The Glorious Cause, page 28
In Virginia, Thomas Jefferson, Richard Henry Lee, and Patrick Henry, after learning of the ministry’s version of a fair trial in the Gaspee affair, decided that a permanent organization was needed to maintain colonial vigilance. The House of Burgesses agreed with them and in March appointed a standing committee to correspond with other legislatures or their committees about activities deemed dangerous to America. This intercolonial committee of correspondence served as the model for others; and in another twelve months all the colonies, except Pennsylvania where Joseph Galloway blocked action, had followed suit.17 That these committees existed proved to be more important than anything they did. They signaled an increasing awareness in America of a common cause. They also provided an example of common action.
That example was not easy to maintain in these years of drift. Virginia of course had pointed the way early in the conflict with Britain, most notably at the time of the Stamp Act crisis. But, like other colonists, Virginians returned with relief to normal occupations when threats to their liberties were eased. The others included Yankees in Massachusetts, fierce in the defense of freedom but also eager for calm. Not even Sam Adams could do much about the popular mood once the British ministry backed off.
IV
The affair over the Gaspee helped to rouse some in Massachusetts, but in 1772 a local conflict yielded even more discontent. The issue was a familiar sort by the summer of 1772—who should pay the salaries of royal officials serving in the colony? The legislature saw the control of salaries as a means of controlling the officials, surely a misapprehension but one widely shared outside Massachusetts. The British government counted itself among those who believed that salaries could be an important weapon in the struggle for power, and in 1768 it sought to insulate Thomas Hutchinson from the worst of popular pressures by ordering that henceforth his salary as chief justice should be paid from Customs revenues. Two years later it decided to pay Hutchinson as governor and Andrew Oliver as lieutenant governor from the duty on tea, and in the summer of 1772 it added all the superior court justices.18
The lengthening list of officials now out of the reach of popular influence set Sam Adam’s teeth on edge. The Boston newspapers opened their columns to Adams and his friends, who lost no time in expressing their alarm at the growth of irresponsible power in Massachusetts. Adams also turned to the town meeting and guided that body into requesting further information from the governor about the ministry’s purposes. Not getting it, the town requested that the legislature be called into session. The governor then reminded the town that calling the legislature was his business, and he had no intention of doing so just then. At this point Sam Adams claimed that all normal remedies had been exhausted and that Massachusetts should look for some extraordinary means of protecting its liberties. Sam Adams was never at a loss for ideas of what should be done in the defense of Massachusetts, and now he proposed that Boston establish a committee of correspondence “to state the Rights of the Colonists and of this Province in particular, as Men, as Christians, and as Subjects; to communicate and publish the same to the several Towns in this province and the World as the sense of this Town, with the Enfringements and Violations thereof that have been, or from time to time may be made—Also request of each Town a free communication of their Sentiments on this Subject.”19
The town approved this motion unanimously, an action facilitated no doubt by distaste for Hutchinson who, in turning down its petition for a meeting of the legislature, had not been able to resist the opportunity to instruct the town in its limited rights. The committee sat down to work at once and by the end of the month produced a report adopted by the town and almost immediately printed as the Votes and Proceedings. . . of Boston, known to contemporaries as the “Boston Pamphlet.”20 This tract resembled the productions of committees from that day to this, for it offered widely shared assumptions. But in tone at least it departed from such efforts in its uncompromising conclusion that the violence of British encroachments upon colonial rights pointed to a plot to enslave America. To demonstrate the existence of this plot it rehearsed the familiar grievances. Taxation without representation found a central place in this list, as did Parliament’s assertion in the Declaratory Act that it possessed the authority to bind the colonies “in all Cases whatsoever.” The Boston Pamphlet also reminded Massachusetts citizens of the unlawful force used against them by a standing army and the hordes of gluttonous placemen who rushed in to do the government’s bidding: “Our Houses, and even our Bed-chambers, are exposed to be ransacked, our Boxes, Trunks and Chests broke open, ravaged and plundered, by Wretches, whom no prudent Man would venture to employ even as menial Servants.” The governor himself took part in the conspiracy; he had become in fact “merely a ministerial Engine.” Justice had been taken out of reach by the stipends accorded the judges from Customs revenues and by shifting revenue cases to vice admiralty courts which sat without juries. There was much more on this list, including a reference to the danger to religion by the bishops whose coming apparently was imminent.21
The starkness of the threat to liberty, as described in the Boston Pamphlet, pointed up just how precious colonial rights were. The list of these rights contained nothing new, but it was phrased with great clarity. The pamphlet asserted that the colonials were British subjects and as such retained the rights of subjects. These rights took their origin in nature and reason. They were “absolute Rights”; they could not be alienated; no power could lawfully remove them from the people’s control; and the people themselves could not give them up—to government or anyone else.22
Boston’s statement of rights and grievances seemed to invite support from the towns of the colony, although the Boston committee did not flatly ask that the outlying communities form committees of correspondence and join in the search for a redress of grievances. It did not have to ask. As 1772 ended the news of what it had done spread. The Boston Gazette did its part, and no doubt travelers from the town reported what had taken place in November. The committee itself printed six hundred copies of the pamphlet which by the spring of 1773 had made their way into even the remote corners of the colony. The response seems to indicate that Boston’s concerns were those of the majority of Massachusetts towns. By April 1773, almost half of the towns and districts of the colony had taken some action, forming their own committees of correspondence, passing resolutions echoing Boston’s dread of the sinister plot against their liberties, and instructing their representatives to look into the matter of the judges’ salaries.23
Although Thomas Hutchinson, who was one of those judges as well as governor, probably never realized it, he helped evoke these declarations of disaffection. He did so by making a speech in January 1773 to the General Court answering the Boston committee of correspondence and its pamphlet. For the most part Hutchinson maintained a measured tone in this speech. He also succeeded in making his understanding of the colonial status in the empire absolutely clear. That clarity spurred on the opposition. The speech deplored the resort to committees of correspondence and the claim to absolute rights. The colonists, Hutchinson said, did not need such committees. As for their rights, they were derived from the charter granted them by the Crown. From the founding on, the premise of their government was that they were subordinate to Parliament. They enjoyed some of the rights of Englishmen, but not all: they could not send representatives to Parliament, a right of Englishmen, because they had removed themselves far from England. Their own legislature enjoyed some authority, but it was not to pass laws conflicting with those of Parliament. Thus, the charter, custom, and geography all served to limit colonial rights, a limitation recognized by everyone and only recently challenged by men making extraordinary demands. These men were in the wrong, and to make their error obvious Hutchinson stated his conclusion starkly: “I know of no line that can be drawn between the supreme authority of Parliament and the total independence of the colonies.”24
Hutchinson had badly miscalculated. There was a powerful constitutional case against the supremacy of Parliament in the colonies; it had been stated repeatedly since 1765 and now it was restated—by Samuel Adams, the committee of correspondence, and the towns. Hutchinson had not suppressed public opposition; he had strengthened it.
Sam Adams and the Boston committee took pains to see that the newly resurrected opposition did not lose direction. In June they played the strongest hand they had held in years—they published the letters of Thomas Hutchinson, Andrew Oliver, and several others to Thomas Whately, the British subminister. Benjamin Franklin had sent the letters to Thomas Cushing six months before with the injunction that they should be kept secret. How Franklin obtained the letters is not completely clear, and Cushing did not care. He and Adams soon decided that the letters must be revealed to the public so that the treachery of Hutchinson and his friends could be exposed.25
The letters, written in the years 1767, 1768, and 1769, revealed the extent of their writers’ disenchantment with the popular opposition to the actions and policies of the British government. Little in the letters could have surprised readers in Massachusetts; what made the letters sensational was the timing of their release and the revelation—now completely clear in concentrated expression—that the agents of the Crown in America were deeply alienated from the people. And these agents, Thomas Hutchinson and Andrew Oliver chief among them, by their own words seemed to confess that they were advocates of a conspiracy, a conspiracy so frequently adduced as to lose its capacity to shock let alone frighten. Hutchinson’s suggestion to Whately that English liberties be curtailed, which he infuriatingly said he offered for “the good of the colony,” appalled the readers of his words. His patronizing tone—here and elsewhere he referred to those who disagreed with him as “ignorant” or in a “frenzy”—made these statements, which he had repeated in public, seem a betrayal of Massachusetts. In sentences which became notorious as soon as they were published he wrote:
I never think of the measures necessary for the peace and good order of the colonies without pain. There must be an abridgment of what are called English liberties. I relieve myself by considering that in a remove from the state of nature to the most perfect state of government there must be a great restraint of natural liberty. I doubt whether it is possible to project a system of government in which a colony 3,000 miles distant from the parent state shall enjoy all of the liberty of the parent state. I am certain I have never yet seen the projection. I wish the good of the colony when I wish to see some further restraint of liberty rather than the connexion with the parent state should be broken; for I am sure such a breach must prove the ruin of the colony.26
By the time Hutchinson’s letters were published, his enemies had perfected the techniques of responding to encroachments upon liberty. Now they took things a step farther—the House of Representatives petitioned the ministry for the governor’s removal, and the newspapers picked up the pace of denunciation. By late summer 1773 even Thomas Hutchinson, he of good intentions and unfortunate means, recognized that the “Pause in Politics,” commented on by Samuel Cooper, had ended in Massachusetts.27
In May, just before the publication of the letters, Parliament took an action which assured that the pause would end everywhere in the thirteen colonies. It passed the Tea Act of 1773, a statute intended to bail out the financially troubled East India Company. The Act gave to the company a monopoly of the trade in tea with the colonies and retained the three pence duty on tea. Both features of the Act aroused opposition. Together they gave notice that Parliament would be what it liked in America. A “pause” in politics meant nothing. Parliament had insisted on its supremacy once more. Direction now replaced drift in America.
11
Resolution
The reception accorded the Tea Act in 1773–74 is replete with paradox. For the previous two years the Americans had drunk tea, much of it legally imported, and they had paid the duty of three pence per pound. Smuggling was still acceptable and a good deal of tea was imported illegally from Holland, but equally acceptable was the legal but quiet importation of tea from England through Customs. And yet within a year of the passage of the Tea Act, the opposition had revived and given a celebrated tea party in Boston harbor even though the duty remained the same. And anyone who brought in tea was branded an enemy to his country though many had done so without reproach during the preceding two years. Why we may ask did this convulsive reaction occur, destroying private property, provoking a fresh defiance of Parliament, and once more pulling the American colonies together?
The answer has much to do with how the colonists understood the Tea Act. They believed that the Act left them no choice; it forced the issue; it expressed still another claim by Parliament of the right to tax them. This claim meant, as far as they were concerned, that the English plot to enslave them had been revived. If they went on paying the duty now that the government’s intentions were laid bare, they would be cooperating with the enslavers.
Arriving at this understanding consumed the summer following passage of the Act. Exactly what Parliament had done, let alone intended, was not known fully in America until September when a copy of the statute was printed in the newspapers. Even then confusion abounded because interpretations of the Act published in the newspapers implied and sometimes stated that the East India Company’s tea would be imported duty free. The supporters of the Tea Act, most notably the company’s consignees, understandably felt no urgency in explaining its terms, and as late as November several in New York insisted that the company’s tea would not have to pay the old Townshend duty.1
As before, the Sons of Liberty resorted to the newspapers to expose the ministry’s purposes. But this time the Sons in Philadelphia and New York—not in Boston—assumed leadership. The Philadelphians set the tone of the opposition and gave it direction in ways made familiar in the crises over the Stamp Act and Townshend acts. There were differences, however, in 1773: the artisans made themselves known rather earlier than before and threats of violence were issued almost at once. To be sure the constitutional argument was made in conventional terms—Parliament had no right to tax the colonists because the colonists were not represented in it—but no one suggested that the colonies should delay other action until Parliament reconsidered its position. Rather a mass meeting held in Philadelphia on October 16 pronounced anyone importing tea sent out by the East India Company “an enemy to his country” and appointed a committee to call upon the consignees to obtain their resignations. With John Dickinson lending his opposition to the East India Company, most of the consignees—wealthy Quaker merchants—agreed in November to give up their commissions. One firm, James and Drinker, attempted to avoid resigning outright, but by December it too had given in.2
No doubt these merchants were affected by the threats of rough treatment made against anyone who imported tea. The committees of the people, chosen in mass meetings or self-appointed in several cases, included one styling itself “The Committee for Tarring and Feathering” which promised to practice its art on any Delaware River pilot who brought tea ships up the river to the city. When it learned the name of the captain of the Polly, which carried company tea, it informed him that his “diabolical service” would bring him into “hot water.” As if this were not enough, the captain, one Ayres, was asked how he would like a halter around his neck and “ten gallons of liquid tar decanted on your pate—with the feathers of a dozen wild geese laid over that to enliven your appearance?” The committee’s advice to Captain Ayres was “to fly to the place whence you came—fly without hesitation—without the formality of a protest—and above all, Captain Ayres, let us advise you to fly without the wild geese feathers.” The committee tendered this advice in a broadside before Ayres reached the North American coast. When he finally reached the Delaware River in late December, the Boston Tea party had been given, the governor, John Penn, and the Customs officials were cowed, and the consignees converted to patriotism. Ayres did the only thing left to him—hauled anchor and set sail for England, his cargo of tea undisturbed.3
A similar set of events was enacted in New York: the Sons of Liberty revived and mass meetings were held in the autumn under their tutelage as Isaac Sears, Alexander McDougall, and John Lamb once more assumed leadership. Although consignees followed the example of those in Philadelphia and resigned their commissions, the governor, William Tryon, insisted in December that when the tea arrived it should be unloaded and stored at the Battery. Tryon had good cards in his hand: a stouthearted Council and, better yet, a man-of-war standing off Sandy Hook awaiting the tea. Even so, he lost, for the Nancy, the ship carrying the tea, was blown off course by a severe storm and put into port badly damaged in Antigua in February. By the time she was repaired and made her way to New York, the game was up. After taking on fresh provisions, the Nancy, cargo intact, sailed for home.4
The only port where tea was landed was Charleston, South Carolina. There, disagreements among artisans, merchants, and planters produced indecision which Governor William Bull took advantage of. Many Charleston merchants had been importing English tea and paying the duty; others had been smuggling Dutch tea. The legal importers insisted on a ban against the importation of all tea, whatever its origin, pointing out that only the smugglers would profit from barring the product of the East India Company. The consignees proved quite willing to give up their commissions, but no agreement was reached about what to do with the company’s tea that arrived on December 2, 1773. The governor solved the problem twenty days later by seizing the tea for nonpayment of duty. The tea was stored and never sold.5
