Bernard summoned a town meeting the next day, and there he learned that the mob had indeed grown out-of-hand: the extent of destruction the night before had exceeded the orchestrators’ intentions. Though most of the town had celebrated the riots earlier in the month, most were unsettled by the amount of destruction on 26 August. This time Bernard had no trouble summoning the militia, which would patrol the streets for the next several weeks to keep order. A warrant was issued for MacIntosh’s arrest, and he was taken into custody. Word of his arrest traveled fast, and patriots made it clear that if he wasn’t released, the next target for the Sons of Liberty would be the Customs House. The sheriff released MacIntosh without orders, and when he told Hutchinson and the Governor’s Council of what he had done, they gave him a soft rebuke and knew better not to make anything of it.
The lawyer Josiah Quincy, reflecting on the events, wrote in his notebook, ‘O ye Sons of Popularity: beware lest a thirst of applause move you groundlessly to inflame the minds of the people… Who, that sees the fury and instability of the populace, but would seek protection under the arm of power?... Who that beholds the tyranny of oppression and arbitrary power, but would lose his life in defense of his liberty?’ When these words were read in the town legislature, Hutchinson was moved to tears, and he confirmed his own personal opposition to the Stamp Act despite his unfettered devotion to the crown. John Adams, who in no way approved of what his cousin had orchestrated, wisely remarked, ‘Is it known that [Andrew Oliver] ever advised the British to lay internal taxes upon us? Is it known that he ever solicited the office of Distributor of Stamps? Or that he has ever done anything to injure the people? If there is no proof at all of any such injury done to the people by that gentleman, has not the blind, undistinguishing rage of the rabble done him irreparable injustice?’ John Adams’ thirst for justice, regardless of any man’s personal views on acts of Parliament, would garnish him both wide respect and equally wide contempt as the colonial crisis continued to deteriorate.
Regardless of how things had gotten out-of-hand on 26 August, the Sons of Liberty had succeeded in trumpeting their message: stamp distributors weren’t safe. Almost universally, stamp officers resigned their posts or refused to do their duty for fear of their lives and property. When the stamps would arrive, there would hardly be anyone willing to receive them, much less issue them; most shipments of stamps would be burned or cast into the sea by members of the Sons of Liberty. Those stamp officers who weren’t so keen on abandoning their duties faced recrimination from the Sons of Liberty in ‘tarring and feathering’ ; such tarring and feathering would often occur beneath ‘trees of liberty,’ and the humiliating experience was enough to coerce them to resign their posts. As the Sons of Liberty gained clout, those who opposed them would be seen as no less wicked than those who promoted Parliament’s acts: Ambrose Barcroft of Philadelphia wrote to his cousin in Lancashire, ‘[It is unsafe] for a man even to speak a word for the King except he knows what company he is in. At Trenton in West Jersey they tar’d and feather’d a man just for drinking the King’s health!’ Such acts of violence directed against those openly loyal to the crown and supportive of Parliament’s measures would become commonplace, and the Sons of Liberty would be known in some circles as ‘Sons of Violence’; their modern-day classification by some historians as colonial terrorists doesn’t fall far from the truth.
When learning about the Stamp Act riots in middle school, it’s often assumed – if not outright stated – that the mob’s members acted out of Whig ideologies; in other words, the participants, top-to-bottom, were voicing their malice against ‘taxation without representation.’ For centuries that’s precisely what most historians have taught, but more recent research over the past several decades has cast serious doubt on that premise. This isn’t to say, of course, that ‘taxation without representation’ was nothing more than a Trojan horse: it was a real concern, but it wasn’t everyone’s concern. Those with property – merchants, lawyers, and colonists with plenty of land and money – truly resented taxation without representation; those without wealth or property didn’t have a bone in the matter, for they weren’t the ones liable for paying taxes. Those powerful and wealthy colonists chafing against Parliament’s laws identified themselves as Whigs in tandem with the stalwart ‘liberal’ political party in England (the Whigs opposed the ‘Tories,’ the conservative party advocating Parliamentary authority and strict measures in overseas colonies).
While United States textbooks paint the riots as caused by disagreements with Parliament’s legislation and overreach, many of those favorable to the crown had a different take. Anne Hulton, a sister to one of the customs commissioners, echoed a popular loyalist conviction that the riots and the subsequent rebellion were directed by ‘the Leader, who Governs absolutely, the Minds and the Passions of the people.’ Though she couldn’t identify this shadowy demigod, Peter Oliver – the crown-appointed chief justice of Massachusetts and brother-in-law to Thomas Hutchinson – believed he knew the man. He put to paper a not-uncommon hunch that the riots – and all that followed – had their genesis in a feud between Hutchinson and James Otis, Jr. In Oliver’s words, Otis had swore ‘that if his father was not appointed a justice of the superior court, he would set the province in a flame.’ Hutchinson had vowed to appoint his father to that position, but in the last instant he chose someone else, backstabbing Otis and betraying their agreement. Oliver believed the rioters – whom he believed were incapable of acting on their own – were little more than lackeys for Otis and his friends. ‘They always had their geniuses,’ Oliver wrote, ‘who (by the Mob Whistle, as horrid as the Iroquois Yell…) could fabricate the structure of rebellion from a single straw… As for the people in general, they were like the mobility of all countries, perfect machines, wound up by any hand who might first take the winch.’ The idea that the lower-class mob was little more than a machine to be directed by puppeteers took root in many peoples’ minds, patriot and Tory alike; one could scarcely believe that poor farmers, sailors, and rope-makers were capable of any sort of autonomous volition. By the outbreak of hostilities, however, such preconceptions were beginning to crumble. Gouverneur Morris, a New York patriot who would become one of the Founding Fathers and signatory on the Articles of Confederation and, later, the United States Constitution, noted with a hint of enlightenment while observing a mob in New York City, ‘These sheep, simple as they are, cannot be pulled as heretofore. In short, there is no ruling them; and now, to leave the metaphor, the heads of the mobility grow dangerous to the gentry; and how to keep them down is the question… The mob begin to think and to reason. Poor reptiles: it is with them a vernal morning, they are struggling to cast off their winter’s slough, they bask in the sunshine, and ere noon they will bite, depend on it. The gentry begin to fear this… I see, and I see it with fear and trembling, that if the disputes with Great Britain continue, we shall be under the worst of all possible dominions; we shall be under the domination of a riotous mob.’
The idea that the mobs that ravaged Boston during the tumultuous days of the Stamp Act controversy were the tools of puppeteers isn’t restricted to those favorable to the crown; even today many histories explain the mob as the work of propagandists; while Peter Oliver believed James Otis Jr. to be the architect, most homegrown histories give this honorific to Samuel Adams. The prevalent idea has been that Samuel Adams – among other patriots – embraced Whig ideologies against unsavory Parliamentary measures. The unthinking, machine-like mob became a tool with which they attacked the statutes and all who protected them; in time, their Whig convictions filtered down to the lower masses where they took root and began directing the mob towards more political ends. This idea of diffusion has been popular in historical interpretations of past events, but in reality, as historian Ray Raphael puts it in his A People’s History of the American Revolution, ‘‘Except in totalitarian societies, people (even common people) tend to pursue, of their own volition, their personal interests and the interests of their communities.’ Historians would do well to question the concept of diffusion, and rather than viewing the mob as a mechanistic tool, seek to understand why the mob’s participants found themselves compelled to protest. Human beings are self-serving creatures, and thus we can assume the lower-class, non-propertied patriots aligned themselves with the ‘American Cause’ out of their own interests. What self-interests, then, would a non-propertied, non-taxed colonist seek to promote? The answer may very well be one seen time and again throughout history: class warfare.
Most patriot leaders, particularly the ‘high-tiered’ leaders of the Sons of Liberty, were ‘upper-crust’ colonials with property worthy of protection against Parliamentary infringement; but the majority of the other patriots – the ‘lower-echelon’ radicals – had different reasons for protesting Parliament’s schemes. In the years before the Stamp Act riots, tensions had been building between propertied colonists (particularly those in favor with the crown) and the lower-class poor. Since the late 1600s, the American colonies had undergone a shift in wealth distribution: the richest five percent had increased their share of assets to thirty to forty-nine percent, while property owned by the poorest half decreased from nine to five percent. The statistics read like an echo of Sherwood Forest: the rich got richer while the poor got poorer. Boston’s Lieutenant Governor Hutchinson made no friends when he justified poverty because it resulted in ‘industry and frugality’; the fact that he said it in Boston only made the remark all the more galling, for Massachusetts’ thin soil made farming difficult, and failures produced droves of ‘strolling poor’ who wandered from this town to that, looking for work, and eventually arriving in seaport towns like Boston or New York where they sought meager employment in shipyards, taverns, with rope-makers, or even on sailing ships. While the better-off patriots countered Parliament with arguments born from natural rights, English liberties, and the limits of the British constitution, poorer patriots opposed the crown – and its red-coated enforcers – as the very instruments that promoted the aristocracy, making the rich richer and keeping them in power. It can be argued – and it has been argued, quite effectively – that the Stamp Act riots and the waves they created weren’t primarily about Parliamentary legislation but the outpouring of pent-up loathing towards the crown-favored rich who flaunted their wealth and abused their power at the expense of the underdogs.
This undercurrent of ‘class warfare’ wasn’t relegated to Boston. In New York City, theatrical productions ground to a halt when disrupted by rioters. Wealthy and powerful New Yorkers frequented the theaters, dressed in the best fashion, arriving in gilded carriages, and throwing their money this way and that. Theaters became symbols of class oppression; an unnamed New Yorker writing as ‘Philanderer’ lamented how season tickets sold for as much as fifty pounds while New York’s poor starved in the streets. In like manner to theater-going, most colonists viewed tea parties as a symbol of moneyed power. The common colonist drank tea only occasionally, for it was ridiculously expensive; those who drank it often had the money to do so, and their tea parties involved ornate china and serving dishes that, all told, could be worth more than a poor farmer’s home. Tea parties were a carryover from the English aristocracy, and as the divide between the colonies and America deepened, its symbolism as such would take on darker tones. Far south of New York, in Virginia, poor colonists protested horse racing and gambling, for these were the high-stakes (and expensive) pastimes of the plantation gentry.
As colonial protests against the crown government and its officials increased, propertied patriots struggled to maintain control over the lower-class mob. Undoubtedly they knew that their Whig ideologies mattered little to most protesters; what mattered was the hands-on, down-to-earth realities of daily life at the expense of the rich. Just as protests today can easily dovetail into riots resplendent with violence and vandalism, so, too, did high-ranking patriot leaders attempt to ‘head off’ such violence and vandalism time and again. They knew that success in their venture didn’t lie on burning and pillaging but on hurting England where it hurt: their pockets. Besides that, most patriot leaders were propertied men, and they knew that the destruction of their political enemy’s property could easily turn to the destruction of their own.
The Stamp Act Congress
Appeals to Parliament following the Revenue Act had failed, and politicians in Massachusetts wondered if a coherent, united message to Parliament and the crown would have more effect than a handful of detached appeals. The Great and General Court of Massachusetts issued a circular letter in June of 1765 to its counterparts in the other colonies, inviting them to send representatives to New York ‘to consider of a general and united, dutiful, loyal and humble Representation of their Condition to His Majesty and the Parliament; and to implore Relief.’ Massachusetts had tried its hand at this a year earlier when it called for a collective convention from the colonies to oppose the Sugar Act, but the call had fallen on deaf ears. This time, however, things were different: as the Virginia Resolves circulated, and as pamphlets and essays began promoting Locke’s ‘Social Contract’ theory, and as people from every class of American society, not just merchants, would feel the effect of the tax when it went into effect in November, there were positive responses. Delegates would be sent, but not from all the colonies. Virginia, Georgia, and North Carolina couldn’t send delegates, since the governors of those colonies refused to convene the colonial legislatures for the purpose of electing representatives; when the governors of Delaware and New Jersey refused to convene the legislatures, the legislatures took matters into their own hands and held rump sessions to appoint delegates. New Hampshire, too, failed to send delegates. In October of 1765, twenty-seven delegates from nine of the thirteen colonies converged on New York City.
The cramped and dirty streets of Boston far to the north were outdone by the well-paved, clean streets of New York City. Filled with around twenty thousand people, the city of New York was the second largest colonial port behind Philadelphia, which boasted twice as many inhabitants. New York City had begun as New Sweden by the Dutch, but the British had wrested the city from the Dutch in the earlier Dutch wars. The Dutch were a cosmopolitan people who valued diversity, and New York City reflected this: people from different religions, cultures, nations, and languages called the city home. The rich lived in elegant mansions while most of the middle-class workers were merchants trading off the wharves. Most homes were Dutch in architecture, and visitors admired the beauty of the women. In the wintertime the city sported sleighing parties and raucous balls, and come summertime there were parties on the water, recreational fishing, and, of course, lots of drinking. A famous bridge three miles from the city was known as the Kissing Bridge, and etiquette demanded that as you cross the bridge, you salute the lady whom you called your own. Across this bridge delegates rolled into the bustling seaport town to petition the King and Parliament of their grievances against the Stamp Act.
Led by John Dickinson, the Congress cobbled together a Declaration of Rights and Grievances. The Congress began by declaring, almost as if it were a disclaimer, the colonies’ allegiance to the crown and ‘all due subordination’ to Parliament. Within the context of such loyalty and subordination, the Congress asserted that it was pivotal to the peoples’ freedom that taxes weren’t imposed absent consent and insisted that virtual representation failed to capture the spirit of liberty. The Congress affixed to the Declaration of Rights and Grievances an Address to the King, a Memorial to the House of Lords, and a Petition to the Commons outlining their grievances against the Stamp Act. The delegates fought over every word: some delegates were conservative, and they hoped to request a repeal of the Stamp Act based solely on the fact that it adversely affected trade between England and her loyal colonies. The more radical members of the Congress nipped at the bit to go so far as to state that ‘it is unconstitutional and contrary to their rights, supporting the independency of the provinces, and not subject to the legislative power of Great Britain.’ Such words smacked of treason, and the conservative delegates balked. Debate raged regarding the exact nature of Parliament’s rights and power towards the colonies, though most delegates agreed that Parliament did have the right to regulate colonial trade, since that power lay beyond colonial control.
Over a period of twelve long, exhausting days, the delegates hammered out thirteen resolves that summarized their case against unlimited taxation by Parliament. These resolves were coached in terms of fidelity to Great Britain, swearing that ‘the members of this Congress [are] sincerely devoted, with the warmest Sentiments of Affection and Duty to his Majesty’s Person and Government;’ they explained that they found it to be their ‘indispensible Duty, to make the following Declarations of our humble Opinion, respecting the most Essential rights and Liberties of the Colonists, and of the Grievances under which they labour…’
The first three resolves served as a sort of summary of the arguments circulating in colonial minds regarding the rights of Englishmen, specifically their right, according to the British Constitution, to not be taxed absent representation:
Resolved, That His Majesty’s subjects in these colonies, owe the same allegiance to the Crown of Great-Britain, that is owing from his subjects born within the realm, and all due subordination to that august body the Parliament of Great Britain.
Resolved, That His Majesty’s liege subjects in these colonies, are entitled to all the inherent rights and liberties of his natural born subjects within the kingdom of Great-Britain.
Resolved, That it is inseparably essential to the freedom of a people, and the undoubted right of Englishmen, that no taxes be imposed on them, but with their own consent, given personally, or by their representatives.
The fourth resolve attacked the idea of ‘virtual representation’:
Resolved, That the people of these colonies are not, and from their local circumstances cannot be, represented in the House of Commons in Great-Britain.
The fifth and sixth resolves claimed the right of taxation to belong exclusively to the colonial assemblies:
Resolved, That the only representatives of the people of these colonies, are persons chosen therein by themselves, and that no taxes ever have been, or can be constitutionally imposed on them, but by their respective legislatures.
Resolved, That all supplies to the Crown, being free gifts of the people, it is unreasonable and inconsistent with the principles and spirit of the British Constitution, for the people of Great-Britain to grant to His Majesty the property of the colonists.
The seventh resolve upheld the Constitutional right of trial by a jury of peers; here was a swipe at the much-loathed Vice Admiralty courts set up in Nova Scotia:
Resolved, That trial by jury is the inherent and invaluable right of every British subject in these colonies.
The next three resolves (8-10) focused specifically on the Stamp Act:
Resolved, That the late Act of Parliament, entitled, An Act for granting and applying certain Stamp Duties, and other Duties, in the British colonies and plantations of America, etc., by imposing taxes on the inhabitants of these colonies, and the said Act, and several other Acts, by extending the jurisdiction of the courts of Admiralty beyond its ancient limits, have a manifest tendency to subvert the rights and liberties of the colonists.
Resolved, That the duties imposed by several late Acts of Parliament, from the peculiar circumstances of these colonies, will be extremely burthensome and grievous; and from the scarcity of specie, the payment of them absolutely impracticable.
Resolved, That as the profits of the trade of these colonies ultimately center in Great-Britain, to pay for the manufactures which they are obliged to take from thence, they eventually contribute very largely to all supplies granted there to the Crown.
Taken together, resolves eight through ten argued that the Stamp Act ‘by extending the jurisdiction of the Courts of Admiralty beyond its ancient limits’ had ‘a manifest tendency to subvert the rights and liberties of the colonists;’ and that the duties imposed were ‘extremely burthensome and grievous.’ In lieu of this, Resolves Eleven and Twelve urged the repeal not only of the Stamp Act but also of the Sugar Act on grounds of both their damaging effects on trade and their hampering the rights and liberties of the British colonies:
Resolved, That the restrictions imposed by several late Acts of Parliament, on the trade of these colonies, will render them unable to purchase the manufactures of Great-Britain.
Resolved, That the increase, prosperity, and happiness of these colonies, depend on the full and free enjoyment of their rights and liberties, and an intercourse with Great-Britain mutually affectionate and advantageous.
The thirteenth resolve affirmed the right of British subjects to petition the King and the House of Parliament; in other words, the Congress was saying, ‘We are allowed to have such a Congress, and we are allowed to express our views to you as we are doing.’
Resolved, That it is the right of the British subjects in these colonies, to petition the King, Or either House of Parliament.
The resolves ended with another plea for repeal of the Stamp Act:
Lastly, That it is the indispensible duty of these colonies, to the best of sovereigns, to the mother country, and to themselves, to endeavor by a loyal and dutiful address to his Majesty, and humble applications to both Houses of 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 American commerce.
Having completed their business, the delegates began to leave New York, some with long journeys ahead of them. A ship bearing stamped paper for New York arrived at Sandy Hook, and the packages of stamps were delivered to Lieutenant Governor Cadwallader Colden. Almost immediately, the hot talk of the politicians and drunk tavern-dwellers turned into action: a mob surrounded Colden’s fortified mansion; Colden could rest in decent peace, since Thomas Gage, the British Commander-in-Chief stationed in New York City, had anticipated trouble and dispatched a battery of three-pounder cannon and a company of the Royal American Regiment to act as Colden’s bodyguards. Colden wanted to get the stamped paper off his hands, as he didn’t care to deal with the growing mob. Colden communicated with the captain of a Royal Navy man-of-war anchored in the North River; the captain balked at the idea of taking the papers off his hands. Days passed, and the mob continued to grow, bolstered by rambunctious young men swarming in from the surrounding countryside. Countless members of the mob wanted to swarm Colden’s mansion; the more level-headed persuaded them not to do so. Storm-clouds began gathering over New York City; but the mob remained where they were, and Colden couldn’t find anyone to take the stamps off his hands.
The date for the enforcement of the Stamp Act drew nearer. Business in New York began to slow, and it neared a dead halt, as merchants in New York (and every other colony, for that matter) were pressured by radicals into signing ‘Non-Importation Agreements.’[1a] These merchants, knowing they faced persecution from the people if they obeyed the upcoming law, and prosecution from the government if they didn’t, began hurriedly writing to their correspondents in London, giving them ‘straight talk’ regarding what was afoot. If nothing was done soon, business would stop, the merchants would be sucked into the economic depression, and Great Britain would soon follow. The Stamp Act Congress delegates weren’t the only ones hoping their appeal wouldn’t fall on deaf ears.
The concerted efforts of the Stamp Act Congress represented a milestone in colonial history, one echoed but not outdone by the Albany Congress[2a] a little more than a decade earlier. The willingness of the colonies – deemed by one man to be ‘always at odds and ever at variance with one another’ – to work together for a common aim reflected a growing consensus across the eastern seaboard that the time had come to ‘unite or die’ (to quote Benjamin Franklin a decade earlier). Newspapers and pamphlets trumpeted the first seeds of colonial resistance, and the learned lawyer to the roughest rope-maker could understand what was at stake. The Stamp Act was loathed by nearly everyone, since it would affect every person of every rank and class in the colonies; pamphleteers convinced the populous that if they were to resign themselves to obey the Stamp Act, they would be reduced to slaves and lose their place as British subjects. In the span of several weeks, colonists from Georgia to Massachusetts no longer talked about ‘our colony’ but of ‘our country’; planters in Virginia and merchants in New York understood themselves primarily not as Virginians nor New Yorkers but as Americans. It wasn’t that they no longer took pride in their individual colonies; it was that they were coming to understand, as they never had before, that they belonged to a wider category of people.
When the Stamp Act Congress’ declarations reached England, Englishmen would be shocked: ‘All of this because of a tax? We’re taxed even harsher than they are!’ Those across the Atlantic failed to perceive that the Stamp Act wasn’t so much the cause but the symbol of a slavish relationship before Parliament. To put it in the words of one historian, ‘[The] colonists were no longer willing to accept a completely subordinate and dependent relationship to the mother country. This was the issue and nothing else.’ The issue wasn’t taxation but taxation without representation; and English liberties, as etched out by the English Bill of Rights in the wake of the Glorious Revolution, concretely involved taxation by representation. To tax without representation was to disregard the Bill of Rights; it was to treat the colonists not as English citizens but as slaves. That’s how the Americans saw it, even if Englishmen couldn’t quite grasp the issue.
The destructive demonstrations from mid-late August found echoes in neighboring colonies. The influence of the Sons of Liberty spread far and wide, and by the end of October, as Colden in New York was stuck with a shipment of stamps inside his walls and with an ever-growing mob camped outside his estate, all but two of the stamp distributors in all the colonies had resigned.[3a] Demonstrations akin to those in Boston took place in colonial towns up and down the coast. In Newport, Rhode Island a crowd carried three effigies – representing Martin Howard, Jr., a royalist who had suggested that the colony be put under crown control; Dr. Thomas Moffat, a royalist who agreed with Howard; and Augustus Johnson, the rumored Distributor-of-Stamps-to-be – and hung the effigies from a gallows in front of the courthouse. Imitating the damage exacted on the houses of Oliver, Hutchinson, and others in Boston, the homes of those men were ransacked; poor Dr. Moffat, a scientific man, lost telescopes, hydrometers, barometers, microscopes, compasses, and a library of books.
All across the colonies, pageants were held with mock trials of the stamp distributors. In Lebanon, Connecticut, the ‘criminal’ appeared in ‘virtual representation’ through a straw-filled dummy. The dummy was tried, placed in a cart with a rope around its neck, and dragged through the streets. Following along with the prisoner was a man pretending to be the devil, hissing, ‘Accept the office [of stamp distributor] and enslave your country!’ On the other side of the dummy was a chained woman dressed as the criminal’s mother, representing the country he was enslaving. She pleaded with her child to have pity on her, but the criminal would only reply, ‘Perish, my country, so that I get that reward!’ (i.e. the four hundred pound salary for the office). The pageant ended when the effigy was hanged and delivered to the devil, who hurled the straw-filled dummy into a roaring bonfire. In scenes like these, the Sons of Liberty gathered together, shared lots of drink and bellowed patriotic songs, and they cursed England and condemned all who vowed to promote the Stamp Act. The date for the Act’s enforcement loomed, and no one knew what to expect, not least of all the besieged Governor Colden in New York.
Rights, Grievances, and Non-Importation: The Stamp Act Debates in Parliament
The Stamp Act went into effect on 1 November 1765 - and everyone held their breath. Across the colonies, the day was observed as a day of mourning: muffled bells were tolled, minute guns were fired, and flags were lowered to half-staff; this day would be remembered as the day American liberty died. In New York City, Governor Colden had armed the city’s royal fort in case there was any trouble from the mob; Fort George already boasted a decently-sized British garrison, but Colden added mortars, guns, ammunition, and ‘all the necessaries for the regular attack of the enemy.’ The British commander, Major James, declared that he would cram the stamps down the peoples’ throats if they wouldn’t willingly take them, adding, ‘I will fire upon the town if I judge it necessary!’ The Sons of Liberty responded with indignation, placed an effigy of Colden on top of one of Colden’s carriages (which they had stolen from his coach-house), and surrounded by a crowd of upwards of half a thousand people, they drove the carriage back and forth under the guns of the fort, where soldiers at their ports stood with muskets at-the-ready, and where artillerymen stood by their mortars. Major James watched the spectacle, and he could only grimace as the Sons of Liberty torched the carriage and the effigy. As the carriage burned, the crowd thronged around the house of an arrogant British army officer and burned it to the ground. Major James may not have held his tongue, but he held his troops. He refused to retaliate against the display, knowing that a retaliation was precisely what the Sons of Liberty craved as ammunition against the crown.
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| London in the 1700s |
The spectacle in New York paled in comparison to what was coming next: the colonists had agreed, either by choice or coercion, to boycott British goods in protest of the Stamp Act. Colonial imports were slashed, and colonists began manufacturing their own goods in direct opposition to Britain’s mercantilist laws, which denied the right of the colonies to manufacture their own goods. Stamps sat in warehouses, unused; no one was willing to distribute them. For a time the courts were unable to function; newspapers couldn’t be sold; ships had to lie out in harbor, unable to be charted or cleared. Soon the colonists shrugged their shoulders, disregarding the Act entirely, and life continued absent stamps. The boycott lengthened, and factories in England began to feel the pinch: factories were closed, thousands were rendered jobless, and merchants and manufacturers tiptoed ever nearer to bankruptcy. Englishmen from the commercial class began hurling petition after petition at their Parliamentary leaders, begging the Act to be revoked; the colonists’ resistance was crippling the English economy. The Stamp Act Congress had been on the mark with its resolution that ‘the restrictions imposed by several late Acts of Parliament, on the trade of these colonies, will render them unable to purchase the manufacturers of Great Britain.’ Those words hadn’t been so much hot air.
Nearly three and a half months before the Stamp Act went into effect, George Grenville had been ‘relieved of command’ by King George III. This had nothing to do with the unrest fermenting across the Atlantic; in January the king had come down with a debilitating chest cold, a wretched cough, and side-splitting stomach cramps[1c]. Rendered bedridden, physicians attended to him, and the situation looked bleak: his temperature kept fluctuating and his pulse skyrocketed. For three months he seemed to get better, then weaken again, and court physicians, desperate to heal him, subjected him to a gauntlet of potions, purgings, blistering, bleedings, and cuppings. He miraculously survived their crude medical practices. When the king got better in April, he told the House of Lords that he wished to have a regent appointed to function as king, assisted by a council, in the interim between what could be his untimely death and the maturity of his then-infant son. Despite George’s desire for a regent to be appointed, Grenville didn’t make any recommendations to the Council, and some members of Parliament actively worked to exclude the king’s beloved mother from the regency Council. Grenville didn’t try to put a stop to it, and upon learning of these Parliamentary shenanigans, George blamed Grenville, since he was the Prime Minister, and kicked him from office.
Grenville’s ousting led to a reshaping of the king’s cabinet: the Marquees Rockingham, a stick-like, thirty-five year-old politician of great wealth and prominent family connections, was named the Lord of the Treasury. Horace Walpole, a prominent member of Parliament, despised Lord Rockingham, calling him ‘weak, childish, and ignorant,’ and ‘by no means fit for the head of Administration.’ Sirs Conway and Grafton were appointed Secretaries of State, and two carryovers from Grenville’s ministry – the Lord Chancellor, Northington; and the Secretary of War, Barrington – were friends of the king and retained their positions.
The king’s cabinet had a difficult road ahead of them, not least of all tasked with the question, “How do we deal with the unrest in the colonies?” By the end of 1765, Parliament’s members had been inundated with a torrent of letters and petitions from England’s merchants and businessmen for repeal of the Stamp Act. In Manchester, Nottingham, Leeds, and many other factory towns, thousands of workmen had been displaced. The effects of the colonial boycott couldn’t be ignored, and they were compounded by more news of escalating unrest: persecution of crown officials and the destruction of government property hardened the hearts of Parliamentary members who took the colonial defiance personally. Anarchy, rebellion, and treason were words used to label the colonial dissidents. The king took the news in stride, though not without grief and a growing apprehension regarding what the future might bring. He told Secretary of State Conway, ‘I am more and more grieved at the accounts of America. Where this spirit will end is not to be said.’
When Parliament convened in December, the growing crisis was the talk of the chamber. Grenville, no longer in the king’s favor but still a member of Parliament, used his political clout to cater to the conservatives, hoping to incite indignation towards the unrest in Boston and resentment towards the ungrateful colonists. Grenville believed, with most conservatives, that to repeal the Stamp Act would be to set a precedent from which there could be no turning back. British historian W.E.H. Lecky captures the beliefs of the conservative members of Parliament, in that they believed ‘it was the right and duty of the Imperial Legislature to determine in what proportions the different parts of the Empire should contribute to the defence of the whole, and to see that no one part evaded its obligations and unjustly transferred its share to the others. The conduct of the colonies, in the eyes of these politicians, admitted of no excuse or palliation. The disputed right of taxation was established by a long series of legal authorities, and there was no real distinction between internal and external taxation… It was a simple truth that England governed her colonies more liberally than any other country in the world. They were the only existing colonies which enjoyed real political liberty.’[2c] The staunchest conservatives, in the spirit of thought captured by Lecky, decried the dissenting colonists as rebels, and the outworking of their defiance – nothing short of rebellion! – had to be squashed. It would be lethal, in the words of one conservative, ‘to talk big at the Courts of Madrid and Paris and be timid and pusillanimous at Boston and Rhode Island.’ Conservatives saw Boston as the seedbed of unrest, and some went so far as to suggest that ‘a good cannonading might cure Boston of its distemper and bring the other colonies to their senses.’
Rockingham, who advocated the Stamp Act’s repeal, chafed against the conservatives clamoring to make a public spectacle of Boston. Grenville’s blood boiled, knowing that the man who had taken his place was standing in opposition to what he had built. George III sought a middle ground, suggesting to Rockingham that they modify the Stamp Act. Rockingham replied, ‘My ministry intends to stand by repeal as an issue of confidence.’ He even went so far as to state that if the vote for its repeal, which he was determined to press through Parliament, was voted down, he and his ministers would resign. George was haunted by the thought of Grenville returning to his cabinet, so he decided to back off his new Prime Minister: he didn’t like the idea of repeal, but he loathed the idea of having to deal with Grenville again. As Grenville spent his time lathering up a storm against the colonies, Rockingham looked outwards to the merchants and manufacturers across England who had been plunged into dire straits by the Stamp Act.
Disgruntled and despairing merchants had met in London in early December to orchestrate a national campaign for the Stamp Act’s repeal; now they had Rockingham and Edmund Burke, Rockingham’s secretary and a Parliament member from Bristol, on their side. The London merchants cobbled together a committee and began sending letters to anyone who had an interest in the matter. Other towns and cities emulated the London committee, and committees even sprang up in Scotland. Memorials and petitions blanketed Parliament, and many a Parliamentary member was hounded by unceasing floods of letters from merchants and businessmen from their districts. Grenville relied on rhetoric; Rockingham tried to be more practical in his aims. It was, at least in his mind, simple enough: a revenue law designed to produce revenue had only caused problems. The situation had to be remedied. Riots, after all, were part of everyday life, and he saw them as an ‘effervescence of liberty,’ a ‘favourable crisis by which nature throws off the peccant humors in the body politic.’ By showing how the Stamp Act would only bring worsening conditions to England’s economy, perhaps even destroying her critical trade with North America, Rockingham hoped to appeal to the more common-sense members of Parliament. All that aside, he still had to deal with the obvious defiance of Parliamentary authority: the Stamp Act Congress had emphatically declared that Parliament had no right to tax Americans because Americans weren’t represented in Parliament. Rockingham understood Parliament to be a sovereign body tasked with passing laws that would affect the colonies; that was its purpose. The Americans, however, insisted that while legislation lie at the heart of Parliament’s purpose, that didn’t mean it had the right to tax anyone who wasn’t represented in Parliament. Rockingham would have a hell of a time solving this dilemma, or even, in the least, dodging it. He would find support when an old English hero, who had retired from politics after being stricken with an illness that gave him ‘periodic madness’ or ‘aggravated eccentricity’ (depending on whom you talked to), made an appearance and let all Parliament, not least Grenville, know his thoughts on the matter.
On 14 January 1766, William Pitt electrified Parliament when he declared to the House, not least to Grenville who sat one seat away from him, that ‘every capital measure’ taken by Grenville’s ministry ‘has been entirely wrong!’ Grenville seethed, and Pitt sought to uphold the case made by the Stamp Act Congress: 'It is my opinion that this Kingdom has no right to lay a tax upon the colonies. At the same time, I assert the authority of this Kingdom over the colonies, to be sovereign and supreme, in every circumstance of government and legislation whatsoever.’ Pitt’s deeply-ingrained belief was that the Americans shared every right belonging to Englishmen, that they were bound by England’s laws as Englishmen, and that as Englishmen they were under the protection of its constitution. He argued that taxation wasn’t part of Parliament’s legislative power, but that ‘taxes are a voluntary gift and grant of the Commons alone. In legislation the three estates of the realm are alike concerned, but the concurrence of the peers and the crown to a tax, is only necessary to close with the form of a law. The gift and grant is of the Commons alone.’ Anticipating the jargon of virtual representation, Pitt declared, ‘Who in England represented the Americans? The knights of the shire, the representatives of a borough – a borough, which perhaps its own representatives never saw?’ Virtual representation, he sneered, was ‘the most contemptible idea that ever entered into the head of man.’ He went on to say that the issue before Parliament, that of American taxation, was ‘a subject of greater importance than ever engaged the attention of this house!’ Eager to point out the irony, he suggested that the only exception might be the debate ‘near a century ago’ that gave birth to the English Bill of Rights, the very thing from which the colonists’ grievances were founded.
The chamber was overwhelmed with silence as Pitt took his seat. Secretary of State Conway stood up and said that he agreed, for the most part, with Pitt. When he sat down, Grenville stood to counter Pitt’s arguments. He prophesied that if Pitt’s views were upheld, the rebellion fostering in America would become nothing short of outright revolution. He said he didn’t understand how Pitt could believe that taxation wasn’t part of Parliament’s power; after all, Parliament had, for decades, passed taxation laws on people underrepresented in Parliament, such as the manufacturing towns, and no one had objected to Parliament’s right to tax when the Stamp Act had been introduced. It’d just been a matter of course. ‘Protection and obedience are reciprocal,’ he said. ‘Great Britain protects America. America is bound to yield obedience. If not, tell me when the Americans were emancipated? When they want the protection of this kingdom, they are always ready to ask for it. That protection has always been afforded them in the most full and ample manner. The nation has run itself into an immense debt to give them their protection! And now they are called upon to contribute a small share towards the public expense, and expense arising from themselves, they renounce your authority, insult your officers, and break out, I might almost say, into open rebellion!’
Grenville took his seat, confident in his counter-argument; and when Pitt stood to counter Grenville, Grenville couldn’t help but be shocked as members of Parliament began chanting, ‘Mr. Pitt! Mr. Pitt! Mr. Pitt!’ Grenville’s face reddened like a cherry, and the cries went on for so long that the Speaker of the House had to call the place to order. Things quieted down, and all eyes bore on the eccentric Pitt standing before them. Pitt looked over at Grenville, and he said, ‘Grenville asks us, “When were these colonies emancipated?” I desire to know when they were made slaves! I rejoice that America has resisted. Three millions of people, so dead to all the feelings of liberty as voluntarily to submit to be slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of the rest!’ He made clear that he believed Parliament had full authority to legislate for the colonies; but England and her colonies were so connected that ‘the one must necessarily govern; the greater must rule the less; but so rule it, so as not to contradict the fundamental principles that are common to both.’ To all the conservatives who advocated crushing the dissidents in America, Pitt acknowledged armed force would crush them, but ‘America, if she fell, would fall like a strong man. She would embrace the pillars of the state, and pull down the constitution along with her. Is this your boasted peace? Not to sheath the sword in its scabbard, but to sheath it in the bowels of your countrymen?’ He continued, ‘The Americans have not acted in all things with prudence and temper. They have been wronged. They have been driven to madness by injustice! Will you punish them for the madness you have occasioned? Rather let prudence and temper come first from this side. I will undertake for America, that she will follow the example… Upon the whole, I will beg leave to tell the house what is really my opinion. It is, that the Stamp Act be repealed absolutely, totally, and immediately!’
Lord Camden, one of the biggest legal figures of the day, took his stand with Pitt, arguing that Pitt was right: taxation wasn’t part of Parliament’s sovereign power, and taxation and representation were intimately connected. This position, Camden said, is founded on the laws of nature; nay, more, it is itself an external law of nature. For whatever is a man’s own is absolutely his own. No man has a right to take it from him without his consent, either expressed by himself or [his] representative. Whoever attempts to do it attempts an injury. Whoever does it commits a robbery. Edmund Burke, Rockingham’s right-hand-man, tried to appeal to the conservatives by reminding them that the Administration didn’t consider the Stamp Act to be illegal or unconstitutional, but they did hold it to be expedient. He advocated a return to the policy of benign neglect that had characterized England’s disposition towards her colonies before the end of the French and Indian War; he argued that if they would only do that, then the colonies would return to a state of peace and harmony, trade would be jumpstarted, and the Empire, already swollen and flourishing after its victory in the Seven Years War, would continue to flourish. The Lord Chancellor, allied with Grenville, snidely quipped, ‘If they withdraw allegiance, you must withdraw protection, and then the little State of Genoa or the Kingdom of Sweden may soon overrun them!’ Give them what they want, he argued, and see how they like it!
Pitt's speech sowed confusion, so that many who had been staunchly opposed to repeal now considered its merit. Rockingham hoped to leech off Pitt’s harvest, and from the 17th to the 27th of January, he flooded Parliament with petitions from merchants. The members of Parliament were bored all but to death by hearing from the pens of commercial giants the inability of merchants to collect on their colonial debts, the decay of trade with North America, and the countless hardships that had been thrust upon England by the boycott. Many petitions suggested that if things weren’t remedied, merchants who had prided themselves on being English traders might go to France, or the German states, or anywhere else that could enable them to make a livelihood. On the third of February, 1766, Secretary of State Conway moved a resolution declaring that Parliament did have the power to make laws binding the colonies ‘in all cases whatsoever’; hoping to soften the palates of the conservatives who balked at restricting Parliamentary power, Conway reiterated again and again that while Parliament did have the right to tax, the Stamp Act on its own accord just wasn’t working.
The template for the Declaratory Act had been laid, though many wondered how the Declaratory Act would look if the Stamp Act were to be repealed: ‘Wouldn’t it look like we were defeated and just trying to save face?’ On the fourth of February, the resolution, which had no bearing whatsoever on the Stamp Act itself, passed; only three or four members voted against it, including William Pitt. Grenville pushed for a resolution three days later to draft an Address to the King promising him that the Commons would back him up in his enforcement of the Stamp Act; his proposal was soundly defeated 274 to 134. Enraged, Grenville accused the ministry of ‘sacrificing the sovereignty of Britain to placate the colonies!’
Rockingham decided on a gamble to show the House that the colonists didn’t object to all taxes and that they really were loyal subjects. To demonstrate this, he called on none other than the colonial agent for the Pennsylvania Assembly, Benjamin Franklin.[3] Franklin, mild-mannered and welcoming before Parliament, shattered the caricature of colonists as bushwhacking, beer-guzzling, senseless nitwits. Grenville and his supporters lambasted him with questions, and he smiled and answered them with tact. He reasserted that the Americans were nothing more than loyal subjects suffering under a tax damaging to their lives and properties. He played into Rockingham’s ten-day tour of commercial grievances, adding that Grenville’s policies had started turning the wheel of American economic independence, something Grenville and his associates feared. Repeal of the Stamp Act, Franklin argued, would reverse that wheel as Americans turned again to English manufactures.
‘What used to be the pride of America?’ he was asked.
‘To indulge in the fashions and manufactures of Great Britain,’ he replied.
‘What now is their pride?’
‘To wear their old clothes over and over again, until they can make new ones.’
‘Why should anyone expect them to pay taxes again if they succeed in escaping this one?’
Franklin supported the colonial distinction between internal and external taxes. ‘They would willingly pay duties on trade to Britain,’ he said, ‘in return for the protection of the Royal Navy on the high seas.’
‘Do you not think,’ he was asked, ‘that the people of America would submit to pay the stamp duty if it was moderated?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘never, unless compelled by force of arms.” He shrugged, laughed, and said, ‘I don’t see how a redcoat with a musket could force a citizen to buy the stamps should he simply refuse to do so.’
‘What do you say of the American temper towards Great Britain?’
‘Prior to the Stamp Act,’ he replied, ‘they had not only a respect but an affection for Great Britain, for its laws, customs, and manners, and even a fondness for its fashions.’
‘And what is that temper now?’
‘Oh,’ he chuckled, ‘very much altered.’
Franklin added, ‘The Stamp Act says we shall have no commerce, make no exchange of property with each other, neither purchase nor grant, nor recover debts; we shall neither marry, nor make our wills, unless we pay such and such sums; and thus it is intended to extort our money from us, or ruin us, by the consequence of refusing to pay it.’
‘And what if troops are employed?’ Grenville’s team asked.
‘They may not find a rebellion,’ he answered. ‘But they may indeed make one.’
The Repeal of the Stamp Act
On 21 February 1766 Conway introduced the resolution to repeal the Stamp Act. He reasserted, again, that the Administration believed in Parliament’s right to tax the colonies, but enforcement could very well provoke a civil war not only disadvantageous to trade, as had already been experienced, but which would weaken Great Britain and open a door for a renewed war with France and Spain. The resolution moved to a vote, and it passed 276 to 168. The resolution having passed, the ministry worked harder than ever to get it through both the House and the King. Hoping that the boycott would end with the repeal, they worked day-and-night, and by the first week of March, the resolution had been encapsulated in both a Declaratory bill and a Repeal bill. The House passed both on 4 March with astounding majorities, and on 18 March King George III gave his assent. The Stamp Act had officially been repealed, and ships were quickly dispatched to America with the news. Rockingham and his ministry hoped this would smooth things over and that Franklin’s prophecies of a renewed, mutually beneficial relationship with Great Britain in light of repeal would come to pass. Rockingham also hoped the Declaratory Act would go unnoticed in the relief that was sure to flood the colonies. The Declaratory Act read:
AN ACT for the better securing the dependency of his Majesty’s dominions in America upon the crown and parliament of Great Britain.
WHEREAS several of the houses of representatives in his Majesty’s colonies and plantations in America, have of late, against law, claimed to themselves, or to the general assemblies of the same, the sole and exclusive right of imposing duties and taxes upon his Majesty’s subjects in the said colonies and plantations; and have, in pursuance of such claim, passed certain votes, resolutions, and orders, derogatory to the legislative authority of parliament, and inconsistent with the dependency of the said colonies and plantations upon the crown of Great Britain: … be it declared…
That the said colonies and plantations in America have been, are, and of right ought to be, subordinate unto, and dependent upon the imperial crown and parliament of Great Britain; and that the King’s majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the lords spiritual and temporal, and commons of Great Britain, in parliament assembled, had, hash, and of right ought to have, full power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the colonies and people of America, subjects of the crown of Great Britain, in all cases whatsoever.
II. And be it further declared…, That all resolutions, votes, orders, and proceedings, in any of the said colonies or plantations, whereby the power and authority of the parliament of Great Britain, to make laws and statutes as aforesaid, is denied, or drawn into question, are, and are hereby declared to be, utterly null and void to all intents and purposes whatsoever.
Stationed in New York City, Thomas Gage reported, ‘Rejoicings on this Occasion have been remarkably great… Nothing of consequence seems at present to be apprehended in most of the provinces.’ News of the Stamp Act’s repeal reached the British colonies mid-May, and the news gave birth to wide celebrations in every colony. Fireworks burst in the night skies, festivities were held in every major town, and addresses of thanks to God and King George III flowed from pulpits. Statues of the King and William Pitt were approved in New York and Virginia; effigies of Pitt, Isaac Barre, and Secretary of State Conway were erected not to be beheaded, hung, or burned, but to be praised and revered. Church bells tolled from dawn to twilight, celebratory guns were fired, and bands played royal music. A popular song graced tavern-houses and pageants:
In spite of each parasite, each cringing slave,
each cautious dastard, each oppressive knave,
each gibing ass, that reptile of an hour,
the supercilious pimp of abject slaves in power.
We are met to celebrate in festive mirth
the day that gave our freedom second birth.
That tell us, British Grenville never more
shall dare usurp unjust, illegal power,
or threaten America’s free sons with chains,
while the least spark of ancient fire remains.
In Boston the Sons of Liberty gathered around the future Liberty Tree and fired two fieldpieces in salute. Patriots put candles in their windows to show their approval of the repeal – and some who didn’t light candles had rocks thrown through their windows. The Sons of Liberty built a pyramid of 280 lamps on the Boston Common; the four upper stories were decorated with figures of the King and Queen and fourteen ‘of the worthy patriots who have distinguished themselves by their love of liberty.’ Crowning the pyramid was a round box of fireworks; the next tier, bolstered by Doric columns, bore a poem written for the occasion. The poem closed with the lines that if George III ever found himself encircled by enemies, he could rest well, knowing that if he wished, he could ‘to this asylum stretch thin happy wing, and we’ll contend who best shall love our KING.’ All day pennants, flags, and banners flew from the cramped houses, coloring the narrow streets; trees were adorned with ribbons and colored cloths. Hancock, the richest (and most vain) merchant in Boston, bought his own supply of fireworks and a keg of Madeira wine for public consumption. At twilight, twelve rockets were fired in a shower of sparks, and then countless more fireworks were lit so that ‘the ground seemed alive with bee-hives and serpents.’ James Otis, Jr. and other patriots with houses facing the Common opened their homes to the public, and ladies and their men went house-to-house, drinking toasts to liberty. An hour before midnight, the fireworks atop the pyramid were lit, and sixteen dozen serpents slithered about in the air. As the festivities wound down, the pyramid unconventionally went up in flames, one of the candles having gone crooked, and it burned to the ground, the portraits of the King and Queen curling and blackening, as if in prophecy of the future.
Sam Adams, however, wasn’t in a celebratory mood. He’d read the Declaratory Act and he saw in it portents of the future that no one else, it seemed, could perceive. The Sons of Liberty, having come into existence in direct opposition to the Stamp Act, could only fade away. Adams believed the Sons would return; it would only be a matter of time before Parliament tried something else. One historian captures, with the hindsight only an historian can have, the sentiments growling in Adams’ bosom: ‘The colonies were grateful for what turned out to be, in a sense, only a stay of execution. Those responsible for the direction of British policy were somewhat chafed at having had to concede for practical reasons what they firmly adhered to on theoretical grounds: the supreme authority of Parliament over the colonies in all cases whatsoever. The two parties to the dispute, England and her American colonies, were at the end as far apart as they had been at the beginning. Appearances, as it turned out, were deceiving. What had happened was that a full-blown revolution had been interrupted by a truce; neither party had budged an inch. One party (Great Britain) had reluctantly yielded to the argument of expediency. The other had interpreted this as they wished, that is to say, as capitulation.’
As deluded celebrations swept the thirteen colonies, George III looked across the Atlantic and saw the colonists as nothing less than spoiled, disobedient, and ungrateful children.
And he was determined to discipline them.
[1] The practice of tarring and feathering originated in feudal Europe and was revived in the American colonies. The victim would be stripped down to his waist or stripped ‘all the way,’ and as strong men kept him immobile, other men poured burning tar over his body, or painted it on with brushes; then the man would be forced to roll in a bed of feathers, or feathers would be thrown onto him. The experience itself was bent at humiliation, but the physical effects weren’t minor: many victims had tar on them for years, and removing the tar often involved removing the skin’s epidermis. More often than not, the victims would be paraded around town as a spectacle. The aim of this practice was to either force the victim to conform to the mob’s demands or to drive him out of town in shame. Humiliation was the name of the game; in the words of historian Ray Raphael, ‘What could be more ridiculous than a human prancing about with feathers, like a silly goose?’
The Genesis of the Stamp Act
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