Boston in the American Revolution: A Town Versus an Empire

By Brooke Barbier and Alan Taylor

Discover the people and places of colonial Boston during the tumultuous years of rebellion—illustrations included.
 
In 1764, a small town in the British colony of Massachusetts ignited a bold rebellion. When Great Britain levied the Sugar Act on its American colonies, Parliament was not prepared for Boston’s backlash.
 
For the next decade, Loyalists and rebels harried one another as both sides revolted and betrayed, punished and murdered. But the rebel leaders were not always the heroes we consider them today. Samuel Adams and John Hancock were reluctant allies. Paul Revere couldn’t recognize a traitor in his own inner circle. And George Washington dismissed the efforts of the Massachusetts rebels as unimportant.
 
With a helpful guide to the very sites where the events unfolded, historian Brooke Barbier seeks the truth and human stories behind the myths. Barbier tells the story of how a city radicalized itself against the world’s most powerful empire and helped found the United States of America.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Mar 6, 2017
• ISBN: 9781439658789

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

This book tells the story of how individuals in Boston reacted during an exceptional political and economic crisis lasting from 1763 to 1776. This is not a story about the people of Boston fighting for independence from the British Empire, as the colonists weren’t actually seeking to be independent for the vast majority of those years. The men in this story did not have a master plan to become the United States of America or even to split from the British Empire. It is easy to presume that they had such a plan when you know the end of the story, as you inevitably do with the American Revolution. (Spoiler alert: the colonists break free from the mother country.)

When reading this book, we must do our best to forget how the struggle ends because it takes away from the drama. If you already knew how it all turned out (and I ruined that a couple of sentences ago), you’d miss the absolute improvisation and uncertainty surrounding the events you’ve known about since grade school. When our story begins in 1763, Boston is not a town eager to declare independence or fight in another war; rather, it is an economically depressed postwar town. The French and Indian War had just concluded, and thousands of men from Massachusetts had fought alongside the British as their allies. After the war, many colonists felt proud to be a part of the seemingly successful and ever-expanding British Empire. They weren’t longing to split from it.

Instead of viewing the American Revolution as inevitable, I see it as a slow burn, with one event or offense building on another, and one that could have happened differently, even up to the moment of war. As a result, this story does not privilege one event as being more important or revolutionary than another. Some historians claim that a single episode marked the beginning of the American Revolution—the Boston Massacre or the Boston Tea Party, for example—but that is a reductionist view that comes only with the benefit of hindsight. Six weeks before the Boston Tea Party took place, the rebels were not planning to destroy the king’s tea. Even a few hours beforehand, the rebels were trying to find a passive, nondestructive way to solve the problem of the tea. They weren’t thinking as they dumped tea into the harbor, This is where we finally sever ties with the British Empire. The United States didn’t officially break from the British Empire until it declared independence, and it only stuck after it won an eight-year-long war.

We also must not see the people in this story—even those whom we think we know—as one-dimensional characters with a singular political focus. They were messier and more complicated than that. Please meet them anew on these pages and form new thoughts about them. Just like humans today, human beings in the eighteenth century could be petty, hypocritical and selfish and also hopeful, loving and funny, and you’ll see that on these pages. Each chapter highlights a man, or key player, in Boston and the many aspects of his personality. Some remained loyal to the Crown, and some rebelled against British policies. Some have been forgotten and some enshrined in the pantheon of American history. But in this story, none of them are heroes and none of them are villains, even if they were considered as such by their contemporaries.

As the title of this book—Boston in the American Revolution—indicates, I unapologetically place Boston at the center of the American Revolution. This is because most of the significant action leading up to war with the British Empire happened in Boston. New York City didn’t have the fervent rebel leaders that Boston did or the deep-seated hatred of some of the royal officials ruling their colony, and Philadelphia was far too conservative. Virginia was politically radical but did not have the same men on the street who could intimidate and threaten. Tiny Rhode Island rivaled Boston in its creativity when mobbing but not consistently enough. It truly was Boston’s American Revolution.

A note about terminology in this book: I refer to the people who rebelled against the British Crown and its policies as rebels. It is an imperfect term but better than the sweeping colonists, which generalizes political sentiment, or the politically charged Patriots, which they only are to us today because the United States won the war. Had the British Empire prevailed, those we refer to as Patriots would be called traitors. Therefore, I find the best term to be rebels, since that noun is also the verb that best defines their behavior in this book. Those colonists who remained loyal to the Crown are appropriately referred to as Loyalists, which included Crown officials and ordinary colonists who sided with the British Empire. When reading the voices of rebels and Loyalists, you’ll see that I have kept their original eighteenth-century spelling and syntax, which could often be inconsistent and awkward.

Finally, for those who want to take their understanding of Boston’s American Revolution to the physical world or visit lesser-known spots off the Freedom Trail, there is the From Past to Present feature at the end of each chapter. It provides information about the sites mentioned in that chapter and what they look like today. I founded my tour company in 2013 and have been leading tours of the Freedom Trail since then. I know that visitors to Boston often want to have more context for the historic sites they’re visiting. If a trip to Boston isn’t in your near future, you can watch short videos online (www.yeoldetaverntours.com/videos) that I have created about many of the sites and people in this book. I hope this book inspires you to continue to learn more about the history of Boston and the people who resided within it.

1

WELCOME TO BOSTON, 1763

Key Player: Samuel Adams, a Man Ready to Emerge

It mattered whether you came by land or by sea if you were going to be impressed by your first glance of Boston. By sea, no question, you’d be charmed by the city’s shoreline filled with church steeples and excited by its vast and bustling wharves. By land, not as much. The only land route in and out of Boston was the Neck, a narrow strip about fifty yards wide that sometimes flooded in the spring, turning Boston into a temporary island. So arriving by the Neck meant your journey might be a perilous one, and you’d be rewarded with a vista of gallows and grazing cows and not much else. It also mattered where you came from. If from the countryside, the noise, people and buildings might awe or excite you. If from Europe, you’d likely be disappointed, if not disgusted, by Boston’s provincialism. Boston’s population of about 15,500 people would seem trifling compared to the nearly 1 million people packed into London. More than anything, though, it mattered when you arrived in Boston.

Because if you arrived in 1763, you’d be shocked. You’d heard that Boston was a town dependent on its busy harbor. One contemporary described Boston Harbor this way: The Masts of Ships here, and at proper Seasons of the Year, make a kind of Wood of Trees. Where you thought you’d see plentiful ships and a buzz of activity, you’d instead find a fairly quiet harbor. You wouldn’t see a forest of ship masts. And the many men it took to make such a harbor hum wouldn’t be as visible as you expected. Men in Boston could work as merchants, sailors and fishermen—all jobs dependent on business at sea. Longshoremen loaded and unloaded goods from the ships and docks. Rope workers had the backbreaking job of creating rope to be used aboard the ships, work that required using clubs to beat the rope tightly. Mast builders created ship masts, something for which New England was well known due to its abundance of tall and wide trees. Merchants imported and exported goods and were at the top of the economic pyramid, employing many men to prepare their ships for sea. But now, many merchants in Boston were struggling financially, so the varied men they usually employed had less work or no work at all.¹

Much of Boston’s economy was dependent on labor, goods and money outside of the town because Boston didn’t manufacture much—aside from rum, rope and barrels. When times were tough, as they were in 1763, some men and their families needed to move to find work. Poor relief in Boston had increased nearly two and a half times in the last ten years, as people struggled to make ends meet. Maybe it was better there weren’t that many men milling about. You’d heard rumblings that smallpox—a highly infectious and deadly disease—was making its way through Boston.

And it wasn’t just Boston that was suffering. Its mother country—Great Britain—had just concluded a long and costly war. The French and Indian War, also known as the Seven Years’ War by Europeans, began in 1754 and, despite its name, lasted nine years. The British fought to extend their territory in North America and prevent the French Empire from encroaching on their trade and settlement. Both the British and the French tried to enlist the Native Americans to their sides, but individual tribes allied with whomever was most advantageous to their interests at the time—usually the French. The colonists throughout North America joined the British side and fought alongside the regulars of the British army.

In this view of Boston from the harbor, Long Wharf is visible in the center and, behind it, a quaint skyline of hills and church steeples. Library of Congress.

Of all the colonies to fight in the French and Indian War, Massachusetts contributed the most soldiers. Over one-third of the eligible fighting men from Massachusetts participated. These men weren’t serving alongside the British army because they believed in the economic goals of the empire—they were making a financial decision. Beginning in 1758, the Crown agreed to pay the soldiers—at a generous rate—and men signed up in droves. This left Massachusetts dependent on Great Britain for payments, but the mother country was essentially insolvent.

After the British won the French and Indian War, the empire was in crippling postwar debt. The national debt of £72 million at the beginning of the war had nearly doubled by 1763 to £122 million. The British were also left with an empire so vast—it now extended west of the Appalachians—that they couldn’t possibly control all of it. As commander in chief of British forces in North America, General Thomas Gage had lots of new territory in the West, but he lacked the resources to manage it effectively. An estimated ten thousand troops would be necessary to guard their newly won territory. The Crown couldn’t afford to pay for that many troops without help from its colonies—the very people who had just finished fighting a war. So the financial problems of the mother country were soon going to trickle down to its colonies, just as the financial struggles of Boston’s merchants trickled down to their workers. But as troubling as Boston might seem, don’t turn around just yet. Boston has plenty of alcohol to offer, which you’ll likely want after your long journey.

WELCOME TO BOSTON

Boston in 1763 was a town of less than a thousand acres and a little longer than two miles from tip to tip, vastly smaller than it is today. In eighteenth-century Boston, you could be nearly anywhere in town and smell the salt air. If you entered Boston via the Neck (as long as it was passable), you’d follow Orange Street into town. Once past the desolate Neck, you’d be glad to discover the thoroughfare filled with taverns, where you’d find inexpensive rum, a place to sleep and a place to stable your horse. Orange Street led into the South End of Boston, which was the largest part of town. Some familiar men lived here, including Samuel Adams and Benjamin Franklin, when he was young. The South End was bordered by Boston Common, a nearly fifty-acre park for more cows to graze, residents to enjoy a stroll and carriages to ride through. Boston Common eventually rose to Beacon Hill—the tallest hill in Boston. Beacon Hill earned its name from the beacon that capped it. It was a wooden post whose top would be lit on fire to warn Boston and surrounding towns of danger. Beacon Hill was sparsely settled, except for some houses and ropewalks. The few houses there were stately, including one at the top of the hill. It was one of only four stone mansions in Boston—the residence of Thomas Hancock, uncle of John Hancock.

The center of town was King Street, which began with the Old State House—called the Towne House by contemporaries—and extended down to Long Wharf. Unlike many of the other streets in Boston, King Street was fairly wide and straight. The aptly named Long Wharf was an extension of King Street and stretched for a third of a mile into Boston Harbor. Wealthy merchants—including the hotheaded future troublemaker Richard Clarke—often located their warehouses and offices where King Street met Long Wharf. Some Bostonians even lived on Long Wharf, including portrait artist John Singleton Copley when he was a young boy. In addition to the Old State House, King Street also boasted a courthouse, a customs house and several taverns, inns and shops. A short walk