Free Bunker Hill by Nathaniel Philbrick

Once again, Hancock had found a way to elevate his standing among the people of Boston.
    —
    On May 25, the new royal governor suffered through an Election Day sermon at the First Meeting based on the scriptural proverb “When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice: but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn.” Later that day he was presented with a slate of twenty-eight candidates for his own governor’s council that was filled with patriots. As was his right, he rejected thirteen of them, including John Adams and Harvard professor John Winthrop. He also reminded both houses of the General Court that as of June 1 they would be meeting not in Boston but, as the Port Act required, in Salem. Instead of living in Province House, Gage needed to be based near the new temporary capital, and over the course of the next few days he made arrangements to stay in a mansion in the little town of Danvers, just a few miles from Salem.
    On May 29, Admiral Montagu began setting up the blockade that would prevent all shipping from reaching or leaving Boston Harbor. Given the size of the anchorage, it was no easy matter. The
Magdalen
was placed at Point Shirley at the harbor’s extreme northeastern corner, the
Mercury
fourteen miles to the south at Point Allerton, and the
Tamar
hovered near the harbor entrance at the Brewsters. Six other vessels took up positions throughout the inner harbor, with the largest and most conspicuous of the warships, the admiral’s flagship
Captain
,
placed between Long and Hancock’s wharves, the entire Boston waterfront comfortably in range of her guns.
    On June 1 John Rowe recorded in his diary, “This is the last day any vessel can enter this harbor until this fatal act of Parliament is repealed. Poor unhappy Boston. God knows only thy wretched fate. I see nothing but misery will attend thy inhabitants.”
    —
    But the Boston Port Act was only the beginning. The very next day, word reached the city that a vessel had arrived in Marblehead with a draft of another bill that would be referred to in the months ahead as the Massachusetts Government Act. Not content with sealing off Boston, Parliament had decided to strip the colony of the essence of its royal charter, which dated back to 1692. With the exception of one pro forma annual gathering to elect town officials, regular town meetings, the lifeblood of the patriot movement, were to be forbidden. Instead of being nominated by the House of Representatives, subject to the governor’s veto, the upper chamber of the General Court was to be handpicked by the king through what was called a writ of mandamus (Latin for “we command”).
    It now seemed as if everything Samuel Adams had predicted was about to come true. By August, when the Government Act went into effect, every town in Massachusetts would be deprived of its liberties.
    John Rowe received the disturbing news while attending a meeting of fellow Boston merchants. Rowe was a moderate, a man doomed to see both sides of the situation and to reserve judgment; he loved the mother country, but he also cared deeply about the town of Boston. Back in December he appears to have gotten so caught up in the excitement surrounding the Tea Party that he was heard to shout, “Who knows how tea will mingle with salt water?” It was an exclamation he had come to regret as he struggled to play both sides of the political fence. “The people have done amiss [with the Tea Party],” he wrote in his diary, “and no sober man can vindicate their conduct, but the revenge of the ministry is too severe.”
    Samuel Adams seems to have taken the Government Act as a kind of goad. It was time, he and the Boston Committee of Correspondence decided, to circumvent the merchants and their attempts to pay for the tea and appeal directly to the farmers of the country towns. Since the merchants’ livelihood was based on trade with London, they would always be wary of anything that might endanger that