The story of Boston. A study of independency

Front matter

ghtN^ . G AT

COPYRIGHT DEPOSm

THE OLD STATK-HOT'SE ([748) AS RESTOREn IN 1 88 1. FrontisfiiTf.

Preface

The Story of Boston deals with the doings of a community of earnest men who for eightscore years had no considerable interests except those connected with poHtics and reHgion. For the whole of the earlier period of their history they gave themselves with all the force of their nature to such subjects as these. The pursuits which in our day absorb the attention of intelligent men are peculiar to our age and generation ; the Fathers of New England knew them not.

Governor Hutchinson was right when he wrote, in 1773 : " For many years past the town of Boston has been used to interest itself in every affair of moment which concerned the Province in general " : for certainly Boston sought to do all that it could to give form to the action of the colonists in other parts of Massachusetts and of America. The story of Boston cannot be told, therefore, without reference to events that were going on in other parts of the land. Her great citizen, Samuel Adams, was the " Father of the American Revolution." Boston men saw the beginning of that struggle, and they stood side by side with their fellows of the other colonies then, as they have stood by them in the

IV PREFA CE.

conflicts of the nation since. As we approach our own day we are not so much involved in the affairs of other communities, though Boston has never been an uninterested spectator of pubhc movements in any portion of the continent.

The Story of Boston calls us to a study of Independency, — to the contemplation, first, of a vigorous struggle by strong men for a century and a half against a powerful monarchy ; and next, to an examination of the fruits of a discipline of debate and conflict in the development of a typical American civilization.

Nowhere is the truth more plain that the story of a community is told in the lives of its inhabitants. It is only as one becomes filled with the spirit of the men and women of Boston that he discovers the springs which have moved them in dealing with agitating questions. The outside record of the soldier, of the statesman, of the legislator, is written large on the pages of history ; but the inspiring motives of their actions are often hidden in the unprinted story of familiar life and conversation. It is hoped that in some degree the real lives of the fathers of Boston and of those who labored and suffered by their sides may be brought out in the following pages.

Cambku)i;e, Juue 17, 1889.

Contents

I. — A Declaration of Independence

II. WiNTHROP AND HIS COMPANIONS .

III. — Getting Ready for a Voyage . IV. — The Founding of Boston . v.— Margaret Winthrop Comes over VI. — The Lay of the Land VII. — Sundry Troubles VIII. — The Government Becomes more Popular .....

Index

240 256

273 290

305 321

438 448

457 469

ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE

The Old State-House (1748) as Restored in 1881. Frontispiece

John Winthrop • -13

Sir Richard Saltonstall. From a Portrait by Rembrandt 19

Winthrop's Fleet in Boston Harbor, from a Spot between Boston and East Boston 39

Blaxton's Lot 43

The Great Elm IN the Common. Destroyed in 1876 . 47 Copp's Hill as it Appeared in Winthrop's Time. The

Mill was Erected IN 1632 57

Two Pages of the " New England Primer " (Seventeenth Century). This was Used as Lately as the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century . . . .71 The Frog Pond on the Common as it Now Appears . . 75

Increase Mather i33

The First King's Chapel (16S8), Showing the Beacon . 166 The First Church, or "Old Brick." Built in 1713, on the Site of the Present Joy's Building and Occupied until 1808. Its Bell Sounded the Alarm at the Time of the " Massacre," March 5, 1770 . . . 179 Furniture of Wealthier Townsmen in Provincial Times 183 A Map of Boston in 1722. This Map, Known as the "Bonner Map," was Made by Captain John Bonner, AND No Older Map is Known that Gives the Streets AND Prominent Places. The Original is Preserved among the Archives of the Massachusetts Historical Society . . .187

Interior of Christ Church at Present (Built 1723) . 203

Boston and its Environs in 1775. This Shows the Fortifications around the Town at the Opening of the Revolution ; it also Serves, so far as the Natural Features Go, to Illustrate All Stages of the Earlier History of the City ... . 209

vii

Y I i 1 ILL US TRA TIONS,

PAGK

Samuel Adams. At the A(;e of 45 Yeaks. After the

Portrait by Copley in the Art Museum (1772) . . 223

The Second Faneuil Hall (1764) 235

Interior of the Present King's Chapel, (Corner-Stone

John Hancock. After the Portrait by Copley in the

Museum of Fine Arts (1737-1 793) 257

James Otis, (1725-1783) at the Age of Thirty. After k

Portrait by Blackburn 267

The Old State-House in 1801. The State-Street End, Showing the Old Brick Church (on Washington Street) behind IT. Built in 1748 . . . .315

Governor Thomas Hutchinson, after a Portrait in Possession of the Massachusetts Historical Association, ONCE THE Property of Jonathan Mayhew . . 333

The Old South Church, in its Present Condition. (Built

1729) 341

John Hancock's House, Facing the Common . . . 401 Crossing of the Railroads in the Back-Bay Region in

1840 411

JosiAH Quincy (i 772-1 864). From the Portrait by

Stuart now in the Museum of Fine Arts . . 427 Advertisement of the Worcester Railroad, from the

Papers of the Day 450

The Rear of the State-House, and the Monument,

Showing the Removal of the Hill (1811-1S12) . . 453 The Monument from Temple and Derne Streets (iSii-

1812) 455

Map of Modern Boston, from the Latest Authoritative

The Present State-House (Built IN 1795) . . . . 471 The Private Library of George Ticknor, until Lately

IN THE House on the Corner of Park and Beacon

Streets, in which Lafayette was Entertained. (0>.

1870) 477

The Public Garden and the Buildings around it in the

" Back Bay" Region. This is all on " Made" Land,

— the Sidewalk in the Foreground Marking the Ex-

tkkmk Limit of the Original Shore ... 4S1

THE STORY OF BOSTON.

I. A Declaration Of Independence

The twenty-sixth of August, 1629, is an important date in the history of Boston. On that day the decision was taken that determined the settlement of the town. Had it not been for a conclusion then reached by a company of discreet gentlemen who met at Cambridge, England, the promontory called Shawmut might have been peopled by quite a different class of settlers from those who made it their first home on the American coast.

Up to that time England had done but little in the way of settling the new lands in the West, though she made great claims upon America, because, as she supposed, her sailor, Cabot, had been the first of Europeans to lay his eyes on the shores that he appropriately called Prima Vista. There had, it is true, been considerable exploration under Elizabeth ; but it was not until the reign of James that any thing creditable and enduring was actually accomplished. On the third of November, 1620,

I the latter sovereign formed a body corporate known as " The Council for New England," the full name of which was " The Council Established at Plymouth, in the County of Devon, for the Planting, Ruling, Ordering, and Governing of New England in America," and it was upon its charter that most of the New England grants were based. The act of incorporation was essentially the giving of new and enlarged privileges to a body established in 1606 by the same king, which was known as " The Northern Colony of Virginia."

The Council for New England was an important company, comprising forty persons, most of them men of distinction, and some of them peers of the highest rank." In March, 1628, it made a grant to another company of the territory in which Boston lies, known as " the Massachewset." The name had been conferred upon it by Captain John Smith, the explorer of Virginia, who considered it " the paradise of all those parts." There is some mystery about the granting of this charter, and there was indefiniteness about the extent of the territory conveyed ; but without stopping to have all matters settled, the persons interested, who really formed a great land company, sent out a small colony under command of John Endicott, one of their number, which reached Salem, then called Naumkeag, in September, 1628, and that place became the first town in the colony.

* The facts about the Council for New England are given in detail by Charles Deane, LL.D., in Winsor's " Narrative and Critical History of America," vol. iii., \)\\. 295, 320, etc.

THE CHARTER OBTAINED. 3

When the council for New England sold the territory just mentioned it gave the buyers no powers of government (though it had received rights for " ordering and governing "), and it became necessary to obtain them from the king, who at that time was Charles the First. By whatever means, a charter was obtained from him, and it was duly signed and sealed March 4, 1629. The territory was then defined as extending from three miles north of the Merrimac River to three miles south of the Charles River, and from the Atlantic Ocean to " the South Sea," as the Pacific was called. This seems an immense territory, but it did not appear so vast to the grantors as it does to us, because it was limited in two important particulars. In the first place, it was generally supposed that our continent was an island, the distance across which was not great * ; and, in the second place, all territory that might prove to be occupied by any Christian state was excluded from the grant. The natives reported to John Smith that the river of Massachusetts extended " many days' journey into the entrails of that country," and in 1619, a bold explorer dreamed of getting through to the Indiesby way of the Charles River, or the Mystic, which seems marvellously strange to us who know those little streams!

The persons interested in the Massachusetts

wished to fish or to trade with the natives, and to

* The only exception to this belief known to the present writer is found in the " Records of the council for New England," edited by Charles Deane, LL.D., and published in the proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society for 1S67. On page 124 it is said that the distance " from sea to seals near about three thousand miles.".

establish colonies for those purposes ; but it was not long before the purposes changed. Many who were restive under the condition of religious and political affairs in England, who were discouraged at the prospect of ever accomplishing any thing in the way of certain reforms that they felt to be all-important, conceived the project of making a colony for religion under the purchase. Ferdinando Gorges,* in his book " America Painted to the Life," says that there were several kinds of these people, who did not agree among themselves ; that some of the more discreet among them made plans to settle in New England, and that " in a very short time numbers of people of all sorts flocked thither in heaps " ; but this anticipates our story.

The charter of Charles the First constituted the original purchasers, and some score of others whom they had admitted to their company, a political body corporate with the name " The Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England," and gave them authority to enact laws and to carry them out, provided they made none opposed to those of England. By the end of May arrangements had been made to send out a second company of settlers, under the general direction of the Reverend Francis Higginson. Five ships sailed from the Isle of Wight in that month, and reached Salem by tlie end of June ; but our interest is not with them. The body corporate provided by the charter was far from complete in its political powers, though the

* Quoted by Hutchinson, in his " History of Massachusetts," chapter i.

A BOLD suggestion: 5

governor, the deputy-governor, and the eighteen " assistants," which it mentioned, were authorized to make laws, and an annual gathering was provided for, in which all the " freemen " of the colony were to be brought together as " The Great and General Court."

The interest in the movement to which Gorges referred continued in England, and was destined to have a greater influence upon American affairs than he or any one else dreamed. Among the persons connected with it were several gentlemen of " figure and estate," as the old form of speech expresses it, who thought that there might be an opportunity in the distant land to manage affairs both of church and state in accordance with their own views. They became alarmed as they saw some of the principal liberal speakers in parliament committed to the Tower and to other prisons, and though they had hoped long, they at last gave up all expectation of being able to bring about a political and religious reformation in the father-land. To one of these, Matthew Cradock, who was governor of the Massachusetts company, a bold inspiration was suggested. It was no less than this : that the charter and the company itself might both be removed to the New World.*

In the history of America we find that at one time and another certain individual men seem to

* " He did not say, what he must have been clearly understood to mean, that in this way the king would have some difficulty in laying his hand upon the governor." " History of England, from the Accession of James I. to the Outbreak of the Civil War," by Samuel R. Gardiner, LL.D., vol. vii., p. 156, preside over the destinies of the communities in which they Hve, and this is remarkably true in the history of Boston. Mr. Cradock appears now merely to make a suggestion, and it is another man who rises to prominence first, as the presiding genius of the settlement of our promontory. The characteristics and the very name of John Winthrop were strongly stamped upon much of the expression of life in the town during the early years of its existence, and their influence has not yet been lost. The meetings of the company had been held in London, but no particular place was mentioned in the charter, and they could be, and actually were at times, held elsewhere.

Perhaps this removal had been thought of before. In the year 1644, at a time when there was a good deal of political discussion in Boston, Mr, Winthrop wrote a formal " Discourse on Government," which has been printed.""'" In it lie says that when the charter was at first drawn, it was the intention to "keep the chief government in the hands of the company residing in England," as was the case in the charter for Virginia, but that a clause to that effect was stricken out, " with much difficulty," and permission given to establish a government in America. Mr. Winthrop does not make it clear, however, that any thing more was intended than that such rights as had been given to Endicott might be

* In the following jiages much use will he made of the " Life antl Letters of John Winthrop," in which (ii., 443) this " Discourse," which came to light in i860, among a mass of papers discovered in an old family residence at New London, Conn., will be found.

DISCUSSING REMOVAL. /

delegated to those who should go across the ocean, and that was quite different from the authority which he and his associates exercised in Boston after the actual transfer of the charter. As for the meetings, the gentlemen were free to come together, if they thought best, on a ship in the Thames, for all that the charter said ; and if perchance that ship were to weigh anchor, and they should find themselves sailing away towards America, ought the meeting be stopped ? If the proceedings should of right be stopped, how far might the vessel sail without making them illegal ? Mr. Cradock was sure that there was room for a little profitable study in questions like these, and accordingly he made his momentous proposal, at a meeting held in London in July, that the charter and the government should be transferred to America, those members* of the company being placed in its offices who should be willing to " inhabit and continue there " with their families.

Nothing in so grave a matter was to be done in haste and it was decided that before the next meeting, which was to be held on the twenty-eighth of August, the members should write out their views, both in favor of the proposition and against it, and they were desired " to carry this business secretly, that the same be not divulged," because, as they appear to have very well understood, taking a charter across seas was something very like setting up an independent government and placing it so remote from the king and parliament that they would find it difficult to interfere with it. There was, in fact, no reason for keeping the plan secret except this: that the scheme involved independence of king and parliament. In an address delivered on the completion of the second century from the settlement of Boston, Josiah Ouincy, then president of Harvard College, declared that the idea of independence of the parent state was first conceived by Winthrop and Dudley and Saltonstall and their associates ; that they, by their act in bringing the charter over the sea, indicated a settled purpose to obtain independence, and made as efificient a declaration of that purpose as was possible under their circumstances. They actually obtained, Mr. Quincy asserted, "an effectual independence under a nominal subjection." The historian, William Gordon, says of their motives (vol. i., page 42) : " They meant to be independent of English parliaments."

Can we imagine the thought and conferences that occupied the four weeks after this meeting? These were earnest men, and though on the face of the records the matter seems to be new, there is reason to suspect, as has been remarked, that they had long held the secret intention of making such a transfer as was now broached. However, they took counsel of one another, and especially of a Mr. John White of their number, a man learned in the law, and after having satisfied themselves that it would be legal to make the transfer, they inquired who were willing to go to New England to " inhabit and continue there." Mr. Cradock had intimated that there were persons of worth and quality ready for the move. Now they appear.

THE MEETING AT CAMBRIDGE. 9

On the twenty-sixth of August — two days before the meeting that was to settle the matter, — twelve men held the important conference to which reference has been made. Little did they foresee the importance of their unpretentious gathering. Perhaps they met in the room of Mr. John Winthrop's son, Forth, in Emanuel College. They failed to record the place, and we know only that it was in Cambridge. How long the men who met on that memorable day debated the subject before them we are not informed. We are certain, however, that " upon due consideration," having weighed the greatness of the work and the consequences of their action, they all agreed, and sincerely and freely promised and bound themselves one to the other, to " pass the seas (under God's protection), to inhabit and continue in New England," provided that the whole government and the charter should be legally transferred to remain there also."^

When the company met two days later, it was announced that the business to be attended to was to give answer to the gentlemen who had signed this agreement. There was no haste in this case.

* With regard to the transfer, Mr. Bancroft writes in his ninth chapter: "The lawfulness was at the time not questioned by the privy council ; at a later day was expressly affirmed by Sawyer, the attorney-general ; and in 1677 the chief-justices Rainsford and North still described the ' charter as making the adventurers a corporation upon the place.' " Dr. Ellis says that the imputation that the transfer was made illegally, in daring contempt of authority, and that the " company surreptitiously stole away from England with the patent to set up an unlicensed authority on the soil of New England," has been " satisfactorily set aside." — " The Puritan Age and Rule," p. 47.

lO A DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.

Two committees were appointed to prepare arguments on the subject, the one for and the other against making the transfer. Accordingly the following morning the committees met. It was at the early hour of seven. They weighed each other's arguments — they turned them over and over again. Finally they discussed the points thoroughly before the whole company, and then a vote was called for. As many as desired to have the charter and the government of the plantation removed to America were asked to hold up their hands. Those who were opposed were likewise asked to do the same, and it appearing that it was the general consent that the removal should take place, it was formally decided that an order for the transfer should be drawn up. This, President Quincy calls " the first and original declaration of independence."

WINTHROP AND HIS COMPANIONS.

Of the twelve men who thus boldly declared their independence, and expressed their willingness to become pilgrims, the first to fix our attention now, as we look at the list under the light of subsequent history, is Mr. John Winthrop. Probably his name would have attracted us if we had examined the list in the year 1630, for the man who bore it was evidently a person of no mean importance. He was a native of the little hamlet of Groton in Suffolk, a few miles west from Ipswich, a place so insignificant that it has faded from our maps, and its very name is dropped from the great gazetteers of our day. It is of importance to us in connection with the annals of Boston and of America, however, and will always be remembered as having given its name to other places in the New World.

John Winthrop was a late comer in the group of men interested in this scheme for colonization. His name does not occur in the records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay until the meeting after that of August twenty-sixth, and we do not even know that he was actually present at any meeting until October, when he was appointed to make arrangements of a business nature for those who intended to emigrate. Though he comes thus suddenly into prominence, the course of his life, laid before us in his " Life and Letters," shows that he had been much engaged both in considerations of the progress of New England and old England. He felt (to draw from a carefully written paper known as " General Considerations for the Plantation of New England," which was circulated among some of the friends of the enterprise) that he had fallen upon disastrous times ; that fountains of learning in his native country were corrupted ; that all arts and trades were carried on in such deceitful and unrighteous ways that it was wellnigh impossible for a good man to live by any of them ; that the land was weary of her inhabitants ; that man had become of less importance than beasts, children, who ought to have been considered blessings, being counted the greatest burdens; that the kingdom of antichrist was increasing ; that, in brief, the Lord had begun to frown upon England and to cut its inhabitants short. It seemed to Mr. John Winthrop that America was intended by Providence to be a place of refuge for the many who were to be saved out of the general calamity which seemed imminent, and that emigration was a work of God for the good of the church, which had no place left to fly into but the wilderness. The American continent was supposed to be the home of the arch-fiend and his angels, and a generation later Michael Wigglesworth, the typical Puritan poet, wrote in " God's Controversy with New England," that the region was

JOHN WINTHROP.

" A waste and howling wilderness,

Where none inhabited, But hellish fiends and brutish men

That devils worshipped.

This region was in darkness placed,

Far off from heaven's light, Amidst the shadows of grim death

And of eternal night.

Mr. Winthrop did not fail to discuss the other side of the question in his " General Considerations "; probably that he might have a reply to give those who should differ from him in opinion. If it were said that Englishmen had no right to enter upon a land that had so long been occupied by others, he replied that the natives enclosed no land, and that if suf^cient for their use were left to them, the remainder might lawfully be taken ; that there were in fact but few of the natives left, since a great plague had overtaken them, and that those who were living would learn so much from Englishmen as to be able to obtain more benefit from what might be left them than they then did from the whole land. Was it urged that if good people were to leave England it would be more open to the judgments feared than it was before ; he replied that the departing of the good people would only foreshadow and not bring on the evil, and might cause the remnant to repent ; that the emigrants would do more good in the new land than at home ; and that the barbarians might through them receive the gospel, the preaching of which had been one of the prominent purposes of every scheme of colonization that had been proposed since the days of Columbus and the

THE ONE GREAT BOOK. I 5

Cabots. The colony at Salem had already placed on its official seal an Indian erect holding an arrow in its right hand with the Macedonian cry, " Come over and help us ! " indicative of its intentions in respect to the spiritual welfare of the savages.

John Winthrop was at the time forty-two years of age. His lot had been cast among men who had been associated with such statesmen and scholars as Bacon and Essex and Cecil, accustomed to discuss the highest matters of state. He was born the year that his country was threatened by the great Armada from Spain, and he had lived through the last part of the reign of Elizabeth, the whole of that of James the First, and the first years of King Charles. The discussions of vital topics of statecraft and theology were as familiar to him as household words. He was eleven years old when Spenser died, and doubtless he was acquainted with the almost puritanic allegory of that most poetical of poets. Doubtless, too, he was familiar with the " Divine Emblems " of Francis Quarles ; perhaps he knew of the quiet life of saintly George Herbert, then hidden at Bemerton ; and we may imagine that he had seen something of the brilliant promise of the youthful Milton, who had lately taken his bachelor's degree at Cambridge.

In the " History of the English People," by Green, and in the history of our literature, by Taine, we become acquainted with the most powerful influence upon the development of the English character at this time. In his history, Mr. Green says: "The small Geneva Bibles carried the Scripture into every home, and wove it into the life of every English family " ; and he shows that the influence of this book was great also upon the intellectual development of the people, " that the mass of picturesque allusions and illustrations which we borrow from a thousand books, our fathers were forced to borrow from one," for, as he adds, " the Bible was as yet the one book that was familiar to every Englishman, and everywhere its words, as they fell on ears which custom had not deadened to their force and beauty, kindled a startling enthusiasm." Among the circle to which John Winthrop belonged the Bible was still the one great book, and as we consider this fact we shall, as Mr. Green says, " better understand the strange mosaic of biblical words and phrases which colored English talk two hundred years ago." The Geneva version was the one that the people still carried, but the translation known as " King James's " had appeared but a score of years previous to the time of the Boston emigration, and the fact that it was in progress, and finally that it had been completed, must have added to the interest in the volume.

The letters of Winthrop present us the picture of a loving husband and father, a careful man of affairs, a far-seeing statesman, and a most devout man of religion. He addresses the most afTectionate messages to his " good wife," to whom he often writes in terms like these : " Yet I must kiss my sweet wife * ; and so,