The day Warren’s printed oration appeared, a group of loyalists and soldiers held a mock meeting of their own. In it, they chose seven men to represent Boston’s selectmen and Dr. Thomas Bolton, a physician from Salem, to deliver their response to Warren. The group mounted the balcony of the British Coffee House, and Bolton, wearing a black academic gown and a tattered wig, delivered this parody of Warren’s earnest address “to a crowd of few else beside gaping officers,” according to one witness. But James Rivington, a New York publisher with loyalist leanings, published Bolton’s satire.
The patriots cited by Bolton in the excerpt that follows — Samuel Adams, John Hancock, John Rowe, and Joseph Lee — were involved in the plans for and/or the actual event of the Boston Tea Party. During the Boston Tea Party, participants dressed as Mohawk Indians, part of the Iroquois Confederacy. The Narragansetts of Rhode Island were among the first native groups encountered by the early European settlers. Following a massacre by English settlers in 1675, they were confined to a reservation.
The flourishes of rhetoric I cannot use — these will I leave to the Sons of Liberty of this degenerate age.
I cannot boast the ignorance of Hancock, the insolence of Adams, the absurdity of Rowe, the arrogance of Lee…. Nor can I with propriety pass over the characters of these modern heroes, (or, to use their own phrase, Indians,) without a few observations on their late conduct.
These sachems, or Indian chiefs, tho’ of different titles, all proceeded from one and the same tribe; who being originally inhabitants of a country a thousand leagues to the eastward, were transplanted (or in the vulgar phrase, transported) hither, only for asserting that claim, which is the natural right of every man, to a share of the good things of this world; which good things, Fortune had most unjustly bestowed upon others in too large a proportion.
It was a matter of dispute for some time whether they were of the Mohawk kind or not…. [Y]et several of these chiefs denied it, by openly declaring themselves to be neither more nor less than plain Narragansets; who scorn’s to scalp any person who would submit to have his private property destroyed, without complaining.
With regard to their political schemes, I challenge all Hell to match them. Law they have none, nor any do they want….
The First of these chiefs is A–ms [John Adams], a sachem of vast elocution; but being extremely poor, retails out syllables, sentences, eulogiums, etc. to draw in the multitude; and it can be attested, that what proceeds from the mouth of A–ms is sufficient to fill the mouths of millions in America. But it is prophesied that the time is near at hand, when the frothy food will fail them.
But generous John scorns to let him starve — far from it; ’tis well known his purse-strings have been at Sam’s disposal ever since he assisted in making the Oration delivered by John on the 5th March 1774, to a crowded audience of Narraganset Indians.
The Second of these chiefs is H—-ck [John Hancock], who having been possess’d of too much money for a private gentleman, resolved to make a public attempt to become a Monarch, and having courted popularity and power almost as long as he did Miss ———— Miss ———— or Mr Barnard’s cook-maid, Betty Price, is at last likely to be jilted in his turn, and in the end to be wedded to beggary, contempt, and a g—–s.
The Third of these incomparable Indians is Rowe; a chief (according to George Alexander Stevens) possess’d of a great fund of knowledge; but having a skull of an uncommon thickness, and the sutures of the cranium being closely compacted, he never has been able to display any rational faculties, except when he invented the new method of making Tea.
But, oh! for words to grace the character of the most traiterous of men!—a modern Bravo. Did not the name of rebel stain the soldier, I could have afforded him a more brilliant title, and have call’d him a General. His name is L– [Joseph Lee]. Oh! beware my friends of his follies! He mounted to almost the height of preferment, but mazed with ambition, he fell from the precipice, burst himself asunder, and exposing his pride, proved Mr. Pope’s assertion.
Pride still is aiming at the blest abodes,
Men would be angels, angels would be gods;
Aspiring to be gods, if angels fell,
Aspiring to be angels, men rebell.
Oh! my friends and fellow subjects! what infatuation must possess the deluded fools who depend on such a race of rascals for their leaders!
Source: Thomas Bolton, An Oration: Delivered March 15th, 1775, at the Request of a Number of the Inhabitants of the Town of Boston (New York: James Rivington, 1775); David Potter and Gordon L. Thomas, The Colonial Idiom (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1970), 301–4; Alfred E. Jones, The Loyalists of Massachusetts—Their Memorials, Petitions and Claims (London: Saint Catherine Press, 1930), 43–44.
Evaluating the Evidence