Thus horridly, by night and day, were the mobs driven on by the hopes of plunder and the pleasure of domineering over their superiors. Having sent terror and lamentation through their own colony, the incarnate fiends paid a visit to the episcopalians of Great Barrington, whose numbers exceeded that of the Sober Dissenters. Their wrath chiefly fell upon the Rev. Mr. Bostwick and David Ingersoll, Esq. The former was lashed with his back to a tree, and almost killed; but on account of the fits of his wife and mother, and the screamings of the women and children, the mob released him upon his signing the eighteen articles, or their League or Covenant, as they called it, (which without doubt was the same as that drawn up and written by Governor Trumbull, which will be referred to hereafter.) As to Mr. Ingersoll, after demolishing his house and stealing his goods, they brought him almost naked into Connecticut upon the bare back of a horse, in spite of the distresses of his mother and sister, which were enough to melt the heart of a savage, though producing in the Sober Dissenters but peals of laughter that rent the skies.
Treatment so extremely barbarous did Mr. Ingersoll receive
at their hands, that the sheriff of Litchfield County could not withhold his interposition, by which means he was set at liberty, after signing the league and covenant. The Grand Jury indicted some of the leaders in this riot, but the Court dismissed them, upon receiving information from Boston that Ingersoll had seceded from the House of Representatives, and declared for the King of England.
What caused this irruption of the mob into Great Barrington, follows: The laws of Massachusets-Bay gave each town a power to vote a tax for the support of the ministry, schools, poor, &c. The money, when collected, was deposited with the town treasurer, who is obliged to pay it according to the determination of the majority of the voters. The Sober Dissenters, for many years, had been the majority in Barrington, and had annually voted about two hundred pounds sterling for the ministry, above half of which was taken from the Churchmen and Lutherans, whose ministers could have no part of it, because separately the greatest number of voters were Sober Dissenters, who gave the whole to their minister. This was deemed liberty and gospel in New-England; but mark the sequel. The Lutherans and some other sects having joined the Church party, the Church gained the majority. Next year the town voted the money, as usual, for the ministry, &c.; but the majority voted that the treasurer should pay the share appointed for the ministry to the Church clergyman, which was accordingly done; whereupon the Sober Dissenters cried out, “Tyranny and persecution!” and applied to Governor Hutchinson, then the idol and protector of the Independents, for relief. His Excellency, ever willing to leave “Paul bound,” found a method of reversing the vote of the majority of the freemen of Barrington in favour of the Churchmen, calling it “a vote obtained by wrong and fraud.” The Governor, by law or without law, appointed Mayor Hawley, of Northampton, to be Moderator of the town-meeting in Barrington. The Mayor accordingly attended, but, after exerting himself for three days in behalf of his oppressed brethren, was obliged to declare that the episcopalians had a great majority of legal voters; he then went home, leaving matters as he found them.
The Sober Dissenters were always so poor in Barrington that they could not have supported their minister without taxing their neighbours; and when they lost that power, their minister departed from them, “because,” as he said, “the Lord had called him to Rhode-Island.” To overthrow the majority of the Church, and to establish the American Vine upon its old foundation, was the main intention of the Sober Dissenters of Connecticut in visiting Great Barrington at this time.
The warlike preparations throughout the colonies, and the intelligence obtained from certain credible refugees of a secret design, formed in Connecticut and Massachusets-Bay, to attack the royal army, induced General Gage to make some fortifications upon Boston-Neck for their security. These, of course, gave offence; but much more the excursion of a body of troops, on the 19th of April, 1775, to destroy a magazine of stores at Concord, and the skirmishes which ensued. In a letter of the 28th of April from Mr. Trumbull, the Governor of Connecticut, to General Gage, after speaking of the “very just and general alarm” given the “good people” of that province by his arrival at Boston with troops, and subsequent fortifications, he tells the General that “the late hostile and secret inroads of some of the troops under his command into the heart of the country, and the violence they had committed, had driven them almost into a state of desperation.” Certain it is, that the populace were then so maddened by false representations and aggravations of events, unfortunate and lamentable enough in themselves, as to be quite ripe for the rebellion the Governor and Assembly were on the point of commencing, though they had the effrontery to remonstrate against the defensive proceedings of the General, in order to conceal their own treachery. Further on, in the same letter, Mr. Trumbull writes thus: “The people of this colony, you may rely upon it, abhor the idea of taking up arms against the troops of their sovereign, and dread nothing so much as the horrors of civil war; but, at the same time, we beg leave to assure your Excellency that, as they apprehend themselves justified by the principles of self-defence, so they are most firmly resolved to defend their rights and privileges to the last extremity;
nor will they be restrained from giving aid to their brethren, if an unjustifiable attack is made upon them. Is there no way to prevent this unhappy dispute from coming to extremities? Is there no alternative but absolute submission or the desolations of war? By that humanity which constitutes so amiable a part of your character, for the honour of our sovereign, and by the glory of the British empire, we entreat you to prevent it, if it be possible. Surely, it is to be hoped that the temperate wisdom of the empire might, even yet, find expedients to restore peace, that so all parts of the empire may enjoy their particular rights, honours, and immunities. Certainly this is an event most devoutly to be wished for; and will it not be consistent with your duty to suspend the operations of war, on your part, and enable us, on ours, to quiet the minds of the people, at least till the result of some further deliberations may be known?” &c. &c.
From this letter, written, as it was, from the Governor of a province at the desire of its General Assembly, the people of England might have learned to think of the American as they did of the French sincerity. It is almost past credit that, amidst the earnest protestations it contains of a peaceable disposition in Mr. Trumbull and the rest of his coadjutors in the Government of Connecticut, they were meditating and actually taking measures for the capture of certain of the King’s forts, and the destruction of General Gage and his whole army, instead of quieting the minds of the people! Yet such was the fact. They had commissioned Motte and Phelps to draft men from the militia, if volunteers should not readily appear, for a secret expedition, which proved to be against Ticonderoga and Crown Point; and the treasurer of the colony, by order of the Governor and Council, had paid 1500l. to bear their expenses. Nay, even before the date of the above amiable epistle, Motte and Phelps had left Hertford on that treasonable undertaking, in which they were joined on the way by Colonels Allen and Easton. Nor was this the only insidious enterprise that they had to cover. The “good people” throughout the province, to the number of nearly 20,000, were secretly arming themselves, and filing off, to avoid suspicion, in small parties of
ten and a dozen, to meet “their brethren” the Massachusets; not, however, with the view of “giving aid, should any unjustifiable able attack be made upon them,” but to “surprise” Boston by storm. In addition to the Governor’s letter, the mock-peacemakers, the General Assembly, had deputed Dr. Samuel Johnson, son of the Rev. Dr. Johnson, spoken of in this work, and Oliver Wolcott, Esq. both of the Council, which had ordered the 1500l. for the adventurers to Ticonderoga, to wait upon General Gage, the more effectually to amuse and deceive him into confidence and inaction. But happily, at a critical time, just before the intended storm and slaughter at Boston, the news of the success of the secret expedition reached the town, which fully discovered the true character and business of the two Connecticut ambassadors, and rendered it necessary for them, sans cérémonie, to retire from Boston, and General Gage immediately to render the fortifications at the Neck impregnable.
The Sober Dissenters, chagrined at being disappointed in their hostile project against Boston, readily embraced the opportunities which afforded of wreaking their vengeance upon New-York. At the instance of the rebel party there, who found themselves too weak to effect their purpose of subverting the Constitution of the province, a large body immediately posted to their assistance, delivered “their brethren” from the slavery of regal government, and invested them with the liberty of doing that which was fit in their own eyes, under the democratic administration of the immaculate Livingstons, Morris, Schuyler, &c. As seemed necessary to the furtherance of their pacific views, frequent irruptions were made afterwards, in which many loyalists were disarmed and plundered, and some of them taken prisoners. Among these last were the Rev. Dr. Seabury and the Mayor of New-York. Governor Tryon happily escaped their fury; as also did the Rev. Miles Cooper, LL.D., who was leaving his house through a back window when a party of ruffians burst into his chamber and thrust their bayonets into the bed he had just quitted. Mr. Rivington was one of the sufferers by the loss of his property.