THE TRUE HISTORY OF
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
By Sydney George Fisher
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
IV
PARLIAMENT TAXES PAINT, PAPER, AND GLASS AND
THEN
ABANDONS TAXATION
DURING the year
after the repeal of the Stamp Act
politics were comparatively quiet
in the colonies. The
Assembly of Virginia
voted a statue to the king and an
obelisk to Pitt, and New York voted statues to both the
king and Pitt. Several of the colonies passed
acts indemnifying
those who had suffered in the Stamp Act riots.
There was, however, one cloud in the sky. A clause of
the Mutiny Act, passed
at the same time as the Stamp
Act, had required the colonial legislatures to provide
the
British soldiers quartered
in America with barracks, fires,
beds, candles, and other necessaries. This provision was
now enforced as part of the remodeling of the colonies.
The officers in command demanded their supplies. The
assembly in New York voted part of the supplies, but
failed to furnish vinegar, salt, and pepper.
This disobedience on the part of a dependency was extremely
irritating, even to a Whig ministry ;
and an act
of Parliament was promptly passed prohibiting the New
York Assembly from enacting any law until it complied
with the requisition
for the soldiers. This was internal
regulation with a vengeance,
that Parliament and a Whig
ministry should actually suspend
the power
of a colonial
legislature. Yet the act was unquestionably constitutional,
because the colonists themselves had admitted that Parliament
had full control over them, except
in the matter of
internal taxation.
They now began
to realize the absurdity of the ground
they had taken, and to see that the colonial relation necessarily
implied full power
of Parliament over New York
or any other colony. New York, however, submitted,
obeyed orders, and everything remained comparatively
quiet.
A few months after the repeal of the Stamp Act the king
and the Rockingham ministry disagreed, and on July 7,
1766, that ministry went out of office. William Pitt
formed a new one, made up
of politicians from the various
cliques and factions of the Whigs,
a most impossible and
impracticable ministry, and as short-lived as its predecessor.
Pitt was no longer
the powerful
statesman who had carried
England through
the great war with France and
secured for her Canada and what seemed to be a worldwide
empire. His health was broken and his nervous
system shattered. He was afflicted with paroxysms of
anger, could not bear the slightest noise, or even the presence
of his children in the same house with him. He
spent enormous sums of money in planting
his country seat,
"
Hayes," and secluding himself within it. He sold
the country-seat, but was so unhappy
at parting with it
that his wife bought
it back for him. He required a constant
succession of chickens to be kept cooking
in his
kitchens all day to satisfy his uncertain, but at times
ravenous, appetite.*
* Lecky,
"
England in the Eighteenth Century," edition of 1882,
vol. iii. p. 121
In forming the new ministry he compelled
the king
to
give him a title, and henceforth he is known as Lord
Chatham. Within a few weeks after forming
the ministry
his health failed so rapidly
that he had to be taken to
the continent. He never afterwards exercised any control
in the ministry of which he was supposed
to be the head and within a little more than a year he retired from it
altogether. But up
to his death,
in 1778, he would occasionally
appear in the House of Lords to make those
eloquent and pathetic appeals, from which our school-boys
used to recite passages, denouncing
the government because
it would not withdraw all the troops from America, and
by peaceful discussion persuade
the colonies to stay within
the empire.
As for the ministry he had formed,
it was not his in
any sense. On every question
it pursued
a course opposed
to his policy and after extraordinary
confusion and divisions
it soon ceased to bear even the semblance of a
Whig ministry,* for by successive resignations Tories were
admitted until it became all Tory. Lord Hillsborough and
Lord North were admitted to it
;
and finally that extreme
and thorough-going Tory Lord George Germain. The
Whigs went entirely out of power, and for the remainder
of the time we have a Tory government dealing with the
colonies.
*
Lecky,
"
England in the Eighteenth Century," edition of 1882,
vol. iii. p. 123, et seq
The constant changing of ministries at this time had not
a little to do with the development
of the revolutionary
spirit in America. A ministry seldom lasted over a year.
While there were the two great parties, Whig and Tory,
they were strangely confused and split up
into factions.
Party lines were not distinctly drawn,+ There could be
no consistent and steady
colonial policy. Whig ministries
used Tory methods and Tory ministries used Whig
methods. The uncertainty, the shifting back and forth
from severity to liberality, passing taxing
acts and repealing
them, was a vast encouragement
to the colonial rebels.
As our Revolution advanced we find party
lines and policies in England becoming clearer, until towards the end they
are quite distinct
;
and in 1778 the ministry
carried out a
distinctly Tory policy.
+Ibid., pp. 110-114
As one reads in this period of English history how
weak, divided, and headless every ministry was; how
bankrupt and disturbed business had become; how violent
the excitement and rioting over Wilkes
;
how incapable
the government was to keep ordinary civil order even
in London, one cannot help smiling
to think of the opportunities
our ancestors had in this confusion. There has
been no period since then when we could have broken
away so easily. Luck was an important
factor in the Revolution, and attended us from the beginning
to the
end.
In the autumn of 1766 Parliament went to the country,
and, as was naturally
to be expected, the new election returned
a body more determined than ever to remodel the
colonies, It is difficult for any nation to endure a dependency
where its sovereignty
is not recognized. The colonists
had compelled England to repeal an important law,
and had brought about this repeal by violence, by withholding
trade, by starving English
merchants and workingmen.
Could this be endured ? could it be possible that
a set of inferior people
in a dependency had such power as
that?
Observing the temper
the house was in, Charles Townsend,
Chancellor of the Exchequer, a whig, and a most
brilliant but uncertain member of the patch-work Chatham
ministry, announced, on January 26, 1767,
that
the administration was prepared
to solve the American
problem. This solution would render the colonies self 'sustaining,
and relieve Great Britain of the expense of
securing, defending, and protecting them. He knew, he
said, a mode by which revenue could be drawn from America for this purpose
without causing the heat and
turmoil of the Stamp
Act
;
and for this hopeful announcement
he was vigorously applauded on all sides.
His plan was nothing more than taking
the colonists at
their word on the distinction between external and internal
taxes. They had said that they were willing
to pay external
taxes, so a bill was introduced laying a duty on
paint, paper, glass, and tea imported
into the colonies, and
to be paid at their seaports
in the exact manner which they
had said was lawful and constitutional.
It was also at this time that other bills were introduced
creating commissioners of customs to reside in Boston,
strengthening the jurisdiction of the admiralty courts, and
taking other vigorous measures to suppress American
smuggling, as already
described in a previous chapter.
This patch-work Whig ministry
felt as strongly
as the
Tories the necessity
for remodeling and reforming
the
colonies.
The paint, paper, and glass
act was a great landmark in
the Revolution, and wrought
a great change
of opinion.
The colonists were fairly caught
in their own argument.
These new taxes were external, and, therefore, constitutional.
At the same time they were laid on articles of such universal
use, imported
in such large quantities from England,
that they would be paid
in the enhanced price of
the articles by all the people
all over the country just
like
the stamp tax, and so were as much an internal taxation as
the stamp tax. The colonists could only weakly argue
against them that they were purely
for raising revenue,
and not for the regulation of the commerce of the empire.
But although they were as internal in their effect as the
stamp tax, they could not be resisted, as the stamp tax had
been resisted, by simply
not using
the stamps. These
taxes were collected at the seaports by the authority and force of the British, navy and army and a host of new
revenue officers. If the articles were imported,
the taxes
would usually be paid, and the articles were of such
universal use that it was difficult not to import them.
Petitions, resolves, and remonstrances were again
sent
to England, and the associations for suspending importations
were renewed
;
but it is noticeable that there was no
rioting. In fact, the colonists were acting
in a rather subdued
manner. They hardly knew what to think. The
next step was a serious one. They must adopt new political
principles. Their leaders were holding them in check.
A town meeting was held in Boston to discountenance
rioting, and Otis urged
caution and advised that no opposition
should be made to the new duties. On the 20th of
November, 1767, when the taxes went into effect, the people
were remarkably quiet.*
*
Barry,
"
History
of Massachusetts,"
vol. ii. pp. 340,
341
Their petitions, letters, and public documents are full
of the most elaborate expressions of loyalty and devotion.
The famous petition which Massachusetts sent to the king
in January, 1768, is apparently
the perfection of simple hearted
unquestioning loyalty. Knowing what was in
their hearts, it is most amusing
to read the long-drawn-out
humble submissiveness of their words. There is no bold
arguing against the right
to tax. They merely beg and beseech
to be relieved from these new taxes. If they
cannot
be relieved from them,
then they can only
"
regret
their unhappy
fate." They repeat the old unfortunate admission
of the Stamp Act Congress
that Parliament has superintending
authority over them, but instead of adding the
exception of internal taxation, they have a new exception,
which they state by saying
that this supremo authority
extends to "all cases that can consist with the fundamental
rights of nature and the constitution." Those words,"
fundamental rights of nature," were a new way of limiting
the authority of Parliament and significant of what
was soon to happen.
Glancing at the documents sent out by the other, colonies,
we find another idea obtruding
itself. They ask
for a return of the conditions and privileges they had
enjoyed before the French War closed in 1763; the old
days when the French in Canada prevented any remodeling
or reform by England.
This request
for a return to
that happy golden age became a watchword in the patriot
party.
In the next month, February, 1768,
the Massachusetts
Assembly sent to all the other colonial assemblies a circular
letter, very cautiously worded, and arguing
the subject in a
quiet way. There is nothing about external and internal
taxes
;
but the recent duties on paint, paper, and glass are
said to be infringements of their natural and constitutional
rights, because such duties take away their property without
their consent
;
which is simply
a roundabout way of saying
that no taxation without representation, and the doctrine
of consent, must now be applied
to external as well
as internal taxes.
It is to be observed that they say
that the duties are
infringements of their natural and constitutional rights.
A year or two before it was only
their constitutional rights ;
now it is also their natural rights. They are broadening
their position to meet the new conditions. Massachusetts
also said in the circular letter that the doctrine of consent
was an "unalterable right in nature ingrafted
into the
British Constitution." This was altogether a new way of
looking at the British Constitution,
to "ingraft" upon
it a
right of nature against the will of Parliament and the
English people ;
and these rights of nature will soon have
to be considered in a separate chapter.
The Massachusetts circular letter, of course, insists
strongly that it is impossible
that the colonies should ever
be represented in Parliament
;
and it declares in all seriousness
that the colonists are not seeking
"
to make themselves
independent of the mother country." In short, they
are
just dear, good children, who are so devoted to mother
England that they
will show her how to remodel her constitution.
The British government, however, was not in the least
deceived. They very naturally regarded
this letter as
"
of
a most dangerous and factious tendency,
calculated to inflame
the minds of good subjects
in the colonies." The
chief object of the letter had been to promote union among
the colonies, unite them in opposition, and encourage
a
reciprocal expression of feeling. The government quickly
saw this, and there was an unsuccessful attempt
to have
Massachusetts rescind the letter.* This caused an irritating
controversy, which has been most voluminously described
in many histories, but into the details of which we have
not space to enter.[I have to say I am a bit troubled by this the author implies that this is a true history of our revolution, yet then says he does not have the space to go into detail about what he admits caused a controversy, so it just makes me more aware that the author has a bias and agenda to spin this 'true' history in a certain direction DC]
* Paul Bevere, patriot, silversmith, engraver, and lover of saddlehorses,
celebrated the refusal of the legislature
to rescind by making a
handsome silver punch-bowl, inscribed, To the Memory of the Glorious
Ninety-two Members of the Honorable House of Representatives of
the Massachusetts Bay, who on the 30th of June, 1708, voted not to
rescind.
It has been commonly said that the attempt of the
government to have the letter rescinded was unwise because
it was practically a denial of the right
to petition, and made
the colonies more rebellious than ever. But the ministry
were in an awkward predicament. They saw that the
colonies were evidently moving off. There was a powerful
rebel party at work among them. Should the government
stand still and let them go
?
The most serious provision of the paint, paper,and glass act remains yet
to be mentioned. The colonists had
objected to the Stamp Act because it was understood that
the revenue from it was to be devoted to keeping
an army
among them. They were also unalterably opposed
to any
system by which revenue raised from them was to be
turned generally into the English exchequer. The paint,
paper, and glass act was intended to obviate both of these
objections. The revenue raised from it was to be spent
entirely on the colonies themselves in maintaining among
them civil government and the administration of justice.
There was to be a colonial civil list, as it was called, and
hereafter all governors, judges, and other colonial executive
officials were to receive fixed salaries paid by the crown
out of the revenue raised by the duties on paint, paper,
glass, and tea. The old system
of the assemblies securing
the passage of their favorite laws by withholding
the governor's
salary, and of controlling the judges
in the same
way, was to cease. There was to be no more bargain and
sale legislation; but in place of it orderly, methodical,
regular government.
This, as previously shown,
struck at the root of what
the colonists considered their system
of freedom. If they
could no longer control governors and executive officials
through their salaries, they
could no longer have their
favorite laws. They would become mere colonies, compelled
to take what was given
to them and to do as they
were told.
The first man to come forward with a popular and encouraging
statement of the colonist side of the controversy
was John Dickinson, a young man of thirty-five, a Quaker,
and a lawyer of considerable practice in Philadelphia. He
had been for some years more or less concerned in politics ;
had been a member of the Stamp
Act Congress, and had
drafted several of its documents.
He seems to have understood that the arguments thus
far published were too brief and general. There was not
enough of detail in them. The aggressive or patriot party
among the colonists needed more light and were not sufficiently
aroused. He accordingly wrote for one of the
newspapers a series of
"
Letters from a Farmer" which
accomplished his purpose most admirably. They awoke
the colonists with a bound. The title was also fortunate,
for the farmers were by
far the largest and most important
class in the community.
His opening sentence was captivating. "I am a
farmer," he said, "settled after a variety of fortunes near
the banks of the Delaware in the province of Pennsylvania,"
His farm was small,
his servants few and good ;
he had a little money at interest
;
he asked for no more.
There were twelve of these letters by Dickinson published
in the Pennsylvania
Chronicle between December
2, 1767, and February 15, 1768. They were quickly
copied in most of the other colonial newspapers, reprinted
in pamphlet form in numerous editions in America and
England, and translated in France. They caused the
greatest excitement among our people. Town meetings,
societies, and grand juries sent votes of thanks to the
author. They toasted him at public dinners, and wrote
poems and eulogies
in his honor. At the same time we
must remember that these letters were also attacked as
going entirely too far and
"
calculated to excite the passions
of tiie unthinking."
*
* "Life and Writings of Dickinson," vol. ii. p. 280.
They enlarged in detail on the danger
of losing control
of the salaries of the governors. They showed the full
meaning of Parliament's suspension of the legislative
power of New York. They showed that if Parliament
could suspend the functions of a colonial legislature,
it was omnipotent in its control of the colonies. Dickinson was
bold enough to answer the argument
that England was
too powerful to be resisted. It is also significant that he
describes as a warning
to the colonists how Ireland had
lost her liberties.
He took the new ground of rejecting
all authority of
Parliament, and at the same time tried to make it appear
that there was no change from the old line of argument.
He kept all the old arguments going,
so as to conceal the
new movement. He clung
to the old absurdity of allowing
Parliament to regulate the commerce of the colonies
by duties which should not be for revenue. This effort to
conceal the change
of ground renders a great deal of his
reasoning very obscure to a modern reader.* But the
patriot party understood him- Englishmen
also understood
his purpose and saw what was coming,+
*
Franklin, who was in England at the time, was puzzled by
this obscurity. "I know not what bounds the farmer sets to the
power he acknowledges
in Parliament to regulate the trade of the
colonies, it being difficult to draw lines between duties for regulating
and those for revenue
; and,
if Parliament is to be the judge,
it seems
to me that establishing such principles of distinction will amount to
little.
33 "Life and Writings
of Dickinson," vol. ii. p. 281.
+Critical Review, xxvi. 62; "Life and Writings
of Dickinson,"
vol. ii. p. 282.
In this same year, 1768, more strenuous efforts than
ever were made to suppress smuggling. On June 10
there was the riot over the seizure of the sloop
"Liberty."
In September men-of-war and transports loaded with
troops arrived in Boston to keep
order. The British
officials in the colony had asked for these troops.# By
September 30 Boston Common was covered with tents,
and about fourteen men-of-war lay
in the harbor, with springs on their cables, and their broadsides covering
the town.
# The loyalists said that citizens also asked for them.
" The Conduct
of the Late Administration examined," p. 53,
et passim.
The position was serious and very peculiar; for, as
Franklin said in his criticism on Dickinson's Letters, the
Boston people were in their resolutions and documents
acknowledging subordination to Parliament and at the
same time denying
its power
to make laws for them.
The year 1769 opened
with Parliament declaring
in
both speeches and resolutions that the colonies were in a
state of disobedience to law and government, adopting
measures subversive of the constitution and disclosing an
inclination to throw off all obedience to the mother-country.
This was unquestionably a true description of the
situation
;
and I cannot see that any good purpose
is served
by obscuring or denying
it by means of those passages
in
the documents of the colonists in which they
declare their
"
heartfelt loyalty"
to Great Britain, disclaim all intention
of independence, and acknowledge
the supreme authority
of Parliament. Those fulsome expressions deceived no one
at that time, and why should they be used to deceive the
guileless modern reader ? The patriot party made many
such prudent statements, which were merely
the nets and
mattresses stretched below the acrobat in case he should fall.
We find Parliament in this year directing that the
governor of Massachusetts obtain
"
the fullest information
touching all treason or misprision of treason within his
government since the 30th day of December, 1767, in
order, as the instruction went on to say, that his Majesty
might have such offences tried within the realm of England,
according to the statute passed
in the thirty-fifth year of
the reign of Henry VIII."
The meaning of this, in plain English, was that a colonist
suspected or accused of treason must not be tried
in the colonies where any jury
that could be called would probably acquit him as a matter of course. It seemed
better to take him to England
and try him there in the
calm and impartial light of regular
British administration.
This measure filled the patriotic party
in the colonies with
the most violent indignation. They denounced it in every
form of language ;
and although no one was ever taken to
England to be tried,
it was enumerated in the Declaration
of Independence as one of the causes of separation.
It was natural that our people, who, under the restraining
power of France, had enjoyed
so much liberty that they
scarcely understood what a colony was, should be indignant
at this suggestion of transporting them for trial.
On the other hand,
the ministry wished to establish British
authority in the so-called colonies
;
the law of Henry VIII.
was on the statute-book
;
it had been used several times
;
the Scotch rebels had been tried out of the country
in
which their crimes were committed
; so, also, the Sussex
smugglers and the murderers of Mr. Park,
the governor
of the "Windward Islands.
It afterwards also seemed necessary
to prevent the
colonists from trying
in their courts British officials who
might be accused by them of murder, when in their official
capacity they were suppressing
riots. They would be
convicted as a matter of course. Provision was therefore
made for taking such officials to England,
or to another
and more peaceable colony,
for trial. This measure, like
the other, was never enforced, but vigorously denounced
by our people. There were no trials for treason in the
Revolution, although England was on the verge
of it
several times.
Meantime, the non-importing
associations were revived,
in the hope that they would be as successful as they had
been with the Stamp
Act
;
and we notice now for the first
time that force and intimidation were used to compel
merchants and others to join
these associations and refrain from
importing. Thus the year 1769 wore away until November,
when, before the non-importation agreements had had
any great effect, the extraordinary and unexpected news
was received that the Tory ministry had of their own
accord decided to repeal the duties on paint, paper, and
glass and leave only
the duty on tea.*
* Ramsay,
"
American Revolution," Trenton edition, 1811, p. 110 j
Byerson, "American Loyalists,'
7 vol. i. p. 301; Hildreth, "United
States," edition of 1880,
vol. ii. p. 653; Bancroft, "United States,"
edition of 1883, vol. iii. p. 362,
In the spring they had been denouncing
the colonial
rebellion and preparing
to punish
traitors. In the autumn
they had eaten their own words, and in effect complied
with the request of the rebels. The small duty on tea
was left standing merely to show that the right to tax
remained, just as the Declaratory Act had been passed when
the Stamp Act was repealed. This duty on tea would also,
it was believed, be a test of the real sentiments of the
colonists, and show whether or not they were bent on
rebellion and independence under any pretext.
During the following winter this promise of repeal was
promptly fulfilled. The duties on paint, paper, and glass
were repealed, and the ministry even went farther and
abandoned all attempt
to compel
the colonists to pay for
their defense or to maintain the troops
stationed among
them. What could have been more gracious, more friendly,
or more conciliatory than this ? I cannot agree with those
writers, both American and English, who hold that a conciliatory
policy would have saved the colonies to England.
We must remember that on this occasion Lord Hillsborough
officially informed all the colonial governors that
the ministry
"entertained no design
to propose
to Parliament
to lay any further taxes on America for the purpose of raising a revenue." This was in strict compliance
with the colonial argument and with Dickinson's
"Letters
from a Farmer" that what America objected to was
"
taxation
for the purpose
of raising a revenue." The ministry
had abandoned the revenue and abandoned the compulsory
maintenance of the army. They could hardly have done
more unless they had declared England
the colony and
America the mother-country. The colonies were put
back very nearly into the old condition that prevailed
before 1763.
Lord Hillsborough's promise
that no more taxes should
be laid on the colonies was faithfully kept. The British
Parliament never passed
another taxing
act
; and, when
five years later actual warfare began, no one could say
that
the promise had been broken, for there had not been even
an attempt to pass such an act.
When we seek to discover why the Tory ministry made
this sudden change, which was in effect an adoption of
the Whig policy and Whig methods, we find that they
had discovered that the new duties would not produce
16,000 per year, and that the military expenses
in the
colonies had increased to more than ten times that sum.
The paint, paper, and glass duties being
therefore a failure
and an expense, causing great irritation, and England
being already oppressed with debt, the ministry wished to
compromise with the colonists and settle the dispute
in a
friendly way. They had been divided on the question,
and, after long discussion of their differences, settled them
in favor of the colonists.
If we seek still farther to explain
this change of front,
we may account for it, as a great deal of subsequent
conciliation
or vacillation may be accounted for, by the fear of
France, Her shadow was appearing. She was again
coming on the scene. The colonists were threatening to appeal to her
;
and the Boston Gazette of September 20,
1768 ;
had openly made the threat.* Even without the
threat it was obviously
France's policy
to take advantage
of any open rupture
or difficulty that England might have
with the colonies. France wished to revenge
her humiliation
in 1763 and cripple England's power
as an empire.
This fear paralyzed
all of England's
action. It was an
underlying influence of debates in Parliament and consultations
of ministers. England must avoid if possible the
forcing of the dispute
to that extremity.
*
Holmes, Annals," vol. ii. pp. 177, 178.
But whatever may be the reasons, the important
fact
remains that in this year 1770 Great Britain withdrew
the two great colonial grievances, taxation for revenue,
and compulsory support of a standing army; and this
event should not be obscured or placed
in the background
of historical narratives merely because it does not show
sufficient tyranny or oppression on the part of England.
The first and most important consequence of this conciliation
was that among the patriot or rebel party England's
prestige was gone forever. She had lost much of her prestige
and vastly encouraged
that party when she repealed
the Stamp Act at its dictation
;
and now she had given the
finishing stroke,+
+ "
Letters of James Murray, Loyalist," p. 170.
England, of course,
lost no prestige among the people
afterwards called loyalists, people un-Americanized, inclining
strongly towards England by taste and associations,
and not inspired with the passion
for ownership
of the
country in which they
lived. These people accepted
the
repealing act in the spirit in which it was offered, as
redressing grievances and tending
to secure the colonies
within the empire.
So very conciliatory was the repealing
act and the promise of the ministry,
that it had a quieting
effect on all parties
and put an end to excitement and turmoil for three or
four years. The moderates in the patriot party were willing
to let well enough alone, and the small duty on the one
item of tea did not bother them any more than the old
Declaratory Act. In truth, the extreme radicals of the
Samuel Adams type had nothing with which to arouse the
moderates. The agitation business was at a low ebb.
Within a few months, however, an accident occurred
which could be used, and was used for a time, for purposes
of excitement. It was one of those accidents which, in
strained relations between independent nations, often precipitate
a war.
The ministry had not thought
it a necessary part of
conciliation to withdraw the troops from Boston
;
and it is
difficult to see how they
could properly have withdrawn
them. The lives of the customs officials in that town
had been threatened by the mobs, and were not safe
;
and
the troops and war-vessels had been asked for, and sent,
for the purpose of protecting those officials as well as to
assist them in enforcing the navigation
laws.
The ministry could not very
well abandon the enforcement
of those laws. They had decided to stop smuggling,
and had started to stop
it. They could hardly draw back
from that undertaking without surrendering completely
to
the colonists and abandoning
the little that remained of
British authority in America. Moreover, the colonists had
admitted that such laws regulating
trade were constitutional.
The contest and the strained relations were now confined
to Boston. The rest of the colonies were quiet and had
no particular grievance; and the contest itself had now
returned to the old subject of smuggling.
The soldiers in Boston were extremely irritating; not only because they were swaggering and offensive after the
British manner, but because Massachusetts was entirely unaccustomed
to anything
of that sort. If she had always
been a real colony, accustomed to supervision, her people
might have treated the military occupation
as a small
matter. British colonies often have considerable bodies of
troops stationed in them. In our own time in Canada we
have often seen the people quietly acquiescing
in the presence
of the red-coated regiments which caused such frenzy
in Massachusetts. But Massachusetts had at one time enjoyed
semi-independence, and the presence of troops
to
enforce laws which she had disobeyed
for a hundred years,
and grown rich through disobeying, was almost unbearable.
Her people felt towards those troops very much as
they would feel today
if Boston were occupied by
a foreign
soldiery.
It was naturally
to be expected
that anything
like ill conduct
by the soldiery would be exaggerated by the
people and used by
the patriot leaders to stimulate their
resentment. There is no question
that some of the more
radical and fiery spirits were constantly exciting the townspeople
to quarrel with the soldiers. Both men and boys
made a constant practice
to insult the "bloody-backs," or
"
scoundrels in red,"
as they
called them
;
and they would
shout at them,
"lobsters for sale." The soldiers in their
turn had their insults for the
"
mohairs,"
or
"
dung-hill
tribe," as they called the colonists. The soldiers were
often arrested by the local magistrates, whom we may be
sure were not lenient with them and the colonists complained
that the officers screened their men from punishment.
On the 2nd of March, 1770, a soldier asking
for employment
at Gray's rope-walk was refused in. coarse language.
He insisted on having
a boxing-match
with one of the workmen, and was beaten. He returned with some companions
and was driven off, and a larger number coming
to fight with clubs and cutlasses were also driven off. On
the night of the 5th there was much disturbance in the
streets
;
the soldiers were swaggering and threatening, and
the citizens and boys replying
to them in language equally
abusive. The mob, armed with clubs, balls of ice, and
stones inside of snow-balls, finally pressed upon a picket
guard of eight men, daring them to fire. The soldiers
restrained themselves for some time,
until one, receiving a
blow, fired his musket, and immediately six of the others
fired. Three citizens were killed and eight wounded.*
*John Adams, "Works,
vol. ii. p. 229; Ramsay, "Colonial History,"
vol. i. pp. 364, 365
; Holmes,
"
Annals," vol. ii. pp. 166, 167
;
Hildreth,
u
History of the United States," vol. ii. chap.
xxix. pp. 554,
555
There was at once great excitement in the town. The
bells were rung; the cry was spread, "The soldiers are
rising," and many believed that a general attack by the
citizens on the soldiery was narrowly averted. The next
day a town meeting was called. A committee, of which
Samuel Adams was chairman, urged Governor Hutchinson
to remove all the soldiers from the town to preserve
the
peace and prevent an attack by the people, who would
soon be swarming in from the country. After some hesitation
Hutchinson agreed
that the soldiers should be sent
down the harbor to the castle. This was, from one point
of view, a wise and creditable expedient
to prevent
violence.
But we must also remember that it was a yielding
on the part of England to the demands of the colonists,
with the redoubtable rebel Sam Adams at their head.
The captain of the guard and the eight men had been
immediately arrested. They were turned over to the civil
authorities of the colony, regularly tried, defended by John Adams and Josiah Quincy, and the captain and six of the
men acquitted. The remaining two were brought
in guilty
of manslaughter, and slightly punished. This trial reflected
the greatest
credit not only on the jury, but on
Adams and Quincy, who were patriot leaders; and the
verdict of the jury showed that the soldiers had not been
seriously to blame. But most of the patriot party seized
upon the occurrence for their own purposes. They called
it the
"
Boston Massacre," and Paul Revere prepared
a
colored engraving
of the scene, calling
it the
"Bloody
Massacre." They exaggerated
it into a ferocious and unprovoked
assault by brutal soldiers upon
a defenseless people,
and the eagerness with which this exaggeration was
encouraged showed whither events were tending.
The evidence taken at the trial has been published,* and
contains all we really know about the event. It is worth
reading as an astonishing
revelation of the times, the anger
and resentment of a large part of the people, the torrents
of abuse and slang that were exchanged,
the hatred of England
and English control, and the readiness to destroy any
symbol of that control. After reading
the description by
the witnesses of that night
in Boston, one sees that the
American communities could never be turned into modern
colonies by the conciliatory policy, or any policy except
some sort of extermination.
* "The Trial of the British Soldiers of the Twenty-ninth Regiment
of Foot for the Murder," etc., Boston, 1807. It reveals a great
deal of local color, and discloses to us the Boston street boy of that
day.
The government had been most lenient in surrendering
the guard to be tried by a jury of colonists and in removing
the troops from Boston,
so that the
"massacre" could not
at that time be worked up into rebellion. The government
had certainly not acted harshly. On the contrary, there had been so much yielding
that the two regiments
that
had been sent out of Boston were ever afterwards ridiculed
in England as the
"
Sam Adams regiments."
The colonists quieted down. John Adams retired from
politics and devoted himself to his profession. Except for
the partially successful attempts
to repress
their smuggling,
the people were very much in the same semi-independent
condition as before the French War. The slight tax on
tea, which had been left partly
to show that Parliament
was the supreme power
and partly
as a test to see how
rebellious the colonists were, worked well enough,
because
the colonists did not mind it
;
and continued to smuggle
tea from Holland.
There were strong
indications that possibly the American
problem had been settled, and that the colonies would remain
colonies of the old smuggling kind, disregarding such laws
as failed to please them. Violent efforts were made by the
more radical to keep up the non-importation associations,
but without success. One by one the Southern colonies
and then Pennsylvania and the New England colonies and
New York began importing
all English
commodities except
tea. The protest which the extreme patriots made
against this is instructive as showing
the condition of parties.
They declared that the spirit of liberty was dead.
The students at Princeton, among whom was James Madison,
put on black gowns, and Lynch,
of South Carolina,
is said to have shed tears over what he deemed the lost
cause.
This state of quietude
lasted three years, to the great
annoyance of men like Samuel Adams, who were bent on
absolute independence. But most of the patriots were content
that they could repeal
acts of Parliament and order
British troops out of a town.
to be continued...next...
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