r eighty. Colonel Ebenezer Stevens agrees
with him. "None put the number lower than sixty, nor higher than
eighty," is the recollection of "a Bostonian," fifty years after the
event. John Andrews was told that they mustered on Fort Hill to the
number of about two hundred. "From one hundred to one hundred and fifty
being more or less actively engaged" thought Hewes, one of the actors.
"Two or three hundred dressed like Indians," wrote Dr. Cooper to Dr.
Franklin.

These varying estimates may be accounted for in this way. Those who
report the smaller number either repeated what they were told, or saw
only one of the parties on its way to the ships, while the others speak
of the entire body after its separate parts had united at the wharf.
Some may mean only such of the party as were in Indian dress. If we
place the number on board the ships at fifty or sixty, and estimate
those at work by the sides of the vessels at sixty or seventy, we shall
probably not be far out of the way, the whole number then aggregating
from one hundred and ten to one hundred and thirty. The names of more
than one hundred of these have been preserved.

Who were these men? "Depend upon it," said John Adams to Hezekiah Niles
in 1819, "These were no ordinary Mohawks. The profound secrecy in which
they have held their names, and the total abstinence of plunder, are
proofs of the character of the men." But two of the recognized leaders
of the people were there,--Dr. Young and Thomas Molineux. Most of them
were mechanics and apprentices, but they were mechanics of the stamp of
Revere, Howard, Wheeler, Crane and Peck, men who could restrain and keep
in due subordination the more fiery and dangerous element, always
present in popular demonstrations. That element was not wholly absent on
this occasion, for Mackintosh, the leader in the Stamp Act riots, was
present with "his chickens," as he called them, and active in destroying
the tea. There were also professional men, like Dr. Young and Dr. Story,
and merchants, such as Molineux, Proctor, Melvill, Palmer, May, Pitts
and Davis, men of high character and standing, so that all classes were
fairly represented. As might be expected, those appointed for the work,
and who were in Indian dress, were largely men of family and position in
Boston.

A writer in the American Magazine of History attempts to discredit the
statement that the party were in Indian dress, intimating that it was an
afterthought, intended