George Robert Twleves Hewes

In “George Roberts Twelves Hewes, A Patriot Shoemaker of Boston,” Alfred F. Young argues that the soldiers during this time were very ruthless. They didn’t care about the people in the town because they thought they were the best and had the most authority so they could do whatever they wanted to do. Hewes was a shoemaker who first started off in the story by fixing a shoe for John Hancock. I was a big honor for him to do this. In the years between 1768 and 1775 he became a citizen which means that he participated in the events that led to the Revolution. Hewes made a pair of shoes for whom he thought was for Captain Thomas Preston, but another soldier picked them up and never paid. Young showed that the soldiers thought they could get anything because they were keeping everyone safe. Hewes later confronted the soldier and a military hiring was held. The soldier received three hundred and fifty lashings for this crime. If Hewes would have known that this would have been the outcome he would have never said anything to the courts. Hewes also witnesses a soldier take advantage of a woman by taking her bonnet, cardinal muff, and tippet. Hewes follows the soldier and asks for the stolen goods back, but decides not to press charges. Soldiers back in time were just plain evil and Hewes was trying to change their ways. This was the main argument that Young was trying to express that the soldiers had no sense of common decencies to the people they were protecting.

Alfred F. Young supports his argument by showing that the soldiers were very incapable of their jobs. They treated everyone like peasants and didn’t care about their well being. He states in the essay “He witnessed an incident in which a soldier sneaked up behind a woman, felled her with his