“Humbling the Tories” on the South Shore, 1774

In my last entry, I traced the rising tensions that brought British Redcoats to Marshfield in January 1775. To understand why, we looked back to the winter of 1773-1774, when Marshfield Patriots burned tea on what became known as Tea Rock, openly defying royal authority. In response, Loyalist Nathaniel Ray Thomas pushed through resolutions in Marshfield town meeting pledging allegiance to King George III and vowing punishment for those responsible for destruction of the tea and for those who were intimidating Loyalists in Plymouth. But instead of deterring the Whigs, it provoked them—1774 would be a year of reckoning.

By this time, colonial frustrations with British rule had reached a boiling point. The Patriots had tried resolutions on paper, they had tried economic boycotts, they had tried petitions. And yet, despite years of effort, matters only grew more desperate. There clearly was a sense among many Whigs that forceful methods were necessary. While they were ultimately on the right side of history, the revolutionary fervor that swept through Massachusetts in 1774 led to increasingly aggressive protests—protests that could blur the line between patriotic resistance and mob justice.

Imagine a scene on a low hill in the dead of night in Duxbury, Massachusetts, in the spring of 1774. A group of men stands gathered around a tall pole, recently hoisted and set into the ground. A bonfire burns nearby, casting long shadows across the hilltop. Some of the men carry torches. They are waiting.

Soon enough, the object of their attention appears: an ox and cart plodding along the narrow road that curls around the base of the hill. In the cart is a man from Marshfield who has chosen loyalty to the Crown over the revolutionary cause. Whether he sits or is forced to stand, stumbling with each jolt of the cart, we can only guess. What is certain is that the Patriots are making an example of him. And he is not the first to be brought here this spring.

The cart makes its way up the hill, wheels groaning, the ox’s heavy breath creating plumes in the cold night air. When it stops, the man is hauled out and made to stand with his back against the liberty pole. He is given a choice: renounce the King and ask the forgiveness of his countrymen, or face the consequences.

Does he resist? Does he condemn his captors for dragging him from his home in the middle of the night? Or does he, seeing the odds against him, and the rope hanging from the top of the liberty pole, quickly recant? However it unfolds, the end result is the same—he is only released once he has denounced the Crown and signed a piece of paper to certify it.[1]

These public humiliations, a practice known as “Humbling the Tories,” became a common scene across New England in 1774. They took many forms–although, contrary to popular belief, tarring and feathering was exceedingly rare (only one instance in Boston and perhaps isolated incidents elsewhere). The Patriots saw themselves as defenders of liberty, and their frustration with those seen as obstacles to their cause pushed them to extremes. In town after town, the same drama played out: Loyalists, once respected members of the community, found themselves forced to choose between submission or suffering the wrath of their neighbors.

In Middleborough, the Loyalist Silas Wood learned firsthand what it meant to stand against the tide. A mob descended upon his home, dragging him from his hearth and hauling him to a nearby pond. What began as a humiliating dunking nearly turned into something far worse. Only the tearful pleas of his children spared him.[2]

In Halifax, Daniel Dunbar, an ensign in the militia, was targeted for refusing to surrender an old militia banner bearing the insignia of the King. A group of men broke into his home, dragged him outside, and subjected him to the brutal punishment of “riding the rail”—an hours-long ordeal. When he at last relented, giving up the banner, his tormentors claimed their prize and left him.[3]

Plymouth initially took a measured approach to dealing with Crown supporters. Back in 1770, in the wake of the Boston Massacre, Plymouth established a committee of inspection to summon those Loyalists who defied the non-importation agreement before the town committee and to give them a chance to explain themselves. It seems Plymouth Whigs hoped to avoid mob action and to instead question Loyalists in civil proceedings. But four years later, in 1774, things would be quite different and Plymouth eventually saw its share of anti-Tory violence. Among those targeted was Thomas Foster, Esq., a venerable gentleman of seventy years, who had once been regarded with deep respect. But his allegiance to the Crown erased any goodwill he had accrued. When the mob came for him, he had no choice but to flee into the woods, leaving his home to be ransacked.[4]

And then there was Jesse Dunbar. Perhaps no incident better captured the raw emotions of the time. A resident of Halifax, Dunbar made the unfortunate choice of purchasing cattle from Nathaniel Ray Thomas, the most reviled Loyalist in the region. When he brought the cattle to Plymouth to be slaughtered, word spread quickly, and the people of Plymouth decided to make an example of him.

Seized by a crowd, Dunbar was forced inside the carcass of one of his own slaughtered cattle—a gruesome humiliation that would be seared into local memory. The man and carcass were loaded onto a cart and in this state he was brought through four towns to the be dumped off at the doorstep of Nathaniel Ray Thomas. Patriots of each town along the way took their turn in tormenting him.[5]

A young Seth Sprague of Duxbury, at first eager to join in Dunbar’s punishment, later admitted that as he watched the man’s suffering, something shifted in him. When they reached the Thomas estate, the Squire was not there. But Sprague well remembered Mrs. Thomas addressing the crowd from her window, her composed and reasoned words quieting the din of the mob. Sprague later recalled that she “made some of them, at least, very much ashamed.” Even he, an adolescent at the time, sensed that things had gone too far.[6]

Such moments remind us that revolutions are complicated. The American Revolution was a fight for freedom, but it was not without its darker edges. The Patriots of 1774 were ultimately fighting for a just cause—but their justified anger sometimes drove them to extremes. And these extremes gave the Loyalists of Marshfield good reason to contemplate petitioning the royal Governor for military protection.

But it would take one more dramatic act to drive them to take that step. Ultimately–perhaps predictably—the mob came for Nathaniel Ray Thomas himself. In massive numbers. But that is a subject for another post…

[1] Justin Winsor, History of Duxbury (Boston: Crosby & Nichols, 1849), 138-139 tells us that recantations at the liberty pole near Gamaliel Bradford’s house were common before and during the war. Among the Marshfield Loyalists who were forced to recant there, Winsor names Paul White, Elisha Ford, and a Dr. Stockbridge. In Hon. Seth Sprague of Duxbury, his Descendants down to the Sixth Generation, and his Reminiscences of the Old Colony Town (Milton: Published by William Bradford, 1915), “Reminscences of Hon. Seth Sprague,” 4, the shipbuilder, who was about 14 at the time, recalls the recantations at the liberty pole and the threat of being “histed” [hoisted] thereon.

[2] Clifford Kenyon Shipton, New England Life in the Eighteenth Century, (1995), 331.

[3] James Henry Stark, The Loyalists of Massachusetts and the Other Side of the American Revolution (Boston: Published by James H. Stark, 1907), 421.

[4] Frank Moore, The Diary of the Revolution: A Centennial Volume Embracing the Current Events in Our Country’s History from 1775 to 1781 as Described by American, British, and Tory Contemporaries, (Hartford: J. B. Burr Publishing Co., 1876), 40.

[5] Winsor, 140 and Stark, 421.

[6] Sprague, “Reminscences” in Hon. Seth Sprague, 3.