Letter from Cyrus Baldwin to Loammi Baldwin, 15 August 1765
Description:
Boston's working-class men enter the debate over the Stamp Act in their own fashion. For years, gangs from the town's North and South Ends have converged on 5 November to celebrate Pope's Day (in England called Guy Fawkes Day, which commemorates the 1605 defeat of a Catholic plot to blow up Parliament). With a depression in full swing and unemployment high, some Bostonians take the occasion as an excuse to crack heads. In August 1765, when radicals (later identified as the Loyal Nine, forerunners of Boston's Sons of Liberty) approach Ebenezer McIntosh, ringleader of the South End mob, he readily accepts their offer to give his boys another cause for action. Andrew Oliver has been appointed stamp master for Boston. He presents an object for scorn, effigy, and rampage much nearer to hand than the Pope. From Miscellaneous Bound Manuscripts
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