Three days later (September 19) Governor Bernard threw off all disguise. He formally announced to the Council that troops were coming, and asked this body to provide them quarters. And now began a long, irritating, and arrogant endeavor on the part of the Executive to browbeat the local authorities in the matter of providing quarters for the troops. The official record is voluminous. The Patriots kept strictly to the law, and won a moral victory: the royal officials persisted in virtually urging burly British will as law, and suffered the shame of an ignominious defeat. The Governor thought the Government had received a blow that made it reel; and, in a garrulous, complaining letter, supplies not only a vivid idea of the whole of this struggle, but an idea of his well-deserved individual mortification. "The account up to this time," (October 30, 1768,) he wrote, "will end in my having employed myself from September nineteenth to October twenty-sixth, that is, thirty-eight days, in endeavoring to procure quarters for the two regiments here to no purpose. For having during this time been bandied about from one to another, I at length got positive refusals from every one that I could apply to, that is, the Council, the Selectmen, and the Justices of the Peace; upon which the General, [Gage,] who came here on purpose, has found himself obliged to hire and fit up buildings at the expense of the Crown, by which means the two regiments are at length got into good occasional barracks."
The new scene of an American States-General in Faneuil Hall,—so the royal Governor and Parliamentary orators termed the Convention,—a manifestation of the rising power of the people, was followed by the spectacle of an imposing naval force in the harbor. The Sam Adams Regiments, sent on the mission of warring against the republican idea, were proudly borne to Boston by fifteen British men-of-war, which were moored (September 29) in well-chosen fighting positions around the north end of the quiet, but glorious town. In the evening the curious Bostonians put out in their boats from the wharves to get a near view of the ships. There were great rejoicings on board. The sky was brilliant with the rockets that were shot off from the decks, and the air resounded with the music of the bands. It was noticed that the favorite piece seemed to be "the Yankee tune": it was played by the regimental bands when Earl Percy led a British force out of Boston on Lexington morning, but no mention is made of its being performed when this force returned in the evening of that famous day, or when the Sam Adams Regiments left the town.
The King's troops landed on the first day of October. Though it had been printed in England that ten thousand men were enrolled to oppose them,—though the local officials had predicted that the event would occasion a crisis in affairs,—though John Bull had been so abominably imposed upon that he as much expected to see a mob resist the landing as he lately expected the mob would resist the delivery of the Confederate Commissioners,—and though not merely ministerial circles, but all England, were looking forward with serious apprehensions to the result,—yet the day was so tame that little history was made worth relating. As the spectators on board the ships, about noon, were looking for a battle-scene, they saw only a naval and military show. The ships of war were prepared for action by loading the guns and putting springs on the cables. The troops, after sixteen rounds of powder and ball had been served out to them, entered the boats. Rude artists were looking on, and sketching the peaceful display, setting down each boat and ship and island, with view undisturbed by the smoke of battle or even of salute. They did not notice, however, that the commander of the land force, Lieutenant-Colonel Dalrymple, went ashore privately, at about eleven o'clock, and sauntered over the town. He met no local militia; he saw nor horns nor hoofs of insurrection; he saw not even the royal Governor, for he had retired to Jamaica Plain; and instead of a cordial Executive greeting and proper directions as to what to do, he found that everything was left to himself. He knew that neither the Council nor the Governor had provided quarters for his command; but from the doings or non-doings of this day he conceived feelings towards the runaway official which he expressed by words, at the time, "full as plain as pleasant," and afterwards officially in writing to his superiors. Bernard met Dalrymple's intimations of cowardice by the truthful allegation that there was not the least danger of insurrection, and of want of attention by the mean allegation that the Colonel was chagrined because he was not complimented with a dinner.
An hour after the Commander made his reconnoissance, about noon, the boats moved in fine order towards the Long Wharf, so termed as being a noble commercial pier running far out into the Bay. Here the Fourteenth Regiment, under Colonel Dalrymple, landed, and, having formed, marched, in the words of the time, with drums beating, fifes playing, and colors flying, up King Street (now State Street) to the Town-House, where it halted. It is not said that the troops were complimented by the presence of the people, who, on holidays then as on holidays now, usually appeared, having an air of self-respect, well-dressed, well-behaved, with nothing moving among them more threatening than the baton of the police as the sign of law and authority, but respecting that as the symbol of their own law. What Tory writers and officials say warrants the inference that the Patriots kept away. Dalrymple said that the Convention was planet-stricken; "Sagittarius," a Tory scribbler, says the Convention ran, and tells how they ran:—"The courage of the faithful only consisted in blustering, for the morning that the troops landed they broke up, and rushed out of town like a herd of scalded hogs." If the Patriots generally were absent, it was from design. The Fourteenth Regiment remained near the Town-House until the Twenty-Ninth joined it, when the column marched to the Common. About four o'clock these troops were joined by the Fifty-Ninth Regiment, and a train of artillery with two field-pieces. This made a force of a thousand fine-appearing and well-disciplined regulars.
Colonel Dalrymple ordered the Twenty-Ninth Regiment to encamp immediately, which, as it had field-equipage, it was enabled to do, and pitched its tents on the Common; but he had no cover for the Fourteenth Regiment, and he now endeavored to obtain quarters for it. He was directed to the Manufactory House, a large building owned by the Province, in what is now Hamilton Place, near the Common, which was hired by a zealous Patriot, who declined to let the troops occupy it; whereupon he applied to the Selectmen for Faneuil Hall, promising that the utmost care should be taken not to injure the property. "About twilight," in the words of the "Gazette," "the Fourteenth Regiment marched down to the Hall, where they stood under arms till near nine o'clock, when the door, by some means or other, being opened, they took up their lodgings there that night." The Colonel exultingly wrote,—"By tolerable management I got possession of Faneuil Hall, the School of Liberty, from the Sons thereof, without force, and thereby secured all their arms": about four hundred had been recently placed there to be cleaned.
Such was the day, so long looked forward to, of the landing of the King's troops. The people were indignant, but were silent and preserved their self-respect; but the object of the popular leaders had been accomplished, so far as the reception of the military force was concerned. A candid British observer, who was in Boston, saw the truth and printed it in England:—"The Patriot leaders of the Opposition were much more concerned at any mobs that happened than the Government people. These last seem pleased with them, as countenancing their representations,—the necessity of sending soldiers to keep them in order." On this occasion, in the words of the "Gazette," "Not the least attempt was made or contemplated to oppose the landing of the King's troops or their encampment on the Common." There is no mention made of even hisses or groans, as the colors that symbolized arbitrary power were proudly borne up King Street. The peace and good order that marked the day much chagrined the Loyalists, and fairly astonished "the gentlemen of the military."
These gentlemen might have read in the next issues of the journals the temper of the public mind, in the comments freely made on their mission and on the events that were said to have occasioned their presence. The pretext, the obnoxious proceedings of the eighteenth of March, was characterized as the trifling hallooing of a harmless procession; the mob of the tenth of June was more serious, but was soon over; but on the all-important and vital point of allegiance, they might have seen expressed, in the weighty words of the Council, infinite regret at the reflection which that show of force implied on the loyalty of the people to their sovereign, who had not in his wide-extended dominions any more faithful subjects than in the town of Boston. And what really was the offence of the Patriots? They had resolved, they had petitioned, they had agreed not to import or to buy British goods. But they were not law-breakers, for they could triumphantly challenge their opponents to produce a single instance since the tenth of June of an interruption of the public peace or of resistance to law; and they were not political heretics, for the principles of colonial administration which they stood on were such as their countrymen unanimously now indorse, and British statesmanship is now pleased to accept. Yet they were threatened in the streets with the whipping-post and the pillory, with the loss of their ears or their heads,—and in official instructions, printed in the journals, with transportation to England for trial. This last threat was serious. The Government proposed to make arrests under a statute of the reign of Henry VIII.: actually designed (Lord Mahon's words) "to draw forth the mouldering edict of a tyrant from the dust where it had long lain, and where it ever deserved to lie, and to fling it" against a band of popular leaders who were wisely and well supporting a most sacred cause. But these leaders were not actuated by the fanaticism that is always blind and often cruel, nor by the ambition that is unworthy and is then reckless and criminal; but, with a clear apprehension of their ground and definite notions of policy, they went forward with no faltering step. Their calm and true statement through the press was,—"It is the part this town has taken on the side of Liberty, and its noble exertions in favor of the rights of America, that have rendered it so obnoxious to the tools of arbitrary power." "We are now [October 3, 1768] become a spectacle to all North America. May our conduct be such as not to disgrace ourselves or injure the common cause!"
Thus wove the solid men of Boston their mantle of enduring glory.
OUT OF THE BODY TO GOD.
Wearily, wearily, wearily:
Sobbing through space like a south-wind,
Floating in limitless ether,
Ether unbounded, unfathomed,
Where is no upward nor downward,
Island, nor shallow, nor shore:
Wearily floating and sobbing,
Out of the body to God!