Conceived in Liberty (163 page)

Furthermore, Otis’s call for a Stamp Act Congress was all well and good; but it would, after all, be another if larger Assembly ineffectually petitioning Parliament for relief. The important thing was the popular reaction to the Virginia Resolves, and here Otis showed his change of heart by denouncing them as treasonable. And while Otis erratically continued to denounce the British in anonymous contributions to the radical
Boston Gazette,
his public statements lauded the power of Parliament and went so far as to ask for British troops to put down the rebellious Americans. If salvation was to come, it would not be from James Otis or from a Stamp Act Congress.

Massachusetts and especially Boston had for years now been the great center of libertarian resistance to the depredations of Great Britain. But now its old spokesman, James Otis, was no longer fit to lead the liberal cause. Oxenbridge Thacher, who had written Massachusetts’ original principled protest against the Sugar Act before being watered down by Hutchinson, exclaimed when he heard of the Virginia Resolves, “They are men!” And Thacher or a friend immediately wrote in the
Boston Gazette
a fervent defense of the Resolves against conservative Massachusetts critics:

The people of Virginia have spoke very sensibly, and the frozen politicians [of Massachusetts]... say they have spoke treason... pray gentlemen, is it treason for the deputies of the people to assert their liberties, or to give them away?... We have been told... that it is not prudence for us to
assert our rights in plain and manly terms. Nay, we have been told the word RIGHTS must not be once named among us! Cursed prudence of interested designing politicians!

But Oxenbridge Thacher lay on his death bed. Was there then no one to rouse the people, no one to lead the Boston masses into the streets to serve as the spearhead and vanguard of an American revolution against the Stamp Act? Yes, there was one man. If Otis was a dependable radical leader no more and if Thacher lay dying, there was still the magnificent Sam Adams.

Adams saw clearly that the real fight against the stamp tax would have to take place in the streets. He saw that the locus of pressure and unrest must be the appointed royal officials, the enforcers of the Stamp Act; in particular, that popular pressure should focus on the stamp distributors, the royal appointees who were in charge of selling the stamped paper and who were happily preparing to assume their lucrative posts.

In the early summer of 1765, Sam Adams gathered together a group of Bostonians to lead and direct the people of Boston in the streets. The group was called the Loyal Nine. Like the membership of Adams’ Caucus Club, which comprised a cross section of the town’s occupations from shipyard workers to wealthy merchants, the Loyal Nine was a diverse group. It included two distillers, Thomas Chase and the wealthy John Avery; Benjamin Edes, printer of the
Boston Gazette,
the liberals’ party organ; small businessmen—artisans like the braziers Stephen Cleverly and John Smith, the jeweler George Trott; and Henry Bass, a cousin of Adams. The headquarters of the group was Chase’s distillery at Hanover Square.

Adams rapidly worked out a remarkably efficient structure for the radical movement. The vulnerable public leaders of the fight—legislators, ministers, and others—were not directly identified with the popular mobs. The effective liaison and direction were maintained through the Loyal Nine led by Adams, even though he was not an official member. The Bostonian populace was unified into an effective force, with the various groups, from wealthy merchants to the bully boys of the taverns, playing complementary roles in the struggle. For the mass base of the popular mobs, Adams was able to utilize the gangs of the North End and of the South End of Boston. Every year on Guy Fawkes Day, or Pope’s Day, November 5, Boston’s celebration of the defeat of the Catholic Gunpowder Plot of 1605 was traditionally climaxed by a quasi-friendly but violent clash between citizens of the North End and the South End. In time, each section had developed a gang for this purpose and trained its members in paramilitary fashion to a finely honed edge. Every year, also, the quasi-friendly fighting became a bit bloodier. Particularly effective was the South End gang, which had been victorious in the 1764 brouhaha. The gang was headed by the shoemaker Ebenezer Mackintosh, whose South End forces totaled two thousand men.

Adams was able to press Mackintosh and the South End into action as his mass base, and by August 14 the radical liberals, smoothly organized by Adams, were ready to strike. Adams was ready to give the signal for the first mob action against the Stamp Act, a deed that set the pattern and furnished the inspiration not only for further riots against the stamps, but for all the riots down to the American Revolution.

Adams realized that the focus of attack must be the stamp master. On the morning of August 14, a Boston mob, directed by Adams and the Loyal Nine, hung an effigy of Andrew Oliver on a tree—dubbed the Liberty Tree—in Newbury Street. Oliver, a brother-in-law of the Tory lieutenant governor, Thomas Hutchinson, had been appointed stamp distributor in Massachusetts. Alongside Oliver hung in effigy the symbol of the hated Lord Bute—a large boot with an image of the devil crawling out of it.

The affair was a challenge flung at the royal government. Some of the shrewder members of the Council advised Governor Bernard to dismiss the whole episode as ostensibly a silly prank, but Bernard, furious at the hard-hitting attacks in the
Boston Gazette,
decided to accept the challenge. He was also advised to do so by Lieutenant Governor Hutchinson, an able theoretician and the chief beneficiary of the Tory cause in Massachusetts. As chief justice, Hutchinson ordered the sheriff to cut the effigy down, and the Council washed its hands of responsibility by turning the problem over to the sheriff.

There was a considerable slip, however, ‘twixt order and execution. The sheriff, to his amazement and dismay, found that the effigy could be cut down only by risking the officers’ lives at the hands of the populace.

The effigy was, so to speak, the opening gun of the struggle; the radicals now decided to hammer the point home. By evening, a large crowd had gathered at the Liberty Tree. They cut down the effigy and, bearing it up, began to march in a mock funeral procession. The mob included wealthy merchants, many disguised in the work clothes of a laborer, and was led by Ebenezer Mackintosh at the head of his South Enders. First the mob went to the Council building, where they made their presence felt, and where they shouted the stirring slogan “Liberty, Property and No Stamps!” The slogan was evidently patterned after the “Liberty, Property and No Excise” of the cider tax rebellion in the west of England two years before. After impressing the Council, the mob proceeded to serious business. Andrew Oliver had just finished constructing a building at his dock, and it seemed plausible that from here he would distribute the stamped paper. There, at the Kilby Street dock, the mob quickly razed the menacing building completely to the ground. From there the disciplined crowd moved on to Oliver’s home, where they put on an impressive show for that worthy by beheading Oliver’s effigy. The graphic lesson did not escape the stamp master’s understanding—especially as it was promptly followed by a shower of stones. From there the mob climbed a
nearby hill, and ritualistically stamped Oliver’s effigy and burned it in a huge bonfire.

At that point, the more gentlemanly members of the crowd, lacking taste for more violence, quietly went home. Ebenezer Mackintosh was left to do what had to be done next. Mackintosh and the crowd now returned to Oliver’s home and smashed into the house, calling loudly for Oliver and threatening to kill him on the spot. Finding that Oliver had fled to the military post on the island of Castle William, the mob did the best it could by destroying the interior of his home.

Governor Bernard ordered the militia to beat the drums to sound an alarm, only to find, to his consternation, that the drummers were all in the mob. Hastily, Bernard, realizing that discretion was the better part of valor, also skipped town to the safety of Castle William.

Thomas Hutchinson, the Tory
ultra,
was made of sterner stuff. He walked with the sheriff to the Oliver home to order the mob to disperse. Seeing them, one of the mob’s leaders shouted: “The governor and the sheriff! To your arms, my boys!” A hail of stones fell upon the august officials as they hurried away.

August 14! Here was a day to live in song and story! The first revolutionary blow had been struck by the colonists against the tyranny of the British Grand Design. For many years, August 14 was celebrated throughout America as “the happy day, on which Liberty arose from a long slumber.” Or, as Sam Adams thundered: “The people shouted; and their shout was heard to the distant end of this Continent.”

The next day, the liberal leaders pressed their advantage, and continued the work that the mob had begun so skillfully. They visited Oliver and informed him that the previous night was just a sample of what he could expect unless he resigned his office immediately. Here, then, was the main point of the mob action: revolutionary pressure on all stamp masters to resign their offices, and thus make impossible the distribution of any stamped paper and hence any enforcement of the stamp tax. Oliver promised to ask the Crown for permission to resign, and meanwhile to take no action to enforce the stamp tax.

This reply satisfied the radical leadership and the Loyal Nine, but the radical masses sensibly wanted to make very sure: to dot the
i’s
and cross the
t’s.
In short, they demanded nothing less than Oliver’s immediate resignation. On the evening of the 15th, the mob built another large bonfire and threatened to raze Oliver’s house to the ground. The leaders were able to dissuade them, and the rank and file contented themselves with surrounding the house of Thomas Hutchinson. They called for his presence, but in vain. Hutchinson had fled. He knew that this time the mob meant business.

Adams and the Loyal Nine were jubilant. Their mass pressure had forced the stamp master to resign, and his example was a standing warning to anyone with the temerity to take his place. When one Tory declared that
he
would not have been as spineless as Oliver, the Loyal Nine taught him an instructive lesson by publicly fixing the date when
his
house would be destroyed. The Tory quickly came to his senses and retracted his statement.

The leaders now saw that mass action need not stop with the intimidation of Oliver; that more could be and needed to be done. In particular, they saw that it was necessary to cow not only the stamp master but also the whole clique of Tory officials appointed by the Crown.
They
were the enemy and not simply an isolated stamp distributor. Particularly, the suspicion grew, with good reason, that Thomas Hutchinson had secretly favored the stamp tax, and that he was their most dangerous enemy within Massachusetts.

The leaders also saw the sweep of public opinion on their side; few people criticized the events of the 14th, and the leading Congregational ministers of Massachusetts—liberals all—blessed the mob action and virtually called for more. Especially ardent in favoring resistance to the stamp tax were the Reverend Andrew Eliot, the Reverend Charles Chauncy, the Reverend Samuel Cooper, and, doubly especially, the great libertarian Reverend Jonathan Mayhew. These men were friends of the secular leaders of the people—Adams, Otis, the wealthy Boston merchant John Hancock, the brilliant young lawyer from Braintree, John Adams, etc. Mayhew was particularly ardent in attacking arbitrary power, in battling the Stamp Act, and in championing the right of resistance by the people. He warned menacingly that the Stamp Act could not be enforced in Massachusetts without bloodshed, and he emphasized that there were “sixty thousand fighting men in this colony alone.”

On the night of August 26, the radicals struck again, escalating their revolutionary blows. The mob gathered in full force around a bonfire in King Street, blowing on whistles and horns, and shouting enthusiastically for “Liberty and Property!” Then, revealing striking discipline and coordination, the mob, under the generalship of Ebenezer Mackintosh, split into several sections—each with its assigned tasks. One group went to the home of William Story, deputy register of the admiralty court. Story, suspected of writing reports to England denouncing the Boston merchants, received treatment befitting his actions and status. The mob destroyed his papers, including his public papers that would list the violators of customs regulations, and wrecked his home and office. Another group went after another key enemy, Benjamin Hallowell, the controller of the customs, who had angered the Boston merchants by rigorous enforcement of the trade laws. Hallowell’s house was also wrecked and his papers (containing written records relevant to enforcement of the British regulations) carried away.

Mackintosh now united two sectors of the mob, and marched on to the
pièce de résistance
of the evening: the home of Thomas Hutchinson. Before the 26th, several opportunities had been given to Hutchinson by the liberals to deny his complicity in passing the Stamp Act. But Hutchinson stood on his offended dignity and repeatedly refused to make the denial. Even on the day
of the 26th, Hutchinson was given a final opportunity to deny the charge, but he refused to do so. The people could only interpret the lieutenant governor’s lofty silence as assent; so they proceeded to wreck his house with a zeal and thoroughness surpassing their ardent work of the night of August 14.

The attack on the home of Thomas Hutchinson served to polarize the political conflict in Massachusetts. It was one thing to use the mob to put the fear of God into the stamp distributor and the customs collector; no one, after all, could sympathize with these bureaucrats but their own families. But an attack upon Hutchinson was a different story. Hutchinson was the nucleus and the leader of the small but powerful clique of oligarchs who were privileged by the royal government. An attack against him could only be interpreted as an attack upon the clique as a whole. The struggle against Great Britain had now become, as a corollary, a domestic struggle as well. And this was not surprising, since the domestic ruling clique governed as a creature of the Crown.