The Glorious Cause, page 22
Not that the Customs commissioners were indifferent to strict enforcement of regulations governing commerce. They were determined to see these regulations observed by the service they supervised and by the merchants. When they arrived in November 1767 they had been shocked by the state of the Customs in America—at least Hulton and Burch had been, for they were new to Boston. Temple and Paxton, who were experienced, had long recovered from whatever shock they felt when they first joined Customs, and Robinson, who had received a rough initiation when he tried to seize the Polly for smuggling molasses, knew something of American attitudes. With the exception of Temple, who had little use for the others, the commissioners intended to tighten up the system.
Upon looking into the conduct of business in New England, they found smuggling “to a very great height” but only six seizures for violations in the past two and one-half years. And in these six seizures only one successful prosecution had followed; the other ships had either been retaken by mobs or released by local juries in court.25
The commissioners recognized that a part of their difficulty lay with their subordinates, some of whom took bribes, perhaps even solicited them. Their solution was to hire more officials, a curious decision and sure to fail unless they found some way to introduce honesty into the discharge of duties. Time soon demonstrated that they had failed.
Beaten by Hancock in the Lydia affair, the commissioners nursed their disappointment, and then on June 10 ordered Comptroller Benjamin Hallowell and Collector Joseph Harrison to seize Hancock’s sloop Liberty. The Liberty had tied up on May 9 after a voyage from Madeira; she carried a cargo of wine, some of it “the best sterling Madeira,” intended for Hancock’s own table. The day the Liberty arrived, two tidesmen boarded to make certain that no cargo was unloaded that was not declared. The ship unloaded twenty-five casks of wine the next day; Hancock paid the required duty, and the tidesmen reported that nothing else was taken off. In the month that followed, the Liberty took on board barrels of whale oil and tar.26
On June 10, the day of the seizure, one of the tidesmen, Thomas Kirk, swore that he had lied in his report on the unloading of the Liberty in May; that, in fact, after refusing a bribe by one of Hancock’s captains, he had been forcibly confined below decks on the night the ship arrived. Locked below, he had heard sounds of unloading for about three hours, and when released he had been threatened with violence if he did not hold his tongue. The other tidesman could give no evidence on any of this because, according to Kirk, he was home sleeping off too much drink. Kirk had decided to come forward, he said, because he was no longer afraid for his life, Hancock’s captain who had terrorized him having died. The captain, it should be noted, had died on May 10.27
Whatever the truth in this story—Kirk’s account seems of doubtful authenticity—it served as a pretext for the action against the Liberty. The charge on which she was seized did not mention wine or the circumstances of her unloading in May, but rather indicted Hancock for loading the oil and tar without a permit. By a strict interpretation of the relevant statutes, Hancock was guilty; he had not posted the bonds and other papers before the cargo was taken aboard. He had not because the practice in Boston and almost every other colonial port was to load and then to take out the required papers, when the exact size and composition of cargo were known. The commissioners, emboldened by Kirk’s “evidence,” obviously ordered seizure on a technicality never before honored in Boston. As in the case of the Lydia, they believed they had the opportunity to strike a blow for royal authority by bringing low one of the most obnoxious opponents of the Crown in America. They may have totally believed Kirk’s story, though if they did they must have discounted the popular explanation of his new-found honesty and courage: as an informer he stood to collect one-third of the proceeds from the confiscated ship and cargo.28
Hallowell and Harrison seized the ship at sunset and immediately signaled the Romney, a fifty-gun man-of-war, to move her away from the wharf and out into the harbor. The Romney dispatched a small boat to accomplish the job. Removing the Liberty proved to be difficult: a mob gathered and fought the contingent from the Romney to keep her tied up at Hancock’s wharf. No one was killed or even seriously injured in the struggle, and the men from the Romney getting the upper hand towed the Liberty out under the guns of their ship. Thwarted at the wharf, the crowd, “chiefly sturdy boys and Negroes” according to Thomas Hutchinson, turned its attention to Harrison and Hallowell, who were lucky to escape with their lives. Hallowell absorbed more blows than Harrison, who ducked into an alley after being hit hard on the body. Left on the ground, bruised and covered with blood, Hallowell was rescued by several gentlemen in the mob—so much for Hutchinson’s “boys and Negroes.” The usual reprisals were made on the houses of the officials, windows broken and other minor damage done, though the houses escaped the gutting that had been standard practice in 1765. Before the night ended, the mob evidently grew to several thousand, surging through the streets hunting other Customs officials, beating them when it found them, and not calling it quits until one in the morning.29
The weekend was quiet—“Saturday and Sunday evenings are sacred,” Hutchinson observed.30 Beneath the surface calm on both sides, Hancock and the Sons of Liberty and the authorities were planning their next moves. The Customs commissioners had little trouble in deciding what they should do and fled with their families and subordinates to the security of the Romney. That recourse did not seem appropriate or necessary to Governor Bernard, who on Monday met with the Council in an unsuccessful effort to persuade the councillors to ask for troops. The councillors were cool to the idea, telling the governor that “they did not desire to be knocked on the Head.” In contrast, the Sons of Liberty were hot, announcing that they proposed “to clear the Land of the Vermin, which are come to devour them.”31
Before the week was out the Sons were, as both Bernard and Hutchinson admitted, in complete control of the town. They converted a mass meeting at Liberty Hall (as the ground under the Liberty Tree was called) into a succession of legal town meetings; they listened to all sorts of wild proposals from the cranks in their midst (such as bringing all men-of-war in the harbor under the orders of the town meeting) and then quietly petitioned the governor to order the Romney to leave Boston; they restated the familiar case against Parliamentary taxation; and they instructed the town’s representatives to the House to do all they could to prevent further impressments and to inquire into the report that the Customs commissioners or someone else had requested that royal troops be sent to Boston.32
The town’s resolution about troops carried an ominous meaning. Bernard must have read it with a special sort of horror, for he had long wanted troops sent in but dared not ask for them without the Council’s approval. The Customs commissioners were under no such restraints and had long since requested troops, explaining in justification that the “Governor and Magistracy have not the least Authority or power in this place.” Bernard knew of the commissioners’ desires—he had pleaded his own inability to gratify them often enough—but he would not act on his own, even though he was not admitting that his power had evaporated. He does not seem to have been terribly frightened for his own safety, though a friend had told him to “get out of the way” should troops arrive; rather, he was deeply depressed by the weakness of his government in Massachusetts.
And he knew that he faced still another crisis, for Hillsborough’s instructions to “require” the House to rescind the Circular Letter had just arrived. Bernard must have known that the House would refuse, and he must have known that dissolving the House when it refused, as ordered by Hillsborough, the Secretary of State for the American Colonies, would not answer anything.33
Still, Bernard had no choice, and on June 21, in an atmosphere still acrid with the smoke of the Liberty riot, he transmitted Hillsborough’s order to rescind. The House stalled for a few days, and Otis gave a feverish speech, once more seemingly unrelated to the issues at hand but in fact calculated to rouse American revulsion at English degeneracy, while the faction carefully measured its supporters. Bernard pressed for a reply three times and on June 30 received what he dreaded: a negative vote of ninety-two to seventeen and a message from the House describing its Circular Letter as “innocent,” “virtuous,” and “Laudable.” The governor then did as ordered: he dissolved the legislature.34
Sending the House packing only made matters worse for Bernard and royal authority. The Sons of Liberty now had still another issue: the freedom of the people’s representatives to gather and petition for redress of grievances was now being denied. Hillsborough’s bad-tempered letter to Bernard, soon spread all over the newspapers, did not soothe troubled spirits either. Together, Hillsborough and Bernard had given the popular party opportunities it would not fail to use.
House members who had voted against rescinding the Circular Letter, now raised to sainthood as the “Glorious Ninety-two,” soon had the exquisite pleasure of reading their names in the Boston Gazette. The rescinders, invariably described in less flattering terms, also found their names in print. Those members who had been unfortunate enough to be absent when the vote was taken got the point and began falling all over themselves in their haste to write Speaker Cushing announcing that had they been present the Glorious Ninety-two would have been an even larger group. Speaker Cushing obliged them by giving their letters to the Gazette, which printed them. This sort of pressure to conform to the popular line was hardly subtle, but it was mild compared with the attacks in the Gazette on several of the rescinders.35
By this time Otis, Adams, and their cohorts were old hands at using the press. They very nearly outdid themselves during summer 1768. Constitutional issues were skillfully explained—especially the threat to Liberty created by the dissolution of the House—and new versions of the ministerial plot against the colonies relayed. Sam Adams did much of the writing in the summer, often under the name “Determinatus.” As “Determinatus” he summed up the reasons for the people’s anger in these words:
I am no friend to “Riots, Tumult, and unlawful Assemblies,” I take upon me to say, any more than his Excellency is: But when the People are oppressed, when their Rights are infringed, when their property is invaded, when taskmasters are set over them, when unconstitutional acts are executed by a naval force before their eyes, and they are daily threatened with military troops, when their legislature is dissolved! and what government is left, is secret as a Divan, when placemen and their underlings swarm about them, and pensioners begin to make an insolent appearance—in such circumstances the people will be discontented, and they are not to be blamed....36
Adams did not exaggerate the popular unease; the governor also reported it to his superiors in London.
There were signs other than the newspaper reports. A little more than a week after the dissolution of the House, around fifty Sons of Liberty attempted to capture John Robinson, a Customs commissioner, at his home in Roxbury. Rumor had it that Robinson had left the safety of the castle where he had fled in June. The rumor was false, and the Sons settled for breaking down Robinson’s fruit trees and the fence around his house. Later in July a much larger crowd tried to extract a resignation from John Williams, the inspector general of Customs, but he refused to be intimidated.37
The governor was frightened, however, by these rumblings and said so in a series of despairing letters home. A “trained mob,” he reported, controlled the town. He felt himself to be between “two fires,” the mob, which would blame him if he requested troops, and the British authorities, who would blame him if he did not. A few days after writing he decided to ask the Council to join him in a request for troops and he received the reply he expected—a unanimous “no.” Deeply depressed, he wailed to Barrington, “it is all over now,” unaware that things would soon look darker.38
In the summer the Otis-Adams group may have exuded a confidence that they did not feel. There were stories circulating that troops were on the way, and troops would at least temporarily strengthen the hands of Bernard and the commissioners. To keep up popular enthusiasm for the cause, Otis and Adams kept the presses screaming and on August 15, the anniversary of the Oliver riot, put on a lavish celebration complete with cannon firing, music (including the “American Song of Liberty”), a great parade, and fourteen toasts, ending with one to the “Glorious NINETY-TWO.” Then more cannon were fired, and the gentlemen present repaired to the Greyhound Tavern in nearby Roxbury for a “frugal but elegant” dinner. More toasts followed, and after the Liberty Tree in Roxbury was consecrated, the entire group returned to Boston.39
III
Governor Bernard hated such expressions of the “popular” will, but his nerve held until early September, when an article in the Gazette, “containing a System of Politicks, exceeding all former Exceedings,” forced him into a strategic mistake. The article, actually a series of queries by “Clericus Americanus,” purported to deal with the various grievances long discussed by Americans. What caught Bernard’s eye was the answer to “Sidney’s” question: What shall we do if troops are sent to Boston? Clericus Americanus answered with horrifying bluntness: the colonies must declare their independence. Bernard had received word on August 27 that troops had been dispatched to Boston. Dreading an “insurrection” should they arrive unannounced—and convinced by Clericus Americanus that the situation would be explosive—on September 9 he leaked the information he had of the troops’ coming and thereby made more trouble for himself. For on telling what he knew, he gave the popular leaders time to prepare. An unannounced arrival surely would have gone unopposed and just as surely would have deprived the faction of its opportunity to organize a good deal of barely latent hostility. As it was, the popular leaders used the troops’ coming both before and after their actual arrival to organize outlying towns. In seeking to forestall opposition, Bernard helped spread it.40
Boston’s town meeting gave Bernard an inkling that he had miscalculated by sending a committee to see him to ask officially about his knowledge of the coming of troops; it also requested that he call the legislature. The governor replied immediately that his information was “of a private nature” and that he had no authority to call another assembly until he received orders from the king. Bernard has been accused of lying in both these statements, a severe accusation but not as strained as his reading of his instructions from Hillsborough.41
The town simply refused to be denied. If it could not have the legislature, it would call a convention of towns to consider the crisis at hand. The selectmen also dredged up an old statute—”a good and wholesome law of this Province”—providing that every soldier and householder should have a musket and ammunition and urged compliance. Their reasons: the “prevailing apprehension, in the minds of many, of an approaching war with France,” a grim joke substituting France for England, but not amusing to the governor. To ensure that no one missed the point, the selectmen brought four hundred muskets into the meeting, where they lay on display.42
A little more than a week later, on September 22, the convention of towns met in Boston. Otis, Cushing, Samuel Adams, and John Hancock represented Boston; Cushing was chosen to preside and Adams to serve as clerk. The convention opened with seventy representatives from sixty-six towns and several districts in attendance, and before it closed on September 27 representatives from another thirty towns arrived. A contemporary observer, the Reverend Andrew Eliot of Boston, reported that the convention was divided into three “parties”: one, fearing that it was illegal, wished it to disband; another willing to trust the people without any restraints; and a third wishing to sit until the troops arrived and then to take things—presumably the government—into their own hands. The actions of the convention suggest that moderates eventually controlled its deliberations, however divided its delegates.43
The first order of business was a skirmish with the governor, set off by a petition to that worthy. The convention denied in its opening shots that it had any claim to “authoritative or governmental Acts,” but it also pointed out that its members came from all over the province, a fact, it suggested, which indicated that anxiety was widespread. To ease the people’s fears, the governor should call the legislature, which could then deliberate on how to meet the threat of a standing army and request a redress of grievances. The governor refused to receive this petition and urged the convention to break up, hinting in a brief note that the delegates might face criminal action if it did not. This brought a stiff message from Thomas Cushing asking “wherein the Criminality of our Proceedings consists.” Bernard again refused to receive any communication from the convention, and it went into secret session. What came out of these meetings was a “Result of the Convention” and a petition to the king. These documents did not advance colonial constitutional theory, nor did they threaten to oppose the landing of troops with force. After reviewing the recent history of colonial affairs, the “Result” simply made plain the convention’s desire for a meeting of the legislature.44
This demand was less important for the development of colonial resistance than the fact that the convention met at all. It was not a criminal body, nor was it illegal; yet it did mark an extension of defiance of royal authority. There seems to have been little disposition among its members to fight the British army. Otis apparently said little; Adams may have spoken more, but he did not demand the use of force; Cushing opposed armed resistance, though he did recommend that Bernard and Hutchinson be driven from the colony. But Boston was not Massachusetts, and the hatred, the tensions, and the awareness of the threat to political Liberty posed by the troops were all less intense in the towns and on the farms of the interior than in Boston.45
