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will be rebellion, confiscation and death," said the CHAP. younger Murray; and his words were as oil to the flame. "No consequences," they replied to him, "are so dreadful to a free people as that of being made slaves." "This," wrote he to his brother, "is not the language of the common people only; those that have heretofore sustained the fairest character are the warmest in this matter; and among the many friends you have heretofore had, I can scarcely mention any to you now."

One evening in August the farmers of Union in Connecticut found Willard of Lancaster, Massachusetts, within their precinct. They kept watch over him during the night, and the next morning five hundred men would have taken him to the county jail; but after a march of six miles he begged forgiveness of all honest men for having taken the oath of office, and promised never to sit or act in council.

The people of Plymouth were grieved that George Watson, their respected townsman, was willing to act under his appointment. On the first Lord's day after his purpose was known, as soon as he took his seat in meeting, his neighbors and friends put on their hats before the congregation and walked out of the house. The extreme public indignity was more than he could bear. As they passed his pew, he hid his face by bending his head over his cane, and determined to resign. Of thirty six who received the king's summons as councillors, more than twenty declined to obey them or revoked their acceptance. The rest fled in terror to the army at Boston, and even there could not hide their sense of shame.

CHAPTER IX.

MASSACHUSETTS DEFEATS THE REGULATING ACT.

Aug.

AUGUST, 1774.

CHAP. THE Congressional delegates from Massachusetts, conIX. secrated by their office as her suppliant ambassadors 1774. in the day of her distress, were welcomed every where on their journey with hospitable feasts and tears of sympathy. No governor in the pride of office was ever attended with more assiduous solicitude; no general returning in triumph with sincerer love. The men of Hartford, after giving pledges to abide by the resolutions of the congress, attended them to Middletown, from which place they were escorted by carriages and a cavalcade. The bells of New Haven were set ringing as they drew near, and those who had not gone out to meet them, thronged the windows and doors to gaze. There they were encouraged by Roger Sherman, whom solid sense and the power of clear analysis were to constitute one of the master builders of our republic. "The parliament of Great Britain," said he, "can rightfully make laws for America in no case whatever." The free

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holders of Albemarle county, in Virginia, had a CHAP. month earlier expressed the same conclusion, and, in the language of Jefferson, claimed to hold the privi- Aug. lege of exemption from the authority of every other legislature than their own as one of the common rights of mankind."

After resting one night at New Haven, and visiting the grave of the regicide Dixwell, the envoys continued on their way. As they reached the Hudson, they found that the British ministry had failed to allure, to intimidate, or to divide New York. A federative union of all the English colonies, under the sovereignty of the British king, had for a quarter of a century formed the aspiration of its ablest men, who long remained confident of the ultimate consummation of their hopes. The great design had been repeatedly promoted by the legislature of the province. The people wished neither to surrender liberty, nor to dissolve their connection with the crown of England. The possibility of framing an independent republic with one jurisdiction from the far North to the Gulf of Mexico, from the Atlantic indefinitely to the West, was a vision of which nothing in the history of man could promise the realization. Lord Kames, the friend of Franklin, though he was persuaded that the separation of the British colonies was inevitably approaching, affirmed that their political union was impossible. Prudent men long regarded the establishment of a confederacy of widely extended territories, as a doubtful experiment, except under the moderating influence of a permanent executive. That the colonies, if disconnected from England, would fall into bloody dissensions among them

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CHAP. selves, had been the anxious fear of Otis of Massachusetts; and was now the apprehension of Philip 1774. Livingston of New York. Union, with the security of all constitutional rights, under the auspices of the British king, was still the purpose of Jay and his intimate associates. This policy had brought all classes together, and loyal men who, like William Smith, were its advocates, passed for "consistent, unshaken friends to their country and her liberties." The community did not as yet know with what sullen passion the idea had been trampled under foot by the British ministry, nor how it was hated by the British king; and as yet prudence suppressed every allusion to an "appeal" to arms. But the appeal was nearer at hand than the most sagacious believed.

The last Tuesday in August was the day for holding the supreme court in Boston; Oliver, the impeached chief justice, was to preside; and in the conduct of business to conform for the first time to the new act of parliament. The day was to decide whether Massachusetts would submit to the regulating act; and Gage, who thought it might be necessary for a part of his army to escort the judges in their circuit as far as Worcester, anticipated no opposition to organizing the court in the heart of the garrisoned town. But neither he nor his employers had computed the power of resistance in a community where the great mass is inflamed with love for a sacred cause.

Before Samuel Adams departed, he had concerted the measures by which Suffolk county would be best able to bring the wrongs of the town and the province before the general congress; and he left the

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direction with Warren, whose impetuous fearlessness CHAP. was tempered by self-possession, gentleness, and good sense, and who had reluctantly become convinced 1774. that all connection with the British parliament must be thrown off. On the sixteenth of August a county congress of the towns of Suffolk, which then embraced Norfolk, met at a tavern in the village of Stoughton. As the aged Samuel Dunbar, the rigid Calvinist minister of its first parish, breathed forth among them his prayer for liberty, the venerable man seemed inspired with "the most divine and prophetical enthusiasm." “We must stand undisguised upon one side or the other," said Thayer, of Braintree. The members were unanimous and firm; but they postponed their decision, till it could be promulgated with greater formality. To this end, and in contempt of Gage and the act of parliament, they directed special meetings in every town and precinct in the county, to elect delegates with full powers to appear at Dedham on the first Monday in September. From such a county congress Warren predicted very important consequences."

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Meantime Boston was not left to deliberate alone. On Friday, the twenty-sixth, its committee were joined at Faneuil Hall by delegates from the several towns of the counties of Worcester, Middlesex, and Essex; and on the next day, after calm consultation, they collectively denied the power of parliament to change the minutest tittle of their laws. As a consequence, they found that all appointments to the newly-instituted council, and all authority exercised by the courts of justice, were unconstitutional; and therefore that the officers, should they attempt to act,

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