American Rebels

by Nina Sankovitch

  The crowd dispersed, only to gather again two days later at a town meeting where John Hancock was appointed head of a committee to procure the resignations of the tea sellers. But once again, the tea merchants proclaimed they could not resign their commissions; the tea was already on its way, and they had contractual obligations to sell it.

  While publicly defiant, in private the tea agents continued to send desperate letters to Governor Hutchinson, begging him for protection of their homes, their cargoes, and their own selves. The best Hutchinson could offer was refuge on Castle Island, as well as his prayers that all would go as well as it could.

  By the end of November, the Sons of Liberty were losing patience with the tea merchants and the governor. The first vessel bearing tea, the Dartmouth, had arrived in Boston Harbor. John Rowe, owner of the Eleanor, another vessel expected any day now, wrote in his diary, “The worst of Plagues, the detestable Tea … is now arrived.”21 Abigail Adams described the tea as “that bainfull weed … this weed of Slavery” and despaired of the “direfull consequences” that lay in store for her colony.22

  All of Boston lay in wait, anticipating the arrival of more tea ships from England. The Sons of Liberty and their supporters haunted the harbor front, keeping vigilant watch, determined to prevent any tea cargoes from being unloaded. The tea merchants remained behind closed doors, equally vigilant and determined: they vowed that nothing would stop them from taking ownership of their cargoes, off-loading the tea, and selling it at the prices set in the Tea Act.

  19

  Tea, That Baneful Weed

  The Spirit of Liberty is very high in the Country …

  —JOHN ADAMS

  At 9:00 a.m. on November 29, 1773, church bells began to peal throughout Boston. The call was not to come to church but to come to a protest. Signs had appeared on every post and corner of the town: “Every friend to his country, to himself and posterity, is now called upon to meet at Faneuil Hall at 9 o’clock this day (at which time the bells will begin to ring) to make a united and successful resistance to this last, worst, and most destructive measure of administration.”1

  More than one thousand people gathered at Faneuil Hall. The building couldn’t hold so many people, so the meeting was moved to the Old South Meeting House. By the afternoon, the number had swelled to more than five thousand people, almost one in three Bostonians protesting the landing of East India Company tea—and growing increasingly resolved to fight such landing at any cost.

  Messengers were chosen, excellent horsemen all, and told to be ready to leave at any moment, bound for the committees of correspondence in other colonies with news from the citizens of Massachusetts. The meeting ended with the exhortation issued by John Hancock: “My Fellow Countrymen, we have now put our Hands to the Plough and Woe be to him that shrinks or looks back.”2

  Governor Hutchinson had no troops in the city to break up the crowd. He demanded that John Hancock, as commander of the Cadets, call out his men and see to the dispersal of the crowd. Hancock refused; instead he directed the Cadets to assemble promptly at Griffin’s Wharf and there to guard against the Dartmouth unloading any of its cargo. A twenty-four-hour watch was set up, manned by the Cadets, Paul Revere, and other Masons from St. Andrew’s Lodge to ensure that no tea was landed.

  On December 1, a meeting was once again convened in the Old South Meeting House and once again, the large crowd called for the East India Company tea to be returned to England. The sheriff for Boston, Stephen Greenleaf, made his way into the church and demanded that the crowd leave the premises, as it was an unlawful meeting. But the thousands gathered there jeered at him and chased him out into the street. By this time, Elisha and Thomas Hutchinson Jr., along with Richard Clarke, had fled with their families to Castle Island. Safe there, they refused to back down from their tea commissions.

  But who would unload the vessels? The Dartmouth had been joined by the Eleanor at Griffin’s Wharf; the Beaver, with its cargoes of “smallpox and … tea” was due any day.3 John Rowe lamented ever allowing his vessel, the Eleanor, to carry tea: “I was very sorry [to have] any Tea on Board—& which is very True for it hath given me great Uneasiness.”4

  Rowe’s ship, along with the others, was held hostage in the standoff between Governor Hutchinson and the Sons of Liberty. While the colonists refused to let the tea be landed, the governor let it be known that no tea-bearing vessel would be allowed to leave the harbor before they had unloaded their cargoes—and paid their duties. Hutchinson ordered British warships, armed and ready, to guard the mouth of the harbor to prevent any departures, while the armed citizens on shore were just as determined to prevent the cargoes from landing.

  Town meetings continued. Negotiations began between customs officers and other Crown officials, town and colony representatives, shipowners, and tea merchants in an effort to come up with a way of allowing ships to off-load cargo other than tea. Hutchinson wrote later that he never suspected the colonists would destroy the tea cargoes, “there being so many men of property active at these meetings.”5

  And it was true that for the organizers of the meetings at Old South Meeting House, maintaining order and respecting property were both vital concerns: support of the other colonies might well turn on the manner in which the ban on tea off-loading was implemented in Boston. The other colonies, and all of England, were watching—and care would be taken.

  But at the same time, the organizers were becoming frustrated. Negotiations were proving fruitless, and as the impasse wore on, it was becoming more and more difficult to contain the anger of agitators who gathered almost every day to protest the Tea Act and the presence of the vessels tied up at Griffin’s Wharf. All the pistols in Boston had been “bought up, with a full determination to repell force with force,” and every day more men arrived from the surrounding villages, including Roxbury, Dorchester, and Cambridge, ready to fight.6

  Already the home of Richard Clarke, purveyor of tea, had been attacked and all its windows broken. Hancock, Warren, Sam Adams, Josiah Quincy Jr., and others met night and day, debating a course of action: there must be a way to both vent the anger of the impassioned colonists and control it.

  The morning of December 16, 1773, dawned cold but bright, the sun rising in a cloudless sky. Another meeting began at the Old South Meeting House, with speeches and questions, debates and proposed resolutions, continuing on all day. By the afternoon, almost seven thousand people had squeezed into or stood huddled by the doors of the meeting house. Francis Rotch, representative of the family who owned both the Eleanor and the Dartmouth, had been called to attend the day’s meeting, to answer why his ship still stood tied up; he tried to argue that his hands were tied, as Governor Hutchinson refused to let his vessels go.

  Try again, he was advised, and off he went.

  But as evening began to close in, it became clear to everyone gathered in Old South that the only way through the impasse was a path of radical, and determinative, action. Josiah Quincy Jr., who had rallied his strength to travel the few blocks to the meeting house, and then to climb the stairs to the upper gallery, rose now from his seat to speak. He began to list, in thorough detail, all of the encumbrances laid on the colonists of Massachusetts by the English Parliament. Harrison Gray, a wealthy merchant and Loyalist, interrupted Quincy, and warned him against speaking treason. Josiah didn’t flinch.

  “If the old gentle man on the floor intends, by his warning to ‘the young gentleman in the gallery,’ to utter only a friendly voice in the spirit of paternal advice, I thank him,” Josiah Jr. said. But, “if his object be to terrify and intimidate, I despise him. Personally, perhaps, I have less concern than any one present in the crisis which is approaching. The seeds of dissolution are thickly planted in my constitution. They must soon ripen. I feel how short is the day that is allotted to me.”7

  With that, Josiah announced to the world that his consumption had returned, and that he had little to lose and everything to gain by securing the liberty of his fellow co
lonists against British tyranny forever and for good. And so, when he saw a group of men enter the hall, dressed as Mohawk Indians, he knew the time had come. He and his fellow patriots had devised a plan to overcome the impasse of tea ships tied up at the wharves, British guns positioned at Castle Island, and raging colonists on shore.

  The plan was simple: the tea was to be launched, bale by bale, into the freezing waters of Boston Harbor. There would be no unloading and no returning, no payment of duties and no capitulation to Parliament. Josiah drew a deep breath, willing himself not to cough and fighting against the dizziness that now accompanied him every day. He looked down at the gathering of men below and saw John Hancock already rising from his chair. The plan was in play.

  “I see the clouds which now rise thick and fast upon our horizon, the thunders roll, and the lightnings play.” Josiah spoke in a rising crescendo of certainty. “To that God who rides on the whirlwind and directs the storm I commit my country.”8

  John Hancock, down on the floor, met the gaze of Josiah, then turned around to take in the sight of the crowd gathered in the meeting house, overflowing and ready to spill out into the night. He pronounced the words that would release these men into history: “Let every man do what is right in his own eyes.”9

  John Rowe, seated close to Gray, was heard to murmur, “Who knows how tea will mix with salt water?”10

  Josiah Quincy Jr. fell back into his seat, exhausted, while all around him, men surged down the stairs, out the doors, and into the night.

  A crowd of two thousand and more swarmed down to the harbor, following a legion of men dressed as Mohawks. The costumed men, along with many others, boarded the tea-bearing vessels tied up at Griffin’s Wharf, located the chests containing tea, and broke them apart, gathered up the tea in armfuls, and threw it overboard. All in all, it took about sixty men little more than three hours to destroy 342 chests and release 46 tons (92,000 pounds) of tea into the sea.

  The work was completed quickly and methodically; as one participant recorded it, “We mounted the ships and made tea in a trice. This done, I took my team and went home, as an honest man should.”11 Any cargoes other than tea were left undamaged in the ships; the ships themselves were not damaged in any way, other than a small padlock broken on one door, which was replaced the next day by anonymous delivery to Captain Bruce of the Eleanor.

  As John Adams reported to Joseph Warren, “The Town of Boston, was never more Still and calm of a Saturday night than it was last Night. All Things were conducted with great order, Decency and perfect Submission to Government.”12

  For days after, engorged wads of tea washed up along a fifty-mile stretch of shoreline, including the beaches of Dorchester, where it was gathered up and burned so that nobody could attempt to dry and drink the tainted “weed of slavery.”13 One full chest of tea washed ashore at South Boston, where it was retrieved and then carried by wagon all the way back to Boston to be set afire on the Common.

  John Hancock came out from his mansion to watch the tea burn; joined by Dolly, he descended from the house to walk the public paths he had paid for. The couple took in deep lungfuls of fragrant, wafting smoke, then turned to go back inside the mansion. A passerby let out a deep whoop, imitating Indian war cries. When asked, John Hancock would always deny that he had been present at the dumping of the tea: “The particulars I must refer you to Capt. Scott, for indeed I was not as acquainted with them myself, as to give a detail.”14

  Hancock had already arranged for all the stores of tea in his warehouses to be sent back to England, no matter that it wasn’t East India Company tea, and now he wrote to his London agent with glee over the turn of events: “No one circumstance could possibly have taken place more effectively to unite the colonies than this manoeuvre with the tea.”

  From juggling his duties as a merchant and as a political leader, John had now firmly decided where his loyalties lay: with the people first, and with his business a far second.

  When he heard that he and the other leaders of the meetings at Old South would likely be charged with treason, and their arrests arranged by the attorney general, Jonathan Sewall, Hancock responded that he “was for having a Body Meeting [a public accounting] to take off that Brother in Law of his.”15 He was not yet married to Dolly, sister to Esther Sewall, but he was laying claim to Dolly as his wife, and to America as his country.

  Within hours of the Boston Tea Party, messengers on horseback—told days before to be at the ready—rode out to New York, Philadelphia, and beyond, with the news: “We inform you, in great haste, that every chest of tea on board the three ships in this town was destroyed the last evening without the least injury to the vessels or any other property. Our enemies must acknowledge that these people have acted upon pure and upright principle.”16

  From close and distant parts, messages of thanks arrived in Boston, sent to “the worthy Brethren of the Town of Boston, for their unwearied Care and Pains, in endeavoring to preserve our Rights and Privileges.”17

  Throughout the colonies, resolutions were passed that no East India Company tea would be allowed to land, and in Philadelphia, New York, and Charleston, agents for the East India Company were forced to resign their commissions. In New York, “a vast number of the inhabitants, including … lawyers, merchants, landowners, masters of ships, and mechanics” together with the “Sons of Liberty of New York” undertook watches to prevent any tea from landing in the colony.18

  On December 25, the British ship Polly, bearing nearly seven hundred chests of tea in its hold, attempted to travel up the Delaware River to Philadelphia. The Polly was stopped by a blockade of small boats at Chester, and Samuel Ayres, the captain of the ship, was handed a message: “What think you, Captain, of a Halter around your Neck—ten Gallons of liquid Tar decanted on your pate—with the feathers of a dozen wild Geese laid over that to enliven your appearance? Only think seriously of this—and fly to the Place from Whence you came.”19

  By the next tide Captain Ayres was back on board and the Polly was turned round, ready to return to England.

  John Adams was away in Plymouth on the evening of the Tea Party. He returned to Boston the next day. He had missed out on all the meetings in the Old South Meeting House; now he sorely regretted not being present as a witness to the dumping of the tea in Boston Harbor.

  Writing in his diary about it, Adams was rapturous: “Last Night 3 Cargoes of Bohea Tea were emptied into the Sea.… This is the most magnificent Movement of all. There is a Dignity, a Majesty, a Sublimity, in this last Effort of the Patriots, that I greatly admire. The People should never rise, without doing something to be remembered—something notable And striking. This Destruction of the Tea is so bold, so daring, so firm, intrepid and inflexible, and it must have so important Consequences, and so lasting, that I cant but consider it as an Epocha in History.”20

  In a letter to James Warren written that same day, John’s excitement continued unabated: “The Dye is cast: The People have passed the River and cutt away the Bridge.… This is the grandest, Event, which has ever yet happened Since, the Controversy, with Britain, opened! The Sublimity of it, charms me!”

  Abigail rejoiced beside him, admiring both the daringness of the move and the strength of its message: England could not doubt the resolve of the Americans now. But John and Abigail also worried, for there was sure to be retribution: “What Measures will the Ministry take, in Consequence of this?—Will they resent it? will they dare to resent it? will they punish Us? How? By quartering Troops upon Us?—by annulling our Charter?—by laying on more duties? By restraining our Trade? By Sacrifice of Individuals, or how.”21

  John predicted that the consequences would be largely economic and political: “Individuals will be threatened with Suits and Prosecutions.… Charters annull’d—Treason—Tryals in England and all that.”

  But Abigail foresaw war. It was inevitable, in her view, and might be the only way to secure the rights of the colonists. She shrank from the horrors of it; neverthe
less, she hoped her fellow patriots would be as brave in fighting as they had been in protesting: “Altho the mind is shocked at the Thought of shedding Humane Blood, more Especially the Blood of our Countrymen, and a civil War is of all Wars, the most dreadfull.… Many, very Many of our Heroes will spend their lives in the cause, With the Speech of Cato in their Mouths, ‘What a pitty it is, that we can dye but once to save our Country.’”22

  * * *

  Sam Adams wanted the colonists’ version of the tea dumping to be the first received on the other side of the Atlantic; he hoped to stave off the worst of parliamentary punishments by ensuring that its representatives had an accurate account of both the events leading up to the Tea Party and the Tea Party itself. In a letter to Arthur Lee, the American representative of colonial trade interests in London, Adams wrote that Governor Hutchinson and his “Cabal” had refused to consider the “conciliatory alternatives proposed” by his group of patriots and declared that Hutchinson himself was “answerable for the Destruction of the Tea.”23

  But Parliament, inundated with reports from both Crown officials (including Governor Hutchinson) and private ship and cargo owners, wouldn’t see the events of December 16 in the same way that the Massachusetts colonists did. And when it came to the destruction of the tea, it would be the colonists of Massachusetts, not the governor, who would be made answerable.

  What the leaders in Parliament failed to understand was that answering to England was no longer a goal of the New England colonists. What they had been fighting for since the passage of the Stamp Act in 1765 was an acknowledgment of their rights as British citizens, not a reading list of what they owed to England. As Josiah Quincy Jr. wrote back in 1765, “Happy people who enjoy this blessed constitution! Happy, thrice happy people, if ye preserve it inviolate!”