Danver Steven L. (Edited). Revolts, Protests, Demonstrations, and Rebellions in American History: An Encyclopedia (ENG)

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Further Reading

Agresto, John. “ ‘Art and Historical Truth’: The Boston Massacre.” Journal of Communi-

cation (Autumn 1979): 170–174.

Brigham, Clarence S. Paul Revere’s Engravings. New York: Atheneum, 1969.

Ford, Paul Leicester. “Some Pelham Copley Letters.” Atlantic Monthly, April 1893, 499–510.

Korsmeyer, Carolyn. “Pictorial Assertion.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 43,

no. 3 (Spring 1985): 257–265.

Paul Revere—Artisan, Businessman, and Patriot: The Man behind the Myth. Boston: Paul

Revere Memorial Association, 1988.

Triber, Jayne E. A True Republican: The Life of Paul Revere.Amherst:Universityof

Massachusetts Press, 1998.

George R. T. Hewes’s Account

of the Boston Massacre (1770)

In 1833, writer James Hawkes discovered one of the last surviving participants of the American

Revolution in Richland Springs, New York. He was 91-year-old George R. T. Hewes, who had wit-

nessed the Boston Massacre, pa rticipated in the Boston Tea Party, and served in the American

militia during the Revolutiona ry War. Hawkes wrote a biography of Hewes and published his

memoir, in which Hewes describes the events he witnessed. These publications made Hewes

famous. Reproduced here is Hewes’s account of the Boston Massacre of March 1770.

On my inquiring of Hewes what knowl edge he had of that event, he replied, that he

knew nothing from history, as he had never read anything relating to it from any pub-

lication whatever, and can therefore only give the information which I derived from

the event of the day upon which the catas trophe happene d. On that day, one of the

British ofﬁcers applied to a barber, to be shaved and dressed; the master of the shop,

whose name was Pemont, told his apprentice boy he might serve him, and receive the

pay to himself, while Pemont left the shop. The boy accordingly served him, but the

ofﬁcer, for some reason unknown to me, went a way from the shop without paying

him for his service.

After the ofﬁcer had been gone some time, the boy went to the house where he was,

with his acc ount , to demand payment of his bill, but the sentinel, who was before the

doo r, would not give him admittance, nor permit him to see the ofﬁcer; and as some

angry words were interchanged between the sentinel and the boy, a considerable num-

ber of the people from the vicinity, soon gathered at the place where they were, which

was in King street, and I was soon on the ground among them. The violent agitation of

the citizens, not only on account of the abuse offered to the boy, but other causes of

excitement, then fresh in the recollection, was such that the sentinel began to be appre-

hensive of danger, and knocked at the door of the house, where the ofﬁcers were, and

told the servant who came to the door, that he was afraid of his life, and would quit his

164 Boston Massacre (1770)

post unless he was protected. T he ofﬁcers in the house then sent a messenger to t he

guard-house, to require Captain Preston to come with a sufﬁcient number of his sol-

diers td defend them from the threatened violence of the people. On receiving the mes-

sage, he came immediately with a small guard of grenadiers, and paraded them before

the custom-house, where the British ofﬁcers were shut up. Captain P reston then

ordered th e people to disperse, but the y said they would not, they were in the king’s

highway, and had as good a right to be there as he had. The captain of the guard then

said to them, if you do not disperse, I will ﬁre upon you, a nd then gave orders to his

men to make rea dy, and immediately after gave them orders to ﬁre. Three of our citi-

zens fell dead on the spot, and two, w ho were wounded, died the next day; and nine

others were al so wounded. The persons who were killed I well recollect, said Hewes;

they were, Gray, a rope maker, Marverick, a young man, Colwell, who was the mate

of Captain Colton; Attuck, a mulatto, and Carr, who was an Irishman. Capt ain Preston

then immediately ﬂed with his grenadiers back to the guard-house. The peop le who

were assembled on that occasion, then immediatel y chose a committee to report to

the governor the result of Captain Preston’s conduct, and to demand of him satisfaction.

The governor told the committee, that if the people would be quiet that night h» would

give them satisfaction, so far as was in his power; the next morning Captain Preston, and

those of his guard who were concerned in the massacre, were, accordingly, by order of

the governor, given up, and taken into custody the next morning, and committed to

prison.

It is not recollected that the offence given to the barber’s boy is mentioned by the his-

torians of the revolution ; yet there can be no doubt of its correctness. The account of

this single one of the exciting causes of the massacre, related by Hewes, at this time,

was in answer to the question of his personal knowledge of that event.

A knowledge of the spirit of those times will easily lead us to conceive, that the

manner of the British ofﬁcers application to the barber, was a little too strongly tinctured

with the dictatorial hauteur, to conciliate the views of equality, which at that period

were supremely predominant in the minds of those of the Whig party, even in his humble

occupation; and that the disrespectful notice of his loyal customer , in consi gning

him to the attention of his appre ntice boy, and abruptly leaving his shop, was intended

to be treated by the ofﬁcer with contempt, by so underrating the services of his appren-

tice, as to deem any reward for them beneath his attention. The boy too, may be

supposed to have imbibed so much of the spirit which distinguished that period of our

history, that he was willing to improve any occasion to contribute his share to the public

excitement; to add an additional spark to the ﬁre of political dissention which was

enkindling.

When Hewes arrived at the spot where the Massacre happened, it appears his atten-

tion was principally engaged by the clamours of those who were disposed to aid the boy

in avenging the insult offered to him by the British ofﬁcer, and probably heard nothing, at

that time, of any other of the many exciting causes which lead to that disastrous event,

though it appeared from his general conversation, his knowledge of them was extensive

and accurate.

Boston Massacre (1770) 165

But to pursue the destiny of Captain Preston, and the guard who ﬁred on the citizens;

in about a fo rtnight after, sai d Hewes, the y were brought to trial and indicted for the

crime of murder.

The soldiers were tried ﬁrst, and acquitted, on the ground, that in ﬁring upon the citi-

zens of Boston, they only acted in proper obedience to the captain’s orders. When Pres-

ton, their captain, was tried, I was called as one of the witnesses, on the part of t he

government, and testiﬁed, that I believed it was the same man, Captain Preston, th at

ordered his soldiers to make ready, who also ordered them to ﬁre. Mr. John Adams, for-

mer president of the United States, was advocate for the prisoners, and denied the fact,

that Captain Preston gave orders to his men to ﬁre; and on his cross examination of me.

asked whether my position was such, that I could see the captain’s lips in motion when

the order to ﬁre was given; to which I answered, that I could not. Although the evidence

of Preston’s having given orders to the soldiers to ﬁre, was thought by the jury sufﬁcient

to acquit them, it was not thought to be of weight enough to convict him of a capital

offence; he also was acquitted.

Source: James Hawkes, A Retrospect of the Boston Tea-Par ty, with a Memoir of George R. T.

Hewes (New York: S. S. Bliss, Printer, 1834), 28–32.

Richard Palmes’s Account of the Boston Massacre (1770)

Boston resident Richard Palmes, who was an eyewitness to the incident, later gave the following

account of the Boston Massacre of March 1770. Palmes claimed to be next to Captain Preston,

who had just assured him the soldiers had no intention of firing into the crowd when the solders

opened fire into reaction to a piece of ice or ball of snow that was thrown at them.

I, Richard Palmes, of Boston, of lawful age, testify and say, that between the hours of nine

and ten o’clock of the ﬁfth instant, I he ard one of the bells rin g, which I supposed was

occasioned by ﬁre, and enquiring where the ﬁre was, was answered that the soldiers

were abusi ng the inhabi tants; I asked where, was ﬁrst answered at Murray’s barracks.

I went there and spoke to some ofﬁcers that w ere standing at the door, I told them I

was surprised they suffered the soldiers to go out of the barracks a fter eight o’clock;

I was answered by one ...pray do you mean to teach us our duty; I answered I did not,

only to remind them of it. One of them then said, you see that the soldiers are all in their

barracks, and why do you not go to your homes. Mr. James Lamb and I said, Gentlemen,

let us go home. ...I then saw Mr. Pool Spear going towards the townhouse, he asked me

if I was going home, I told him I was. ...But when I got to the town-pump, we were told

there was a rumpus at the Custom-house door; Mr. Spear said to me you had better not

go, I told him I would go and try to make peace. I immediately went there and saw Capt.

Preston at the head of six or eight soldiers in a circular form, with guns breast high and

bayonets ﬁx ed. ...I went immediately to Capt. Preston ...and asked him if their guns

were loaded, his answer was they are lo aded w ith powder and ball; I then said to him,

166 Boston Massacre (1770)

I hope you do not intend they s hall ﬁre upon the inhabitants, his reply was, by no

means. ...[T]hen ...I saw a piece of snow or ice fall among the soldiers on which the

soldier at the ofﬁcer’s right hand stepped back and discharged his gun at the space of

some seconds the soldier at his left ﬁred next, and the others one after the other. After

the ﬁrst gun was ﬁred, I heard the word “ﬁre,” but who said it I know not. After the ﬁrst

gun was ﬁred the said ofﬁcer had full time to forbid the other soldiers not to ﬁre, but I

did not hear him speak to them at all; then turning myself to the left I saw one man dead,

distant about six feet; I having a stick in my hand made a stroke at the soldier who ﬁred,

and struck the gun out of his hand. I then made a stroke at the ofﬁcer, my right f oot

slipped, that brought me on my knee, the blow falling short; he says I hit his arm; when

I was recovering myself from the fall, I saw the soldier that ﬁred the ﬁrst gun endeavoring

to push me through with his bayonet, on which I threw my stick at his head, the soldier

starting back, gave me an opportunity to jump from him into Exchange lane, or I must

have be en inevitably run through the body. I looked back and saw three pe rsons laying

on the ground, and perceiving a soldier stepping round the corner as I thought to shoot

me, I ran down Exchange lane, and ...into King Street, and followed Mr. Gridley with

several other persons with the body of Capt. Morton’s apprentice, up to the prison

house, and saw he had a ball shot through his breast ; at my return I found that the ofﬁ-

cers and soldiers were gone to the main guard. To my best observation there were

not seventy people in King Street at the time of the ﬁring, and them very scattering,

but in a few minutes after the ﬁring there were upwards of a thousand.

Source: Richard Palmes, “A Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre in Boston”

(Boston, 1770).

Boston Massacre (1770) 167

Regulator Movement (1771)

The Regulator Movement—actually two distinct movements, centered in North

and South Carolina, respectively—was a vigilante protest movement launched

by backcountry farmers sh ortly before the American Revolution. In South Caro-

lina, the R egulators sought to impose law and order a nd gain fuller access to the

colonial legislature and colonial courts. In North Carolina, a more radical and mil-

itant group of Regulators protested political corruption, taxation, and the impris-

onment of debtors. Though they differed in many respects, the two movements

shared an emphasis on making colonial governments more responsive to the colo-

nists’ immedi ate needs. The Regulator Movement was the largest-sc ale politica l

uprising in British N orth America between Bacon’s Rebellion and the American

Revolution.

North and South Carolina were chartered in 1670, but white settlers did not

begin to populate the Carolina backcountry until the middle third of the 18th cen-

tury. Backcount ry residents, many of whom were recent immigrants from

Scotland, Ireland, and Germany, lived isolated, hardscrabble lives. Many were

religious dissenters, which set them apart from the predominantly Anglican resi-

dents of the coastal regions. To some extent, backcountry and coastal settlements

enjoyed a symbiotic relationship. Coastal planters relied on backcountry settlers

to protect them by creating a buffer zone that would keep slaves within the colony

and Indians out; backcountry settlers often aspired to emulate coastal leaders by

breaking free of subsistence farming, becoming slaveholding planters, and partici-

pating in the trans-Atlantic market economy. But in spite of their common aspira-

tions, backcountry farmers and coastal planters differed greatly in lifestyle,

wealth, and political power, and their interests often diverged. In fact, the

coastal-backcountry axis of conﬂict was pervasive in 18th-century America; it

shaped colonial politics in New England and Pennsylvania as well as the South.

In the late 1760s, disaffected Carolina frontiersmen began to organize a protest

movement they called “the Regulation.” In South Carolina, the term “Regulation”

referred to the protesters’ wish to “regulate” the disordered affairs of the back-

country. In North Carolina, it denoted the protesters’ wish to “regulate” and reform

the unfair policies and corrupt administration of the colonial government.

The North Carolina Regulator Movement, which was the more radical of the

two, originated with the formation of the Sandy Creek Association in Orange

169

County in August 1766. The Sandy Creek Association was succeeded in

April 1768 by the Regulator Association, from which the Regulator Movement

took its name. Tho ugh centered in Orange County, the protest also encompassed

Anson and Rowan counties and sporadically infected other backcountry districts.

The m en who joi ned the North Carolina Regulation r eﬂected the full range of

the backcountry’s truncated social hierarchy, fr om impoverished farmers to mod-

erately afﬂuent planters. Some Regulators owned slaves, sawmills, gristmills,

and substantial acreage that was reputed to be among the most fertile farmland

in North America. The afﬂuence and upward mobility of many Regulators under-

cuts any n otion that the Regula tion was a simple class conﬂ ict between r ich and

poor. Altogether, perhaps three-quarters of the adult men who resided in the North

Carolina backcountry participated in the Regulator Movement.

The Regulators’ principal grievance was the corruption of North Carolina’s

royal provincial government. They protested exo rbitant taxes and co urt fees, the

seizure of farmers’ property and livestock to pay taxes, and the widespread prac-

tice of imprisonment for debt. They particularly resented the taxes imposed to

pay for the construction of a sumptuous governor’s palace in New Bern. The Reg-

ulators’ protests sometimes assumed a hysterical tone; in their most radical phase,

in the winter of 1770–1771, the Regulators threatened to slay all judges and law-

yers in the colony. But t he Regulators also advanced several pragmatic and far-

sighted proposals for improving provincial government. They advocated the

implementation of a more equitable tax system, in which each man would pay in

proportion to his income. They sought to diminish corruption by limiting attor-

neys’ fees and providing for clerks to be paid salaries so that they would not have

to rely on court fees for income. The Regulators also advocated the use of the

secret ballot and sought to make the government more responsive to the people

by publishing roll-call votes of the Assembly and allowing voters to instruct their

representatives.

For many Regulators, these political proposals were infused with a radical Prot-

estant vision of social reform. Although the established Anglican Church had

scarcely made inroads in th e North Caroli na backcountry, both Quakerism and

the evangelical preaching of the First Great Awakening transformed the region in

the mid-18th century. These movements emphasized individ ual freedom of con-

science and diminished traditional esteem for social and political hierarchies. Her-

man Husband, one of the intellectual l eaders of the Regulator Movement,

published two pamphlets in which he argued that Christians were obliged to

ensure that the governments under which they lived were just; a man who

neglected to defend his civil rights, Husband argued, was ﬂouting the will of

God. Husband’s reasoning incorporated elements of Whig country thought, which

would later play a pivotal role in the American Revolution.

170 Regulator Movement (1771)

It is difﬁcult to construct a coherent account of the Regulators’ actions because

the Regulator Movement was truly a popular movement, with an informal leadership

structure and ﬂuid tactic s and goals. Wh ile a few prominent leaders e merged—

Herman Husband as theorist and scribe, James Hunter as “general” of physical

resistance—these leaders p referred to inﬂuence, rather than command, their

followers. The Regulators did create a modicum of organizational structure. They

bound themselves to a common cause by creating “associations,” drafting resolu-

tions, and, in some cases, swearing oaths (Quaker Regulators, as well as some who

were Baptist, abstained from taking oaths). But the Regulation was fundamentally

a grassroots movement, characterized by localism, voluntarism, minimal hierarchy,

and constant recourse to the dictates of the individual conscience.

Violent clashes between the Regulators and the North Carolina government ﬁrst

erupted in 1768. On April 8, a group of 70 to 100 Regulators rioted to protest the

seizure of a fellow Regulator’s horse as a tax payment. They ﬁred on the home

of Edmund Fanning, a prominent Orange County ofﬁcial, and broke his window-

panes. Fanning attempted to muster the Orange County mi litia to arrest the ring-

leaders but found that many militiamen sympathized with the Regulators and

refused to turn out. When Fanning arrested Herman Husband and William Butler

in May, 700 Regulators gathered to press for the men’s release. On June 20, James

Hunter and R ednap Howell presented a Regulator petition to Governor Tryon; in

this document, the Regulators repeated their long-standing concerns about politi-

cal corruption and singled out Fanning as an ofﬁcial who had stymied their efforts

to secure redress. Tryon, though long sympathetic to backcountry settlers’ con-

cerns about political corruption, warned the Regulators not to resort to extralegal

means. He promised to tour the backcountry, which he did in the summer of

1768. This visit culminated in a narrowly averted clash between nearly 1,500 mili-

tiamen, commanded by Tryon, and 800 Regulators, who apparently planned to dis-

rupt the sessions of the Hillsborough Superior Court. The Regulators opted to

disperse rather than confront Tryon’s army.

The Regulators continued to petition Tryon throughout 1769, but they gradually

lost the governor’s goodwill. By early 1770, the Regulators were once again dis -

rupting court sessions and interfering with sheriffs’ efforts to collect taxes. On

September 24, Regulators disrupted the Hillsborough Superior Court and severely

beat Edmun d Fanning. In November, they torc hed the home and barns of Judge

Richard Henderson. Soon afterwards, Tryon heard rumors that t he Regulators

planned to disrupt the meeting of the North Carolina Assembly in December.

The Assembly convened in an atmosphere of mounting anxiety, even hysteria.

Governor Tryon denounced the popular protest and asked the Assembly to author-

ize him to suppress it by military force. The Assembly responded by passing the

Johnston Riot Act of January 15, 1771. This law made riotous behavior a felony

Regulator Movement (1771) 171

and, in some cases, treason; it also permitted the government to prosecute accused

rebels in any of North Carolina’s six superior courts, regardless of w here the

alleged offense had occurred. Finally, it empowered Tryon to suppress the Regula-

tors by force. Meanwhile, the Assembly expelled Herman Husband on charges of

seditious libel.

Ironically but predictably, the so-called “ Bloody Act” heightened rat her than

quelled backcountry protest. Angry frontiersmen ﬂocked to join the Regulator

cause. They drew up counter-resolutions, forbade courts to meet, and pledged

not to pay taxes. In the spring, Tryon, who knew that h e would soon be moving

on to the provincial governorship of New York, resolved to put down the Regulator

Movement briskly and decisively. He marshaled approximately 1,200 to

1,500 militiamen (some under the command of General Hugh Waddell) and

marched the m west, where they eventually encamped at Grea t Alamance Creek

near Hillsborough. On the evening of May 15, a party of approximately 2,000–

3,000 Regulators petitioned Tryon for an audience. Tryon declined, and around

noon on May 16, he ordered the militia to open ﬁre on the assembled Regulators.

The poorly armed Regulators, their movemen ts uncoordinated by any command-

ing ofﬁcer, were easily defeated in a two-hour battle. Tryon subsequently hanged

seven Regulators and required approximately 6,400 others to swear allegiance to

the province of Nort h Carolina. The Battle of Alamance marked the collapse of

the Regulator Movement. Although disaffection lingered in the backcountry, and

many families chose to move westward to distance themselves from the provincial

government, the Regulators’ formal protest was at an end.

Meanwhile, a more moderate movement, also known as “the Regulation,” took

shape in the South Carolina backcountry. Afﬂuent farmers and planters joined

forces to suppress the numerous outlaws, squatters, and drifters who had populated

the South Carolina backcountry in t he a ftermath of the Seven Years’ War. They

retaliated against suspected criminals by whipping them, burning the ir homes, or

apprehending them and delivering them directly to the Charleston jail. They also

harassed impoverished frontier settlers who lived primarily by hunting and forag-

ing. The sedentary, land- owning R egulators denigrated these hunters as shiftless

“white Indians”; they loathed them because the hunters subverted conventional

norms of respectability, inconvenienced their neighbors by practices such as ﬁre-

hunting, and stirred up conﬂicts with local Native Americans by trespassing on

their hunting grounds. The South Carolina Regulator Movement may thus be inter-

preted as a concerted effort by upwardly mobile settlers to pus h the backcountry

out of a rough-and-ready frontier stage of development and bring it within t he

orbit of commercial plantation agriculture.

In spite of their propensity for vigilante justi ce, the South Car olina Regulators

evinced a relatively conservative, law-and-order mind-set. Most were substantial

172 Regulator Movement (1771)

landowners who sought to protect private property and make the backcountry safe

for agrarian capitalism. In 1767, they presented the South Carolina Assembly with

a remonstrance in which they detailed the backcountry’s crime problem and urged

quick action. They requested local courts, local jails, a more convenient system for

processing land warrants, and fuller backcountry representation in the South Caro-

lina Assembly. (Until 1768, the vast backcountry was treated as a single electoral

district.) In 1768 and again in 1769, armed Regulators marched from the back-

country to lowcountry polling places, where they demanded the right to vote.

Although election ofﬁcials did not always comply, the Regulators succeeded in

electing several candidates in this fashion.

The assemblymen recognized the establishment tone of the Regulators’ remon-

strance and promptly accede d to several of the Regulators’ demands. In Novem-

ber 1767, the Assembly established two ranger companies, composed largely of

Regulators, and empowered them to suppress banditry and other crimes. In 1768,

two new backcountry parishes were created, permitting greater backcountry repre-

sentation in the colonial legislature. Finally, the Circuit Court Act of 1769 created

a much-needed network of courts, jails, and sheriffs to maintain order in the

backcountry. Intermittent Regulator violence continued throughout these years,

alienating some coastal residents and spawning countera ttacks by a rival back-

country group called the Mo de ra to rs. Nevertheless, the movement dissipa te d by

1771, when the governor of South Carolina issued a general pardon to all of the

colony’s Regulators. The moderate tone of the South Carolina Regulation, the

Assembly’s prompt and sympathetic response, and the colony’s strong tradition

of consensus governme nt combined to prevent th e sort of open warfare between

Regulators and colonial ofﬁcials that occurred in North Carolina.

Historians co ntinue to debate the R egulator Movement’s relationship to the

American Revolution. In the 19th century, the Regulator Movement was often

interpreted as an overt protest against British rule, and thus as a precursor to the

American Revolution. This approach, which fell into disfavor in the early 20th

century, was succeeded by an interpretation of the Regulator Movement as a class

conﬂict that anticipated the more extensive post-Revolutionary conﬂict over “who

should rule at home.” More recently, historians have noted the recurring pattern of

east-west tension in colonial politics, the speciﬁc backcountry social and religious

context that informed the Regulator Movement, and the complexity and variety of

the Regulators’ political aims. In South Carolina, the Regulators clearly sought to

participate in, not overthrow, the colonial government. Most joined the coastal

elite in supporting American independence, even as they continued to contest the

coastal parishes’ domination of South Carolina politics. The North Carolina Reg-

ulators, on the other hand, expressed dissatisfaction with both British imperial rule

and the political leadership of North Carolina’s resident coastal elite. This dual

Regulator Movement (1771) 173