10 MARCH 1776, BOSTON HARBOR: The first ships of the British flotilla depart: Continental soldiers count between twenty-five and thirty ships departing Boston and sailing down the harbor.
He has been provided with one ship with which to store those items in his custody, but he will appropriate so much that he will end up filling a second. And once he and his men are seen doing so, others—both civilians and soldiers—soon follow suit.
Brush effectively treats this as a license to seize whatever goods he wishes, issuing worthless certificates in exchange, and so the looting of Boston begins: Crean and his underlings begin breaking into houses and carting off all the valuables they can find.
The articles are to be turned in to New York Loyalist Crean Brush, whom Howe issues a commission empowering him “to make inquiry if any such goods be secreted in stores, and you are to seize all such.”
10 MARCH 1776, BOSTON: General Howe issues a proclamation commanding “all good subjects” to turn in “all linen and woolen articles” (no exception is made for clothing) to army authorities, to keep them from the Continental Army. Any who fail to do so “will be treated as a Favourer of Rebels.”
Cover of Tories: Fighting for the King in America's First Civil War by Thomas B. Allen
Cover of 1776 by David McCullough
Caner leaves behind a house filled with valuable property; he has been given only six hours’ notice of his departure and very little space in which to transport his belongings even if he had time to pack them. Main sources: Thomas B. Allen, TORIES; David McCullough, 1776
Henry Caner
10 MARCH 1776, BOSTON: Reverend Henry Caner gives a last Sunday service at King’s Chapel, then boards a ship in the departing British flotilla, taking with him the communion service and the church’s register of baptisms, marriages and burials. He will never see New England again.
“‘that the Common Course has been to Blend with the New system of politics the Errors & Deficiencies that had Cript into the old.’ Therefore there is Scarcly any Example of Such a phenomenon as a perfect Common Wealth. But we will hope the present period will Leave one to posterity.” buff.ly/BOU4eHS
“It is an Observation of the Celebrated Bourge, ‘that Almost all political Establishments are the Creatures of Chance Rather than of Wisdom, and that There are few Instances of A people Forming for themselves a Constitution from the Foundation,
“I have Long been an Admirer of A Republican form of Goverment, And was Convinced … that if Established upon the Genuine principles of Equal Liberty, it was A Form productive of Many Excellent qualities, and Heroic Virtues in Human Nature. …
“However Fashionable in Europe, or However it Might Coincide with the taste for Elegance And pleasure in the one sex, or Co opperate with the Interest, or passions of the Other.
“Notwithstanding the Love of Dress, Dancing, Equipage, Finery and Folly, Notwithstanding the Fondness for Fasshion, predominates So strongly in the Female Mind, I hope Never to see an American Monarchy,
Mercy Otis Warren, painted by John Singleton Copley
10 MARCH 1776, PLYMOUTH, MASSACHSETTS: “We will hope … that the American Republic will Come as Near the standard of perfection as the state of Humanity will Admit,” Mercy Warren writes to John Adams, after he asked for her thoughts on what government the colonies should adopt.
Four Continental soldiers are killed in the bombardment. In the morning, Continental soldiers will recover seven hundred British cannonballs from the hillside.
Redcoat cannon unleash “a most Heavy Fire from the Shipping in the Harbour from Several of the Wharves & from several Batteries; Such a Firing, was never before heard in New England,” and Continental artillery returns fire from Roxbury.
9 MARCH 1776, BOSTON, ROXBURY AND DORCHESTER, MASSACHUSETTS: “Such a Firing, was never before heard in New England”: The nightly cannon bombardments return when the redcoats realize the Continentals are constructing a new emplacement on Dorchester Heights.
Civil authorities, from the Congress down to local committees, might well require such tests; but military officers can never have the power to do so, as “there can be no liberty where the military is not subordinate to the civil power,” says Congress.
Lee prepared a list of men of whose politics he was suspicious and ordered that everyone on the list be required to take the oath; anyone who refused, he ordered arrested and deported to jail in Connecticut.
A representation of Charles Lee
9 MARCH 1776, PHILADELPHIA: The Continental Congress forbids military officers from instituting political tests or oaths on civilians, after learning that Charles Lee has required such tests on people in New York “in order to ascertain their political principles.”
He also argues that free trade within the British Empire, rather than the system of internal tariffs such as the one on tea, would result in the greatest economic prosperity for the empire.
Several chapters of The Wealth of Nations deal with the conflict between Britain and the Colonies. Smith believes it’s absolutely appropriate that the Colonies pay imperial taxes, but that in return they should receive representation in Parliament.
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations is the world’s first comprehensive exploration of political economy, the interaction of economic and political systems in the production of national wealth. Smith has been drafting it for seventeen years.
9 MARCH 1776, LONDON: The Wealth of Nations, by Scottish philosopher and economist Adam Smith, is published in two volumes. It’s a foundational text in classic economics and the theory of free markets. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wea...
“How Such a Complicated tho’t could ever enter into, or be retained by a human Soul, and if retained how Such an Amazing Design could ever be executed, infinitely exceeds all my Comprehension.”
“This Work which has a Vast Number of Wheels and an Infinity of Indentations and Teeth is capable of representing the Exact Position of every Moon and Planet at any Period for eighteen hundred years forward.
“The outer Circle of this Works on which the Signs are marked which make a retrograde Rotation once in Twenty five Thousand years, moves so inconceiveably Slow as to require Nine Million one hundred Twenty five Thousand Turns to bring this Circle once round.
“The whole Solar System is here represented, the comparitive Distances and Magnitude of every Planet and their Satellites, and all their true Motions made by turning a small crank in the manner a Man turns a Grind stone, each turn Makes a day.
“As I am but little acquainted with astronomy or Mechanism I could only View it with the strange Wonder of a Barbarian for such I could only consider myself when compared to such a Matchless Genius.
8 MARCH 1776, PHILADELPHIA: Connecticut delegate Oliver Wolcott writes to his wife Laura of his awe at viewing David Rittenhouse’s orrery: www.library.upenn.edu/collections/...
The Congress does resolve “to enquire into the cause of the imprisonment of the officers of Militia” in Canada: Wooster rescinded the preexisting militia commissions and reassigned them to men of his own choosing, then imprisoned as an enemy to America any officer who objected.
