Old Boston Days & Ways by Mary Caroline Crawford

Author:Mary Caroline Crawford [Crawford, Mary Caroline]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Geschichte
Publisher: Jazzybee Verlag
Published: 2018-02-28T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER X. THE MAN OF THE TOWN MEETING

WHAT of Samuel Adams all this while? He, also, it will be remembered, was a delegate to the Continental Congress and had been named with Hancock in General Gage's proclamation of June 12, 1775, offering pardon in the king's name, to all, — save two, — " who shall forthwith lay down their arms and return to the duties of peaceable subjects." To Adams, particularly, applied, of course, the further clause in that proclamation which characterized the offences of the proscribed patriots as of " too flagitious a Nature to admit of other Consideration than that of condign Punishment."

At this time as ever Adams was woefully poor. While he "superintended the birth of the child Independence," there were often no shoes for his own children, and only a scanty supply of food to spread on the table of his home on Purchase Street, Boston. His wife, Elizabeth Wells, was a very remarkable woman, however, and in some fashion or other she managed to keep the children in health and to darn her husband's old coat so that it lasted until his friends got together to buy him a new one. As clerk of the Massachusetts House of Representatives Adams earned about a hundred pounds a year until he went to Congress and, for the rest, he wrote, as we have seen, for the press. Moreover, since his chosen friends were among the plain people, his own personal expenses were very slight.

A memorable picture of him has been given by his biographer, James K. Hosmer, sitting side by side with some ship-carpenter on a block of oak, just above the tide, or with some shop-keeper in a fence corner sheltered from the wind, talking, ever talking, of freedom for his country. "For he was particularly popular in the ship-yards, the craftsmen of which exercised a great influence, his own poverty, plain clothes and carelessness as to ceremony and display," causing the laboring men to feel that he was more nearly on a level with themselves than Bowdoin, Cushing, Otis or Hancock, who, either because they possessed wealth or were affiliated with it, were counted among the workers as aristocrats. Of Adams's daily walks and habits vivid hints are given in an affidavit taken at the time when an attempt was made to collect evidence against him to the end that he might be sent to England and there tried for treason. Nothing came of the project; but there is still preserved in the London state-paper office the following curious memorial of the plan: "The information of Richard Sylvester of Boston, inn-holder, taken before me, Thomas Hutchinson, Esq., Chief Justice of said province, this twenty-third of January, in the ninth year of his Majesty's reign: "This informant sayeth that the day after the boat belonging to Mr. Harrison was burnt, the last summer, the informant observed several parties of men gathered in the street at the south end of the town of Boston, in the forenoon of the day.

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