Boston and the Sons of Freedom

Why did the American Revolution percolate in Boston?

Backing into the Port of Boston Harbor

Separated from England and the rest of Europe by a long sea voyage, colonists became accustomed to laissez-fare government rule.  As long as they paid their minimal taxes to the crown, Great Britain generally left them alone.

The colonies evolved to be meritocracies, where free men could rise according to their abilities and the strength of their characters.  These self-made men were free to learn to read and write.  They could become as wealthy and educated as their natural talents might take them.

While this may not sound unusual in today's America, it was a stark contrast to the feudal society that still dominated much of the Old World.

In Europe, for the most part you were noble by birth, or you were serfs, destined to toil away your lives in fields for your lords, barely subsisting.

Being a serf was slightly better than being a slave, but not by much. Serfs worked long, back-breaking days from before dawn to dusk, and then returned to their hovels to eat meager meals and sleep on straw mats, only to get up early the next morning and start the grind again. Sunday was their day of rest and worship.

Their lords knew exactly how bountiful their crops were and took most of the rewards for themselves,

The nobles, on the other hand, owed fealty to their king, to whom they sent tributes (taxes) and provided troops for wars.

The king's responsibility was to provide a combined national defense that would stand to protect the individual fiefdoms of the lords from foreign powers or other lords within the kingdom seeking to expand their territories. 

The lords themselves had in most cases earned their lands and titles as knights through valiant service in wars defending the kingdom or conquering new lands.

In the Middle Ages, merchants began to emerge to serve the needs of royalty, with enterprising serfs somehow scratching together enough capital to start their businesses.  These entrepreneurs slowly grew to be a prosperous class that in some cases became as wealthy as royals, whose lavish lifestyles and obligations to the crown sometimes took more money than aristorcrats could squeeze from their serfs.

Ken Follett's World Without End does an excellent job describing this period.  To follow the progess of humanity from cave man to modernity, read Edward Rutherford's Sarum, a long, challenging novel that puts our societal evolution in perspective.

People began to view the feudal structure as too much of a one way street, and in 1215, King John of England was forced to sign the groundbreaking Magna Carta, which put limits on what his government could demand of its subjects.  It was a clear break from strictly top-down government, where a central power controlled the lives of his kingdom through a calcified aristocratic structure.

Against that backdrop, a city like Boston, filled with merchants and farmers who kept the lion's share of their profits for themselves, painted quite a contrast.

They thought of themselves primarily as Americans rather than British subjects, but Great Britain considered all of their colonies to be valuable pieces of their empire that must contribute to the combined effort to protect and expand the empire.

In all fairness, the British had a point.  The French and Indian War started with skirmishes in the early 1750s when France tried to expand its holdings in the Ohio River Valley into the Virginia colony.  In this war, Virginian George Washington cut his battlefield teeth as a British officer, earning his reputation with native Americans as being a great spirit through whom bullets passed without effect.  Great Britain declared war against France in 1756 and achieved victory in 1763, not only having successfully defended Virginia but also capturing more of America, driving France out of Canada and trading formerly French Louisianna to Spain for Florida.

The Brits decided they needed to be reimbursed for this massive outlay for victory in what in Europe became known as the Seven Years War.

In 1765, British Parliament passed the Stamp Act, imposing a tax on every printed piece of paper.

It wasn't a very big tax, and the Stamp Act tax really was for the purpose of defending the American colonies, but American patriots considered it to set an unacceptable precedent.

And that in a nutshell is the background of the Revolutionary War.

Yes,  the American Revolution essentially came down to a political argument still prominent today: how much should free people be forced to pay in taxes to support government programs?

Walking Boston's Freedom Trail, we saw the places many of the most dramatic episodes in our country's history played out: the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party and the Battle of Bunker Hill.

There's Paul Revere's House, home of the man whose historic ride was memorialized by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem that was recited by school children of my era, though I guess these days the kids are more likely to hear Jay Z rap songs. There's the Old North Church in which "two if by sea" shined in the tower to be interpreted and forwarded by Revere on his midnight ride.

There's Faneuil Hall, the market place that doubled as a public meeting hall where Samuel Adams and other firebrands orated in town meetings between 1764 and 1774.  There's Boston Latin School, attended by five signers of the Declaration of Independence: Sam Adams, John Hancock, William Hooper, Robert Treat Payne and Benjamin Franklin.  Of those five, only Franklin didn't graduate, though he did pretty well without much formal education. Franklin is more closely associated with Philadelphia where he settled at the age of 17 and achieved wealth and international fame, but Boston considers him their native son, and his statue stands prominently in front of Boston Latin.

A highlight for us was lunch at the Green Dragon, where the sign proclaims it to be "The birthplace of the Revolution."

While the ties to the original Green Dragon which was demolished in 1854 are tenuous, we were happy to enjoy a Ben Franklin Burger and Sam Adams Oktoberfest draft pint in a public house which celebrates our country's heritage.

The Sons of Liberty secretly met in the basement of the Green Dragon to discuss their revolutionary plans.  Each wore a jewel with an image of the Liberty Tree on it as a form of identification, and they also had a secret passcode, though I can't see how there could have been that many members to keep track of. Among the Sons of Liberty were Paul Revere, Sam Adams, John Hancock and the less widely known but historically significant Dr. Joseph Warren, who is revered as perhaps the greatest hero of the Revolution in Boston.

Dr. Warren was a leader in the cause of liberty.  In a toga, he delivered an eloquent oration annually at public remembrances of the Boston Massacre.  He wrote the Suffolk Resolves voicing objection to Britain's punitive "Intolerable Acts" enacted in response to the Boston Tea Party.

Warren dispatched Paul Revere along with William Dawes (alas, the poet apparently wanted to focus on one hero for dramatic impact) on their midnight rides.  He also fought at the Battle of Lexington and Concord, where a musket ball parted his wig.

Before that battle, the dashing young widower was rumored to have seduced New Jersey-born Margaret Kemble Gage.  Her husband, General Thomas Gage, commanded the British North American Forces.

It's known that Warren recieved information from a well-connected spy referred to as "a daughter of liberty."

It's conjecture that Margaret was the source who warned that her husband planned to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock in Lexington and then capture the revolutionary armory at Concord.

Forewarned, the Sons of Liberty escaped capture, and patriot militamen, hiding behind walls and trees, fired upon the straight columns of Redcoats and served the superior British forces a shocking defeat.

While it was never confirmed that Margaret was the mole, her husband unceremoniously boarded her on a ship bound for England while he stayed behind to attempt to regain control of the situation.

General Gage eventually returned to England himself but remained estranged from his wife.

On May 31, 1775, Dr. Warren was elected President of the revolutionary Massachusetts Provincial Congress, and two weeks later on June 14, just three days after his 34th birthday, Congress appointed him Major General.

At the Battle of Bunker Hill (actually fought at Breed's Hill), which is within walking distance of Boston's historic down town, Warren joined the fight not at his new rank but as a militia volunteer manning the lines.  On June 17, 1775, Warrren was killed in battle, becoming a martyr to the cause.

Three years before his death, Joseph Warren had also been selected as the Grand Master of the Masons for the Continent of America, in addition to the title of Grand Master of Freemason Saint Andrews Lodge, a position he held from 1769.

The original Green Dragon had been purchased by the Freemason Saint Andrews Lodge of Boston in 1764 to use as their organization's headquarters, and there was some member overlap between Masons and the Sons of Liberty. 

John Hancock and Paul Revere were members of Saint Andrews Lodge, and six other signers of the Declaration of Independence were definitely Freemasons, including Benjamin Franklin.

Paul Revere's House

George Washington and several,but not all, of his generals, were Freemasons, too.

You may remember Nicholas Cage's character following clues left by Masons in the fictional Disney movie, "National Treasure."

It all fits nicely with my own wild theory about the Knights Templar. After being officially disbanded, some Knights joined other historic movements, and I believe that included explorations of America.

If you want to go further down this rabbithole, read on.

The Masons had begun as a trade organization to protect the ancient mysteries of architecture, dating back to the mathematical revelations of Euclid, although it is unclear as to when the guild actually started.  Over the centuries, they evolved to consider themselves essentially the metaphysical brick layers for the "Great Architect" (God), and former Knights Templar could easily have infiltrated this organization.

"One if by land. Two if by sea."

According to The Masonic Trowel (and I am not claiming that source to be infallible), Masons are always neutral in wars, but it does go on to say:

"Although the Masonic fraternity played no part in the Revolutionary War, it can easily be shown that in many ways the revolutionary ideals of equality, freedom, and democracy were espoused by the Masonic fraternity long before the American colonies began to complain about the injustices of British taxation. The revolutionary ideals expressed in the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, and the writings of Thomas Paine, were ideals that had come to fruition over a century before in the early speculative lodges of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, where men sat as equals, governed themselves by a Constitution, and elected their own leaders from their midst. In many ways, the self-governing Masonic lodges of the previous centuries had been learning laboratories for the concept of self-government."

The USS Constitution Battle Ship, "Old Ironsides"

 I can definitely see how such an organization could have impacted the founding of the United States, especially when so many of the movement belonged to it.

Back to more practical realities, we were able to reach the Freedom Trail by public transit, taking a bus to the metro train for under $3 a ticket.

It makes for a wonderful self-guided shore excursion.

My son says the Sam Adams Brewery tour shouldn't be missed, but we were worn out by the time we returned to the train station from Bunker Hill.