MASSACHUSETTS.
On the fifth of March, 1851, a petition was presented to the Massachusetts Legislature, asking an appropriation of $1,500 for erecting a monument to the memory of Crispus Attucks, the first martyr in the Boston Massacre of March 5th, 1770. The matter was referred to the Committee on Military Affairs, who granted a hearing of the petitioners, in whose behalf appeared Wendell Phillips, Esq., and Wm. C. Nell, but finally submitted an adverse report, on the ground that a boy, Christopher Snyder, was previously killed. Admitting this fact (which was the result of a very different sense from that in which Attucks fell), does not offset the claims of Attucks, and those who made the fifth of March famous in our annals—the day which history selects as the dawn of the American Revolution.
Botta's History and Hewe's Reminiscences (the tea party survivor) establishes the fact that the colored man, Attucks, was of and with the people, and was never regarded otherwise. Botta, in speaking of the scenes of the 5th of March, says "The people were greatly exasperated. The multitude armed with clubs, ran towards King Street, crying, 'Let us drive out these ribalds; they have no business here!" The rioters rushed furiously towards the Custom House; they approached the sentinel, crying, 'Kill him, kill him!' They assaulted him with snowballs, pieces of ice, and whatever they could lay their hands upon." The guard was then called, and, in marching to the Custom House, "they encountered," continues Botta, "a band of the populace, led by a mulatto named Attucks, who brandished their clubs, and peltered them with snowballs. The maledictions, the execrations of the multitude were horrible. In the midst of a torrent of invectives from every quarter, the military were challenged to fire. The populace advanced to the points of their bayonets. The soldiers appeared like statues; the cries, the howlings, the menaces, the violent din of bells still sounding the alarm, increased the confusion and the horrors of these moments; at length the mulatto and twelve of his companions, pressing forward, environed the soldiers, and striking their muskets with their clubs cried to the multitude: 'Be not afraid, they dare not fire; why do they hesitate, why do you not kill them, why not crush them at once!' The mulatto lifted his arm against Captain Preston, and having turned one of the muskets, he seized the bayonet with his left hand, as if he intended to execute his threat. At this moment, confused cries were heard: 'The wretches dare not fire!' Firing succeeds, Attucks is slain. The other discharges follow. Three were killed, five severely wounded, and several others slightly."
Attucks was killed by Montgomery, one of Captain Preston's soldiers. He had been foremost in resisting and was first slain; as proof of front and close engagement, received two balls, one in each breast.
John Adams, counsel for the soldiers, admitted that Attucks appeared to have undertaken to be the Hero of the night, and to lead the army with banners. He and Caldwell, not being residents of Boston, were both buried from Faneuil Hall. The citizens generally participated in the funeral solemnities.
The Boston Transcript, of March, 1851, published an anonymous correspondence disparaging the whole affair; denouncing Crispus Attucks as a very firebrand of disorder and sedition, the most conspicuous, inflammatory, and uproarious of the misguided populace, and who, if he had not fallen a martyr, would richly have reserved hanging as an incendiary. If the leader, Attucks, deserved the epithets above applied is it not a legitimate inference that the citizens who followed on are included, and hence, should swing in his company on the gallows? If the leader and his patriot band were misguided, the distinguished orators who, in after days, commemorated the fifth day of March, must, indeed, have been misguided, and with them the masses who were inspired by their eloquence; for John Hancock, in 1774, invokes the injured shades of Maverick, Gray, Caldwell, Attucks, Carr.
And Judge Dawes, in 1775, thus alludes to the band of misguided incendiaries. "The provocation of that night must be numbered among the master springs which gave the first motion to a vast machinery, a noble and comprehensive system of national independence."
Ramsay's History of the American Revolution, Vol. I., p. 22, adds, "The anniversary of the 5th of March was observed with great solemnity; eloquent orators were successively employed to preserve the remembrance of it fresh in the mind. On these occasions the blessings of liberty—the horrors of Slavery, and the danger of a standing army were presented to the public view. These annual orations administered fuel to the fire of liberty, and kept it burning with an irresistible flame."
The 5th of March continued to be celebrated for the above reasons, until the Declaration of American Independence was substituted in its place, and its orators were expected to consider the feelings, manners, and principles of the former as giving birth to the latter.
In judging, then, of the merits of those who launched the American Revolution, we would not take counsel from the Tories of that or the present day, but rather heed the approving eulogy of Lovell, Hancock and Warren.
Welcome, then, be every taunt that such correspondents have flung at Attucks and his company, as the best evidence of their merits and strongest claims on our gratitude. Envy and the foe do not labor to abuse any but prominent champions of a cause.
The rejection of this petition was to be expected, if we accept the axiom that a Colored man never gets Justice done him in the United States, except by mistake. The petitioners only asked for that Justice, and that the name of Crispus Attucks be surrounded with the same emblems constantly appropriated by a grateful country to other gallant Americans.
And yet let it be recorded that the same session of the Legislature which had refused the Attucks monument, granted one to Isaac Davis, of Concord,—both were promoters of the American Revolution; but one was white, the other black—and this fact is the only solution to the problem why Justice is not meted out.[1]
[1] A monument to Crispus Attucks has been erected on Boston Commons since the above was written.—H. T. K.
Extract from the Speech of Hon. Anson Burlingame, in Faneuil Hall, October 13, 1852, when alluding to the volunteer participation of Boston officials in returning Thomas Sims to bondage, in April, 1851.
"The conquering of New England prejudices in favor of liberty, 'does not pay.' It 'does not pay,' I submit, to put our fellow citizens under practical martial law; to beat the drum in our streets; to clothe our temples of justice in chains, and to creep along by the light of the morning star, over the ground wet with the blood of Crispus Attucks, the noble Colored man, who fell in King Street, before the muskets of tyranny, away in the dawn of our Revolution; creep by Faneuil Hall, silent and dark; by the Green Dragon, where that noble mechanic, Paul Revere, once mustered the sons of liberty; within sight of Prospect Hill, where we first unfurled the glorious banner; creep along with funeral pace, bearing a brother, a man made in the image of his God, not to the grave—oh, that were merciful, for in the grave there is no work and no device, and the voice of a master never comes—but back to the degradation of a Slavery which kills out of a living body an immortal soul. (Great sensation.) Oh! where is the man now who took part in that mournful transaction, who would wish, looking back upon it, to avow it."
During the Revolutionary War, public opinion was so strongly in favor of the abolition of slavery, that, in some of the country towns, votes were passed in town meetings that they would have no slaves among them; and that they would not exact, of masters, any bonds for the maintenance of liberated blacks, should they become incapable of supporting themselves. A liberty-loving antiquarian copied the following from Suffolk Probate Record, and published it in the Liberator of February, 1847:
"Know all men by these presents, that I, Jonathan Jackson, of Newburyport, in the county of Essex, gentleman, in consideration of the impropriety I feel, and have felt in beholding any person in constant bondage—more especially at the time when my country is so warmly contending for the liberty every man ought to enjoy—and having sometime since promised my Negro man, Pomp, that I would give him his freedom—and in further consideration of five shillings, paid me by said Pomp, I do hereby liberate, manumit, and set him free; and I do hereby remise and release unto said Pomp, all demands of whatever nature I have against said Pomp.
"In witness whereof, I hereunto set my hand and seal, this nineteenth June, 1776.
"Jonathan Jackson. (Seal).
"Witness, Mary Coburn, Wm. Noyes."
It only remains to say a word respecting the two parties of the foregoing indenture.
Jonathan Jackson, of Newburyport, we well remember to have heard spoken of, in our boyish days, by honored lips, as a most upright and thorough gentleman of the old school, possessing talents and character of the first standing. He was the first Collector of the Port of Boston, under Washington's administration and was Treasurer of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for many years, and died in 1810. A tribute to his memory and his worth, said to be from the pen of the late John Lowell, appeared in the Columbian Sentinel, March 10, 1810. His immediate descendants have long resided in this city, are extensively known, and as widely and justly honored.
Pomp took the name of his late master, upon his emancipation, and soon after enlisted in the army, as Pomp Jackson, served through the whole war of the revolution and obtained an honorable discharge at its termination. He afterwards settled in Andover, near a pond, still known as "Pomp's Pond," where some of his descendants yet live. In this case of emancipation, it appears, instead of "cutting his master's throat," he only slashed the throats of his country's enemies.
The late Governor Eustis, of Massachusetts, the pride and boast of the democracy of the East, himself an active participant in the War, and therefore a most competent witness, states that the Freed Colored Soldiers entered the ranks with the whites. The time of those who were Slaves was purchased of their masters, and they were induced to enter the service in consequence of a law of Congress, by which, on condition of their serving in the ranks during the War, they were made Freemen. The hope of Liberty inspired them with the courage to oppose their breasts to the Hessian bayonet at Red Bank, and enabled them to endure with fortitude the cold and famine of Valley Forge.
Seymour Burr was a Slave in Connecticut, to a brother of Col. Aaron Burr, from whom he derived his name. Though treated with much favor by his master, his heart yearned for liberty, and he seized an occasion to induce several of his fellow servants to escape in a boat, intending to join the British, that they might become Freemen; but being pursued by their owners, armed with implements of death, they were compelled to surrender.
Burr's master, contrary to his expectation, did not inflict corporal punishment, but reminded him of the kindness with which he had been treated, and asked what inducement he could have in leaving him. Burr replied that he wanted his liberty. His owner finally proposed, that if he would give him the bounty money he might join the American army, and at the end of the war be his own man. Burr, willing to make any sacrifice for his liberty, consented, and served faithfully during the campaign, attached to the Seventh Regiment, commanded by Colonel, afterwards Governor Brooks, of Melford. He was present at the siege of Fort Catskill, and endured much suffering from starvation and cold. After some skirmishing the army was relieved by the arrival of Gen. Washington, who, as witnessed by him, shed tears of joy on finding them unexpectedly safe.
Burr married one of the Punkapog tribe of Indians, and settled in Canton, Mass., where his widow now, aged one hundred and one years, draws his pension.
Primus Hall, a native Bostonian, and long known to the citizens as a soap-boiler, served in the revolutionary war, and used to entertain the social circle with various anecdotes of military experience; among them an instance, where being himself in possession of a blanket, at a time when such a luxury had become scarce, Gen. Washington entered the tent, having appropriated his own bedding for the worn-out soldiers, Hall immediately tendered his blanket for the General, who replied, he preferred sharing his privations with his fellow soldiers, and accordingly Gen. Washington and Primus Hall reposed for the night together.
Mr. Hall was among those Colored citizens who, in the war of 1812, repaired to Castle Island, in Boston harbor, to assist in building fortifications. (See Appendix.)
Joshua B. Smith narrated to me that he was present at a company of distinguished Massachusetts men, when the conversation turned upon the exploits of Revolutionary times; and that the late Judge Story related the instance of a Colored Artillerist, who, while having charge of a cannon with a white fellow soldier, was wounded in one arm. He immediately turned to his comrade and proposed changing his position, exclaiming that he had yet one arm left with which he could render some service to his country. The change proved fatal to the heroic soldier, for another shot from the enemy killed him on the spot. Judge Story furnished other incidents of the bravery and devotion of Colored Soldiers, adding, that he had often thought them and their descendants too much neglected, considering the part they had sustained in the Wars; and he regretted that he did not, in early life, gather the facts into a shape for general information.
At the close of the Revolutionary War, John Hancock presented the Colored Soldiers, called the "Bucks of America," an appropriate banner (bearing his initials) as a tribute to their courage and devotion in the cause of American Liberty, through a protracted and bloody struggle. This banner is now in the possession of Mrs. Kay, whose father was a member of the company.
When a boy, living in West Boston, I was familiar with the presence of "Big Dick," and of hearing the following history confirmed. It is not wholly out of place in this collection.
Big Dick—Richard Seavers, whose death in this city we lately mentioned, was a man of mighty mould. A short time previous to his death, he measured six feet five inches in height, and attracted much attention when seen in the street. He was born in Salem or vicinity and when about sixteen years old, went to England, where he entered the British navy. When the war of 1812 broke out, he would not fight against his country, gave himself up as an American citizen, and was made a prisoner of war.
A Surgeon on board of an American privateer, who experienced the tender mercies of the British Government in Darton prison, during the War of 1812, makes honorable mention of King Dick, as he was there called.
"There are about four hundred and fifty negroes in prison No. 4, and this assemblage of blacks affords many curious anecdotes, and much matter for speculation. These blacks have a ruler among them whom they call King Dick. He is by far the largest, and I suspect, the strongest man in the prison. He is six feet five inches in height, and proportionably large. This black Hercules commands respect, and his subjects tremble in his presence. He goes the rounds every day, and visits every berth to see if they are all kept clean. When he goes the rounds, he puts on a large bearskin cap, and carries in his hand a huge club. If any of his men are dirty, drunken or grossly negligent, he threatens them with a beating; and if they are saucy, they are sure to receive one. They have several times conspired against him, and attempted to dethrone him, but he has always conquered the rebels. One night several attacked him while asleep in his hammock, he sprang up and seized the smallest of them by his feet, and thumped another with him. The poor negro who had thus been made a beetle of, was carried next day to the hospital, sadly bruised, and provokingly laughed at. This ruler of the blacks, this King Richard IV, is a man of good understanding, and he exercises it to a good purpose. If any one of his color cheats, defrauds, or steals from his comrades, he is sure to be punished for it."—Boston Patriot.