Paul Revere

186 Pages·1991·2.31 MB·English

PAUL REVERE
1758
An army surgeon, Dr. Cabel Ray, passing through Charlestown common, observed the desiccated headless
gutted corpse of the slave Mark in its cage there, and noted in his diary:
His skin was but very little broken, altho he had hung
there over three or four years.
(Paul Revere, in describing his famous ride of April 18, 1775, would mention racing past the spot on the
common “where Mark was hung in chains.”)
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1760
William Molineaux, Huguenot merchant, built an exceedingly pretentious house in Boston on the site of what
would eventually become the east wing of the State House.
With the late 17th Century/early 18th Century arrival in Boston of French Huguenots had come their
dedication to “keeping,” despite the overwhelming Puritanism there, the Christmas day of nativity, with lights,
greenery, prayer, and music. Paul Revere’s father had noted his initial Christmas in Boston, and little Paul
would sneak into the Episcopal church to enjoy the sweet smell of decorative greens.
1770
March 5: The town of Acton voted to join in the general colonial boycott of imported British goods.
As early as the 21st of December, 1767, the town [of Acton] voted
to “comply with the proposals, by the town of Boston, relating
to the encouraging of manufactures among ourselves, and not
purchasing of superfluities from abroad.” On the 5th of March,
1770, the town entered into a covenant not to purchase nor use
foreign merchandise, nor tea.
The state of public affairs was again brought before the town
on the 21st of December, 1772, and referred to a committee,
consisting of Capt. Daniel Fletcher, Francis Faulkner, Deacon
Jonathan Hosmer, Deacon John Brooks, Josiah Hayward, Ephraim
Hapgood, Captain Samuel Hayward, Simon Tuttle, and Daniel
Brooks. Their report was made on the 18th of the following month,
and expresses the general sentiments of the people in this
vicinity.
At this time the town had no representative in the General Court,
and a vote was passed recommending to the representatives of the
people, that they use every constitutional measure in their
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power to obtain a redress of all their grievances.
Although the Parliament was rescinding all of its Townshend Revenue Act’s imposts except for the one upon
bulk tea, by this point things were getting very much out of hand in the American colonies. An incident
occurred which has been recorded in part by an engraving by Paul Revere, in part by Boston court records,
which closely resembles in its development the “Arawak Massacre” that had occurred in the Year of Our
Lord 1503 on the island of Haiti. One of the first major clashes between army and citizenry came about
as an intensification of a mistake made while some drunks were throwing snowballs at some annoyed soldiers
outside a tavern. One of the deep-rooted causes of the incident in downtown Boston was that the army soldiers
were being so poorly paid that they were forced to moonlight for American employers. The incident began as
an American rope-maker named William Green pretended to be offering paid work to a British private named
Walker. When Walker, sucked in, responded the affirmative, Green proceeded to make a rough joke out of it,
and then Walker was tripped and his weapon taken away from him. He went and got eight or nine of his fellow
soldiers, and it was then that the drunken mob of Americans began to pelt the soldiers with icy snowballs. This
was in downtown Boston not far from the Quaker meetinghouse, and it intensified in a manner similar to that
1. Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;.... Boston MA: Russell, Odiorne,
and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy, 1835
(On or about November 11, 1837 Henry David Thoreau would indicate a familiarity
with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study.)
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in which some playful Spaniard in Haiti had shouted “Tomalo!” causing an attack dog being held on leash
nearby to lunge and disembowel a minor chief. It is possible that there was a minor fire nearby, but at any rate
someone on that street in Boston shouted “Fire!” Seven of the frightened soldiers obeyed what they thought
was an order to fire into the taunting crowd of drunken civilians throwing snowballs some of which were
admittedly loaded with rocks and ice. After which some people were very sorry that this thing had happened,
and that some people had been killed for no very good reason, while some other people were exceedingly
elated because such stuff was going to be a prime ingredient in the manufacture of further such confused and
frightful hostilities. Capitalizing on this incident to the maximum extent possible, a Boston Huguenot named
Paul Revere very promptly rushed out an engraving of a “Boston Massacre,” which you will be able to view
on a following screen.
WIKIPEDIA’S LIST OF HUGUENOTS
Evidently he had copied this design being worked up by a colleague, his brother-in-law Pelham, and beaten
him to publication:
Thomas Hutchinson was acting royal governor of the colony at the time of the Boston Massacre, and was
virtually forced by the citizens of Boston, under the leadership of Samuel Adams, to order the removal of the
British troops from the town. Throughout the pre-Revolutionary disturbances in Massachusetts he would be
the representative of the British ministry, and though he would disapprove of some of the ministerial measures
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he would feel impelled by his role to enforce them and would necessarily incur the hostility of the Whig or
Patriot element.
The attorneys for the defense, Josiah Quincy and John Adams, would be able to win acquittals for most of the
accused soldiers despite the fact that their response had created five corpses, among them most notably the
lengthy corpse of Crispus Attucks. The jury, which, one must consider, was made up of Boston citizens, would
find a couple of these soldiers guilty of an offense, but the offense would be not be murder. As their penalty
the court would require of them that they read aloud a verse of Scripture and then –to ensure that they could
in the future be identified if they were again tempted to this sort of conduct– submit to having a thumb branded
with the letter “M” standing for “manslaughter.”
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The Reverend Doctor Mather Byles, Sr. of Boston, a Congregationalist who was being forced from the pulpit
on account of his Loyalist views, was said to have remarked during the long funeral procession for the people
killed in the Boston Massacre: “They call me a brainless Tory; but tell me, my young friend, which is better,
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to be ruled by one tyrant three thousand miles away, or by three thousand tyrants not a mile away?”
1772
In Nova Scotia, imports this year were valued at £63,000 and exports at £53,375. The population was
estimated at 18,320 souls, besides 865 Indians. The fees for the registry of deeds at Halifax was £25, the
registry of probates £80, and the provost marshals £10.
It was in about this year that Paul Revere took his degree, in Freemasonry, near Yarmouth in Nova Scotia.
Samuel Hearne compiled his “Map of Part of the Inland Country to the Northwest of Prince of Wales Fort.”
Arctic Explorations
Date Explorer Nation Discovery
1501 Gaspar Corte Real Portuguese Newfoundland
1536 Jacques Cartier French St. Lawrence River, Gaspe Peninsula
1553 Richard Chancellor English White Sea
1556 Stephen Burrough English Kara Sea
1576 Martin Frobisher English Frobisher Bay
1582 Humphrey Gilbert English Newfoundland
1587 John Davis English Davis Strait
1597 Willem Barents Dutch Spitsbergen, Novaya Zemyla
1611 Henry Hudson English Hudson Bay
1616 William Baffin English Ellesmere and Devon Islands
1632 Thomas James English James Bay
1741 Vitus Bering Russian Alaska
1772 Samuel Hearne English Coppermine River to the Arctic Ocean
1779 James Cook British Vancouver Island, Nootka Sound
1793 Alexander Mackenzie English Bella Coola River to the Pacific
1825 Edward Parry British Cornwallis, Bathurst, Melville Islands
1833 John Ross British North Magnetic Pole
1845 John Franklin British King William Island
2. Arthur Wentworth Hamilton Eaton, THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES: THE NOTED BOSTON TORY PREACHER, POET, AND WIT, 1707-
1788 (Boston MA: W.A. Butterfield, 1914), 146-7
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Arctic Explorations
Date Explorer Nation Discovery
1854 Robert McClure British Banks Island, Viscount Melville Sound
THE FROZEN NORTH
CARTOGRAPHY
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King George III appointed Benjamin West as historical painter to the monarch, with an annual allowance of
1,000 pounds.
When Paul Revere went to create an image of King Phillip in this year for use in Ezra Stiles’s edition of
Benjamin Church’s ENTERTAINING HISTORY, he displayed no more originality than was usual for him. It is
likely that he created this depiction of a man who had died in the previous century well before he was born on
the basis of a series of mezzotints that had been published in London in 1710 which purported to depict not
this Wampanoag leader but instead a couple of his Mohawk enemies, named Ho Nee Yeath and Sa Ga Yeath
(and also, a group of Ohio natives that Benjamin West had painted in 1764). We note that neither of Metacom’s
hands appear crippled in this famous Revere engraving, when the one salient fact that we have about his
appearance is that a hand had been maimed, evidently when a pistol he was firing split in his gun hand (not
knowing whether he was right-handed or left-handed, and the records not telling us which hand was in
Alderman’s bucket of rum, we don’t know which hand Phillip had maimed).
This crude and derivative engraving would subsequently be used by New England whites to demonstrate that
the sachem Metacom had indeed been in his person quite as hideous and malformed and dwarfish as his white
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enemies in his generation had been pleased to suppose.
1774
August 16: Sam Adams and Dr. Joseph Warren had selected Doty’s Tavern in Old Stoughton for the first formal
meeting or County Congress where delegates would on this date reduce to writing the principles of American
Independence, a formulation which would become known as the “Suffolk County Resolves” but which in fact
amounted to a Declaration of Independence.
When the draft document was read to the congress by Peyton Randolph, it was approved without a single
alteration. The Reverend Samuel Dunbar was among those speaking in favor of the document’s approval. All
the Coercive Acts were declared unconstitutional and hence not to be obeyed. The people of Massachusetts
were urged to form a government of their own to collect taxes and withhold them from the Royal authorities
until the Acts had been repealed. They were advised to gather arms for their own militia. Heavy economic
sanctions were recommended. This document would be carried on horseback by Paul Revere after a final
meeting at Vose’s Tavern in Milton and would electrify the discordant Continental Congress at Philadelphia
with the boldest statement as yet made. Thus Dorchester now boasts that it was the birthplace of American
liberty.
DUNBAR FAMILY
CONTINETAL CONGRESS
At a meeting of the delegates of every town & district in the
county of Suffolk, on tuesday the 6th of Septr., at the house
of Mr. Richard Woodward, of Deadham, & by adjournment, at the
house of Mr. [Daniel] Vose, of Milton, on Friday the 9th instant,
Joseph Palmer, esq. being chosen moderator, and William
Thompson, esq. clerk, a committee was chosen to bring in a report
to the convention, and the following being several times read,
and put paragraph by paragraph, was unanimously voted, viz.
Whereas the power but not the justice, the vengeance but not the
wisdom of Great-Britain, which of old persecuted, scourged, and
exiled our fugitive parents from their native shores, now
pursues us, their guiltless children, with unrelenting severity:
And whereas, this, then savage and uncultivated desart, was
purchased by the toil and treasure, or acquired by the blood and
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valor of those our venerable progenitors; to us they bequeathed
the dearbought inheritance, to our care and protection they
consigned it, and the most sacred obligations are upon us to
transmit the glorious purchase, unfettered by power, unclogged
with shackles, to our innocent and beloved offspring. On the
fortitude, on the wisdom and on the exertions of this important
day, is suspended the fate of this new world, and of unborn
millions. If a boundless extent of continent, swarming with
millions, will tamely submit to live, move and have their being
at the arbitrary will of a licentious minister, they basely
yield to voluntary slavery, and future generations shall load
their memories with incessant execrations.--On the other hand,
if we arrest the hand which would ransack our pockets, if we
disarm the parricide which points the dagger to our bosoms, if
we nobly defeat that fatal edict which proclaims a power to frame
laws for us in all cases whatsoever, thereby entailing the
endless and numberless curses of slavery upon us, our heirs and
their heirs forever; if we successfully resist that unparalleled
usurpation of unconstitutional power, whereby our capital is
robbed of the means of life; whereby the streets of Boston are
thronged with military executioners; whereby our coasts are
lined and harbours crouded with ships of war; whereby the
charter of the colony, that sacred barrier against the
encroachments of tyranny, is mutilated and, in effect,
annihilated; whereby a murderous law is framed to shelter
villains from the hands of justice; whereby the unalienable and
inestimable inheritance, which we derived from nature, the
constitution of Britain, and the privileges warranted to us in
the charter of the province, is totally wrecked, annulled, and
vacated, posterity will acknowledge that virtue which preserved
them free and happy; and while we enjoy the rewards and blessings
of the faithful, the torrent of panegyrists will roll our
reputations to that latest period, when the streams of time
shall be absorbed in the abyss of eternity.--Therefore, we have
resolved, and do resolve,
1. That whereas his majesty, George the Third, is the rightful
successor to the throne of Great-Britain, and justly entitled
to the allegiance of the British realm, and agreeable to
compact, of the English colonies in America--therefore, we, the
heirs and successors of the first planters of this colony, do
cheerfully acknowledge the said George the Third to be our
rightful sovereign, and that said covenant is the tenure and
claim on which are founded our allegiance and submission.
2. That it is an indispensable duty which we owe to God, our
country, ourselves and posterity, by all lawful ways and means
in our power to maintain, defend and preserve those civil and
religious rights and liberties, for which many of our fathers
fought, bled and died, and to hand them down entire to future
generations.
3. That the late acts of the British parliament for blocking up
the harbour of Boston, for altering the established form of
government in this colony, and for screening the most flagitious
violators of the laws of the province from a legal trial, are
gross infractions of those rights to which we are justly
entitled by the laws of nature, the British constitution, and
the charter of the province.
10 Copyright  Austin Meredith