Conceived in Liberty (189 page)

Here was a grievous threat indeed to the merchants of America. The East India Company could now employ its monopoly power to cut prices even below smuggling prices, and to arrogate the entire American tea trade to a new vast network of its own agents, branches, and favored merchants. New York and Philadelphia merchants, in particular, feared imminent ruin of their flourishing trade in smuggled Dutch tea. But the fears of American merchants were hardly confined to tea; they knew full well that the East India Company imported into England vast quantities of other commodities: silks, calicoes, spices, chinaware, etc. And if now the East India Company were to take over the American tea business, could these commodities be far behind? Indeed, such a scheme was already being proposed to England by the Tory merchant of Philadelphia, Thomas Wharton. Philadelphia had already had bitter experience with East India Company machinations in other commodities than tea. In 1771, when chinaware first began to be manufactured successfully in Philadelphia, the East India Company—monopoly importers of chinaware into England—managed to manipulate the price to fall by one-fourth in order to destroy its newfound American competition.

It is the curious position of some historians that to focus on mercantile opposition to the East India monopoly means to charge such hostility to the
Tea Act with lacking principle, with being confined to economic self-interests, and with lacking the support of the bulk of the people. On the contrary, there is no necessary contradiction between political principle and economic self-interest. Opposition to a governmentally privileged monopoly is itself a high principle, which can be and was upheld by the American populace as well as by the merchants. The fact that the competing merchants would also have been driven to the wall by the East India monopoly was certainly a compelling reason for mercantile opposition to the Tea Act; but it did not conflict with the libertarian principles that generally animated American opinion. Quite the opposite. Defense of one’s property and commerce against a privileged monopoly is
required
by libertarian principle. Liberty
implies
property rights and free trade; it does not contradict them.
*

Another vital factor in the colonists’ opposition to the East India invasion was their horror at the brutal and rapacious record of East India Company government in Bengal—its depredations, monopoly, and ruinous taxation—a record that had led directly to the disastrous Bengal famine of 1769—71. One of the most terrible famines in history, it killed millions, eradicating a full one-third of the population of Bengal. The specter of that famine and of the East India Company tyranny that had brought it about was in the minds of the American people as they confronted the prospect of the East India Company extending its tentacles to America. This horror at the record of the East India Company was expressed most forcefully and eloquently in the widely circulated pamphlet of Pennsylvania’s eminent liberal leader, John Dickinson:

Their [the East India Company’s] conduct in Asia, for some years past, has given ample proof, how little they regard the laws of nations, the rights, liberties, or lives of men. They have levied war, excited rebellions, dethroned princes, and sacrificed millions for the sake of gain. The revenue of mighty kingdoms have centered in their coffers. And these not being sufficient to glut their avarice, they have, by the most unparalleled barbarities, extortions and monopolies, stripped the miserable inhabitants of their property, and reduced whole provinces to indigence and ruin. Fifteen hundred thousand... perished by famine in one year, not because the earth denied its fruits,
but this company and its servants engrossed all the necessaries of life, and set them at so high a rate, that the poor could not purchase them. Thus having drained the sources of that immense wealth... they now, it seems, cast their eyes to America, as a new threat, whereon to exercise their talents of rapine, oppression and cruelty. The monopoly of tea is, I dare say, but a small part of the plan they have formed to strip us of our property.

In coming to the aid of the near bankrupt East India Company, the British government did not neglect its
quid pro quo.
In two companion acts to the Tea Act, it took care to grant itself control of East India affairs and patronage. Thus, the top governors of India were now to be named by the government. This takeover, too, had grave repercussions in the colonies. For this involved a violation of the East India Company charter by Great Britain, and the Americans feared nothing more than a threat of tampering with their precious colonial charters. Yet here was clear precedent for large-scale intervention.

American opposition, particularly New York opposition, to the new tea policy was whipped up by the brilliant theoretician of the Rockingham Whigs, Edmund Burke. Burke was appointed New York’s London agent in late 1770 and his correspondence had great influence in forming opinion in that colony. Opposed to the record of the East India Company and especially to the Crown’s takeover, Burke bitterly attacked the King’s Friends and the Tories who were behind the Tea Act. He urged Americans to resist, pledging the full support of the English Whigs in that effort.

*
The East India Company lost money in Bengal, but the company bureaucrats there were able to garner large personal fortunes by plundering the natives.

*
Historians as disparate as Robert E. Brown and James Truslow Adams agree in upholding this spurious contradiction. Thus Adams, generally pro-British, sneers at the antimonopoly focus as involving “absolutely no principle,” presumably since defense of one’s economic rights can never be conjoined with high principles. Brown, determinedly anti-British and accepting this fallacious dichotomy, tries oddly and unsuccessfully to assert that the main focus of American opposition to the Tea Act was on the tea tax and not on monopoly. In this way he hopes to salvage democratic principle in what would otherwise be a supposedly narrow, selfish economic ground for American resistance. But his attempt ignores the fact that the tea tax had been quietly on the books since 1767, and that no new tax—or even more rigorous enforcement—was here being imposed. See Brown,
Middle-Class Democracy,
p. 312
n
. Contrast this discussion of the tea crisis with Arthur M. Schlesinger’s in
The Colonial Merchants and the American Revolution,
1763–1776 (New York: Ungar, 1917), pp. 244–51, 262–304.

The first concrete step of the East India Company to invade the American market came at the end of August 1773, and was published in the American press in September. Aiming eventually to construct a factory in Philadelphia and its own warehouse in each of three leading American ports, the company decided to begin by shipping six hundred thousand pounds of tea to a few favored merchants as agents, or consignees, in the four leading ports of America.

The merchants of the four ports quickly mobilized against this threat and were backed by the press and the bulk of the populace. It was clear to the resisters that the best way to meet the tea invasion was in the same way that the hated stamps had been repulsed—by revolutionary mob violence or the threat thereof against the few favored distributors of the commodity. In 1765 the appointed stamp distributors had been “persuaded” by force to resign their posts; now it was the few consignees designated by the company to receive the tea. After securing their resignation, the next step was to prevent the East India tea from landing on American shores. The British government had no idea that the Tea Act would cause any particular stir, much less that violence against its agents, direct or indirect, would be resumed.

Not surprisingly, matters came to a head in Boston. That great center of Anglo-American confrontations faced a British fleet and troops stationed offshore; moreover, it had as governor the flint-hearted Tory Thomas Hutchinson. Opinion had been inflamed against Hutchinson the previous spring when the wily Benjamin Franklin, to ingratiate himself with his employers, the Massachusetts Assembly, secretly sent them old letters of Hutchinson and of his henchman Andrew Oliver expressing Tory views and calling on Britain
for tough policies against the colonies. Sam Adams’ publication of the letters in June polarized the silent conflict between Massachusetts and its governor, and provoked him to be more intransigent than ever. Three of the Boston tea consignees, by no coincidence, turned out to be two sons and a nephew of Hutchinson, in a firm of which the governor himself was a member and probable partner. Hutchinson’s personal interest in East India tea simply strengthened his Tory resolve to give not an inch to the colonists. Thus, whereas the executive officials of the three other colonies, lacking specific instructions to the contrary, were happy to look the other way while mob pressure was put upon the consignees, Hutchinson resolved to back the consignees to the hilt.

On November 3 a Boston mob gathered at the Liberty Tree to witness an expected resignation by the consignees. Thwarted by their refusal, the mob stormed the store of Richard Clarke (Hutchinson’s nephew) and was only driven off after a prolonged struggle by a group of friends of the consignees. Two days later, on November 5 and 6, a Boston Town Meeting was assembled and presided over by John Hancock. The meeting unanimously adopted resolutions demanding that no merchants import any British tea, and appointed a committee including such radical leaders as Sam Adams, William Molineux, and Dr. Joseph Warren to pressure the resignation of the consignees. But the consignees were emboldened by Hutchinson’s support and repeatedly refused to resign. When the tea arrived, they, along with the harassed customs commissioners, took secure refuge with the British troops at Castle William.

With the consignees refusing to resign, stopping the landing of the tea became ever more important to the Americans. Transcending the bounds of Boston, Sam Adams called a joint meeting of the committees of correspondence of the towns of Boston, Roxbury, Brookline, and Cambridge for November 22. The meeting resolved unanimously to prevent the landing and sale of the tea, and the Boston committee was instructed to raise the town to “immediate and effectual opposition.” The Boston Town Meeting, furthermore, was now superseded by the unofficial, flexible, and more powerful revolutionary institution: the “body meeting”—a recurring mass meeting of the body of all inhabitants of Boston and Roxbury, Brookline, and Cambridge.

The first tea ship, the
Dartmouth,
arrived at Boston harbor on November 27; two other East India tea ships followed a few days later. Promptly, two great mass meetings of the “body” met through November 29 and 30, presided over by the eminent merchant Jonathan Williams. The mass meeting adopted unanimously the resolution of Sam Adams that the tea be shipped back by the East India Company and that no duty whatever be paid on the tea. The latter demand represented an advance in American goals. Hutchinson sent the sheriff to disperse the “unlawful” assemblage, but he was hissed down by the meeting. While the consignees discreetly repaired to Castle William, Hutchinson responded to the popular demand by refusing the ships permission
to leave the harbor unless duty were paid. Thus the East India ships were caught between two swords.

On receiving word of the situation from their committees of correspondence, town after town in Massachusetts resolved to back the Boston mass meeting to the hilt, including Cambridge, Brookline, Roxbury, Charlestown, Marblehead, Plymouth, Malden, Gloucester, Lexington, Groton, Newburyport, Lynn, and Medford.

The deadlock at the port could not continue indefinitely. The tea ships’ entry into port made the vessels liable to seizure by the customs officers after twenty days for nonpayment of duty. The rebels were afraid that once the customs officers had the tea, they could land it, sell it secretly to the people, and use the money to pay the salaries of the appointed officials of the colony.

Meanwhile, the Boston Committee of Correspondence provided a military guard on the tea ships to make sure that the tea was not landed in secret. Clearly the tea must be destroyed before its confiscation by customs, and the period of grace for the
Dartmouth
was up on December 17. The last chance for the colonists was therefore on December 16. That day, the 16th, a great mass meeting of the “body” of eight thousand people learned of Hutchinson’s refusal to allow the
Dartmouth
to sail home. The meeting heard the news with great restiveness and anger. Several angry speeches ensued. The prominent merchant John Rowe asked meaningfully: “Who knows how tea will mingle with salt water?” Finally, Sam Adams arose to give the signal that angry words must now give way to deeds: “This meeting can do nothing more to save the country.” Thereupon, a remarkably disciplined ginger group of Sons of Liberty, disguised as Mohawk Indians, rushed to Griffin’s Wharf, boarded all three tea ships, and spent several hours of the night dumping every bit of East India tea into Boston harbor. No other property and no person was at all harmed. This was the famous and electrifying Boston Tea Party. The heroic band of “Mohawks” that defied British armed might numbered over a hundred and represented a cross section of the populace: from leading merchants to farmers, carpenters, and blacksmiths. The band also probably included such prominent radical leaders as the merchants William Molineux and Henry Bass, the engraver Paul Revere, the young clerk and writer James Swan, the old South End gang leader Ebenezer Mackintosh, and the ardent radical theoretician Dr. Thomas Young, who had previously made the first public suggestion for dumping the tea overboard.

The “Mohawks” had done their work well, and Hutchinson soon found that no Americans, whether the Council, grand juries, justices of the peace, sheriffs, or the militia, would help to track down the culprits. Only one witness to the Tea Party was willing to testify—but only if the trial took place in England. John Adams hailed the Tea Party as “an epoch in history” and as “the most magnificent movement” of all the actions of the “patriot” forces before the outbreak of the Revolution.