Old Cape Cod

by Mary Rogers Bangs

I dare be bold

Appears like Dagon bright,

But it will fall

And make a scrawl

Before the morning light.”

Business ran over into the next day, when one of the suspects in the affair of the Liberty Pole, whether or not the poet is not recorded, was made to apologize. Again the assembly, in committee of the whole and “attended by music,” waited upon Otis, who was lodged at the house of Mr. Davis. Adjured in writing not to sit in the king’s council, but rather as a “constitutional councillor of this province” in the elected General Court at Salem, in writing he expressed gratitude “for putting me in mind of my duty; I am determined to attend at Salem in case my health permits.” To the reading of his message listened “the whole body with heads uncovered and then gave three cheers in token of their satisfaction and high appreciation of his answer as well as esteem and veneration for his person and character.” In final session the company again repudiated the hated acts of Parliament and pledged themselves to the sacred cause of liberty, registered their abhorrence of mobs and violence, warned off any other molesters of the Liberty Pole, and agreed to use their “endeavors to suppress common peddlers.” The last a matter of some mystery until one knows that peddlers were prone to sell tea, and were perhaps suspected of being spies. Barnstable had entertained the host gratis, and the hottest patriot there must have welcomed its withdrawal to Sandwich, where it proceeded to take like action against Tories and possible meddlers with the town’s Liberty Pole. Then, amid cheers for everybody, Doctor Freeman’s company broke up and sifted back to their homes, but he himself was not to come scathless out of his adventure.

Suspecting a ruse when, a few nights later, he was summoned to a dying patient, he was not to be disappointed: for as he passed the tavern, three of the “recanters” appeared as a “Committee of the Body of the People” and demanded his presence within to answer for his actions. Ignoring them, he walked on, but on his return he was set upon by the “Committee,” it is said, and crying out that his sword-cane was his only weapon he laid about him valiantly, but was knocked senseless, and would have been in hard case had he not been rescued by friends. The whole community, it seemed, was against such lawlessness. The so-called Tories who had not fled were arrested, and on the plea of Freeman got off with a fine of one hundred pounds “lawful money.” But the people showed no such clemency. Sandwich, after an indignation meeting of the citizens, rearrested the culprits and forced them, on a scaffold under the Liberty Pole, to sign a confession acknowledging that their conduct was such as “would disgrace the character of a ruffian or a Hottentot,” and engaging themselves in future “religiously to regard the laws of God and man.”

The Tories, for the most part, were no such “Hottentots.” It was natural in such a settlement as Cape Cod that there should be many conservatives: men descended from those who had never failed in loyalty to the English Government, were it Stuart or Roundhead, who had been taught to love England as the home of their fathers, and the source of law and light. As late as 1766 even Franklin was declaring before a parliamentary committee that “to be an Old England man was of itself a character of respect and gave a kind of rank among us,” and “they considered Parliament as the great bulwark and security of their liberties.” There were as a fact four parties: the ardent Whigs like Nathaniel Freeman, who were separatists at all costs; the irreconcilable Tories who, when war was imminent, fled behind the British lines in Boston or New York, or to Nova Scotia and Canada, or to England, and, in the case of Cape Cod, often to the islands southward where they could be in easy communication with British ships. And there were the moderates of both camps: Whigs whose sensibilities were offended by the extreme methods of the radicals; Tories, chiefly men of the older generation, who lacked pliancy and vision to respond to a newer order; and with the latter were ranged, at any rate at the beginning of the trouble, those who loved freedom, they could swear, yet loved better present securities and feared conflict with the might of Britain. As time went on the number of moderate Whigs steadily increased, especially in the Old Colony as befitted the sober temper of the Pilgrim inheritance; even Joseph Otis, of Barnstable, who had rivalled Doctor Nathaniel Freeman in fervor, was to join them, and the lukewarm, patriots or Tories, were ready to declare for the colonies. Even a Tory in exile could be secretly elated by the prowess of his countrymen; and one such in England confided to his diary that “these conceited islanders” may learn to their cost that “our continent can furnish brave soldiers and judicious expert commanders.” It speaks well for the Federalists that after the war was over and many extreme Tories who had left their homes petitioned to return, they were reinstated upon pledge of loyalty to the new State: whether restored as generously to the affection of their neighbors history does not record, but one may fancy children’s gibes to the third generation. In Sandwich there were many Tories who were brought to conform; but it is said there was still much disaffection, and when the Declaration of Independence was read out by the parson on a certain Sunday, a Tory who was much esteemed in the neighborhood “trooped scornfully and indignantly out of meeting.”

At Cape Cod the feud between Tory and Whig took on a comedy aspect in comparison with the vindictive civil war which it presented in many counties of New York and in the southern colonies. At Truro, as late as 1774, the house of a Whig doctor was attacked, and many still refused to employ him; a parson, for receiving a number of prominent Whigs, was admonished by some of his parishioners. At Barnstable the parties had their headquarters in rival taverns; and at Sturgis’s, where Whigs met every evening to comment on the news, the discussion, running high between moderates and radicals, sometimes slopped over into action. After one such meeting a man who had criticised the system of espionage that wasted energy in ferreting out old women’s secret stores of tea, had his fence destroyed by his irate neighbors. Otis and Freeman, it seems, were not popular with the militia who, at a review one day, clubbed muskets instead of presenting arms. “The Crockers are at the bottom of this,” cried Joseph Otis. “You lie,” gave back Captain Samuel Crocker. A fight between the two naturally ensued; in the midst of which Freeman, who was not the man to be an inactive spectator, turned upon another Crocker, a moderate Whig in politics, followed him into his house, slashing at him harmlessly enough, and in his turn was like to have been murdered by a younger member of the Crockers thirsting for vengeance. Freeman’s cutlass took effect only upon the “summer beam” of the house; and years afterwards, when it was used as a tavern, Freeman, who had come from Sandwich to attend court, was refused entertainment there. “My house is full,” quoth Madam Crocker. She pointed to the scars of the “summer beam.” “And if it were not, there would be no room for Colonel Freeman.” “Time to forget those old matters, and bury the hatchet,” protested Freeman. “Very like,” said she, “but the aggressor should dig the grave.”

A certain young woman, suspected of disloyalty, and asked by the Vigilance Committee whether she were a Tory, answered in four emphatic words which the record leaves us to imagine from the dark comment: “The Committee never forgot them and ever after treated her with respect.” This woman, Amos Otis tells us, never lost her youthful vivacity; even in old age she was gay, responsive, able to discuss with equal zest the latest novel or parson’s sermon. Her wit was keen, and the point “never blunted in order to avoid an allusion which prudery might condemn.”