American Tempest Read online

  American Tempest

  American

  Tempest

  HOW THE BOSTON TEA PARTY

  SPARKED A REVOLUTION

  HARLOW GILES UNGER

  DA CAPO PRESS

  A Member of the Perseus Books Group

  Copyright © 2011 by Harlow Giles Unger

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. For information, address Da Capo Press, 11 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA 02142.

  Designed by Trish Wilkinson

  Set in 11.5 point Adobe Garamond Pro

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Unger, Harlow G., 1931–

  American tempest : how the Boston Tea Party sparked a revolution / Harlow Giles Unger.—1st Da Capo Press ed.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 978-0-306-81962-9 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Boston Tea Party, 1773. 2. United States—History—Revolution, 1775–1783—Causes. I. Title.

  E215.7.U64 2011

  973.3—dc22

  2010047734

  First Da Capo Press edition 2011

  Published by Da Capo Press

  A Member of the Perseus Books Group

  www.dacapopress.com

  Da Capo Press books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the U.S. by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, or call (800) 810-4145, ext. 5000, or e-mail [email protected].

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  To Bob Pigeon and Lissa Warren

  There is nothing so easy as to persuade people that they are badly governed.

  —THOMAS HUTCHINSON,

  GOVERNOR OF MASSACHUSETTS

  Contents

  List of Illustrations

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction

  CHAPTER 1

  “Rally, Mohawks!”

  CHAPTER 2

  The Saints of Boston

  CHAPTER 3

  Mr. Cockle: The Governor’s Creature

  CHAPTER 4

  The Miserable State of Tributary Slaves

  CHAPTER 5

  Flockwork from England

  CHAPTER 6

  The Flame Is Spread

  CHAPTER 7

  A Diabolical Scene

  CHAPTER 8

  A Blackguard Town

  CHAPTER 9

  Farewell the Tea-board

  CHAPTER 10

  “Damn You! Fire!”

  CHAPTER 11

  “Let Every Man Do What Is Right!”

  CHAPTER 12

  “We Will Never Be Taxed!”

  CHAPTER 13

  “We Must Fight!”

  CHAPTER 14

  Savage Barbarities and Diabolical Cruelties

  CHAPTER 15

  The Forgotten Patriots

  Appendix A: The Declaration of Independence

  and Its Signatories

  Appendix B: The First Tea Party Patriots

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Index

  List of Illustrations

  Maps

  1. Town of Boston

  2. Boston, its harbor and environs, 1775–1776

  Illustrations

  1. James Otis, Jr.

  2. Thomas Hancock

  3. Harvard College

  4. Thomas Hutchinson, Jr.

  5. Samuel Adams

  6. Peter Oliver

  7. Hancock House on Beacon Hill

  8. Hancock House interior

  9. Thomas Pownall

  10. John Hancock

  11. Patrick Henry speaks against the Stamp Act

  12. Castle William

  13. The Green Dragon Tavern

  14. John Dickinson

  15. William Pitt, Earl of Chatham

  16. Thomas Cushing, Jr.

  17. British troops drill on Boston Common

  18. John Adams

  19. Frederick Lord North

  20. Bostonians paying the excise man

  21. The Boston Massacre

  22. The Boston Gazette’s front page

  23. Faneuil Hall

  24. The Boston Tea Party

  25. Customs Commissioner John Malcolm on the scaffold

  26. Joseph Galloway

  27. Old South Meeting House

  28. Bostonians in distress

  29. Edmund Burke

  30. General Thomas Gage hears the pleas of Boston’s boys

  31. Patrick Henry

  32. Major General Dr. Joseph Warren

  33. Paul Revere

  34. Thomas Jefferson

  35. Commander in Chief George Washington

  36. The Tory’s Day of Judgment

  37. King George III

  38. Boston rebuilt, 1789

  39. The Declaration of Independence

  Acknowledgments

  My deepest thanks to the wonderful staff at my publisher, Da Capo Press of the Perseus Books Group. All work incredibly hard behind the scenes and seldom receive the public acknowledgment they deserve for the beautiful books they produce and market. I owe a great debt of thanks to Publisher John Radziewicz, who has championed the publication of this and other books on American history. Special thanks, too, to Lissa Warren, the brilliant director of publicity, whose tireless efforts I believe do more to promote the study of American history than many schools and colleges. Among other essential contributors to this and other Da Capo books are Kevin Hanover, director of marketing, and the wonderful sales force of the Perseus Books Group; marketing executive Sean Maher, editor Jonathan Crowe; the incredibly skilled—and patient—Cisca L. Schreefel, associate director of editorial services and project editor for this book; copy editor Josephine Mariea; proofreader Anna Kaltenbach; and indexer Robie Grant.

  Finally, my most sincere thanks to my wonderful editor Robert Pigeon, executive editor at Da Capo Press, for the time, energy, passion, and skills he contributed to this book, and to my literary agent Edward W. Knappman of New England Publishing Associates, for his enduring faith in my work.

  Author’s Note: Spellings and grammar in the eighteenth-century letters and manuscripts cited in this book have, where appropriate, been modernized to clarify syntax without altering the intent of the original authors. The original spellings may be found in the works cited in the endnotes and bibliography.

  Introduction

  Bostonians had just stepped out of their homes to go to work when they spotted the notices on fence posts and trees: “Friends! Brethren! Countrymen! That worst of plagues, the detestable tea is now arrived. . . . The hour of destruction or manly opposition to the machinations of tyranny stare you in the face.”1

  It was Monday morning at nine, November 29, 1773, when the first church bell tolled, then a second, and another—until every church tower in the city rocked in the fearful crescendo. All but paralyzed with fear by the din, neighbors glanced at each other, then began trotting down the narrow alleys to the waterfront. Shopkeepers who had just opened for business shuttered their doors and joined the flow of people—hundreds, at first, then thousands, from all directions swarming into the square in front of Faneuil Hall. All tried forcing their way in—rich, poor . . . merchants, craftsmen, farmers, shipfitters, seamen, laborers . . . beggars, thieves, thugs . . . men and boys . . . clubs, rifles, pistols, and a variety of missiles in hand, ready to shatter windows of the capitol or fire at the gods in heaven. They called for
the blood of those they hated—British officials, those who supported British rule, those who deprived them of what they perceived as liberty. They called for the overthrow of a government that had fostered their prosperity for generations and protected them from enemy attacks by hostile Indians, French troops, and Spanish conquistadores for a century and a half.

  Massachusetts Chief Justice Peter Oliver puzzled over the tempest swirling around him: “For a colony which had been nursed in its infancy with the most tender care and attention, which has been indulged with every gratification that the most forward child could wish for . . . to plunge into an unnatural rebellion . . . must strike some with a degree of astonishment. By adverting to the historic page, we shall find no previous revolt . . . but what originated from severe oppressions.”2

  The cause of the ruckus was indeed astonishing: a three-penny-per-pound tax on British tea, which was nothing more than a “social beverage” largely consumed by idle women as “a sign of politeness and hospitality . . . a mark of civility and welcome.” But men seldom drank it, and it ranked below ale or rum among the beverages that Americans consumed most. Indeed, only about one-third of the population drank as many as two cups a day, and the tax had no effect on consumption. Eminently affordable by almost every American, tea had first appeared in America as an all-purpose elixir for “headaches, giddiness, and heaviness . . . colds, drop-sies, and scurvies—and it expelleth infection . . . prevents and cures agues, surfeits and fevers.”3

  Although the largest, wealthiest merchant groups routinely paid whatever duties the government demanded and absorbed the tiny extra costs, second-tier and third-tier merchants on the edge of failure evaded duties and tried to gain a competitive edge by buying low-cost, smuggled Dutch tea that they could sell at prices well below those of dutied English teas. The British government, however, badly needed to collect those duties. It had accumulated debts of more than £1 million in the French and Indian War in the north and west, and Parliament was determined to step up tax enforcement to force Americans to assume more of the costs of their own defense.

  Boston’s mid-level merchants objected and, as Massachusetts Royal Governor Thomas Hutchinson put it, “From so small a spark, a great fire seems to have been kindled.”4 The dissenting merchants responded to the increased taxes by organizing waterfront workers into a raging mob that surged through the streets, taking control of the town and its government. The mob brooked no dissent, burning homes of the most outspoken opponents and sending the dreaded tumbrel, “in imitation of the Inquisition coach,” to the doors of citizens who dared voice support for the established government. The squeaking wooden tipcart arrived at dawn, its drivers breaking down doors and dragging shrieking victims from their beds for transport to the “Liberty Tree.” A jeering mob awaited to strip them, swab them in scalding tar, and dress them in chicken feathers before hanging them by the waist from a branch to be scorned, beaten, and humiliated.5

  “The tarring and feathering and riots reigned uncontrolled,” Chief Justice Peter Oliver recalled. “The liberty of the press was restrained by the very men who had been halloowing for liberty. . . . Those printers who were inclined to support government were threatened.”6 After the mob burned down the home of a merchant who had paid the required duties on imported tea, a churchman at the conflagration assured the merchant’s frightened neighbors “that it was all right, it being in a good cause.”7

  Oliver explained that “all this struggle and uproar arose from the selfish designs of the merchants.” He called them “mock patriots who disguised their private views by mouthing it for liberty . . . [but] who will sacrifice everything for money.”8

  The struggle and uproar climaxed on Thursday, December 16, 1773, with the legendary “Boston Tea Party,” when an estimated six to seven dozen men, many amateurishly disguised as Indians—who were then a symbol of freedom—dumped at least £10,000 of tea (about $1 million today) into Boston harbor. Whatever the motives of its perpetrators, they unleashed social, political, and economic forces they would never again be able to control.

  The Boston Tea Party provoked a reign of terror in Boston and other American cities, with Americans inflicting unimaginable barbarities on each other. Mobs dumped tea and burned tea ships in New York; Philadelphia; Charleston, South Carolina; and elsewhere—and Boston staged a second tea party a few months after the first one. The turmoil stripped tens of thousands of Americans of their dignity, homes, properties, and birthrights—all in the name of liberty and independence. Nearly 100,000 Americans left the land of their forefathers forever in what was history’s largest exodus of Americans from America, and untold thousands who refused to leave their native land fled westward into the dangerous wilderness to start life anew under new identities.

  Even in the face of such horrors, John Adams saw a grander picture, calling the Boston Tea Party nothing short of “magnificent” and insisting it displayed “a dignity, a majesty, a sublimity. . . . This 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.”9

  Ironically, few, if any, Americans today—even those who call themselves Tea Party Patriots—know the true and entire story of the original Tea Party and the Patriots who staged it. Their names are long forgotten; no monument lists them or describes what they did and why. Before the original Tea Party Patriots disembarked, they swore never to reveal each other’s names, although British authorities accused John Hancock, Sam Adams, James Otis—and even fat little John Adams—of dumping some of the tea. Although the names of Tea Party Patriots are of some interest, what John Adams called the “important consequences” of the Tea Party had far more impact on American history—socially, politically, and economically. One social consequence, for example, was a shortage of tea that helped transform Americans into a nation of coffee drinkers. However, the political and economic consequences went far beyond culinary tastes and also affected the minds, hearts, souls, and lives of almost every American then and now. These included, among others, a declaration of independence, a bloody revolution, and the modern world’s first experiment in self-government.

  What a party! What a teapot! And what a tempest!

  Chapter 1

  ”Rally, Mohawks!”

  Thousands had pushed into the Old South Meeting House, “turning the House of God into a den of thieves,” according to Massachusetts Chief Justice Peter Oliver. “Thus assembled, they whiled away the time hissing and clapping, cursing and swearing until it grew near darkness and then the signal was given to act their deeds of darkness.”1

  A burst of blood-curdling war whoops from without silenced the huge congregation for a moment.

  “Rally, Mohawks!” came a cry from the rear—and again the terrifying war whoops from beyond. From the pulpit, moderator Samuel Adams called out, “This meeting can do no more to save the country.”2 And the doors of the church burst open, spilling congregants onto the stony parvis in the icy moonlit air.

  “Boston harbor a tea-pot tonight!” someone shouted.

  “Hurrah for Griffin’s Wharf!” answered another.

  “The Mohawks are come!” a third voice called.3

  Fifty or more men stood huddled in the shadows of the buildings opposite the church—blankets draped over their heads and shoulders, their faces smeared with lamp-black. Poised as Indians, they wore tomahawks, knives, or pistols in their belts and carried an axe or hatchet in their hands. Together, they represented the first—the original—Tea Party Patriots and would redound through history as a collective symbol against government taxation without the consent of the taxed.

  As the throng burst from the church, the Mohawks signaled to them to follow in silence along Milk Street, then a sharp right toward the waterfront, flowing like molten lava—steadily, relentlessly—until it reached Fort Hill. Other “Indians” stepped into the line of march, “one after another, as if by accident, so as not t
o excite suspicion.”

  Three ships lay tied to the pier as the procession approached Griffin’s Wharf. Armed guards protected the entrance, but stood away as the Indians approached. The crowd of followers halted on a rise above the wharf to watch the Indians as they boarded the ships. Like a swarm of locusts, the Indians spread across the decks, with some attaching blocks and tackles to lift chests from the holds. Chest after chest rose from the darkness of the ship’s bowels onto the decks, where axes and hatchets split their seams so expertly that spectators barely heard a sound. “We resembled devils from the bottomless pit rather than men,” recalled Joshua Wyeth, a sixteen-year-old blacksmith at the Tea Party. “Many of [us] were apprentices and journeymen, not a few, as was the case with myself, living with Tory masters.

  We boarded the ship . . . and our leader in a very stern and resolute manner, ordered the captain and crew to open the hatchways and hand us the hoisting tackle and ropes, assuring them that no harm was intended them. . . . Some of our number jumped into the hold and passed the chests to the tackle. As they were hauled on deck, others knocked them open with axes, and others raised them to the railing and discharged their contents overboard. . . . We were merry . . . at the idea of making so large a cup of tea for the fishes.4

  A reporter from the Massachusetts Gazette was also on the scene:

  They applied themselves so dexterously to the destruction of this commodity that, in the space of three hours, they broke up three hundred and forty-two chests, which was the whole number in these vessels, and discharged their contents. . . . When the tide rose, it floated the broken chests and the tea insomuch that the surface of the water was filled there-with a considerable way from the south part of the town to Dorchester Neck and lodged on the shores [see map 2, page 82]. . . . The town was very quiet during the whole evening and the night following. Those who were from the country went home with a merry heart, and the next day joy appeared in almost every countenance, some on account of the destruction of the tea, others on account of the quietness with which it was effected.5