An Empire on the Edge

by Nick Bunker

  19. Whitefoord and the Advertiser: W. A. S. Hewins, ed., The Whitefoord Papers (Oxford, 1898), pp. 143–44.

  20. The columns ran in the Public Advertiser, Sept. 8, 11, 14, and 22, 1773. Apart from the Edict, the most famous was “Rules by Which a Great Empire May Be Reduced to a Small One,” Sept. 11, 1773. They can be found reprinted in BFP, vol. 20.

  21. John, Lord Campbell, Lives of the Lord Chancellors (London, 1856–57), vol. 8, p. 8.

  Chapter Ten: THE BOSTON TEA PARTY: CLIMAX

  1. Alexander Leslie, letter from Boston, Dec. 6, 1773, GD26/9/512/5, Leslie-Melville Papers, NAS.

  2. Montagu’s journal, entry for Nov. 18, 1773, ADM 50/17, NAK.

  3. Sixty-Fourth Regiment of Foot at Castle William: Regimental muster roll (June–Dec. 1773), WO12/7312, NAK. Comments on Alexander Leslie: Major James Wemyss, Sketches of the Character of General Staff Officers, file HOU b MS Sparks 22, p. 215, Jared Sparks Collection, Houghton Library. Leslie’s letter: See note 1 above.

  4. Early stages of American resistance to the tea: Benjamin W. Labaree, The Boston Tea Party (Oxford, 1964), chap. 5; Benjamin Carp, Defiance of the Patriots: The Boston Tea Party and the Making of America (New Haven, Conn., 2010), chaps. 4–6; and the American papers from the House of Lords referred to below in note 8.

  5. Pigou and Booth: Kellock, “London Merchants and the Pre-1776 American Debts,” pp. 140–41.

  6. Adams’s letters to Hawley, October 4 and 13, 1773: Cushing, Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. 3, pp. 52–62.

  7. Thomas Young: Pauline Maier, “Reason and Revolution: The Radicalism of Dr. Thomas Young,” American Quarterly 28, no. 2 (Summer 1976). Importation to Boston in 1773 of duty paid tea on Hancock’s ships: Davison & Newman Papers, London Metropolitan Archives, Gl.Ms. 8633.

  8. Hannah Fayerweather Winthrop to Mercy Otis Warren, November 10, 1773, Correspondence with Mercy Otis Warren, microfilm edition, reel 1, MHS.

  9. Archive repositories in Great Britain contain a wealth of source material relating to the Boston Tea Party. The most important collections are the Parliamentary Archives at Westminster, which contain the House of Lords copies of the documents laid before Parliament by Lord Dartmouth in March 1774, HL/PO/JO/10/7/406–8; and the Colonial Office records in the National Archives, where the relevant files are CO5/160 and CO5/763. These include all the witness statements taken in London and Boston, the official dispatches from Hutchinson, Montagu, and Leslie, and some American newspapers and pamphlets such as The Alarm of October 1773. Some of these papers have been transcribed and published, first in Tea Leaves by Francis S. Drake in 1884 (see above, note 13 to chapter 9) and then in DAR, vol. 6, in the 1970s. However, it is unwise to rely on selectively printed material because the various accounts of the destruction of the tea and the events leading up to it contain many discrepancies that become apparent only when the sources are compared. Typescripts of the relevant letters of Thomas Hutchinson are on microfilm at the Massachusetts Historical Society, in Letter Book 17, pp. 1077–1165, covering the period November 12, 1773–January 4, 1774.

  10. The meetings on November 29 and 30: L. F. S. Upton, “Proceedings of Ye Body Respecting the Tea,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 22, no. 2 (April 1965), pp. 287–300.

  11. John Adams’s reading of Rousseau’s Social Contract and its influence in Massachusetts: R. R. Palmer, The Age of Democratic Revolution (Princeton, N.J., 1959), vol. 1, The Challenge, pp. 223–24.

  12. Alexander Leslie: See note 1 above. This comment appears in a postscript, dated Dec. 11, to his letter of Dec. 6.

  13. Alexander Leslie to General Haldimand, Dec. 16, in “The Montresor Journals,” ed. G. D. Scull, in Collections of the New-York Historical Society 14 (1881), pp. 531–32.

  14. For the meeting on the sixteenth, Upton, “Proceedings of Ye Body Respecting the Tea,” pp. 297–300, seems to be the most reliable source, when checked against the witness statements preserved in London and against the accounts of the Tea Party given by Labaree, Boston Tea Party, and Carp, Defiance of the Patriots.

  15. Two lists of names of the Tea Party’s participants survive from the nineteenth century. The first, containing 58 names, appeared in 1835 in Traits of the Tea Party, whose author was a young lawyer, journalist, and antislavery activist from Boston, Benjamin Bussey Thatcher. A second, much longer list of 113 names was printed by Francis S. Drake in Tea Leaves. Dealing first with Drake: While much of his book remains extremely useful, his list of the men who destroyed the tea has to be treated with caution. For example, it contains the name of David Kinnison, who died in Chicago in 1852, allegedly aged 115. Although Kinnison was clearly an impostor—centenarian or not, no trace of him survives in Boston town records from the eighteenth or nineteenth century—Drake did not question his story. Indeed, in general Drake’s methods were less than rigorous. He took Thatcher’s list and then added 55 names, but he seems to have collected these from hearsay without attempting to verify what he was told. This is apparent from a file of Drake’s working papers at the New England Historic Genealogical Society in Boston (11.D.3 [Dr.24], Special Collections).

  In 1871, Drake was commissioned to produce a biographical dictionary for the Massachusetts Sons of the Cincinnati, a society of descendants of officers in George Washington’s army. Drake circulated a questionnaire to the members and asked them for information about their forebears. Then word for word he copied what they told him into the dictionary, published in 1873, without any further authentication. In those cases where his respondents claimed that their forebears had been at Griffin’s Wharf, he incorporated the material into Tea Leaves when it appeared a decade later. Drake’s handwritten notes suggest that for the rest of the names he relied on press reports and earlier books, all of which had first appeared long after the revolution.

  We are on much safer ground with the 1835 list from Thatcher. None of his names are absurd, like that of David Kinnison, and most check out well against the archive material that survives from revolutionary Boston. Moreover, Thatcher had ready access to men and women with firsthand information about the period. Starting in 1825, at the time of the fiftieth anniversary of the outbreak of the war, a few of the last survivors of the Tea Party had begun to give press interviews, including the Boston shoemaker George R. T. Hewes, whom Thatcher met and with whom he cooperated on another book. Indeed, Thatcher’s own family had played a prominent role in the events of 1773–75. His grandfather Reuben Brown was a minuteman at Concord, and his great-uncle was Henry Knox, Washington’s chief of artillery.

  Thatcher said that he took his list from “an aged Bostonian, well-acquainted with the history of our subject.” This might well have been the veteran journalist Benjamin Russell (1761–1845), the son of John Russell, who is known to have been a Tea Party participant. Benjamin Russell knew Paul Revere well, he also befriended George Hewes, and during the 1830s he remained very active in Boston politics at a time when Thatcher was making his name in the town. In the light of all this, Thatcher’s list appears to be sound, as far as it goes, even though it cannot be complete. All the eyewitnesses suggest that far more than 58 men were involved. I am grateful to J. L. Bell for his suggestion that Russell was the source of the list, which he and I discussed in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the fall of 2011.

  16. Sir Lewis Namier, England in the Age of the American Revolution (London, 1930), p. 32. For an incisive American interpretation: chaps. 12 and 13 of Robert W. Tucker and James C. Hendrickson, The Fall of the First British Empire: Origins of the American War of Independence (Baltimore, Md., 1982).

  17. North’s speech on April 18, 1785, in Parliamentary History of England (London, 1815), vol. 25, cols. 456–61.

  PART THREE: DOWN THE SLOPE

  Chapter Eleven: THE CABINET IN WINTER

  1. For the political debates about America in London in 1774–75, the most reliable scholarly studies are two fine works by British historians: Bernard Donoughue, British Politics and the American Revolution: The Path to War, 1773-1775 (Lo
ndon, 1964) and P. D. G. Thomas, Tea Party to Independence: The Third Phase of the American Revolution, 1773–1776 (Oxford, 1991). However, these are Anglocentric books, focused on high politics at Westminster, and they tend to neglect not only the American dimension of the story but also its military and economic elements. The approach adopted in An Empire on the Edge has involved not only a re-examination of the British political papers used by Donoughue and Thomas and the addition of new ones, but also a close reading of the newspapers of the period. In order to trace the interaction of events on each side of the ocean as the war drew near, one has to reconstruct the flow of news as accurately as possible: and this can be done using the press reports that survive. On the British side, the most useful coverage can be found in the London Evening Post (very anti-government); the Public Advertiser (mildly anti-government); the Lloyd’s Evening Post (pro-government); and the Morning Post (non-aligned but scurrilous). In the 1770s, British political journalists left no stone unturned in their pursuit of a story and they were just as funny, irreverent and well-informed as they are in the twenty-first century. The American papers tended to be less entertaining, but they were very thorough and—which is still the case today—more reliable about numbers and quotations. As for British official material, An Empire on the Edge also makes extensive use of Admiralty and Treasury documents, which fell outside Donoughue’s and Thomas’s field of interest. These records are exceptionally valuable because of their precision in matters of detail and chronology.

  2. Alexander Wedderburn, later Lord Loughborough: The best source is the biography by John, Lord Campbell in vols. 7 and 8 of his Lives of the Lord Chancellors, with the quotation from Thurlow on p. 206 of vol. 8.

  3. Whitehall and the Cockpit: London and Its Environs Described (London, 1761), vol. 2, pp. 154–55; and London in Miniature (London, 1755), pp. 109–10. Accounts of the Privy Council meeting on January 29: Campbell, Lives of the Lord Chancellors, vol. 8, pp. 15–21; William Temple Franklin, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Benjamin Franklin (London, 1817–18), vol. 1, pp. 427–28, and app. 7; and John Bowring, ed., The Works of Jeremy Bentham (Edinburgh, 1838–43), vol. 10, pp. 59–60. Wedderburn’s speech: BFP, vol. 21, pp. 37–70.

  4. For “all the licensed scurrility,” see Public Advertiser, Feb. 2, 1774.

  5. Public Advertiser, Feb. 4, 1774.

  6. The American business: Lord John Cavendish to the Marquess of Rockingham, Jan. 29, 1774, WWM R/I/1479.

  7. For “a witling, a punster and a prig,” see Public Advertiser, Feb. 7, 1774.

  8. Buckinghamshire’s motion, February 1, 1774: PDNA, vol. 4, p. 8. For cabinet meetings and Dartmouth’s conduct of affairs, the principal sources are the Dartmouth Papers, calendared by the Historical Manuscripts Commission, 14th Report, app. pt. 10 (London, 1895), vol. 2, pp. 192–213, covering the period January to June 1774.

  9. Gage on colonial disobedience: Gage to Lord Barrington, June 28, 1768, and Sept. 8, 1770, in CGG, pp. 479–80, 556–57. His meeting with the king: George III to Lord North, Feb. 4, 1774, in CG3, vol. 3, p. 59.

  10. Estimate of eighty thousand militiamen: General Evening Post, Feb. 12–15, 1774, quoting the Newport (R.I.) Mercury.

  11. Charles Van: Morning Post, Jan. 31, 1774; and P. D. G. Thomas, “A Monmouthshire Politician of Character: Charles Van (d. 1776) of Llanwern,” Monmouthshire Antiquary 18 (2002), pp. 85–89.

  12. Edward Thurlow: Arthur Polson, Law and Lawyers; or, Sketches of Legal History and Biography (London, 1840), vol. 1, pp. 100–116; and Lord Campbell, Lives of the Lord Chancellors, vol. 7, esp. pp. 173–86.

  13. BFP, vol. 20, pp. 106–15.

  14. From the Dartmouth Papers: See note 8 above. The letter is calendared on p. 197.

  15. On the legal obstacles to closure of a port, see William Blackstone, “Of the King’s Prerogative,” in Commentaries on the Law of England (London, 1765–69), bk. 1, chap. 7, as corrected in the second edition.

  16. Thurlow’s outburst: Historical Manuscripts Commission, Manuscripts of Captain H. V. Knox (Dublin, 1909), p. 270.

  17. CG3, vol. 3, pp. 71–76.

  Chapter Twelve: “BOSTON MUST BE DESTROYED”

  1. Public Advertiser, March 4, 1774.

  2. The House of Commons: Orlo Williams, “The Topography of the Old House of Commons” (Ministry of Works, 1953; unpublished monograph in the Parliamentary Archives, London); and for an account of the interior and the behavior of members, see P. D. G. Thomas, The House of Commons in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1971), pp. 1–7.

  3. On the career and personality of Edmund Burke: The superb biographical sketch by Paul Langford in the ODNB. Verses by Goldsmith: From his poem “Retaliation” (1774). Comment from a Frenchman: The Abbé Morellet, who met Burke early in 1773, in Sutherland, Correspondence of Edmund Burke, vol. 2, July 1768–June 1774, p. 425n.

  4. The debate on March 7: PDNA, vol. 4, pp. 36–51, with Wedderburn on pp. 39–41 and Burke on pp. 41–44.

  5. Debate on March 14: Ibid., pp. 55–82, with the “coldest proceedings” comment on pp. 77–78.

  6. Merchants’ deputation: London Evening Post, March 17–19, 1774. For data about the London firms that dealt with the colonies, see Kellock, “London Merchants and the Pre-1776 American Debts,” with material about Hayley on p. 129. Weakness of the colonial lobby in Great Britain: Jacob M. Price, “Who Cared About the Colonies? The Impact of the Thirteen Colonies on British Society and Politics, 1714–1775,” in Strangers Within the Realm: Cultural Margins of the First British Empire, eds. Bernard Bailyn and Philip D. Morgan (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1991), pp. 395–436.

  7. Leaked story: By “Crito,” Morning Post, March 17, 1774.

  8. Debate on March 23: PDNA, pp. 87–112, with Charles Van on pp. 102, 106–7, 112. John Wilkes and the Tea Party: His appointment diary, Add. MSS 30,866 (No. 2), BL, shows him dining on January 20, 1774, with “several American gentlemen.” This was the night when the news arrived from Boston. On March 25, he dined at William Lee’s house with guests including Hugh Williamson, a physician from Philadelphia who had been in Boston and seen the tea destroyed. And then, on March 28, at George Hayley’s house, Wilkes met John Hancock’s sea captain James Scott and also Captain Hall of the tea ship Dartmouth. The London Evening Post, its publisher, John Miller, and his relationship with Wilkes: Lucyle Werkmeister, The London Daily Press, 1772–1792 (Lincoln, Neb., 1963), pp. 112–14. Also see a letter from Wilkes, Jan. 15, 1772, in Everett, Letters of Junius, pp. 358–59.

  9. The Duke of Richmond: The only full-length study is Alison Olson, The Radical Duke: Career and Correspondence of Charles Lennox, 3rd Duke of Richmond (Oxford, 1961). My quotations come from pp. 4 and 12.

  10. Richmond and resistance in Boston: A. F. Steuart, ed., Last Journals of Horace Walpole (London, 1910), vol. 1, p. 344.

  11. PDNA, vol. 4, pp. 172–73, 177–78.

  12. Debate on May 2, including Burke’s speech on American taxation: PDNA, vol. 4, pp. 329–83. For the best edition of Burke’s speech, see Paul Langford, ed., The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke (Oxford, 1981), vol. 2, pp. 406–63, with preface and notes.

  13. Remark by George III: Steuart, Last Journals of Horace Walpole, vol. 1, p. 346.

  14. Richard Rigby: ODNB.

  15. CG3, vol. 3, pp. 102–3.

  16. The dissenting motions: PDNA, vol. 4, pp. 417–19, 431–33.

  17. Waning of anti-Catholicism among the ruling elite: Colin Haydon, Anti-Catholicism in Eighteenth-Century England (Manchester, U.K., 1993), chap. 5, esp. pp. 187–92. Another reason for animosity against Catholics to diminish was simply this: the fact that there were so few in England. A census of their numbers in 1767 produced a total of only 69,376.

  18. Wedderburn on the Quebec Act: PDNA, vol. 4, p. 469.

  19. The politics of London in the 1770s remain a murky subject, partly because so many of the personalities involved, including Frederick Bull, left very few letters and papers to posterity. The surviving correspondence of John Wilkes is also
quite thin. For their political activities more generally, the principal sources are the newspapers, especially the London Evening Post and the Public Advertiser; the printed poll books, which list the voters for each candidate in parliamentary elections; and the collections from the Corporation of London and from some livery companies at the London Metropolitan Archives. We also have the benefit of scholarly research by John Sainsbury, Disaffected Patriots: London Supporters of Revolutionary America, 1769–1782 (Kingston, Ont., 1987), and Julie Flavell, When London Was Capital of America (New Haven, Conn., 2010), with the latter dealing extensively with Stephen Sayre and the Lees.

  With regard to Bull: Box C.78, Noble Collection, LMA; and Public Advertiser, Jan. 2, 1772, and Dec. 2, 1773. There is a brief sketch in J. Parsons (publisher), City Biography: Anecdotes and Memoirs (London, 1800), pp. 84–87. Property deals in the West Indies by Stephen Sayre and William Lee: Dominica land sales register, April 1770, CO 106/11, fols. 58–59, and a printed list of proprietors, ca. 1772, CO 76/9, NAK. Electoral activities of the radical caucus in London: Records of the Framework Knitters’ company, MSS 3445/2 and 3447, LMA; Journal of the Court of Common Council, microfilm X109/100, LMA; and Common Hall Papers, 1770–74, COL/CN/056-060, LMA. The last mentioned include material relating to the choice of Sayre and Lee as sheriffs, and drafts in Bull’s handwriting of a Wilkesite manifesto for his 1773 election to Parliament. Lists of the votes cast in the city: A Corrected List of the Persons Who Have Polled for Frederick Bull (London, 1773). This supports an estimate that 60 percent of the city’s electorate supported Bull and the other radicals.

  20. Events of June 18–22: CG3, vol. 3, pp. 112–13; Steuart, Last Journals of Horace Walpole, pp. 358–60; and Haydon, Anti-Catholicism in Eighteenth-Century England, pp. 193–203.