Thomas Gage - Governor of Massachusetts

Governor of Massachusetts

Gage returned to England in June 1773 with his family and thus missed the Boston Tea Party in December of that year. The British Parliament passed a series of measures known in the colonies as the Intolerable Acts as a way to punish the colonies, and specifically the Province of Massachusetts Bay, for this and other acts of protest against British colonial policy. Some of the terms of those acts, for example the option to remove political trials to England, originated with Gage, and measures curbing the activities of town meetings and extending Crown governance into the Ohio Country also show his influence. With his military experience and relative youth (Massachusetts governor Thomas Hutchinson was then 62 years old and unpopular, and the equally unpopular lieutenant governor (Andrew Oliver), a hated Tory, was 67 in 1773 and died in March 1774), Gage, a popular figure on both sides of the Atlantic, was deemed the best man to handle the brewing crisis and enforce the Parliamentary acts.

In early 1774, he was appointed military Royal governor, or commander-in-chief, of Massachusetts, replacing Hutchinson. He arrived from England in early May, first stopping at Castle William on Castle Island in Boston Harbor. He then arrived in Boston on 13 May 1774, having been carried there by the HMS Lively. His arrival was met with little pomp and circumstance, but was generally well received at first as Bostonians were happy to see Hutchinson go. Feelings about him rapidly deteriorated as he began to implement the various acts, including the Boston Port Act, which put many people out of work, and the Massachusetts Government Act, which formally dissolved the provincial assembly. He attempted to buy off political leaders in Massachusetts, notably Benjamin Church and Samuel Adams. With the former he was successful—Church secretly supplied him with intelligence on the activities of rebel leaders—but Adams and other rebel leaders were not moved.

Gage also sought to strictly enforce army decisions calling for the confiscation of war-making materials. In September 1774, he ordered a mission to remove provincial gunpowder from a magazine in what is now Somerville, Massachusetts. This action, although successful, caused a huge popular reaction known as the Powder Alarm, resulting in the mobilization of thousands of provincial militiamen who marched towards Cambridge, Massachusetts. Although the militia soon dispersed, the show of force on the part of the provincials had a lasting effect on Gage and he subsequently grew more cautious in his actions. The rapid response of the provincials was in large part due to Paul Revere and the Sons of Liberty. The Sons of Liberty kept careful watch over Gage's activities and successfully warned others of future actions before Gage could mobilise his British regulars to execute them.

Gage was criticised for allowing groups like the Sons of Liberty to exist. One of his officers, Hugh Percy remarked, "The general's great lenity and moderation serve only to make them more daring and insolent." Gage himself wrote after the Powder Alarm, "If force is to be used at length, it must be a considerable one, and foreign troops must be hired, for to begin with small numbers will encourage resistance, and not terrify; and will in the end cost more blood and treasure." Edmund Burke described Gage's conflicted relationship by saying in Parliament, "An Englishman is the unfittest person on Earth to argue another Englishman into slavery."