by Simon Schama
To his regret, Franklin was not able to see William Pitt, increasingly infirm, pessimistic and evil-tempered. But even if that encounter had taken place it is extremely unlikely that he would have been able to persuade that ‘friend’ of the Americans to his view of the inevitable organic development of his country. For as much as Pitt was adamant in his opposition to the iniquitous stamp tax, he was equally adamant that parliament in principle was indisputably sovereign over the colonies. It was that unwavering assumption that led subsequent British administrations, even when making concessions to American grievances, to make categorical reiterations of that sovereignty. The stamps may have gone, but other commercial duties, the Townshend duties, were introduced in 1767, and the customs administration to enforce them became, especially in ports like Boston, notorious for the shamelessness of its smugglers, increasingly militarized. One of the most shameless of them all, the rich young merchant John Hancock, typically converted self-interest into ideology by calling one of his sloops Liberty and flaunting his intention of ‘running’ Madeira ashore. When a ship-of-the-line, the Romney, was summoned from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to assist the customs officers, riots in the docks made it impossible for it to do its assigned work.
It was the glaring fact that Boston and New York were not only uncowed by the threat of force but also rapidly becoming ungovernable that triggered the decision to use regular troops as police. The colonial ports had responded to the Townshend tariff of duties in 1767 by mobilizing a boycott of British imports; shippers and shopkeepers found to have violated it were denounced, intimidated, roughed up and sometimes tarred and feathered. Some 3500 redcoats under the command of General Gage were brought to the rowdiest of all the centres of protest, Boston. In a small, tight-packed city, they could hardly help being extremely visible – that indeed was the idea – and were habitually abused by jeering crowds (especially by young apprentices) as ‘lobster sons of bitches’. The fact that the soldiers were allowed to moonlight in jobs like ropemaking, which were usually held by the locals, did not help. By late 1769 brawls were common. And sometimes matters got completely out of control. On 23 February 1770 an eleven-year-old boy, Christopher Seider, joined a noisy protest of schoolboys and apprentices outside the shop of an importer, Theophilus Lilley, where he was shot dead by a customs officer. With feelings whipped up by a powerful woodcut of the shooting published in the Boston Gazette, his funeral turned into a mass demonstration, carefully orchestrated for maximum tear-jerking by Sam Adams. As many as 500 boys marched two by two behind the little bier, and behind them came at least 2000 adults.
On 5 March the inevitable disaster happened when a wigmaker’s apprentice ragged a soldier all the way to the Custom House for an allegedly unpaid bill. When a guard struck the pursuing youth, a tocsin normally used as a fire alarm was sounded and mobilized a large and angry crowd. A small and frightened platoon of eight soldiers, sent to restore order, was surrounded by the crowd who pelted them with rock-solid snowballs. Terrified they were about to be manhandled or worse, they panicked and started shooting. Five were killed, including a black, Crispus Attucks, and an Irish leather breeches-maker, Patrick Carr. Several more were badly wounded. Only the appearance of Thomas Hutchinson, promising swift and proper legal action and evacuating the troops to Castle Island in the harbour, avoided much more serious bloodshed. Though it was recognized that the soldiers had acted out of fear rather than malice, and though they were defended by at least one well-known ‘patriot’, John Adams, their acquittal only contributed to the legend of a deliberate ‘massacre’ carefully cultivated by the widespread distribution of a print made by the engraver and silversmith Paul Revere, showing a line of British soldiers firing in unison at defenceless civilians. The print was also incorporated into an extraordinary front page of the Boston Gazette, its dense columns of print lined in funereal black and including images of five coffins, engraved with skulls in the manner of the tombs in the Granary and Copps Hill burial grounds. Though he knew better, Sam Adams (John’s cousin) had no hesitation in publicizing the incident throughout the colonies as evidence of the murderous intent of the British to slaughter civilians who refused to truckle to parliamentary coercion.
Even at this point, however, there was nothing inevitable about the separation of America and Britain. Most Americans, even those deeply affronted by the economic and military policies of governments and parliament, still considered themselves in religion, language and historic culture ineradicably British. If anything, they felt passionately that they were the legatees of the ‘true’ British constitution, which had been abandoned in the mother country or somehow held hostage by a vicious and corrupt oligarchy. Some Americans who visited London and were shocked by the excesses of luxury and depravity they found there (while occasionally enjoying a sample of it) explained the lamentable abandonment of the old traditions of freedom by this sorry descent into voluptuary wickedness. But many still hoped the clock could yet be turned back to the days before 1763, a date that began to assume scriptural significance as the first year of iniquity. The virtuous king, evidently misled by wicked counsel, might yet be rescued from his misapprehensions. A changing of the guard at Westminster actually seemed to bode well. The author of the infamous customs duties, Charles Townshend, died. The non-importation campaign against British goods had begun to subside so gratifyingly that in 1770, when Lord North became First Lord of the Treasury, he could announce, without fear of being accused of surrendering to intimidation, that most of the objectionable duties would be repealed. In 1771 Franklin wrote optimistically to Samuel Cooper that there seemed to be a ‘pause in Politics . . . should the [British] Government be so temperate and Just as to place us on the old ground where we stood before the Stamp Act, there is no danger of our rising in our demands’.
There was, however, one commodity on which Lord North, in his wisdom, decided to retain the duty: tea. And the storm that stirred this particular cup would overwhelm British America.
Few could have foreseen the repercussions in May 1773 when the Tea Act was passed through parliament. Looked at from London, it seemed merely a pragmatic expedient designed to get the financially beleaguered East India Company out of its difficulties. The Company had been chartered by Queen Elizabeth in 1600 and had established its first trading post on the west coast of India at Surat eight years later. As usual, the expectation had been that some exotic raw materials might be imported to England (and re-exported to Europe) in exchange for the sophisticated manufactured goods of the home country. But India, and especially its dazzling, printed cotton textiles, turned out to be a lot more sophisticated than anything produced in England. There was nothing that India wanted or needed in exchange for those ‘calicoes’ other than silver. So bullion poured out of England as the calicoes poured in, especially in the second half of the seventeenth century, generating a costume revolution as the light, brilliantly patterned fabrics gripped first the fashionable and then the middling classes. Only the panic-stricken representations of English linen manufacturers stemmed the flow of the imports. Happily, tea came along as a substitute and by the middle of the eighteenth century accounted for almost 40 per cent of its import business.
But – especially in America – heavily dutied British tea, although an obligatory item in the pantry, was expensive compared to virtually identical leaf smuggled by the Dutch. The non-importation campaign of 1768–9 had only made matters worse. By 1773 there was a tea mountain piled high in the Company warehouses in the City of London around Fenchurch and Leadenhall Streets, 18 million pounds of it. East India Company stock was in free-fall, and, as if this were not bad enough, the Company owed the government a substantial debt for unpaid customs duties, as well as the military protection of its trade. Lord North and the government were darkly considering its future. Then someone – a Scot, Robert Herries – had a bright idea. Why not abolish entirely the customs duties on tea imported into Britain, lowering the price to the point where it could undersell Dutch contraband lea
f not only in Britain but even on the European and American markets? The answer was yes, but. Lord North had decided that he would repeal all the Townshend duties except for tea, if only to preserve the principle of parliament’s right to impose tariffs on the colonies. Now, however, it was thought that the drastically lowered price of tea shipped into America through the East India Company would sweeten the modest payment of threepence a pound to the point where the Americans would hardly notice they were swallowing it.
They noticed. On 7 October 1773, when the first ships loaded with tea chests were already on the high seas, handbills signed ‘Hampden’ were posted and distributed in New York, warning that, under the diabolical guise of cheap tea, Americans were once again being lured to accept taxation without their own consent. The fact that the duty was to be used to pay for colonial administration and that many of the selected ‘consignees’ – the American merchants who would receive and sell it – were connected to the likes of the Governor of Boston, Thomas Hutchinson, only heightened the sense of a conspiracy. Two of the consignees were actually Hutchinson’s sons, a third was his father-in-law. Hampdens suddenly were reborn everywhere. One of them, the Philadelphian Dr Benjamin Rush, his spirit possessed by the ghost of the foe of ship money, declared that ‘the baneful chests contain in them a slow poison . . . something worse than death – the seeds of SLAVERY’. In Charleston, New York and Philadelphia the intended consignees were put under such pressure of intimidation as the instruments of reimposed taxation that nearly all backed off, promising not to accept the cargoes.
In Boston, the destination for four brigs, the sudden crisis was a godsend for Sam Adams, whose efforts to sustain the trade boycott against Britain had been meeting with increasing indifference – until the tea was on its way. At just the right time, private letters exchanged among Hutchinson, the Lieutenant-Governor Andrew Oliver and Thomas Whateley were discovered by Franklin and published. The letters sneered at the patriots, and expressed the hope that parliament and the British government would do its utmost to uphold the principle of their sovereign right to regulate trade and tax the colonies. The apparently devious way in which cheap tea was being used to seduce innocent and virtuous Americans to part with their liberty was evidence of the ‘diabolical’ nature of the design. On 29 November, the day after the first ship, the Dartmouth, carrying 114 chests of Bohea, had tied up at Griffin’s Wharf, notices in town called on ‘Friends! Brethren! Countrymen! The Hour of Destruction or Manly Opposition to the Machinations of Tyranny stares you in the Face!’
Boston instantly turned into a revolutionary hothouse with bells ringing to summon concerned citizens to public meetings. They came from the city, and they came from neighbouring towns and villages – Cambridge, Woburn, even Hutchinson’s village of Milton. Thousands of them poured into Faneuil Hall – so many of them that the meeting had to be reconvened in Old South Meeting House, the fine Congregationalist Church, where light washed over the agitated speakers and their flock from high windows. The ‘baneful weed’ could not, would not be unloaded; nor would the iniquitous duty be paid. It would be sent back to London in proper disgrace. But, the poor merchants who had shipped it, all unsuspecting, pleaded, British law forbids, on pain of forfeiture, the return of any dutiable cargo once shipped out. To send it back would be to guarantee their ruin. Too bad was the majority opinion. In the meantime, Hutchinson and his family consignees had fled to the safety of Castle William, where they too refused to think about returning the cargo. So it stayed on board ships at the wharves, guarded, in effect, by the patriots while the stand-off continued and two more ships, the Beaver and the Eleanor, arrived.
By the third week in December a deadline loomed. If duty had not been paid by then, the customs officers would (doubtless with the help of troops) seize the tea as forfeit. Knowing that, faced with financial disaster, the consignees would capitulate, pay and unload, the Boston Committee of Correspondence, the organizing arm of the patriots, summoned further meetings. On the 16th Old Southie was again filled to capacity as orators denounced enslavement by the pot and Josiah Quincy attacked Boston’s foes for their ‘malice . . . and insatiable revenge’. An envoy, the ship’s captain, had been sent to Hutchinson at Milton, demanding one last time that the Dartmouth be allowed to sail, if not for England, then at least out to the harbour castle so that it could be said to be on its way. Around quarter to six, with the light almost gone, Hutchinson would not be swayed. Sam Adams got to his feet to say that he could not see what more could be done to save the country. It was not so much an utterance as a signal. An Indian war-whoop sounded in the church gallery; there were more at the door from a crowd of fifty or so, their faces crudely blackened with coal-dust, disguised as fancy-dress braves with blankets substituting for native dress. The ‘Mohawks’ whom handbills had warned might attack the cargoes of tea if a solution were not found were on the war-path, and it led right to the wharf. Most of them, like the shoemaker Robert Twelves Hewes, were working men who had been drawn into the world of direct political protests over the past four years, and they had been deliberately selected by the patriot leaders for their relative anonymity. But they had also been carefully instructed on what to do. The noise they made was enough to stop one merchant, John Andrews, from enjoying his evening cup of tea. Arriving at the door of the Meeting House he collided with a roaring crowd as it exited into the softly falling Boston rain, heading for the docks and the Dartmouth and the Eleanor.
By the light of lanterns the ‘Mohawks’ did their work, smashing their way with hatchets through 342 chests containing 45 tons of tea, value £9000: enough to make, it has been estimated, 24 million cups. Once split wide open to ensure maximum damage, the chests were heaved into the water where much of the loose tea escaped. A vigilant eye was kept on anyone who imagined that, for all their patriotic ardour, they might help themselves to a little by stuffing it down their coats or breeches. There was so much tea that before the job was done it began to back up against the sides of the ships as if the vessels were becalmed in some monstrous tide of Bohea slurry. The next morning, by the light of day, little boats went out into the water to make sure none of the cargo remained undamaged, using paddles to push the wooden chests and free-floating rafts of the stuff down into the muddy water. As they were drifting through the muck John Adams wrote in his diary, ‘This is the most magnificent Movement of all . . . there is a dignity, a Majesty, a Sublimity in this last Effort of the Patriots that I greatly admire . . . the Destruction of the Tea is so bold, so daring, so firm, intrepid and inflexible, and it must have so important Consequences and so lasting, that I cannot but consider it as an Epocha [sic] in History.’
He was right. The Boston Tea Party was a classic instance of an issue and event, apparently trivial, even absurd, in itself, becoming floodlit into a great drama of national resistance. This was the way it was described in the instant accounts written in Boston for distribution throughout the colonies and carried there by a network of fast-riding couriers, not least the silversmith Paul Revere. Not everyone was impressed, of course. There were many, even on the patriot side, who were outraged by the wanton destruction of property and believed that those responsible ought to pay compensation. For a while at the end of 1773 and the beginning of 1774 it seemed possible that the action might isolate Boston rather than automatically win it sympathy in the other colonies. That, at any rate, was what Lord North’s government was calculating when it decided to punish the city and colony in the most draconian manner possible. The port of Boston was to be closed until compensation was paid for the tea, guaranteeing financial ruin for its mercantile community and real hardship for its citizens. The 1691 charter of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was to be called in and reissued so that a more orderly government would be established. A Quartering Act authorized the billeting of troops in unoccupied buildings and barns.
It was this act of coercion beyond anything that had happened before, which convinced waverers and sceptics who had doubted Sam Adams’
insistence that they were facing not a reasonable and well-intentioned home government but a selfish and brutal tyranny that he was, in fact, right. George Washington, a stickler for the sanctity of property, wrote, ‘The cause of Boston, the despotick Measures in respect of it, now is and ever will be the cause of America (not that we approve their conduct in destroying the Tea).’ In the weeks and months that followed, as regiments landed and a naval blockade took up position outside the harbour, America was created. Planters as far away as South Carolina sent rice to Boston; farmers in Connecticut, New York and Rhode Island established wagon convoys to get food supplies to the inhabitants, represented as the innocent victims of British retribution. Most seriously, the first inter-colonial Continental Congress since the Stamp Act Congress convened in Philadelphia in September 1774 to consider a coordinated response. By the time the Congress opened in Carpenters’ Hall in October, another action of the British government had added to its suspicions and fears. By the terms of the Quebec Act, passed in August, parliament had agreed to preserve the French system of civil law and to allow the 70,000 Francophone Catholics of Canada to practise their faith without penalties, their Church to be supported by tithes. To the overwhelmingly Protestant Americans this heralded trials without juries, the effective end of habeas corpus and a government instituted in America without any kind of elected assembly, only a nominated council. It was ‘slavery and wooden shoes’ entering by the back door, or more precisely up the St Lawrence and down the Hudson. And it was the most obvious confirmation yet that George III was indeed a Stuart in all but blood. No wonder he displayed so many Van Dycks of Charles I at Windsor Castle.