not
the last, memorable but not most memorable, met in New York in the
early November of 1765. Nine colonies were represented at its
table--Massachusetts, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island,
Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, and New York. The
congress passed a series of resolutions, as firm in their purpose as
moderate in their language, putting forward the grievances and
asserting the rights of the colonies.

But the protests against the Stamp Act were not limited to eloquent
orations or formal resolutions. Deeds, as well as words, made plain
the purpose of the American people. Riots broke out in colony after
colony; the most and worst in Massachusetts. Boston blazed into open
revolt against authority. There were two Government officials in
Boston who were especially unpopular with the mob--Andrew Oliver, the
newly appointed collector of the stamp taxes, and Chief Justice
Hutchinson. A scarecrow puppet, intended to represent the obnoxious
Oliver, was publicly hung upon a tree by the mob, then cut down,
triumphantly paraded through the city to Oliver's door, and there set
on fire. When the sham Oliver was ashes the crowd broke into and
ransacked his house, after which it did the same turn to the house of
Chief Justice Hutchinson. Oliver and Hutchinson escaped unhurt, but
all their property went through their broken windows and lay in ruin
upon the Boston streets. Hutchinson was busy upon a History of
Massachusetts; the manuscript shared the fate of its {92} author's
chairs and tables, and went with them out into the gutter. It was
picked up, preserved, and exists to this day, its pages blackened with
the Boston mud. Many papers and records of the province which
Hutchinson had in his care for the purpose of his history were
irretrievably lost.

The next day the judges and the bar, assembled in their robes at the
Boston Court House, were startled by the apparition of a haggard man in
disordered attire, whom they might have been pardoned for failing to
recognize as their familiar chief justice. In a voice broken with
emotion Hutchinson apologized to the court for the appearance in which
he presented himself before it. He and his family were destitute; he
himself had no other shirt and no other clothes than those he was at
that moment wearing. Part even of this poor attire he had been obliged
to borrow. Almost in rags, almost in tears, he solemnly called his
Maker to witness that he wa