Bunker Hill
reasonable man, with an American wife.
Gage was met at Long Wharf by a delegation that included the upper chamber of the General Court, known as His Majesty’s Council; the town selectmen; and a host of other officials, including the province’s secretary, Thomas Flucker. Preceding this august group were the Independent Company of Cadets, the elite of Boston’s militia, who were responsible for accompanying the royal governor at official functions. Dressed in red coats with blue facings, patterned on the uniforms worn by the British Foot Guards, the cadets were the governor’s official bodyguards and were commanded by John Hancock.
If Samuel Adams was the guru of the patriot cause, Hancock, thirty-seven, was its uncrowned king. Handsome, with the stubble of a beard visible on his clean-shaven cheeks, he’d recently scored a major success in March with a surprisingly well-delivered Massacre Day Oration, an annual event held in the Old South Meetinghouse that provided Bostonians with a stirring reminder of the evils of a standing army. No one in America had lived a more privileged life than John Hancock, and yet there was a profound difference between him and the man whom it was now his sworn duty to protect, Lieutenant General Thomas Gage. Gage’s family had lived on their estate in the Sussex town of Firle since the fifteenth century. His status as British gentry was something that he and everyone he knew took for granted. Hancock’s wealth, on the other hand, was only a generation old. His uncle, who had adopted him when he was a boy, had amassed much of his fortune selling arms and provisions to the British army during the French and Indian War. John Hancock’s inherited wealth had provided him with a beautiful house on Beacon Hill, an ornate carriage, fashionable clothes, and a nasty case of gout, but it had not won him the sense of entitlement that the landed aristocracy in England enjoyed. As anyone in the colonies could see, fortunes could be lost even more quickly than they could be made, and as a consequence, the wealthy in America tended to be (relative to their counterparts in Britain, at least) an insecure and touchy lot.
Much has been said in both his and our own time to malign Hancock’s intelligence and temper, but not even Samuel Adams proved as adept at responding to the mood swings of the American people. After his uncle’s death, he purposely changed the direction of the family business to include a variety of house and shipbuilding projects that came to employ, his lawyer John Adams estimated, at least one thousand Boston families. In the 1770s, as his wealthy peers throughout New England became the objects of envy, suspicion, and open ridicule, Hancock became ever more popular. He served diligently both as a selectman and as a moderator at town meetings. Whereas the idealistic fervor of Samuel Adams could rub even patriots the wrong way, Hancock had the charismatic flair required to attract a loyal popular following, and it was little wonder that Hutchinson had once tried to bring him into the loyalist fold. To the end, however, Hancock remained his own man. He declined to serve on Samuel Adams’s Boston Committee of Correspondence, and as Thomas Gage was about to discover, Hancock had a talent for the deftly delivered stab in the back.
Cannons were fired from Admiral Montagu’s flagship, HMS
Captain
, and from the batteries in the North End and on Fort Hill to the south. Gage had brought with him both his chariot and his coach, and it’s more than likely that at least one of these vehicles was used to transport him and his retinue up Long Wharf to King Street. Here he received a standing salute from the companies of militia, artillery, and grenadiers before reaching the Town House, whose red bricks had recently been painted gray to resemble stone. Once he’d stepped from his carriage to the entrance of the Town House, he climbed the stairs to the council chamber, where he presented his commissions from the king to the upper house of the General Court. After taking the required oaths, he appeared on the balcony overlooking King Street and read a proclamation directing all militia officers to maintain their commissions until receiving further orders, which prompted three volleys from the companies on the street below. A vast crowd had assembled on the square that had formerly been the scene of the Boston Massacre and the tarring and feathering of John Malcom, and on that afternoon
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