The stories go on, with a touch here and a touch there to accent the village flavor. The Bodfishes, huge father and huge sons, lived a patriarchal life on their farm; for more than seventy years their estate was held in common, the father acting as trustee and granting his sons only as much as would qualify them for voters. And a scion of the less illustrious branch of a prominent family was ready to argue his claim for preëminence: “We’ll discuss that,” he would thunder with swelling port. And won the sobriquet of “Scussion Sam” for his pains. There was another member of the same family whose shrewd humor served as well as roguery. He was master of the little packet nicknamed Somerset after the British man-of-war, which carried to Boston onions, among other cargo, for the West Indies market. “Gentlemen,” said he persuasively to some possible buyers, “these are what are called ’tarnity’ onions; they’ll keep to all eternity.” But a week out of port on their way to the south, the onions had to be thrown overboard. At another time he outsailed a neighbor who was shipping onions to a Salem trader, and presented his own cargo in their stead. “But how about Huckins?” asked the trader. “My son-in-law,” returned the captain glibly. “Here are the onions.” One may fancy that tavern and living-room buzzed with the news of this trick when the discomfited Huckins made the home port. Still another member of the family was of different mould—one who gloried in the ease his poverty gave him. “I’m thankful I don’t own that number of cattle,” commented he, watching a neighbor laboring over his stock on a snowy day. “Squire and I,” said he again genially, “keep more cows than any other two men in town.” Squire, his brother, had twenty cows, he one.
But the account of Barnabas Downs best typifies, perhaps, the tranquil village life that flowed on amid the outer turmoil of war and politics and finance. He was born in 1730 and lived long and laborious years on his thirty-acre farm, which supported some cattle, a horse or two, a large flock of sheep, and produced sufficient grain and vegetables. His stock ran at large through the summer; his winter hay he cut in the salt meadows. His clothing was made from the wool of his sheep; the surplus produce of his farm he traded for groceries at the village shop, and exchanged labor for labor with blacksmith, shoemaker, and carpenter. Sometimes he shipped onions to Boston; but he had little money, and needed little. And at this time his class of small farmers made perhaps more than half the population in any one of the Cape towns except those, like Truro, where practically every man in the community “went to sea”—simple, industrious creatures, who lived comfortably by another standard than ours, and were not unmindful of larger interests than their own. “He was the most independent of men,” is the comment of Otis. “Six days he labored and did all his work, and the seventh was a day of rest.”
CHAPTER V
THE ENGLISH WARS
I
The difficulties incident to the French wars had given the colonies useful training to prepare them for concerted action against the stupid enactments of the mother country in the reign of George III. England, fully occupied with the great continental wars of which the American conflicts were only a by-product, had been forced largely to let the colonies fend for themselves. When border hostilities were growing to the final French and Indian War, she had suggested the expediency of their coöperating for defence; and just twenty-two years before the Declaration of Independence came into being, Benjamin Franklin had been ready to present to a Colonial Council, called to parley with the Six Nations, a plan of confederation which, being objected to by some as giving “too much power to the people” and by others as conceding “too much to the king,” came to naught. But the fact was established that all the colonies, and not only those of New England, were learning to act together. And the great drift away from mutual understanding with England, which in the beginning, one would think, might have been so easily checked, increased. The colonies knew that by their valor chiefly had been established in America the supremacy of England, and their youthful pride was quick to take offence. In 1760, when a Royal Governor, in his inaugural, cited “the blessings of subjection to Great Britain,” the Massachusetts House was careful to express their “relation” to the Home Government. His predecessor, who had been more sympathetic to the genius of the colonies, lived to warn Parliament that never would America submit to injustice. Yet year by year was injustice done. As early as 1761 oppressive trade acts had brought out the flaming eloquence of young James Otis, of Barnstable. “I argue in favor of British liberties,” cried he in the Massachusetts Chamber. “I oppose the kind of power the exercise of which in former periods of English history cost one king of England his head and another his throne.” For four hours, spellbound, the Court listened to his plea; and well might John Adams, who heard him that day, aver: “American independence was then and there born.” And for the next ten years by his pamphlets, “The Vindication of the Conduct of the House of Representatives” and “The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved,” by his letters, and other writings, it has been truly said that Otis “led the movement for civil liberty in Massachusetts.”
As if urged on to foolishness by a decree of fate that America should be a nation, England continued to blunder: she sought to extinguish the military spirit that had been so useful to her by creating a standing army which, although independent of them, the colonies should support; she obstructed manufacturing that the colonies might be dependent upon British markets; by prohibitive foreign duties she restricted trade to British ports, and even taxed trade between colony and colony for the benefit of the imperial treasury. No wonder the colonies were assured that England meant to get an undue portion of the war expense from them. And when Englishmen complained that rich colonists lived like lords while they were impoverished with taxes, the colonists were ready to retort that England had appropriated Canada, the prize won largely through their efforts, and that they had already taxed themselves to the limit to pay their own way. But England, undeterred by warnings at home and plain signs of storm in the colonies, still pleading “the vast debt” incurred “in defence of her American possessions,” in March, 1765, passed the obnoxious Stamp Act which prescribed the use of stamped paper for business and legal documents, newspapers and pamphlets: an annoying enough provision in itself, but the crux of the difficulty was that England, without the consent of the colonies, imposed the tax.
In October a congress of deputies met in New York to “consult on the common interest,” and was presided over by Timothy Ruggles, who had married the Widow Bathsheba Newcomb, of Sandwich, and lived there for some years as lawyer and tavern-keeper. He is said to have been a man of charm and wit, a clever politician, and a patriot who later turned Tory. The congress set forth in no uncertain terms “the rights and liberties of the natural-born subjects of Great Britain ... which Parliament by its recent action has invaded.” And pre-dating the Boston Tea Party, it was another man with Cape affiliations, Captain Isaac Sears, who, in other fashion, defeated the excisemen. “Hurrah, boys,” cried he at the head of a New York mob, “we will have the stamps.” And have them they did, and burned them, too. Sears became head of a Committee for Public Safety, and when Gage was trying to buy material in New York, warned the citizens that America best keep her supplies for her own use. His sobriquet of “King Sears” tells us something of his personality.
England, against the advice of her ablest men, proceeded on her ruinous way. Some parliamentary bombast about “these Americans nurtured so carefully by the motherland” was neatly punctured by Captain Barré, a member who had lived in the colonies: “Planted by your care? No, your oppressions planted them in America,” thundered he. “Nourished by your indulgence? They grew by your neglect. Protected by your arms? They themselves have nobly taken up arms in your defence.” “They are too much like yourselves to be driven,” was his parting shot. And in the Lords, Camden was announcing: “You have no right to tax America; I have searched the matter. I repeat it.... Were I an American, I would resist to the last drop of my blood.” Asked in what book he found such law, he proudly answered: “It has been the custom of England; and, my lords, the custom of England is the law of the land.” At Boston, as in antiphon, James Otis declared: “Let Great Britain rescind; if she does not, the colonies are lost to her.”
A convention of towns, those of the Cape included, calling upon the king for redress, appealed to “the sovereign people.” The king’s ministers answered by garrisoning Boston with four thousand royal troops which the Whigs were now ready to view as a foreign aggression. Non-importation associations, under the motto, “United we conquer; divided we die,” were formed—Boston leading, the Cape towns following close. In the general excitement Massachusetts boiled hottest: for in her capital were the royal troops and here, naturally, was the first clash of arms. The year 1770 brought the “Boston massacre”; and in the same year, under Lord North, all duties were remitted save those on tea—England had bound herself to the East India Company there: to no avail, since the right to tax was reserved. Yet the repeal was welcomed as a partial victory by all but the hot-heads who were determined on separation; and Englishmen, who had taken a burning interest in the struggle of the colonies, rejoiced. London celebrated the event with clash of Bow Bells and dressed ships on the Thames.
Then, in 1773, came the little fleet of tea ships to Boston; and Boston, though she liked tea, promptly threw it into the harbor. Captain Benjamin Gorham, of the Barnstable family, was master of one of the ships, with a cargo of “Bohea”; and it was solemnly reported that “this evening a number of Indians, it is said of his Majesty of Ocnookortunkoog tribe, emptied every chest into the dock and destroyed the whole twenty-eight and a half chests.” And Cape Cod had her private Tea Party: for one of the fleet had run aground on the “Back Side” at Provincetown. John Greenough, district clerk of Wellfleet and teacher of a grammar school “attended by such only as learn the Latin and Greek languages,” busied himself about the task of transferring the cargo to Boston; but no Cape captain, though several were idle, would undertake the job, and boats were had down from Boston for the purpose. The Boston Committee of Correspondence, meantime, sent out a circular letter reporting their Tea Party, and adding: “the people at the Cape will we hope behave with propriety and as becomes men resolved to save their Country.” For it was suspected that not all the wrecked tea had been shipped to Boston; and indeed it soon transpired that Master Greenough, seeing no harm since the Government got no duty, had thriftily retained two damaged cases for himself and a friend. Brought to see his error, his due apology was spread upon the records: “I do declare I had no intention to injure the liberties of my countrymen therein. And whereas the Committee of Correspondence for this district apprehend that I have abused them, in a letter I sent them, I do declare I had no such intention, and wish to be reconciled to them again and to forget and forgive on both sides.” Other tea than Greenough’s hoard was being hunted out. A Truro town-meeting records: “Several persons appeared of whom it had been reported that they had purchased small quantities of the East India company’s baneful teas, lately cast ashore at Provincetown. On examining these persons it appeared that their buying this noxious tea was through ignorance and inadvertance, and that they were induced thereto by the villainous example and artful persuading of some noted pretended friends of government from the neighboring towns.” There is evidence enough that some tea floated into the channels of trade; but any one guilty of the traffic, when apprehended, was quick to place the blame elsewhere.