Undergrad Thesis- “We might now behold American Grievances red-dressed:” Soldiers and the Inhabitants of Boston, 1768-1770

David Niescior“We might now behold American Grievances red-dressed:” Soldiers and

the Inhabitants of Boston, 1768-17701

On October 1st, 1768 British soldiers of the 14th and 29th

Regiments of Foot, joined by a detachment from the Royal Regiment

of Artillery and the 59th Regiment, landed in Boston. Reports

told of Yankee Doodle being sung jeeringly from the transports

the night before. When the troops landed they came with “Muskets

charged, Bayonets fixed, Colours flying, Drums beating and Fifes

&c. playing...”2 under the cover of a sizeable squadron of the

Royal Navy, with broadsides faced towards the town. Within days

of the landing the Journal of the Times stated that “the Common” was

“covered with Tents, and alive with Soldiers; Marching and

Countermarching to relieve the Guards, in short the Town is now a

perfect Garrison.”3Such a martial display was purposefully

1 “It being the King's Accession-Day, there was a general Appearance of the Troops in the Common, who went through their Firings, Evolutions, &c, in a Manner pleasing to the General. A Divine of the Punny Order, being in the Field, was pleased to observe, that we might now behold American Grievances red-dressed: The glitter of the Arms and Bayonets, and this hostile appearance of Troops in a Time of profound Peace made most of the Spectators very serious..." Journal of Occurrences, Oct. 25th, 1768.2 Journal of Occurrences, October 1st, 1768.3 Journal of Occurrences, October 3rd, 1768. The Journal of the Times, alternatively known as the Journal of the Occurrences, was a series of anonymously attributed day-by-day accounts of the political happenings in Boston written by men such as Samuel Adams, the printers Edes and Gill, and others. The Journal was not fair journalism; it ignored events which did not suit the desired narrative by not covering mob actions or presenting opposing viewpoints. Further, the reports

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intended to be intimidating. The troops came to pacify the town,

which had recently been the scene of protests in the forms of

mobs and crowds, and Governor Bernard of Massachusetts, the

Colonial Secretary the Earl of Hillsborough, and the customs

commissioners who had been the target of public opposition in

1767 and 1768, hoped the presence of smartly dressed soldiers in

large numbers would quell resistance to the Townshend Acts.

it made were not published until some weeks after the dates it carried were passed, and the first printings were done in New York and Philadelphia. The Boston printings were different than those printed in New York and Philadelphia. They were generally slightly shorter and often time removed somedetails, and were quite haphazardly published. At one point in the publishing of the Journal in the Boston Evening Post, the Journal was ran out of order, leading to the an apology and the missing dates added in later, even further removing the dates of the Journal from the actual date of the day, which was then already a space of two months. The delay led some, like Thomas Hutchinson, to criticize the Journal for deceiving the Boston readership’s memory. In the New York Journal the Journal of the Times was published as The Journal of Occurrences, and that is the version which I have used within this paper. The New York version is identical to the Philadelphia version, printed in The Pennsylvania Chronicle; however, as there is the possibility of slight (however negligible) differences between the two printings, the Journal generally cited is the New York printing. Whether or not the events the Journal reported were true or not is something of a moot point, however, for the purpose of this study. While the Journal may have told mistruths, in doing so it presents the sentiments which pervaded Boston during the period of Occupation. These feelings were in turn distributed outside of the colony, as the Journal was published elsewhere (as far away as Georgia and London, for example), and, during the period it was published, was the primary tool for the leaders of the Boston resistance to advance their case to the outside world. For good, albeit brief discussionsof the Journal of Occurrences, see Philip Davidson, Propaganda and the American Revolution, 1763-1783 (Durham: The University of North Carolina Press, 1941) 236-237 and Hiller B. Zobel, The Boston Massacre, (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1970) 109-110

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The decision to garrison Boston culminated in the events of

March 5th, 1770, alternatively referred to by contemporaries as

the “riot on King Street,” or “the Bloody Massacre perpetrated in

King Street.” The interim period of roughly 17 months has often

been characterized as a build-up of tension between soldiers and

civilians. L. Kinvin Wroth and Hiller B. Zobel, in their

tremendously important collection of John Adam’s writings, The

Legal Papers of John Adams, present the common sentiment of most

historians when they state that “friction between inhabitants and

soldiers had increased steadily [before the Boston Massacre];

this friction generated heat and even occasional sparks of

violence.”4 This argument is an oversimplification of the nature

of the first Boston garrison.5 The period of October 1st, 1768 to

March 5th, 1770 was marked by frequent rather than occasional

violence which continued well after the “Massacre” happened.

Rather than steadily increasing, the “friction” between soldiers

and civilians was defined by mutual animosity, which was from the4L. Kinvin Wroth and Hiller B. Zobel ed., The Legal Papers of John Adams (Cambridge:Belknap Press, 1965) I.5 The decision to name this period of the Imperial crisis in Boston as the firstBoston garrison is purposeful. The troops which arrived on October 1st, 1768, were effectively gone by the end of March, 1770. Troops returned in 1773, but that garrison was governed by its own political dynamics, and it is an error to conflate the two as one continuous period of occupation.

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very beginning fierce and indelible, and engendered by Army

practices and soldiers’ actions which were deeply antagonistic to

the people and culture of Boston.

The situation in Boston during the garrison of 1768-1770 was

interpreted in entirely different ways depending on one’s initial

political assumptions. To Boston radicals, who perceived the

course of British colonial policy as part of a broader scheme on

the part of conspiring government officials to fundamentally

alter the English Constitution, the garrisoning of Boston and the

actions of the Army whilst in the town provided yet more evidence

of efforts from within the government to alter the state of

British liberty. To the Army, Boston was a town in near

rebellion, and the actions of the Boston population seemed only

to verify that interpretation. Ultimately, the events in Boston

from October 1768 to Mach of 1770 did little but solidify and

reinforce the assumptions of each side. Boston’s radicals never

regarded government with more suspicion than after the garrison,

and the Army (and consequently, Whitehall) began to firmly

believe that Boston was a town in rebellion. The garrisoning of

Boston as a response to the Townshend Acts crisis achieved little

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more than to make the political divisions between Boston radicals

and supporters of the government’s colonial policy more

intractable and irreconcilable. In other words, whereas the Army

was intended to enforce Parliamentary supremacy, the garrison

only worked to make Boston surer of the need to resist, and the

Army surer that “[t]hings [were] got out of the Reach of

Authority.”6

The Angered Town

The troops sent to Boston in 1768 were dispatched to quell

resistance to Parliamentary measures. Boston was uproarious over

the Townshend Acts (import duties on various commercial goods

which the colonists perceived as little more than a tax), and the

customs commissioners sent to enforce them. Boston was not a

particularly happy town to begin with; several trades were

economically stagnant, and as the 1760s wore on, the numbers of

those who could be termed impoverished only increased.7 There had

6 Dalrymple to Gage, 29 October 1769CO 5/88, TNA7 Indeed, as Gary B. Nash, The Urban Crucible: Social Change, Political Consciousness, and the Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979) 292-300, argues, poverty and economic self-consciousness of the lower orders contributed tremendously to the ferocity of the response to the Stamp Act in 1765. During the first Boston garrison, however, the economic aspects of resistance were not quite as clear. As Nash points out, “Interclass hostility was thus muted by the presence of an adversary whom people in all ranks fearedand detested.”(Ibid., 360) I differ, however, in supposing that the soldiers

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been mobs and riots during the Stamp Act crisis in 1765, and the

drama in Boston took place at a time when much of the Empire was

in crisis; Wilkesite mobs caused trouble in London and there were

disorders in Ireland in opposition to an increase in the Irish

military establishment. The Army, further, was justified year to

year in Britain for more than just the obvious military reasons;

it also served as the primary tool by which the civil power was

supported, particularly against smuggling and importation law

(such as was the primary trouble in Boston), and those in the

government were generally free with its use.8 1768 was full of

occasions in which troops were used to force a return to order,

and it worked in the logic of Whitehall to dispatch troops to

Boston. The Commissioners, and those who stood in defense of the

Governor, certainly had reason to fear. Anne Hulton, sister to

Henry Hulton, one of the Commissioners, had evidently experienced

the terror of a mob before, as she wrote in June of 1768, “the

Mobs here are very different from those in O[ld] England where a

moonlighting in various trades contributed much to the tension in Boston, as there is very little reference to such grievances outside of a single instancerelating to an incident at the ropewalks on March 2nd. That event, however, points more towards the scarcity of work for soldiers than the opposite. 8 J.A. Houlding, Fit For Service: The Training of the British Army 1715-1795 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 57-90.

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few lights put into the Windows will pacify, or the interposition

of a Magistrate restrain them, but here they act from principle &

under Countenance, no person daring or willing to suppress their

Outrages, or to punish the most notorious Offenders.”9 The ‘Sons

of Liberty,’ or, “Sons of Violence,” as Lady Hulton called them,

stood in the way of implementation of Acts of Parliament, an

obstacle that Lord Hillsborough, Secretary of State for the

Colonies, and thus one of the principal architects of colonial

policy, did not fully, or even care to, understand. In the summer

of 1768 news of a large tumult involving 2-3,000 of Boston’s

inhabitants, which drove the Customs commissioners to seek

shelter on Castle William, a small fortress island in Boston

Harbor, reached London. Hillsborough sent two regiments to

Boston, the 64th and 65th, from Ireland. They were supplemented by

General Thomas Gage, Commander in Chief in North America, with

two more: the 14th and 29th. On September 9th the news that a

military presence was on its way reached the colony and, 19 days

later, the 14th and 29th Regiments, joined by a detachment of the

9 Anne Hulton, Letters of a Loyalist Lady (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1927) 11.

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59th and Royal Artillery, could be seen anchored offshore in

their transports.10

The Boston council was not particularly impressed by the

martial display of the landing. Certainly, it was a captivating

spectacle. Even the deacon John Tudor, who made little note of

political events in the diary he kept, recorded that the force

that marched into Boston “made a gallant appearance.”11 The

council, however, unmoved by the show, simply denied letting out

barracks in the town to the Army. Legally, by the letter of the

Quartering Act, the Army was obliged to fill the already

established barracks of the city before it could request new

ones. The catch was that Boston’s military barracks lay at Castle

William, built on an island a mile into the bay. For the

military, the purpose of coming to Boston was to make a presence

in the town, not fill the province’s barracks a mile out to sea.

After a brief period during which the 29th camped on the Common,

and the 14th was lodged in the Court House and Faneuil Hall (the

10 Richard Archer As if An Enemy’s Country: The British Occupation of Boston and the Origins of Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 83-105 and Shy, Toward Lexington, 290-303.11 William Tudor ed., Memorandoms from 1709, &c., by John Tudor, to 1775 & 1778, 1780 and to '93: A Record of More or Less Important Events in Boston From 1732 to 1793 / By An Eye-Witness, October 1st, 1768.

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latter allowed only because the 14th did not bring camp equipage)

the Army rented housing in the town. The 14th was able to secure

a single building for its barracks, but the 29th was forced to

rent several buildings close to the ropewalks; a situation which

later served only to increase, and thus worsen, the number of

soldier/civilian interactions.12

Even as the Army was marching into Boston, the inhabitants

had little idea about the numbers of soldiers that they might

eventually find among them. It has been pointed out that with the

arrival of the two regiments from Ireland in November, the number

of troops in Boston approached nearly 2,000, and one in three men

in the town was a soldier.13 The reality is that far fewer

soldiers made any sort of presence in the town, and that the

number of soldiers coming to Boston only decreased after the full

complement of four battalions arrived. Instead, the numbers which

interacted with the civilians of Boston on a regular basis

scarcely could have numbered 800 when they arrived, and through

desertion (and the parties sent out of Boston to retrieve

deserters), sickness, and the recall of the detachment of the

12 Archer, As if An Enemy’s Country, 105-115, Shy, Toward Lexington 304-305.13 Archer, As if an Enemy’s Country, xvi.

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59th, that number only grew smaller over the 17 month period in

which Boston was first garrisoned. The two Irish regiments, a

substantial part of the numbers that were initially part of the

garrisoning force, were kept in Castle William, and only made

limited appearances in the town on field days and when their

bands played for local events.14 Regardless of the reality of the

size of the military presence in Boston, the inhabitants, at the

beginning of the garrison, were worried that the numbers of

soldiers among them was imminently going to rise. As early as

October 16th, the Journal of the Times reported that it had received

word in a dispatch from London that “’4000 Troops are ordered for

Boston, which it is thought will sufficiently intimidate those

People to comply with the Laws enacted in England.’”15 The New

York Journal, reporting on word received from Boston, stated that

the 13th Regiment of Foot was bound for the town as well, and its

commander, General James Murray, was to take command of the

14 The 64th and 65th play a very little role in this paper, as they did in the garrison itself. The few references made in period texts to those regiments isin relation to their arrival, their subsequent departure, and the occasions inwhich they “made a fine appearance” on field days (see Diary of John Rowe, January19th, 1769). They spent the bulk of their time at Castle William, and were withdrawn back to Ireland to quell troubles there a few, uneventful (for them)months after they arrived. 15 Journal of Occurrences, October 16th, 1768.

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whole. The 13th Regiment was never sent to Boston, nor its

commander, but the fear of it was real enough for it to make

print.16

Fundamental to the distrust of the troops was a general

distrust of the purposes of London. As Pauline Maier has

explained, it was not until late 1769 and early 1770 that the

imagined structure of a supposed conspiracy to alter the English

constitution was well established, but with the landing of the

troops on 1768, Boston’s radicals became inclined to perceive

government actions to preserve the peace in Massachusetts as

being for the purpose of suppressing political dissent.17 The 14th

and 29th Regiments were recalled from Halifax, a station regarded

by the authors of the Journal of the Times as being on the frontier,

and that seemed telling. The Journal reprinted a worrying letter,

which deemed “it... extremely singular that [troops] should be

dawn off from a Frontier Province... and sent to a Place as

Boston, where they cannot be wanted or desired, unless your

Constitution of Government is to be altered...”18 It certainly

16 New York Journal, November 10th, 1768.17 Pauline Maier, From Resistance to Revolution: Colonial Radicals and the Development of American Opposition to Britain, 1765-1776 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1991) 183.18 Journal of Occurrences, December 1st, 1768.

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seemed to the authors of the Journal that the troops were not

there to enforce a general adherence to the law. After a store

owned by a “Mr. Gray” was broken into, and a sentry posted nearby

was reported to have seen the men who committed the break-in and

yet did nothing, the Journal commented ironically about “how useful

our Military Guards might be for the Protection of the Town in

the Night.”19 The army, it seemed, was there not to enforce the

law generally, but to suppress the city.

The official actions of the Army within the town further

engendered civilian ire. A week after landing, construction began

on a guard house at Boston Neck, the one land route out of

Boston. Sentries were posted throughout the town and at the neck,

and at night they challenged all who approached them, threatening

anyone who didn’t respond.20 By the 12th of October the Army began

dispatching parties of soldiers disguised as deserters into the

countryside to apprehend those who went off from their

regiments.21 The presence of sentries at the neck and throughout

the town was particularly irritating and insulting, and

19 Journal of Occurrences, March 1st, 1769.20 Journal of Occurrences, October 8th, 1768.21 Journal of Occurrences, October 12th, 1768.

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occasionally dangerous. On October 19th the Journal of the Times

reported “Gentleman and Ladies coming into Town in their

Carriages, threatned by the Guards to have their Brains blown out

unless they stopped.”22 Early in November, the Journal reported

that “Two Men and Lad coming over the Neck into the Town, were

haled by one Guard and passed them; soon after they were

challenged by another, they replied that they had just answered

one, but they hoped they were all Friends; upon which a Soldier

made a Pass or two with his Bayonet at one of them, who parried

the Bayonet at first, but was afterward badly cut on the Head and

grievously wounded in divers Parts of his Body.”23

Further, the guards seemed to usurp the town’s own Watch.

The Town Watch would ordinarily patrol the streets, and maintain

order and prevent crime at night. The military, though, had

little regard for Boston’s constabulary efforts. Officers

disregarded challenges made by the Watch, and on at least one

occasion scornfully rebuked and threatened those who made an

attempt to challenge officers at night.24 The Guard house at the 22 Journal of Occurrences, October 19th, 1768.23 Journal of Occurrences, November 2nd, 1768.24 Journal of Occurrences, November 25th, 1768. Anne Rowe Cunningham ed., Letters and Diary of John Rowe, Boston Merchant: 1759-1762, 1764-1779 (Boston: W.B. Clarke Company: 1903) 177.

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neck itself also became a symbol of the inhabitant’s perceived

oppression. It was built on Town land, without the approbation of

the Town. As the Journal reported, the inhabitants felt that

“These are Times in which no Inhabitant knows what Ground he

stands upon, or can call his own.” The night after the first

frame was erected it was torn down by “Persons unknown.”25 The

disguised parties, too, roused great suspicion, and the Journal

warned that “Parties of Soldiers going about the Country in

Disguise and pretending to be Deserters, are guilty of great

Impositions, and may occasion much Mischief if not checked in

Time.”26 The Army’s presence, and the suppressive appearance of

its constabulary actions, only generated animosity.

Martial justice was a source of particular disgust for the

inhabitants of Boston. Besides preventing desertion, military

justice was also intended to maintain order and discipline. Petty

crimes such as thievery and indiscipline were the realm of

Regimental Courts Martial, who could inflict corporal punishment,

but did not have jurisdiction for capital crimes. Punishment

25 Journal of Occurrences, November 9th, 1768 and October 9th, 1768. Anne Rowe Cunningham, ed. Letters and Diary of John Rowe, Boston Merchant (Boston: W.B. Clarke Company, 1903), 177. 26 Journal of Occurrences, October 19th, 1768.

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generally meant lashes, and the number of strokes often numbered

in the hundreds. The spectacle was meant to awe the rest of the

regiment into order, but in Boston it meant further civilian

disgust for the Army. It was not long after the arrival of the

troops that the inhabitants were witnesses to the spectacle. On

October 6th, “nine or ten Soldiers of Col. Carr’s [29th] Regiment,

for sundry Misdemeanors, were severely whipt on the Common...”27

Not long after, on the 14th, the display repeated itself, as “one

Rogers, a New-England Man, sentenced to receive 1000 Stripes, and

a Number of other Soldiers, were scourged in the Common...” The

Journal was aghast to report that “some Gentlemen who had held

Commissions in the Army, observing, that only 40 of the 170

lashes received by Rogers, at this Time, was equal to Punishment

to 500, they had seen given on other Regiments.”28 There was also

a racial aspect to Boston’s disgust for the Army’s system of

punishment. The drummers (whose duties included inflicting

punishments) of the 29th Regiment were Afro-Caribbean in origin.

When lashes were to be given, the convicted man was tied to a

frame made of halberds (an ancient polearm retained by the 18th

27 Journal of Occurrences, October 6th, 1768.28 Journal of Occurrences, October 14th, 1768.

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century army as a symbol of rank) and whipped by the drummers,

before the assembled regiment. As the Journal reported, “to behold

Britons scourg’d by Negro Drummers, was a new and very

disagreeable spectacle.”29 Such a display of military authority,

“however necessary, was shocking to Humanity.”30 It was not the

last time the 29th would distinguish itself to the town.

The sight of whippings on the Common excited religious

disgust, as well as visual. For the December 15th entry, the

Journal decried in relatively lengthy fashion the Army’s methods

of maintaining order. Besides the “Distressing Sympathies [which]

force themselves on those who have the greatest Humanity,”

biblical law ordained that “giving more than forty Stripes... is

breaking a Moral Law of God...” The Journal entry continued,

describing martial punishment as “Indignities [that] are a

Disgrace to the human Nature.” Such punishments, as the Journal

recorded, could result in death. A serjeant, found drunk on duty,

was broke (returned to the ranks as a private soldier) and

sentenced to 200 lashes. The serjeant’s back, after receiving his

punishment, was reported to “mortify, and the Mortification from

29 Journal of Occurrences, October 6th, 1768.30 Journal of Occurrences, October 14th, 1768.

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reaching his Kidneys, he died delirious.”31 Besides being sinful

and racially inverted, in other words, the military’s methods of

punishment and instilling order were perceived as being

needlessly brutal.

Apart from efforts to preserve discipline and order within

the ranks, other official military actions alienated the

populace. One of the most offensive ways in which the town felt

the military presence was in the amount of noise the army

generated. A continuing complaint was the sound of drums and

fifes, particularly on the Sabbath. Guard parties were posted

every 24 hours, and would be routinely relieved by a new party.

The parade of the relief was accompanied by drums and fifes;

partially to keep the step of marching soldiers, and also as part

of the military spectacle. This practice was not halted in

respect for the Sabbath. The consequences of these military

interruptions were regarded as being wholly harmful. “[T]he Minds

of serious People at Public Worship,” reported the Journal of the

Times, “were greatly disturbed with Drums beating and Fifes

playing, unheard of before in this land- What an unhappy Influence

31 Journal of Occurrences, December 15th, 1768.17

must this have upon the Minds of Children and others; in eradicating the Sentiments of

Morality and Religion, which a due Regard to that Day has a natural Tendency to

cultivate and keep alive.”32 The town had a brief respite from the

annoyance of the fifes and drums in December, and the Journal was

glad to report that, “Guards are now relieved on Lord’s Day

Morning one Hour sooner than on other Days... [and] that there is

now much less martial Music on the Sabbath...”33 but by the 18th,

the loud martial cadences were back. The Journal reported that,

“Last Evening after Church Service, there was a considerable

gathering of Children and Servants, near the Town House, drawn by

the Music of the Fife, &c. which is again heard on the Sabbath,

to the great concern of the sober and thoughtful

Inhabitants...”34 The Fifes and Drums, and their supposed “ill

Effect upon the younger and more thoughtless part of the

Community...” became a matter of constant disagreement between

the military and the population, and fostered a religious element

to the tension between soldiers and civilians.

32 Journal of Occurrences, November 6th, 1768. Italics as originally printed.33 Journal of Occurrences, December 4th, 1768. 34 Journal of Occurrences, December 19th, 1768.

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Aside from distracting the populace from their worship, the

religious practices of the soldiers and of the military in

general produced tension. The Army was not without religious

ceremony. On October 13th, the New York Journal reported that “in

consequence of Orders... the Troops quartered here, assembled in

the Common... Mr. Kneeland, Chaplain to the 59th Regiment, read

Prayers and preached a Sermon adapted to the Occasion.- The

service was attended with great Decorum.”35 The parading guards,

however, apart from disrupting the worship of the inhabitants,

was perceived by the inhabitants as interfering with the

soldiers’ ability to attend to worship. Surely, as the Journal of

the Times argued, if the “Parade of relieving the Guard, &c. might

be dispensed with upon the Sabbath; whereby the Inhabitants would

be less disturb’d, and the Soldiery have more Time to attend the

more important Duties of this holy Day.”36 The hopes were

maintained through early December. Just as the Journal reported

gleefully that the Army was parading at an earlier hour, it

explained that the change now allowed “the Soldiery to attend

35 The New York Journal, October 13th, 1768. 36 Journal of Occurrences, November 20th, 1768.

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public Worship in Season...”37 These hopes for the good religion

of the soldiers were dashed with the renewal of the fifes and

drums on the Sabbath later in the month. “It has... been noticed

by some Persons, that the sawing of Wood at the Barracks, is more

heard on the Sabbath, than on week Days...” the Journal reported,

sarcastically continuing that, “perhaps this may be pleaded for a

Work of Necessity and Mercy, the Service the Troops are ingaged in,

being so important as not to permit any other leasure Time being

allotted them for this Business.”38 In other ways, the soldiers

were presented as being kept from religious service. On January

1st, 1769, the Journal of the Times reported that “The Soldiery are

obliged, the Lord’s Day not excepted, to attend twice or thrice a

Day at the calling of the Rolls,” perhaps as a measure to prevent

desertion. “[W]hat a pity is it,” the Journal continued,

that [the soldiers] are not ordered to attend Prayers in theChurches nearest to them, once a Day at least; and if their Chaplains would give a few Words of Exhortation at those seasons, and employ but one Hour in a Week, in catechising or instructing the soldiers in the fundamental Principles ofChristianity, many of whom appear to be as ignorant thereof,as those who are inlisted under the Banners of Mahomet. -Might it not be hoped and expected , that their Morals wouldbe reformed, whereby they would become better Soldiers, and

37 Journal of Occurrences, December 4th, 1768. 38 Journal of Occurrences, May 5th, 1769.

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render their Residence in any Town less intolerable to the sober Inhabitants.-39

The Army’s disruptive reputation only grew worse. Apart from

walking “the Streets during the Time of Divine Service, a

Practice which [has] been very disagreeable and inconvenient to

the Inhabitants,” the Army also engaged in other highly impious

activities. “Our English Divines,” reported the Journal of the Time,s

are agreed in Sentiment, relative to the Morality of the Christian Sabbath, and this Town from its Beginning, has been remarkable for a strict Observation of the Lord’s Day.-On the First Arrival of the Troops, the sober Inhabitants were greatly grieved, that the Military Parade and Music could not be dispensed with, or at least lessened on those Days; they were sensible what unhappy Effects, it would haveon the Minds of our inconsiderate Youth, and the lower Classof People: All Application for a Redress of this Grievance, has been ineffectual; Disorders upon the Sabbath, are increasing; our wholesome Laws cannot be executed upon the Soldiery: The Last Lord’s Day, our Common was covered with great Numbers of People, some of whom were diverting themselves with Horse-Racing, &c. in the very Presence of our Wardens.40

In other words, the Town was perceived to be slipping in its

attendance to religion, and it was due to the Army’s presence.

While the practice of walking the streets during religious

service and racing horses on the Common on Sunday was later

39 Journal of Occurrences, January 1st, 1769.40 Journal of Occurrences, June 5th, 1769.

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reported to be forbidden by a military order, the Religious

strife generated by the military was not abated.41

Religious tension was only one of the several ways in which

the army’s presence was disagreeable to the populace which was

not directly determined directly by the choices of the officers.

While the parade of guard reliefs was determined by the

leadership, the officers did not directly order that the soldiers

engage in impious behavior. Army officers were supposed to

maintain a pious disposition within their commands. Article One

of Section I in the Articles of War, the military code of law,

stated that “All Officers and Soldiers, not having just

Impediment, shall diligently frequent Divine Service and

Sermon...”42 In a widely reprinted treatise, one military author

detailed in a chapter the importance of divine worship: “From the

natural profligacy of the lower class of Men, and in general

their total ignorance in religious matters, it very much behoves

Officers to insist on the Non-commission officers, Drummers, and

private Men, constantly attending at divine worship, in order to

41 Journal of Occurrences, June 15th, 1769. 42 Rules and Articles For the Better Government of His Majesty’s Horse and Foot Guards, and All Other HisMajesty’s Forces in Great Britain and Ireland, Dominions beyond the Seas, and Foreign Parts, 1778, 3.(Reprint)

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excite them to a decency of morals, and to avoid many

immoralities, which a neglect, in this particular might leave

them more at large to commit.”43 In another, widely subscribed to

treatise, the author gave exemplar orders, which were intended to

be considered as model standing orders. They included the command

that, “An Officer of a company to march the men to church every

Sunday, who are to remain there during the time of divine

service...”44 The Officers of the Boston garrison failed to

preserve a state of religious piety amongst the soldiers suitable

to the Boston population. Though officers were not wrong for

“resenting the smallest Disrespect offered themselves by a

Soldier, and such Offences are severely punished,” The Journal of

the Times noted that, “it seems the Name of God may be dishonoured

with horrid Oaths and Blasphemies in their presence without their

looking upon themselves as obliged to punish or even reprove them

for the same...” The same entry complained that there were not

“more Pains... taken and better means used to reform the Army....

The common Soldiers are in general destitute of Bibles and proper

43 Bennet Cuthbertson, Cuthbertson’s System, For the Complete Interior Management and Œconomy of a Battalion of Infantry, 1776 (Reprint) 129-130. 44 Thomas Simes, The Military Medley: Containing the most necessary Riles and Directions for Attaining a Competent Knowledge of the Art, 1768 (Reprint) 5.

23

Books of devotion... [and] our Army has less Appearance of

Religion among them than there is among any other in Europe...”45

Such ‘unofficial’ ways by which the soldiers angered the populace

proved to be a particularly prominent cause for Boston’s

antipathy for the Army.

Prominent among Boston’s reasons for aversion for the Army

was the drunken nature of the soldiers. Alcohol was a constant

within a soldier’s daily life. Hardly a General Court Martial was

met in which impairment by alcohol was not given as an excuse by

a defendant soldier.46 The propensity for soldiers to drink was

only exacerbated by quartering within the town. “It seems not

improper for the Day,” asserted the Journal of the Times, “to reflect

with Concern on the Drunkenness, Debaucheries, and other

Extravagancies which prevail by Means of the Troops being

quartered in the midst of a Town, where distilled Spirits are so

cheap and plenty...”47 The officers, too, were not immune from

the criticism of drunkenness. After a soldier of the garrison 45 Journal of Occurrences, December 25th, 1768. 46 The character given to Richard Eames, executed in Boston per the order of aGeneral Court Martial, as “an Honest man tho’ sometimes unfortunate in Liquor”in WO 71/77 is rather typical for a soldier’s court defense. Many, if not most(particularly in desertion trials), attributed their crimes to being drunk at the time. 47 Journal of Occurrences, November 27th, 1768.

24

died “from too free a use of Spirituous Liquors,” the Journal of the

Times reported that the Captain of his company ordered the

soldiers to view the deceased body. The Journal noted that, “It’s

to be hoped that suitable number of Officers will be pickt out of

the Military Core, to lead and accompany the Soldiers on this

melancholy Service.”48 The Army was seen as being generally and

excessively drunk; a characterization that applied to all ranks.

The Army’s drunkenness was perceived by the Town to have a

negative effect on the people of Boston. As the Journal asserted,

“The unhappy Consequences of quartering Troops in this Town,

daily visible in the Profaneness, Sabbath breaking, Drunkenness,

and other debaucheries and Immoralities, may lead us to conclude

that out Enemies are waging War with the Morals as well as the

Rights and Priveleges of the poor Inhabitants.” Such inflammatory

rhetoric made routine appearance in the Journal. On February 27th,

1769, it reported, “Our former Predictions of what would be the

unhappy Effects of quartering Troops in this Town, have been too

fully verified. They are most wretchedly debauched, and their

48 Journal of Occurrences, December 22nd, 1768. As the entry is pre and post-ceded by December dates, it is assumed that the printed date of “Oct. 22” in the New York Journal publication of the Journal of Occurrences is a misprint.

25

Licentiousness daily increasing...”49 The disturbances, as

reported by the Journal, were the fault of the Army. The Army

brought its “drunken Soldiery,” who, “have a raging Appetite for Spirits,

and whose Barracks, are encircled with Distilling-Houses and Dram Shops,”50 and the

town’s morals were perceived as suffering for it. The Army,

succinctly stated, was identified as a moral poison.

A seemingly obvious way in which the Army’s poor morals

impinged directly on the town’s liberty was the way in which

soldiers treated women they encountered. Very soon after the Army

arrived, the Journal of the Times began reporting stories of abuse. On

November 9th, for example, the Journal described how “a married

Woman... returning home in the Night, was seized by the Neck and

almost strangled, she was then thrown upon the Ground, and

treated with great Indecencies: Another Woman at New Boston was

rudely handled.” These stories were reported for political

purpose, as even the Journal admitted that “The Mention of such Abuses as

these is by no means intended to insinuate a Want of Care in the Commanding Officers,

but to shew the great Impropriety and Grievance of quartering Troops in the

49 Journal of Occurrences, February 27th, 1769.50 Journal of Occurrences, April 9th, 1769. Italics as originally printed.

26

Town...”51 Further accounts of soldiers insulting and attacking

women made routine appearance in the Journal, and it served a

convenient tool for protesting the Army’s presence, as well as a

source of genuine consternation. In February of 1769, for

instance, the Journal reported that “Two Women, the other Evening,

to avoid the Solicitations and Insults of a Soldier, took Refuge in a

House... The Soldier was so audacious as to enter with them...”

The Journal continued, claiming the soldier then attacked the

owner of the house with a sword, causing the “Loss of a Quart of

[the house owner’s] Blood.” The same entry reported other

attacks, telling of one woman who “received a considerable Would

on her Head with a Cutlass,” and another who “had a Bayonet run

through her Cheek.”52 Reports such as these made frequent entries

in the Journal, but were not necessarily fictions. Of the few

experiences George Robet Twelves Hewes had with soldiers prior to

the “Massacre” that he remembered many years later, when

interviewed as one of the last surviving members of the

Revolutionary generation, one of the most prominent was an attack

51 Journal of Occurrences, November 9th, 1768. Italics as originally printed. 52 Journal of Occurrences, February 27th, 1769.

27

and robbery of a woman.53 Perhaps soldiers simply sought out

targets of opportunity, particularly those who they felt were

weak or otherwise defenseless. Regardless of the reasons for the

attacks, however, they antagonized the population of Boston

further, and provide the Boston radicals with political fodder.

Soldiers, as part of the licentiousness that New England’s

inhabitants detested, had a tendency to become embroiled in

brawls, particularly with sailors, and those habits contributed

to the perception of the Army as bringing, rather than

suppressing, disorder in Boston. Sailors and soldiers, both

societal outgroups, generally disliked each other, and that

animosity played out in violent fashion during the first Boston

garrison. Indeed, even the Journal of the Times noted that “the

Soldiers... and the Seamen... discover a very particular Dislike

or rather Enmity to each other...” before describing a “bloody

Affray” that occurred after “a Number of Soldiers and Sailors

happened to meet.” The Journal, written in Boston, which was very

much a maritime town, was, perhaps, not sorry to report that the

53 Alfred F. Young, The Shoemaker and the Tea Party: Memory and the American Revolution (Boston: Beacon Press, 1999), 36.

28

sailors carried the day.54 Similar reports made, like the attacks

on women, routine appearance in the Journal. On July 5th, 1769, for

example, the Journal reported of a “Dispute... between a Soldier

and a Sailor.” The Journal took the opportunity on this occasion

to have a joke in the form of puns at the expense of both

parties, reporting that the sailor, though unarmed excepting for

a stick (handed to him by a “good natured Female”) beat back the

soldier armed with a sword, dealing to his antagonist “several

Strokes... that obliged him to sheer off with considerable Damage

to his Hull; he is since haul’d up in Hospital to repair, and it

is imagin’d will be some Time before he is fit for Service.” The

bulk of the reporting, however, made clear that the brawls only

made Boston a more dangerous place, and served to further the

argument that the Army was the cause of Boston’s disorders.55

The perception of the military’s negative effect on order

and religious morals was also joined by racial tension. The Army

brought with it a remarkably different attitude towards race,

particularly when contrasted against Boston’s stark racism. The

black drummers of the 29th Regiment, for example, were not a

54 Journal of Occurrences, December 18th, 1768.55 Journal of Occurrences, July 5th, 1769.

29

source of great contention within the regiment, and both the

white and black soldiers held at least some regard for one

another. On March 2nd, shortly after the first fights between the

29th Regiment and the ropemakers (which would devolve into the

shooting on March 5th) began, Thomas Walker, one of the black

drummers of the 29th Regiment, reported meeting Patrick Walker, a

fellow soldier in the regiment, in the street. Patrick Walker was

cut and bleeding badly, having just been beaten by a group of

ropemakers after a verbal exchange. Quickly, Thomas Walker

gathered some other soldiers from the regiment, and went back to

meet Patrick Walker’s assailants. After being met by an even

larger group of ropemakers, and after another verbal exchange,

the soldiers, with Drummer Walker, became engaged in another

fight, wherein they were beaten severely, Drummer Walker

reporting that he was “Cut... in three places in the Head [and]

remained there as long as [he] was able.” Thomas Walker then made

his way to his barracks, having grown “weak with the great

Effusion of blood Which abundantly Issued from his Wounds.”

Thomas Walker had been enraged by an assault on another soldier,

30

and with the help of other white soldiers went to exact

revenge.56 In times of need, white soldiers sought help from

black civilians, as well. After William Normanton, a soldier in

the 29th Regiment, was attacked and severely wounded by a man

wielding a hatchet and “a large Mastiff Dog,” he saw “two Negroes

Whose assistance he implored.” They quickly helped him escape,

“[rescuing] him from impending Death.”57 Aid did not always

entail rescue, however. The party who returned the deserter

Richard Eames from the countryside found help at a tavern in the

form of “intelligence from a Negro Woman of a Deserter; Who said

one of the Men had got a place with a Farmer the last Week; and

the Negro Woman informing him of the house and shewing him the

door; (He Serjeant Philip’s) detached Thomas Wilson, and Thomas

West, (of the Grenadier Company) to see for him.”58 In the cases

of William Normanton, the party which returned Richard Eames, and

Drummer Thomas Walker, sympathy on the part of blacks both in and

out of the army for soldiers led to personal action.

56Deposition of Thomas Walker, 24 July 1770, CO 5/88, TNA. The number of soldiers who accompanied Drummer Walker is hard to determine accurately. Walker himself claimed only two came with him, but civilian observers claimed as many as eight or nine. 57 Deposition of William Normanton, 24 July 1770, CO 5/88, TNA.58 WO 71/77, TNA, 119.

31

Sympathy was very often mutual, and Boston’s inhabitants

noticed it with rancor. Not long after the Army arrived in

Boston, Captain John Wilson, who commanded the detachment of the

59th Regiment which landed in Boston with the 14th and 29th

Regiments, called on slaves to rise up. “[N]ow the Soldiers are

come,” the Journal of the Times reported him saying to a group of

slaves, “the Negroes shall be free, and the Liberty Boys Slaves.”

The Journal was quick to note that these words came “to the great

Terror and Danger of the peaceable Inhabitants of said Town.”

Boston, like the rest of New England, held very strong racial

beliefs, particularly in regard to the relation of enslaved

servants to masters, and to disturb that dynamic was to disrupt

deeply held convictions relative to social hierarchies.59 Captain

Wilson, and the Army more broadly, inadvertently touched on those

very sensitive beliefs. Though Wilson’s words were likely made

while somewhat inebriated, the inhabitants felt them to be very

serious indeed. Boston reacted quickly to the perceived threat.

Beginning in late October, orders were given to “the Selectmen to

the Town Watch, to take up and secure all such Negro Servants as

59 See John Wood Sweet, Bodies Politic: Negotiating Race in the American North, 1730-1830 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003) passim.

32

shall be absent from their Master’s Houses, at an unseasonable

Time of Night.”60 Other incidents were quickly reported by the

Journal. Some soldiers, for example, who reportedly broke into the

house of a Justice, were said to be “in humble Imitation of some

of their Superiors, [and] very free with the Blacks, to whom they

declared a liking.”61 When the 64th and 65th Regiments arrived at

Castle William from Ireland in November the Journal, “hoped that the

Arrival of these Troops will lead some Officers to conclude that the Aid and Contenance

of our Negro Gentry may now be dispensed with.”62 The racial aspect of the

military tensions were never resolved, and remained a standing

grievance of the Town towards the military’s presence.

The town on October 1st, 1768 was not the same as it was on

September 30th, and the civilians of Boston resented changes in

the Town dynamics that the soldiers caused. Interactions with

soldiers on duty as sentries, as well as the interactions that

soldiers had with women, emasculated the men in the town, making

them feel powerless. Soldiers, further, insulted the identity of

60 Journal of Occurrences, October 31st, 1768. 61 Journal of Occurrences, November 9th, 1768. 62 Journal of Occurrences, November 10th, 1768. Italics as originally printed.

33

the town, which was expressed in its moral and racial codes. It

did not help, either, that military men were apt to engage in

fights and other disorders. Boston, evidently, was being pulled

apart at the moral seams by a military presence that was, in many

ways, foreign. Overwhelmingly the troops were associated with

disorder and violence, which only further reinforced the notion

that the soldiers were not intended for a general preservation of

the King’s peace, but to punish Boston and suppress its

opposition to recent colonial policy. Ultimately, the enmity of

soldiers and civilians, both political and moral in nature, found

expression in various means of public opposition.

Resistance

The Army, for its part, very rapidly began to perceive

Boston as a town in rebellion, confirming many of the notions

held by the ministry in London. By various means the populace of

Boston opposed the presence of the Army, some with the express

purpose of lessening the number of soldiers in the town or

otherwise hampering the Army’s efforts, whereas others,

particularly violence, manifested as vents for frustrations

caused by the Army’s presence. The forms of active resistance in

34

Boston can be fitted into two categories, the first being that

which earned the approbation of the Boston radical leadership.

Such means of opposing the military presence were reported on for

the consumption of other colonies in colonial news publications,

particularly the Journal of the Times and, following the termination

of the Journal, the resolves of Boston legislative committees,

notably An Appeal to the World, or a Vindication of Boston, a narrative of the

course of Boston political resistance commissioned by the Boston

Town Meeting in October of 1769, but not printed until 1770.63

Publications such as these were purely political in origin. John

Adams, for example, noted with glee in his diary that the evening

of September 3rd, 1769 was “spent in preparing for the Next Days

Newspaper—a curious Employment. Cooking up Paragraphs, Articles,

Occurences, &c.—working the political Engine!”64 Cool, deliberate

63 Boston Town Meeting Committee Report on the Vindication of the Town, October 18th, 1769, Massachusetts Historical Society, document number PJA01d109. Why the Journal ceased to print is not clear. It was perhaps in response to the withdrawal of the 64th and 65th Regiments from the town back toIreland; the battle, it may have seemed, was won. When it may have become clear that the withdrawal of those troops was not a portent of the withdrawal of all troops, the Journal did not resume. Instead, the authors were engaged innewer ventures, such as the Appeal, which perhaps promised more than the Journal had been able to deliver, politically. The Journal, from the outset, was designed for consumption elsewhere, but was published in Boston as well, and did not help abate crowd furor. The Appeal, in contrast, was aimed explicitly at “the World,” and thus may have been intended to evade the inhabitants themselves. 64 Diary of John Adams, September 3rd, 1769, Massachusetts Historical Society.

35

means of defiance, such as enticing soldiers to desert, or

abetting legal processes which left soldiers adrift in court

procedure, locked away in goal between court meetings for months

on end after not being able to pay steep bail demands, were at

least reported on with approbation, on the seldom occasion they

were not actually celebrated. Desertion was easy to portray as

being expectable in such an “impolitick” colonial station and

other means of resistance as entirely just.

The second category in which the forms of Boston civilian

resistance can be fitted is that of unendorsed methods. Primarily

these took on the form of mob actions. From 1767, after the worst

of the earliest anti-Townshend Acts mob actions had made the

movement of troops to the town probable, if not inevitable, the

Boston leadership had pursued a policy of distancing themselves

from mobs. Mob action was in part the cause of their woes, and it

was with an entirely straight face that James Otis, a radical

firebrand, could plead in the defense of soldiers on trial that,

“he was ashamed of the ill usage given them by the

inhabitants...”65 This policy continued through the period of the

65 Dalrymple to Gage, Dec. 28th, 1769, Gage MSS, quoted in John Richard Alden, General Gage in America: Being Principally A History of His Role in the American Revolution (Baton

36

first Boston garrison, evidenced by the fact that mob and crowd

actions, though nearly routine, were never reported on unless,

such as in the case of the Boston “Massacre,” they were

impossible to ignore.66

A popular means by which the civilians of Boston pursued

resistance to the Army was to entice soldiers to desert. This

tactic was generally pursued by persuading to soldiers to abandon

their military career in return of receiving either a sum of

money, a new set of clothes (a rather expensive commodity in the

18th century), a chance to pursue their civilian trade in the

country, or a combination of all three. Enticements to desert

such as these were not unique to Boston, or America. As Don

Hagist has pointed out, every deserter left the Army for his own

reasons, and those reasons are too nuanced to adequately

summarize.67 Desertion was epidemic throughout the Empire,

however, and Boston civilians were quite aware of this

phenomenon, as well as quick to capitalize on it. Enticing

Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1948), 173. This incident is made all the more revealing given that Otis was the prosecutor. 66 The events of March 5th, however, were never accurately reported by radicals, who instead formed the event to fit their chosen narrative as well as possible. 67 Don Hagist, British Soldiers, American War: Voices of the American Revolution (Yardley: Westholme, 2012) x-xi.

37

desertion was not a matter of sympathy for the hard life of

soldiers, but for more pragmatic reasons. By encouraging soldiers

to desert, the total number of troops in the town could be

reduced. Evidently the officers of the Army were aware of this,

and made a point to caution the soldiers that “the Practices of

the Inhabitants to entice them away from the Service, was not out

of Affection to them but from Disaffection to the Government.”

The Journal was quick to assert that had the troops been quartered

at Castle William as they should have been to begin with, there

would not have been a desertion problem.68 It may be that an

economic rationale augmented the political one behind the act of

enticing desertion. Physical labor in rural Massachusetts was

practically a legal tender. Deserting soldiers were willing to

work farms simply for shelter and a change of less conspicuous

clothes, and thus supporting their efforts to desert must have

seemed as providing an economic, as well as political,

advantage.69 Regardless of motives, the net result was a

constantly dwindling number of troops, with replacement recruits

68 Journal of Occurrences, October 13th, 1768. 69 Fred Anderson, A People’s Army: Massachusetts Soldiers and Society in the Seven Years’ War (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1984) 28-32.

38

not being enlisted at a fast enough rate to keep up. In the first

year of the garrison alone, for example, the 29th Regiment

reported 71 desertions.70 The establishment strength of a

marching regiment of foot during this period was 342 private

soldiers in 9 companies, which was supplemented by officers and

non commission officers to a regulation strength of about 442.71

The rate by which soldiers were deserting meant that by October

of 1769, the 29th Regiment alone was reduced in numbers of

private soldiers by over 20%. Combined with soldiers missing

because of sickness, on party in the countryside scouring for

deserters, or otherwise indisposed, the regiment’s presence in

the town was reduced by nearly 30% of its real strength.72Though

the Army was able to replace some of the deserters with drafts

(soldiers moved from one regiment to another) from corps

stationed elsewhere, the majority were new recruits; soldiers who

had little experience and who required at least a year before

70 WO 12/4493, TNA. 71 J.A. Houlding, Fit For Service, Appendix C. The strength differed between regiments, respective to their placement on the Irish and English establishments, with the two being brought on relative parity in 1770-71. 72 Though I did not have access to the 14th Regiment’s muster rolls, there is no reason to think they fared any better than the 29th.

39

they could be considered fully trained.73 The loss of experience,

as well as manpower, only helped deteriorate the Army further.

Whatever intentions the Governor and the Commissioners had

for the presence of the Army, the military presence in Boston was

immediately threatened. Desertion was the primary danger to any

18th century army, particularly for those in foreign lands. The

problem was ancient, and the army dealt strict punishment for

deserters. The Articles of War called for death upon a guilty

verdict, though that sentence was often mitigated to 1,000 lashes

by a General Courts Martial, the only military court authorized

to deliver capital sentences, particularly for a soldier’s first

offense.74 The added variable of Boston’s angry population only

exacerbated the situation. In a dedicated, costly effort, Boston

radicals assisted and encouraged deserting soldiers. John Croke,

a soldier in the 29th Regiment, was among the first to be

tempted. As he recalled, “Shortly after the Regiment Landed in

Boston, being encamped on the Common, one of the Inhabitants

Invited this Deponent to a publick-house, Where he treated him 73 J.A. Houlding, Fit For Service, 257-277, 294-296. 74 War Office [hereafter WO] 71/77, The National Archives, Kew, England [hereafter TNA] contains records of General Courts Martial in colonial stations from 1768-1771, and is an excellent resource which offers a diverse look at military justice during the period of the first Boston garrison.

40

with Liquor, and said, If he, this Deponant Chose to Desert, he

would provide him With money and Clothes, And in Order to make

his agreement Secure, gave this Deponant half a Dollar...”75

Another soldier in the 29th Regiment, James Corkrin, was

similarly tempted. A few weeks after “the Troops Came to Boston,”

he later recalled that, “he was Sentry at the Neck Guard, When a

Countryman Came up to him and told him That he, (this Deponant)

should have fifty pounds a Year, to go with him to the

Country...”76 Croke and Corkrin were just two of the ones who did

not give in to the offer; many others, however, gave in to the

temptation. The Journal was quick to speculate. Perhaps the

soldiers enjoyed the mild winter, or noticed that the “Common

people [were] cheerful, hearty, and well clad...” Massachusetts,

it was argued, is like “Canaan... a Land flowing with Milk and

Honey.”77 On the 12th of October the Journal of the Times reported

75Deposition of John Croke, 24 July 1770, Colonial Office [hereafter CO] 5/88,TNA. CO 5/88 contains both correspondence coming to and from Massachusetts by British officials and several dozen depositions taken from British soldiers ofthe 14th and 29th Regiments in the months after the “Boston Massacre.” While, like the Journal of Occurrences, the depositions in CO 5/88 do not necessarily present a balanced view of the events in Boston, the sentiments expressed in them, as well as many of the specific events, corroborate each other. As such they are an invaluable tool in gauging the situation British soldiers found themselves in during the period of the first Boston garrison. 76Deposition of James Corkrin, 24 July 1770, CO 5/88, TNA.77 Journal of Occurrences, January 17th, 1769.

41

“great Desertions and a general Disposition to desert from the

Regiments here, which it is said left Halifax under great

Dejection of Spirits; about 21 of the Soldiers absconded the last

Night...”78 That number may be an exaggeration, but by April of

1769 the 29th Regiment alone had suffered 40 desertions, a

significant portion of the regiment’s establishment strength,79

and by January of 1769, the Journal was eager to gloat that during

a general muster for the Queen’s birthday, “the thin Appearance

made by the several Regiments, fully evinced that their being

quartered in this Town was a Measure as impolitick as it was

illegal...”80

The military leadership in Boston was quite aware of the

desertion epidemic, and almost immediately endeavored to prevent

it. Two days after the army landed, “a Proclamation was read

offering a Reward of 10 Guineas to such Soldier as should inform

of any one who should attempt to seduce him from the Service,

after which it is said the Col. advised them not to refuse any

Money, offered as a Temptation to Desert, but to bring the 78 Journal of Occurrences, October 12th, 1768.79 Muster rolls of the 29th Regiment, WO 12/4493, TNA. Four of those men who deserted were subsequently returned, though one managed to escape and desert again. 80 Journal of Occurrences, January 18th, 1769.

42

Offender to him, when he would take Care that it should be the

last Offer he should make.”81 Despite the offers, the punishments

available to a General Court Martial, and the thinly veiled

threat to the inhabitants of Boston, desertion continued. To

prevent further desertion, sentries were placed about the town to

make it more difficult for anyone within the town, particularly

soldiers, to leave without first being seen or stopped. The chain

of sentries was particularly dense at the Neck, where a

guardhouse which soon became known as “the fortification” was

constructed, as it was the solitary land bridge between the town

and the rest of Massachusetts. The job was made more difficult in

the winter, when soldiers could abscond across a frozen Boston

Harbor, but for most of the year the Army was able to exert a

great deal of control over who came and, more importantly, who

left Boston. To further battle the never ceasing dilemma of

desertion, the Army dispatched parties of soldiers disguised as

deserters into the countryside to apprehend those who went off

from the Army, a tactic that was already in use in New York.82

81 Journal of Occurrences, October 3rd, 1768.82 See WO 71/77 for the General Courts Martial trials of Cpl. Thomas Bomstead,Gunner Isaac Chamberlain, and Richard Eames, private soldier. These parties occasionally ran into resistance from the country people. A letter contained in CO 5/88 from Lt. Col. Dalrymple to General Gage, October 28th, 1769,

43

For a while the subterfuge worked. On the 14th of October,

disguised soldiers from the grenadier company of the 14th

Regiment captured Richard Eames, also a soldier of the 14th

Regiment, who had hired himself out as a laborer for a farmer

some 25 miles from Boston. The disguises worked well enough that,

when they reached the farm, the party was led to Eames by the

farmer himself. On the 22nd Eames was brought before a General

Court Martial. He pleaded that he had not been paid arrears owed

to him, and that he had often been struck while at exercise

(contemporary parlance for drill practice). While witnesses

testified he had in fact been paid regularly, and that he had

only been struck as much as any other soldier, he was given a

good character as “an Honest man tho’ sometimes unfortunate in

Liquor.” Nevertheless, the army needed an example, and Richard

Eames was their means of providing it. The court sentenced him to

death, and on the 31st the sentence was executed. Eames, “dressed

provides one account of a party being surrounded by “very great numbers” of country men, whose faces were “blacked,” springing one of a pair of prisoners from a party of soldiers. The other prisoner acted in aid of the party, perhaps hoping for a reprieve.

44

in white” was shot on the Common, and the regiment was paraded

around his body.83

Paradoxically, preventing desertion became the primary task

of the army so that it could pursue the original but now

secondary task of preserving the King’s peace. The Army took

these efforts against desertion for very good military reasons;

the army was being worn away, and it had to be stopped. The

precautions only alienated the population further. Further, when

deserters were apprehended and punished, the spectacle shocked

and outraged the people, unused to the sight of the harsh

discipline of the Army. The execution of Eames only exacerbated

the disgust for the deserter parties. “[N]otwithstanding all the

Care of the Officers,” the Journal reported, “and Viligance [sic]

of the Military Guards, which almost surround the Town, the

83 Richard Eames is often listed as Richard Ames. That is how his name appearsin the Journal of Occurrences, and how several historians have recorded him as since. The records of his trial appear in WO 71/77, wherein his name is spelled Eames. The Army’s records being more trustworthy than Boston’s, in this regard, I have elected for the latter spelling. A description of his execution is given in the Journal of Occurrences, October 31st, 1768. General Gage went back and forth between enforcement of sentences and leniency. This may have been an effort to engender a powerful respect for his office among the troops, as well as among the inhabitants of Boston, a contemporary theory of the purpose of punishment well discussed in Fred Anderson, A People’s Army: Massachusetts Soldiers and Society in the Seven Years’ War (New York: W.W. Norton & Company,1984) 121-123. Whether or not such tactics worked on the troops is hard to ascertain, but it certainly did not have the desired effect on the inhabitants.

45

Practice of sending out Serjeant’s Parties in Disguise, still

continues, but we do not hear of any one deserter being brought

back, excepting poor Ames, whose Execution is thought to have

been as impolitical as it was illegal; it deters those Country

People from making Discoveries, which the prospect of a Reward

might tempt them to do, as they now apprehend, that this cannot

be done without involving themselves in the Guilt of Blood.”84

Succinctly stated, the slow atrophy of regimental strength could

not be stopped without further alienating the populace.

In response to the sentries which surrounded the town the

townspeople found another means of resistance: ignoring the

demands of sentries. The political leaders of the Boston

resistance were evidently delighted about the practice. Unlike

other means of resistance, which did not play into the narrative

of a peaceful town subdued and oppressed by a dangerous standing

army, Bostonians ignoring the demands of sentries were easily

portrayed as simply exercising their natural rights. The

inhabitants, prior to the arrival of the army, had been able to

walk about the town freely, and without consequence. The

84 Journal of Occurrences, February 13th, 1769. 46

sentries, however, in demanding the identity of those who passed

before their posts, were readily characterized as agents of a

tyrannical conspiracy. The Journal of the Times, never reported the

extent to which the people of Boston contributed to desertion,

but instead portrayed the army as falling apart at the seams

because of the “impolitick” decision to quarter in the Town. In

essence, the Journal’s narrative was that desertion was not the

fault of the townspeople, and that they therefore had no reason

to respond to challenges. Such an incident took place shortly

after the troops arrived, and the sentries were posted, on

November 30th, 1768. A merchant, in response to the challenges of

some sentries, replied that “he was not obliged to answer, nor

had they any Business with him...” The Journal reported that the

soldiers snapped back, saying that “[Boston] was a Garrison

Town,” and “presented their Bayonets to his Breast... and

detained him a Prisoner for above Half an Hour...” The Journal

entry concluded with the commentary, “Perhaps by treating the most

respectable of our Inhabitants in this Sort, it is intended to impress our Minds with

formidable Ideas of Military Government, that we may be induced the sooner to give up

such trifling Things as Rights and Privileges, in support of which we are now suffering

47

such great Insults and Injuries.”85 A week later, on December 6th, the

Journal was eager to note that some sentries, perhaps the same as

those who stopped the merchant, were brought before Justice

Richard Dana for “stopping an Inhabitant of this Town... for

refusing to answer when hail’d.” Dana had them bound to the court

to appear the next January, a sentence to the gaol if the troops

did not manage to find bail from an acceptable source. The Journal

applauded the efforts of the Justice, soon to be infamous with

the troops.86

Enticing soldiers to desert and ignoring sentries, were,

however, somewhat peaceful paths of resistance. The town was

generally enraged by the presence of the army, at all social

levels, and great anger roused by the quartering of troops in

Boston caused reactions that were varied both in their violence

and their intensity. Typical among interactions between civilians

and soldiers were insults, particularly on the part of the

civilians. A soldier could expect at some point to be called a

“Lobster scoundrel,” a “Bloody back’d dog,” a “rascal” or any

number of combinations of such “abusive” and “ill language.”

85 Journal of Occurrences, November 30th, 1768. Italics as originally printed. 86 Journal of Occurrences, December 6th, 1768.

48

Besides mere insults, however, threats were also a common form of

resistance to the army. Serjeant John Eyley, of the 14th

Regiment, for example, recounted seeing a mob assembled before

the Main Guard in October of 1769, insulting the sentries there,

and “threatening the sentrys in a most abusive manner, and

particularly one Pitts who said if he had the scoundrels

elswhere, and without Arms he would thrash them as long as his

cane would last.”87 Later in the same month, Serjeant James

Hickman of the 14th Regiment recalled a verbal exchange between

him and Robert Pierpoint, a recurring character in the

depositions of soldiers, late at night at a guard house.

Pierpoint, after not being admitted an audience with an officer,

and being told to come back in the morning, left the premises,

“threatening to shoot [Serjeant Hickman] or any of his guard that

should pass by his house saying he had a brace of Pistols loaded

for that purpose.”88 Threats were not necessarily only to be

expected from those of the lower classes. On one occasion

reportedly “well dress’d men,” after being told they had to obey

the King’s commands, responded “if they imagin’d any person

87 Deposition of John Eyley, 25 August 1770, CO 5/88, TNA.88 Deposition of James Hickman, 15 August 1770, CO 5/88, TNA.

49

present thought so, they would, Tar and Feather him immediately,

and afterwards cut off his Head & stick it upon the highest post

on the Town.”89 Thomas Podger and Richard Henley, private

soldiers in the 14th Regiment, received typical treatment after a

man refused to answer their challenge when they were sentry at

the neck guard in November of 1769. The man “damn’d them for

scoundrels, and said he had no right to answer them, and if he

had a pistol he would blow their brains out, and much more

threat’ning ill language...”90 This threat turned out to be

largely empty, but others proved to be very real.

Soldiers did not always respond to verbal assault with a

turned cheek. Rather, as men were prepared to do in an age when

personal honor was often a closely and violently guarded

possession, they occasionally reacted in an impassioned manner.

In typical military situations, offensive language would have

justifiably sparked a violent reaction. This was not simply

cultural permission, but judicial as well. Military courts, the 89 Deposition of George Smith, 25 August, 1770, CO 5/88, TNA. Accounts of violence often reported attacks in the fashionable North End, suggesting that even the relatively wealthy of Boston were not so averse to threats and violence to seek to have them halted, even if they did not always take part themselves. Underlining as originally written.90 Deposition of Thomas Podger and Richard Henley, 25 August 1770, CO 5/88, TNA.

50

proceedings of which soldiers would have been fairly familiar

with, were apt to let soldiers go with lesser or mitigated

punishments in cases of assault, and even murder, if the

defendants could prove they had been provoked by “ill language.”

In Mahon, in 1770, for example, Richard Sherman, of the 3d

Regiment of Foot, was brought before a General Court Martial for

striking Thomas Acres, a soldier of the same regiment, which was

“supposed to be the occasion of his death.” Sherman hinged his

defense on an insult that Acres had given him, and the Court

found it enough to acquit him of the crime. The rule of excusing

insulted soldiers from defending their honor applied for assault

that occurred on those higher in rank, as well. In Gibraltar, for

example, in 1768, a soldier in the 30th Regiment of Foot,

Laurence Griffen, struck a Serjeant of the same regiment whilst

on his post as sentry. The defense relied on great verbal abuse

the serjeant had dealt to Griffen, and the Court found the

defense acceptable, taking into account that Griffen had been

“irritated and provoked by the abusive Language which he received

from the Serjeant... and which he also appears to have at first

borne with great Patience.” Griffen’s punishment was mitigated,

51

and he was sentenced to a much reduced sentence. In an even more

striking instance, Thomas Thomas, a private soldier in the 58th

Regiment, was shaken from his bed, hit a few times, and greatly

insulted by a serjeant, Antony Brown. Serjeant Brown thought

Thomas was the man who several women had complained had abused

them, and he was fetching Thomas to have him punished.91 Thomas

reacted to the insults by dealing the serjeant a number of blows.

The Court acquitted Thomas of the charges leveled against him.

While military courts, and the army in general, desired that

soldiers not react violently to insults, it was felt a somewhat

tolerable and understandable indiscretion.92

In Boston, soldiers reacted to continual insult with

occasional violence. A particularly infamous case was the one of

John Riley, a grenadier in the 14th Regiment. In mid July of

1769, Corporal Samuel Heale of the 14th Regiment entered into a

verbal altercation with a man in the market place of Boston,

after witnessing a man he claimed was “beating a Boy very much.”

Corporal Heale interposed on the boy’s behalf, stating that “it

91 His guilt in regard to the women was never established. 92 WO 71/77, TNA. The cases appear on pages 351-354, 60-68, and 420-428, respectfully.

52

was shamful [sic] to beat the Boy so inhumanly.” During the

exchange, John Riley approached, and after being told what it was

about, joined Corporal Heale in berating the man who had beaten

the boy. John Winship, a butcher, meanwhile approached the

argument, and interposed between the soldiers and the man they

were altercating with. Riley and Winship had previously exchanged

harsh words before, and Winship was eager to revive a verbal

exchange which had occurred the previous day. The exchange of

insults between Riley and Winship heightened, though the original

exchange begun by Heale had ended. Eventually, Riley had enough,

and extended his hand in an effort to end the squabble, “Which

winship insultingly refused to do, saying he would not shake

hands with any dirty Rascals like us for fear of Catching the

Itch.” After that slight Heale walked away, not having the

personal connection to the fight that Riley did, but the exchange

between Riley and Winship continued. Riley became incensed, and

punched Winship. 93 93 Deposition of Samuel Heale, 25 August 1770, CO 5/88, TNA. As reported in the Journal of Occurrences, July 28th, 1769, in the deposition of John Loring, John Winship’s insults were not forgotten by Riley’s fellow grenadiers, or their colonel, Col. Dalrymple. The next day, as Winship came from the market in his cart towards Justice Quincy’s house, he was taunted and jeered at by a group of grenadiers from the 14th Regiment, who followed him. When Winship applied to Captain Fordyce to control his men, Col. Dalrymple replied, “you are a

53

Unlike what Riley, as a soldier, might have expected, the

act of striking Winship over insults he received was met with

swift judicial consequences. Riley was hauled before the court,

and sentenced to pay a steep fine; a sentence that was not deemed

just by those within the Army. Lieutenant Alexander Ross of the

14th Regiment, at the behest of Captain Charles Fordyce,

commander of the 14th Regiment’s grenadier company, attempted to

intervene. He knew the judge, Justice Quincy, personally, and the

fine was well beyond what any soldier could afford to pay. And,

after all, Captain Fordyce had been assured by “severall Soldiers

who were present when the Quarell hapned, that Riley had bore a

great deal of abuse and ill language from the Butcher before he

Struck him.” Lt. Ross met with no luck. Riley, for being unable

to pay the fine of 13 shillings and 4 pence, was sentenced to

gaol.94

John Riley, not a man who would stand being slighted by

another, was evidently not one to take an injustice from a court

either, and so he decided to run. While Justice Quincy wrote a

damned Scoundrel, you was saucy, they served you right, and I don’t care if they knock you down again.” The soldiers took great delight at this response, and loudly and repeatedly praised their “noble Gentleman” officer. 94 Deposition of Charles Fordyce, 25 August 1770, CO 5/88, TNA.

54

mittimus, Riley took off for the door. He was grabbed by a

constable, but managed to wrestle himself, with the constable

clinging to him, outside, where other men from the grenadier

company were assembled.95 The soldiers loosed Riley free from the

constable, but were shortly afterward confronted by Lt. Ross, who

“seem’d angry at [Riley’s] Escape,” and Capt. Fordyce, who

ordered them home. It is important to note that the escape was

not planned. The grenadiers who were assembled outside had been

accosting John Winship, having followed him as he rode his cart

to the Justice’s House, insulting and berating him. Nonetheless,

the grenadiers instantly took their chance to spring Riley from

Boston’s justice, and made good Riley’s escape.

The day may have ended there, but the angered inhabitants of

Boston were not quite ready to let the events of the day passed

without one last, violent, word. As Corporal Robert Balfour, of

the 14th Regiment, was returning to his barracks, he was met by a

“number of townspeople” who first “knock’d him down and said God

damn him for a bloody back’d scoundrel,” and then inquired as to 95 Depositions relating to this event in CO5/88 and the Journal of Occurrences mention exposed “cutlasses” and “swords.” By this time the only men in Britishmarching regiments of foot that carried swords, or ‘hangers’ as they were termed, were the men in the grenadier companies. These swords were short, curved, and intended more to look menacing than to function as actual weapons.

55

what regiment he belonged to. When he answered the 14th, the same

as Riley and Lt. Colonel Dalrymple, the mob, glad to get some

revenge for the incident at the courthouse, “then damn’d him,

&said if his Colonel had been there, they would have serv’d him

in the same manner.” Balfour was so bruised as to find it

difficult to return to his barracks, but the mob’s rage was

temporarily satiated.96

Though Riley’s reaction to Boston’s justice was unique, what

he experienced judicially was fairly typical for soldiers before

a civil court during the first Boston garrison, which became a

powerful forum by which the opposition to the army expressed

themselves. The courts were generally crowded with angered

inhabitants. At Riley’s trial the mob, assembled in the audience

and at the door, “were exceedingly abusive to some Soldiers in

the street and threatning to take their Swords from them &ca..

&ca.” On another occasion, Ensign John Ness of the 14th Regiment,

who was charged with an invented accusation that he had stolen

wood from Robert Pierpoint, found the courtroom filled to

capacity by angry townsmen, with even more collected outside, who

96 Deposition of Robert Balfour, 25 August 1770, CO 5/88, TNA. 56

“Made use of a great many abuseive words, Such as saying here

comes ye bloody back Rascall he will be soon in Goal. We shall

shortly Conduct him there.”97 While officers and soldiers brought

before the court stood unable to reply, Boston found a means by

which to verbally assault members of the Army with no fear of

consequences.

The Justices of the Boston courts were themselves very much

opposed to the Army’s presence as well, and made their opinion

known at every opportunity. Lt. Ross, charged after Riley’s

escape with fomenting a riot and a rescue of Riley, was appalled

by his treatment by the court. Reporting his mistreatment, Ross

complained that,

Every matter that could be Alledged against us was Attentively listened to, and even Exaggerated by the Justices. Mr. Denna [Justice Richard Dana] in particular demanded of us in a threatening manner “what brought you here? (Meaning to this Province) by whose Authority came youamongst us &c.? and when Capt. Fordyce (who was present) attempted to speak for any of the Deffendants, he was Immediately Silenced by the Bench, nor suffered to say a Single word in favour of them. After all the Witnesses were heard (which were only those who could Advance any thing against us) The said Justice Denna made a Speech, fill'd with much Invective, and Abuse, against the Military in General, and those before him in Particular. Towards the

97 Deposition of John Ness, 25 August 1770, CO 5/88, TNA. Underlining as originally written.

57

Close of which, he gave those present, and all the Troops inBoston this Precaution, to behave with Circumspection, nor Offer the least insult to any of the Inhabitants in Town, for that to his knowledge many carry’d conceal’d weapons about them, and that they would one Day give the Troops a Crush, when they did not expect it, they being but a handfulwhen compared with the Inhabitants98

Dana was eventually stopped on this tirade by “a jog” from

another justice, even his colleagues perhaps deciding he had said

rather too much. Regardless, Dana was an infamously harsh judge.

The ensign Ness, in his own trial, was “a good Deal Surprized to

be asked when he arrived whether he brought bail with him. He had

only just entered the court, and yet it seemed Dana had

preconceived the sentence. Ness recalled later that,

I answered I had not, as I did not know I was guilty of any Crime, and Desired I might send for the Soldiers to prove it; Justice Dana refused it telling me I was not then on My Trial that Peirpoint had sworn the peace against me, Therefore he should comit me, if I did not find Bail, for a hundred Pounds.99

Justice Dana then made use of his favorite arguments and a

favorite threat:

When speaking of the Soldiers; What brought you here, who Sent for you, and by what authority do you mount Guard, or

98 Deposition of Alexander Ross, 25 August 1770, CO 5/88, TNA. The final threat is echoed in several other depositions about the trial. 99 Deposition of John Ness, 25 August 1770, CO 5/88, TNA. Underlining as originally written.

58

march in the Streets with arms, it is contrary to the laws of the Province, and you should be all taken up for so offending. We want none of your Guards, We have arms of our own, and Can protect ourselves. Adding also you are but a handfull, and had Better take care not to provoke us, if youdo, you must Take the Consequence, with numberless other agravating Circumstances tending to stir up the Inhabitants against the Soldiers.100

As the crowd in the court jeered, Ness was then berated by

Pierpoint, who threatened Ness with his fists. Justice Dana, no

doubt friendly to Pierpoint’s sentiments, feigned deafness when

Ness objected to this treatment. In a similar incident, Henry

Cullin, then a private soldier in the 29th Regiment, was brought

to trial on a charge of assault from a man who had been

restrained by Cullin and a serjeant after he had tried to break

into a barrack gate. Justice Dana made use of his preferred

warning again, Cullin reporting that “During the Course of the

Tryal the whole Army was abused both by the Justice and Lawyers,

Particularly by Justice Dana who Precided as Chief Justice, and

said that the Soldiers had Better take care of themselves, and

what they were about, for that they were but a Handfull, and if

the Townspeople had a mind to turn out against them, the Soldiers

100 Ibid. The arguments against the Army’s presence, as well as the final warning, are echoed in the deposition of Serjeant Hickman, who was also present at the trial.

59

would be Nothing in their Hands, and further threatned the

Soldiers very much.”101 The Justices were well recognized for

their efforts by the Journal of the Times, which joyfully noted, “It is

our Happiness and Security, that we have recourse to the Common Law... We have

Magistrates who have Spirit enough to exert themselves in support of our common

Rights...”102 Like ignoring sentries, the courts were an acknowledged

form and forum of resistance which only reinforced the narrative

of rowdy soldiers in a peaceful town.

It was a common tactic within the courts to tie soldiers up

in judicial proceedings for months by demanding steep bail

amounts, and by denying bailers to the soldiers. Soldiers earned

a pittance, and there was not much charity for soldiers in

Boston. Invariably, the next court date for a soldier would be

scheduled months in advance, so that the soldiers, unable to pay

the bail, would be doomed to a “troublesome and Vexatious

confinement in Goal.”103 The sentries brought before Justice Dana

on December 6th, 1768, were comparatively lucky; their court date

101 Deposition of Henry Cullin, 28 July 1770, CO 5/88, TNA. Cullin was evidently deemed a trustworthy, sober, and reliable soldier by his officers, as he was later promoted to corporal, the date of his promotion recorded as December 25th, 1769 in the muster rolls kept in WO 12/4493.102 Journal of Occurrences, December 6th, 1768. 103 Deposition of James McKaan, 24 July 1770, CO 5/88, TNA.

60

was only weeks later. For others brought before the court,

confinement might mean months. Serjeant Hickman of the 14th

Regiment was one such soldier. Brought before Justice Dana, he

was threatened with confinement which “must infallably have been

[the case] had I not procured Bail for £50 which was with much

difficulty accepted as many creditable Persons who offered to

become security were objected to by the Senr Justice Dana,

evidently for no other purpose then to subject me the Deponent to

a Confinement of upwards of ten months which must unavoidably

have been the case as [the] Tryal has been delay’d from October

last to the present time for reasons unknown.”104 The strategy was

evidently effective, as confinement remained a common fear among

the soldiers throughout the period of the garrison. The courts,

very much predisposed towards the punishment of soldiers and

officers, innocent or not, rarely let a soldier go.

On the seldom occasion, however, that a member of the Army

was released, or managed to avoid being punished by the Boston

courts, it provoked a strong reaction from the town. Captain John

104 Deposition of James Hickman, 25 August 1770, CO 5/88, TNA. Underlining as originally written.

61

Wilson, for example, formally accused of “stirring up, exciting,

and encouraging the Negro Slaves in Boston to a Conspiracy

against their Masters” in the March following his drunken tirade

calling for a group of slaves to rise up, managed to avoid being

brought to trial by answering ‘not ready’ when the Attorney

General inquired to his state of preparation for the trial.105

After Wilson departed, the court failed to give Wilson notice to

appear again. The Journal reported disdainfully, “[I]t is probable

[he] never will appear...”106 The Journal was shocked to hear that,

a month later, Captain Wilson and his detachment of the 59th

Regiment sailed for Halifax and was “out of the Reach of the

Laws” of Massachusetts. In this instance, “the Conduct of the

King’s Attorney... has been highly disgustful to the People.” The

Journal then called for a “Parliamentary Enquiry... into those

Matters.”107 A member of the Army being released was simply so

unusual that it could hardly be a legal mistake, it was criminal

negligence.

105 Journal of Occurrences, March 27th, April 20th, 1769.106 Journal of Occurrences, April 20th, 1769. 107 Journal of Occurrences, June 1st, 1769.

62

The courts bias worked against soldiers as plaintiffs, as

well. In June, 1769, while on his post as sentry, John Timmons, a

private soldier in the 29th Regiment, was knocked down in the

street by a man wielding a stone or a brickbat. After coming back

to his senses, he heard the cry, “Murder!” from a nearby woman.

She was quickly quieted by some nearby men, “Damn’d for a whore

to Keep Silence,” but not before alerting Timmons to which way

his assailants ran. He quickly gave chase in the direction of the

South Meeting House, but after rounding the corner of the House,

he was met by three wigmakers wielding clubs. He was then beaten

severely, and dragged through the streets, before a party of

soldiers from the Main Guard was alerted and the three men were

driven off. The identities of his assailants were ultimately

discovered, but when Timmons attempted to have them brought to

trial, he was refused by three different justices (including

Justice Dana), who all claimed they were too busy to take his

case.108 In a similar incident, Serjeants William Jones and

Richard Pearsall of the 29th Regiment, and Jones’ wife and baby,

were returning to Boston after a day off of duty in Charlestown

108 Deposition of John Timmons, 28 July 1770, CO 5/88, TNA.63

via the ferry that joined the two cities, and were met by a man

leading a horse. The man tried to board the ferry with his horse,

but Serjeant Jones advised him that there was not enough room for

the horse, the ferryman having already denied any more

passengers. The man then “Damed said Serjeant Jones for a Damed

Rascall and A Damed Scroundrell,” and beat both Serjeants and

Jones’ wife, who was carrying their child, with his whip. A mob

quickly surrounded the scuffle, and joined the man with the whip.

Luckily, “some Gentlemen that were witnesses to the Ill usage

received [from] the Mob” intervened, and prevented more of the

beating which “by all appearances would have taken the Lives of

[the Joneses and Pearsall].” The indignity was only exacerbated

when the Serjeants attempted to initiate legal charges. Though

they collected witnesses to testify for them (namely, the

gentlemen that rescued them), they were advised by General Mackay

to “to drop all Prosecution as no redress could be obtained for A

Soldier in Boston.”109 Though in both cases the soldiers had clear

cut cases of assault, of which any soldier would have been

pilloried for if the situations had been reversed, the courts

109 Deposition of William Jones and Richard Pearsall, 28 July 1770, CO 5/88, TNA.

64

were not going to give them redress. The courts were a tool to be

used by Boston against soldiers, not the reverse.

Physical violence, such as in the two previous cases, was

another means by which the inhabitants of Boston resisted the

presence of the Army. Enticing soldiers to desert was a

calculated choice; it generally involved some expenditure in the

form of money or clothing, but it had the immediate payoff of one

more soldier out of Boston. Violence was, predominantly, an

emotional, uncalculated action. Just as calling out insults to

soldiers did little to hasten the withdrawal of the troops from

the town, so too did violence bear little reward but personal

satisfaction, but the townspeople still engaged in it often.

Violence against the soldiers took on various forms, one of

the most prominent being attacks on what may be termed targets of

opportunity. Such attacks occurred on single or small groups of

soldiers, generally not on duty, who were walking along the

streets of Boston. These individuals and small groups would be

confronted, beaten severely, and often left for dead or saved by

the fortuitous arrival of reinforcing soldiers. Incidents like

these began to occur very shortly after the Army arrived in

65

October of 1768. In late November, for example, Corporal William

Lake of the 14th Regiment was met in the streets of the North End

by a small mob. One of their number “struck him with a Club which

brought him to the ground... some of the Mob crying out keep him

down whilst he is there, he [Lake] as soon as he recover’d his

senses a little, beg’d they wou’d not kill him...” Corporal Lake

was then left after the mob had done its work, and he was allowed

to return to his barracks without further injury, though he was

“very much bruised and beaten [in] a barbarous manner”110 A month

later a similar assault occurred, this time on three soldiers of

the 14th Regiment, Serjeant Thomas Hoult, Drummer John Gregory,

and Thomas Smith, private soldier. Walking in the North End, they

were met by another mob, which without warning “knock’d them

down, dragged them thro’ the Gutters in the street, crying out

they were Lobsters, shew them no mercy, repeating their blows and

using them in a most barbarous manner...” They were saved by the

appearance of some soldiers, but the three soldiers were sure

that the “crowd” which attacked them “intended to murder them.”111

110 Deposition of William Lake, 25 August 1770, CO 5/88, TNA. 111 Deposition of Thomas Hoult, John Gregory, and Thomas Smith, 25 August 1770,CO 5/88, TNA.

66

Drummer John Gregory found himself in a similar situation in the

January following. Again walking with a serjeant, one Hardress

Gray, he and his companion were met by a mob, which gave them

“some aggravating Words and imprecations.” The soldiers evidently

did not back off, however, and Serjeant Gray was knocked down,

given “several Violent blows [and] dragged... by the hair of his

head.” Drummer Gregory too was knocked down, “and beat... in a

most barbarous manner.” A third soldier, Roger McMullon, hearing

the serjeant crying “murder!,” rushed to the scene to save the

hapless drummer and serjeant, but being met with a mob that was

only growing larger, was too beaten severely. Both Serjeant Gray

and McMullon recalled during the fight that one of the

inhabitants brought a large club to bear on McMullon, “which

would most probably have kill’d him,” but was saved when Serjeant

Gray blocked the blow. The soldiers were eventually left alone,

but not before the mob had beaten them all severely.112 These

three instances occurred within the first four months after the

arrival of the troops, and the rate at which they happened only

increased in the months that followed.

112 Deposition of Hardress Gray, John Gregory, and Roger McMullon, 25 August 1770, CO 5/88, TNA.

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Physical attacks could be life threatening, which

demonstrates just how vicious the crowd could become as well as

how well the inhabitants of Boston came to recognize the soldiers

in their midst, happened in June of 1769. As Joshua Williams, a

recruit for the 29th Regiment, was walking on the streets near

the bay on his way to his barracks a few days after his arrival

in Boston, he was perceived by a crowd of people. They were

strangers to him, he was a newcomer to them, and the mob noticed,

saying “here comes A new or A Strange Lobster.” The mob did not

take well to the new soldier in their midst, and soon afterward

there were cries in the crowd to knock him down. From there he

received a brutal beating. His skull was fractured by men

wielding clubs with a sharpened edge, and his temples were

pierced by “some... [wielding] A Pike or Other Weapon.” He was

nearly thrown into the bay, but luckily for him some in the crowd

proclaimed that he was already dead. He was left on the street,

bruised and bleeding, and as the crowd left, they stole his

regimental hat. Being a recruit, it may have been his only

article of regimental clothing; it was an insult added to already

68

great injury.113 Such attacks marked the conscience of soldiers in

Boston, and, given the opportunity, they rarely hesitated to

implement their bayonets to hold a crowd back.

Another sort of attack which prevailed during the first

Boston garrison were premeditated, organized attacks upon

soldiers on duty, as sentries or otherwise. Rather than the ‘spur

of the moment’ style which characterized attacks on targets of

opportunity, who simply experienced firsthand the emotional

outburst of civilians with an easy target, premeditated attacks

required time to organize. The amount of preparation varied from

target to target; a lone sentry required far less preparation to

harass than a well manned guard house. Often, such attacks would

be led by an individual. Such an attack occurred in April of

1769, when a “gentleman” by the name of “Mr. Jervais... Came to

the Barracks Gate [of the 29th Regiment] at the Head of a Mob, &

beat the Sentry off his Post With Stones Sticks &ca...” When the

serjeant of the guard, Thomas Smilie of the 29th Regiment,

inquired to their intentions, he was answered “Damn You Bloody

Back Rascals our Town is free, We will have no soldiers in it but

113 Deposition of Joshua Williams, 28 July 1770, CO 5/88, TNA. 69

our Selves, which we think better Soldiers than You.”114 The

motivation for the attack, simply stated, was an emotional

reaction to the Army’s presence.

This style of attack became particularly prominent in

October of 1769, when several occurred in quick succession. On

the 17th, Richard Ratcliff, a private soldier of the 14th

Regiment, was approached by a mob whilst sentry at the Main

Guard. Ratcliff reproached the mob, and told them to keep away

from his post, but was upbraided by a particularly prominent

member of the crowd, by the name of Pitts, “who Dam’d the

Deponent for a Lobster Scoundrel Bloodyback dog, Saying he had no

business there and if he had him in another Place and without

Arms, he Pitts would Thresh him as long as his Cane would

last...” Pitts then approached Ratcliff several times, attempting

to provoke a reaction from Ratcliff, but to no avail.115 While

violence did not occur during this instance, 6 days later another

mob appeared at the Neck Guard. The Officer of the Guard there,

Ensign John Ness, was earlier in the night charged with theft of

wood from Robert Pierpoint. A constable came to carry him before

114 Deposition of Alexander Mall, 12 August 1770, CO5/88, TNA. 115 Deposition of Richard Ratcliff, 25 August 1770, CO5/88, TNA.

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Justice Dana, but agreed to wait until after Ness was relieved

the next morning before carrying him before the Justice, as the

ensign was then on duty. The constable left without dispute, but

a mob quickly collected, led by Pierpoint himself, evidently

displeased with the constable’s decision. The mob pushed back the

sentries in front of the Guard house, and even after being warned

by Ness that he would turn out the guard if they went any

further, began to push on a third sentry. Ensign Ness then turned

out the guard, with fixed bayonets. The two sides faced off

against each other, the soldiers standing with dirt, rocks, and

brickbats thrown at them, until the guard relief arrived, and

Ensign Ness’s guard marched off. The mob followed Ness’s guard

detail, and pushed in on the marching formation of the guards,

eventually causing a break in the line. In the confusion, and

whilst Ness worked to restore order, a musket which was loaded

without orders was fired accidentally. As Ness yelled to his

soldiers to not load their muskets or fight back against the

inhabitants, the mob then withdrew briefly, but continued to

throw dirt, rocks, and brickbats, which cut one soldier and cause

him to bleed. As the guards continued to march, a blacksmith,

71

Obadiah Whiston, approached the soldiers and, wielding a

brickbat, hit William Fowler in the face, causing him to bleed

profusely, and momentarily knock him senseless. The Serjeant of

the Guard, James Hickman, intervened, and pushed Obadiah back

with the butt end of his halberd. The guard, under a rain of

thrown debris, eventually managed to make its way back to the

14th Regiment’s barracks, bruised and bloodied.116

The ordeal was not over yet, however, as the events happened

to present a perfect opportunity for Boston to wield the court

against the Army. Ensign Ness was true to his word to the

constable, and appeared before Justice Dana. There he was

surprised by a demand that he provide bail. The charges against

him were false, and he had abundant witnesses to confirm his

innocence. Justice Dana informed Ness that Pierpoint had sworn

the charges against him, and that Ness had then to provide his

bail. Not being prepared for this contingency, Ness asked various

officers who were present at the Justice’s house to apply for

bail money, and eventually they returned with a handful of

116 Deposition of John Ness, deposition of James Hickman, deposition of MichealGroves, Robert. Adamson, John Stevens, William Coleman, and John Thorp, deposition of William Fowler, 25 August 1770, CO 5/88, TNA.

72

“reputable Inhabitants” to offer bail. Much to Ness’s further

surprise, “for reasons only known to the Justice, [they] were all

refused...” Even more shocking to Ness, however, was when Captain

O’Hara, of the same regiment, produced bail money in cash, and

was yet still refused by Justice Dana. Eventually Dana accepted

the offer of one Mr. Lloyd, a Boston merchant, to post bail, but

only then launched into his usual upbraiding oratory, and

feigning deafness while Pierpoint insulted and threatened Ness.

Though Pierpoint attempted to bribe three soldiers into

testifying against Ness, an offer they all refused and reported

to their officers, the charges were dropped, no evidence being

produced to prove them.117 Ensign Ness’s troubles were not yet

over, however, as very soon afterwards, on the 26th, he was

brought before the court to answer for the musket that was

discharged. Again Ness was brought through the wringer to produce

bail, but it was eventually posted, and with no evidence to prove

he had ordered soldiers to fire, he was acquitted once more. The

real show, however, concerned Serjeant Hickman, who was brought

on charges of assaulting Obadiah Whiston because the serjeant had

117 Deposition of Corporal Thomas McFarland, Samuel Bish, and Stephen Cheslett,25 October 1770, CO 5/88, TNA.

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pushed Whiston back with the butt end of his halberd after

Whiston bashed William Fowler in the face with a brick. Serjeant

Hickman too was subjected to Dana’s particular weighing of

persons posting bail, and had several “creditable Persons” denied

by Justice Dana. Though both Ness and Hickman were eventually

released by the court, they had come very close to being confined

for a long period of time, as they were bound to the court, but

never brought to trial.118 There was not enough evidence for even

Justice Dana to convict the two men, but he had put in a solid

judicial effort to have them jailed.119 The Army’s perspective of

the case and the events surrounding it is easily discernible in

the report of the incident by Lt. Colonel William Dalrymple, who

held command of the troops posted to Boston. “Not content with

abusing the King’s Troops, they [the inhabitants] have used every

little Evasion of the Law to torment us...” Though Dalrymple was

pleased to note that “by the Goodness of the Cause, and by

patience” he had “dissapointed [the Justice’s] malice” from

118 The tactic of jailing soldiers who couldn’t provide bail has been mentionedbefore, as it will be recalled, against sentries who held inhabitants when they refused to answer to challenges. The case of Ness and Hickman was evidently an exception to the norm, perhaps because the charges were so evidently invented. 119 Dalrymple to Gage, 28 October 1769, CO 5/88, TNA.

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imprisoning Ensign Ness and Serjeant Hickman, to conclude his

report of the case of Ensign Ness and Serjeant Hickman, Dalrymple

wrote,

I believe the whole of the matter may be imputed to that Mr.Pierpoint of whom I wrote to you, and to the times; the People seem determined to embroil things entirely, to effect which they will leave nothing undone to render the situation of the troops embarassing and indeed insupportable, the men are rendered desperate by continued Injustice. I informed the Lieutenant Governor, but he can do nothing, and if I may judge of the future, by the present this is but a Prelude to some more consequential; at least never was the popular Insolence at such aPitch as you will easily percieve.

Dalrymple was evidently very concerned about the situation the

Army then found itself in, and was fully aware that things could

only get worse.

To close out the month of October, 1769, a small mob

approached the sentries at the Guard House at the Neck, who were

then berated and insulted, and threatened with clubs. The mob

drew closer, and the two sentries were “Obliged to Charge their

Bayonets in their own Defence.” Though they struck at the two

sentries with clubs, claiming “they Would soon Drive them, and

all the Rest of the Damn’d Vilians belonging to the King out of

Town,” and indifferent to the pleas of the two soldiers that

75

“they Were Obliged to do their Duty on pain of Death,” the crowd

was able to do little more than hit their clubs on the sentries’

bayonets. The inhabitants eventually retired, evidently weary of

the fray, but not without shouting at the soldiers “all the

Abusive Language they Could invent” as they departed.120

The tension between the soldiers and the civilians was fully

perceived by the military leadership. The Army, which

increasingly perceived the Town as in a state of rebellion, did

not make the connection between the presence of soldiers and

increased disorders. Instead, the Army only began to see the

situation as being worse than they had previously thought, and

subsequently buckled down further in their decisions. Whereas in

October of 1768, in the first few weeks of the Garrison, General

Gage was able to hope that

The discipline and order which will be preserved amongst theTroops, I trust, will render their stay, in no shape distressful to his Majesty’s dutiful subjects, in this town;and that the future behaviour of the people, will justify the best construction of their past actions, which I flattermyself will be such, as to afford me sufficient foundation,

120 Deposition of Thomas Light, 25 August 1770, CO 5/88, TNA. 76

to represent to his Majesty, the propriety of withdrawing the most part of the Troops,121

a year later, Lt. Col. Dalrymple confided in Gage,

I consider myself to be without Support, Government here is in the Hands of the Multitude, and I am sure something very unpleasant is at Hand; No Person living can be more continually engaged in diagreeable Broils, and I fairly confess, I despair of being able to stand against such a Complication of Artifices and Violences, tho’ no Attention nor Temper shall be wanting.122

Dalrymple was, in short, greatly worried that in the coming

months the troops would suffer even greater injustices than they

already had. The town was becoming more adventurous in their

attacks and in their methods of resistance; the day after

Dalrymple completed his dispatch of the 28th, a mob “several

Thousand” strong pursued a supposed “informant” in the

nonimportation struggle, and chased the printer John Mein out of

town. During the mob action, a soldier was caught in the middle,

and while loading his firelock to defend himself, beaten and

hoisted into a cart carrying the supposed informant, now tarred

and feathered. By the end of October, Lt. Col. Dalrymple, and the

Army leadership more generally, believed that “Things are got out

121 Journal of Occurrences, October 28th, 1768.122 Dalrymple to Gage, 28 October 1769, CO 5/88, TNA

77

of the Reach of Authority.”123 Boston had become a powder keg,

ready to explode on the troops.

The Riot on King Street

While it is not the purpose of this paper to give a fully

detailed narrative of the events of early March, 1770, the way in

which the townsmen and the Army acted and retrospectively

interpreted the “riot on King Street” can only be fully

understood within the context of intense soldier/civilian

animosity and the immediate circumstances which culminated in the

“Bloody Massacre.” 124 The explosion of violence which occurred in

early March, 1770, was not produced by the mere presence of

soldiers alone, nor simply the tensions which resulted from

months of widespread unrest that had begun even before the troops

123Dalrymple to Gage, 29 October 1769, Hutchinson to Gage 29 October 1769, deposition of Thomas Burgess, 24 July 1770, CO 5/88, TNA. 124 I am inclined to agree with John Shy, who wrote in Toward Lexington , 318, that “[w]hether Preston ordered the shots that killed five men is not a very interesting question. A jury of Massachusetts citizens acquitted him and all but two of his men, who received nominal sentences for manslaughter, and that judgment ought to satisfy historians.” It is, after all, not the minutia of the “Massacre” itself which makes it such a vital moment, but the great utility it had as a political tool. The 5 deaths, while tragic, are only as important as they proved to be useful to the Boston resistance. The short narrative given here of the events preceding the “Massacre” has been assembledfrom those given by Hiller B. Zobel in The Boston Massacre, Archer As if An Enemy’s Country, the depositions given in CO 5/88, A Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre (1770), A Fair Account of the Late Unhappy Disturbance in Boston (1770), and the records ofthe trial proceedings of the enlisted men.

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arrived in Boston. Indeed, as have been previously illustrated,

there were several comparable, earlier ‘sparks’ which did not set

off the metaphorical powder keg. 125 Instead, it took several

days’ worth of increasingly pent up anger joined with hard

fighting and bleeding in a series of violent occurrences,

combined with the Army failing to adequately respond to the

situation in Boston, rather than any singular event, to effect

the “Horrid Massacre.”

Ultimately, and importantly, the attention paid to the

"Massacre" as a climactic event was, and remains, somewhat

excessive. The shooting, which resulted in 5 dead and 6 wounded

townspeople, was one of several violent incidents, the memory of

which were subsequently and purposefully suppressed, so as to

make the “Massacre” simultaneously anomalous and expectable.

Historians, because of the swift application of the “Massacre” as

a political tool by the leaders of the Boston resistance, have,

in turn, often been apt to mistake the “Massacre” for a result,

when it is far more important as a cause. The truly climactic

125This is an observation first made by John Shy, Toward Lexington, 310. Shy does not, however, fully discuss the great number of other mob actions on the nightof March 5th, nor does he carry his narrative of March, 1770 much further thanthe hours following the firing.

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event is not the “Massacre,” then, but the withdrawal of the

troops some weeks later. As a consequence of this error, the

shooting of the civilians of Boston is withdrawn from the sea of

violence it occurred in. March 5th was meant to be a violent

night from the beginning, but it was the soldiers who were

supposed to be the victims. In retrospect, the town was finally

given a political coup that it could not refuse, and the military

was forced out of the town. For the Army, however, and in turn

for the government, the actions of the inhabitants in the first

weeks of March came to define the way in which Boston was

perceived.

Tension between soldiers and civilians did not abate in the

least during the months preceding March 5th, and were perhaps

never more intense. Things were particularly stressful for the

garrison; the rate at which violent attacks on soldiers took

place did not slow at all, and several attacks had occurred

between November and February of 1769-1770. On Christmas day,

1769, for example, three soldiers of the 14th Regiment were

assaulted, and they took shelter in a nearby shop. When the crowd

threatened to pull the house down, whilst threatening to “murder

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those bloody back’d rascals,” the fearful owners of the building

hurriedly led the soldiers out a back door, with directions

toward their barracks.126 Several similar incidents occurred over

the next few weeks.

The court had not ceased to be a threat, either. In December

of 1769, James McKaan, a private soldier in the 29th Regiment,

was standing sentry at the Neck Guard. A number of people

appeared, kicking a football, and McKaan withdrew to his sentry

box. McKaan remained in his box for some time, but after the game

had drawn too close to his post, he left the box, and demanded

that the players move the game elsewhere. The townspeople did not

take the demand well, and a small crowd appeared. One of their

number kicked the ball at the soldier, hitting him on the head,

and it rebounded over the wall behind him. When a boy tried to

climb over the wall, McKaan forced him away, having already

warned the crowd not to attempt to retrieve it. One of the mob

threw a brickbat which hit McKaan, and he quickly returned to the

shelter of his sentry box. The crowd then surrounded the box, and

threatened him with legal penalties. McKaan, aware of the

126 Deposition of Gavin Thomas, 25 August 1770, CO 5/88, TNA. 81

potential for long months of imprisonment before trial when he

would almost inevitably fail to post bail, “Abscond[ed] himself

some time from his Duty to avoid a troublesome and Vexatious

confinement in Goal.”127 McKaan did not report any punishment for

this perhaps tolerated dereliction of duty.

The events which culminated in the Boston Massacre were

preceded by a somewhat routine exchange of insults. Patrick

Walker, a private soldier in the 29th Regiment, was seeking out a

bucket of water near the ropewalks when a ropemaker, William

Green, called out to him. Green asked if Walker wanted a job, and

Walker, eager for a side job which could supplement his military

pay, replied that he did, and innocently asked what the work

would be. Green, quickly replied that the job was to empty his

“Necessary House.” Walker, like John Riley of the 14th Regiment a

few months earlier, did not take well to the insult, and after a

lengthy argument, the ropemaker and Walker exchanged blows. Green

was not alone, however, as the ropewalk was full of other

laboring ropemakers, and Walker was subsequently beaten rather

severely. As he retreated to his barracks, he met Drummer Thomas

127 Deposition of James McKaan, 24 July 1770, CO 5/88, TNA.82

Walker in the street. Patrick Walker was “cut & bleeding Very

much.” As described earlier, Drummer Walker, joined by other

soldiers, then went to the ropewalks to exact revenge, but were

also beaten.

The fight at the ropewalk did not end there, however, and

another scuffle occurred soon afterward. The numbers on both

sides increased, until by the afternoon, at least 40 soldiers

were involved in one scuffle, with an indeterminate amount of

ropemakers joining them. Eventually, higher echelons of the

Regiment became aware of the growing battle, and a corporal

ordered the soldiers back to their barracks. Fights which carried

as much emotional weight occasionally happened in Boston. As was

detailed earlier in the case of Corporal Robert Balfour, beaten

after the escape of John Riley, Boston civilians were very

capable of holding a grudge, and letting loose their displeasure

when the course of the day did not go their way. The geographical

location of the 29th in relation to the ropemakers played a role

as well. The 29th Regiment’s barracks, unlike that of the 14th,

were distributed in several buildings in the near vicinity of the

ropewalks. Retaliation to isolated attacks on lone soldiers

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elsewhere in Boston were impossible to follow up, as the nameless

assailants merely drifted back into the crowd. At the ropewalks,

however, if a soldier of the 29th met with poor treatment,

returning with reinforcements meant only a short walk.

Tempers remained high over the course of the weekend, and

there were more scrapes on Saturday. There was a temporary cease

of fighting on Sunday. The soldiers remained incensed, and were

in expectation of further brawls. They evidently felt their

chances for victory in the scuffles were pretty good. A soldier’s

wife, perhaps with a little undue pride in her husband and corps,

joined in a discussion of “the affrays at the ropewalks,” and

confidently declared “that before Tuesday or Wednesday night they

would wet their swords or bayonets in New-England people’s

blood.”128 While her sanguineous prediction was perhaps

128A Short Narrative, 17. Boston radicals attempted to spin this and other predictions as evidence of a military conspiracy. It seems much more evidence that soldiers were not proactive in their participation in the violence. The soldiers could have, but did not, continue the fight on Sunday. The events that transpired on the 5th were ultimately results of the decisions of civilians to resume the fight after the Sabbath passed. That the leadership ofthe resistance felt it necessary to identify the battles as being initiated bya conspiracy of soldiers is telling, as well. The mob actions which were so prominent in early March could not be depicted as originating with the town, and especially not with the political leadership, or else their narrative would lose essential consistency. Consequently, the radicals perceived the fights as civilians defending themselves from the violent desires of soldiers,rather than the other way around.

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overstated, it is clear that the soldiers expected the ropemakers

to resume the fighting. Most historians have noted the break on

Sunday as simply a noteworthy pause, but the break betrays the

Boston inhabitants as originators of the bulk of the fighting.

Boston, as well as the rest of Massachusetts was a very religious

society, and proudly so. Just as soldiers working on the Sabbath

insulted their sensibilities, so too would have fighting.

Soldiers did not shy from violence, and indeed, many, if not

most, relished it when they had the opportunity to respond, but

when it came to initiating a fight, it generally fell on the part

of the inhabitants to do so. Soldiers, in this way, were

reactive, replying in kind, but not originally.

On the 3rd, a Saturday, a serjeant of the 14th Regiment went

missing; presumed killed by the ropemakers. The soldiers did

nothing in response. Instead, after a fruitless search of the

ropewalk by Lt. Col Carr of the 14th Regiment, the serjeant

turned up at a nearby “House of Pleasure.” He had gotten drunk

and as a result was absent from the roll call, but was happily

alive. The incident demonstrates a number of things: One, a minor

point, is the great degree of trust the officers put in their non

85

commission officers. It was not imaginable to the officers that

the serjeant was simply in dereliction of his duty. Secondly, and

importantly, it was far more plausible that he had been killed by

ropemakers. Boston was palpably dangerous to soldiers, and it

seemed the course of the Boston garrison had come to its logical

conclusion: the soldiers would be killed. That soldiers would kill

civilians, even in self defense, was unimaginable until after the

“Massacre” took place.129

The momentary cease of direct action against the soldiers

did not prevent planning however, and by Sunday evening, most in

the town knew to expect resumed battle on Monday. Ensign Gilbert

Carter, of the 29th Regiment, while walking from Green’s

Barracks, was met by “a Mob of People who called him all the

approbious Names their tongues could utter [and] throwing Snow

balls & Stones at him.” The ensign, evidently worried it would

get worse for him, tried to diffuse their anger with “Gentle

Speeches but that they Still Continued their abuse Saying that in

129John Gray had been incensed by the search of his ropewalk, however, and applied to Colonel Dalrymple. The two men engaged in cold discussion, and resolved that both would attempt to contain the rage of the two sides. This resolution admits an aspect of the relationship between the 29th and the ropemakers; both felt they were opposed by the other, as if two sides in a battle. A FairAccount, 13-14.

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a Short time they would not Leave one of us alive in Boston.”130

Some of the inhabitants prepared for the “bells... to be rung to

assemble the inhabitants together,” a point of detail which, on

the 5th, drew many not initially clued into the drama out into

the streets, thinking there was a fire in the town, thereby

escalating the battle.

The crowds that initially assembled on the night of March

5th were not particularly large, though no doubt terrifying to

the military men in the town. There were scuffles outside

Murray’s barracks, one of the houses let to the 29th Regiment to

house their number, but after a short brawl with improvised

weapons Army officers arrived and ended the brawl; leaders of the

crowd, after short, terse discussion with the officers, called on

their number to go home. Simultaneously, at the Main Guard, a

crowd brandishing clubs, attacked two sentries, “and Cut and

wounded said soldiers in Different parts of the head and body in

an apparetly Dangerous manner.”131 Meanwhile, a small exchange of

blows occurred between the sentry at the Custom House, Hugh

White, and a wigmaker’s apprentice, Edward Gerrish. Gerrish had

130 Depositiong of Gilbert Carter, 25 July 1770, CO 5/88, TNA.131 Deposition of Alexander Mall, 12 August 1770, CO 5/88, TNA.

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insulted an officer who passed by the post on a walk, by

complaining of a reneged debt. Hugh White took great offense to

the treatment of the officer, and replied by hitting Gerrish with

his firelock. Gerrish, still a young boy, began to cry. Shortly

thereafter, the bells began to ring, and people flooded into the

streets.

Civilian/soldier relations were never more strained. At

9:00, before the bells began to ring, William Normanton, a

soldier in the 29th Regiment, walked alone on his way back to his

barracks and passed by the ropewalks. Peter Winslow, a ropemaker,

“without provocation,” exclaimed he would kill the soldier, and

buried a hatchet in Normanton’s left arm. Like the attack on

Corporal Balfour of the 14th Regiment in the previous July, the

attack on Normanton was because he belonged to a specific

regiment which had recently earned particular hatred from the

inhabitants. As Normanton recalled, Winslow swore that because

“[Normanton] belonged to the 29th. Regiment he Would have his

Life.” Winslow, not satisfied with the blow to Normanton’s arm,

called on another man to bring a larger hatchet. In this moment

Normanton managed to wrestle Winslow to the ground, and dragged

88

himself and Winslow a short distance up the road. Normanton,

however, was then mauled by Winslow’s “large Mastiff Dog,” who

“tore his Cloath’s as also his Flesh in a most shocking manner.”

Normanton was finally saved by “two Negroes Whose assistance he

implored,” and he managed to escape to the barracks.132 Corporal

John Eustace, another soldier of the 29th Regiment, was aware of

the danger Boston posed, and while on his way from the Neck Guard

to the Main Guard, walked with his hand resting on his sheathed

bayonet. Robert Pierpoint, the man who had been at the center of

many of the town’s efforts to oppose the Army, looking for a

fight, called out to the corporal, and asked him why he walked

with the bayonet in his hand. Eustace replied that “it was with

no intent to Offend or Molest any Person,” but the answer did not

satisfy Pierpoint, who then called Eustace a liar, and began to

beat him with a cudgel, dealing several bruising blows, one of

which Eustace claimed made his hand useless for several weeks

afterward. Eustace was evidently a likable fellow, as he was one

of the few soldiers who could claim inhabitants as friends.

Several people nearby intervened on his behalf, saving him from

132 Deposition of William Normanton, 24 July 1770, CO 5/88, TNA.89

what Eustace believed would have been certain death. It was not

the last time Pierpoint dealt violence against the troops that

night.133

The people who assembled in King Street after the

bells began to ring numbered about 30, at first, and seeing the

manner in which the sentry had treated the boy, were incensed,

and closed on his post. The crowd was fed by those returning from

the short lived siege of Murray’s Barracks, the crowd at the Main

Guard who heard “Noise of another mob not far,” and by a third

group which had assembled in Dock Square, carrying clubs, both

improvised and not, and now marched down King Street, meeting the

already collected mob there.134 Cries of “Fire!” from the marching

crowds supplemented the church bells, and numbers of uninformed

townspeople joined the assembly grouped before the Custom House.

The crowd eventually numbered between 300 and 400, and Hugh

White, facing previously unheard of numbers of enraged

inhabitants, called for the guard. 133 Deposition of John Eustace, 24 July 1770, CO 5/88, TNA. Robert Peirpoint also made a deposition of this event, recorded in A Short Narrative. Pierpoint paints Eustace as the villain, but does not make any mention of a later incident reported by a soldier, in which Pierpoint was at the head of a small mob. Given Pierpoint’s disposition to giving false witness against soldiers, Pierpoint’s deposition is far more problematic as a source than Eustace’s. 134 Deposition of Alexander Mall, 12 August 1770, CO 5/88, TNA.

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The responsibility fell on Captain Preston of the 29th

Regiment, with a detail of 7 men, to reinforce the sentry.

Preston was slow in acting, and it was obvious to those who saw

him that he was not sure what to do. Eventually, however, he

called for the guard to turn out. The guard was not eager to

enter the fray, and Preston barked “Damn your bloods, why don’t

you turn out?” when they were slow in forming. The men were the

largest in the regiment, being of the grenadier company, and had

been involved in the ropewalk brawls of the weekend, but even

they were visibly fearful.135

The soldiers had expected a fight, but the events which

followed Preston’s arrival at the Custom House were far beyond

anything they could have anticipated. The soldiers saw numbers

far greater than had ever been assembled previously, many

carrying weapons, and pressing in on them, throwing clubs, ice,

and other debris. The soldiers fired, one by one, into the crowd.

Ultimately 5 died, with 6 more wounded. The crowd cleared away,

only returning to collect the dead, dying, and wounded. There was

a moment when the soldiers presented their arms again, unaware of

135 Quoted in Zobel, Boston Massacre, 19491

the civilian intentions. Preston, however, ordered the soldiers

to cease, and the detail marched back to the Main Guard. The

night did not end there.

The shooting enraged the town like no other previous

incident. The Army, and the government, prepared for the worst.

Preston ordered the entire guard turned out into the narrowest

part of King Street, and formed them for street firing, a drill

maneuver particularly suited to fighting in narrow spaces. He

also had the duty drummer to beat to arms, calling for the

garrison to ready themselves for battle. Preston, in other words,

was preparing to be attacked by the mob, whose numbers had now

grown to at least a thousand. Thomas Hutchinson, meanwhile, was

convinced by numbers of Boston’s inhabitants that “unless [he]

went out immediately, the whole town would be in arms and the

most bloody scene would follow that had ever been known in

America.”136 In the streets he met a mob, and was obliged to

escape. Eventually he made his way through the crowd in King

Street to Preston, and after inquiring into the firing, and after

136 Hutchinson to Gage, 6 March 1770, quoted in Zobel, Boston Massacre, 202. 92

a terse conversation, was forced by the cries of the mob to go to

the Town House, to answer to the inhabitants what had happened.137

Simultaneously, at the Neck Guard, Ensign Gilbert Carter,

who had been the subject of insult and thrown debris the day

before, found himself opposed by a large crowd, who “Came to the

Guard &... threw Sow balls & Stones at the Centry’s & used the

most provoking Speeches that they Could utter.” Ensign Carter,

after expostulating with the mob to disperse “with the most

Gentle Terms,” called out the guard. The crowd threatened the

post, and warned the officer that they had “10000, or 12000 Men

from the Country... who would tear [the garrison] all to pieces.”

Carter, having exhausted his usual ‘gentle’ methods for calming a

crowd, made harder remonstrances to the crowd. He warned that “if

they did not Disperse [they must] blame themselves for the

Consequences.” Shortly thereafter the crowd backed away; While

Carter reported that it was because of the warning he gave, it is

more likely they were drawn away by the large collection of

people who met at the Town House, where Hutchinson was

speaking.138

137 Ibid., 202-203. 138 Deposition of Gilbert Carter, 25 July 1770, CO 5/88, TNA.

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Members of the Army also found themselves imperiled

elsewhere in the town after the shooting. After the drums beat to

arms, five officers of the 14th Regiment, who were away from

their corps, left to take their commands, when they were met in

the street by about 8 or 9 inhabitants wielding clubs. The group

was broken up, but Ensign Mattear, one of the officers, aimed a

pistol at the men, and by that means managed to get away, with

three of the other officers.139 Captain Goldfinch, the ranking

officer in the group, was not so lucky. Joseph Whitehouse, a

private soldier in the 14th Regiment, was making his way to the

Regiment’s barracks, when he encountered Goldfinch on the ground,

with his sword stolen, and being beaten by the townsmen with

their clubs. Whitehouse attempted to intervene, but the crowd

then turned on him, and beat him such that it was afterwards

“with much difficulty he reached the barracks.” Corporal Hugh

McCaan, of the 29th Regiment, reportedly unaware of what had

happened in King Street, was met by Robert Pierpoint, this time

at the head of a mob. Pierpoint then struck the corporal with “a

Broad Bludgeon,” and cried out that the soldiers “were Murdering

139 Deposition of Daniel Mattear and deposition of John Goldfinch, 13 March 1770, A Fair Account.

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the Towns People at the Town House,” and that he would “never be

satisfied while there was A Soldier in the Town.”140 McCann, later

at the head of a small party of soldiers continuing in their

various duties at the Guard houses by going the rounds, was met

by another mob, but this time had other soldiers with him. He

ordered them to charge their bayonets, “and by that means, got to

his Guard with some difficulty but much Ill Language.” The danger

to soldiers in Boston was palpable. Several officers who were

that night at the British Coffee House, a favorite location for

Boston’s military officers and friends of the government, got to

the roof and hid themselves there. They could hear civilians

outside threatening “that they would kill Either Officer or

Soldier which were they could find,” and agreed to wait for an

armed guard to escort them to safety which, luckily, later

arrived.141 It was wise to stay in the shop; Henry Malone, a

private soldier in the 29th Regiment, was not so lucky as to have

that advantage. He had earlier been in the streets, looking for

why the fire bells rang. After hearing shots being fired, and the

140 Deposition of Hugh McCann, 28 July 1770, CO 5/88, TNA. Deposition of John Goldfinch, 13 March 1770, A Fair Account.141 Deposition of Jeremiah French, 25 July 1770, CO 5/88, TNA.

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drums beat to arms, he quickly accoutered himself, and was given

orders by a serjeant to fetch another soldier, who resided in a

home nearby. On his way to fetch the soldier he was met by an

inhabitant who first asked him where he was going, and being

unsatisfied with the answer, “drew a Sword that he had concealed

under His Coat & made a Lunge at Sd. Malone, Swearing Vehemently

That he would Run it thro’ his Body if he did not instantly go

back.” Malone, understandably, obliged the demand, but made known

what had happened to his serjeant, who then dispatched an armed

guard to “Escort [the soldier] Safe to his Company as he dare not

Venture out alone, there being Such Multitudes of people

assembled in all parts of the Town, without being in iminent

Danger of his Life.”142 There was a fire in Boston. Not of literal

flames, but of mortal hatred for the soldiers and a rampant

desire to strike back at the soldiers for the earlier shooting.

Even after the “Massacre,” the soldiers were under orders

from their officers to keep their muskets loaded with “a brace

[pair] of balls.” During the trial of Captain Preston and the men

who fired on King Street, the order to load and the act of

142 Deposition of Henry Malone, 24 July 1770, CO 5/88, TNA. 96

loading became potentially incriminating; damning evidence that

the soldiers intended to fire on civilians from the outset.

During the night itself, however, it was a measure of self-

defense. The town seemed entirely riotous, and though on October

1st, 1768, when the troops marched into town with loaded muskets

and fixed bayonets, when a charged weapon was a means of

asserting power, on March 5th, 1770, it was a sign of

desperation. The troops remained jumpy throughout the night. When

Edward Crafts, a civilian, attempted to make his way in the

company of another inhabitant towards the Town House, during the

early morning hours of March 6th, to claim Captain Preston’s

guilt in ordering the men to fire, he was met by Corporal John

Eustace and a party of men. The soldiers then accosted Crafts,

several presented their arms at him, and Corporal Eustace ordered

some of his men to cock their firelocks. Eustace, as it might be

recalled, had been beaten by Pierpoint earlier in the night, and

it may have made him eager to get back at the town. Eustace then

hit one of the men Crafts was walking with, and directed another

blow at Crafts himself, which he absorbed with his arm. Another

soldier, Hugh McCann, then intervened on Crafts behalf, stating

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that “[t]his is Mr. Crafts, and if any of you offer to touch him

again I will blow your brains out.” Eustace may have noted to

himself the irony of the situation, himself having been saved by

some civilians earlier in the night, and marched off. McCann

encountered Crafts the next day, and informed Crafts that Eustace

had struck him with such force that the musket was broken, and

that he was lucky that McCann intervened, as any one of the men

that presented their pieces at him would have shot him.143 The

soldiers were terrified, angered, and carrying loaded muskets.

Though perhaps possible, another “Massacre” did not occur.

The anger of the night of the 5th eventually subsided

enough, thanks to careful political maneuvering by Hutchinson

back at the Town House, for the population of Boston, both

soldiers and civilians, to go home until morning. Judicial

proceedings began against Preston and the men who fired in King

Street. The legal machinery, one of the only tools the Boston

radical leadership approved of prior to March 5th, began to run,

and the military was obliged to remain in their barracks. The

“accident” in King Street, as one officer termed it, provided an

143 Deposition of Edward Crafts, 17 March 1770, A Short Narrative.98

inescapably attractive tool to force the withdrawal of the

troops; the great shock of the shooting simply could not be

ignored.

Simultaneously as the radical leadership sought to utilize the

“Massacre” to force the withdrawal of the troops from Boston, the

inhabitants filled the vacuum that was left by troops now

confined by orders to their barracks, and armed parties

maintained a strict control on the movements of soldiers. The

militia was called up, and now mounted guard where the Army had

been days earlier, ostensibly to keep the order of the troops,

but with a distinct hint of mockery. The firm belief that

Boston’s inhabitants had that they were better soldiers than the

regulars was being put to the test. The hiding of the soldiers

was a military decision; Colonel Dalrymple risked his troops even

further if they remained in plain sight mounting guard, and they

would not truly be safe until out of the town. He later

complained to Gage about being forced to leave, but only as a

matter of political necessity.144 By midmonth, both the 14th and

29th Regiments were sent to Castle William, from whence the 29th

144 John Shy, Toward Lexington, 318. 99

left shortly thereafter for New Jersey. Boston, for all the

efforts of its leadership to prove otherwise, was now known

within the Army as a hostile town, and for good reason.

Townspeople quickly took over control of the streets from

the soldiers. The night following the “Massacre,” for example,

Serjeant John Ridings, of the 14th Regiment, was found outside

his barracks by a group of men wielding clubs. Ridings was on his

way back to his quarters, after coming off duty as orderly

serjeant. He was threatened, and dragged before the Captain of

the Guard, now a militia officer. Luckily for Ridings, the

Captain believed his story, and told him to return to his

barracks. He was stopped several more times on his way back to

his barracks by groups of “Armed men, some calling him Lobster

and other abusive Names”145 The effort to have him jailed, on the

part of the inhabitants who stopped him, was tried and true. The

serjeant was simply lucky that these inhabitants, while menacing,

were acting lawfully, or at least with the approbation of the

court.

145 Deposition of John Ridings, 25 August 1770, CO 5/88, TNA. 100

The inhabitants utilized extralegal methods as well as

lawful means to oblige the soldiers to remain in their barracks,

and soldiers occasionally met with far more violent opposition

than Serjeant Ridings had encountered. On the afternoon of the

7th, John Kirk, a soldier in the 14th Regiment, was walking in the

streets. He was surprised when a man knocked him down from

behind, followed quickly by a mob which “gave him a vary abusive

and threatening language,” and obliged him to take shelter in a

nearby shop, “for fear of worse consequences.” Kirk, evidently,

had good reason for his fear. Later that evening, Henry Dougan,

surgeon’s mate for the 29th Regiment, was stopped by a group of

men armed with “Fire Arms and Clubs.” Men from the crowd

recognized him as being with the army, a testament to how

intimate the soldiers and civilians had become. Fortunately for

Dougan, he was in civilian attire that evening. When a man pulled

off his cloak to reveal his dress, they found nothing suspicious,

and were unable to make good on their threat that if he was

either a soldier or an officer, “they would immediately Sacrifice

[him].”146 The ropemakers had certainly not forgiven the soldiers,

146 Deposition of Henry Dougan, 25 July 1770, CO 5/88, TNA. A deposition almostexactly the same is given in A Fair Account, which was taken only 9 days after

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as Jacob Moor, a private soldier in the 29th discovered. Moor was

walking back to his barracks near the ropewalks, where he was met

by a ropemaker, who, after exclaiming that “he thought all the

Damn’d Lobstering scounderals were gone out of Town,” warned Moor

that “if ever any of the Rope makers met with any of [the

soldiers] near the Rope walk, they would certainly murder them.”

Moor then was treated to the normal appellations of his service,

and kicked on the backside.147 In the latter end of the month,

John Care, a soldier in the 14th Regiment, while on what he

termed “lawful business” was accosted by inhabitants. He was

insulted by some townspeople and, though he should have known

better, asked them “the reason of [the] abuse.” He was

immediately seized, and in a threat that was certainly not empty,

warned that he would “be sent to Gail to the rest of the bloody

back’d Dogs that were already there.”148 Such incidences of

isolated, lone soldiers being harassed by militia sentries, a

dramatic reversal of what had been the norm for the previous 17

the massacre. 147 Deposition of Jacob Moor, 25 August 1770, CO 5/88, TNA. 148 Deposition of John Care, 25 August 1770, CO 5/88, TNA.

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months, would have repeated themselves, and perhaps even worse,

had the troops not been soon afterward removed from the town.

For the most part, by May of 1770, the troops were entirely

gone from the city. There remained, however, a hospital on the

Common. Castle William was a small post, hardly big enough for

two understrength, peacetime establishment Regiments, and without

the quarters to house sick soldiers. The hospital which was

maintained on the Boston Common, naturally, as the final bastion

of the Army’s presence, attracted the ire of the townspeople. One

particularly notable event happened on May 29th, 1770. As troops

recovered in the Hospital, they would occasionally walk around

the common, perhaps seeking fresh air (as fresh as could be had

in an18th century city) or to stretch their legs. William Holam,

a corporal in the 14th Regiment, was their first victim. Holam

had been the victim of violence before. He had been knocked down

on the streets in November the year earlier, and suffered his hat

and bayonet stolen from him. On the 29th he was standing in the

gate to the common, when “a number of the inhabitants of the town

came up to him with clubs and sticks and struck him several

times.” Shortly thereafter, the crowd moved on to more targets.

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Gavin Thompson, a private soldier in the 14th Regiment, was

clubbed on his back, and scolded insultingly that “if he did not

like that, they would give him more, and kick him off the Common

for they wou’d have no Lobster among them.” Edward Osbelddeston,

also a soldier in the 14th Regiment, was met by the crowd as

well. Though he was not dealt blows, the crowd jeered, saying he

had no right to be there. When Osbelddeston replied he had a

right as a servant of the King, the crowd reportedly snapped back

“Damn the King of Great Britain, Damn the Ministry, and all the

Scoundrels that order’d the Lobsters to Boston, and drinking a

health to King Hancock hoping King George would not be long on

the Throne.” These sentiments of the crowd were reflected in the

experience of Serjeant William Henderson, William Leeming, and

Eustace Maryweathers of the 14th Regiment. They were walking

together on the common, as they put it, “inoffensively.” Before

long, however, they were “attacked” by “a number of Towns

people.” The mob then demanded of them the serjeant’s sword, and

the cockades from their hats. The soldiers “answered they had

authority from his Majesty, The Serjeant to wear a Sword, and all

of them Cockades and saw no right they had to make that Demand.”

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Luckily for the soldiers they were met by a bystander who

“advised them to go off directly for that Mob they saw was

assembled on purpose to use them ill, and to force them from the

Common.” The soldiers, smartly, “thought it best to retire.”149

The crowd’s demand of Henderson, Leeming, and Maryweathers

offers an insight into the nature of the mob. It was not

collected strictly to attack the soldiers, nor was it gathered in

response to any singular event. The mob was, instead, assembled

to humiliate the soldiers. The crowds of Boston had a tendency to

steal soldierly possession. Hats, bayonets, and swords, objects

which were symbols of regimental belonging, were prone to be

thieved from beaten soldiers. In those instances, however, the

theft was a parting gesture, a final insult added to injury.

Demanding of the soldiers their cockades, which were symbols of

political allegiance, was, in contrast to earlier thefts, to

149 Deposition of William Holam, deposition of Edward Osbelddeston, deposition of William Henderson, William Leeming, and Eustace Maryweathers, 25 August 1770, CO 5/88, TNA. Archer As if An Enemy’s Country, errs in stating these attacks occurred in 1769. The wording of the depositions, in the context of when they were recorded, places them in 1770, particularly in the case of William Holam,who suffered three attacks from Boston civilians, and made his deposition of those three attacks in sequential order. Holam’s May 29th reflections are recorded after his recollection of the November 1769 attack. Secondly, none from the 29th Regiment, who left the colony in May, made depositions about these attacks, which indicates that they happened after the Regiment left.

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outright demand them to surrender their dignity to the Boston

mob. The attack on the recuperating soldiers at the hospital was

to make a mockery of the soldiers; another reminder of Boston’s

political victory.

The attack of the 29th was not the final foray of the

Boston mob into the Common to attack soldiers. William Holam, the

hapless soldier assaulted twice before, was attacked again in

June. As he strolled on the Common “for the benefit of his

health,” he was given chase by a “large mob of the inhabitants,”

who caught up to him and, “being armed with bludgeons and

clubs... knock’d him down and bruised him very much.” Before

leaving, the crowd gave him a warning: “if his Colonel was there

they would serve him in the same manner.”150 The mobs of Boston

felt little respect for the Army in any respect and, indeed, held

it as wholly contemptible.

The course of the Garrison ultimately only confirmed the

suspicions of Boston’s population concerning the motives of the

ministry in London, as well as those of sympathetic observers.

150 Deposition of William Holam, 25 August 1770, CO5/88, TNA. 106

When five of Boston’s inhabitants were seemingly martyred by

soldiers on the night of March 5th, the result was a confirmation

of suspicions that would prove to be nearly irreversible. In the

years that followed the “Massacre,” the anniversary served as a

time for both remembrance, and political activity. The annual

March 5th orations sought to explain the event, as well as the

political situation which caused it, none of which was flattering

for the ministry, the Army, or the government in general. Because

of the “Massacre,” and the period of garrison as a whole, not

only could Boston radicals perceive a conspiracy within the

ministry to fundamentally alter the Constitution, but they could

easily utilize their experience as the most egregious evidence.

However the town regarded the Army, the Army in turn held

feelings that were starkly reversed. Boston had secured within

the Army a reputation a dangerous and violent station. The Army,

in short, felt it faced a hostile force. The 14th Regiment, now

the sole corps remaining in Massachusetts, made repairs to Castle

William, and readied the battalion there to be prepared to take

“possession of the Castle... upon the first Appearance of

Danger.” This would have been standard military procedure, as any

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regiment in new quarters would prepare for the possibility of an

attack, and the entire fortress was in disrepair. But rather than

focus on repairs to the whole, the Army focused on repairing the

sides most vulnerable to attack. The weak part of the fort,

however, was not towards the sea. Indeed, as Gage wrote in

August, from the harbor “nothing is to be feared.” Instead, the

fort had to be made secure from the direction of the town, from

which direction it was now most vulnerable. The officers inside

were instructed to mount the fortress “upon the first appearance

of danger... [and] to seize the Castle the moment it became

necessary.”151 Gage was careful to note that though he did “not

apprehend any Danger” immediately, he felt it “impossible to

forsee” the threat the town might pose, “considering the Anarchy

that has so long subsisted in Boston.... [and] how far the

Madness of the People may carry them.”152 The military never

perceived the town as having acted against the military as a

spontaneous reaction on the part of the entire social spectrum of

Boston, and therefore never fully understood the nature of the

political situation they had become actors in. Instead, the Army

151 Gage to Hillsborough, 18August and, CO 5/88, TNA. 152 Gage to Hillsborough, 8 September 1770, CO 5/88, TNA.

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perceived the tumults and riots of 1768-1770 as being part of the

efforts of the radical leadership to subdue rightful authority.

Indeed, after the events of March 5th, one officer quipped that

“Mr. Mollineux was the author of all this.”153Boston, by virtue of

its mobs, was deemed by the Army as entirely out of control, and

now the possession of potentially hostile forces

It might be remembered that the Army arrived in Boston in an

offensive way. Bayonets were fixed, the muskets were loaded, and

the Navy ships which escorted the transports lay off Boston with

their broadsides faced on the town. That show, however, was just

that: an effort at intimidation. When the Army again bore guns on

the town of Boston, from the ramparts of Castle William, it was

because the military was now the subject of intimidation. From

the perspective of the Army, the 17 months in which it was

garrisoned within the town was marked by danger, both judicial

and violently extralegal. Ultimately, Reinforcing the walls of

the fortress, which protected the remaining soldiers against a 153 Deposition of Joseph Allen, 16 March 1770, A Short Narrative. William Molineux was a prominent radical, and director of many of the earlier protests. Molineux, though a leader of some crowd actions, was determined to draw a linebetween those that were necessary and those that were not, and between those that were violent and those that were simply coercive. He was, in the end, also determined, though he did not succeed, to ensure that Boston did not earna reputation as lawless. See Maier, 127-130 and 134.

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town seemingly in a state of rebellion, was simply the first step

on a course which brought both sides to the Lexington Green five

years later.

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