Desperate Sons

by Les Standiford

  That the duties imposed by the Stamp Act and other “late acts of Parliament” would be burdensome, grievous, and “from the scarcity of specie” be impossible to pay.

  That Great Britain profited greatly by trading with the colonies.

  That duties and levies would seriously impair colonists’ ability to purchase British products.

  That “the increase, prosperity, and happiness” of the colonies was dependent upon “full and free enjoyment” of rights and liberties and an “affectionate” relationship with Great Britain.

  That it was the unquestioned right of the colonists to petition “the king or either house of Parliament.”

  And, finally, that it was the indispensable duty to the king, the mother country, and themselves (with all due respect to both His Majesty and Parliament) “to procure the repeal of the act for granting and applying certain stamp duties, of all clauses of any other acts of Parliament whereby the jurisdiction of the admiralty is extended as aforesaid, and of the other late acts for the restriction of the American commerce.”

  Certainly all those notions had been conveyed to the mother country before, but this was the first time that all the colonies were speaking in a single voice. That they managed to so much as convene such a gathering, let alone reach agreement on those weighty matters, was remarkable.

  But the truth is that even the British began to see the folly of their actions. In an article that attempts to explain the differences between colonial and British thinking on the limits of parliamentary power, historian Edmund Morgan points out that some two weeks prior to the New York gathering, Governor Bernard of Massachusetts had gone to far as to write a letter to Timothy Ruggles, one of the more conservative members of that colony’s delegation, suggesting that he urge the congress to submit to the Stamp Act, given that it was very likely to be repealed.

  Furthermore, Morgan argues, the colonists who were still hoping for a reasoned conclusion to the issues were putting a very fine point of logic into their declarations. The implication of declaring “subordination” to Parliament while denying its right to levy taxes might seem puzzling, but the argument essentially was that taxes were “internal” matters. Parliament could levy “external” duties having to do with trade regulation (though the language of the declarations seemed to decry the effects of the Sugar Levy as well), but taxes were the “free gift” of the common people and could be levied only by their own representatives.

  Whatever the exact thinking of the men who drafted and debated those declarations of October 1765, it is clear that such shadings of meaning held little sway once passions were unleashed in public settings. Debate among historians continues to this day as to the extent to which politicians willfully manipulated mob actions in order to further their own ends, but what happened on the streets of Boston, Providence, and elsewhere is unmistakable.

  Even in distant Charleston, South Carolina, one of the principal shipbuilding centers of the colonies, the demonstrations took on a similar character. With their principal spokesman, Christopher Gadsden, away at the Stamp Act Congress in New York, a group of mechanics organized a spectacle similar to that in Boston. On the morning of October 19, Charlestonians awoke to find that a twenty-foot-high gallows had been erected at the busiest intersection in town, with the effigy of George Saxby, the newly appointed stamp commissioner, dangling from a noose and the likeness of the devil hanging by his side. “Liberty and no Stamp Act” was the legend emblazoned on the gallows.

  Later in the evening, the figures were cut down and paraded through the streets by a crowd of two thousand. At one stop in their travels, the mob entered the home of Saxby but, finding neither the stamp master nor any papers inside, moved along to the town commons, where they burned the effigies, along with a coffin bearing a sign, “American Liberty.” Before the week was out, Saxby and every other stamp agent in the colony resigned his post, at least until the king and Parliament could consider, in the resignees’ words, “the repeal of an act that had created so much confusion.” Worse yet for the loyalists, it was “confusion” that would only spread.

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  Murderer of Rights and Privileges

  On the moonless night of November 1, 1765, sentries at watch atop the walls of Fort George, the British garrison at the tip of New York Island, stared warily northward as a crowd of torch- and candle-bearing men moved down Broadway ever closer to their post. Church and meetinghouse bells in the city began to toll incessantly, and scraps of angry shouting drifted from the direction of the city commons, a mile away.

  Though they were ignorant of the size of the group that was approaching, there were fifteen thousand or more residents in the square mile or so of inhabited land that lay at the end of the island, squeezed between what were then known as the North River and the East River. And even with their forces recently bolstered by the arrival of the 60th Regiment from Crown Point, there were only a hundred soldiers inside the fort. There had never been anything resembling a military action waged by colonists against an installation of the king, but the fort’s defenders were well aware that there was trouble in the air.

  When a figure stepped forward out of the darkness and moved quickly toward the sentry at the gates, more than one musket barrel would have followed the shadow as it went. But the moment when a finger might have tightened on a trigger passed. The figure arrived unharmed before the gate, handed a letter to the sentry with brief instructions, and was quickly gone.

  The sentry passed the letter to a guard inside the gates, who took it quickly to the quarters of Lieutenant Governor Cadwallader Colden. The seventy-seven-year-old Colden, a longtime servant of the king, was the acting governor of New York and, with the Stamp Act due to take effect on this day, had left his home for the safety of the fort, where the first stamped papers from London had been stored since their arrival on October 24.

  Colden gave the guard a glance, then smoothed the letter on his table and lit a second candle to aid his aging eyes. “To the Honorable Cadwallader Colden, Esq., Lieut. Governor of the City of New York,” the letter was addressed.

  Sir,

  The People of this City and Province of New York, have been inform’d that you bound yourself under an Oath to be the Chief Murderer of their Rights and Privileges, by acting as an Enemy to your King and Country . . . in the Inforcement of the Stamp-Act which we are unanimously determined shall never take Place among us, so long as a Man has Life to defend his injured Country. . . . We can with certainty assure you of your Fate if you do not this Night Solemnly make Oath before a Magistrate, and publish to the People, that you never will, directly or indirectly, by any Act of yours or any Person under your Influence, endeavor to introduce or execute the Stamp-Act, or any Part of it, that you will to the utmost of your Power prevent its taking Effect here, and endeavor to obtain a Repeal of it in England. So help you God.

  That much might have been enough of an affront to the duly appointed governor, but what followed went well beyond the bounds of polite political debate:

  We have heard of your Design or Menace to fire upon the Town, in Case of Disturbance, but assure yourself, that, if you dare to Perpetuate any Such murderous Act, you’ll bring your grey Hairs with Sorrow to the Grave, You’ll die a Martyr to your own Villainy, and be Hang’d . . . upon a Sign-Post, as a Memento to all wicked Governors, and that every Man, that assists you Shall be, surely, put to Death.

  New York

  If there was any doubt as to the seriousness of the situation, it was now at an end.

  Compared with that of other colonies, wrote the historian Carl Becker, the initial response to the Stamp Act in New York was relatively measured and moderate. There had been visible anti-British conflict in New York since 1732, when, Becker says, pro- and anti-British feeling had begun to coalesce around a few central issues not necessarily limited to that colony alone: (1) freedom of the press, (2) the independence of the judiciary, (3) authority of royal decrees, (4) the frequency of elections, (5) the appointm
ent of the colony’s agents to England, and (6) the degree to which the local assembly could control the raising of revenue and the administration of the laws.

  New York had been successful in defending the first of those issues as far back as 1734, when John Peter Zenger, the editor of the New York Weekly Journal, had published an attack on then-governor William Cosby. Though Cosby had had Zenger jailed on charges of libel, Zenger had subsequently been tried and acquitted by a jury, thus establishing the principle of truth as a defense against such claims.

  In addition, the New York Assembly was steadfast about maintaining its own authority over its internal affairs, often refusing to raise revenues at the request of the governor, refusing his lordship a life salary, and appointing its own agent to Parliament. There had been various shifting alliances over the past decades, with the proprietors of the large tracts of land up and down the Hudson tending toward the more conservative pro-British faction and the professionals and merchants aligning more toward an independent stance, but the prospect of the Stamp Act was of a much greater magnitude than anything that had ever intruded on New York politics before, an issue that would obliterate familiar party lines.

  Though the state assembly in late 1764 formed its own committee of correspondence with reference to issues of “trade of the northern colonies,” news of the passage of the Stamp Act escalated matters significantly. For the first time, the largely intermingled interests of the three classes that traditionally dominated how things were done in the colony were being challenged by men who previously had little influence over their colony’s affairs. These were the farmers and “mechanics,” or skilled workmen, and the laborers at the bottom of society’s ladder, as Lieutenant Governor Cadwallader Colden described them in a report to the British lords of trade.

  “Though the farmers hold their land in fee simple, they are, as to condition of life, in no way superior to the common farmers in England,” he said, though he was not discounting their importance. “This last rank includes the bulk of the people and in them consists the strength of the province.” In fact, this “last rank” would have a large part in actions that Becker said would “complete the formation of the Revolutionary parties” in the state.

  In New York, there had been grumblings among Colden’s constituency from the time of the announcement of the Sugar Act the year before, and earlier in 1765 there had been formed a society “For the Promotion of Arts, Agriculture, and Economy” that intended to promote local manufacturing and look into the boycotting of British goods. But Colden was not concerned at the time. A March issue of the New-York Gazette, the liberal rag that it was in the eyes of loyalists, assured readers that the thought that “the Colonies aim at an Independency, is so entirely senseless and ridiculous, as to be almost beneath a serious Refutation.”

  Yet following the announcement of the passage of the Stamp Act, the tone of articles in the press and of broadsides that appeared in such gathering spots as Burns’s Tavern was far less restrained. A young attorney named John Morin Scott published several articles under the pen name “Freeman” that summer, ending one with the declaration “If, then, the interest of the mother country and her colonies cannot be made to coincide; if the same constitution may not take place in both; if the welfare of the mother country necessarily requires a sacrifice of the colonies’ right of making their own laws, and disposing of their own property by representatives of their own choosing—if such is really the case between Great Britain and her colonies, then the connection between them ought to cease . . . it must inevitably cease.”

  In addition, the Gazette published its own rendition of the Virginia Resolves, along with accounts of the demonstrations in Boston, Providence, and elsewhere. Though Colden professed little concern publicly, he did write to General Thomas Gage, the commander of British forces in the colonies, suggesting that the forces at Fort George be bolstered “as may be sufficient to secure it against the Negroes or a Mob.”

  Things began to change, however, when the newly appointed stamp master, James McEvers, wrote to Colden on August 30 to resign a position that had scarcely been announced. McEvers, a local merchant, explained to Colden that threats he had received had convinced him that were he to keep the job, his “house would have been Pillag’d, my Person Abused and his Majestys Revenue Impair’d.”

  None of that deterred Colden, however. Perhaps motivated by his wish to shed the “Acting” portion of his title, he informed his friend Sir William Johnson, the British superintendent for Indian affairs, that he would prevail over the brigands who opposed the Stamp Act and interfered with the duties of public officials. “I expect to defeat all their Measures,” he told Johnson. “The Stamps shall be delivered in proper time after their arrival. I shall not be intimidated.”

  Colden wrote again to General Gage, asking that reinforcements be sent to Fort George, then warned Captain Kennedy of the Royal Navy that the ship bearing the stamps for New York would need protection. Kennedy agreed to have a British man-of-war meet the good ship Edward at Sandy Hook and escort it into New York harbor.

  Meanwhile, with news of what had happened in Providence and Boston now widely reported, the Connecticut stamp agent, Jared Ingersoll, wrote to Colden on September 9 suggesting that perhaps the stamp papers bound for his office should be held in New York for a bit upon their arrival from London. Less than a week later, Ingersoll told Colden that he had been forced to pledge that he would have nothing to do with the papers. What Colden decided to do with Connecticut’s stamps was up to him. On September 25, New Jersey governor William Franklin advised Colden that he could find no person willing to assume responsibility for his colony’s stamps; when they arrived in New York, Colden had better hang on to them.

  Meanwhile, the stamp agent for Maryland, Zachariah Hood, fled his home for New York, where he hoped to hide from his increasingly irate fellow citizens. The protesters’ counterparts in New York were advised that Hood was now among them, however, and the panicked stamp agent sent a note to Colden saying that a mob had “declared their intention to Attack” the hotel where he was staying and “destroy” him. One might have presumed that all this would signal Colden that a change in strategy was in order, but the resolute lieutenant governor sent word to Hood that he should quit the King’s Arms Hotel and take refuge at Fort George.

  Essentially, Colden was now responsible for the stamps of three colonies and was harboring the stamp master of a fourth. One could be forgiven for passing off his actions as those of a doddering near octogenarian, but the energy that Colden applied to his duties suggests that he was fully aware of what he was doing. Colden’s own letter book and other correspondence in the archives of the New-York Historical Society show a voluminous correspondence during the period that also reveals that he and his councilmen were barely on speaking terms by the fall of 1765.

  Scott, the notorious author of the “Freeman” articles in the New-York Gazette, joined with two other young liberal lawyers in publishing the Sentinel, a weekly devoted almost entirely to the excoriation of Colden and his shortcomings. In addition, copies of a broadside titled the Constitutional Courant, which Colden said contained accusations too slanderous for even the likes of John Holt and the New-York Gazette to reprint, made their way to New York City. The masthead of the sheet featured a rendering of a snake cut into pieces, representing the colonies. “Join or Die” was the motto.

  Though the Courant has since been attributed to the work of William Goddard, a New Jersey activist, Colden’s efforts to discover who was responsible for the popular sheet were fruitless. One vendor told an official that he picked up his copies at “Peter Hassenclever’s ironworks,” a witticism that sent the vendor and his fellows into hysterics as they watched Colden’s minion hurry away in search of Hassenclever’s mythical lair of sedition. Until shots rang out at Concord, defenders of liberty throughout the colonies would claim that their papers were printed by the nonexistent Hassenclever.

  The impact of such publications o
n the colonial public might be hard to fathom for a contemporary observer, but just as a few populist newspapers such as the Los Angeles Free Press and the Berkeley Barb were of extreme importance for political activists of the 1960s, the papers and broadsheets of the mid-1760s were the principal means of information for ordinary citizens.

  Copies were brought to taverns and read aloud, and when crowds had enough of shouting “Huzzah!” and “For shame!” they joined in the singing of popular ballads that were also printed and circulated by hand. One quoted by Henry Dawson, a nineteenth-century chronicler of the period, was titled “An Excellent New Song for the Sons of Liberty in America” and ran to thirteen stanzas with sentiments that made it the “We Shall Overcome” or “The Age of Aquarius” of its day:

  With the Beasts of the Wood, we will ramble for Food,

  And lodge in wild Deserts and Caves.

  And live as Poor as Job, on the skirts of the Globe,

  Before we submit to be Slaves. . . .

  The Birthright we hold shall never be sold

  But sacred maintain’d to our Graves;

  Nay, and ere we’ll Comply, We will gallantly die,

  For we must not and will not be Slaves; Brave Boys,

  We must not, and will not be Slaves.

  Despite all this, however, Colden soldiered on. He called a meeting of his council to announce that indeed the stamps for New York were expected from London shortly, that men-of-war would escort the vessel into New York harbor, and that he intended to house the paper at Fort George. When he announced that he was petitioning General Gage for reinforcements, though, his advisers suggested that he was going too far. They believed there was little likelihood of citizens’ storming one of His Majesty’s garrisons and thought that the sight of troops marching through the streets would surely only fan further discontent.