AMERICA IS JOSEPH
Yet in Old England itself, Members of Parliament were beginning to fret about the exact place of America within their understanding of Empire. The autonomous confidence of the Thirteen Colonies seemed to grate with British amour propre. In 1764 the British bureaucrat and American imperialist Thomas Pownall suggested his colleagues understand ‘that our kingdom may be no more considered as the mere kingdom of this isle, with many appendages of provinces, colonies, settlements, and other extraneous parts’. Instead, it was now ‘a grand marine dominion’ and, as such, needed a new political structure ‘consisting of our possessions in the Atlantic and in America united into a one interest, in a one centre where the seat of government is’.67 The 1766 Declaratory Act had granted the British parliament the power ‘to bind the Colonies and People of America, Subjects of the Crown of Great Britain, in all cases whatsoever’, and the role of the royal governor was now recast as enforcing the writ of parliament rather than co-existing with colonial legislatures. That was not how they saw it in Boston: a city with its own Parliamentary Charter of 1691, its own House of Representatives, its annual ‘Town Meetings’ (held in Faneuil Hall), vibrant meeting-houses and a democratic political culture which stretched back to its covenanting past. For all their loyal toasts to the king and queen, the citizens of Boston and settlers of Massachusetts were also adamant that their political freedoms rested in the chambers of their self-governing assemblies, not upon the whim of royal governors.68
When Britain and America were in harmony, such competing ideas mattered little, but in fractious times they were engines of misunderstanding. After the capture of Quebec, the 1763 Peace of Paris and the end of Franco-British hostilities, the misunderstandings multiplied. The expansion of British imperial power and a growing military infrastructure needed to service multiple wars produced a doubling of the national debt and demanded new sources of revenue. Many in London – not least the new prime minister, George Grenville – felt that the merchants and financiers of the American east coast had done well out of British imperial power and could now look forward to a stable trading future. So they should pay for it. To keep the French at bay, military numbers were to be expanded in America from 4,000 to 10,000 regular troops, and it was only right that the colonists should help foot the bill – just as George III’s other subjects in England, Wales and Scotland did so. After years of gentle subsidy which had allowed Boston, New York and Philadelphia to grow fat on colonial commerce, America needed to contribute to its own defence. The logic of the case seemed entirely sensible to Benjamin Franklin, who, then acting as the Pennsylvanian Assembly’s agent in London, accepted that the Crown might need ‘to keep troops in America henceforward, to maintain its conquests, and defend the colonies; and that the Parliament may establish some revenue arising out of the American trade, to be applied supporting these troops’.69 Advocates of this course suggested it was best to regard the colonies as analogous to English ‘counties palatinate’ – jurisdictions without parliamentary representation but integral members of the English body politic.70
But for the business interests of Bostonians, parliament’s grounds for taxation could not have been more unfortunately chosen. They began with the 1764 Sugar Act, which actually dropped the duty on imported molasses but raised it on sugar and legislated for a more effective tax collection system in the hope of countering the smuggler economy. Boston’s distillers were hit hard. ‘There was not a man on the continent of America who does not consider the Sugar Act, as far as it regards molasses, as a sacrifice made of the northern colonies to the superior interest in Parliament of the West Indies,’ grumbled John Adams.71 Then came the 1765 Stamp Act, which slapped extra taxes on pretty much all printed material – every newspaper, journal, pamphlet, almanac (such as those published by Benjamin Franklin’s brother), diploma and legal document – even on packs of playing cards. For such a fiercely literary city as Boston, this meant a substantial new expense imposed in the midst of a postwar slump. The response was, as John Rowe recalled, swift and violent. On 14 August 1765,
a great number of people assembled at Deacon Elliot’s Corner this morning to see the Stamp Officer hung in Effigy with a Libel on the Breast, on Deacon Elliot’s tree and along side him a Boot stuffed with representation … this stamp officer hung up all Day – at night they cut him down, layd him out and carried in Triumph amidst the acclamations of many thousands who were gathered together on that occasion. They proceeded from the South End down the Main Street, through the Town House and Round by Oliver’s Dock – they pull’d down a New Building which some people thought was building for a Stamp Office and did some Mischief to Mr Andrew Oliver’s house.72
After hanging effigies at the ‘Liberty Tree’ (an elm tree in the South End) and ransacking the stamp master Andrew Oliver’s house, the mob came for his brother-in-law and chief justice of the Massachusetts superior court, Thomas Hutchinson. His elegant North End mansion was gutted – every expensive window smashed; the crockery, drapes and furniture looted – and his life almost taken. In many ways, this sudden urban violence was no different to the kind of ‘moral economy’ bread riots which many British cities experienced during the course of the eighteenth century: a popular outburst to ‘unfair’ price rises or taxes.73 Oliver, Hutchinson and the loyalist community within Boston – now identified as ‘enemies of liberty’ – saw a more sinister force at play.
‘Spent this evening with Mr. Samuel Adams at his House,’ recorded John Adams in his diary on 30 December 1772.
He affects to despize Riches, and not to dread Poverty. But no Man is more ambitious of entertaining his Friends handsomely, or of making a decent, an elegant Appearance than he. He has lately new covered and glased his House and painted it, very neatly, and has new papered, painted and furnished his Rooms. So that you visit at a very genteel House and are very politely received and entertained.74
This urbane host, up to date with all the London fashions, was the man behind the ‘Boston Caucus’, the long-standing political wing of the city’s labouring classes, which was now blamed for running the mobs attacking Oliver and Hutchinson. Samuel Adams had been baptized at the New South Congregational Church (in 1722) and was the son of an equally devout nonconformist father, ‘Deacon’ Samuel Adams Senior. But politics, as well as religion, featured prominently in the Adams household thanks to a failed investment in a land bank followed by punitive law suits, all of which the family blamed on arbitrary interventions by Crown authorities. In 1729 Samuel Adams Senior was elected a member of the Boston Town Meeting as part of the Boston Caucus, and in the 1750s, after Boston Latin School and Harvard College, his son took on a sinecure as a tax collector for the Town Meeting and then followed his father into the Caucus. His previous profession as lawyer, accountant, businessman and brewer had not worked out. Even as a tax collector he ended up owing the town of Boston £8,000 in back payments.
Over time, Samuel Adams Senior and Junior worked their personal animus towards British officialdom into a broader critique of colonial rule. Writing as ‘A Puritan’ in the Boston newspaper, Independent Advertiser, Samuel Adams Junior played on a growing sense of economic insecurity among the labouring classes and sought to connect that anxiety to London’s oppressive taxation policies. In doing so, he drew upon the Bostonian self-identity as ‘free-born Englishman’ with the rights of Magna Carta and liberty under the law. From its origins in the 1630s theirs was a colony of settlement, not exploitation; a joint endeavour across the ocean. But the Westminster parliament, with its growing demands for colonial taxation, was both undermining a Boston economy already laden with war debts and striking at the heart of the legal and political privileges which flowed from the colonies’ founding Charters. At root, Massachusetts was being taxed without being represented in the legislative assembly which was imposing the levies – and this was surely contrary to the British constitution, mystically unwritten though it was. ‘If taxes are laid upon us in any shape without our having a lega
l Representation where they are laid,’ Adams asked in 1764, ‘are we not reduced from the Character of free Subjects to the miserable State of tributary Slaves?’75 Adams was far more than a gifted polemicist – he was also a first-rate politician able to marshal public opinion, manage mob dynamics and secure election to the Massachusetts House of Representatives. In the midst of an economic downturn, in a city with a tradition of voluble street politics and a merchant elite ever more hostile to the demands of parliament (but not king), the Boston Caucus came to pose a powerful challenge to the imperial settlement.
At this point, uncharacteristically, British politicians opted for peaceable compromise. On 16 May 1766 the brigantine Harrison docked at Boston harbour with copies of the repeal of the Stamp Act. The relief across the city was tangible. After the effigy burning, house looting and politicking of recent months, Boston could resume its natural role as a loyal, royal city. ‘This day is the Joyfull Day indeed for all America and all the people are to Rejoice,’ recorded John Rowe in his diary on 19 May 1766. ‘Dined at Colo Ingersoll’s with 28 Gentlemen – we drank fifteen Toasts and very Loyal they were and suited to the Occasion. In the evening there were very grand Illuminations all over the Town. In the Common there was an Obelisk very beautifully decorated and very grand fireworks were displayed.’76 Indeed, the repeal allowed for another outburst of monarchical fervour with huge ‘Figures of their Majesties’ erected on Boston Common for all to celebrate. Two months later, there was even a thanksgiving service for the repeal of the Stamp Act. John Adams was in the congregation.
Mr Wibirt’s [text] was Genesis 50th. 20th. – ‘But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but god meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this Day, to save much People alive.’ – America is Joseph, the King Lords and Commons – Josephs Father and Brothers. Our Forefathers sold into Egypt, i.e. Persecuted into America, etc. Wibirt shone, they say.77
But the repeal of the Stamp Act and the loss of income to the Exchequer only intensified the problem of funding the colonies, containing the French and supporting both a military infrastructure and legal system (of customs officials, judges and governors) needed to underpin parliamentary sovereignty. The young chancellor of the exchequer, Charles Townshend, supported by Prime Minister Grenville, came up with an alternative solution in the form of the 1767 Revenue Act. The so-called ‘Townshend duties’ imposed an import tax (rather than the Stamp Tax’s direct tax on indigenous produce) on all glass, paper, lead, paint and tea shipped into the American colonies. And these new taxes came with a Board of Customs Commissioners designed to end Boston’s dockside grey economy and finally put the imperial finances on a stable footing. Needless to say, the duties were met with an indignant response. Because for all of Samuel Adams’s protestations of constitutional propriety and lawfulness, the Boston economy was in fact heavily dependent upon illegal smuggling and the avoidance of duties. ‘We have been so long habituated to illicit trade that people in general see no evil in it,’ Thomas Hutchinson censoriously commented.78 He estimated that some three-quarters of the consumer goods brought into America were done so illegally. And the high-yielding crates of Chinese tea were amongst the most regularly smuggled goods.
In Boston, the imposition of new taxes on established imports instantly politicized the waterfront and, with it, Boston’s relationship with the mother country. Within a matter of weeks, the customs officials, the Royal Navy and the tax collectors who patrolled the wharfs and jetties metamorphosed from an irksome but necessary bureaucracy to the aggressive arm of a foreign government. The British Empire imperceptibly shifted from an enterprise of which Boston was a part to something approaching an oppressive, occupying force. On a more psychological level, the taxing of those consumer goods which had connected Boston with Britain, which had made Massachusetts part of the Georgian world, also undermined an important component of their imperial identity as Britons. That consumer bond across the Atlantic – drinking from the same ceramics, wearing the same silks, reading the same novels – was under fiscal assault by the British government. And the response of Boston was to strike back at precisely that ‘empire of goods’ which had so Anglicized their city.
The Townshend duties sparked a wave of non-consumption and ‘non-importation’ activism which stressed frugality and asceticism as the only means to make London mend its ways. Lists were drawn up of superfluous consumer goods – ceramics, furniture, clocks, draperies and finery – which any righteous Boston citizen should have the moral purpose to resist. With smart political acumen, Samuel Adams called upon Boston’s Puritan heritage to encourage his compatriots to deny themselves the ‘baubles of Britain’. The language of commerce was shifting: what had once connected the Americans with the greatest trading nation of the world, in peaceable and prosperous union, was now regarded as a luxurious, corrupting self-indulgence. Even the House of Hancock, the leading trading family of North America, was forced into backing the boycott. After the death of Thomas Hancock in 1764 the business had passed into the hands of his nephew, the raffish but shrewd John Hancock, who wisely thought it best to ally himself with Samuel Adams and the Boston Caucus rather than suffer the fate of a Thomas Hutchinson. ‘It is surprising to me that so many attempts are made on your side to Cramp our Trade, new Duties every day increasing,’ he wrote in ostentatious protest to his London associate in 1767. ‘In short we are in a fair way of being Ruin’d. We have nothing to do but unite and come under a Solemn agreement to stop importing any goods from England.’79
In 1767, public virtue not private consumption became the touchstone of patriotism. In December the Boston Town Meeting instructed its representatives in the general assembly to acknowledge its fears over ‘the distressed Circumstances of this Town, by means of the amazing growth of Luxury, and the Embarrassments of our Trade; and having also the strongest apprehensions that our invaluable Rights and Liberties as Men and British Subjects, are greatly affected by a late Act of the British Parliament’; they urged their representatives ‘to encourage a spirit of Industry and Frugality among the People’.80 Above all, that meant an end to tea. The drink that had defined a shared British sensibility and became a template for manners was now demonized as a symbol of enslavement and luxury. The students of Harvard College vowed to abstain; the coffee-houses served up all sorts of new, revolting non-tea concoctions. But it was the women of Boston, having once brewed the pot, sieved the tea and poured the milk, who placed themselves at the forefront of this consumer boycott. They wrote to the newspapers, created trouble in shops selling tea, circulated lists of importing merchants, and urged the city’s menfolk to show the same kind of reserve in the tavern that they themselves were exhibiting at the tea table.81
The response of the British authorities to such commercial disobedience was not subtle. ‘On Friday, September 30th, 1768, the ships of WAR, armed Schooners, Transports, etc. Came up the Harbour and Anchored round the TOWN: their Cannon loaded, a Spring on their Cables, as for a regular Siege,’ recounted the North End silversmith Paul Revere. ‘At noon on Saturday, October the 1st the fourteenth and twenty-ninth Regiments, a detachment from the 59th Regiment and Train of Artillery, with two pieces of Cannon, landed on the Long Wharf; then Formed and Marched with insolent Parade, Drums beating, Fifes playing, and Colours flying, up King Street.’82 Revere went on to craft a very precise little silver engraving depicting the troops processing up the Long Wharf, the warships bobbing in the harbour and ‘the city on the hill’ looking every inch the godly bastion under attack from a tyrannical empire.
With the fifty-gun warship HMS Romney sitting at anchor, 700 British grenadiers encamped on the Common and customs officials boarding ships and raiding wharfs at whim, Boston came to feel like a city under siege. It was only a matter of time before violence erupted. The capture of John Hancock’s sloop Liberty on the charge of smuggling Madeira, followed by the arrest of Hancock and the requisition of Liberty, could have sparked off a wave of attacks on customs commissioners. But Hancock himse
lf was wealthy and smart enough to swallow the losses. Instead, the spark came in March 1770 with a fight outside the customs house on King Street, when a wigmaker’s apprentice taunted Captain-Lieutenant John Goldfinch over an unpaid bill. Months of escalating brawling and abuse between bored soldiers and the Boston mob culminated in a confused fire-fight which resulted in five fatal shootings. Among the dead were the sixteen-year-old shipwright’s apprentice Christopher ‘Kit’ Monk, the mixed-race mariner Crispus Attucks and the Irish leatherworker Patrick Carr.
As the crack of gunshot ricocheted into the March air, the tight, tiny city of Boston erupted: bells rung and the streets swarmed as if a fire had engulfed it. Even the placid, trimming John Rowe was perturbed by such incendiary violence.
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