Patriots (16 page)

But when the day came, no one resisted. At noon on Saturday, October 1, 1768, with drums and fifes setting the pace, British soldiers in their bright-red coats and black three-cornered hats marched up King Street. Many of the drummers were black men, wearing yellow coats and the high white bearskin caps of the grenadiers. The officers were adorned with silver armor at the neck and the chest, crimson sashes at the shoulder and swords at the waist. Sergeants marched with halberds, the long-handled battle axes.

For nearly four hours, the
British paraded through the town, past Town House and the Old Granary Burying Ground, until at last they assembled on the cow pasture that Bostonians called their Common. The ranks included nine companies each from the Fourteenth and Twenty-ninth Regiments, one company of artillery and an eighty-four-man unit from the Fifty-ninth Regiment—a total of a thousand men. Paul Revere, the silversmith, stood on the sidelines, angered by the British insolence. But the soldiers could afford to be arrogant. Each soldier had been issued
sixteen rounds of powder and ball, and Boston’s arms remained stacked in Faneuil Hall.

—

Samuel Adams had lost.

Andrew Oliver’s small grandson watched the redcoats land and ran home happily. Now, the child announced, the mob wouldn’t tear down any more houses. His grandfather said that the sight of the troops on the Common allowed him to sleep easy in his bed. The
Boston Gazette
still promised that the
people would not be awed into being taxed without their consent. And Samuel Adams could write, “I am
in
fashion and
out
of fashion as the whim goes.
I will stand alone.” But Adams’ only immediate revenge was to take John Adams’ young son to the Common and try to instill in the child a patriotic loathing of the redcoats parading there.

To the Tories, the few threats of defiance rang hollow. Before the troops had landed, General Gage had described the patriots as “a people who have ever been very bold in council but never remarkable for their
feats of action.” Boston’s cowed acceptance of the two regiments was proving him right. Mather Byles, the foremost Tory clergyman in Boston, met a group of patriots in the mall and taunted them with a pun: “Well, gentlemen, you have been exerting yourselves for some time, and I congratulate you now that your grievances are
red-dressed.” In New York, the local Sons of Liberty derided Boston’s collapse as evidence of
“the ridiculous puff and bombast for which our Eastern brethren have always been too famous.”

Thomas Hutchinson was not so sure that Adams and his crowd had been routed. Calling the Massachusetts convention had been a bold stroke, and, if it hadn’t given Samuel Adams all he had asked, the meeting itself had been the most open step yet toward revolution. But for now the general opinion in England was that Americans could not endure the smell of gunpowder.

For lack of better quarters, the Twenty-ninth Regiment pitched its tents on Boston Common. Dalrymple led the Fourteenth to Faneuil Hall and forced town officials to open one door. Inside was a bonus: before bedding down for the night, Dalrymple’s men commandeered the four hundred arms still on display from
the Town Meeting. The next morning, Francis Bernard opened Town House to the troops, including the room where the House of Representatives usually sat. James Otis warned that the stench from the troops in the House chamber might be infectious and urged that members meet elsewhere.

With winter approaching, the troops needed warmer lodging. Officers began to rent quarters in town, but some of their men solved the problem by deserting. Within two weeks, seventy men were gone, and Dalrymple was offering a reward of ten guineas to the soldier who would point out any man urging him to defect. Private Richard Ames of the Fourteenth was caught and shot on the Common as a warning to the others, and the execution shocked those Bostonians who were accustomed to the laxer discipline of their own militia. Dalrymple hoped his strictness would prevent more desertions and any further friction with the town. Public lashings on a soldier’s bare back with a cat-o’-nine-tails became a regular event.

Even the threat of reprisal couldn’t curb natural hostilities. One drunken British captain came upon a group of slaves one night in late October. “Go home,” he shouted, “and
cut your masters throats.” He was hauled before a justice of the peace, and the town watchmen were ordered to keep Negroes off the streets late at night.

—

Boston’s antagonism gave the British troops reason to welcome the reinforcements London had promised. In mid-November, ships carrying the Sixty-fourth and Sixty-fifth Regiments finally arrived in the harbor after being
blown off course as far as the West Indies. By that time, Colonel Dalrymple had rented enough warehouses to accommodate his men, and one leading patriot, William Molineux, was letting his property on Wheelright’s Wharf for twenty-five pounds sterling a month. A detachment of the fresh troops went to Castle William. The rest quietly took other lodgings in the town, and married officers found suitable rooms for their families. The customs officials returned from their exile at the Castle and took up their normal duties. Some even bought houses near Boston. The gala dances started up again.

But in England, political life was roiling. America’s nonimportation
agreements were choking off lucrative trade and throwing thousands of men out of work. Benjamin Franklin heard of rioting all over the country and saw for himself hordes of men storming through London streets. Prompted by letters from Governor Bernard and other Tories, Parliament was ready to take action against the lawless colonials, and George III pledged himself to enforce any measures Parliament might adopt. The Duke of Bedford, urging that England punish the instigators of the Boston riots, exhumed a law from the reign of Henry VIII that would permit Parliament to bring men like James Otis and Samuel Adams to England, where juries would convict them and judges would order them hanged. Early in 1769, Hillsborough wrote to Francis Bernard to inform him that the king wanted evidence sent to him of any treason committed within the colony since December 30, 1767.

For eight years, the word “treason” had been flung about loosely in legislatures and courtrooms. Now the Tories had to produce evidence that would convince a British attorney general to prosecute. Thomas Hutchinson forwarded to London an affidavit from Richard Sylvester that accused Samuel Adams of open calls to rebellion against the English troops. Sylvester claimed that on one occasion Adams had spoken treason to seven men in the South End. Another time, he had called on Sylvester at his house and preached treason there: “We will take up arms and
spend our last drop of blood before the king and Parliament shall impose on us.”

Sylvester also gave evidence against Dr. Benjamin Church. In the
Boston Gazette
, Church had called Governor Bernard “Fop, witling, favorite stampman, tyrant tool. / Or all those mighty names in one,
thou fool!’ According to Sylvester, Dr. Church was urging the patriots to seize both Bernard and Hutchinson and confiscate their papers to learn what lies against the people of Boston they were sending to London.

As proof, the Sylvester affidavit was scant and somewhat tainted. Many of the alleged statements did reflect Samuel Adams’ prejudices—“The times were never better in Rome than when they had no king and were a free state, and as this is a great empire we shall soon have it in our power to
give laws to England.” But since Sylvester was not a prominent Son of Liberty, why had Samuel Adams been calling regularly at his parlor? Still, that was the extent
of the case against Adams, and the Boston Tories hoped it would be enough to get him shipped off to London, along with James Otis and John Hancock. Tories joked that when Samuel Adams passed the ropemakers’ galleries these days, he
“shuddered at the sight of hemp.”

In London, however, the attorney general reviewed the evidence, ruled that Samuel Adams and the rest had come
“within a hair’s breadth” of treason, but declined to prosecute them.

That refusal, combined with the growing pressure from the nation’s afflicted merchants, began to change Parliament’s mood. Arguments for restoring harmony with the colonies were once again being heard. Samuel Adams had never lost faith in the power of the nonimportation agreement, and now merchants throughout London were urging Parliament to recall Governor Bernard. From Hillsborough they won a pledge that Bernard not only would be replaced but would never again be appointed to any post in any colony. In March 1769, Hillsborough wrote to Bernard to inform him that it was he, not Samuel Adams, who would be boarding a ship headed for London. Officially, Bernard was being recalled only to report in person to the king on conditions. As consolation for the loss of his post, he would receive the title of baronet.

Bernard was not fated to leave Massachusetts peaceably. Before Hillsborough’s instructions could reach Boston, a ship from London brought a new calamity for him. Bernard’s confidential letters to Hillsborough over the past months had come home again to America.

—

William Beckford was among those members of Parliament who were friendly to the patriots. He had invoked a House of Commons rule that permitted any member to read and make copies of all ministry correspondence. Beckford delivered the copies of Bernard’s letters to a London agent for the patriots, who dispatched six of them to America, most of them dating from November 1768, as well as one from General Gage to Lord Hillsborough. In his letters, Bernard had castigated the town of Boston and the Council for refusing to house the troops promptly and pressed again for changes in the charter to
make the Council more responsive to the king and his governor. The Sons of Liberty read those letters in public, and there was a ferocious outcry. The
Council immediately voted to print them as soon as the patriots could prepare an essay refuting them.

Francis Bernard became fearful all over again. When his letters were printed, he warned London, they would be sent throughout the province to stir up the people, “and I fear it will have the
worst effects.”

Bernard’s fears always proved more reliable than his hopes. Writing home, a British officer stationed in Boston said: “His doubles and turnings have been so many that he has altogether lost his road and brought himself into
great contempt.”

—

The spring opening of the Massachusetts legislature was delayed because the patriots objected to a British cannon that was aimed directly at the House chambers. The English officer in charge declined to move it. For a week, the House refused to transact business in the face of such a threat, and Bernard ordered the House session moved to Cambridge. Amid much angry protest, the House members met at Harvard College. There, Francis Bernard was told, someone had cut the heart out of his official portrait.

The legislature finally convened, and Adams and Otis introduced a petition that Bernard be recalled. They charged that in opposing the patriots Bernard had opposed the king’s true interests, had misinterpreted conditions in Boston and had given the province “what is technically known as a
black eye.” The hundred and nine House members present on June 27, 1769, passed the resolution unanimously.

Bernard had received the summons to London, but in his opening statement to the legislature he hadn’t announced his departure. The baronetcy, however, was too good to keep secret, and the
Boston Gazette
was soon reporting the news with a barrage of mockery. No story about the governor failed to give him full due as “Sir Francis Bernard, of Nettleham, Bart.”

As he prepared to leave, Bernard asked the hostile legislature to pay him a year’s salary in advance. The members turned him down and reminded him that during a smallpox epidemic he had charged the victims rent for their quarantine at Castle William. Now the patriots demanded that Bernard reimburse the colony at the same rate for the nights he had sheltered the customs commissioners there.

Bernard wasn’t likely to find much sympathy in London. To ingratiate himself with his patron, he had arranged to have a native American artifact delivered to Lord Barrington. But when it arrived in London, his lordship’s thanks had been chilly.

“I have been considering that the admirable
canoe you were so good as to give me will be useless here,” Barrington wrote. “Nobody can navigate it or will venture to go into it. Let me beg of you to give it to some other friend.”

—

On July 31, 1769, Francis Bernard boarded a warship, the
Rippon
, while his wife and large family stayed behind to close the houses. For a day the
Rippon
lay becalmed just outside Boston Harbor, and the governor couldn’t miss the festivities that were accompanying his departure. The Union Jack was run up the pole at the Liberty Tree, and banners flew from Hancock’s Wharf. Throughout the day he heard church bells and militia cannon. At night the
Rippon
still couldn’t sail, and its passengers saw a huge bonfire on Fort Hill, where Andrew Oliver’s effigy had burned four years before.

If Bernard had left Massachusetts on that same day in 1765, his administration might have been judged a success. Apart from the blunder of appointing Hutchinson as chief justice, and an enthusiasm for money that opened him to scorn, he had brought a few small gifts that might have served him well in calmer times. Hutchinson had claimed he was a charming storyteller with an anecdote for every occasion. Bernard may not have been able to recite all of Shakespeare by heart, as he sometimes boasted, but no one would ever challenge him to prove it, and his appreciation of literature was genuine. He had promoted the fortunes of Harvard College and had drawn the designs for Harvard Hall. He was more kindly than not, more affable than many of his opponents. But he lacked the will or the sense to understand the nature of the battle. He had consistently underestimated the appeal of the patriots, sure that the people’s goodwill or his own deft maneuvering would keep the population civil. Bernard was an orphan who wanted above all to be loved, and in Boston he had come against the one heart that would never love him.