Hutchinson and the English officers understood the danger, and for many months the discipline was exemplary, but precautions were futile. Though he knew full well how to be all things to all men, the natural affiliations of Samuel Adams were with the clergy and the mob, and in the ship-yards and rope-walks he reigned supreme. Nor was he of a temper to shrink from using to the utmost the opportunity his adversaries had put in his hands, and he forthwith began a series of inflammatory appeals in the newspapers, whereof this is a specimen: “And are the inhabitants of this town still to be affronted in the night as well as the day by soldiers arm’d with muskets and fix’d bayonets?... Will the spirits of people, as yet unsubdued by tyranny, unaw’d by the menaces of arbitary power, submit to be govern’d by military force?” [Footnote: Vindex, _Boston Gazette_, Dec. 5, 1768.] In 1770 it was notorious that “endeavors had been systematically pursued for many months, by certain busy characters, to excite quarrels, rencounters, and combats, single or compound, in the night, between the inhabitants of the lower class and the soldiers, and at all risks to enkindle an immortal hatred between them.” [Footnote: Autobiography of John Adams. _Works of J. Adams_, ii. 229.] And it is curious to observe how the British always quarrelled with the laborers about the wharves; and how these, the closest friends of Adams, were all imbued with the theory he maintained, that the military could not use their weapons without the order of a civil magistrate. Little by little the animosity increased, until on the 2d of March there was a very serious fray at Gray’s rope-walk, which was begun by one of the hands, who knocked down two soldiers who spoke to him in the street. Although Adams afterward labored to convince the public that the tragedy which happened three days later was the result of a deliberately matured conspiracy to murder the citizens for revenge, there is nothing whereon to base such a charge; on the contrary, the evidence tends to exonerate the troops, and the verdicts show the opinion of the juries. There was exasperation on both sides, but the rabble were not restrained by discipline, and on the night of the 5th of March James Crawford swore he he saw at Calf’s corner “about a dozen with sticks, in Quaker Lane and Green’s Lane, met many going toward King Street. Very great sticks, pretty large cudgells, not common walking canes.... At Swing bridge the people were walking from all quarters with sticks. I was afraid to go home, ... the streets in such commotion as I hardly ever saw in my life. Uncommon sticks such as a man would pull out of an hedge.... Thomas Knight at his own door, 8 or 10 passed with sticks or clubs and one of them said ‘D--n their bloods, let us go and attack the main guard first.’” [Footnote: Kidder’s _Massacre_, p. 10.] The crown witnesses testified that the sentry was