No More Learning

STRUGGLE WITH THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 28l
Shortly after news of the new tea statute reached Phila-
delphia, the inhabitants met at the State House and adopted
a set of eight resolutions which became the model for
similar votes in other cities. The tea duty was branded as
taxation without representation, and the shipment of teas
by the East India Company was denominated an open at-
tempt to enforce the ministerial plan. Anyone in any wise
countenancing this plan was denounced as "an enemy to
his country. " Finally, a committee was appointed to wait
on the tea consignees and request them to resign. 1 With
some natural reluctance, these latter acquiesced. A second
public meeting was then held, which gave their undivided
voice against the entry of the tea ship upon its arrival at
the custom house and against the landing of the tea. 8
Sometime later, dire threats in the form of broadsides
issued forth to the Delaware pilots, asking them to prevent
the arrival of the tea ship or, if that were impossible, to
give the merchants timely notice of the event. 8 In this
posture affairs remained for the time.
At Boston the course of opposition assumed a somewhat
different aspect because of the peculiar situation of things
at that port. As the seat of the Customs Board and the
apex of the revenue system of the continent, there were,
from the outset, grave possibilities of friction and violence
at Boston, although an executive bent upon conciliation
might have avoided disaster. Governor Hutchinson was
not now such a man, notwithstanding his moderation
during non-importation times and his yielding to the pop-
ular demand in withdrawing the troops after the Massacre.
No doubt he was led to overestimate the influence of the
1 October 16, 1773. Pa. Packet, Oct. 18, 1773.
* Pa. Chron. , Jan. 3, 1774.
* Pa. Mag. , vol. xv, pp. 390-391; Mass. Gas. & Post-Boy, Dec. 13, 1773.
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? 282 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776 ,
conservative elements in the community by reason of the
tranquillity of recent years; * but he had other reasons for
firmness. Among the beneficiaries of the new law at Bos-
ton were his sons, Thomas and Elisha, and his nephew.
Richard Clarke. He himself, as his correspondence shows,
acted as business mentor to his sons; and it is probable that
he was also financially interested in the firm. At any rate,
he was in the habit of writing long letters to William Pal-
mer, the great tea merchant, inquiring about the tea market
at London, ordering shipments of the herb for the firm, and
dickering about the prices and quality of the teas sent. 2
His personal interest in the treatment of the tea, the landing
of which some people in Boston were determined to pre-
vent, could not have been without effect on the bold unyield-
ing course he adopted toward the opposition.
It is not necessary here to recount the oft-repeated tale
of the tea destruction at Boston. The story need not'be re-
told until some skilled detective of historical research has
brought to light such elusive facts as the transactions of the
radicals at the home of Edes, publisher of the Boston Ga-
aette; the whispered conferences of the more radical mer-
1 Thus, Hutchinson wrote to the Directors of the East India Com-
pany, Dec. 19, 1773: "As double the quantity <<f Tea proposed to be
ship'd by Company had been imported in a year and the duty paid
without any disturbance, I flattered myself for several months after I
first heard of the intentions to ship on account of that Company that I
should find no more difficulties than upon Teas [which] have been
ship'd by private merchants. " Mass. Arch. , vol. xxvii. pp. 597-598.
1Mass. Arch. , vol. xxv, pp. 200, 528, 542; vol. xxvii, pp. 203, 206-207,
234, 274, 317, 413, 460, 483. Bancroft was aware of Hutchinson's per-
sonal interest in the sale of the teas: History of U. S. (1876), vol. vi,
pp. 173, 174, 175, 183, 271. Vide also Barry, J. S. , History of Massa-
chusetts (Boston, 1855-1857), vol. ii, p. 467. Governor Hutchinson was
criticised by a speaker in Parliament in 1774 for having permitted his
sons to be appointed consignees. Parliamentary History, vol. xvii, p.
1209. Besides those named, the Boston consignees were Benjamin
Faneuil, Jr. , and Joshua Winslow.
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? STRUGGLE WITH THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 283
chants in their counting-rooms; the infinite craft and re-
sourcefulness of the deus ex machina, Sam Adams. Adams
had his long awaited opportunity. His effort to foster a
continuous discontent throughout the province had failed
of success because it lacked a substantial issue and the
backing of the business classes. The opposition to the East
India Company received a wide support from the mer-
chants; the clear inference from his course of action is that
he designed to utilize this discontent to drive the populace
to extreme measures, thereby to commit the province irre-
vocably to the cause of revolution and independence. 1
Several features of the Boston transactions need to be
noted. 2 From the beginning, the merchants as a class joined
in the popular demand for the resignation of the consignees
and against the landing of the tea. Their vehicle of action
was a legal gathering of the town; further than that the
majority of them, at the beginning, had no desire to go:
popular tumult and the destruction of life and property
were not normally in their program to secure relief from a
commercial grievance. * The^effort. therefore, of the bulk
of the merchant class was, on the one hand, to give effective
Expression to the popular will through t*">>
on the other hand, to restra1n or prevent mob outrages.
They were outmaneuvered by the strategy ftf AHams and
tl1r jjlr1linnrj1 nT Hntrliin]nn
Almost a month before the arrival of the first of the tea-
1 Cf. Hutchinson, op. cit. , vol. iii, pp. 439-440.
1 The principal documents relative to the tea episode may be found in:
Bos. Town Rees. (1770-1777); I M. H. S. Procs. , vol. xiii, pp. 155-183;
vol. xx, pp. 10-17; Col. Soc. Mass. Pubs. , vol. viii, pp. 78-89; Boston
newspapers, Nov. and Dec,; Bos. Com. Cor. Mss. , vol. vi, pp. 452-459.
* Referring to "the greater part of the merchants," Hutchinson wrote
on Nov. 15, 1773: "though ^in general they declare against mobs and
violence, yet they as generally wish the teas may not be imported. "
I M. H. S. Procs. , vol. xiii, p. 165.
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? 284 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
ships, a mob gathered under Liberty Tree to witness the
consignees resign their commissions; and when they found
they were to be cheated out of their performance, they
stormed the store of Richard Clarke & Sons and were
driven off only with great difficulty by the consignees and
their friends. It was this exhibition of violence which ap-
parently convinced the more substantial classes that further
developments should be under the visible authority of the
town meeting. Accordingly, two days later, on November
5 and 6, a town meeting assembled over which John Han-
cock presided as moderator. The four hundred tradesmen
among those present took occasion to disavow unanimously
their authorship of a handbill, thrown about Faneuil Hall,
which accused the merchants of fomenting discontent for
purposes of self-aggrandizement. The meeting adopted the
Philadelphia resolutions and further voted their expecta-
tion that no merchant should thereafter import any dutied
tea. A committee of the body was appointed to secure the
resignation of the consignees; but those gentlemen declined
to comply, upon the ground that they did not yet know
what obligations, moral or pecuniary, they were under to
fulfil their trust. On the seventeenth, the mob once more
took matters into its own hands and attacked the home of
Richard Clarke with bricks and stones. Again the town
meeting was quickly summoned, with Hancock in the
chair; but demands upon the consignees only brought the
response that advices from England now informed them
that their friends there had entered into engagements in
their behalf which put it out of their power to resign.
Adams now called into being a new agency of the pop-
ular will, which was destined to supplant the merchant-
controlled town meeting and which was the natural fruit-
age of the committee of correspondence system. This was
a joint meeting of the committees of Boston, Dorchester,
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? STRUGGLE WITH THE EAST INDIA COMPANY
285
Roxbury, Brookline and Cambridge, representing a largely
rural and therefore less conservative constituency than the
Boston committee alone. This new body, meeting on No-
vember 22, resolved unanimously " to use their Joint influ-
ence to prevent the Landing and Sale of the Teas . . . ,"
and the Boston committee was instructed to arouse all the
towns to an " immediate and effectual opposition. "
The first tea ship, the Dartmouth, made its appearance
in the harbor on Saturday, November 27, the other two
arriving some days later. This was the signal for the next
progressive step in the development of the radical organ-
ization-- a meeting of all the inhabitants of the towns
represented in the joint committee. It was this irrespon-
sible mass-gathering of inhabitants of Boston and the
nearby towns that now assumed direction of events, the
town meeting being entirely superseded. 1 The mass meet-
ing sat th1oug'fl Monday and Tllfgdayand, because of great
numbers, adjourned from Faneuil Hall to Old South Meet-
ing House. 2 One of the very first votes was a unanimous
resolution fh^t the tea, shipped by the East India Company
"shall nn^ only h<. spnf back but that no duty shall be paid
thereon," and this was later supplemented by a vote apply-
1 " Massachusettensis," writing in the Mass. Gas. & Post-Boy, Jan. 2,
I775. remarked on this supplanting of the town meeting, observing
that: "A body meeting has great advantages over a town-meeting, as
no law has yet ascertained the qualification of the voters; each person
present, of whatever age, estate or country, may . . . speak or vote at
such an assembly; and that might serve as a skreen to the town where
it originated, in case of any disastrous consequence. "
* " A more determined spirit was conspicuous in this body than in
any of the former assemblies of the people. It was composed of the
lowest as well, and probably in as great proportions, as of the superior
ranks and orders, and all had an equal voice. No eccentric or irreg-
ular motions, however, were suffered to take place. All seemed to
T1ave been the plan of but few, it may be, of a single person. " Hutch-
inson, Mass. Bay, vol. iii, p. 433.
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? 286 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
ing the same principles to private shipments of tea. These
r,esolye^*? Q? ^lit1it^ ti1c t1ltiimituiii of tl1p ra. dica. ls. who
were_now clearly in the ascendant: the town meeting-
never gone bevond the f^anH ^f- ffrf tr>
turned unladen. Henceforth the destruction of the tea was
1nevitable, unless Hutchinson should weaken. The gover-
nor gave no indications of a faltering resolution, for the
sheriff in his name confronted the assemblage with a proc-
lamation commanding them "to disperse and to surcease
all further unlawful proceedings;" but the only effect was
to arouse "a loud and very general hiss. " The meeting
carried on negotiations with the consignees, and with Rotch,
owner of the Dartmouth, but failed to secure satisfactory
concessions. The meeting adjourned after establishing
watches for th^Dartmouth and the other tea ships as they
should arrive. Copies of the transactions were sent to
Philadelphia and New York.
The excitement at Boston prompted the committees of
correspondence in other towns of the province to secure the
passage of resolutions, pledging their support to Boston and
decreeing the non-importation of dutied teas. 1
Monday, December 1 3, arrived -- the seventeenth day
after the arrival of the Dartmouth; and Rotch still lin-
gered in his preparations to send the vessel to sea. The
situation had become somewhat complicated through the
fact that the vessel had been entered at the custom house in
order to unload drygoods and other merchandise belonging
to the merchants. 2 Under a statute of William III, this
entry made the vessel liable to seizure at the end of twenty
1 From Nov. 26 to Dec. 16, the following towns acted, in the order
named: Cambridge, Brookline, Roxbury, Charlestown, Marblehead,
Plymouth, Ma1den, Gloucester, Lexington, Groton, Newburyport, Lynn.
and Mcdford. Bos. Com. Cor. Mss. , vols. vi and vii, passim.
1 Hutchinson, op. cit. , voL iii, p. 430 n. ; Pa. Mag. , vol. xiv, p. 36.
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? STRUGGLE WITH THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 387
days by the customs officers for the non-payment of duties.
Affairs had reached a critical stage. On Tuesday afternoon
the mass meeting again assembled and "enjoined" Rotch
to demand a clearance for his ship at the custom house.
The plan was that, in case of refusal, he should enter a pro-
test, and then, securing a permit from the governor, pro-
ceed to sea. Accompanied by a committee of ten, Rotch
made the demand, but the customs collector refused an
answer until he had had time to consult with his colleagues.
Thursday was the last of the twenty-day period; and early
in the morning the country people began to pour into town
by the fifties and the hundreds. Almost eight thousand
people attended the meeting which was to hear the outcome
of the conference. Greatest impatience was manifested
when they were told that a clearance had been refused while
the dutiable articles remained on board. Rotch was or-
dered upon his peril to enter a protest and to demand of the
governor a permit for his ship to pass the Castle.
Hutchinson, meantime, had not been idle. 1 He had re-
newed in writing the orders which used to be given to the
commander of the Castle to allow no vessel to pass the
fortress without a permit; and a number of guns were
loaded in anticipation of trouble. Fearing that the vessel
might try to escape through a different channel, two war-
ships, which had been laid up for the winter, were, at his
request, sent to guard the passages out of the harbor. Was
it a portent that, on the very day the storm broke, the
armed brig Gaspee should arrive from Rhode Island for
action? When Rotch made his request of Hutchinson, the
governor, feeling his mastery of the situation, replied that
he " could not give a pass till the ship was cleared by the
1 Hutchinson's own account to Hillsborough; Mass. Arch. , vol. xxvii,
pp. 586-587.
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? 288 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
Custom-House. " l The waiting assemblage learned the
news with greatest exasperation. There were angry
speeches in the flickering candle-light. Then Sam Adams
arose to his feet and pronounced clearly the talismanic
words: "This meeting can do nothing more to save the
country. " There was an answering war-whoop out of
doors; and a disciplined mob, disguised as Mohawk In-
dians, hastened to the wharf, and with great expedition
dumped into the harbor not only the tea on board the Dart-
mouth but also that on board the other two ships. No
other property was injured; no person was harmed; no tea
was allowed to be carried away; and a great crowd on the
shore looked quietly on.
The mob that worked silently and systematically that
night was evidently no ordinary one. Exhaustive research
many years later brought forth a list of participants; but.
as very few of the men ever cared to avow their connection
with the lawless undertaking, the identity of the persons
will never definitely be known. 2 However, it is evident that
1 " His granting a pass to a vessel which had not been cleared at the
custom-house, would have been a direct violation of his oath, by mak-
ing himself an accessary in the breach of those laws which he had
sworn to observe. " Hutchinson, op. cit. , vol. iii, pp. 436-437. This is
the best defense of Hutchinson's action. Vide also Hutchinson, Diary
and Letters of Thomas Hutchinson, vol. i, pp. 103-104; Maw. Arch. ,
vol. xxvii, p. 611. Nevertheless, in the preliminary weeks Hutchinson
had every opportunity, through his personal relations with the tea
consignees, to prevent the situation from reaching such an acute
stage. Had the public mind been less inflamed, the merchants as a
class would never have lent their support to the act of destruction. In
view of the dire consequences, which Hutchinson might very well have
foreseen, it would appear that he should have stretched his discretion-
ary powers to the point of permitting Rotch to depart without clear-
ance. In this connection it is worth noting that Lord Mahon in his
History of England (Boston, 1853-1854), vol. vi, p. 2, thought that
Hutchinson was "perhaps unwise" in refusing the permit.
1 Vide Drake, Tea Leaves. Cf. Pierce, E. L. , "Recollections as a
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? STRUGGLE WITH THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 2
the better class of citizens toiM fjjfjr h
ters, masons, farmers, blacksmith^ qnd harpers- T^kp names
of fifteen merchants, pf the more radical stamp, including
William Molineux and Henry Bass, have been included in
the list; and it is known that Lendall Pitts, brother to John
Pitts, the selectman, had charge of one portion of the mob.
John Hancock was probably speaking the truth when he
disclaimed all knowledge of any detail of the tea destruc-
tion. 1 But it is clear that many merchants, who went into
the movement against the East India Company with the in-
tention of resorting only to peaceful opposition, were swept
by the surge of popular feeling into measures of which
their best judgment disapproved. 2 Two days after the tea
affair, Governor Hutchinson described in some amazement
the apparent callousness of the public toward the destruc-
tion of ? 15,000 of property belonging to the English com-
pany. The Stamp Act riots had excited horror and pity,
he declared, because the great loss fell upon two or three
individuals; but now no pity was expressed for " so great
Source of History," 2 M. H. S. Procs. , vol. x, pp. 473-480. Drake's list
includes 11 1 names. Contemporary accounts fixed the number of par-
ticipants variously from 50 to 200. Hutchinson said: "So many of the
actors and abettors were universally known, that a proclamation, with
a reward for discovery, would have been ridiculed. " Mass. Bay, vol.
iii, p. 439. Edes, at whose house the "Indians" rested in waiting, was,
according to his son, the only person who had a complete list of par-
ticipants; and after his death the list was taken, it would appear, by
the merchant, Benjamin Austin, as a paper whose contents he wished
not to be publicly known. Thereafter it disappeared. 1 M. H. S. Procs. ,
vol. xii, pp. 174-176.
1 Brown, John Hancock His Book, p. 178. Loyalist contemporaries
claimed insistently that he was one of the mob.
1 Hutchinson wrote shortly after the tea destruction: "All this time
nobody suspected they would suffer the tea to be destroyed, there being
so many men of property active at their meetings, as Hancock, Phillips,
Rowe, Dennie, and others, besides the selectmen and the town clerk
who was clerk of all the meetings. " / M. H. S. Procs. , vol. xiii, p. 170.
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? 290
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
a body as the East India Company; it is said to be a loss
which will never be felt. " *
At Philadelphia, the eventful day arrived some days later
than at Boston. In the weeks following the public resolu-
tions of October 16 there had, seemed for a time serious
danger that the workingrnpfl of Philadelphia would Sep-
arate thetncglwc frnm faf. ftppo^tirm tn, th>> Fagt JnrHa
because of the unreasonablv high prices which
demandfT frr *u" gtnnt;c1~< *"" Early
in December, however, a committee of investigation was
appointed by the inhabitants; and, after some difficulty,
they succeeded in forcing the price of tea down to a level
of six shillings a pound. 2 This allayed the mutterings. On
Saturday evening, December 25, it was learned that the
tea ship, commanded by Captain Ayres, had arrived at
Chester; and armed by this forewarning, the vessel was
stopped the next day at Gloucester Point, about four miles
from the city. 8 Captain Ayres, being brought ashore, was
made acquainted with the feeling of the townsmen; and he
promised that he would go to sea when the people had so
expressed themselves in public meeting. Upon Monday,
eight thousand people of all ranks assembled in the Square,
and in spirited resolutions directed Captain Ayres not to
enter the vessel at the custom house but to depart imme-
diately for England. So it came about that, within six days
after the tea ship entered the Capes, she was on her way
out again with her cargo undisturbed. By preventing entry
1 Mass. Arch. , voL xxvii, p. 594. A fourth tea-ship, not yet arrived,
was cast ashore on the back of Cape Cod by a storm about this time.
Ibid. , p. 587.
? Fa. Gas. , Dec. 8, 1773; also Pa. Chron. , Dec 13.
* The principal documents relative to the tea episode in Philadelphia
may be found in Pa. Mag. , vol. xv, pp. 385-30^.
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? STRUGGLE WITH THE EAST INDIA COMPANY
291
at the custom house, the Philadelphians succeeded in avoid-
ing the difficulties which the Bostonians had faced, although
thereby Thomas Wharton found himself deprived tempo-
rarily of the use of a fine chariot which was consigned to
him, and other rrifrrhpnrg had tn ^o without their winter
The public meeting, after voting instructions for Ayres's
guidance, resolved their hearty approval of the destruction
of the tea at Boston. The passage of this resolve awoke
the only discord at the meeting, for the committee, which
had prepared the other resolutions in advance, had rejected
this one by a vote of ten to two. The tenor of the resolu-
tion was contrary to the sentiments of "the substantial
thinking part," and had been carried in open meeting only
through the eloquence of the two advocates and the un-
thinking enthusiasm of the crowd. *
At Ne^y York, as elsewhere, the merchants were active
in stirring up opposition to the East India Company's ship-
ments; but the development of events revealed, more
clearly than elsewhere, th<>
merchants and rafjjrak as to the proper mode of procedure. *
Preparations for the arrival began on November 10, when
a printed notice, signed by " Legion," directed the pilots to
refuse to guide the tea ship into the harbor. As the vessel
was expected sometime in December, a committee of citi-
zens exerted pressure upon the consignees to resign their
1 Pa. Mag. , vol. xiv, pp. 78-79.
1 Wharton to Walpole; Wharton, Letter-Book (Hist. Soc. of Pa. ), pp.
33-34-
* The best accounts of these events are: the narrative by "Brutus"
in N. Y. Gasetteer, May 12, 1774, reprinted in 4 Am. Arch. , vol. i, pp.