On December 16, 1773 a mob of up to
130 men and boys, many of them wearing the ragged clothing of day laborers and
apprentices, other donning thin disguises as Indians, stormed three
ships moored in Boston harbor and began destroying chests of tea
and dumping their contents into the harbor. That’s right, it was the
so-called Boston Tea Party, although no one would call it that for
nearly sixty years. In fact, no one wanted to talk about it all.
Why? Because the ruffians and
hooligans who carried at the act were, well, terrorists. Yes,
terrorists. What else would you call people who in defiance of clear law
destroyed a fortune in private property while roughing up the crew and
threatening government officials—customs
agents. They did so not only in spite of taxes imposed on tea by the English
Parliament, but against the wishes of their own Massachusetts born
and bred Royal Governor Thomas Hutchinson.
And who actually carried out the
foul dead? No one admitted it, but everyone was pretty sure that the
hair-on-fire radical firebrand Samuel Adams and his so-called Sons of
Liberty had something to do with it. Adams had cobbled together a sort of
ward political organization from the gangs of apprentices who used to ritually
brawl and riot on Pope’s Day, as Guy Fawkes Day festivities
were called in Boston. During agitation against the Stamp Act and
Townsend Duties Adams marshaled his forces to harass tax collectors—even
tarring and feathering some. In 1765 the boys attacked and burned
Governor Hutchinson’s home because, although he opposed the Townsend Duties and
recommended to Parliament that they be repealed, stood by enforcing the law as
written.
Colonial opposition, including the
action of Adams and his gang, had forced Parliament to end both the Stamp Act
and the Townsend Duties. But Parliament, just to prove it had the
authority to do so, left a duty on Tea, most of which arrived in the Colonies
after being re-exported from England by the powerful East India
Company. Parliament also imposed a duty on tea sold in England, which
dramatically reduced consumption and left the company holding tons of tea that
they could not sell. The Company determined to sell the tea in the
Colonies. The Royal government was determined to collect duties on the
tea.
Up and down the coast the Committees
of Correspondence organized resistance to accepting the tea and paying the
duties. Local governments in Charleston, South Carolina, Philadelphia,
and New York each refused to allow a ship containing the tea to
dock. But Governor Hutchinson, whose two sons were among the consignees
of the cargo, was determined to let the tea land and collect the duty.
Other interests were also opposed to
allowing the tea to land. A class of smugglers had gotten very wealthy in
the illicit tea trade. If these new shipments landed, even with the
duties, the tea would have undersold the smuggled commodity and the criminals
would have been ruined. And the chief smuggler and black-marketeer was the colony’s richest man, John
Hancock. Sam Adams frequently met with the smuggler and relied on him
to finance the activities of his mob. A classic case of corrupt
criminals supporting terrorists.
The Dartmouth
arrived groaning with East India Tea in November amd
inspired packed mass meetings at Faneuil Hall and the Old South
Church where resolutions were passed demanding that the ships be turned
away. Teams of thugs were dispatched to keep an eye on the docks twenty-four
hours a day to prevent the landing. Governor Hutchinson encouraged his
sons and other consignees not to give in. He went further, forbidding the
Dartmouth, which was soon joined by two more ships, from leaving port
without paying the duties. Moreover, if the tea was not landed and the
duty paid in twenty-days, the Crown could seize the cargo and sell it itself.
On the evening of December 16, the
deadline for paying the duties, a more than 7,000 people—about a quarter of the
entire Boston population—crowded around the Old South Church where Adams was
conducting another of his rant-a-thons.
In addition to the street toughs, there were master mechanics, small tradesmen
and shop keepers, seamen from the port, and a sprinkling of mostly
down-at-the-heels lawyers and threadbare schoolmasters. Most of the
“better class” stayed home with their shutters latched tight. Probably
half of the crowd was simply curious about what would happen.
During the meeting it was announced
that Hutchinson had again refused to yield and ordered that the tea be unloaded
the next morning. Adams reportedly told the crowd “This meeting can do nothing
further to save the country.” Many believe that this was a pre-arranged
signal that a raid on the ships was on. At any rate, the meeting began to
break up. The whole crowd did not, as legend has it, stream to the
docks.
Two or three hours later, a group of
men and boys estimated to be as few as 30 to as many as 130 made what appeared
to be a well organized assault on the Dartmouth and two other ships, the
Eleanor and the Beaver. It took a couple of
hours to drag all of the chests from the ships’ holds, stave in the chests to
prevent them from floating, and dump the cargo overboard. Then the
raiders melted into the dark streets of Boston.
Predictably Hutchinson and officials
reacted with outrage. But so, almost unanimously, did all of Boston’s “better
classes,” excepting, of course, Hancock and his associates who stood to make a
killing in smuggled tea. Among those condemning the terrorism were
respectable patriots. Benjamin Franklin, the colonial agent in
England demanded that the rightful owners of the tea—The East India Company and
one small London trader—be repaid “every schilling” lost. At least one
wealthy New York merchant offered to personally repay the companies, but was
rebuffed by the Ministry, which was in no mood to let Boston off the hook.
Feeling a good deal of heat, Sam
Adams denied that he had anything to do with the raid. But he did defend
it as the inevitable outcome of popular resentment against alleged tyranny.
In the short term, the terrorists
won. No East India Tea landed or paid duty in the colonies that
year. Parliament announced that the hated tax would be allowed to
lapse—if the tea was paid for.
Hutchinson, as revealed in stolen
letters that Franklin sent back to the colonies, urged the Government to get
tough on the rebels. The scandal ended Franklin’s career as an agent as
he was called before the Privy Council and humiliated.
The government took Hutchinson’s
advice, as it was inclined to do in any case. It ordered the port of
Boston closed to all commerce, an action intended to impoverish what was
one of the most, if not the most, prosperous cities in the Empire. The
city, which was already groaning under Redcoat troops “quartered on the
town”—in the homes of citizens since the repeal of the Stamp act, would feel
increasingly oppressed.
That, too, may have been just what
the radicals wanted. It is a truism of terrorists everywhere that they
often act to bring on a heavy handed oppression which will build popular
resentment. It is a tar baby trick that governments and
authorities never fail to fall for. Intentional or not the repression of
Boston did fuel the spread of radicalism. In less than two years the
powder keg would explode and the American Revolution underway.
Just as the terrorists wanted.
But the Boston establishment never
was comfortable with the lawlessness that night in the harbor. After the
Revolution, they were terrified by the specter of mob rule. They
were scared witless by Shay’s Rebellion in western Massachusetts, which
clearly drew on insurrectionist radicalism and contempt of authority inspired
by the pre-revolutionary period. The events in the harbor were, by common
agreement, simply written out of history and left unmentioned.
By the next century few remembered
what had happened or why. But around the fiftieth anniversary of the
Revolution things began to change. The Boston elite had become
pro-British and so opposed to the War of 1812 that they led an abortive
secession movement. But the war, when it finally ended, was
popularly viewed, even in the streets of Boston, as a second war of
independence. A wave of patriotism swept the country. Among the
victims was the deeply conservative establishment Federalist Party. The
so-called Era of Good Feeling swept in virtual one party—Democratic
Republican—rule in Washington. Even loyal New Englander John
Quincy Adams abandoned his father’s party to take a position as Secretary
of State in the Monroe administration. Although the rump
Federalists clung to control in Boston, they were increasingly challenged by
the Republicans—mostly from the same class of laborers, apprentices, mechanics,
and shop keepers who had been part of Sam Adam’s old constituency. There
was even a new labor movement brewing in the city.
In 1830 two pulp biographies of George
Robert Twelves Hewes were published. The previously obscure and
impoverished shoe maker was a still living participant of the raid. His
story revived interest in the forgotten episode. One of the books even
had a new name for the event—the Boston Tea Party. The growing Democracy
of Boston embraced Hewes and his story. He was feted at grand public
celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the event and lauded as a hero.
The excitement may have carried over into the next year when in 1834 the first Democrat-Workingmen’s
Party mayor was elected in Boston—to the absolute horror of almost everyone
with much money.
Soon the Tea Party re-entered the
public consciousness. Later, when the story could no longer be
suppressed, it was re-spun to seem more like a mainstream protest.
It is a safe bet that most of those
now invoking the Tea Party as a revolt in favor of private property and those
who are cynically glad to use genuine popular discontent to shore up their
plutocracy won’t tell you any of this.
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