The scene that followed beggared description. The people ran from their homes and places of business into the streets, white with rage. The bells rang out the alarm of danger. The bodies of Attucks and Caldwell were carried into Faneuil Hall, where their strange faces were viewed by the largest gathering of people ever before witnessed. Maverick was buried from his mother's house in Union Street, and Gray from his brother's residence in Royal Exchange Lane. But Attucks and Caldwell, strangers in the city, without relatives, were buried from Faneuil Hall, so justly called "the Cradle of Liberty." The four hearses formed a junction in King Street; and from thence the procession moved in columns six deep, with a long line of coaches containing the first citizens of Boston. The obsequies were witnessed by a very large and respectful concourse of people. The bodies were deposited in one grave, over which a stone was placed bearing this inscription:—
"Long as in Freedom's cause the wise contend,
Dear to your country shall your fame extend;
While to the world the lettered stone shall tell
Where Caldwell, Attucks, Gray and Maverick fell."
Who was Crispus Attucks? A Negro whose soul, galling under the destroying influence of slavery, went forth a freeman, went forth not only to fight for his liberty, but to give his life as an offering upon the altar of American liberty. He was not a madcap, as some would have the world believe. He was not ignorant of the issues between the American colonies and the English government, between the freemen of the colony and the dictatorial governors. Where he was during the twenty years from 1750 to 1770, is not known; but doubtless in Boston, where he had heard the fiery eloquence of Otis, the convincing arguments of Sewall, and the tender pleadings of Belknap. He had learned to spell out the fundamental principles that should govern well-regulated communities and states; and, having come to the rapturous consciousness of his freedom in fee simple, the brightest crown God places upon mortal man, he felt himself neighbor and friend. His patriotism was not a mere spasm produced by sudden and exciting circumstances. It was an education; and knowledge comes from experience; and the experience of this black hero was not of a single day. Some time before the memorable 5th of March, Crispus addressed the following spirited letter to the Tory governor of the Province:—
"To Thomas Hutchinson: Sir,—You will hear from us with astonishment. You ought to hear from us with horror. You are chargeable before God and man, with our blood. The soldiers were but passive instruments, mere machines; neither moral nor voluntary agents in our destruction, more than the leaden pellets with which we were wounded. You was a free agent. You acted, coolly, deliberately, with all that premeditated malice, not against us in particular, but against the people in general, which, in the sight of the law, is an ingredient in the composition of murder. You will hear further from us hereafter.
Crispus Attucks."[527]
This was the declaration of war. It was fulfilled. The world has heard from him; and, more, the English-speaking world will never forget the noble daring and excusable rashness of Attucks in the holy cause of liberty! Eighteen centuries before he was saluted by death and kissed by immortality, another Negro bore the cross of Christ to Calvary for him. And when the colonists were staggering wearily under their cross of woe, a Negro came to the front, and bore that cross to the victory of glorious martyrdom!
And the people did not agree with John Adams that Attucks led "a motley rabble," but a band of patriots. Their evidence of the belief they entertained was to be found in the annual commemoration of the "5th of March," when orators, in measured sentences and impassioned eloquence, praised the hero-dead. In March, 1775, Dr. Joseph Warren, who a few months later, as Gen. Warren, made Bunker Hill the shrine of New-England patriotism, was the orator. On the question of human liberty, he said,—
"That personal freedom is the natural right of every man, and that property, or an exclusive right to dispose of what he has honestly acquired by his own labor, necessarily arises therefrom, are truths which common sense has placed beyond the reach of contradiction. And no man, or body of men, can, without being guilty of flagrant injustice, claim a right to dispose of the persons or acquisitions of any other man, or body of men, unless it can be proved that such a right has arisen from some compact between the parties, in which it has been explicitly and freely granted."
These noble sentiments were sealed by his blood at Bunker Hill, on the 17th of June, 1775, and are the amulet that will protect his fame from the corroding touch of centuries of time
The free Negroes of the Northern colonies responded to the call "to arms" that rang from the placid waters of Massachusetts Bay to the verdant hills of Berkshire, and from Lake Champlain to the upper waters of the Hudson. Every Northern colony had its Negro troops, not as separate organizations,—save the black regiment of Rhode Island,—but scattered throughout all of the white organizations of the army. At the first none but free Negroes were received into the army; but before peace came Negroes were not only admitted, they were purchased, and sent into the war, with an offer of freedom and fifty dollars bounty at the close of their service. On the 29th of May, 1775, the "Committee of Safety" for the Province of Massachusetts passed the following resolve against the enlistment of Negro slaves as soldiers:—