Bunker Hill

to “harangue” at Boston town meetings. “My answer to him always was, ‘that way madness lies.’ The symptoms of our great friend Otis, at that time, suggested to Warren a sufficient comment on these words at which he always smiled and said, ‘it was true’ ” (p. 291). Henry Adams’s reference to his Boston ancestors being “ambitious beyond reason to excel” is cited by Walter McDougall in
Freedom Just Around the Corner
, p. 147. Gillian Anderson in the “The Funeral of Samuel Cooper” cites the references to “silver-tongued Sam” and to his “ductility,” p. 657. Clifford Shipton cites the reference to Cooper’s eventual mental breakdown being attributed to “the inordinate use of Scotch snuff,”
SHG
, 11:211. In a March 15, 1773, letter to Benjamin Franklin, Cooper refers to having spent the winter “confined to my house . . . by my valetudinary state, and been little able to see and converse with my friends,”
The Papers of Benjamin Franklin
, 20:110.
    On Samuel Adams, see the biographies by John Miller, William Fowler, Ira Stoll, and Mark Puls. Adams seems to have been a “revolutionary ascetic,” of the type described in Bruce Mazlish’s book of the same name. In an April 4, 1774, letter to Arthur Lee, Adams writes of the future he sees for America and England: “It requires but a small gift of discernment for anyone to foresee that providence will erect a mighty empire in America, and our posterity will have it recorded in history, that their fathers migrated from an island in a distant part of the world, [the inhabitants of which] were at last absorbed in luxury and dissipation; and to support themselves in their vanity and extravagance they coveted and seized the honest earnings of those industrious emigrants. This laid a foundation of distrust, animosity and hatred, till the emigrants, feeling their own vigor and independence, dissolved every former band of connection between them and the islanders sunk into obscurity and contempt” (p. 82). On the population and number of towns in Massachusetts, see L. Kinvin Wroth’s interpretive essay in
PIR
, 1:1–3. Richard D. Brown’s
Revolutionary Politics in Massachusetts
is an excellent study of the Boston Committee of Correspondence and the towns; for the beginnings of the committee, see pp. 38–122. G. B. Warden also provides a useful account of the committee’s activities in
Boston, 1689–1776
, pp. 241–74. Brown cites the town of Gorham’s January 7, 1773, letter to the Boston Committee of Correspondence in
Revolutionary Politics
, p. 118. For the exchange between Hutchinson and the House of Representatives in early 1773, see
The Briefs of the American Revolution
, edited by John Phillip Reid, pp. 7–102. On the May 13, 1774, town meeting, see the minutes in
Boston Town Records, 1770–1777
, pp. 171–74.
    Charles Bahne calculates the cost of the East India Tea lost on December 16, 1773, in the Friday, December 18, 2009, entry of J. L. Bell’s blog
Boston 1775
, http://boston1775.blogspot.com/2009/12/how-much-was-tea-in-tea-party-worth.html. Stephen Patterson writes of Samuel Adams’s political maneuvering at the expense of John Rowe and other merchants in
Political Parties in Revolutionary Massachusetts
, pp. 74–83. Gage’s arrival and reception at Straight Wharf on May 17 is detailed in the May 23, 1774, issue of the
Boston Gazette
. On John Hancock, see Herbert Allan’s
John Hancock: Patriot in Purple
, William Fowler’s
The Baron of Beacon Hill
, and Harlow Giles Unger’s
John Hancock: Merchant King and American Patriot
. John Andrews details the falling out between Hancock and Gage in entries written on August 16 and 17, 1774, in “Letters of John Andrews” (subsequently referred to as LJA): 342–43. Reverend Gad Hitchcock’s May 25, 1774, sermon preached before General Gage is in
PIR
, 1:299–322. Gage’s rejection of the patriot councillors is described in an article in the May 30, 1774,
Boston Gazette
, which also reprints the speech Gage gave before both houses of the General Court.
    John Rowe tells of where the British naval ships were stationed around Boston Harbor in the May 29, 1774, entry of his
Diary
, pp. 272–73; his reference to “Poor unhappy Boston” is made on June 1, 1774 (p. 273). Francis Drake in
Tea Leaves
recounts how John Rowe asked, “Who knows how tea will mingle with salt water?” at the Old South Meetinghouse prior to the night of the Tea Party (p. 63). Rowe