food and shelter for the royal troops in that province, and for this offense, Parliament, now become the supple instrument of the crown, censured their disobedience, approved of coercive measures, and, by resolution, prayed the king to revive a long obsolete statute of Henry the Eighth, by which the governor of the refractory colony should be required to arrest, and send to England for trial, on a charge of treason, the ringleaders in the recent tumults. The colonial Assembly indignantly responded, by re-asserting the chartered privileges. of the people, and denying the right of the king to take an offender from the country, for trial. And in the House of Commons a powerful minority battled manfully for the Americans. Burke pronounced the idea of reviving that old statute, as "horrible." "Can you not trust the juries of that country?" he "If you have not a party among two millions of people, you must either change your plans of government, or renounce the colonies forever." Even Grenville, the author of the Stamp Act, opposed the measure, yet a majority voted in favor of the resolution, on the 26th of January, 1769.

asked.

The British troops continued to be a constant source of irritation, while, month after month, the colonies were agitated by disputes with the royal governors, the petty tyranny of lesser officials, and the interference of the imperial government with colonial legislation. The Assembly of Massachusetts, encouraged by the expressed sympathy of the other colonies, firmly refused to appropriate a single dollar for the support of the troops. They even demanded their withdrawal from the city, and refused to transact any legislative business while they remained. Daily occurrences exasperated the people against the troops, and finally, on the 2d of March, 1770, an event, apparently trifling in its character, led to bloodshed in the streets of Boston. A rope-maker quarreled with a soldier, and struck him. Out of this affray grew a fight between several soldiers and rope-makers. The latter were beaten, and the result aroused the vengeance of the more excitable portion of the inhabitants. A few evenings. afterward [March 5], about seven hundred of them assembled in the streets, for the avowed purpose of attacking the troops. A sentinel was assaulted near the custom-house, when Captain Preston, commander of the guard, went to his rescue with eight armed men. The mob dared the soldiers to fire, and attacked them with stones, pieces of ice, and other missiles. One of the soldiers who received a blow, fired, and his six companions also discharged their guns. Three of the citizens were killed, and five were dangerously wounded.

1

The mob instantly retreated, when all

These were addressed by a tall man, disguised by a white wig and a scarlet cloak, who closed his harangue by shouting, "To the main guard! to the main guard!" and then disappeared. It was always believed that the tall man was Samuel Adams, one of the most inflexible patriots of the Revolution, and at that time a popular leader. He was a descendant of one of the early Puritans [page 75], and was born in Boston in 1722. He was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence; was afterward governor of Massachusetts; and died in 1803. A purer patriot than Samuel Adams, never lived.

SAMUEL ADAMS.

The leader of the mob was a powerful mulatto, named Crispus Attucks. He and Samuel Gray and James Caldwell, were killed instantly; two others received mortal wounds.

the bells of the city rang an alarum, and in less than an hour several thousands of exasperated citizens were in the streets. A terrible scene of blood would have ensued, had not Governor Hutchinson assured the people that justice should be vindicated in the morning. They retired, but with firm resolves not to endure the military despotism any longer.

The morning of the 6th of March was clear and frosty. At an early hour Governor Hutchinson was called upon to fulfill his promise. The people demanded the instant removal of the troops from Boston, and the trial of Captain Preston and his men, for murder. These demands were complied with. The troops were removed to Castle William [March 12, 1770], and Preston, ably defended by John Adams and Josiah Quincy, two of the popular leaders, was tried and acquitted, with six of his men, by a Boston jury. The other two soldiers were found guilty of manslaughter. This result was a comment on the enforcement of the statute of Henry the Eighth, highly favorable to the Americans. It was so regarded in England, and was used with good effect by the opposition in Parliament. It showed that in the midst of popular excitement, the strong conservative principles of justice bore rule. The victims of the riot were regarded as martyrs to liberty,' and for many years, the memory of the "Boston Massacre," as it was called, was kept alive by anniversary orations in the city and vicinity.

Perceiving the will and the power of the colonists in resisting taxation without their consent, the British ministry now wavered. On the very day of the bloody riot in Boston [March 5], Lord North, who was then the English prime minister, proposed to Parliament a repeal of all duties imposed by the act of 1767, except that upon tea. An act to that effect was passed a month afterward [April 12]. This concession was wrung from the minister partly by the clamor of English merchants and manufacturers, who again felt severely the operations of the non-importation associations in America. As tea was a luxury, North supposed the colonists would not object to the small duty laid upon that article, and he retained it as a standing assertion of the right of Parliament to impose such duties. The minister entirely mistook the character of the people he was dealing with. It was not the petty amount of duties of which they complained, for all the taxes yet imposed were not in the least burdensome to them. They were contending for a great principle, which lay at the foundation of their liberties; and they regarded the imposition of a duty upon one article as much a violation of their sacred rights, as if ten were included. They accepted the ministerial concession, but, asserting their rights, continued their non-importation league against the purchase and use of tea."

1 They were buried with great parade. All the bells of Boston and vicinity tolled a funeral knell while the procession was moving; and as intended, the affair made a deep impression on the public mind. 2 Page 218.

Even before North's proposition was made to Parliament, special agreements concerning the disuse of tea, had been made. Already the popular feeling on this subject had been manifested toward a Boston merchant who continued to sell tea. A company of half-grown boys placed an effigy near his door, with a finger upon it pointing toward his store. While a man was attempting to pull it down, he was pelted with dirt and stones. He ran into the store, and seizing a gun, discharged its contents among the crowd. A boy named Snyder was killed, and Christopher Gore

The spirit of opposition was not confined to the more northern and eastern colonies. It was rife below the Roanoke, and was boldly made manifest when occasion required. In 1771, the Carolinas, hitherto exempted from violent outbursts of popular indignation, although never wanting in zeal in opposing the Stamp Act, and kindred measures, became the theater of great excitement. To satisfy the rapacity and pride of royal governors, the industry of the province of North Carolina, especially, was enormously taxed.' The oppression was real, not an abstract principle, as at the North. The people in the interior at length formed associations, designed to resist unjust taxation, and to control public affairs. They called themselves Regulators; and in 1771, they were too numerous to be overawed by local magistrates. Their operations assumed the character of open rebellion; and in the spring of that year, Governor Tryon' marched into that region with an armed force, to subdue them. They met him upon Alamance Creek, in Alamance county, on the 16th of May, and there a bloody skirmish ensued. The Regulators were subdued and dispersed, and Tryon marched back in triumph to the sea-board, after hanging six of the leaders, on the 19th of June following. These events aroused, throughout the South, the fiercest hatred of British power, and stimulated that earnest patriotism so early displayed by the people below the Roanoke, when the Revolution broke out.3

The upper part of Narraganset Bay exhibited a scene, in the month of June, 1772, which produced much excitement, and widened the breach between Great Britain and her colonies. The commander of the British armed schooner Gaspè, stationed there to assist the commissioners of customs* in enforcing the revenue laws, annoyed the American navigators by haughtily commanding them to lower their colors when they passed his vessel, in token of obedience. The William Tells of the bay refused to bow to the cap of this petty Gesler. For such disobedience, a Providence sloop was chased by the schooner. The latter grounded upon a low sandy point; and on that night [June 9, 1772], sixty-four armed men went down from Providence in boats, captured the people on board the Gaspè, and burned the vessel. Although a large reward was offered for the perpetrators (who were well known in Providences), they were never betrayed.

At

(afterward governor of Massachusetts) was wounded. The affair produced great excitement. about the same time, three hundred "mistresses of families" in Boston signed a pledge of total abstinence from the use of tea, while the duty remained upon it. A few days afterward a large number of young ladies signed a similar pledge.

1 Governor Tryon caused a palace to be erected for his residence, at Newbern, at a cost of $75,000, for the payment of which the province was taxed. This was in 1768, and was one of the principal causes of discontent, which produced the outbreak here mentioned.

Page 248.

3

Page 237.

Gesler was an Austrian governor of one of the cantons of Switzerland. He placed his cap on a pole, at a gate of the town, and ordered all to bow to it, when they should enter. William Tell, a brave leader of the people, refused. He was imprisoned for disobedience, escaped, aroused his countrymen to arms, who drove their Austrian masters out of the land, and achieved the independence of Switzerland.

One of the leaders was Abraham Whipple, a naval commander during the Revolution [page 310]. Several others were afterward distinguished for bravery during that struggle. Four years afterward, when Sir James Wallace, a British commander, was in the vicinity of Newport, Whipple became known as the leader of the attack on the Gaspè. Wallace sent him the following letter: "You, Abraham Whipple, on the 9th of June, 1772, burned his majesty's vessel, the Gaspè, and I will hang you at the yard-arm." To this Whipple replied: "To Sir James Wallace. Sir: Always catch a man before you hang him.-JAMES WHIPPLE."

These rebellious acts, so significant of the temper of the Americans, greatly perplexed the British ministry. Lord North' would gladly have conciliated them, but he was pledged by words and acts to the maintenance of the asserted principle, that Parliament had the undoubted right to tax the colonies without their consent. He labored hard to perceive some method by which conciliation and parliamentary supremacy might be made to harmonize, and early in 1773, a new thought upon taxation entered his brain. The East India Company,2 having lost their valuable tea customers in America, by the operation of the non-importation associations, and having more than seventeen millions of pounds of the article in their warehouses in England, petitioned Parliament to take off the duty of three pence a pound, levied upon its importation into America. The company agreed to pay the government more than an equal amount, in export duty, if the change should be made. Here was an excellent opportunity for the government to act justly and wisely, and to produce a perfect reconciliation; but the stupid ministry, fearing it might be considered a submission to "rebellious subjects," refused the olive branch of peace. Continuing to misapprehend the real question at issue, North introduced a bill into Parliament, allowing the company to export their teas to America on their own account, without paying an export duty. As this would make tea cheaper in America than in England, he concluded the Americans would not object to paying the three pence duty. This concession to a commercial monopoly, while spurning the appeals of a great principle, only created contempt and indignation throughout the colonies.

LORD NORTH.

Blind as the minister, the East India Company now regarded the American market as open for their tea, and soon after the passage of the bill [May 10, 1773], several large ships, heavily laden with the article, were on their way across the Atlantic. Intelligence of these movements reached America before the arrival of any of the ships, and the people in most of the sea-board towns, where consignments of tea had been made, resolved that it should not even be landed. The ships which arrived at New York and Philadelphia, returned to England with their cargoes. At Charleston it was landed, but was not allowed to be sold; while at Boston, the attempts of the governor and his friends, who

1 Frederick, Earl of Guilford (Lord North), was a man of talent, sincerely attached to English liberty, and conscientious in the performanance of his duties. Like many other statesmen of his time, he utterly misapprehended the character of the American people, and could not perceive the justice of their claims. He was prime minister during the whole of our War for Independence. He was afflicted with blindness during the last years of his life. He died in July, 1792, at the age of sixty years.

2 The English East India Company was formed and chartered in 1600, for the purpose of carrying on a trade by sea, between England and the countries lying east of the Cape of Good Hope [note 1, page 37]. It continued prosperous; and about the middle of the last century, the governor of its stations in India, under the pretense of obtaining security for their trade, subdued small territories, and thus planted the foundation of that great British empire in the East, which now comprises the whole of Hindostan, from Cape Comorin to the Himalaya mountains, with a population of more than one hundred and twenty millions of people.

The public mind in Massachusetts was greatly inflamed against Governor Hutchinson at this

were consignees, to land the tea in defiance of the public feeling, resulted in the destruction of a large quantity of it. On a cold moonlight night [December 16, 1773], at the close of the last of several spirited meetings of the citizens held at Faneuil Hall,' a party of about sixty persons, some disguised as Indians, rushed on board two vessels in the harbor, laden with tea, tore open the hatches, and in the course of two hours, three hundred and forty-two chests containing the proscribed article, were broken open, and their contents cast into the water. This event produced a powerful sensation throughout the British realm, and led to very important results.

FANEUIL HALL.

While the American colonies, and even Canada, Nova Scotia, and the British West Indies, sympathized with the Bostonians, and could not censure them, the exasperated government adopted retaliatory measures, notwithstanding payment for all damage to their property was promised to the East India Company. Parliament, by enactment [March 7, 1774], ordered the port of Boston to be closed against all commercial transactions whatever, and the removal of the custom-house, courts of justice, and other public offices, to Salem. The Salem people patriotically refused the proffered advantage at the expense of their neighbors; and the inhabitants of Marblehead, fifteen miles distant, offered the free use of their harbor and wharves, to the merchants of Boston. Soon after the passage of the Boston Port Bill, as it was called, another act, which leveled a blow at the charter of Massachusetts, was made a law [March 28, 1774]. It was equivalent to a total subversion of the charter, inasmuch as it deprived the people of many of the dearest privileges guarantied by that instrument. A third retaliatory act was passed on the 21st of April, providing for the trial, in England, of all persons charged in the colonies with murders committed in support of government, giving, as Colonel Barrè said, encouragement to military insolence already so insupportable." A fourth bill, providing for the quartering of troops in America, was also passed by large majorities in both Houses of Parliament; and in anticipation of rebellion in America, a fifth act was passed, making great concessions to the Roman Catholics in Canada, known as the Quebec Act. This excited the animosity of

time, whose letters to a member of Parliament, recommending stringent measures toward the colonies, had been procured in England, and sent to the speaker of the colonial Assembly, by Dr. Franklin. At about the same time, Parliament had passed a law, making the governor and judges of Massachusetts independent of the Assembly for their salaries, these being paid out of the revenues in the hands of the commissioners of customs. This removal of these officials beyond all dependence upon the people, constituted them fit instruments of the crown for oppressing the inhabitants, and in that aspect the colonists viewed the measure, and condemed it.

Because the Revolutionary meetings in Boston were held in Faneuil Hall, it was (and still is) called The Cradle of Liberty. It was built, and presented to the town, by Peter Faneuil, in 1742. The picture shows its form during the Revolution. The vane on the steeple, in the form of a grasshopper (symbolical of devouring), yet [1867] holds its original place.

It empowered sheriffs appointed by the crown, to select juries, instead of leaving that power with the selectmen of the towns, who were chosen by the people. It also prohibited all town meetings and other gatherings. It provided for the appointment of the council, judges, justices of the peace, etc., by the crown or its representative.