Desperate Sons

by Les Standiford

  The “Journal of the Times,” or “Journal of Occurrences,” as it was also known, changed all that. It might be argued that it was the first time in the history of the colonies that there was a real demand for such information on the part of a wide readership and that circumstances would have demanded the creation of such a news service sooner or later, even if Adams had not conceived of it. But the fact remains that Adams, though unnamed in the bulletins, became the veritable Walter Cronkite of his time, and his news service became an invaluable piece of the march toward revolution.

  The first installment, titled “Journal of Transactions in Boston,” was published in the October 13 issue of John Holt’s New-York Gazette and contained a summary of the events attendant on the troops’ arrival in Boston. Later in the afternoon of their arrival, as the story detailed, the commanding officer of the newly arrived troops “went to the Manufactory House, with an Order from the Governor,” and requested that the occupants remove themselves within two hours, “that the Troops might take Possession.” Instead of receiving a “compliance,” the story continued, he found that “the Doors were barr’d and bolted against them.”

  When the no doubt flummoxed commander appealed to the town council, earnestly entreating, out of “compassion for the troops,” according to the report, the selectmen granted them refuge in Faneuil Hall, in part because the next day was the Sabbath and any possibility of conflict should be avoided. “Thus the Humanity of the City Magistrate permitted them a temporary Shelter, which no Menaces could have procured,” the writer says. The piece concludes with what would become Adams’s standard postscript: “The above Journal you are desired to publish for the general Satisfaction, it being strictly Fact.”

  Contemporary readers might quibble about the purity of that final declaration, but the impact upon the readership of the day was certainly no less than that upon the late-twentieth-century television viewer when Cronkite leaned forward to declare that what had just been delivered was unequivocally the news of the day, and good night. Circulation of the “Journal of the Times,” recounting various thefts, humiliations, beatings, and even rapes committed by troops stationed in Boston and New York, as well as the widespread corruption and malfeasance of customs officers, spread quickly across the colonies, and the paper became standard reading fare even in England.

  All the while, Adams and his fellow writers reminded readers that all such depredation and discord stemmed from the Townshend Acts and that the practical response to be made was to join in the nonimportation agreement. Finally, in March 1769, when the reluctant merchants of Philadelphia joined with those of Boston, New York, and the other principal northern cities, it seemed as if economic pressures might yet force Great Britain to relent.

  In addition, Bostonians had further reason to rejoice when rumors of Governor Bernard’s imminent departure for England, where he was to join the peerage, began to circulate. And although tensions between the troops and townspeople never entirely disappeared, both sides had reason to keep the peace. If there were no eruptions of violence from the mob, Adams could more easily maintain his position that the troops were a waste. As for the troops and especially the commanders responsible for keeping their men in line, a return to the placid surroundings of the Nova Scotia wilderness was a far more pleasant prospect than the continual harassment they lived with in Boston and New York. By August 1, 1769, Bernard would sail for London and General Gage would have transferred two of his four regiments out of Boston, along with the artillery company.

  Adding to the mood of euphoria on his way out of the city, the despised Bernard let it be known that he and other colonial governors had been advised by ministers in England that no plans existed to levy any further duties on the colonies. In fact, the administration was planning to propose to the next Parliament that the Townshend duties on paper, glass, and lead paints be eliminated, leaving only the “necessary” levy on tea. The mid-August celebration staged by the Sons of Liberty in Boston was an exuberant one indeed.

  But for Adams and the more perspicacious of the leadership, a portion of the liquid in the glass of oppression might have been emptied, but it was nonetheless yet half full. If two regiments had been withdrawn from Boston, two still remained. And if a tax on tea remained, then in principle nothing was changed. Until all duties—including those dictated by the Sugar Act—were rescinded, Adams maintained, the fight must continue. A tax of a penny was the same as a tax of a pound.

  Even in distant Charleston, the Sons were working diligently to unite with their northern cousins. In the South, however, the political forces driving the opposition to the Townshend Acts were quite different. The merchants of Charleston were little affected by the duties imposed, for, unlike their Boston and New York counterparts, they carried on almost no illegal trade; duties were simply passed on to their customers, and the more British-manufactured goods that passed through their hands, the more they profited. They were simply not interested in joining a radical movement that threatened their own livelihoods.

  The planters, artisans, and mechanics, however, suffered greatly because of the prohibition of paper currency and the demand that they settle their debts with the merchants in specie. With no money to expand plantings or hire new help, prospects for those interests were gloomy indeed. In the end, it was the mechanics and the planters who constituted the radical element in South Carolina.

  Though Christopher Gadsden was himself a successful merchant, he had long before cast his lot on the side of resistance. In 1769, in fact, he advertised in the South-Carolina Gazette that he was no longer a merchant representing British interests but a “Country Factor,” brokering local produce for export at the highest possible prices. Unless the colonies were in control of their own economic policies, he understood, they would always be subject to the capriciousness of Parliament and the enactment of measures that would hamstring development. He eventually became instrumental in putting together the alliance of South Carolina’s planters and mechanics, who greatly outnumbered the merchants in the province.

  In an aggrieved letter to his superiors, South Carolina lieutenant governor William Bull complained that there were far too many like Gadsden among his constituencies, embracing, in his words, “the political principles now prevailing in Boston, which kindles a kind of enthusiasm very apt to predominate in popular assemblies and whose loud cries silence the weaker voices of moderation.” Bull called Gadsden “a violent enthusiast to the cause” and lamented that he expressed “with great vehemence the most extravagant claims of American exemptions.”

  In Bull’s eyes, Gadsden and the influential planter John Mackenzie (of whom Bull groused, “whose education at Cambridge ought to have inspired him with more dutiful sentiments of the Mother Country”) were the most effective supporters of the drive to secure unanimity on the nonimportation agreement. “At public meetings, whether in Taverns or under the Liberty Tree, they direct the motions as they previously settle the matter,” Bull grumbled.

  By late June 1769, Gadsden succeeded in effecting an agreement between planters and mechanics (including a prohibition on the importation of Negro slaves from England), and within a few weeks, a goodly number of merchants agreed to sign as well. By the end of the year there would be 142 signatures on the agreement and only thirty holdouts, the so-called irreconcilables.

  In his study of the Sons of Liberty in South Carolina, Richard Walsh points out that a significant number of artisans and skilled workers in the province were encouraged by the call for the development of American manufacturing to fill the void left by the nonimportation of various British goods. A society titled “Lovers and Encouragers of American Manufacturers” was established and a proposal to create a paper mill in the colony circulated.

  Gadsden had his critics, of course, most of them successful merchants who feared the loss of the status quo and claimed that opposition to the Townshend Acts set the colonies irrevocably on a road to calamity. “To be independent of Great Britain, would be
the greatest misfortune that could befall,” wrote the irreconcilable planter William Wragg.

  Gadsden’s reply to such wealthy loyalists as Wragg (who was buried in Westminster Abbey following his death in a shipwreck while on his way to England in 1777) was consistent in pointing out that in the end the repercussions of the onerous duties affected those colonists little able to bear it. “In arbitrary governments,” he wrote, “tyranny generally descends, as it were from rank to rank, through the people, til’ almost the whole weight of it, at last, falls upon the honest laborious farmer, mechanic, and day labourer. When this happens, it must make them poor, almost irremediably poor indeed.”

  As such jockeying continued in Charleston, the Sons of Liberty in New York were also becoming a significant force in the local political scene. For a number of years prior to the upheaval that began in 1765, the most powerful machine of influence was that managed by James DeLancey, a trader who initially allied himself and his party with the interests of conservative merchants and landholders.

  Politics in New York, however, has always been a brawling, pragmatically directed arena, a “dirty business,” in the words of the historian Roger Champagne. Votes were bought, influence was peddled, and payoffs and kickbacks were routine, and whatever it took to maintain power was far more important to the players than allegiance to ethics or morals, or steadfast adherence to a political platform. And the skilled workmen and artisans of New York composed a significant portion of the electorate. There were about four thousand white males over the age of twenty-one living in the city at the time, of whom nearly 70 percent held voting rights, either by dint of the ownership of an estate worth £40 or by paying a registration fee. Because the latter was a relatively modest 2 shillings, 3 pence for mechanics, that class came to constitute nearly half of the total electorate.

  Accordingly, as the sentiments of the voting populace began to swing toward the progressive interests led by Philip Livingston in the wake of the Stamp Act Congress, DeLancey countered by forging an alliance with Isaac Sears and his fellow Liberty Boy mechanic John Lamb.

  In the election of 1768, called to reconstitute the provincial assembly that Governor Moore had dissolved in February for its failure to comply fully with the terms of the Quartering Act, the DeLancey candidates took back control of the assembly and rewarded Sears by naming him the city’s first potash inspector, considered a plum appointment. Suddenly, the conservative DeLancey machine was the party of the public interest, at the forefront of opposition to the Quartering Act and mobilization of merchants in support of the nonimportation agreement.

  Nor did the liberty pole lose the attention of the city’s patriots. Following the 1767 celebration held on the common to commemorate the repeal of the Stamp Act, the New York Journal reported that on the night of March 18, following the conclusion of the festivities, “a few very mischievous Spirits among the Soldiery” left the barracks late in the night and cut down the third liberty pole, which had stood since the previous fall.

  The following day, according to the Journal, “the Inhabitants” erected yet another pole, larger yet and banded with iron “to a considerable height above ground.” That same night, the British soldiers returned and attempted to cut the fortified pole down, then tried to dig it up when those efforts failed. Time or exhaustion stymied the troops, however, and on the night of March 21 they returned to try to blow the pole up with gunpowder. “But this also fail’d,” according to the Journal.

  On Sunday night a contingent of citizens installed a surveillance party in a home overlooking the common. In the wee hours, a small party of soldiers armed with clubs and bayonets was observed moving toward the common, but when members of the watch went to confront them, the soldiers withdrew. On Tuesday afternoon, the resolute band of redcoats was observed making its way toward the common, carrying a ladder commandeered from a nearby construction project. Apparently it was the soldiers’ intention to climb past the iron bands that had foiled their earlier attempts to cut the new pole down.

  This time, the Journal reported, the men were spotted by an officer who ordered them back to their barracks. When word of the incident was passed up the chain of command, orders from Governor Moore and General Gage put an end to the siege once and for all. “Since, all has been quiet,” the Journal said, “and we hope this Matter, in itself trivial . . . will occasion no farther Difference.”

  In fact, “the Post,” as the Journal called it, did occasion no further difference for almost three years, during which a relative calm prevailed in the city, though the governor did once again suspend the assembly in 1769 for failing to meet its obligations in support of the troops. At the same time, the DeLancey faction betrayed a promise to Isaac Sears that it would vigorously oppose the Quartering Act and instead brokered an agreement with Governor Moore that would allow the colony to once again print its own currency, if only half would go toward the provisioning of the troops. In short order, Sears and Lamb, along with their more moderate fellow Son Alexander McDougall, switched their allegiance back to the Livingston faction. Such was politics in New York.

  In September 1769, Governor Moore suddenly fell ill and died, thrusting Cadwallader Colden back into the post of acting governor. Though eighty-one by then, Colden was determined to show that he still had the moxie for the permanent position he had long coveted. He followed through on the agreement on currency with the DeLancey faction, and in late November, the assembly authorized the payment of £2,000 for support of the troops.

  Predictably, demonstrations flared up on the common, and on December 16, an anonymous writer circulated a broadside addressed to “the betrayed inhabitants of the city and colony of New York,” complaining that the DeLancey forces had abandoned their constituents in allocating funds for the support of troops sent, “not to protect but enslave us.” The broadside was signed, “A Son of Liberty,” and the DeLancey-led legislature struck back with the offer of a reward of £100 for the name of the author.

  Protests continued into the new year, and on Saturday night, January 13, a group of British soldiers again made their way to the common, where they managed to bore a hole into the liberty pole and pack it with gunpowder. They were about to detonate the charge when patrons from the nearby Montagne’s Tavern spotted them and called a general alarm. The charge misfired, sparing the pole, but the soldiers rushed into the tavern “with drawn Swords and Bayonets,” according to a report in the New-York Gazette, breaking crockery, lamps, and window- panes, “insulting the company and beating the Waiter.”

  This insult provoked the publication of a harangue against the troops and the Quartering Act and a call for a meeting at the liberty pole at noon the following Wednesday, when “the whole matter shall be communicated.” What the Sons of Liberty discovered when they made their way to the common on the seventeenth was dismaying, to say the least.

  In “the dead hour” of the previous night, said the Post-Boy, British soldiers quartered in a house near the common had made their way back to the liberty pole and once again packed a cavity they had chiseled out with gunpowder. That time the charge was detonated, and the pole was shattered. The soldiers gathered the fragments and carried them to the doorstep of the shuttered Montagne’s Tavern, depositing them in a pile.

  Outraged citizens milled about the shattered stump of the liberty pole, muttering at the audacity of the troops. Someone pointed to the nearby house where a few troops were billeted and called out the suggestion that they pull it down. The “Aye!”s were thunderous, and the group began a march toward the house.

  The soldiers billeted there, almost certainly the same ones who had destroyed the pole, arrayed themselves before the house, their bayonets and cutlasses drawn, jeering and daring the citizens to try their damnedest. It might have been the occasion for a bloodbath, but a contingent of British officers arrived, accompanied by a squad of local magistrates, and the confrontation was squelched.

  By Friday, the troops took the rather surprising measure of printing a
broadside of their own and were bustling about the city, handing out copies and nailing others to posts and door frames. The piece began with a ditty:

  God and a Soldier all Men doth adore

  In Time of War, and not before;

  When the War is over, and all Things righted,

  God is forgotten and the Soldier slighted.

  And it continued by making sport of the Sons of Liberty, “as these great heroes thought their freedom depended upon a piece of wood.” These Sons of Liberty ought to be more properly called “the real enemies to Society,” the broadside continued, calling upon the populace to throw their support to the troops, who suffered through the blaze of summer and the freezing nights of winter on their behalf.

  As one soldier nailed a copy onto a posting board at an outdoor market near the wharves, Isaac Sears, who’d gotten wind of what was going on, approached and snatched the man by his collar, demanding that he explain his actions. Posting libelous claims against the citizenry was a serious offense, Sears said. He would drag the man to the mayor and see what happened then.

  A second soldier, who’d been carrying the stack of handbills while his partner did the nailing, started toward Sears, but a fellow Son intervened, grabbing him by the arm and spinning him about. A third soldier pulled his saber and started toward the melee, but Sears snatched up an ox-horn snuffbox and flung it at the swordsman, striking him solidly between the eyes. It was enough to send the soldier fleeing for reinforcements, while Sears and his companion dragged their two captives to the mayor’s house.

  As a crowd gathered and Sears began his explanation of the incident, a party of some twenty soldiers from the barracks advanced, swords and bayonets drawn. At the mayor’s house, the soldiers called out for the release of the two men inside, and the leaders of the company—clearly intoxicated, according to the account of the matter in the Gazette—began pounding on the door.