Boston Bloodbath: Have We Remembered, or Surrendered?
“Remember, my friends, from whom you sprang”
Commemorating the anniversary of the Boston Massacre – March 5, 1770 – John Hancock was issuing a challenge to all of us.
And he was far from alone.
For 13 years, from 1771 to 1783, the Sons and Daughters of Liberty held annual events to remember, with a keynote speaker each year. These speeches provide us with an uncompromising blueprint for a free people – the foundation of the Revolution.
As you read through them all, a number of themes become obvious. They tell us what they fought for – and against. And they leave us with a brutal question for today:
Have we remembered, or have we let this country become a den of thieves?
NATURAL RIGHTS
First, the basis of everything else. As Joseph Warren put it, you are born free.
“Personal freedom is the natural right of every man.”
From this naturally flows an essential principle of the revolution: What’s yours is yours, and no one has a right to steal any of it from you.
“And that property or an exclusive right to dispose of what he has honestly acquired by his own labor, necessarily arises therefrom, are truths which common sense has placed beyond the reach of contradiction.”
William Tudor kicked off his speech in 1779 with a phrase that should sound familiar.
“Ever vigilantly attentive to the sacred, unalienable rights of man; equally studious in the glorious princi?ples of liberty as intrepidly determined to preserve inviolate the inestimable privileges she bestows; you are now convened, not more to commemorate this anniversary, than solemnly to renew the resolves, which freedom, wisdom, virtue, honour inspire”
As Thomas Dawes put it, these unalienable rights don’t come from government. They’re from your creator.
“Liberty, sent from above, was their peculiar inmate: that Liberty, whose spirit, mingling with the nature of man at his formation, taught him, unlike the other animals, to look upward and hope for a throne above the stars”
ARBITRARY POWER
What’s the greatest threat to your natural rights?
For the American Revolutionaries, it was absolutely, without a doubt, a government that doesn’t stay within the limits of the constitution, even the unwritten British Constitution.
They called this arbitrary power.
No one hit this harder than Joseph Warren.
“Nothing was so much the object of their abhorrence as a tyrant’s power: – They knew that it was more safe to dwell with man in his most unpolished state than in a country where arbitrary power prevails.”
And here’s the trick. Tyrants don’t always just take power. They often just convince you you’re too stupid for self-government. That’s exactly what Rev Peter Thacher called out in 1776.
“With Machiavellian subtilty, they have laboured to persuade mankind, that their public happiness consisted in being subject to uncontrouled power; that they were incapable of judging concerning the mysteries of government; and that it was their interest to deliver their estates, their liberties, and their lives, into the hands of an absolute Monarch.”
In the first Massacre Day Oration of 1771, James Lovell pointed to the greatest example of arbitrary power the colonists were facing, which guaranteed death to liberty.
“The declarative vote of the British Parliament is the death-warrant of our birthrights, and wants only a Czarish King to put it into execution.”
John Hancock explained exactly what Lovell was talking about – the Declaratory Act of 1766, where the British claimed unlimited power over the colonies, the root of all the other arbitrary power they toiled under.
“They have declared that they have, ever had, and of right ought ever to have, full power to make laws of sufficient validity to bind the colonies in all cases whatever: They have exercised this pretended right by imposing a tax upon us without our consent”
STANDING ARMIES
But arbitrary power doesn’t enforce itself. And Hancock saw it play out in real time.
“And lest we should shew some reluctance at parting with our property, her fleets and armies are sent to inforce their mad pretensions.”
As Benjamin Hichborn explained, the very existence of a standing army means someone is likely enforcing arbitrary power.
“Every military force must necessarily imply a right of exerci?sing an arbitrary power, so far as respects the objects against which it is to be directed; and what will be the objects against which it will be in constant exercise in proportion to its extent, we may collect from the experience of ages, and the well-known source of human actions.”
Joseph Warren took this right back to the root cause of the Massacre. The British knew they couldn’t convince the people to voluntarily shackle themselves, to get on their knees and submit. So they did what all empires do – they sent in the troops
“As it was soon found that this taxation could not be supported by reason and argument, it seemed necessary that one act of oppression should be enforced by another … a standing army was established among us in a time of peace … namely for the enforcement of obedience to acts which, upon fair examination, appeared to be unjust and unconstitutional.”
And once the occupying army arrived? John Hancock knew the result was guaranteed.
“It was easy to foresee the consequences which so naturally followed upon sending troops into America, to enforce obedience to acts of the British parliament, which neither God nor man ever empowered them to make.”
Rev. Thacher – like all the others – didn’t hold back on that inevitable end result: bloodshed in the streets.
“We experienced the most provoking insults; and at length saw the streets of Boston strewed with the corpses of five of its inhabitants, murdered in cool blood, by the British mercenaries.”
But as Warren made clear, this wasn’t just a Boston problem. It’s universal – all through history.
“The ruinous consequences of standing armies to free communities, may be seen in the histories of SYRACUSE, ROME, and many other once flourishing states; some of which have now scarce a name! Their baneful influence is most suddenly felt, when they are placed in populous cities”
And there is no get-out-of-jail-free card, either. Standing armies are always – not sometimes – bad for liberty.
“Standing armies always endanger the liberty of the subject.”
But as Lovell warned, standing armies also lead to another dangerous result – they compete with militias.
“I must not omit to mention one more bad tendency: ’tis this,—a standing force leads to a total neglect of militias, or tends greatly to discourage them.”
THE MILITIA
That’s because, as Dr. Thomas Welsh explained in the final massacre day oration in 1783, people tend to just get lazy. They defer their own defense to the professionals.
“WHEN communities have so far mistaken their interest, as to commit the defence of every thing valuable in life to a standing army; the love of ease will scarcely permit them to reassume the unpleasing task of defending themselves.”
And that’s dangerous precisely because, as Lovell put it, the real defense of any society is the militia.
“The true strength and safety of every commonwealth or limited monarchy, is the bravery of its freeholders, its militia. By brave militias they rise to grandeur, and they come to ruin by a mercenary army. This is founded on historical facts; and the same causes will, in similar circumstances, forever produce the same effects.”
Welsh explained why. The militia – the people themselves – they have a strong incentive to defend themselves against all enemies – foreign and domestic.
“A MILITIA is the most natural defence of a free state, from inva?sion and tyranny: they who compose the militia, are the proprie?tors of the soil; and who are so likely to defend it, as they who have received it from their ancestors—acquired it by their labor—or obtained it by their valour?”
A militia, as Hancock pointed out, isn’t fighting for a paycheck. They’re free people, defending everything they love – for “hearth and home.”
“When a country is invaded, the militia are ready to appear in it’s defence … they fight for their houses, their lands, for their wives, their children, for all who claim the tenderest names, and are held dearest in their hearts, they fight pro aris & focis, for their liberty, and for themselves, and for their God.”
VIRTUE
But, as George Richards Minot explained, that kind of defense – that kind of courage – requires a virtuous people.
“Virtue and long life seem to be as intimately allied in the political as in the moral world: she is the guard which providence has set at the gate of freedom.”
You can see this clearly in John Hancock – the guy who had so much to lose, and financially, more than anyone on the continent. It would’ve been easy for him to risk nothing rather than everything.
“I glory in publickly avowing my eternal enmity to tyranny.”
Joseph Warren reminded the people in 1775 – just weeks before Lexington and Concord – that it was up to the people themselves to protect and defend their own liberty.
“On you depend the fortunes of America. You are to decide the important question, on which rest the happiness and liberty of millions yet unborn. Act worthy of yourselves.”
Acting worthy wasn’t about making a legal argument. Because, as Minot warned, written laws don’t stop governments that want to violate them.
“Let us not trust to laws: an uncorrupted people can exist without them; a corrupted people cannot long exist with them, or any other human assistance.”
RESISTANCE
Citing Cicero – Joseph Warren reminded the people of their DUTY to protect and defend their own constitution.
“Every member feels it to be his interest, and knows it to be his duty, to preserve inviolate the constitution on which the public safely depends.”
And Rev. Thacher saw resistance as a moral imperative – in essence, “rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.”
“We should be inexcusable to God, to our posterity, to the whole world, if we hesitated, a single moment, in asserting our right, and repelling the attacks of lawless power.”
There are so many different versions of these orators giving versions of the famous revolutionary phrase, “liberty or death,” but this one from John Hancock might be the best of them all. In his view, anyone who valued their skin more than their liberty?
Unmanly cowards.
“Death is the creature of a Poltroon’s brains; ’tis immortality, to sacrifice our|selves for the salvation of our country. We fear not death.”
THE PRIZE
Six themes of the American Revolution. Six links in one chain:
- Natural rights
- Arbitrary power
- Standing armies
- Militia
- Virtue
- Resistance
The people who gave these orations and the people who heard them – they understood and embraced every single one of them.
That’s who you come from – and John Hancock’s challenge still stands for us today.
“SURELY you never will tamely suffer this country to be a den of thieves. Remember, my friends, from whom you sprang.”
Will we act worthy of ourselves and honor the sacrifice of those who fought for freedom? Jonathan Williams Austin reminded us of the real American heroes who said liberty or death – and meant it.
“Let not the ashes of WARREN, MONTGOMERY, and the illustrious Roll of Heroes who died for Freedom, reproach our inactivity and want of spirit, in not compleating this grand Superstructure; the Pillars of which have been cemented with the richest Blood of America.”
Those great American heroes he named were Maj. Gen. Richard Montgomery – who was killed in action leading a charge during the Battle of Quebec. And Joseph Warren, who fought at Lexington and Concord, and then just weeks after giving this message during his second Massacre Day oration – March 6, 1775 – was killed in action at the battle of Bunker Hill.
“But, pardon me, my fellow-citizens, I know you want not zeal Or fortitude. You will maintain your rights or perish in the gene|rous struggle. However difficult the combat, you never will decline it when freedom is the prize.”
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