“The treasury would have given them money, the mills bread, and the bridges would have enabled them to let in their friends, and keep out their enemies. Never was there a more propitious season for the accomplishment of their purpose.
“The country is covered with rich harvests of Indian corn; flocks and herds are everywhere fat in the fields, and the liberty and equality doctrine, nonsensical and wicked as it is (in this land of tyrants and slaves), is for electioneering purposes sounding and resounding through our valleys and mountains in every direction. The city of Richmond and the circumjacent country are in arms, and have been so for ten or twelve days past. The patrollers are doubled through the State, and the Governor, impressed with the magnitude of the danger, has appointed for himself three aids-de-camp. A number of conspirators have been hung, and a great many more are yet to be hung. The trials and executions are going on day by day. Poor, deluded wretches! Their democratic deluders, conscious of their own guilt, and fearful of the public vengeance, are most active in bringing them to punishment.”
CHAPTER XXXIII. BLACK MEN IN THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR.
The Boston Massacre, March 5, 1770, may be regarded as the first act in the great drama of the American Revolution. “From that moment,” said Daniel Webster, “we may date the severance of the British Empire.” The presence of the British soldiers in King Street excited the patriotic indignation of the people. The whole community was stirred, and sage counsellors were deliberating and writing and talking about the public grievances. But it was not for “the wise and prudent” to be the first to act against the encroachments of arbitrary power.
A motley rabble of men and boys, led by Crispus Attucks, a negro, and shouting, “The way to get rid of these soldiers is to attack the main guard; strike at the root; this is the nest!” with more valor than discretion, they rushed to King Street, and were fired upon by Captain Preston’s company. Crispus Attucks was the first to fall; he and Samuel Gray and Jonas Caldwell were killed on the spot. Samuel Maverick and Patrick Carr were mortally wounded.
The excitement which followed was intense. The bells of the town were rung; an impromptu meeting was held, and an immense assembly was gathered. Three days after, on the 8th, a public funeral of the martyrs took place. The shops in Boston were closed; all the bells of Boston and neighboring towns were rung. It was said that a greater number of persons assembled on this occasion than were ever before gathered on the continent for a similar purpose.
The body of Attucks, the negro slave, had been placed in Faneuil Hall, with that of Caldwell, both being strangers in the city. Maverick was buried from his mother’s house in Union Street, and Gray from his brother’s, in Royal Exchange Lane. The four hearses formed a junction in King Street, and there the procession marched on in columns six deep, with a long file of coaches belonging to the most distinguished citizens, to the middle burying-ground, where the four victims were deposited in one grave, over which a stone was placed with the following inscription:
“Long as in Freedom’s cause the wise contend,