Desperate Sons

by Les Standiford

  Colden thanked the councilmen for their advice but continued down his own path. One ally, Indian Commissioner Johnson, wrote to reassure Colden that he was doing the right thing. Certainly, in Johnson’s view, the British system of government would not be intimidated by mobs and rioters. General Gage went so far as to suggest to Colden that they consider arresting inflammatory publishers such as Holt and Scott, but the local magistrates talked them out of it.

  Colden expressed his frustration concerning the situation in a letter home. Though he admitted that he had come to agree with his advisers that now was probably not the right time to begin hauling the press off to jail, it nonetheless galled him that his own attorney general “did not think himself safe” to press charges against such rabble-rousers. Worse yet, he said, he was fully convinced that the anonymous authors of some of the most inflammatory pieces were attorneys of stature and well known to the judges and others “of the highest trust in Government.”

  Colden complained further, “No man who converses generally and knows the characters of the Men doubts who the Authors are, but in the present circumstances, it is not practicable for me to obtain legal evidence.” What modern reader who has seen Lyndon Johnson pictured at his desk with his bowed head held in his hands or Richard Nixon standing in jut-jawed defiance before reporters cannot have some inkling of what was going through Colden’s mind?

  Still the lieutenant governor set about bolstering the defenses at Fort George, aided by an eager artillery officer, Major Thomas James, and by Lieutenant John Montresor, a military engineer, whose careful journals of the period would become a valuable source for future historians. Montresor found that the walls and gate of the fort would have to be shored up and that more guns and ammunition would be needed. The men of the 60th Regiment arrived, and the warships Garland and Hawke were sent out to await the imminent arrival of the stamp ship—the Garland to the Narrows and the Hawke to Sandy Hook.

  At the same time, the Stamp Act Congress was beginning its deliberations, and although Colden considered the meeting illegal, provocative, and at odds with the letter of the British Constitution, there was little he could do to obstruct it. When the results of the Congress were published, the basically respectful tone of the document roused no calls to arms. Much of what was contained had been said before, and with plans set for petitions to the House of Commons, the Lords, and the king appended to the resolutions, all seemed in order.

  Artillery units arrived at the fort, and Montresor was almost finished with his repairs. Commissioner Johnson wrote again to Colden, congratulating him on the fine job he’d done of tamping down unrest. All that seemed likely to blow over now, Johnson opined—but then the stamps arrived.

  On October 22, after a voyage of nine weeks from London, the Edward rounded Sandy Hook, and on October 23, accompanied by Captain Kennedy and the Coventry and the Garland, she dropped anchor in the waters just off the Battery. After a year and a half of prelude, an abstract concept was now undeniable reality. A few hundred feet from colonial shores floated a British ship, her hold containing a cargo that had inflamed a group of largely ordinary men as nothing else could. Two thousand men were gathered at the docks shouting defiance. Flags on the other ships at harbor lowered their flags to half-mast, as the Gazette reported, “to signify Mourning, Lamentation, and Woe.”

  Colden wisely waited out the immediate display of passion, knowing better than to try to tie up the ship and unload the papers at the dock. Better, he thought, to hire a sloop or two from the local yards and, when the time was right, have the papers taken directly from the Edward to the fort under the looming cannon on the ramparts.

  Local boatmen were having none of that, however. Scarcely did the Edward drop anchor than placards were nailed up on street posts, office doors, and public houses throughout the city, from the docks to the northern fringes at Warren Street. “PRO PATRIA,” declared one, with a message brief and to the point: “The first Man that either distributes or makes use of Stampt Paper, let him take Care of his House, Person, and Effects. We dare.” The threat was signed by “Vox Populi.” The effect was that not a sloop in all New York City found itself available for Colden’s hire, not at any price.

  Finally, after night fell on October 24, crews from the Coventry and the Garland boarded the Edward and took charge of the ten crates of stamped paper that had probably been carried as unmarked cargo by an unsuspecting merchant captain. The Edward was no government vessel, after all, and its captain—one William Davis—was a businessman whose other trade goods in his hold, and those on the dock that he hoped to carry back to England, were far more important to him. If he could have known precisely what he would be in for once he reached New York, it is quite likely he would have refused the consignment.

  In any case, the papers were secured by the British sailors and transported quickly to the fort without incident. It was hardly the end of the matter, of course. David McEvers, the son of the recently resigned stamp master, went to Colden and announced that he would eagerly serve in his father’s place. And Major James, perhaps emboldened by the two artillery units now in place at Fort George, made the unfortunate statement that he looked forward to cramming the stamps down the throats of New Yorkers “with the tip of his sword.” Furthermore, he attested, should there be any uprising of the people, he would “drive them all out of town, for a pack of rascals, with four and twenty men.”

  Such talk did nothing to calm the situation, and on the eve of the act’s commencement, Colden wrote a note to the mayor of the city that an informant—a shoemaker named Ketchum—had come forward with news that a plot was under way “to bury Major James alive, this day or tomorrow.” In the midst of all this, Colden was obliged—as was every colonial governor—to appear before his council on October 31, 1765, and publicly attest to the following: “You Swear that you shall do your utmost that all and every of the Clauses contained in an Act of Parliament of Great Britain, passed in the fifth Year of the Reign of our Sovereign Lord King George the Third . . . be punctually and bona fide observed according to the true intent and meaning therof, so far as appertains to you, So help you God.”

  On that day, wrote Lieutenant Montresor, the mood in the streets was that of a great day of mourning. The mood, said Montresor, “Descended even to the Bag-gammon Boxes” at the popular Merchants Coffee House at the corner of Water and Wall Streets near the docks. The games were shrouded in black, he said, and the very dice were wrapped up in crepe. There was a sense of sad resolve. Outright rebellion, it seemed, could not be avoided. The fort must necessarily be stormed and the offensive papers burned.

  An issue of the Gazette appeared on the streets, and though it was not unusual for the paper to announce a funeral, the one featured on this day was noteworthy:

  A FUNERAL LAMENTATION

  On the Death of

  LIBERTY

  Who finally expires this

  Thirty first of October,

  In the Year of our Lord

  M.DCC.LXV.

  Also in the paper was news of a meeting of all the city’s merchants to be held that day “in consternation over the new tax” at Burns’s City Arms Tavern, located at Broadway and Thames Street, a few short blocks from the fort. Two hundred merchants met that afternoon, and after some debate “on the melancholy state of American commerce,” they issued the following resolves: (1) that they would import no further goods or merchandise whatsoever until the Stamp Act should be repealed; (2) that orders already on the way to England were to be considered null and void and no merchandise should be shipped; (3) that they would sell no goods shipped from Britain after the following January 1; and (4) that those resolves should remain binding upon all until any future meeting at which amendment might be made.

  Appended to notices of the merchants’ resolves published in the city papers was a statement of support secured from the city’s shopkeepers on that same day. Along with copies of those notices, the New York Mercury reprinted a letter from a “Principal H
ouse in London to a Gentleman of New York” that expressed the concern and support for the colonists’ position from the merchants and tradesmen in England: “The present situation of the Colonies,” the writer said, “is really alarming to every Person who has large Sums to come from them. . . . If the cursed Act is not repealed, we shall be great sufferers. . . . We dread the Consequences, and know not to what Fatality we are designed.”

  Of course, no one knew what would happen; observers knew only that something significant would. While the merchants and shopkeepers were shut up in Burns’s City Arms Tavern, the stevedores, mechanics, and laborers gathered a few blocks northward on the common. A parade took shape, making its way down Broadway past Burns’s and onward to the fort, but finally the group dispersed. The Gazette reported that smaller bands were heard tramping through the streets later on, breaking lamps and windows, shouting “Liberty,” and promising that they’d be back the following night in greater numbers to “pull down houses,” but the night passed without serious incident.

  On the morning of November 1, Lieutenant Governor Colden sent off his missive to Mayor John Cruger, Jr., warning of the rumored plot against Major James and requesting that the mayor do everything in his power to help calm the populace. He next sent a deputation of troops to watch over Vaux Hall, the home of James, then turned his attention to the final preparations at Fort George.

  In the city, little work was getting done, as men gathered in knots on street corners to speculate on what might happen next. In the Merchants Coffee House, someone tacked up a copy of the letter that would later be carried to Colden. Bulletin boards about the city were covered with notices, “Some of them in a good Stile,” according to the Gazette, threatening woe to anyone who dared to “apply for, deliver out, receive, or use a Stamp or should delay the Execution of any customary public Business without them.”

  Meanwhile, the cannon at the fort were loaded with musket balls and turned from their customary position overlooking the harbor so that they now pointed at the city streets. A pair was positioned directly behind the gates, where any entry would probably be attempted. The cannon belonging to the merchants were ordered to be spiked (rods driven into the fuse holes) to prevent them from being used in an assault against the fort. Colden prevailed upon the navy to dispatch an additional contingent of marines to the fort, and sixteen artillerymen now stood guard at Major James’s home. Now he could only wait and see.

  As it grew dark, the crowd on the common grew steadily, and in distinction to the night before, a number of influential men caught up in the discussions with the merchants and shopkeepers at Burns’s were there to lend some focus to the gathering. It was said to be an unusually calm night, with no wind to disturb the candles and the torches that lit the green. According to the Gazette, it was about 7 p.m. when a commotion rose up.

  Men at the edge of the crowd turned to see a portable gallows being trundled toward them, and shouts of approval rang out as the contraption moved into the light. Dangling from the gallows noose was an effigy of Colden, “a Man who had been honoured by his Country with an elevated Station, but whose public Conduct . . . has unhappily drawn upon himself the general Resentment of his country.” The figure clutched a sheet of stamped paper in its hand, and a drum—alluding to Colden’s purported service as a drummer in a long-ago Scottish battalion—was slung across its back. Beside the figure of Colden hung a familiar form: that of the devil, meant to be whispering encouragement into the governor’s ear.

  While that striking arrangement was receiving cheers, a second group arrived on the common bearing a seated effigy of Colden, and soon the two groups were off on parade through “most of the streets of the city.” One group reached the home of the former stamp master, McEvers, where they stopped to bellow out three cheers. By that time, the church and meetinghouse bells had begun to toll, and someone darted from the shadows to deliver the demand to Colden.

  It could not have been long after the governor finished reading the message when the commotion outside the fort began. The effigy of Colden seated in a chair was paraded past the walls, while threats and taunts were hurled at Major James. As the crowds jockeyed, someone found that the doors of the governor’s coach house had been left unlocked.

  In the next moment, they were thrown open, and the governor’s coach was pulled out. Someone vaulted into the coachman’s seat and reached down to haul the effigy of Colden up beside him. Others snatched up the coach rails and began to trot off toward the common.

  “Fire, damn you!” men shouted to the artillerymen stationed at the the looming cannon above. But no shots came.

  Back up Broadway to the common the surreal procession went, its leaders now hard pressed to keep matters under control. No windows should be broken, it was understood, no violent acts committed.

  The sight of Colden’s effigy mounted on the governor’s own coach threw the crowds at the common into a frenzy. It was decided without debate that everyone would return to the fort with the devil and the dangling rendition of Colden along for the ride.

  This time the mob, said by Montresor to have swelled to two thousand or more, surged against the gates, pounding, demanding admission, once more daring the troops and Major James to fire. But if James heard, he had the good sense to keep his sword sheathed and his tongue tied.

  Finally the group turned away from the fort and made its way to the nearby Bowling Green. There would be a bonfire now, it was decided, and a ready group of volunteers tore planks from the fort’s fence, then added “a Chaise and two Sleys” from the yawning coach house to the pile. In short order, there was a roaring blaze to which the governor’s coach and its silent passenger were added, followed shortly by the gallows and its twisting pair.

  It might have seemed enough for a night’s effort, but for some it was just a start. A sizable contingent—described by Montresor as “300 carpenters”—peeled away from the huzzahs at the bonfire and advanced upon Vaux Hall. Perhaps the major, they thought, had not deigned to greet them at the fort because he was hiding under his bed at home.

  The major had better sense than that, of course: he’d long since removed his family to safety aboard the Garland. As for the sixteen noble artillerymen guarding the major’s home, they took one glance at the advancing mob and immediately decamped. Within moments, according to the account of one bystander, the mob burst through the doors of James’s richly furnished home and its members were wreaking havoc. They shattered “the windos and dores the Looking Glasses Mehogany Tables Silk Curtains A Libiry of Books all of the China and furniture,” the account attests, any shortcomings in its grammar supplanted by its vigor. “The feather beds they cut and throo about the streets and burnt broke and tore the Garden.”

  Thirsty after such efforts, they “drank 3 or 4 Pipes of wine destroyed the Beef throo the butter about and at last burnt the whole.” Not much was left, it seems: “Only one red Silk Curtain they kept for a Colour,” our observer notes. And with that the night was done.

  ( 9 )

  Morning After

  Lieutenant Montresor reported his relief that Colden had ordered the troops to hold their fire despite the insults and depredations of the night, for the result, he said, “would have been a great slaughter.” Certainly, that much is true, for the mob was armed largely with stones and clubs and fortified primarily by drink. A hail of musket and cannon fire would have been deadly and would have put a quick end to bonfires and home wrecking, but as to the long-term consequences, it is more difficult to say.

  Colden, for all his bluster and fervent allegiance to his king, had no desire to be the one to set all hell loose. And though he and his men might have been able to repel the previous night’s assault, they were in no position to withstand a lengthy siege. Even as the morning of November 2 dawned, there were fewer than two hundred troops inside the walls, and the fort, designed to keep watch over the waters of the harbor, was not positioned to withstand an attack from its own citizens.

  Colden wrote t
o British secretary of state Henry Conway that he feared that future attempts to storm the fort might end less fortunately, as “a great part of the Mob consists of Men who have been Privateers and disbanded Soldiers whose view is to plunder the town.” Furthermore, despite the efforts of Major James and Lieutenant Montresor, the fort’s position was precarious, “arising principally from the want of proper cover within, and being commanded by the Circumjacent Buildings.”

  Though it was a Saturday, Colden decided to call a meeting of his council. Given the general ineffectiveness of that group, he could not have expected much, but at the very least he could say he had tried. The response of his advisers was maddening. They were by no means military men, they told Colden, but it seemed that the fort was adequately prepared and defended. Meantime, several members were absent, owing to the fact that the call from Colden had come unexpectedly. The council would summon its absent members to confer again in the afternoon.

  While Colden stewed, he tried Captain Kennedy on a different idea. Perhaps the stamps could be moved aboard one of the naval ships in the harbor, thereby diverting the attention of the rabble from the fort? Captain Kennedy responded adroitly: as the stamps were already ensconced in Fort George, “a place of security sufficient to protect them from any attempts the Mob can possibly make to destroy them,” he could see no reason for displacing them. In fact, he said, “the very attempt to move them must be attended with much greater risque than they can possibly run while there.” In other words, the scalding potato would remain in the lieutenant governor’s hands.

  Finally, the absent council members were rounded up and Colden wearily addressed the body. He was giving this vexing matter considerable thought, he told them. It was indeed his duty as governor to receive those stamps and to place them in the fort, where they would be safe. However, from that point forward, he said, was it not the duty of the master of the stamps to determine what disposition should be made of them? And owing to the fact that there no longer was a stamp master, how could anyone say?