Bunker Hill

recounted how he had recently attended a patriot social gathering during which a gentleman asked a lady what she considered to be “the necessaries of life” given the demands of the boycott associated with the Solemn League and Covenant. The woman responded a day or so later with a flirtatious poem of 114 lines titled “On Female Vanity” that Thomas published anonymously. In the poem, the woman argues that character and intellect, not physical beauty, are what really matter in a woman, particularly in such challenging times. According to the poet, “those modest antiquated charms that lur’d a Brutus to a Portia’s arms” will always trump the “gauze and tassels” of a younger, extravagantly dressed woman. Expertly combining private and political spheres, “On Female Vanity” reads like a love letter cloaked in the issues of the day.
    Sixteen years later, the noted patriot author Mercy Otis Warren claimed credit for writing the poem at the prompting of Harvard professor John Winthrop. But that was not what Bostonians chose to believe in 1774. According to John Winthrop’s wife, Hannah, the gossipmongers insisted that the author was “Miss Mercy Scollay and the gentleman who requested [the poem] Dr. Warren.” In the summer of 1774, Scollay and Warren were, apparently, the couple to watch.
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    By the end of June, letters of support were pouring in to the Boston Committee of Correspondence from all over America. With the prospect of the Continental Congress in September, Samuel Adams’s attention was already beginning to shift from Boston to Philadelphia. But first he and the other members of the Committee of Correspondence had to face the furor created by their handling of the Solemn League and Covenant.
    The morning of Monday, June 27, the day of the town meeting that was to address these issues, proved to be quite hot, and “with many people just idle enough to attend,” Faneuil Hall was filled to overflowing. Samuel Adams was once again chosen moderator of the meeting. It was moved that all the letters written by the committee since the receipt of the Port Bill be read aloud. Faneuil Hall was so crowded that those standing at the back of the room had difficulty hearing what was being said and kept shouting, “A little louder!” Finally it was decided that given the heat and the crowd, they needed to move to the much larger Old South Meetinghouse.
    They reconvened at 3:00 p.m. with the reading of the many letters written by the committee, culminating in the Solemn League and Covenant. Once the controversial document had been read, the loyalist John Amory launched into a prepared speech that concluded with a motion to “censure and annihilate” the Committee of Correspondence, which was immediately seconded. Samuel Adams responded by moving that he be replaced as moderator so that he could defend himself and the committee. With the patriot Thomas Cushing taking over as moderator, the debate began.
    Speaking on behalf of the committee were not only Adams but also fellow members Joseph Warren, Josiah Quincy, Dr. Thomas Young, and William Molineux. The merchants were represented by the province’s treasurer, Harrison Gray, the same elderly loyalist who had objected to Josiah Quincy’s treasonous words prior to the Tea Party back in December, along with a host of others. But it was Samuel Eliot who most impressed fellow merchant and brother-in-law John Andrews. Speaking with a “freedom and manliness peculiar only to himself,” Eliot explained that since New York, Rhode Island, and Philadelphia had so far proved reluctant to join the boycott, it made no sense to punish Boston’s own merchants, who were already reeling from the effects of the Port Bill and its insistence that their imported goods come via Salem. Many of these merchants were expecting shipments from England that would not arrive in Salem until after August 31, the date by which the Solemn League and Covenant insisted that all trade must stop. Not only would the covenant ruin the local merchants, it would serve no greater purpose. By attacking the covenant rather than the committee, Eliot kept the focus on the issues instead of the personalities, and his remarks received, Andrews wrote, “a universal clap.” The debates continued until long past 8:00 p.m., and as it was growing dark, the meeting was adjourned until the next morning.
    Bells were ringing throughout the town when the meeting reconvened at Old South. After more