Johnny Tremain

Mr. Quincy invites Johnny, Rab, Cilla, and Isannah to a restaurant so they can celebrate their victory. The establishment is frequented by Whigs, who congratulate Quincy on his triumph over the two-faced Mr. Lyte. The lawyer warns Johnny that he has made a powerful enemy in the merchant. Rab explains that he was able to spirit Cilla away to the courthouse by showing Mrs. Lapham, who cannot read, a letter from Governor Hutchinson on an unrelated matter.

The autumn grows cold, and Johnny finds a sea captain who will hire him on as a cabin boy for a voyage to Halifax. To pay for the warm clothes he needs for the trip, Johnny decides to sell his silver cup. Thinking that he’ll get a better price from Mr. Lyte than from a silversmith who’ll melt it down, Johnny tries to sell the cup to the crooked merchant. Mr. Lyte snatches the cup, has his clerks block the boy’s escape, and calls for one of his captains to take him away from Boston on a ship.

Johnny escapes and races to the printing office. There, he meets Mr. Lorne, who is the owner and Rab’s uncle. Rab vouches for Johnny, so Mr. Lorne hires him on as a delivery boy even though Johnny has never ridden a horse before. In exchange for delivering papers in Boston and the surrounding towns, Mr. Lorne promises Johnny room and board. Rab takes Johnny to the stable and introduces him to Goblin, a fearful but beautiful pale horse with “a rich, blackish mahogany” mane, a matching tail, and “glassy blue” eyes (106). Rab gives Johnny a riding lesson on the Common where the militia practices their drills. This turns out to be Johnny’s first and only riding lesson as Rab is too busy for more. Undaunted, Johnny practices riding Goblin every day, and he basks in Uncle Lorne and Rab’s praise when he overhears them discussing his remarkable progress as an equestrian.

Johnny soon comes to enjoy his rides to the towns surrounding Boston. His interactions with Rab, Mr. Lorne, and the readers of The Boston Observer expand his interest in and knowledge of politics, and he becomes “an ardent Whig” (109). Johnny also settles into his new home with Rab in the printing shop’s loft. The loft serves as the meeting place for a powerful secret club of Whigs who call themselves the Boston Observers. Johnny’s delivery route for the printing office only takes three days, so he spends the rest of his week taking care of Goblin, teaching himself to write left-handed, and reading in Mr. Lorne’s extensive library. The boy devours everything from works of fiction like Robinson Crusoe to epics like Paradise Lost and the Iliad to essays on chemistry and philosophy. Rab’s aunt often brings Johnny freshly baked sweets when he’s reading, and she is very fond of the lonely boy. In particular, she is endeared by his futile attempts to hide how much he loves her infant son, whom Johnny nicknames Rabbit.

One Thursday, after Johnny finishes delivering his papers, he sees Cilla and Isannah fetching water in the town square. He commiserates with the girls when they describe how Mr. Tweedie has overturned their familiar routines. At first, Cilla responds stiffly to Johnny’s offer to meet her every Thursday and Sunday, thinking he is suggesting that she is too weak to carry water by herself. He explains that he misses her and Isannah. Cilla tells Johnny that she might meet him in the town square as he requested, and Johnny watches the girls head home with a lump in his throat.

Johnny idolizes Rab but is frustrated that he knows little more about the self-contained boy than he learned from their first meeting. Johnny is easily influenced by others’ perceptions of him, and Rab’s incisive questions about Johnny’s behavior encourage him to choose his words with more care. This change bears fruit when Sukey, a Black girl who works for Sam Adams, accidentally splashes him with dishwater. Johnny bites his tongue instead of telling her “what he thought of her” and “black folk in general” (116). Sukey brings him inside so she can dry his clothes, and Mr. Adams speaks with him from then on when he delivers the paper.

In the fall, Johnny attends a dance at the Lexington estate of Rab’s grandfather, who raised Rab after his parents died. Johnny reacts with surprise and slight disapproval when his friend casts off his usual nonchalance to dance with and charm the local girls. After the dance, Johnny mentions that his right hand didn’t seem to trouble the girls he danced with the way that it bothers the people in Boston. Rab replies that Johnny’s negative feelings toward his hand evoke those same feelings in others. Since Johnny wasn’t self-conscious of himself during the dance, his dancing partners thought nothing of his hand either.

A few days later, Johnny sees Rab step out of his dispassionate air again when the Webb twins, who work for the printing press, are bullied at a butcher’s shop. Johnny and Rab rescue the twins’ cat from the cruel butcher’s boy. The two of them take on four opponents in the ensuing scuffle, but Rab makes sure that he and Johnny are safely back in the printing office by the time the constable arrives. Johnny can tell that his friend enjoyed the brawl and wonders why someone so powerful avoids fighting. Aunt Lorne offers some answers by describing how her baby won’t fuss or indicate what’s bothering him, a trait she sees in her nephew and the other Silsbees. Johnny decides to accept Rab as he is instead of trying to puzzle out the enigmatic boy.

In November, tensions rise between England and the American colonies over a tax on tea. Although the tax itself has a negligible impact on the colonists’ finances, many object on principle to paying taxes to England when they are unable to elect representatives in the British government. Early one Sunday morning, Sam Adams comes to the printing office and says that the East India Company’s first shipload of tea nears Boston’s harbor on the Dartmouth. Mr. Lorne and Rab prepare 200 copies of a placard Adams penned, which exhorts the colonists “to make united and successful resistance to this last, worst, and most destructive measure of Administration” (125).

Adams asks Johnny to use a coded message to inform the Boston Observers of a meeting that night, and the boy is excited to have a hand in this rebellious, dangerous event. The secret society’s members include the Reverend Samuel Cooper, Mr. Hancock, Josiah Quincy, John Adams, Dr. Warren, and Paul Revere. Johnny sees Cilla and Isannah standing by the water pump in the town square and thinks they look rather shabby and pitiful. He hadn’t kept his promise to meet them in the past weeks, but he still feels bored listening to Cilla discuss the changes in the Lapham household. Johnny is frustrated by Cilla’s faithfulness toward him and by her ignorance of the ways he’s changed since he left the Laphams.

While the Boston Observers meet in the printing office’s loft, Johnny hears members of the Sons of Liberty beating up a lone Tory and feels sickened by the violence. As Johnny looks around at the men assembled in the attic, he realizes that they want war, not peace and compromise. If the governor does not make the East India Company’s ship return to England within 20 days, the Boston Observers plan to send a boarding party to dump the tea in the harbor on the night of December 16. After swearing the boys to secrecy, the Observers recruit Rab for the cause, and he promises to find other young men to join the boarding party. Rab wants Johnny to participate, and Johnny nervously lies awake. He also has trouble sleeping because he feels terrible for being so unkind to Cilla when he loves her. Seeking to emulate his friend’s calm, Johnny times his breathing to the sleeping Rab’s and manages to fall asleep.

Johnny practices chopping wood left-handed so he can be ready to smash the chests of tea with the rest of the boarding party. Through frequent meetings at the Old South Church, Sam Adams and his followers whip the city into a fury like the one that followed the Boston Massacre. The Eleanor and the Beaver join the Dartmouth in the harbor. The ships cannot leave while the tea is still onboard, but an order from the Town of Boston prevents them from unloading the controversial cargo. In addition, two British warships lie ready to destroy the vessels if they attempt to return to London with the tea. Armed citizens guard the ships day and night to ensure that no tea is smuggled ashore and no harm befalls the vessels.

On the night of December 16, a group of boys gathers in the printing office and prepares to board the three ships. They cover their faces in soot and put on disguises. Rab sends Johnny to the meeting at Old South Church, where Sam Adams uses a coded message to initiate the attack on the tea. At Adams’s words, the crowd of thousands erupts into a clamor of whistles, “Indian war whoops,” and cries of “Hi, Mohawks, get your axes and pay no taxes!” (145). An outwardly calm but inwardly exultant Rab awaits Johnny back in the printing office, and the boys race to the wharf. There, they meet thousands of men and boys in similar disguises, and the crowd divides into three boarding parties.

Rab and Johnny join the group led by Paul Revere and board the Dartmouth. The party works to destroy the chests of tea, but they make sure that they do not damage anything else. Johnny sees Dove trying to steal some of the cargo. This action would compromise the rebels’ moral high ground, so Johnny and Rab dump both the purloined tea and the would-be thief in the harbor. After the participants of the tea party return to shore, a British admiral warns them that there will be consequences for their actions.