Desperate Sons

by Les Standiford

  A. I know it is appropriated by the act to the American service; but it will be spent in the conquered colonies, where the soldiers are, not in the colonies that pay it. . . .

  Q. Do you think it right that America should be protected by this country and pay no part of the expense?

  A. That is not the case. The colonies raised, clothed, and paid, during the last war, near 25,000 men, and spent many millions.

  Q. Were you not reimbursed by Parliament?

  A. We were only reimbursed what, in your opinion, we had advanced beyond our proportion, or beyond what might reasonably be expected from us; and it was a very small part of what we spent. Pennsylvania, in particular, disbursed about 500,000 pounds, and the reimbursements, in the whole, did not exceed 60,000 pounds. . . .

  Q. Do you think the people of America would submit to pay the stamp duty, if it was moderated?

  A. No, never, unless compelled by force of arms. . . .

  Q. What was the temper of America towards Great Britain before the year 1763?

  A. The best in the world. They submitted willingly to the government of the Crown, and paid, in all their courts, obedience to acts of Parliament. . . .

  Q. What is your opinion of a future tax, imposed on the same principle with that of the Stamp Act? How would the Americans receive it?

  A. Just as they do this. They would not pay it.

  Q. Have not you heard of the resolutions of this House, and of the House of Lords, asserting the right of Parliament relating to America, including a power to tax the people there?

  A. Yes, I have heard of such resolutions.

  Q. What will be the opinion of the Americans on those resolutions?

  A. They will think them unconstitutional and unjust.

  Q. Was it an opinion in America before 1763 that the Parliament had no right to lay taxes and duties there?

  A. I never heard any objection to the right of laying duties to regulate commerce; but a right to lay internal taxes was never supposed to be in Parliament, as we are not represented there. . . .

  Q. Did the Americans ever dispute the controlling power of Parliament to regulate the commerce?

  A. No.

  Q. Can anything less than a military force carry the Stamp Act into execution?

  A. I do not see how a military force can be applied to that purpose.

  Q. Why may it not?

  A. Suppose a military force sent into America; they will find nobody in arms; what are they then to do? They cannot force a man to take stamps who chooses to do without them. They will not find a rebellion; they may indeed make one.

  Q. If the act is not repealed, what do you think will be the consequences?

  A. A total loss of the respect and affection the people of America bear to this country, and of all the commerce that depends on that respect and affection.

  Q. How can the commerce be affected?

  A. You will find that, if the act is not repealed, they will take very little of your manufactures in a short time.

  Q. Is it in their power to do without them?

  A. I think they may very well do without them.

  Q. Is it their interest not to take them?

  A. The goods they take from Britain are either necessaries, mere conveniences, or superfluities. The first, as cloth, etc., with a little industry they can make at home; the second they can do without till they are able to provide them among themselves; and the last, which are mere articles of fashion, purchased and consumed because the fashion in a respected country; but will now be detested and rejected. The people have already struck off, by general agreement, the use of all goods fashionable in mourning. . . .

  Q. If the Stamp Act should be repealed, would it induce the assemblies of America to acknowledge the right of Parliament to tax them, and would they erase their resolutions [against the Stamp Act]?

  A. No, never.

  Q. Is there no means of obliging them to erase those resolutions?

  A. None that I know of; they will never do it, unless compelled by force of arms.

  Q. Is there a power on earth that can force them to erase them?

  A. No power, how great so ever, can force men to change their opinions. . . .

  Q. What used to be the pride of the Americans?

  A. To indulge in the fashions and manufactures of Great Britain.

  Q. What is now their pride?

  A. To wear their old clothes over again, till they can make new ones.

  Though Franklin’s testimony would not have moved a man of Grenville’s ilk, it is difficult to imagine any fence-riding member of Parliament listening to such back-and-forth without seeing the unmistakable course to take. An army might counter acts of insurrection, but how could it force a man to buy a stamp or a shirt he did not want?

  At the same time, there was some sentiment in Parliament for a compromise position. When Benjamin Franklin was asked what he thought the opinion of the American public might be about a measure repealing the Stamp Act but reaffirming the sovereignty of Parliament over the colonies, he opined that nothing short of repeal of the Stamp Act itself would be acceptable. When he was asked if Americans would think that it was their violent actions that had forced Parliament into submission, Franklin said no. Reason alone was what dictated the need for repeal.

  With such testimony fresh in members’ minds, George Grenville introduced “An Act for the better securing the dependency of His Majesty’s dominions in America upon the Crown and Parliament of Great Britain.” Referred to as the Declaratory Act, the measure was presented as companion legislation to a bill repealing the Stamp Act. The Declaratory Act was a close copy of the Irish Dependency Act of 1719, stipulating that Ireland was subordinate to and dependent upon the British Crown and that the king, with the advice and consent of Parliament, had full power “to make laws and statutes of sufficient validity to bind the Kingdom and people of Ireland.” However, Grenville appended four words to that wording that would in time prove incendiary: “in all cases whatsoever” [italics added].

  With the understanding that the two measures would go forward together, an accord was finally reached. By a vote of roughly two to one, the Stamp Act was repealed, the Declaratory Act passed, and the legislation ratified by King George on March 18.

  Two hundred and fifty years later, such news would have been beamed around the world in moments, but as it was, the American colonists remained on tenterhooks, with tension and uncertainty to prevail for two months. In New York, General Gage tried to move the powder and guns stored on shore to the warships in the harbor, where they would be less likely to fall into the hands of the Sons. It might have been a wise idea, but not a single local craft could be hired for the purpose, and marines were forced to use their dinghies for the laborious process.

  Meanwhile, discord arose within the ranks of the British. When Governor Moore asked Lieutenant Governor Colden for copies of the letters he had received from London during his term as acting chief, Colden refused. Lieutenant Montresor petitioned Governor Moore for a plot of some 10,000 acres on the Connecticut River, but the governor refused, telling Montresor that he intended the land for his own wife and children.

  Nor were the Sons quietly waiting for further word from London. As Montresor described it, “Five Ruffians or Sons of Liberty fell on an Officer of the Royal Americans on the Common about Dusk, behind his Back, and beat him unmercifully and broke his sword, which he had drawn in his Defence.” Word came from Connecticut that a group of forty men identifying themselves as Sons had “pillaged and ransacked” a gentleman’s house there for the offense of “being a neutral person and not declaring his sentiments.”

  By that time, Montresor had begun to display signs of the budding satirist in his clipped notes. Though the early April weather at last turned mild and the gale winds relented, “The sons or Spawns of Liberty and Inquisition,” he said, were “still venting threats and Insulting the Crown and Officers under it.”

  He seemed to find it presumptuous th
at these “Heroes of Liberty” now maintained an office, kept careful minutes of their various meetings, and sent news and records of their accords “to their licentious fraternity throughout the different Provinces.” At the same time, more ships were arriving up and down the coast of the colonies, bearing word that Parliament had indeed repealed the Stamp Act early in February. Still, there was no official confirmation, and there were signs that even if the act had been repealed it would not matter.

  The Sons were determined to have every restriction on trade removed from the colonies, and they also wanted an end to the jurisdiction of the royal courts of admiralty. A colonist accused of a crime should be entitled to a trial with a jury composed of his peers, and there should be no appeal of the verdict in any British venue.

  A contingent of Sons was at work drilling out the spikes that had been driven into the cannon on the Battery, an endeavor that Montresor found vaguely pointless. The guns were old and their carriages rotted, he said, no longer able to support the weight of the metal. The rusted weapons would be of little use in any battle—“Let them try,” the lieutenant seemed to say.

  A rumor came that “2,000 men from Westchester” were on the march to New York, and all troops and officers were ordered inside the fort. On the following day, two ships attempted to slip into the harbor past the sentinels. The Garland fired warning shots, bringing one of the ships to, while the other fled.

  The next day, Isaac Sears led a party of men on board the merchant ship that had been prevented from unloading its goods. The group seized several crates of beer and ale, along with a quantity of good English cheese. As a spirited rally ensued on the common, another rumor came in from Boston that the Stamp Act had indeed been repealed.

  A man named Swinney, described as “an inflammatory news-carrier and monger” who’d enjoyed a fair share of the purloined cheese and ale, jumped on a horse and began to gallop through the city streets, crying huzzahs “To Pitt!” and “No more king!” His ride might have occasioned more of a flurry, but before he traveled far, a butcher with a fierce loyalty to His Majesty stepped from his shop and, with a deft swing, clubbed Swinney unconscious from his horse.

  Though the rumor of the act’s repeal once again proved premature, copies of William Pitt’s stirring defense of the colonies did in fact arrive and were widely circulated, and the Sons were confident that the end was near. A few days later, on May 5, the New York Mercury advertised that a play would be performed that evening at the Chapel Street Theatre. The piece, The Twin Rivals, was described as a comedy and would include a “Song in Praise of Liberty.” Appended to the advertisement was a note adding, “As the Packet is arrived, and has been the Messenger of good News relative to the Repeal, It is hoped the Public has no objection to the above Performance.”

  The producers’ hopes were to be dashed, however. Scarcely did the nearby church bells toll six and the play begin when sympathizers of the Sons, heedless of the promised song to liberty and indignant “that such Entertainments should be exhibited at this Time of public distress,” burst into the theater “with noise and tumult.” As the lights went out and the fracas escalated, patrons battled toward jammed exits and dived out windows to escape.

  “Thus ended the comedy,” the Newport Mercury drily reported, “in which a boy unhappily had his skull fractured, his recovery doubtful.” Others lost wigs, watches, purses, and caps, and the poor actor who was to have played the part of Mrs. Mandrake was carried outside still wearing his dress and “whipped for a considerable distance.”

  May 7 brought the first day of summer weather to New York, and Montresor reported, “The Sons of Liberty, otherwise the Sons of Tyranny, who now call themselves the Redressors of Grievances held a council whether they should not secretly Barbacue an officer of the 27th [Regiment] for speaking disrespectfully of them.”

  Meanwhile, little business was being conducted. Five ships full of goods languished at the New York docks, Montresor reported, and word circulated that as a result of the Stamp Act boycott, the merchants had no funds to pay their bills due in London. It was all a pretense, however, he said, for the markets were high and workmanship, materials, and goods very costly, “which plainly demonstrates that the country cannot complain of poverty.” As further proof, he cited the high prices and brisk trading of “Beaver skins, the price of which, greater or less, is the standard by which one may judge of the riches of this country.”

  In Connecticut, the situation was dire, the lieutenant reported. Colonists there had recalled their governor and a number of elected assemblymen, and established a Committee of 500 who had renounced “all future connections with Great Britain,” though they maintained their “allegiance to King George III.” Reports came in that in rural areas, squatters had taken possession of deeded lands and had no intention of giving them up. “No law prevails,” Montresor lamented. Indeed, it seemed that civilization in the colonies, as the British conceived of it, was nearly at an end.

  Then, on May 20, more than two months after the fact, word finally came that the king had given his assent to the repeal of the Stamp Act. Montresor reported the ensuing “hideous Din” of church bells and hundreds of boys running through the streets with “poles upon which were hoisted Handkerchiefs, papers, etc., in imitation of the late Mob, attended with repeated Huzzahs.”

  “Friday night to the inexpressible Joy of all,” reported the Boston Post-Boy, “we received . . . the important News, at the Repeal of the Stamp Act, which was signed by His Majesty the 18th of March last.” The news set the bells in the town ringing, “the Ships in the Harbour display’d their Colours, Guns were discharged in different Parts of the Town, and in the Evening were several Bonfires.” Debtors were released from jail, a holiday was proclaimed for the following Monday, and that evening the Sons of Liberty “erected a magnificent pyramid, illuminated with 280 lamps.”

  Similar rejoicing was reported in Connecticut, in New York, and across the colonies. Whereas public gatherings of the past six months had been occasions primarily of strife, suddenly “All was Loyalty to the King, Blessings on the Parliament of Great-Britain, Honour and Gratitude to the Present Ministry, and Love and Affection to the Mother Country.”

  At midnight on the evening of the holiday celebration in Boston, the Post-Boy reported, “upon a Signal given in the Common, and the Beat of a Drum, the Populace retired to their respective Dwellings, the Lights were put out, and the Town was hushed in an unusual silence.” Virtually overnight, it seemed, order and harmony were restored, yet, even for the most optimistic souls in the colonies, it must have seemed too good to be true.

  Montresor’s observations suggest that not everything was magically erased by the decree of His Majesty. The Sons of Liberty, he said, fell into a vehement argument as to who should lead their celebratory procession in the streets of New York. When the resident clergy of the Church of England presented an address to Governor Moore from the assembly, Moore refused to attend the ceremony or accept the document. And trouble remained in Connecticut, where the members of the colonial assembly refused to recognize the state’s newly appointed governor or swear their oath of allegiance to the king.

  While business resumed in New York and Governor Moore held a public meeting at the Merchants Coffee House to assure constituents that there would be no appeals in the British courts of any jury verdict in the colonies, a true test of the Sons’ willingness to forgive and forget came when the warship Hind sailed into New York on May 25, carrying with her Major James, the despised artillery officer who had threatened to jam stamp papers down their throats.

  Immediately, threats began to circulate that the house in which James had resided would be pulled down if he attempted to move back in. When it was suggested that James might seek to be indemnified for the losses he had suffered in November, letters arrived at the homes of assemblymen, warning of dire consequences should they authorize a penny. Though nothing came of such threats, Montresor wrote of nightly marches and demonstrations by the So
ns of Liberty. Though the Stamp Act was repealed and duties on sugar and molasses were reduced, resentment lingered.

  For one thing, some of the more astute of the Sons of Liberty pointed to the Declaratory Act that had come hand in hand with the legislation of repeal. At a meeting at the liberty tree, a notably handsome live oak that graced the pasture of a Mr. Mazyck in Charleston, Christopher Gadsden warned the assembled mechanics and artisans against “the folly of rejoicing at a law that still asserted and maintained the absolute dominion of Great Britain over them.” The somewhat chastened group agreed with Gadsden that they should never relax their vigilance or indulge “the fallacious hope that Great Britain would relinquish her designs and pretensions.” The meeting concluded with the assembly joining hands and swearing their everlasting intention to defend against the encroachment of tyranny, but for most in Charleston, as elsewhere, with the immediate source of irritation gone, the prospects for future strife seemed remote.

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  Better Days

  One of the issues that did not disappear along with the Stamp Act was the problem of money in the colonies. With the economy already depressed, trade down, and receipts as well as expenditures curtailed by local governments, the simple withdrawal of a plan to impose additional taxes did little to put more money into circulation.

  Along with the veiled implications of the Declaratory Act, the Currency Act passed by Parliament in 1764 put an end to the practice of the issuance of paper money by the colonies, notes that were based primarily on the value of mortgaged land. The act was passed in large part because of pressures by British merchants, who complained about the wild fluctuations in the value of the currency they were asked to accept as payment for their goods. Henceforth, trade would have to be carried out in pounds sterling, gold, or silver. Since there was relatively little British currency circulating in the colonies and the colonies had no gold or silver mines, this meant that the colonists were going to have a difficult time buying anything from Great Britain.