was in 1760–1761. The Stamp Act, passed in 1765, was repealed in 1766; it was opposed in Boston by a surprising show of determined and unified public sentiment. Troops were first quartered in the town in 1768. In 1770, on the 5th of March, in a street brawl, a number of citizens were killed or wounded by the soldiers, who fired into a crowd that were baiting a sentry. This incident is known as the “Boston Massacre.” The Tea Act of 1773 was defied by the emptying into the harbour of three cargoes of tea on the 16th of December 1773, by a party of citizens disguised as Indians, after the people in town-meeting had exhausted every effort, through a period of weeks, to procure the return of the tea-ships to England. To this act Great Britain replied by various penal regulations and reconstructive acts of government. She quartered troops in Boston; she made the juries, sheriffs and judges of the colony dependent on the royal officers; she ordered capital offenders to be tried in Nova Scotia or England; she endeavoured completely to control or to abolish town-meetings; and finally, by the so-called “Boston Port Bill,” she closed the port of Boston on the 1st of June 1774. Not even a ferry, a scow or other boat could move in the harbour. Marblehead and Salem were made ports of entry, and Salem was made the capital. But they would not profit by Boston’s misfortune. The people covenanted not to use British goods and to suspend trade with Great Britain. From near neighbours and from distant colonies came provisions and encouragement. In October 1774, when General Gage refused recognition to the Massachusetts general court at Salem, the members adjourned to Concord as the first provincial congress. Finally came war, with Lexington and Bunker Hill, and beleaguerment by the colonial army; until on the 17th of March 1776 the British were compelled by Washington to evacuate the city. With them went about 1100 Tory refugees, many of them of the finest families of the city and province. The evacuation closed the heroic period of Boston’s history. War did not again approach the city.
The years from 1776 to the end of “town” government in 1822 were marked by slow growth and prosperity. Commerce and manufactures alike took great impetus. Direct trade with the East Indies began about 1785, with Russia in 1787. A Boston vessel, the “Columbia” (Captain Robert Gray), opened trade with the north-west coast of America, and was the first American ship to circumnavigate the globe (1787–1790). In 1805 Boston began the export of ice to Jamaica, a trade which was gradually extended to Cuba, to ports of the southern states, and finally to Rio de Janeiro and Calcutta (1833), declining only after the Civil War; it enabled Boston to control the American trade of Calcutta against New York throughout the entire period. But of course it was far less important than various other articles of trade in the aggregate values of commerce. It was Boston commerce that was most sorely hurt by the embargo and non-importation policy of President Jefferson. In manufactures the foundation was laid of the city’s wealth. In politics the period is characterized by Boston’s connexion with the fortunes of the Federalist party. The city was warmly in favour of the adoption of the federal constitution of 1787; even Samuel Adams was rejected for Congress because he was backward in its support. It was the losses entailed upon her commerce by the commercial policy of Jefferson’s administration that embittered Boston against the Democratic-Republican party and put her public men in the forefront of the opposition to its policies that culminated in lukewarmness toward the War of 1812, and in the Hartford Convention of 1814.
Some mention must be made of the Unitarian movement. Unitarian tendencies away from the Calvinism of the old Congregational churches were plainly evident about 1750, and it is said by Andrew P. Peabody (1811–1893) that by 1780 nearly all the Congregational pulpits around Boston were filled by Unitarians. Organized Unitarianism in Boston dates from 1785. In 1782 King’s chapel (Episcopal) became Unitarian, and in 1805 one of that faith was made professor of divinity in Harvard. But the Unitarianism of those times, even the Unitarianism of Channing, was very different from that of to-day. Theodore Parker and Channing have been the greatest leaders. The American Unitarian Association, organized in 1825, has always retained its headquarters in Boston. The theological and philosophical developments of the second quarter of the 19th century were characterized by the transcendental movement (see Massachusetts).
In the period from 1822 to the Civil War anti-slavery is the most striking feature of Boston’s annals. Garrison established the Liberator in 1831; W. E. Channing became active in the cause of abolition in 1835, and Wendell Phillips a little later. In 1835 a mob, composed in part of wealthy and high-standing citizens, attacked a city-building, and dragged Garrison through the streets until the mayor secured his safety by putting him in gaol. But times changed. In 1850 a reception was given in Faneuil Hall in honour of the English anti-slavery leader, George Thompson, whose reported intention to address Bostonians in 1835 precipitated the riot of that year. In 1851 the Court House was surrounded with chains to prevent the “rescue” of a slave (Sims) held for rendition under the Fugitive Slave Law; another slave (Shadrach) was released this same year, and in 1854 there was a riot and intense excitement over the rendition of Anthony Burns. Boston had long since taken her place in the very front of anti-slavery ranks, and with the rest of Massachusetts was playing somewhat the same part as in the years before the War of Independence.
Later events of importance have already been indicated in essentials. On the 9th–10th of November 1872 a terrible fire swept the business part of the city, destroying hundreds of buildings of brick and granite, and inflicting a loss of some $75,000,000. Within two years the whole area, solidly rebuilt and with widened and straightened streets, showed no traces of the ruin except an appearance superior in all respects to that presented before the fire. The expense of this re-creation probably duplicated, at least, the loss from the conflagration. Since this time there has been no set-back to the prosperity of the city. But it is not upon material prosperity that Boston rests its claims for consideration. It prides itself on its schools, its libraries, its literary traditions, its splendid public works and its reputation as the chief centre of American culture.
Authorities.—See the annual City Documents; also Justin Winsor (ed.) The Memorial History of Boston, including Suffolk County . . . 1630–1880 (4 vols., Boston, 1880–1881), a work that covers every phase of the city’s growth, history and life; S. A. Drake, The History and Antiquities of ... Boston (2 vols., Boston, 1854; and later editions), and Old Landmarks and Historic Personages of Boston (Boston, 1873, and later editions); Josiah Quincy, A Municipal History of . . . Boston . . . to . . . 1830 (Boston, 1852); C. W. Ernst, Constitutional History of Boston (Boston, 1894); H. H. Sprague, City Government in Boston—its Rise and Development (Boston, 1890); E. E. Hale, Historic Boston and its Neighbourhood (New York, 1898), and L. Swift, Literary Landmarks of Boston (Boston, 1903). A great mass of original historical documents have been published by the registry department of the city government since 1876 (34 v. to 1905). Boston has been described in many works of fiction, and the reader may be referred to the novels of E. L. Bynner, to L. Maria Childs’ The Rebels, to J. F. Cooper’s Lionel Lincoln, to the early novels of W. D. Howells (also those of Arlo Bates), to O. W. Holmes’ Poet and Autocrat, and Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter, as pictures of Boston life at various periods since early colonial days.
BOSTON, a game of cards invented during the last quarter of the 18th century. It is said to have originated in Boston, Massachusetts, during the siege by the British. It seems to have been invented by the officers of the French fleet which lay for a time off the town of Marblehead, and the name of the two small islands in Marblehead harbour which have, from the period of the American Revolution, been called Great and Little Misery, correspond with expressions used in the game. William Tudor, in his Letters on the Eastern States, published in 1821, states somewhat differently that “A game of cards was invented in Versailles and called in honour of the town, Boston; the points of the game are allusive, ‘great independence,’ ‘little independence,’ ‘great misery,’ ‘little misery,’ &c. It is composed partly of whist and partly of quadrille, though partaking mostly of the former.” The game enjoyed an extraordinary vogue in high French society, where it was the fashion at that time to admire
