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Another Look at the Boston ‘Caucus’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

Alan  and
Katherine Day
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Extract

The authors are graduates of the University of Southampton. Both are now at the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, where Alan Day is completing his doctoral research in the History Department and Katherine Day is a special student in the Social Relations Department. They wish to acknowledge with gratitude the many valuable criticisms and suggestions made at various stages of this paper's composition by Dr Philip S. Haffenden of the University of Southampton and Dr Jack P. Greene and the Early American History Seminar of the Johns Hopkins University.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , April 1971 , pp. 19 - 42
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1971

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References

1 ‘Review of the Propositions for Amending the Constitution submitted by Mr Hillhouse To the Senate of the United States in 1808’, Adams, C. F. (ed.), The Works of John Adams (10 vols., Boston. 1850–1856), vol. 6, p. 542.Google Scholar

2 For example, Davidson, Philip, Propaganda and the American Revolution 1763–83 (Chapel Hill, 1941), p. 4.Google Scholar ‘Through the Boston Caucus Club [Samuel Adams] was elected to several offices and in turn found the Club an immense service to him later in his political and revolutionary activities in Boston’. In fairness, it should be pointed out that more recently, some historians have noted that it is only the North End Caucus to which they are referring. See Labaree, Benjamin W., The Boston Tea Party (New York, 1964), pp. 107, 109, 142Google Scholar, and Jensen, Merrill, The Founding of a Nation, A History of the American Revolution 1763–76 (New York, 1968), p. 449.Google Scholar

3 ‘Proceedings of the North End Caucus’, in Goss, E. H., The Life of Colonel Paul Revere (Boston, 1891), vol. 2, Appendix C, pp. 635–44.Google Scholar Hereafter cited as Caucus Proceedings.

4 Frothingham, Richard, History of the Siege of Boston (Boston, 1849), pp. 29, 30.Google Scholar See also Drake, S. A., Old Boston Taverns and Tavern Clubs (Boston, 1886), p. 46.Google Scholar

5 Boston, 1936. See esp. pp. 38, 72. Hereafter cited as Miller, Adams. An expanded statement of this erroneous notion is found in Warden, G. B., Boston Politics, 1692–1765 (Unpublished dissertation, Yale University, 1966), passim. Hereafter cited as Warden, Boston Politics.Google Scholar

6 According to Frothingham, , op. cit., p. 30.Google ScholarCf. Drake, , op. cit., p. 46.Google Scholar ‘More than 60 influential mechanics attended the first meeting called in 1772’.

7 Biographical Dictionary, p. 472.Google Scholar

8 The activities of the club Adams describes were selecting candidates for various town offices and sending ‘Committees to wait on the Merchants Clubb and to propose, and join, in the Choice of Men and Measures’. Butterfield, L. H. et al. (eds.), Diary and Autobiography of John Adams (4 vols., Cambridge, Mass., 1961), vol. 1, p. 238.Google Scholar Hereafter cited as JA, Diary.

9 i.e. Uncle Fairfield, Cooper (William), Tom Dawes; the other members mentioned by Adams are Story (Elisha), Ruddock (Abiel), Adams (Samuel) and an unspecified ‘rudis indigestaque Moles of others’, Ibid.

10 Dawes was one of the Sons of Liberty who dined at the Liberty Tree, Dorchester. From a paper in the handwriting of Colonel William Palfrey, grandfather of the Hon. Palfrey, J. G., printed in Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings (1869), pp. 140–2.Google Scholar See also Roberts, O. A., History of the Military Company of Massachusetts (4 vols., Boston, 1895–1901), vol. 2, p. 66.Google Scholar Dawes's son believed that there was only one caucus in Boston. He wrote to John Pickering on 2 August 1817 that ‘…when the long garrett was partitioned off I understood that the Caucus met elsewhere, I think at the Green Dragon …’ Pickering MSS, Microfilm in Massachusetts Historical Society. Two factors seriously undermine the younger Dawes's contentions. First, the North End records specifically indicate there were other caucuses operating in Boston. Secondly, Dawes was born in 1757, was 60 at the time of writing this letter and reminiscing about events that occurred when he was a child.

11 Contrary to the general assumptions of etymological dictionaries and historians of the period, e.g. Anderson, G. P., ‘Ebenezer Mackintosh, Stamp Act Rioter and Patriot’, Colonial Society of Massachusetts Transactions, 26 (1924–1926), 23.Google Scholar ‘The South End … at a slightly later period had its South End Caucus to match the North End Caucus’. See also Dallinger, F. W., Nominations for the Elective Office in the United States (Harvard Historical Studies, 4, 1897), p. 10.Google Scholar ‘…The Caucus Club (of Deacon Adams' day) or “North End Caucus” as it later came to be called…’

12 Wells, W. V., The Life and Public Services of Samuel Adams (3 vols., Boston, 1865), vol. 1, pp. 23–4.Google Scholar

13 14 February, 14 March 1763. Trowel and Bluster are Thomas Dawes and James Otis. Their names are handwritten under the names Adjutant Trowel and Bluster on the title page of [Waterhouse, Samuel J.], Proposals for Printing by Subscription the History of Adjutant T. Trowel (Boston, 1766).Google Scholar Otis is also referred to by this name in a letter from ‘Masanello from the shades below to Jangle Bluster Esq.’ See Boston, Evening Post, 23 06 1766.Google Scholar Pug Sly was evidently Royall Tyler. See The Conversation of two Persons under a Window on Monday Evening the 23d of March (Boston, 1765)Google Scholar and Shipton, C. K., Sibley's Harvard Graduates (vols. 4–14, Boston, 1933–1968), vol. 11, pp. 313–18.Google Scholar We are indebted to Mr Edward M. Cook, Jr, for this reference. Identification of the people behind the other names has not been possible.

14 JA, , Diary, vol. 1, p. 343.Google Scholar

15 Only the year is noted on the back of the letter, Oxenbridge Thacher Papers, 1762–5, Massachusetts Historical Society.

16 C. W. Ernst believed this Committee of Tradesmen, that is, the old and true caucus, consisted of ‘mechanics and wage earners’. There is no other evidence to support this view. Letter to Green, S. A., 12 03 1896Google Scholar, Samuel A. Green Papers, 1895–1901, Massachusetts Historical Society.

17 All but three of its 11 recorded meetings were held on the day before the date of the town meeting. Compare Caucus Proceedings, and Report of the Record Commissioners of the City of Boston (39 vols., Boston, 1876–1909), vols. 16 and 18.Google Scholar Hereafter cited as Boston, Reports. The remaining three are all related to the Tea Act and can be considered ‘extraordinary’.

18 See Drake, S. A., op. cit., passimGoogle Scholar. A more recent and general view is that ‘If the American Revolution was “cradled” in any place it was in the urban public houses’. Bridenbaugh, C., Cities in Revolt, Urban Life in America, 1743–76 (Capricorn Books, 1964), p. 358.Google Scholar

19 3 August 1771, JA, , Diary, vol. 2, pp. 49–50.Google Scholar Joseph Ingersoll kept the Bunch of Grapes, Thwing, A. H., The Crooked and Narrow Streets of the Town of Boston, 1630–1822’ (Boston, 1920), p. 137.Google ScholarHart, A. B., Commonwealth History of Massachusetts (5 vols., New York, 1927–1930), vol. 2, p. 252Google Scholar, presents a further theory that the caucus was the eventual outgrowth of the Merchant Club and the old caucus club combined.

20 Warden, , Boston Politics, pp. 120–57.Google Scholar A less satisfactory account can be found in Miller, J. C., ‘Religion, Finance and Democracy in Massachusetts’, New England Quarterly, 6 (1933), esp. 29–33, 40–1. 56–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 Bridenbaugh, , op. cit., p. 295.Google Scholar Mein might have found sympathetic views with the Boston Fire Club. This club, founded in 1753, dismissed two radical politicians, Nathaniel Appleton, a North End Caucus member, and James Otis, sometime after 1755 (the exact date is not given). For its rules and a list of members, see MS 390, Boston Public Library. For the Masons, see below, fn. 62.

22 Boston, Newsletter, 11 01 1776Google Scholar; Adair, Douglass and Schutz, John A. (eds.), Peter Oliver's Origin and Progress of the American Rebellion, A Tory View (California, 1961), pp. 73–4.Google Scholar

23 Adams, also says there were ‘two other young Fellows, Strangers to me’. 20 01 1766Google Scholar, JA, , Diary, vol. 1, p. 299.Google Scholar

24 Ibid., 24 January 1765, vol. 1, p. 251; 4 September 1769, vol. 1, p. 343; 23 December 1765, vol. 1, p. 270.

25 Cunningham, A. R. (ed.), Letters and Diary of John Rowe, 7759–62, 1764–79 (Boston, 1903), pp. 65, 68–70, 101, 152, 174, 183, 222, 254, 257, 329.Google Scholar Most of the entries are tantalizingly brief.

26 Gordon, W., The History of the Rise, Progress and Establishment of the Independence of the United States (3 vols., 3rd ed., New York, 1801), vol. 1, p. 240n.Google Scholar

27 A Vocabulary, p. 57.Google Scholar Other works were more cautious. Webster's American Dictionary of 1847 admitted itself unsure; ‘the origin of the word is not ascertained’. Winsor's, JustinMemorial History of Boston (Boston, 1881)Google Scholar, dismissed Pickering's suggestion as a ‘fanciful derivation’, vol. 2, p. 443.Google Scholar

28 Trumbull, J. Hammond, ‘Words derived from Indian Languages of North America’, American Philological Association Proceedings (1872), p. 30.Google Scholar This onomatopoeic interpretation is attractive, especially as other Indian words, e.g. Tammany, particularly in titles of societies or clubs, have been incorporated into American English. See also Arber, E. and Bradley, A. G., Travels and Worlds of Captain John Smith (2 vols., Edinburgh, 1910), vol. 1, p. 347.Google Scholar The Century Dictionary's return to the Greeks finds favour in Mathews, M. M., A Dictionary of Americanisms on Historical Principles (2 vols., Chicago, 1951).Google Scholar

29 See Boston, Evening Post, 19 08 1745Google Scholar, which mentions a general meeting of lay brethren to ‘be held at West-Corcus in Boston’. Barret, Le Roy C. in American Speech, 18 (1943), 130.Google Scholar This explanation is too contrived. Similar theories concerning the ‘Cabal’ of Charles II have been discounted, see Lee, Maurice, The Cabal (Oxford, 1965).Google Scholar

30 13 May 1765, JA, , Diary, vol. 1, p. 240.Google Scholar

31 Miller, , Adams, p. 8.Google Scholar Warden, Boston Politics, believes that the initial mover behind the caucus was Elisha Cooke. This ties in with what Clifford K. Shipton has described as an early eighteenth-century Bostonian belief, i.e. that the word Caucus was a corruption of ‘Cooke's house’, Shipton, , op. cit., vol. 4, p. 350.Google Scholar M. Ostrogorski's comment is that ‘to be precise, the beginning would have to be carried back to the garden of Eden, where the first caucus was held by Eve and the serpent’. ‘The Rise and Fall of the Nominating Caucus, Legislative and Congressional’, American Historical Review, 5 (1899–1900), 254.Google Scholar

32 Eliot, J., op. cit., pp. 472, 473.Google Scholar

33 e.g. Caucus, Proceedings, pp. 637, 640.Google Scholar It should be noted that this type of political activity was not unique to Boston. For example, one of the concerns of the Philadelphia Yearly Quaker Meeting was to decide on candidates for the Assembly elections. See Pole, J. R., Political Representation in England and the Origins of the American Republic (London, 1966), pp. 102–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34 ‘The Social Context of Democracy in Massachusetts’, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 25 (1968), 544.Google ScholarGordon, W., op. cit., vol. 1, p. 250.Google Scholar

35 Number of participating voters in selection of representatives, 1760–74

See Boston, , Reports, vols. 16, 18.Google Scholar Boston's population had actually fallen from a peak of 17,000 in 1740; Shattuck, Lemuel, Report to the Committee of the City Council Appointed to obtain the Census of Boston for the year, 1845 (Boston, 1846), p. 5.Google Scholar

36 Caucus, Proceedings, 5 05 1772, pp. 637–38.Google Scholar Modesty was the avowed reason for the insertion of the advertisement in the Boston, Evening Post, 14 05 1764.Google Scholar

37 Boston, , Reports, vol. 18, p. 78.Google Scholar

38 3 March 1766, JA, , Diary, vol. 1, p. 302.Google Scholar

39 Boston, , Reports, vol. 18, pp. 111, 151.Google Scholar

40 JA, , Diary, vol. 1, p. 238.Google Scholar

41 Caucus, Proceedings, 4 05 1773, 9 05 1774, pp. 640, 644.Google Scholar

42 Ibid., p. 640; Boston Committee of Correspondence, Minutes, cited in Gary, John, Joseph Warren (Urbana, 1961), p. 126Google Scholar; Boston, , Reports, vol. 18, p. 129.Google Scholar

43 A picture most clearly found in Miller, , Adams, p. 8.Google Scholar

44 The presence of lawyers in the caucus adds weight to what G. B. Warden has seen as a significant change in Boston politics after 1763. This was the alliance then formed between merchants, politicians and the new element, lawyers, . Boston Politics, pp. 247–8.Google Scholar John Adams, Benjamin Kent and Perez Morton were the profession's representatives in the North End Caucus.

45 Information as to occupation has been discovered for all save four members of the North End Caucus. These four include Samuel Adams who as far as is known did not have a job after 1765. One hostile view is that his wife having waited 28 years for her husband ‘uncomplainingly set herself to earn the family bread with her own hands’. Shipton, , op. cit., vol. 10, p. 423.Google Scholar In addition to Shipton, the main sources for compiling this table were: JA, Diary; Drake, F. S., Tea Leaves: Being a Collection of Letters and Documents relating to…1773 (Boston, 1884)Google Scholar; ‘Tax and Valuation Lists—1771’, in Massachusetts Archives, vol. 132, the relevant pages for Boston are 92–147; New England Historical and Genealogical Register; Roberts, O. A., op. cit., vol. 2Google Scholar; A. H. Thwing, Card catalogue of the inhabitants of, and estates in Boston from 1630 to 1800, in Massachusetts Historical Society. Hereafter cited as Thwing, , Catalogue; The Crooked and Narrow Streets of Boston (Boston, 1920)Google Scholar; J. Winsor (ed.), op. cit.

46 Thwing, Catalogue.

47 Ibid.

48 Ibid.

49 See Table I.

50 Revere Family Papers, Xerox, 1746–99, folder for 1746–78 in Massachusetts Historical Society.

51 New England Historical and Genealogical Register (1884), vol. 38, p. 183Google Scholar; Thwing, Catalogue.

52 It is conceivable that the South End Caucus was bound together more tightly by family relationships. Nothing substantial can be said about its North End counterpart in this respect, but of the few known members of the South End Caucus, four were probably connected with the Adams family. Besides John and Samuel, ‘Uncle Fairfield’ was presumably a relative of Samuel Adams, whose mother was born Mary Fyfield, a name spelled in a variety of ways. Captain James Cunningham, through whom John Adams heard of the caucus, was married to Adams's aunt. See JA, , Diary, vol. 1, p. 239n.Google Scholar

53 This Table was compiled from Massachusetts Archives, vol. 132, pp. 92–147.Google Scholar It is likely that more North End Caucus members appeared on the original list. The surviving document is incomplete. The assessments for Ward XI are missing as are some of those in Wards III, VII and XII. A table relating to Boston property ownership as a whole is given in Henretta, James A., ‘Economic and Social Structure in Colonial Boston’, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 22 (1965), 84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Henretta estimates that the assessed annual worth of real estate must be multiplied by six to give the total property value.

54 See Table III and accompanying map. The map is based on John Bonner's enlarged and revised map of Boston in 1769. The original was engraved in 1722. Boston was divided into 12 wards in 1735. For a description of the geographical boundaries of each ward, see Boston, Reports, vol. 12, pp. 131–3.Google Scholar The members were located by using the sources in n. 45 above. Good maps of Boston can also be found in Thwing, The Crooked and Narrow Streets of Boston, especially facing pp. 26, 78, 152.Google Scholar Miss Thwing locates the Green Dragon in the government and business section of the town.

55 See also Hosmer, J. K., Samuel Adams, Man of the Town Meeting (Johns Hopkins University Studies, 2nd ser., vol. 4, 1884), p. 35.Google Scholar ‘He was the prince of canvassers, the very king of the caucus … His ascendancy was quite extraordinary’.

56 W. V. Wells gives a list of 24 pseudonyms under which Adams is known to have written, Life and Public Services of Samuel Adams, vol. 1, p. 445Google Scholar; for his role in forming the Committee of Correspondence, see Boston, Reports, vol. 18, p. 93.Google Scholar

57 [Samuel J. Waterhouse], op. cit., ch. 26. There is no other evidence to corroborate this pamphlet's assertions.

58 Eliot, J., op. cit., pp. 472–3.Google ScholarAdair, and Schutz, (eds.), op. cit., p. 128.Google Scholar Warren did not hold office until 1774, although he delivered the Massacre Oration in 1772 and headed the Committee to plan the Massacre Celebration in 1773. Cary, , op. cit., pp. 106–10, 136.Google Scholar

59 Eliot, J., op. cit., p. 472.Google Scholar

60 Caucus, Proceedings, 4 05, 2 11 1773, pp. 640, 642.Google Scholar

61 Drake, F. S., op. cit., p. lxvi.Google Scholar

62 For an informative discussion of Masons and their participation in events, see Cary, , op. cit., pp. 55–9Google Scholar; see also The Constitutions of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts (Boston, 1857), pp. 107–9.Google Scholar

63 The Merchants Club was formed in 1763. For a list of members see ‘Society for the Encouraging of Trade and Commerce Within the Province of Massachusetts Bay’, in Ezekiel Price Papers, 1754–85, Massachusetts Historical Society. Cunningham, (ed.), op. cit., 11 02 1768, pp. 150–1.Google Scholar John Andrews's comment on Molineux's death in October 1774 was that ‘His loss is not much regretted by the more prudent and judicious part of the community’. Letters of Andrews, John, Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings (1864–1865), p. 379.Google Scholar

64 Henretta, , op. cit., p. 89.Google Scholar

65 Members of the Committee of Correspondence are given in Boston, Reports, vol. 18, p. 93Google Scholar. A list of those who attended the dinner is given in Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings (08 1869), pp. 140–2.Google Scholar For an account of its enjoyable if sober success, see 14 August 1769, JA, , Diary, vol. 1, p. 341.Google Scholar

66 15 January 1766, JA, , Diary, vol. 1, p. 294.Google Scholar

67 Caucus, Proceedings, pp. 641–3.Google Scholar

68 Cunningham, (ed.), op. cit., p. 253.Google Scholar Only three of the delegation–Pitts, Hopkins and Colonel Heath—were not members of the North End Caucus.

69 Caucus, Proceedings, p. 643.Google Scholar

70 The committee had, on 21 October, issued a circular letter to other Massachusetts towns, warning of the dangers inherent in the tea proposals and seeking measures to prevent it from coming into operation. See Labaree, , op. cit., p. 109.Google Scholar Labaree himself tends to inflate the role of the Committee of Correspondence and relegate that of the North End Caucus, see esp. p. 142. Caucus members continued to play an active part in events. The armed guards on the tea ships on 29 and 30 November were led by Edward Proctor and Ezekiel Cheever, respectively, both North End Caucus members. Proctor's guard contained nine, Cheever's three, of their North End Caucus colleagues. Drake, F. S., op. cit., p. lxvi.Google Scholar

71 Cary, , op. cit., p. 132Google Scholar; Thwing, , The Crooked and Narrow Streets of Boston, p. 88Google Scholar; Goss, , op. cit., vol. 1, p. 127n.Google Scholar

72 Adair, and Schutz, (eds.), op. cit., p. 102Google Scholar; cf. ‘The Committee [of Correspondence] took complete charge in Boston and directed the patriots' activities which culminated in the destruction of the tea’. Miller, , Adams, p. 291.Google Scholar

73 Letter to Cooper, Samuel, 24 02 1769Google Scholar, Bigelow, J. (ed.), The Complete Works of Benjamin Franklin (10 vols., New York and London, 1887–1888), vol. 4, p. 232Google Scholar; Adair, and Schutz, (eds.), op. cit., p. 88Google Scholar; JA, , Diary, vol. 3, p. 292.Google Scholar

74 For the Loyal Nine there are two main sources of information. Gordon, W., op. cit., vol. 1, p. 121Google Scholar, where eight names are given, and JA, , Diary, 15 01 1766, vol. 1, p. 294Google Scholar, who gives nine. For an explanation of this discrepancy see Anderson, G. P., op. cit., esp. pp. 357–60.Google Scholar

75 Channing, E. and Coolidge, A. C. (eds.), The Barrington-Bernard Correspondence (Cambridge, Mass., 1912), p. 227.Google Scholar

76 The letter is reprinted in Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, 44 (1911). 688–9Google Scholar; The ‘first affair’ probably refers to the riot on 14 August.

77 Pamphlets of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1965), esp. p. 191.Google Scholar

78 See Brennan, Ellen E., Plural Office Holding in Massachusetts, 1760–1780 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1945), esp. chs. 1, 2.Google Scholar

79 See Henretta, op. cit., and Morison, S. E., ‘The Commerce of Boston on the Eve of the Revolution’, American Antiquarian Society Proceedings, 32 (1922), 24–51.Google Scholar

80 At the end was the note: ‘This good and commendable example will soon be follow‘d by Numbers of other Artificers and Tradesmen’, Boston Weekly News-Letter, 27 02 to 5 03 1741.Google Scholar

81 For a description of the mob see E. S., and Morgan, H. M., The Stamp Act Crisis (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1953), pp. 119–43.Google Scholar

82 See Labaree, , op. cit., pp. 126–45.Google Scholar

83 Thomas, Isaiah, ‘History of Printing in America’, Transactions and collections of the American Antiquarian Society, 5 (1874), 136–40.Google Scholar

84 Boston, Gazette, 9 05 1757, 14 May 1764, 4 May 1767, 6 May 1771Google Scholar. Thomas Hutchinson recognized the use to which caucus politicians were putting the Gazette: ‘…the newspapers were generally furnished with speculations and compositions for the service of the cause in which they were engaged.’ History of the Colony and Province of Massachusetts Bay, 1749–74 (London, 1828), p. 167.Google Scholar

85 Boston, Evening Post, 21 03 1763Google Scholar; JA, , Diary, 14 08 1769, vol. 1, p. 341Google Scholar; Eliot, J., op. cit., p. 472.Google Scholar

86 Adams, C. F. (ed.), op. cit., p. 260.Google Scholar

87 It was in 1770 that Edmund Burke produced his definition and defence of party in Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents, but not until 1826 that John Cam Hobhouse invented the phrase ‘His Majesty's Opposition’. See Robbins, Caroline, ‘Discordant Parties. A Study of the Acceptance of Party by Englishmen’, Political Science Quarterly, 73 (1958), 505–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The secrecy of the North End Caucus meetings may also have been precipitated by a fear of conspiracy on the part of the administration. This fear, usually unfounded, impregnated the eighteenth-century Anglo-American mind. See Bailyn, , op. cit., esp. pp. 86–9.Google Scholar

88 Adams, C. F. (ed.), op. cit., vol. 6, p. 542.Google Scholar