Bunker Hill

had known “every person, white and black, men, women, and children in the city of Philadelphia by name,” even though that city was considerably larger than Boston (p. 59). John Adams claimed that only about a third of the population was dedicated to the patriot cause at the beginning of the Revolution in an August 1813 letter to Thomas McKean (
Works
, 10:63); according to Robert Calhoon (“Loyalism and Neutrality,” in
A Companion to the American Revolution
, edited by Jack Greene and J. R. Pole, p. 235), about 20 percent of the colonists were loyalists, with at least half the population wanting to avoid a conflict altogether and with the patriots gaining the support of between 40 and 45 percent of the population. Walter McDougall in
Freedom Just Around the Corner
writes that the American colonists were the “least taxed people on earth” and also enjoyed the “highest per capita standard of living of any people on earth” (pp. 118, 123). Gene Sharp’s
From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation
was first published in Bangkok in 1993 by the Committee for the Restoration of Democracy in Burma; since then it’s been translated into thirtyone languages and counting; it’s now in its fourth U.S. edition and is published, perhaps suitably given the city’s revolutionary history, in East Boston by the Albert Einstein Institution. See Sheryl Gay Stolberg, “Shy U.S. Intellectual Created Playbook Used in a Revolution,”
New York Times
, February 16, 2011.
    Chapter One— The City on the Hill
    My description of Josiah Quincy Jr.’s speech in Old South Meetinghouse on December 16, 1773, is based primarily on Josiah Quincy’s
Memoir of Josiah Quincy
, which cites Daniel Greenleaf’s memory of Quincy’s dramatic words (pp. 124–25); Greenleaf had been a student of the Lovells at Boston Latin School and was in the gallery that day. Edward Randolph’s letter to King Charles II concerning the claims made by Massachusetts governor Leverett is cited in Michael Hall’s
Edward Randolph and the American Colonies
, pp. 24–25. Leverett’s bloody leather battle jacket is at the MHS. On the aftereffects of King Philip’s War, see my
Mayflower
, pp. 345–46, and Stephen Saunders Webb’s
1676: The End of American Independence
, pp. 409–16. On the overthrow and jailing of Governor Edmund Andros, see G. B. Warden’s
Boston, 1689–1776
, pp. 3–14.
On the 1745 Siege of Louisbourg, see J. Revell Carr’s
Seeds of Discontent: The Deep Roots of the American Revolution, 1650–1750
, pp. 186–262.
    On Britain’s economic policies during the first half of the eighteenth century, see James Henretta’s
“Salutary Neglect”: Colonial Administration Under the Duke of Newcastle
, pp. 323–25, 344. On the debt generated by the end of the French and Indian War, see Alvin Rabushka’s
Taxation in Colonial America
, pp. 568–69. L. Kinvin Wroth describes the trade patterns and other economic activities of Massachusetts in the mid-1700s in an interpretive essay in
Province in Rebellion
(
PIR
), 1:1–3. My thanks to former British consul general in Boston Philip Budden for pointing out the Puritan roots of the slogan “No taxation without representation,” in a private correspondence. Oliver Dickerson analyzes the effects of the various acts in
The Navigation Acts and the American Revolution
; according to Dickerson, the customs officers were “paid out of the revenue collected” (p. 203).
Ray Raphael provides a good synopsis of James Otis’s arguments on the writs of assistance in
Founders
, pp. 13–17. On the details of what happened in the Boston Massacre, see Hiller Zobel’s
The Boston Massacre
, pp. 180–205, and Richard Archer’s
As if an Enemy’s Country
, pp. 182–206. John Greenwood writes of the comet and the fears of an apocalypse in
The Revolutionary Services of John Greenwood
, pp. 3–4. The comet that appeared in the night sky over New England during the summer of 1773 was much commented on at the time and is now known as Lexell’s Comet (for Anders Johan Lexell, who computed its orbit); modern-day astronomers have estimated that Lexell’s Comet passed closer to Earth than any other comet in recorded history.
    John Tyler’s
Smugglers and Patriots
is an excellent examination of the complex role merchants played in the controversies leading up to the Revolution, particularly when it came to the impact Dutch smugglers had on the Boston Tea Party (pp. 171–210). My