Desperate Sons

by Les Standiford

  Of more interest than our agent’s identity, however, is the keen eye for detail that he displays, not to mention his lack of vested interest in the fabled scene in 1765 that he describes:

  Set out Early from halfway house in the Chair and broke fast at York, arived at williamsburg at 12, where I saw three Negroes hanging at the galous for haveing robed Mr. Waltho of 300 ps. I went imediately to the assembly which was seting, where I was entertained with very strong Debates Concerning Dutys that the parlement wants to lay on the american Colonys, which they Call or Stile stamp Dutys. Shortly after I Came in one of the members stood up and said he had read that in former times tarquin and Julus had their Brutus, Charles had his Cromwell, and he Did not Doubt but some good american would stand up, in favour of his Country, but (says he) in a more moderate manner, and was going to Continue, when the speaker of the house rose and Said, he, the last that stood up had spoke traison, and was sorey to see that not one of the members of the house was loyal Enough to stop him, before he had gone so far. upon which the Same member stood up again (his name is henery) and said that if he had afronted the speaker, or the house, he was ready to ask pardon, and he would shew his loyalty to his majesty King G. the third, at the Expence of the last Drop of his blood, but what he had said must be atributed to the Interest of his Countrys Dying liberty which he had at heart, and the heat of passion might have lead him to have said something more than he intended, but, again, if he said any thing wrong, he beged the speaker and the houses pardon. some other Members stood up and backed him, on which that afaire was droped.

  From “If that be treason, make the most of it” to pledging a blood-oath loyalty to King George III and begging pardon from one and all, thank you very much. What is a student of history to believe?

  Whatever one chooses to believe in the end, our anonymous Frenchman proves at least some of his observations to be in accord with known fact, for he would return to the House of Burgesses for more on the following day:

  May the 31th. I returned to the assembly today, and heard very hot Debates stil about the Stamp Dutys. the whole house was for Entering resolves on the records but they Differed much with regard the Contents or purport therof. some were for shewing their resentment to the highest. one of the resolves that these proposed, was that any person that would offer to sustain that the parlement of Engl’d had a right to impose or lay any tax or Dutys whats’r on the american Colonys, without the Consent of the inhabitants therof, Should be looked upon as a traitor, and Deemed an Enemy to his Country. there were some others to the same purpose, and the majority was for Entring these resolves, upon which the Governor Disolved the assembly, which hinderd their proceeding.

  In fact, the House of Burgesses did reconvene the following day and the matter of Henry’s resolutions was brought back for reconsideration by that body. After considerable debate, the inflammatory fifth resolution was excised from the formal list. But that formality mattered little. Newspapers throughout the colony already were in possession of their copies of Patrick Henry’s original declarations, and they would be published in the original form, the first shots fired of what would become a fearsome volley.

  ( 6 )

  Unleashed

  The Virginia Resolves, as the resolutions introduced by Patrick Henry came to be called, would influence a number of other colonial assemblies to issue similar statements in short order. Furthermore, those subsequent reiterations often included Henry’s unsuccessful fifth resolution, as well as two others that he apparently intended to include, depending—one supposes—on the reception of his colleagues to the others as he introduced them (keep going until they flinch, as some pols like to put it).

  While it is unclear whether the sixth and seventh resolutions were actually debated on the floor, one can imagine that if some of Henry’s colleagues were merely hissing over the first five stipulations, the final two would have brought out shouts. The sixth resolution stated that “the inhabitants of this colony, are not bound to yield obedience to any law or ordinance whatever, designed to impose any taxation whatsoever upon them, other than the laws or ordinances of the General Assembly aforesaid.” And the last provided that anyone who denied the assembly’s exclusive power of taxation “shall be deemed an Enemy to this his Majesty’s Colony.” Parliament, it was clear, was the devil incarnate in Patrick Henry’s eyes.

  The first newspaper account of the resolves came in the Newport Mercury, identified as having been sent in a letter of June 18, 1765, “from a gentleman in Philadelphia, to a Friend in this Town.” The anonymous letter writer said that as soon as the governor of Virginia, Sir William Berkeley, had laid eyes on the document, he had informed the burgesses that he would dissolve the resolutions, “and that minute they were dissolved.” However, the writer continues, he was sending them along anyway: “As they are of an extraordinary nature, though they might not be disagreeable.”

  With the publication of such accounts, historians of the likes of Arthur Schlesinger argue, newspaper publishers began to sense that perhaps the bill they worried would kill them might actually bring added revenue to their coffers. Now, in addition to news of local thefts and the occasional necessary hanging, the odd bit of months-old stuff from far-off Europe, and a recitation of newly arrived goods at local stores, readers could find themselves galvanized by controversy surrounding the deviousness of the British and their local agents. As the publishers began to realize, nothing could sell newspapers like such trouble.

  Meanwhile, in September 1765, the Rhode Island Assembly passed its own version of the Virginia Resolves, essentially copying three of the milder resolves passed by the burgesses, as well as two of the more inflammatory resolutions reported in the Mercury and adding a rather incendiary sixth clause of its own, asking that Rhode Island officials simply refuse to enforce the Stamp Act. The colony had a popularly elected governor, Samuel Ward, who wrote to British authorities to explain why the matter was so troubling. The issue was a simple one, he said: the duties and taxes had been laid upon his constituents without their knowledge or consent.

  The Maryland Assembly passed its set of resolutions in late September, though, as the historian Edmund Morgan points out, a subtle distinction was incorporated into their protest. Maryland allowed that the Crown might have the authority to levy an excise duty on trade, but as to “internal” taxation—i.e., on the conduct of business within the colonies—such rights should be reserved to the colonies themselves. Such points seemed sophistries to any number of politicians in Great Britain—what was the difference between “internal” and “external” taxes? Just pay your fair share of the burden and stop the quibbling.

  To Americans, however, the “petty” distinction was at the very heart of the matter. Being asked to pay a bill was one thing; having a hand stuck into one’s pocket was something else altogether. At the very least, the distinction allowed the colonies to justify their outrage in logical terms, and at that point in the contest it was believed that logic would surely prevail.

  Before the end of the year, the assemblies of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, and South Carolina would publish similar sets of resolutions or dispatch revised letters of protest to King George and members of Parliament. And at the same time, the day of implementation of the Stamp Act—November 1, 1765—was drawing near.

  Fourteen boxes of stamped paper arrived in Boston harbor in late September and were transferred to the British garrison in the city. Stamps intended for New Hampshire and Rhode Island also arrived but remained on board a ship guarded by British navy vessels. Other stamps arrived in Philadelphia and in New York. As the biographer Harlow Unger notes, the influential Boston merchant John Hancock pressed associates in London to prevail upon Parliament or the king to reverse themselves before catastrophe struck. The consequences of the Stamp Act “will be bad, & I believe I may say more fatal to you than to us,” he said. “For God’s sake use your Interest to relieve us. I dread the Event.”

  As
early as June, the Maryland Committee of Correspondence circulated a call to all the other colonial assemblies that a congress be assembled in which representatives might “consult together on the present circumstances.” Nine of the thirteen colonies (Georgia, Virginia, North Carolina, and New Hampshire did not participate) would appoint a total of twenty-seven distinguished and influential delegates to attend the meeting, set for New York, on October 19.

  At the same time as such reasoned responses to the loathsome tax were being formulated, however, the situation on the streets was fast deteriorating. On August 14, matters in Boston would spiral completely out of control. “My Lords, I am extremely concerned,” began a letter from Massachusetts governor Francis Bernard to his superiors across the Atlantic on the following day. Bernard, before going into detail as to what had taken place, warned that the news would “reflect disgrace upon this Province, and bring the Town of Boston under great difficulties.”

  As he continued his preamble, Bernard disclosed that he, like most of his colleagues, had completely miscalculated the mood of his constituents: “Two or three months ago, I thought that this People would have submitted to the Stamp Act without actual Opposition. Murmurs indeed were continually heard, but they seemed to be such as would in time die away.”

  One of course imagines bewigged British ministers casting apprehensive glances at each other as they bent over this missive brought fresh from the docks. What on earth is the man driving at?

  Bernard went on to explain. It was all the fault of the burgesses, he declared, and the damnable insistence of the vile newspapers in reprinting their frivolous notions: “The publishing of the Virginia Resolves proved an Alarm bell to the disaffected. From that time an infamous weekly Paper, which is printed here, has swarmed with libels of the most atrocious kind.”

  Here, Bernard was bemoaning the actions of the Boston Gazette, which was carrying continuing installments of “A Letter to a Noble Lord.” Covering the entirety of the paper’s front page, for instance, the installment of August 12 began, “Can anyone tell me why trade, commerce, sciences, and manufactures should not be as free for an American as for a European?”; then it went on to decry at great length the insidious tactics of the British in offering the newly created tax collector posts to colonists. It was a shameless appeal to desperate citizens, the writer complained; furthermore, the writer had no doubt that the British intended it only as a temporary practice. Soon the new ministry would be back to business as usual, installing loyalists and lackeys into the posts.

  Moreover, Governor Bernard said, he was reconsidering the seriousness of these portents: “These have been urged with so much Vehemence and so industriously repeated, that I have considered them as preludes to Action. But I did not think, that it would have commenced so early, or be carried to such Lengths, as it has been.”

  At that point, one might imagine an impatient lord snatching Bernard’s letter from a stuttering minion so that he could read for himself: “Yesterday Morning,” Bernard went on, finally getting to the point, “at break of day was discovered hanging upon a Tree in a Street of the Town an Effigy, with inscriptions, shewing that it was intended to represent Mr. Oliver, the Secretary, who had lately accepted the Office of Stamp Distributor. Some of the Neighbours offered to take it down, but they were given to know, that would not be permitted.”

  The hanging of an effigy of Boston’s newly appointed stamp master (the oak from which it dangled was the one that would come to be known as the “liberty tree”) might in itself have passed without the need for a distressed letter from the governor to his superiors, but Bernard explained that the matter scarcely ended there. “Many Gentlemen, especially some of the Council, treated it as a boyish sport, that did not deserve the Notice of the Governor and Council,” he continued. “But I did not think so however. I contented myself with the Lt. Governor, as Chief Justice, directing the Sheriff to order his Officers to take down the Effigy; and I appointed a Council to meet in the Afternoon to consider what should be done, if the Sheriff’s Officers were obstructed in removing the Effigy.”

  Readers will probably not be surprised to learn that while Bernard was still closeted with his advisers, the sheriff returned with alarming news. “His Officers had endeavoured to take down the Effigy,” Bernard reported, “but could not do it without imminent danger of their lives.”

  Bernard reported the matter to the councilmen and shared his fears that it was only the beginning of, as he put it, “much greater Commotions.” The question that the governor next posed marked him as something less than a despot. “I desired their Advice,” he says, “what I should do upon this Occasion.”

  As Bernard described it, the response reveals the committee system functioning at its fullest:

  A Majority of the Council spoke in form against doing anything but upon very different Principles: some said, that it was trifling Business, which, if let alone, would subside of itself, but, if taken notice of would become a serious Affair. Others said, that it was a serous Affair already; that it was a preconcerted Business, in which the greatest Part of the Town was engaged; that we had no force to oppose to it, and making an Opposition to it, without a power to support the Opposition, would only inflame the People; and be a means of extending the mischief to persons not at present the Objects of it.

  If Bernard held any misperceptions as to where the buck would finally stop, his advisers were quick to correct him:

  Tho’ the Council were almost unanimous in advising, that nothing should be done, they were averse to having such advice entered upon the Council Book. But I insisted upon their giving me an Answer to my Question, and that it should be entered in the Book; when, after a long altercation, it was avoided by their advising me to order the Sheriff to assemble the Peace Officers and preserve the peace which I immediately ordered, being a matter of form rather than of real Significance.

  If Bernard presented himself as something less than a martinet, and if the councilmen behaved as any blame-dodging politician might in a difficult situation, what is most interesting in the account is the sense that no one in the government seems to have seen such a thing coming. Polite dissent on a rural assembly floor, all well and good. Scurrilous letters printed in an irresponsible Whig newspaper, to be expected. But threatening a duly instructed sheriff and his men with their lives? No one could misconstrue such threats.

  Still, as Bernard recounted, matters grew even more dire:

  It now grew dark when the Mob, which had been gathering all the Afternoon, came down to the Town House, bringing the Effigy with them, and knowing we were sitting in the Council Chamber, they gave three Huzzas by way of defiance, and passed on. From thence they went to a new Building, lately erected by Mr. Oliver to let out for Shops, and not quite finished: this they called the Stamp Office, and pulled down to the Ground in five minutes. From thence they went to Mr. Oliver’s House; before which they beheaded the Effigy; and broke all the Windows next the Street; then they carried the Effigy to Fort hill near Mr. Oliver’s House, where they burnt the Effigy in a Bonfire made of the Timber they had pulled down from the Building.

  As Bernard explained, Oliver sent his family from his home and was persuaded by friends to take his own leave, lest an effigy prove too insubstantial a fuel for the bonfire. When the mob discovered that Oliver’s friends had remained behind to barricade the house, “they broke down the whole fence of the Garden towards fort hill, and coming on beat in all the doors and Windows of the Garden front, and entered the House, the Gentlemen there retiring.”

  As Bernard recounted, “As soon as they had got Possession, they searched about for Mr. Oliver, declaring they would kill him.” When it became clear that Oliver had fled, the mob then poured out upon the two neighboring houses, “in one of which Mr. Oliver was.”

  It might have been the end for the stamp master, but, as Bernard puts it, “happily they were diverted from this pursuit by a Gentleman telling them, that Mr. Oliver was gone with the Governor to the Castle
. Otherwise he would certainly have been murdered.”

  By then it was nearing midnight and the mob seemed to have lost some of its steam, according to Bernard. It was decided that Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson might venture, along with the sheriff, to Oliver’s house, “to endeavour to perswade them to disperse.”

  The attempt did not go well, however: “As soon as they began to speak, a Ringleader cried out, The Governor and the Sheriff! To your Arms, my boys! Presently after a volley of Stones followed, and the two Gentlemen narrowly escaped thro’ favour of the Night, not without some bruises.”

  It was essentially the end of the incident, though the governor added something of a telling postscript: “I should have mentioned before, that I sent a written order to the Colonel of the Regiment of Militia, to beat an Alarm; he answered, that it would signify nothing, for as soon as the drum was heard, the drummer would be knocked down, and the drum broke; he added, that probably all the drummers of the Regiment were in the Mob.”

  In any event, Bernard concluded, “Nothing more being to be done, The Mob were left to disperse at their own Time, which they did about 12 o’clock.”

  The account of the incident as reported in the August 19 edition of the Boston Gazette differed little from the governor’s except in some details. The reporter noted, for instance, that there was a sign hung around the neck of the effigy, “In Praise of Liberty,” with a warning added: “He who takes this down is an enemy to his country.”