Desperate Sons Read online

  On November 5, the Boston Town Meeting reported a series of resolutions similar to those adopted in Philadelphia, asserting that the duty on tea was an unjust tax levied by Parliament and that the Tea Act was nothing more than an attempt to impose what Adams called an unconstitutional “Ministerial Plan” of government upon the colonies and “a violent attack upon the Liberties of America.” It was the duty of every American to oppose the Tea Act, the resolutions continued, and anyone who participated in the enterprise in any way was to be seen as “an Enemy to America.” A committee had been selected “to wait on those Gentlemen, who it is reported are appointed by the British East India Company to receive and sell said Tea,” requesting “from a regard to their own characters and the peace and good order of this Town” that they immediately resign their appointment.

  The response from the consignees—two of them sons of Governor Hutchinson—was not exactly what Adams and his fellow council members had wanted. “As they were not yet acquainted with the terms upon which the teas were consigned to them, they were not able to give a definitive answer to the request of the town,” Governor Hutchinson would later write. “The answers were all voted to be daringly affrontive to the town, and the meeting was immediately after dissolved.”

  Meanwhile, it was discovered that seven ships carrying British East India Company tea were already en route to the colonies, three bound for New York, Charleston, and Philadelphia and the other four headed for Boston. The latter were expected to arrive any day, and tensions were mounting. To Hutchinson it seemed the most difficult situation that he had encountered in all his years in office. He was well aware that previous controversies had “had a tendency to deprive him of the esteem and favour of the people,” but, he claimed, he had never been “apprehensive of injury to his person.” Now however, he saw himself up against true villains, “a great proportion of them the lowest part of the people,” from whom “acts of violence are to be expected.”

  Though one member of his council suggested that Hutchinson should simply order the tea returned to England, the governor was not inclined to do so, for it would have meant caving in to Adams and his colleagues and placing any consequent liabilities fully on his own shoulders. While he debated the best course of action, he struck an agreement with the consignees that upon the approach of the ships, their captains would be advised to drop anchor outside the entrance to the harbor. If they never actually arrived in Boston, Hutchinson reasoned, he could not be put into the position of ordering their ignominious return.

  Though the protesters claimed that they would not resort to violent measures to keep the tea from being landed, Hutchinson very much doubted the sincerity of these assertions. On the evening of November 17, a mob demonstrated before the home of Richard Clarke, one of the consignees, and broke one of the windows in an attempt to gain entry. Only the fact that Clarke fired a warning shot over the crowd prevented his house from being pulled down.

  On the following day, with the arrival of the tea ships considered imminent, the town meeting reconvened and once more voted to demand the resignation of the consignees. A committee, which included Samuel Adams, was deputed to serve copies of the resolution to the younger Hutchinsons, to Richard Clarke, and to Benjamin Faneuil and Joshua Winslow, partners in the third firm set to accept the tea. The consignees, encouraged by the governor, responded that their appointments had been arranged in London by other parties and that they were powerless to negate actions that they themselves had not undertaken.

  It was the sort of sophistry that might have impressed Mad Hatters and spectacle-wearing rabbits, but when Adams reported the answer back to the town meeting, that assembly dissolved itself on the spot. “This sudden dissolution,” Governor Hutchinson wrote, “struck more terror into the consignees than the most minatory resolves.” The frightened consignees then petitioned Hutchinson to take the “property of the East India company” under the protection of the government.

  On the following day, Hutchinson took all this to his council, but if he thought that helpful advice would be forthcoming from that quarter, he was sadly mistaken. Fingers were dragged about shirt collars, hemming was followed by hawing, and finally the one member who suggested that the consignees resign stood to proclaim forcibly against the council’s now accepting responsibility for the tea, “lest they should make themselves liable to answer for any damage which might happen to it.” In the end, the council determined that the best course of action was to adjourn until Monday so that the members might have more time to think things over. The exasperated Hutchinson agreed to give them the weekend, but he surely could not have expected much to develop in that time.

  As it turned out, the equivocation of the Governor’s Council was of little consequence. On Sunday, November 28, there sailed into Boston harbor the good ship Dartmouth, laden with more than three hundred chests of tea from India. Adams quickly dispatched an announcement to the Sons’ committees in nearby towns, and soon a similar notice was posted on the boards about Boston: “Friends! brethren! countrymen! That worst of plagues, the detested tea, shipped for this port by the East India company, is now arrived in this harbour—the hour of destruction, or manly opposition to the machinations of tyranny stare you in the face. Every friend to his country, to himself, and posterity, is now called upon to meet.”

  They would gather at 9 a.m. on Monday at Faneuil Hall, Adams said, “at which time the bells will ring, to make an united and successful resistance to this last, worst, and most destructive measure of administration.”

  While Hutchinson and his council met on Monday, Adams stood before a body of several thousand at the Old South Meeting House, there being far too many to fit within Faneuil’s walls. As Adams introduced a resolution demanding that the tea be returned to England in the same ship that had brought it, Hutchinson demanded one last time that the council give him authorization to land the tea under government protection. But that plea went nowhere, largely because of the understanding that once the tea reached American shores, the duty would be payable. The council members’ best advice was that Hutchinson convene the local magistrates and ask them to take all necessary measures to keep the peace, and with that Hutchinson dismissed the group. “The people,” Hutchinson lamented, had prevailed and were now “in possession of all the power of government, for any purpose they thought fit.”

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  Mad Hatter’s Ball

  Meanwhile, what ensued over the series of meetings that took place at the Old South Meeting House over the next two and a half weeks constituted a true revolutionary process. As the scholar L. F. S. Upton put it, Samuel Adams and his fellow leaders were engaged in nothing less than an attempt to convince the populace to accept “the alarming idea that the destruction of private property was necessary for the maintenance of public liberty.”

  The meetings that took place over this period were also of a distinctly different nature, according to Hutchinson. They were no longer “town” meetings, in which participation and voting rights were circumscribed by various conditions. Instead, they were convened as “body” meetings, in which anyone might speak, regardless of age, permanent place of residence, or voting status. To Hutchinson, it was the end of all reason. “Seeing the powers of government thus taken out of the hands of the legally established authority,” he sent the sheriff to Old South with an order that the meeting disperse.

  Though it was some time before the jeers abated, the sheriff was finally allowed to read the governor’s orders, though boos and catcalls resounded all the while. Following the reading, the assembled multitude cast their vote, which to no one’s surprise was a unanimous rejection of the governor’s order, and the meeting went back to its principal business, to determine the proper disposition of the tea on board the Dartmouth.

  The previous day, once the resolution demanding that the tea be returned to England had been passed, the owner of the Dartmouth, Francis Rotch, had stood to protest. For one thing, he pointed out, his captain could not legal
ly pass out of the harbor without a clearance from customs and a permit from the governor, neither of which was likely to be forthcoming. If he tried to sail without a permit, he might be apprehended by navy ships outside the harbor or anywhere along the voyage, his cargo confiscated and taken who knew where. And even if the ship did make it back to London, the unauthorized cargo might well be seized by agents there. Moreover, it did not seem fair to Rotch that he would not in any case be paid for the cost of carrying the cargo all the way to Massachusetts.

  Samuel Adams listened patiently to all this, then asked Rotch if he was familiar with the precedent exempting a shipowner from responsibility for goods lost during a storm or other unexpected accident. Of course he was familiar with it, Rotch shot back, but what did that have to do with his present untenable position?

  Adams may or may not have smiled at the question. But what he told the owner has become the stuff of legend: it was necessary only, he explained to Rotch, that he explain to anyone concerned that a mob of several thousand people had directed him to take the tea back without the duty being paid and that it was for the good of the safety of his person and his property that he comply; that should take care of the matter. The discussion was at an end.

  Rotch was still protesting when the moderator ordered him out, along with the Dartmouth’s captain, James Hall. The Dartmouth was ordered to tie up at Griffin’s Wharf, where the remainder of the ship’s cargo could be taken out. But it would be “at their peril” if they tried to unload the tea, the pair were reminded, and the assembly immediately appointed a twenty-five-man guard to keep watch at the docks and prevent any such attempts.

  Once all that was dealt with, John Hancock stood to inform the assembly that one of the town’s justices had shared the news of Hutchinson’s order to “use their endeavors to suppress any riot that might ensue on account of the tea.” It was further evidence of Hutchinson’s cynical manipulation of the government, “solely calculated to serve the views of Administration,” he said, a sentiment that was quickly put into the form of a resolution and passed without debate.

  Though they were eager to return to the primary business at hand, that being the proper disposition of the tea aboard the Dartmouth, a son-in-law of Richard Clarke, one of the consignees, rose to inform the body that indeed word had just arrived for the agents from the British East India Company. The consignees thus petitioned the body for time to consider this news before appearing with a proposal in hand. The request was granted, and with that the body adjourned until the following morning.

  It was Tuesday morning when the sheriff arrived bearing Hutchinson’s proclamation, however, and by the time that was done and Samuel Adams was finished with his vituperative response, an hour or more had passed. Adams raged for nearly twenty minutes on the specious nature of the governor’s reasoning, going so far as to heap invective on Hutchinson’s salutation, “In Faithfulness to my Trust and as his Majesty’s Representative in this Province.”

  Even that commonplace sent Adams into near apoplexy: “He? He? is that Shadow of a Man, scarce able to support his withered carcase or his hoary Head! Is he a Representative of Majesty?”

  Finally, it was time to return to more pressing matters. As one of the loyalists in attendance described the transition, “When he [Adams] had done remarking on every Expression he thought proper to remark on, the Audience testified their Approbation of what he had said, by Shouts of Applause, Clapping, etc.” and the owners of two more tea-bearing ships on the way, the Eleanor and the Beaver, were invited to speak.

  John Rowe, a part owner of the Eleanor, stood to proclaim that he was truly sorry if in fact his ship were indeed “concerned with bringing any of that detestable and obnoxious commodity” to Massachusetts. When that sentiment provoked cheers and applause, Rowe seems to have found himself carried away. According to one observer writing in a diary unearthed in 1965 by Upton, Rowe wondered, in fact, “whether a little Salt Water would not do it good, or whether Salt Water would not make as good Tea as fresh.” Some historians have argued that such a long-standing Tory as Rowe would never have uttered such words, but the unnamed diarist’s account of the meetings suggests that indeed Rowe was the first to predict the storied drama to come.

  Shortly after Rowe’s appearance, John Copley, a representative of the consignees, was brought before the group to deliver the long-awaited response from the men who’d hoped to already be selling tea and turning a handsome profit. They’d decided not to risk unnecessary incitement by appearing before that body, their emissary said. And although they still deemed it utterly impossible to send the tea back to London, they were nonetheless “very desirous of seeing peace restored to the town.” To that end, the consignees said, they would consent “to storing the Tea in any Store the People should think proper and submit it to the Inspection of any Committee chosen by them, but that they could go no further without ruining themselves.”

  At the end of this, Adams stood to observe that it was indeed a good thing to find that the consignees were willing to negotiate, but he suggested that nothing in their response indicated a material change. The tea should not be permitted to land under any circumstances, he said, and in a subsequent resolution those in attendance agreed. Shortly thereafter, John Hancock rose to close the meeting with fateful words: “My Fellow Countrymen, we have now put our Hands to the Plough and Wo be to him that shrinks or looks back.”

  When news of the body’s actions reached him, Hutchinson found reason to pause. The men had voted to oppose the landing of the tea “at the risk of their lives and properties,” he understood, which to him signified “a more determined spirit . . . than in any of the former assemblies of the people.” Despite the fact that the meeting had included all social ranks, “no eccentrick or irregular motions” had been put forward, and though it was not in his estimation a legal gathering, there was no doubting the unanimity of will he was facing. Even though he was certain that the whole enterprise was the work of Samuel Adams and his cohorts, the governor could scarcely dismiss the threat.

  Immediately following the adjournment of the November 30 meeting, reports from the Boston Committee of Correspondence went out across the colonies. Committees from Roxbury, Dorchester, Brookline, and Cambridge joined the Boston group to hold daily meetings in Faneuil Hall and issued their own communiqués as well. There was a clock ticking on the matter, as all concerned understood. The captain of the Dartmouth was permitted twenty days after docking to declare his cargo and pay the necessary duties. If he had not complied within that time, the ship and its contents could be seized by customs agents and disposed of. If the necessary business was not attended to by December 16, calamity was assured.

  As the standoff between Hutchinson and the town continued, the Eleanor and the Beaver, laden with tea as well, sailed into the harbor and were ordered to tie up near the Dartmouth. As the days to the deadline dwindled, it became apparent that neither Hutchinson nor the Liberty Boys of Boston would budge.

  On December 14, another meeting of the body was convened at Old South Meeting House and Rotch was summoned to give an explanation as to why he had not dispatched the tea back to London. Rotch responded that he found it patently unfair that he, a simple trader operating in good faith, should be put into the middle of a dispute between the colonists and the Crown. It seemed to Rotch that the townsmen were intent upon destroying his ship or at least the tea inside it, and if that were so, he hoped that all those engaged would bear their just portion of his losses. He was willing to relinquish the ship and its contents to some board of appraisers who could determine its value and let others decide its fate, but as for attempting to return the tea if it meant risking his life not to go further in such attempts, Rotch said, so be it.

  Some statements of sympathy for Rotch were forthcoming from the crowd, but in the end he was directed to seek permission from the governor to move his ship. As such an appeal would scarcely endanger his life, he agreed to try.

  On December 16, the bo
dy, several thousand strong, convened again at Old South and listened as Rotch recounted his efforts to comply with their requests. He had petitioned the governor for the necessary permit, and Hutchinson’s reply had been this: “He was always disposed to oblige any person that appealed to him for a pass when there was just reason for one, but he could not think it his duty in this case and therefore could not.”

  It was nearing six o’clock by then, and dusk was falling in the streets outside. Anyone who noticed might have found it an all-too-appropriate reflection of the state at which relations with the mother country had arrived. Samuel Adams then rose to say that he could think of nothing more that could be done. He told those assembled that “they had now done all that they could for the salvation of their country.” As for himself, he said, he intended to “go home, set down, and make himself as easy as he could.” At that someone made a motion that they consider Mr. Rotch’s conduct satisfactory, and upon approval of that sentiment, the meeting’s close seemed imminent.

  As one observer recalls, however, no sooner had merchant Rotch finished his recounting of the governor’s dismissal than a number of men who were standing at the far end of the hall began to drift outside. A few minutes later, there came “an hideous Yelling in the Street . . . and in the Porch, as of an Hundred People, some imitating the Powaws of Indians and others the Whistle of a Boatswain . . . on which Numbers hastened out as fast as possible while Mr. Adams, Mr. Hancock, Dr. Young with several others called out to the People to stay, for they had not quite done.”