American Revolution - Biography, Massachusetts - State & Local History, Governors - U.S. Political Biography, American Colonial History - General & Miscellaneous, U.S. Politics & Government - 1607 - 1811, Historical Biography - United States - Colonial &

The brave Bostonians

Name: The brave Bostonians
Author: Philip McFarland
ISBN: 9780813334400

by Philip McFarland

Write a review

Overview

Most Americans are familiar with the Revolution through its defining moments: the Stamp Act riots, the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, Paul Revere’s ride, the first shots fired at Lexington and Concord. These were events fueled by the anger of an array of Bostonians in search of liberty and justice for an American cause. As a legacy of the Revolution, their heroic tales have intimately defined our consciousness as Americans and the sense of history we carry with us today.But there is another side to the story, a story of Bostonians equally brave and as intensely devoted to liberty and justice, who watched with horror as their homes were pillaged, their reputations destroyed, and their lives torn apart. They were the losers, far more deeply than Britain, King George, or a host of British Redcoats. But their story is largely forgotten.In The Brave Bostonians, acclaimed novelist and historian Philip McFarland traces both sides through the intertwined lives of three native, and eminently respected, Bostonians during the turbulent year preceding the Revolution. Thomas Hutchinson, the last civilian governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, stands as the centerpiece of the story. Unfalteringly loyal to British law and order and far from home as an exile in London, he could only agonize over letters and newspaper headlines as his beloved Boston burst apart at the seams. Josiah Quincy, an archpatriot and feverish enemy of Hutchinson’s loyalism, drove himself to his own tubercular death in pursuit of the colony’s independence. And Benjamin Franklin, the venerable diplomat, scientist, and devoted Anglophile, fought with considerable skill to hold the British Empire together before conceding at last to declare himself heart and soul an American. These three men, each fiercely loyal in his own way to Boston and America, stood in separate corners of the conflict. And each found his own fate.Told in skillful style through the words of those who endured the struggles of the times, The Brave Bostonians brings fresh life to this stirring period of America’s past.

Reviews

There are no reviews yet. Log in to write one.

Editorials

Booknews

A novelist and historian traces both sides of the early conflicts of the American Revolution through the intertwined lives of three native Bostonians during the turbulent year preceding the Revolution. Thomas Hutchinson, the last civilian governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, stands as the centerpiece of the story. Two other key figures are profiled: Josiah Quincy, an archpatriot and enemy of Hutchinson's loyalism, and Benjamin Franklin, the diplomat and scientist who fought to hold the British Empire together before conceding to declare himself an American. For general readers. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Justin Kaplan

An exciting story told with stylistic sureness, narrative pacing, and a firm command of the materials. It dramatizes the human and personal transactions that helped drive a great historical event. -- Justin Kaplan

Pauline Maier

"The Brave Bostonians" tells with great vividness and human detail the story of how, in 1774 and 1775, England and America moved, step by step, toward a war that neither wanted. It provides a gripping introduction to the American Revolution for anyone anxious to know more about that event. -- Pauline Maier

Kirkus Reviews

Shunning caricatures of American revolutionary patriots as heroes and British loyalists as traitors or cowards, novelist McFarland (Seasons of Fear, 1983, etc.) shows in this absorbing narrative of three lives that the prerevolutionary crisis in Boston in 1774þ75 had all the complexity and tragedy of a true civil war, and neither side had any monopoly on courage, virtue, or villainy. In the 1770s, Thomas Hutchinson, Benjamin Franklin, and Josiah Quincy seemingly had much in common: All were prominent native Bostonians (although Franklin had spent his adult life in Philadelphia), all were devoted to America, and, at least at the outset, all were committed to the British Empire and its tradition of law, property rights, and individual liberty. Quincy, a fervent and tubercular patriot who died as the crisis turned into outright war, worked for independence from the outset but represented the British soldiers charged in the Boston Massacre and initially deplored the patriot mobs. Hutchinson, Massachusetts's last royal governor, emerges in McFarland's account as a moderate and intelligent conservative. But, out of touch with Americans' national aspirations and convinced that the better course was cooperation with Britain, he was violently driven out of Boston by mobs and watched helplessly from his London exile as the crisis erupted into war. Franklin was a previous advocate of empire whose son was royal governor of New Jersey and who had spent ten years in London as an agent for several of the colonies. He became embroiled in scandal when he stole and clandestinely circulated several letters of Hutchinson's that showed the royal governor's callousness toward America. Humiliatedbefore the Privy Council in a speech by the solicitor general and stripped of his perquisites, Franklin was to sever his last ties with Britain and become one of the founders of the United States. A compelling narrative that reads like excellent fiction, but also a reminder of the suffering and moral dilemmas that Americans faced during the American Revolution.