Smuggler Nation (9 page)

Figure 2.3 “The Bostonians Paying the Excise-Man or Tarring & Feathering,” London, 1774 (John Carter Brown Library, Brown University).

As conditions continued to deteriorate in 1774, the focus of British customs activity in the colonies shifted from collecting revenue to interdicting war supplies, particularly Dutch gunpowder. A Royal proclamation in October 1774 banned the sale of arms and ammunition. Some customs collectors reported that colonists were already stocking up on gunpowder and other war supplies, with the Dutch island of St. Eustatius suspected as the conduit.
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In this sense, the War of Independence actually began in the form of smuggling long before the first shots were fired at Lexington and Concord in April 1775. Indeed, for months up to that point the only instructions London sent to an anxious General Thomas Gage and his troops holed up in Boston were to interdict smuggled arms from Europe.
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Gage warned London that many colonists were “sending to Europe for all kinds of Military Stores.” Moreover, some British traders were ignoring the prohibitions and clandestinely shipping munitions to the Americans.
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In November 1775, Parliament extended the embargo to all trade with the colonies by passing the American Prohibitory Act. All American commerce would now be considered a violation of the British naval blockade and subject to seizure. As a powerful symbol of having reached a point of no return, in 1776 a mob of New Yorkers tore down the equestrian statue of King George III at Bowling Green, melting it down to make more than forty-two thousand bullets. Tory loyalists rescued fragments of the statue and somehow managed to smuggle the head back to England.
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THERE WERE MANY COLONIAL
grievances leading to armed rebellion against British rule, but grievances related to customs enforcement and the crackdown on smuggling were certainly high on the list. The passage in the 1776 Declaration of Independence denouncing the king for having “erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither
swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance” clearly refers to the activities of customs officials. Another passage denounces King George III “For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world.” How appropriate, then, that John Hancock, the wealthy Boston merchant-smuggler who so brazenly challenged British customs authority, was the first to sign the declaration.
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“A smuggler and a Whig [an opponent of England]” are first cousins, wrote Loyalist Daniel Leonard under the pseudonym “Massachussettensis” in early January 1775, “the offspring of two sisters, avarice and ambition.… The smuggler received protection from the whig, and he in his turn received support from the smuggler.”
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On the eve of the Revolution, an American merchant in London commented that the British colonies in North America had finally been unified “from no object of a more respectable cast than that of a successful practice in illicit trade, I say contrived, prompted and promoted by a confederacy of smugglers in Boston, Rhode Island, and other seaport towns on that coast.”
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Britain’s newfound enthusiasm for rigorously enforcing its trade laws, which had also brought with it widespread abuses, politicized colonial smuggling, so much so that it became a patriotic cause. To be sure, smuggling was about trade and economic interests, but the British crackdown transformed it into something much bigger. It came to symbolize political defiance of overbearing and abusive imperial authority, and as such it served as a unifying and mobilizing force. Economic interests and political ideology converged.

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The Smuggling War of Independence

A RAGTAG FORCE OF
colonial rebels went to war against the world’s greatest military power. As the American General William Moultrie wrote in his memoirs of the Revolution, the colonists rebelled “without money; without arms; without ammunition; no generals; no armies; no admirals; and no fleets; this was our situation when the contest began.”
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No wonder, then, the British had such smug confidence that their overwhelming military superiority would quickly and easily put down the American rebellion. Indeed, at first glance the insurgency should have been short-lived.

It did not turn out that way. Why not? Smuggling is a crucial part of the answer. In other words, illicit trade not only contributed to the outbreak of the American Revolution; it also played a decisive role in the conduct and outcome. While at times subverting the Revolution by prioritizing profits over patriotism, illicit traders defying Britain’s wartime embargo ultimately proved to be essential to its success. Colonial smugglers put their clandestine transportation methods, skills, and networks to good use supplying the insurgency. Part of this simply involved building on previously well-established illicit trading relationships, such as in the West Indies. But it also involved fostering new commercial connections directly with Northern Europe, such as France and Sweden—no easy task in wartime.
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From the very start, the Continental Army was in desperate need of clothes, arms, ammunition, food, and other supplies; with the single exception of food, all required large-scale imports from abroad in violation of the British blockade. This was especially important in the years before France formally entered the war in 1778 (followed by Spain in 1779, and Holland in 1781), tipping the military balance. Most crucial was gunpowder: “the want of powder was a very serious consideration for us,” recounted General Moultrie, “we knew there was none to be had upon the continent of America.”
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Indeed, there were no powder mills operating in the colonies when the war started.
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Virtually all of the gunpowder used by the colonists in the first two and a half years of the war had to be smuggled in, mostly via the West Indies.
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Most of these military supplies were exchanged for colonial products, including cod, lumber, flour, tobacco, and indigo. Victory on the battlefield hinged on success in the world of smuggling. More than one hundred ships reportedly smuggled in supplies during this time period, evading the British warships attempting to blockade the Atlantic coast.
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Smuggled gunpowder trickled in ever so slowly. The situation was especially bleak by the end of 1775. On Christmas Day, George Washington wrote: “Our want of powder is inconceivable. A daily waste and no supply administers a gloomy prospect.”
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Some have argued that if in mid-January 1776 the British had known about the extreme scarcity of gunpowder, they “could have marched out to Cambridge and crushed the newly recruited colonial army” and “thus the revolution would have ended.”
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The British withdrew from Boston in March 1776, unaware of the anemic condition of the colonial forces. At one point, a thirteen-mile-long chain of colonial sentries around Boston did not have even an ounce of gunpowder.
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There was also a shortage of arms, including muskets, cannon, pistols, and bayonets. But unlike gunpowder, which had to be perpetually replenished, the arms supply was cumulative, and so dependence on smuggling channels declined over time. The same was not true of other military-related supplies, however, such as tent materials, clothing, shoes, and blankets, which wore out more quickly, creating chronic shortages throughout the war.
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Patriots and Profiteers

Wartime smuggling blurred the line between patriot and profiteer. Smuggling was both essential to the revolutionary war effort and profitable for the well-placed and well-connected. Some illicit traders sold smuggled gunpowder and other supplies to the Continental Army at highly inflated prices. The Brown brothers in Providence, for instance, were especially well positioned to profit from the war. Their wartime business ventures included organizing “powder voyages” to France, Holland, and Spain.
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One account of the Brown family history describes the Revolution as a “personal bonanza” for John Brown, who allegedly emerged from the war as the richest man in Rhode Island.
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In one deal, he offered a shipment of smuggled pistol powder to colonial forces at a substantial markup. Desperate for the supplies, Stephen Moylan replied on behalf of George Washington: “The General will take it, though it is a most exorbitant price.”
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General Washington denounced such war profiteering, at one point declaring, “There is such a thirst for gain, and such infamous advantages taken to forestall, and engross those Articles which the Army cannot do without, thereby enhancing the cost of them to the public fifty or a hundred pr. Ct., that it is enough to make one curse their own Species, for possessing so little virtue and patriotism.”
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He urged that merchants should “not take an undue advantage of the Distresses of their Country, so as to exact an unreasonable Price.”
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Nevertheless, with the colonies sometimes competing with each other for scarce provisions, smugglers could not resist inflating prices and selling to the highest bidder.
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For instance, Elias Hasket Derby of Salem acknowledged in 1776 that 100 percent profits could be made on imported items such as gunpowder, cotton, cocoa, and sugar, and that 150 percent above normal prices was “more than common” on linens and paper.
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For all the patriotic fervor of the American Revolution, more base economic opportunism was also at work in keeping both civilians and rebel soldiers supplied. And even though they were supplying the Continental Army, smugglers also used this as a cover and opportunity to bring in high-value civilian goods: private trade piggybacked on supply ships restricted by contract only for military purposes.
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This was a form of “smuggling within smuggling,” often involving clandestine
importation of consumer luxury goods that served no military purpose but were in high demand.

Military dependence on smuggling necessitated dispatching brokers abroad to arrange secret shipments. Maryland, Georgia, and Pennsylvania all sent commercial agents to the West Indies to arrange for the transshipment of European supplies.
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Congress also deployed its own agents. For instance, Oliver Pollock, a New Orleans—based merchant, smuggled in Spanish supplies to western outposts and the southern backcountry via Louisiana and the Mississippi River. Congress also sent William Hodge to Europe to covertly acquire munitions from various firms.
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By the end of 1776, Congress had created a web of American commercial agents linking Dutch and French ports to the colonies via the West Indies.

In the spring of 1775, Benjamin Franklin quietly began negotiating with merchants in England, France, and Holland to secure shipments of munitions.
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Foreign merchants were more-than-willing business accomplices so long as the British blockade remained sufficiently porous.
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As historian Neil York writes, “merchants in France, the Dutch Republic, Spain, Sweden, and the West Indies viewed the revolution as an opportunity for expanding their commerce and profits. Though the governments of these countries and their dependencies avoided direct complicity, they seldom interfered with entrepreneurs involved in contraband trade. Some merchants were permitted to remove ‘outmoded’ arms from royal arsenals for a nominal sum even though their destination was obvious. Dutch arms makers were operating their mills at full capacity by mid-1776.”
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Some especially energetic European merchants traveled to the colonies to make deals in person for smuggled military supplies. In one early case, the directors of a leading Nantes shipping company traveled to visit General Washington at his Cambridge headquarters in late 1775, and by the following November they were covertly supplying thousands of dollars’ worth of war supplies.
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The most successful American commercial agent was Silas Deane from Connecticut, dispatched by the Continental Congress to Paris in July 1776 to covertly procure arms and other war supplies.
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Posing as a Bermuda merchant, he collaborated with Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, the head of a bogus mercantile firm—Roderigue Hortalez and Company—set up to obscure French government
complicity. France was willing to help the American cause, but this had to be handled clandestinely and at arm’s length until the French formally entered the war. Supplying the American colonies was considered contraband and a violation of neutrality under international maritime law.
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