American Rebels
Page 45
28 Diary of John Adams, vol. 1, Wednesday, January 1759, Adams Papers, MHS.
29 Ibid.
30 John Adams, Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, edited by L. H. Butterfield (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 1961), vol. 1, p. 119.
31 Diary of John Adams, vol. 1, Summer 1759, Adams Papers, MHS.
32 Diary of John Adams, vol. 1, Spring 1759, Adams Papers, MHS.
33 Ibid.
34 Ibid.
35 Ibid.
36 Diary of John Adams, vol. 1, Summer 1759, Adams Papers, MHS.
37 Ibid.
38 John Adams to Abigail Adams, November 4, 1775, Adams Papers, MHS.
39 Diary of John Adams, vol. 1, October–December 1758, Adams Papers, MHS.
40 Diary of John Adams, vol. 1, Letters to Three Friends on Studying Law, October–November 1758, Adams Papers, MHS.
Chapter 5: Changing Fortunes
1 Jonathan Belcher, letter dated August 21, 1755, Jonathan Belcher Letter Books, 1723–1755, vol. 11, Collections of the MHS.
2 Adams, The Works of John Adams, vol. 2, p. 76.
3 Edmund Quincy IV to Katy Quincy, undated, Quincy Family Papers, MHS. The Quincy Family Papers are part of the Quincy, Wendell, Holmes, and Upham family papers collection of the MHS.
4 Benjamin Franklin to Edmund Quincy IV, December 10, 1761, ibid.
5 Wilson, Where American Independence Began, p. 172, 82.
6 John Adams to Samuel Quincy, April 22, 1761, Founders Online, National Archives, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-01-02-0039.
7 Diary of John Adams, vol. 1, December 2, 1760, Adams Papers, MHS.
8 Ibid.
9 Rebora and Staiti, John Singleton Copley in America, p. 190.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid., p. 187.
12 John Hancock to Thomas Hancock, 1760, quoted in Allan, John Hancock: Patriot, p. 69.
13 Allan, John Hancock: Patriot, p. 71.
14 Ibid., pp. 69–70.
15 Baxter, House of Hancock, p. 144.
16 Ibid.
17 Allan, John Hancock: Patriot, p. 74.
18 Adams, The Works of John Adams, vol. 10, p. 259.
19 Adams Family Correspondence, vol. 1, Richard Cranch and John Adams to Mary Smith, December 30, 1761, Adams Papers, MHS.
20 John Adams to Abigail Adams, October 4, 1762; Abigail Adams to John Adams, August 11, 1763; Adams Papers, MHS.
21 John Adams to Abigail Smith, October 4, 1762, Adams Papers, MHS.
22 Ibid.
23 Abigail Smith to John Adams, August 11, 1763, Adams Papers, MHS.
24 John Adams, Autobiography, Part One, Sheet 8 of 53, 1761–1765, Adams Papers, MHS.
25 Diary of John Adams, vol. 1, Friday, December 29, 1758, Adams Papers, MHS.
26 James Otis, Against Writs of Assistance, February 1761, National Humanities Institute, http://www.nhinet.org/ccs/docs/writs.htm.
27 Ibid.
28 Adams, The Works of John Adams, vol. 4, p. 7.
29 Otis, Against Writs of Assistance.
30 John Adams to William Tudor Sr., March 29, 1817, Founders Online, National Archives, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-6735.
Chapter 6: Colonial Enthusiasms
1 Allan, John Hancock: Patriot, p. 40.
2 Harvard College Library Books Borrowed by Josiah Quincy Jr., 1762–1763, Harvard University Archives.
3 Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, vol. 13 (Boston: MHS, 1875), p. 216.
4 Cover of Law Commonplace book, Josiah Quincy Jr., Quincy Family Papers, MHS.
5 Daniel R. Coquillette and Neil Longley York, Portrait of a Patriot, The Major Political and Legal Works of Josiah Quincy Jr., vol. 5 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2009), Appendix, “The Legal Maxims of Josiah Quincy, Jr.”
6 Ibid., p. 446.
7 Ibid.
8 See Daniel Hannan, “Eight Centuries of Liberty,” Wall Street Journal, May 30–31, 2015.
9 Oxenbridge Thacher, “Draft of an Address to King and Parliament” [1764], Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, vol. 20 (Boston: MHS, 1884), p. 51
10 Josiah Quincy, Memoir of the Life of Josiah Quincy, Junior, of Massachusetts, 1744–1775, edited by Eliza Susan Quincy (Boston: John Wilson & Son, 1874), p. 226, 1n.
11 Ibid., p. 21.
12 Diary of John Adams, vol. 1, August 13, 1769, Adams Papers, MHS.
13 Baxter, House of Hancock, p. 223.
14 Abigail Smith to Hannah Quincy Lincoln, October 5, 1761, quoted in Adams, ed., Letters of Mrs. Adams, vol. 1, p. 5.
Chapter 7: The Mobs of Boston
1 Boston Gazette, February 4, 1765; see also Jayne E. Triber, A True Republican: The Life of Paul Revere (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998), p. 38.
2 Baxter, House of Hancock, pp. 231–232, 21n.
3 John Hancock to John Barnard, April 5, 1765, Letter Book, quoted in Baxter, House of Hancock, p. 233.
4 John Hancock to John Barnard, September 11, 1765, quoted in Baxter, House of Hancock, p. 233.
5 John Adams to William Tudor, June 1, 1817, Adams Papers, MHS.
6 Harlow Giles Unger, John Hancock: Merchant King and American Patriot (New York: Wiley, 2000), p. 89.
7 Coquillette and York, Portrait of a Patriot, vol. 5, p. 446.
8 Peter Shaw, American Patriots and the Rituals of Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), p. 73.
9 Shipton, New England Life, pp. 280–281.
10 Boston Gazette, December 9, 1765.
11 Maryland Gazette, July 4, 1765.
12 Boston Gazette, December 9, 1765.
13 Ibid.
14 Boston Gazette, September 2, 1765.
15 Diary of John Adams, vol. 1, 15 August 1765, Adams Papers, MHS.
16 John Hancock to Hill, Lemar, and Bissett, November 12, 1767, Letter Book, quoted in William M. Fowler, The Baron of Beacon Hill (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980), p. 51.
17 Thomas Hutchinson, The Correspondence of Thomas Hutchinson, 1740–1766, edited by John Tyler and Elizabeth Dubrulle (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2014), p. 12.
18 Governor Bernard to Board of Trade, August 31, 1765, cited in Unger, John Hancock: Merchant, p. 92.
19 Thomas Hutchinson to Richard Jackson, August 30, 1765, reproduced in Jonathan Mercantini, The Stamp Act of 1765: A History in Documents (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2017), p. 97.
20 Ibid.
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid.
23 William Gordon, History of the Independence of America, 1788, cited and quoted in www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/1765-thomas-hutchinson-moves-milton-involuntarily.
Chapter 8: Warmest Lovers of Liberty
1 Diary of Josiah Quincy Jr., reprinted in Albert Bushnell Hart, ed., American History told by Contemporaries, vol. 2, Building of the Republic (New York: Macmillan, 1919), p. 397.
2 Ibid., p. 399.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid., p. 400.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid. This quotation cited by Josiah Quincy Jr. in his diary entry comes from Cato, A Tragedy, by Joseph Addison, written in 1712; see The British Drama (London: William Miller, Old Bond Street, 1804), p. 354.
7 John Hancock to John Barnard, January 18, 1766, Hancock Family Papers, MHS.
8 Fowler, The Baron of Beacon Hill, p. 59.
9 Freder
ick F. Hassam, Liberty Tree, Liberty Hall, Lafayette and Loyalty! (Boston: 1891), p. 1.
10 “Liberty, Property, and No Excise: A Poem,” Compos’d on occasion of the sight seen on the Great Trees (so called) in Boston, New England, on the 14th of August, 1765, printed in The Magazine of History, with Notes and Extra Numbers, Issue 77, vol. 20.–Issue 84, vol. 21 (Tarrytown, NY: William Abbat, 1922), pp. 135–139.
11 Morison, Three Centuries of Harvard, p. 133.
12 Proceedings of the New York State Historical Association, vol. 17, p. 72.
13 John Adams, “A Dissertation on the Canon and the Feudal Law,” No. 1, Monday, 12 August 1765, Adams Papers, MHS.
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid.
16 John Adams, Instructions Adopted by the Braintree Town Meeting Braintree 1765 Septr. 24, Papers of John Adams, vol. 1, p. 137, Adams Papers, MHS.
17 Ibid.
18 Diary of John Adams, vol. 1, December 19, 1765, Adams Papers, MHS.
19 Lorenzo Sears, John Hancock: The Picturesque Patriot (Boston: Little, Brown, 1913), p. 101.
20 Baxter, House of Hancock, p. 234.
21 John Hancock to John Barnard, October 21, 1765, John Hancock Letter Book, quoted in Baxter, House of Hancock, p. 235.
22 Rebora and Staiti, John Singleton Copley in America, p. 71.
23 John Hancock to John Barnard, September 30, 1765, quoted in Baxter, House of Hancock, p. 233.
24 Thomas Hutchinson, October 26, 1765, The Correspondence of Thomas Hutchinson, vol.1 (Boston: Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 2014), p. 315.
25 Diary of John Adams, vol. 1, Saturday, December 28, 1765, Adams Papers, MHS.
26 Ibid.
27 John Hancock to John Barnard, June 23, 1764, Letter Book, Hancock Family Papers, MHS.
28 Barlow Trecothick to Lord Rockingham, November 7, 1765, quoted in John L. Bullion, “British Ministers and American Resistance to the Stamp Act, October–December 1765,” The William and Mary Quarterly 49, no. 1 (January 1992), p. 100.
29 Ibid.
30 Boston Gazette, May 26, 1766.
31 John Adams to William Tudor, June 1, 1817, quoted in Allan, John Hancock: Patriot, p. 96.
32 John Hancock to Harrison and Barnard, May 27, 1766, quoted in Allan, John Hancock: Patriot, p. 97.
33 Richard Frothingham, The Rise of the Republic of the United States (Boston: Little, Brown, 1873), p. 201.
Chapter 9: A Watchful Spirit
1 Abigail Adams and John Adams to Mary Smith Cranch, January 12, 1767, Adams Papers, MHS.
2 Abigail Adams and John Adams to Mary Smith Cranch, May 26, 1766, Adams Papers, MHS.
3 Abigail Adams to Mary Smith Cranch, January 31, 1767; ibid., October 6, 1766, Adams Papers, MHS.
4 Ibid.
5 Adams, The Works of John Adams, vol. 3, p. 488.
6 Ibid., p. 489.
7 Catherine Drinker Bowen, John Adams and the American Revolution (Boston: Little, Brown, 1950), p. 308.
8 Abigail Adams to John Adams, September 14, 1767, Adams Papers, MHS.
9 Abigail Adams to Mary Smith Cranch, October 13, 1766, Adams Papers, MHS.
10 Abigail Adams to Mary Smith Cranch, October 6, 1766, Adams Papers, MHS.
11 Boston Gazette, March 14, 1768, MHS.
12 “Hyperion,” December 5, 1767, in Daniel R. Coquillette and Neil Longley York, eds., Josiah Quincy, Jr. Political and Legal Works, vol. 6 (Boston: Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 2014), p. 8.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid., p. 9.
15 Ibid., p. 10.
16 Clifford K. Shipton, Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, vol. 13 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965), p. 480.
17 “Hyperion,” December 5, 1767, Coquillette and York, eds., Josiah Quincy, Jr., vol. 6, p. 9.
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid., p. 22.
20 “Remarks by Mr. Josiah Quincy,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 19 (January 1882), p. 213.
21 Samuel Quincy to Henry Hill, May 13, 1775, Quincy Family Papers, MHS.
22 Boston Gazette, March 21, 1768, MHS.
23 Josiah Quincy Jr., “Observations on the Boston Port Bill,” Memoir of the Life of Josiah Quincy, p. 247.
24 Diary of John Adams, vol. 1, January 30, 1768, Adams Papers, MHS.
25 Massachusetts Gazette Extraordinary, Number 3351, December 24, 1767, MHS.
26 Ibid.
27 Unger, John Hancock: Merchant King, p. 115.
28 Josiah Quincy Jr., Boston Gazette, October 5, 1767, reprinted in Joseph Tinker Buckingham, Specimens of Newspaper Literature (Boston: L.C. Little and J. Brown, 1850), pp. 180–181.
Chapter 10: The Arrival of Troops
1 Massachusetts Circular Letter, February 11, 1768, reprinted in William Macdonald, Documentary Source Book of American History, 1606–1898 (New York: Macmillan, 1908), p. 148.
2 Bowen, John Adams and the American Revolution, p. 321.
3 Ibid., p. 322.
4 Customs Commissioners to Lords of Treasury, Mar. 28, 1768, in Public Records Office, London, quoted in Baxter, House of Hancock, p. 260.
5 Thomas Hutchinson to R. Jackson, April 17, 1768, in Massachusetts Archives, vol. 26, p. 299, State House, Boston.
6 Abigail Adams to Isaac Smith, April 20, 1771, Adams Papers, MHS.
7 Diary of John Adams, vol. 3, First Residence in Boston, 1768, Adams Papers, MHS.
8 Adams, The Works of John Adams, vol. 2, p. 210.
9 Ibid.
10 Samuel Quincy, “Death of a Cobbler,” preserved poem found in the Quincy-Hill-Phillips-Treadwell Papers, 1699–1969, Cambridge Historical Society, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
11 Quoted in Allan, John Hancock: Patriot, p. 108.
12 Bowen, John Adams and the American Revolution, p. 305.
13 John Adams to Dennys de Berdt, September 27, 1768, quoted in Allan, John Hancock: Patriot, p. 109.
14 John Rowe, Letters and Diary of John Rowe, a Boston Merchant, ed. Anne Rowe Cunningham (Boston: W. B. Clarke Company, 1903), entry dated May 2, 1768, p. 161.
15 Pennsylvania Chronicle and Universal Advertiser, February 27, 1769, Library of Congress.
16 Falmouth, Maine’s leading seaport, was the only town in Maine to sign a nonimportation agreement in retaliation for the Townshend Acts.
17 Governor Bernard to Lord Barrington, July 20, 1768, William Widman Barrington (Viscount), The Barrington-Bernard Correspondence and Illustrative Matter, 1760–1770 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1912), p. 167–168.
18 Quincy, Memoir of the Life of Josiah Quincy, p. 14.
19 Boston Gazette, February 23, 1767, MHS.
20 Josiah Quincy Jr. to Reverend John Eagleson, September 15, 1768, Memoir of the Life of Josiah Quincy, p. 13.
21 Evening-Post, October 24, 1768, The Annotated Newspapers of Harbottle Dorr, Jr., MHS.
22 Josiah Quincy Jr., writing as Hyperion, Appeal, Boston Gazette, October 3, 1768, reprinted in Memoir of the Life of Josiah Quincy, p. 14.
23 Josiah Quincy Jr. to Reverend John Eagleson, September 15, 1768, Memoir of the Life of Josiah Quincy, p. 16.
24 John Adams, Diary and Autobiography, vol. 1, edited by L. H. Butterfield (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), Adams Papers, MHS, part 1, sheet 16 of 53.
25 Ibid.
26 Baxter, House of Hancock, p. 268.
Chapter 11: Portents of a Comet