nevada), so I’m returning to the topic of the original caucus—the somewhat mysterious gathering of politically-minded gentlemen in advance of Boston’s town meeting elections.

After my posting on the “Caucas Club” that builder Thomas Dawes hosted in 1763, architect Frederic C. Detwiler alerted me to an article he wrote about Dawes in Old-Time New England, the magazine Historic New England used to publish when it used to be the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities. Click here for a PDF download of Rick’s article, and here for his follow-up on Dawes’s design of the Brattle Square Church.

Rick’s article about Dawes alerted me in turn to another odd source on the caucus in 1763, which seems to have been the first year it became an open political issue. I quoted a complaint about the “Corkass” from the 21 Mar 1763 issue of the Boston Evening-Post. That same newspaper carried this little advertisement:

THIS AFTERNOON will be published,
And to be had of the Printers hereof.
[Price Five Coppers.]
PROPOSALS
For Printing by Subscription, the History of Adjutant Trowel and Bluster, together with a Specimen of the Work.—

In the eighteenth century, authors would often advertise such “proposals” and “specimens” (or advance peeks) of books they were working on as a way to drum up advance orders and pay for printing the whole book.

In this case, however, the proposal was just an excuse for publishing an eight-page pamphlet attacking a couple of Boston Whigs. A copy of that pamphlet at the Boston Athenaeum has handwritten notes identifying its author as Samuel Waterhouse, “Adjutant Trowel” as Dawes, and “Bluster” as James, Otis, Jr. The major reference guide to colonial publications tentatively dates this pamphlet to 1766, when Waterhouse wrote newspaper articles calling Otis “Bluster,” but the Evening-Post ad shows it appeared three years earlier.

Even in the midst of Waterhouse’s allegory and satire, we can spot details that match other accounts of the caucus meetings in Dawes’s large attic. Highlighted phrases like “General court” and camouflaged phrases like “g——l a———y” make the link to contemporary Massachusetts politics. Here’s an extract that takes up when “Adjutant Trowel” is serving with the army.

Chap. VII. He assembles a number of Malcontents at a large tent, prepared by him for that purpose, to endeavour to obtain their votes, in order to carry a favourite point at the next General court martial, which, partly by their assistance, and partly by stratagem, he effects.

Chap. VIII. Flush’d with success, he forms a plan to new model the army & cashier all those who he imagin’d might oppose any of his future schemes, for which purpose he collects all the discontented officers of the regiment, at the great tent, endeavours to stir them up to sedition, and mutiny against the new General.

Chap. IX. The great increase of his levee—he is look’d upon as an officer of consequence, by the ignorant and illiterate part of his brother officers—applications are made to him instead of the General.—

Chap. X. He boasts of his consequence—takes upon himself the state of a general officer—the army repairs to winter-quarters—he builds himself a stately house, superior to the General’s, with a large hall in the upper story, appropriated to the same use as his large tent.

Chap. XI. He cabals with the inhabitants of the city were [sic] he is quartered, against the mayor and aldermen who from their being men of probity and honor are caress’s by the General quarter’d in the same city.

The “new General” was probably Gov. Francis Bernard, who took office in 1760.

Then “Bluster” comes on the scene, a lawyer upset that a friend has been passed over for the office of “C—f J——e.” In real life, James Otis, Sr., thought he was in line to be Chief Justice; when Bernard appointed Lt. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson to that post instead, his son broke with the royal party and took up popular politics. And so did “Bluster”:

Chap. XIX. Finding every other method fail, he applies to Trowel—is admitted into his junto, or nocturnal assembly—a specimen of his low artifice and cunning—he is look’d upon by the whole herd of fools, tools, and sycophants, as a fit person to represent them, at the next g[enera]l a[ssembl]y—it it publickly declar’d at the junto—he is chose at the g[enera]l e—l[ectio]n.— . . . .

Chap. XXVI. He becomes the darling of Trowel’s Junto, and presides at the head of their affairs—a specimen of his oratory—with his smooth tongue he persuades the junto into an implicit obedience to his will in every respect.—

Chap. XXVII. According to a previous resolution of the junto, he is advanced to a higher post of honor than ever he aspired after—unmerited and unsolicited favors heap’d on him in abundance, for which he thanks the people at their an[nua]l as[sembl]y with the wheedling epithets of F-th-rs, Fr—nds, F-ll-w C-t-z-ns & C—ntrym-n.

Chap;. XXVIII. The transactions of the an[nua]l as[sembl]y,—business postpon’d in order to facilitate some private views of the junto, contrary to the usual and constant custom—partiality to voters, junto officers allow’d to count their own votes without being sworn to the faithful discharge of their office.—

Waterhouse’s pamphlet strikes me as another example of how Loyalists didn’t even try to adapt their rhetoric to the new, popular politics. Imputing that Otis was wrong to call his supporters “Friends, Fellow Citizens & Countrymen” was hardly the way to win support from those very men.

[UPDATE: Article links restored, thanks to Boston 1775 reader Charles Bahne.]

On the Lines in Charlestown

Yesterday’s posting quoted four accounts of the brief panic inside Boston—inside Faneuil Hall, to be exact—at news of a Continental Army raid on Charlestown Neck on 8 Jan 1776. Here are two recollections from men who were involved in that event as teenaged soldiers, one on the American side and one on the British.

First, Continental fife-major John Greenwood (1760-1819) wrote that the raid was “planned by old [Israel] Putnam,” (shown here) with the immediate goal of setting fire to a few houses remaining in that part of Charlestown, “inhabited by a parcel of stragglers, such as sutlers, mechanics, and camp women.”

Greenwood added that the attack a larger secondary goal:

The reason for this frolic being undertaken was that, as General Washington had many spies in Boston and could ascertain everything the British were about, he had learned that on the very evening in question they were about to enact a new play in derision of the Yankees, called the “Blockade of Boston.” . . .

one of the actors was representing a Yankee sentinel, rigged out like a tailor with his paper measures hanging over his shoulders and his large shears sticking out of his pocket, etc., resting or leaning upon his gun and conversing with a countryman who had a newspaper. . . . My father and mother were in the house (Faneuil Hall) at the time and witnessed the scene.

On the other side of the Charlestown siege lines from young Greenwood was nearly-as-young Lt. Martin Hunter (1757-1847). He eventually became a general and a knight. In his memoir he recalled:

A farce called “The Blockade of Boston,” written, I believe, by General [John] Burgoyne, was acted. The enemy knew the night it was to be performed, and made an attack on the mill at Charlestown at the very hour that the farce began.

I happened to be on duty in the redoubt at Charlestown that night. The enemy came along the mill-dam, and surprised a sergeant’s guard that was posted at the mill. Some shots were fired, and we all immediately turned out and manned the works. A shot was fired by one of our advanced sentries, and instantly the firing commenced in the redoubt, and it was a considerable time before it could be stopped. Not a man of the enemy was within three miles of us, and the party that came along the mill-dam had effected their object and carried off the sergeant’s guard.

However, our firing caused a general alarm at Boston, and all the troops got under arms. An orderly sergeant that was standing outside the playhouse door heard the firing, and immediately ran into the playhouse, got upon the stage, and cried “Turn out! Turn out! They are hard at it, hammer and tongs.”

The whole audience thought that the sergeant was acting a part in the farce, and that he did it so well that there was a general clap, and such a noise that he could not be heard for a considerable time.

When the clapping was over he again cried, “What the deuce are you all about? If you won’t believe me, by Jasus you need only go to the door, and there you will see and hear both!”

If it was the intention of the enemy to put a stop to the farce for that night they certainly succeeded, as all the officers immediately left the playhouse and joined their regiments.

Hunter’s description of the reaction inside Faneuil Hall was at best secondhand, but it shows how even British officers were struck by this incident.

A Continental Attack Brings the Curtain Down

After several days of having nothing to report in his diary, Boston selectman Timothy Newell recorded an unusual skirmish on 8 Jan 1776:

Monday at half past 8 P.M. being dark weather the Provincials attacked Charlestown, burnt the houses, remaining at Neck of land, carried off a serjent and a number of Men. . . Just as the farce began at the Playhouse of the Blockade of Boston—which with much fainting, fright, and confusion, prevented the scene.

When I first read about Continental troops timing an attack on British lines to disrupt the performance of a play in Boston, I feared the story was too good to be true. It seemed to feed right into America’s stereotypical, crowd-pleasing picture of the Revolutionary War: clever Yankees, decadent and flat-footed British. And even if an American attack did disrupt a play, was that any more than coincidence? We humans like to believe that our actions have desirable effects and that events don’t just occur by happenstance.

But when I looked into the story, I discovered that not only is it well documented, but its details really do fit that crowd-pleasing scenario. British officers under the lead of Gen. John Burgoyne (pictured above), who was already established as a playwright, took over Fanueil Hall and turned that site of defiant town meetings into a theater. Since Boston outlawed all theatricals down the Punch and Judy shows, the new “playhouse” was clearly a dig at local sensibilities. Furthermore, Burgoyne wrote a farce he titled The Blockade of Boston to lampoon the American rebels, and an item in the 21 Dec 1775 New-England Chronicle confirms that word of that play had gotten out to the American lines.

As for the night of 8 January, Lt. William Feilding described it in a letter to the sixth Earl of Denbeigh dated 19 Jan 1776:

Some Ladies and Officers for diversion, and for the Benefit of the sick and mamed Soldiers in this Army, have Acted Plays; and Faneuil Hall (a famous place where the sons of sedition used to meet) is fitted up very Elegantly for a Theatre.

And on Monday the Eighth Instant was perform’d The Busy Body [a 1709 farce by Susanna Centlivre]: A new farce call’d The Blockade of Boston (written by Genl. Burgoyne) was to have been introduc’d, but unfortunately as the Curtain drew up to begin the Entertainment, an Orderly Sergeant came on the Stage, and said the Alarm Guns were fired which Immediately put every body to the Rout, particularly the Officers, who made the best of their way to their Respective Corps and Alarm Posts, leaving the Ladies in the House in a most Terible Dilema.

This Alarm was as follows, between 8 & 9 oClock at night, and Very dark about thirty Rebels Cross’d the Mill bridge near Charles Town Neck and set fire to some Empty House and took a Sargeant and three men which lay in one of them not as a Guard but as a Convenience as they belong’d to the Deputy Quar Master General. Upon which the Troops in the Redoubts on the Heights fired very Briskly for a few minutes some small Arms & Cannon at the fire; but as Enemy’s number was so small and Retreated immediately as soon as they had set fire to the Houses, they escap’d without the loss of a man. This Alarm was so trifling that it displeased the General much, but on the other hand he was much pleased to see the Elertness of the men.

Burgoyne sailed away from Boston before the delayed premiere of his farce; according to Lt. John Barker, he had already postponed his departure once in hopes of seeing the play go up. Feilding reported the eventual performances in a letter on 28 January:

The Blockade of Boston has been perform’d twice, and Receivd (tho Short) with great Applause. The Characters of the Yankee General and Figure of his Soldiers is inimatable, the Genl: a man who can’t Read but can Speachifie, and tell his Soldiers they are to obey the Voice of the People in the streets, the Joy the Rebells are in, in reading the Resolves of the Mayor and City of London in favor of the Con-ti-nen-tal Congress in Phi-li-del-phi-a pa-per is truly Characteristick.

Lt. Feilding’s letters appear in The Lost War: Letters from British Officers during the American Revolution, edited by Marion Balderston and David Syrett.

The Boston News-Letter, the only newspaper still published in town and strongly supporting the military government, tried to minimize the event in its 11 January issue:

On Monday was presented at the Theatre at Faneuil Hall, the Comedy of the Busy Body, which was received with great applause. . . .

A new Farce called the Blockade of Boston was to have been presented the same evening, but was interrupted by a Sergeant’s representing, or rather misrepresenting, the burning of two or three old houses at Charlestown as a general attack on the town of Boston. But it is very evident, the Rebels possess a sufficiency of what Falstaff terms the better part of valor, to prevent their making an attempt that must inevitably end in their own destruction.

As soon as these parts in the Boston Blockade which are vacant by some Gentlemen being ordered to Charles Town can be filled up, that Farce will be performed with the Tragedy of Tamerlane [probably the 1702 play by Nicholas Rowe].

Peter Force’s American Archives reprinted a letter “from a Gentleman at Boston to his Friend in Edinburgh” dated 29 January that offers another look at the alarm:

The rebels have been very quiet ever since I arrived. They gave a small alarm about a fortnight ago, which occasioned a little confusion, but was soon over. The officers have fitted up a play-house, and some of them had wrote a farce, called the Blockade of Boston. The first night it was to be acted the house was very full. The play being over, the curtain was hauled up for the entertainment to begin, when a sergeant came in and told the officers the alarm-guns were fired at Charlestown, which made no small stir in the house, every one endeavouring to get out as fast as possible; and immediately we heard a pretty smart firing of small arms.

TOMORROW: Reports on the Charlestown raid from two teenagers on the siege lines.

Colonial Boston Vocabulary: "caucus," part 2

I’ve been writing about Boston’s caucus system for discussing who should serve in town offices, which brought up (as Ron commented) the origin of the word “caucus.” Over nearly two centuries researchers have put forward three theories, none of them entirely satisfactory and none of them coming with a supporting paper trail. Those hypothetical roots are:

“Caulkers.” In his 1816 book A Vocabulary; or, Collection of Words and Phrases Which Have Been Supposed to Be Peculiar to the U.S. of America, attorney John Pickering (1777-1846) hazarded this guess, quoting the account of the Rev. William Gordon:

these meetings were first held in a part of Boston where “all the ship-business was carried on;” and I had therefore thought it not improbable that Caucus might be a corruption of Caulkers, the word meetings being understood. I was afterwards informed by a friend in Salem, that the late Judge Oliver often mentioned this as the origin of the word; and upon further inquiry I find other gentlemen have heard the same in Boston, where the word was first used. I think I have sometimes heard the expression, a caucus meeting. [i. e. caulkers’ meeting.] It need hardly be remarked, that this cant word and its derivatives are never used in good writing.

The caulkers of Boston were somewhat organized; the New-England Weekly Journal for 24 Feb 1741 contains an advertisement saying they had agreed to stop taking shopkeepers’ “Notes” or I.O.U.’s as pay.

However, there are big problems with this theory:

• First, Pickering distorted Gordon’s words, which were: “Mr. Samuel Adams’ father and twenty others, one or two from the north end of the town where all the ship business is carried on, used to meet, make a caucus and lay their plan...” Thus, caucus meetings weren’t held in the “ship-business” end of town; rather, a couple of men from that North End came down to the meetings.
• The men who met, as John Adams listed them in 1763, weren’t shipyard workers but office-holders and businessmen. It would have been odd for them to take on the guise of “caulkers”; not until the Jacksonian period did American political leaders try to identify themselves with the common man. And if the “caulkers” term was applied by enemies of the group to discredit it, as later authors suggested, why didn’t the 1763 critic make that connection instead of writing “Corkass”?
  
• Caulkers weren’t noted for being active in town politics any more than any other profession. Their 1741 agreement was an economic one, not political.

Noah Webster adopted this theory, stating that caulkers’/caucus meetings started as protests against British troops around 1770—but that was up to half a century after the caucus meetings began. Many authors followed Pickering’s and Webster’s lead, at least mentioning this theory, even as others piled up.

“Kaukos.” Scholar say this Greek term for a wine vessel became caucus in medieval Latin. Was such a vessel central to “Caucas Club” meetings? John Adams wrote of that group, “they drink Phlip I suppose,” and flip was an alcoholic drink. Antiquarian Alice Morse Earle described it this way:

It was made of home-brewed beer, sweetened with sugar, molasses, or dried pumpkin, and flavored with a liberal dash of rum, then stirred in a great mug or pitcher with a red-hot loggerhead or hottle or flip-dog, which made the liquor foam and gave it a burnt bitter flavor.

A punch-bowl would have been more reminiscent of a Greek kaukos than a flip mug or pitcher.

Furthermore, if the “Caucas Club” first gathered to drink and only later came to talk politics, then the term “caucus” should come up in non-political contexts, and it doesn’t. Some etymologists also argue that classically-educated British-Americans were unlikely to know a medieval Latin term, or to use it when British gentlemen didn’t.

“Kaw-kaw-was.” In the 1870s, James Hammond Trumbull suggested to the American Philological Association that the most likely source of “caucus” was this Algonquin term for “counselor” or a word from a similar root.

An informal abstract of Trumbull’s paper in The Academy said, “As the settlers were fond of adopting native names for their political gatherings, the suggestion seems highly plausible.” Gentlemen in the Middle Colonies did adopt the Tammany name for political clubs in the late 1700s, and an odd celebration of that Delaware leader occurred at Valley Forge in 1778. However, I don’t recall the same sort of behavior in Massachusetts. Bostonians blamed “Mohawks” for the Boston Tea Party precisely to distance that action from their political leaders.

Curiously, John Pickering was a scholar of Native American languages, publishing a treatise titled On the Adoption of a Uniform Orthography for the Indian Languages of North America, but didn’t see this connection.

Lexicographers today seem to lean toward the third of these theories, but they also say that no one can be sure where “caucus” comes from.

A Complaint about the Caucus

Last week I said that John Adams made the first documented use of the word “caucus,” but only by about one month. Boston’s “Caucus Club” was surfacing as a political issue that year because on 21 Mar 1763 Thomas and John Fleet printed the following complaint in their Boston Evening-Post. To be insulting, the writer used a new spelling of the word “caucus.”

Messi’rs Fleets,
By printing the following you will enlighten many of your Townsmen, and oblige all who are willing to act for themselves.——

An Impartial Account of the Conduct of the Corkass
By a late Member of that Society.

It may be expected that I should give the etymology of the word CORKASS, and some account of the rise of the Society, but as they keep no records, and their oral accounts are so various and dark, it is needless to mention them, or go any further back than the present time; only I wou’d observe they talk much of antiquity.

At present the heads of this venerable Company meet some weeks before a Town-Meeting, and consult among themselves, appoint town officers, and settle all other affairs that are to be transacted at town meeting; after these few have settled the affairs, they communicate them to the next better sort of their brethren; when they have been properly sounded and instructed, they meet with the heads; these are called the Petty Corkass: Here each recommends his friends, opposes others, juggle and trim, and often have pretty warm disputes; but by compounding and compromising, settle every thing before the Grand Corkass meets; tho’ for form sake (as at college on commencement days) a number of warm disputes are prepared, to entertain the lower sort; who are in an extasy to find the old Roman Patriots still surviving.

A night or two before town meeting the Grand Corkass meets, consisting of all sorts of men that want town offices, or other favors; the chairman is chose, who makes a harangue on freedom and English liberty, and every individual is told that he may, and beg’d that he would, speak his mind freely; some have been so credulous as to take him in earnest, and have spoke their minds to their cost, lost their favor, and all chance of town offices for ever.

It may be ask’d how they keep together, for as soon as they are discovered they will be forsaken; and so they are by all, but those that learn their art, and get their own ends answered by them: I don’t say there are no honest men among them; for I believe some of ’em are very worthy men; but they let the chiefs think for them, and by a peculiar cunning which some of the senators are perfect masters of, get deceived for many years. The arts made use of by them to carry a point at town meeting are so notorious, that they need not be here particularly mentioned.——

I can’t conceive what gives them a right to rule, except it be for the outward flow of what is couch’d in the following words of an epitaph which I somewhere came across, on an old Lady.

For the Church and Devotion
No Mortal was higher,
But for Faith and good Works,
They never came nigh her.

This article was signed “E.J.,” but that was probably a mask, not the author’s true initials.

Boston had had its big annual meeting for electing town officials one week before this item appeared, on 14 March. It’s possible that the author of this complaint had wanted it published on that day, but the printers sat on it so as not to stoke controversy. More likely, the author was upset at having lost some vote in that meeting and trying to spill the beans on the whole caucus system. It didn’t work.

Boston’s town meeting for electing representatives to the Massachusetts General Court this year took place on 20 May. In The Urban Crucible, Gary Nash wrote, “Following the 1763 attacks on the Caucus, 1,089 people went to the polls for town elections, a number never exceeded in even in the tumultuous years of the following decade.” The meeting chose James Otis, Jr., as moderator, as well as reelecting him as one of the town’s representatives, and supporters of royal governor Francis Bernard lost.

The Roots of the Boston Caucus

Yesterday’s posting quoted John Adams using the word “caucus” (or “Caucas”) in his diary in 1763, the earliest recorded use of that term for a political meeting. However, there’s evidence that the word, and the custom, were much older.

The Rev. William Gordon’s History of the Independence of the United States of America, published in London in 1784, suggested that the caucus had been a Boston political institution since the first quarter of the century. Gordon (shown here) wasn’t a Boston native, but before and during the Revolution he was a minister in Roxbury and became close to the local Whigs, especially Samuel Adams. This passage implies Gordon got his information about the caucus from Adams himself:

More than fifty years ago Mr. Samuel Adams’ father and twenty others, one or two from the north end of the town where all the ship business is carried on, used to meet, make a caucus and lay their plan for introducing certain persons into places of trust and power.

When they had settled it they separated, and each used their particular influence within his own circle. He and his friends would furnish themselves with ballots, including the names of the parties fixed upon, which they distributed on the days of election. By acting in concert, together with a careful and extensive distribution of ballots, they generally carried their elections to their own mind.

In like manner it was that Mr. Samuel Adams first became a representative for Boston.

Samuel Adams was first elected to the Massachusetts General Court in 1765. His father had been a selectman and town representative decades before.

Gordon presented his 1784 history in the form of letters written during the events they describe, and this passage comes from a letter dated in 1774. If we take that year as the starting-point for his phrase “More than fifty years ago,” than Adams’s father had participated in caucuses before 1724, when he was in his thirties. That fits with the age of the caucus members John Adams listed in 1763.

I suspect the caucus tradition grew out of Boston’s first political machine based on popular support, assembled by Elisha Cooke, Jr. (1678-1737), in the first decades of the eighteenth century. Cooke held positions of influence for many years through the town meeting and legislature rather than through royal patronage. The largest town meeting in Boston history occurred in 1714, when he mustered opposition to the royal governor’s proposal for a private bank. But no historian is certain when Boston’s caucuses began.

TOMORROW: Opposition to the caucus in 1763.

Colonial Boston Vocabulary: "caucus"

As the U.S. of A. digests the results of the 2008 Iowa caucuses, it seems timely to discuss the term “caucus,” which first surfaced in pre-Revolutionary Boston. The earliest appearance of the word that anyone can find, by about one month, is in John Adams’s diary:

Boston Feby. 1763. This day learned that the Caucas Clubb meets at certain Times in the Garret of Tom Daws, the Adjutant of the Boston Regiment. He has a large House, and he has a moveable Partition in his Garrett, which he takes down and the whole Clubb meets in one Room.

There they smoke tobacco till you cannot see from one End of the Garrett to the other. There they drink Phlip I suppose, and there they choose a Moderator, who puts Questions to the Vote regularly, and select Men, Assessors, Collectors, Wardens, Fire Wards, and Representatives are Regularly chosen before they are chosen in the Town.

Uncle Fairfield, [William] Story, [John] Ruddock, [Samuel] Adams, [William] Cooper, and a rudis indigestaque Moles of others are Members. They send Committees to wait on the Merchants Clubb and to propose, and join, in the Choice of Men and Measures. Captn. [James] Cunningham says they have often solicited him to go to these Caucas, they have assured him Benefit in his Business, &c.

The Latin phrase rudis indigestaque moles means “rude and undigested mass.” It sounds like John Adams might have been a little miffed at not having been let in on the secret of this smoke-filled room before. Of course, at the time he was still living in Braintree.

Thomas Dawes (1731-1809), host of this caucus club, was a Boston builder who was successful enough to eventually be deemed an architect. He was serving as elected coroner at the time of the Boston Massacre, and achieved the rank of colonel in the Massachusetts militia. His son of the same name became a judge in the early republic. Dawes’s nephew William Dawes, Jr., succeeded him as adjutant of the Boston regiment. In 1806 Gilbert Stuart painted Dawes’s portrait, shown above courtesy of Historic New England.

Most of the other men preparing for Boston’s big March 1763 town meeting were office-holders themselves:

• William Story was Deputy Register of the Vice Admiralty Court, and as such became a target of the Stamp Act rioters in 1765. A couple of years later, his career in the royal government stalled. Story moved to Ipswich and sided with the Patriots.
• John Ruddock was a shipyard owner, militia officer, and justice of the peace in the North End. He became a selectman in 1764. Ruddock was also amazingly fat, and died suddenly in 1772.
• Samuel Adams was John’s second cousin, then serving as elected tax collector.
• William Cooper was Boston’s town clerk for decades both before and after the Revolution.

I haven’t identified “Uncle Fairfield,” who was presumably one of John Adams’s uncles. [How’s that for historical detective work?] Capt. Cunningham was another uncle, and Adams often stayed with him while visiting Boston.

TOMORROW: How far back did the Boston caucus go?

Did the Union Flag Disappoint Boston’s Loyalists?

Yesterday I quoted Gen. George Washington’s January 1776 report that Loyalists in Boston were hopeful that the Continental Army’s new Great or Grand Union Flag (shown at right, as available from FlagandBanner.com) indicated that American soldiers had heard George III’s admonitory speech and decided to capitulate. But was that report well founded?

I rounded up my usual sources from inside the besieged town: selectman Timothy Newell, Col. Earl Percy, Capt. John Barker, merchant John Rowe, and the Boston News-Letter, which was the one newspaper still being printed there. And I found no discussion of the Continentals’ new flag or a renewed hope that they had decided to surrender. And that seems like the sort of thing those people might mention.

In fact, three British reports about the American activity on 2 Jan 1776 indicate that people saw nothing in it but continued defiance. Peter Force’s American Archives includes a letter from the captain of a British ship to his employers in London, dated 17 January, which says:

I can see the rebels’ camp very plain, whose colors, a little while ago, were entirely red; but on the receipt of the king’s speech, which they burnt, they hoisted the union flag, which is here supposed to intimate the union of the provinces.

At the end of the year, the Annual Register, Edmund Burke’s London news round-up, reported (perhaps based on that very captain’s letter):

The arrival of a copy of the king’s speech, with an account of the fate of the petition from the continental congress, is said to have excited the greatest degree of rage and indignation among them; as a proof of which, the former was publicly burnt in the camp; and they are said upon this occasion, to have changed their colours, from a plain red ground, which they had hitherto used, to a flag with thirteen stripes, as a symbol of the number and union of the colonies.

We can gauge the popularity of the Annual Register from the fact that nearly the same sentence, word for word, appeared in James Murray’s An Impartial History of the Present War in America (1780); Robert Beatson’s Naval and Military Memoirs of Great Britain, from 1727 to 1783 (1804); and R. Thomas’s A Pictorial History of the United States of America (1847). Plagiarists cannot hide from Google Books. Schuyler Hamilton’s History of the National Flag of the United States of America (1853) quoted both those sources, with citations. George Henry Preble’s 1872 history of the flag had a short and inaccurate quotation of the Annual Register passage, to match its short and innaccurate quotations of other sources; those, in turn, were reprinted in a number of later flag histories.

Finally, Richard Frothingham’s History of the Siege of Boston quoted a British officer.

Lieut. [William] Carter...was on Charlestown Heights, and says, January 26: “The king’s speech was sent by a flag to them on the 1st instant [i.e., of this month]. In a short time after they received it, they hoisted an union flag (above the continental with the thirteen stripes) at Mount Pisgah; their citadel fired thirteen guns, and gave the like number of cheers.”

None of these British sources hint that people in Boston saw the new thirteen-stripe flag as a sign of imminent American capitulation. And why would they have done so? The Continentals had been flying a flag with a Union Jack in the corner and a red field—a traditional British flag. This new “great union flag” shifted a little away from that standard by adding symbols of the thirteen colonies. Its Union Jack canton still displayed the Whigs’ allegiance to traditional British rights, but it was now a banner exclusive to America.

Granted, those three British reports all date from two weeks or more after the new flag appeared, so there might have been time for Loyalist hopes to rise and fade. But as far as I can tell, our only source for the belief that people inside Boston expected a surrender is the one anonymous person who came out of the town on 3 Jan 1776 and told Washington something the commander-in-chief was pleased to hear. The whole anecdote might have been based on nothing more than a short conversation between a couple of guys.

“Huh. New flag. What do you think it means?”

“Maybe they’re giving up.”

“You really think so?”

“Well, we did just send them the king’s speech.”

“I guess. Still, that’s a lot to hope for.”

“We’ll see in a few days, I’m sure. You coming for dinner Thursday?”

“Thursday? You know, I might be out of town...”

[ADDENDUM: But a flag expert has raised questions about the traditional interpretation of these sources—did the “Grand Union Flag” even exist?]

The Great Union Flag and the Boston Gentry

Yesterday I quoted George III’s October 1775 speech in Parliament about the American rebellion. Copies were printed in Boston and sent out to the American lines on 1 Jan 1776. As it happened, that was also the day Gen. George Washington showed his staff a new flag, adopted to coincide with his reorganization of the Continental Army. He had the flag raised on Cambridge’s Prospect Hill the next morning.

On 4 Jan 1776, Washington wrote sarcastically to Joseph Reed at Philadelphia:

We are at length favoured with a sight of his Majesty’s most gracious speech, breathing sentiments of tenderness and compassion for his deluded American subjects; the echo has not yet come to hand, but we know what it must be, and as Lord North said, and we ought to have believed, (and acted accordingly,) we now know the ultimatum of British justice.

The speech I send you; a volume of them was sent out by the Boston gentry, and farcical enough, we gave great joy to them, (the red coats I mean,) without knowing or intending it, for on that day, the day which gave being to the new army, (but before the proclamation came to hand,) we had hoisted the union flag in compliment to the United Colonies; but behold! it was received in Boston as a token of the deep impression the speech had made upon us, and as a signal of submission, so we heard by a person out of Boston last night. By this time I presume they begin to think it strange that we have not made a formal surrender of our lines.

Based on the number of similar phrases, we can be fairly certain that Reed digested that letter into the report that appeared in the Pennsylvania Packet on 15 January:

That upon the King’s Speech arriving at Boston, a great number of them were reprinted and sent out to our lines on the 2d of January, which being also the day of forming the new army, the great Union Flag was hoisted on Prospect Hill, in compliment to the United Colonies—this happening soon after the Speeches were delivered at Roxbury, but before they were received at Cambridge, the Boston gentry supposed it to be a token of the deep impression—That they were much disappointed at finding several days elapse without some formal measure leading to a surrender, with which they had begun to flatter themselves.

The Packet also mentioned “An intelligent person got out of Boston on the 3d,” presumably the same one Washington cited as his source on the disappointment of the Loyalist “Boston gentry.”

I went looking for more detail about that feeling of disappointment within Boston. In his History of the American Flag (1872), George Henry Preble quoted a version of the anecdote that he dated to the very day the flag rose:

An anonymous letter, written Jan. 2, 1776, says: “The grand union flag of thirteen stripes was raised on a height near Boston. The regulars did not understand it; and as the king’s speech had just been read, as they supposed, they thought the new flag was a token of submission.”

I couldn’t identify the source of this quotation, however, and finally came to suspect that Preble had misinterpreted a passage published by “T. Westcott” of Philadelphia in Notes and Queries in 1852:

The grand union flag of thirteen stripes was raised on the heights near Boston, January 2, 1776. Letters from there say that the regulars in Boston did not understand it; and as the king’s speech had just been sent to the Americans, they thought the new flag was a token of submission.

In other words, there was no anonymous letter dated 2 January. Rather, letters from near Boston at some point after the flag-raising—i.e., the commander-in-chief’s, quoted above—were the first written versions of the story.

Americans from Washington down certainly enjoyed the anecdote, which underscored American steadfastness while painting their rivals as fools. A century later the raising of the grand union flag also inspired the painting shown in thumbnail above, with Gen. Washington overseeing the ceremony. For a closer look and more detail, check out Steve Mulder’s website on Prospect Hill.

TOMORROW: But how much evidence is there for that anecdote?