1770

 __________ 

“They had laid a foundering stone

for the Minutemen at Lexington

& Concord, first to defy & die.” 

Yusef Komunyakaa

__________ 

IN THIS ERA, you might catch sight of John Hancock, attired in lavender jacket, lilac-colored breeches, with frills of lace on his cuffs and shirt front. (300/117)

A leader in the battle against British taxation.

 

* 

The Boston Massacre. 

THIS DESCRIPTION comes from Coe’s Makers of the Nation, written in 1914: 

    Nothing serious, however, occurred until the evening of the fifth of March, 1770. A barber’s boy had jeered at a British officer passing through King Street. A sentry stationed near by had knocked him down. A small crowd of rough young men and boys began to pelt the sentry with stones. “Kill him! Kill him!” they shouted in a most threatening manner.

 

    The sentry was alarmed and called for aid. Colonel Preston and seven soldiers came to his assistance and lined themselves up beside him, facing the crowd, which had by this time increased to the number of fifty. The muskets, however, did not daunt the mob. They pressed forward and struck the guns with sticks, at the same time shouting and calling upon the redcoats to fire. In the confusion the soldiers thought that Preston had given the order to shoot, and discharged their arms. Five citizens were wounded and three killed. There they lay, their blood staining the whiteness of the newfallen snow.

 

    Pointing at Gov. Thomas Hutchinson afterwards, Sam Adams exclaimed with flashing eyes: “If you have the power to remove one regiment, you have the power to remove both. It is at your peril if you do not.”

    As Adams said later, in talking over the event with Dr. Joseph Warren, “I observed his knees to tremble, I saw his face grow pale, and I enjoyed the sight.”

 

* 

ANDREWS makes note of the results of the soldiers’ trial: “That the soldiers had considerable justification is proved by the fact that a jury acquitted all but two, who were convicted of manslaughter, and branded.” (2/46)

 

*

 

YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA, a modern poet, points out the role of Crispus Attucks on that fateful day,

 

Five colonists lay for calling hours

  in Faneuil Hall before sharing a grave

    at the Granary Burying Ground.

 

They had laid a foundering stone

  for the Minutemen at Lexington

    & Concord, first to defy & die,

 

& an echo of the future rose over

  the courtroom as John Adams

    defended the Brits, calling the dead

 

a ‘‘motley rabble of saucy boys,

  negroes & mulattoes, Irish

    teagues & outlandish jacktars,’’

 

who made soldiers fear for their lives,

  & at day’s end only two would pay

    with the branding of their thumbs

 

*

 

DURING the French and Indian War, the Virginia legislature had promised George Washington and his men 200,000 acres in the Ohio Valley; but the grant was not made till 1769. The next year Washington traveled west to spot good lands. The mouth of the Kanawha, he observed was “abounding in Buffalo and Wild game of all kinds as also in all kinds of Wild fowl.” He and his companions, with Native American guides, were gone nine weeks. (109/39)