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Illustrated Episode · Volume III, chapter 27 · 16 September 1765

Tradesmen defend the stamp master

On a night street lit by hand lanterns, ranks of workmen in aprons and round hats stand holding sticks before a shuttered brick house, all turned toward a far orange glow at the end of the street.
Philadelphia, September 1765. The radicals come to burn the house of stamp distributor John Hughes, and seven or eight hundred tradesmen fill the street to guard it. Rothbard notes whose crowd that is: Joseph Galloway's mass base, the White Oaks and the Hearts of Oak. Confronted, the popular mob settles for burning Hughes in effigy. Chapter 27 of Conceived in Liberty.

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Adapted from Murray N. Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty (Mises Institute, 2011), CC BY 3.0.

What happened

John Hughes was Benjamin Franklin's man in Pennsylvania, the stamp distributor Franklin had recommended from London, and he refused to resign. By mid-September Philadelphia's radicals, led by Samuel Smith and helped by the New York Son of Liberty John Lamb, meant to reduce his house to ashes on the night of 16 September. Hughes wrote Franklin that he was well armed and meant to stand a siege, and that several hundred friends were out in the street. Rothbard puts the number at seven to eight hundred, a gang gathered by Hughes and Joseph Galloway from Galloway's base among the city's tradesmen, the White Oaks and the Hearts of Oak. The governor and city officials, sympathetic to the resistance and hostile to Franklin's party, left town. Facing the crowd in the street, the popular mob contented itself with burning Hughes in effigy. On 5 October, with the stamped paper come and a great crowd at the State House, Hughes gave way and deferred executing the Act. For one night the loyalists' own crowd, not the Sons of Liberty, held the street.

Sources

  1. Murray N. Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty (Mises Institute, 2011 single-volume ed.), vol. III, ch. 27, 'Response in Pennsylvania', pp. 884-885, at p. 884. CC BY 3.0. Rothbard
  2. John Hughes to Benjamin Franklin, 8-17 September 1765, in The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, vol. 12 (Founders Online). The page would not load; the quotes are taken from a search summary of it. Primary source
  3. Joseph Galloway to Benjamin Franklin, [8-14 October 1765?] ('Several of the White Oaks and Hearts of Oak were there ... they all Declared they woud be ready ... J.H. has had a Meeting with them and they are determined to defend him to the Utmost'), as quoted in a search summary; the page was not read. Primary source
  4. Chronicles of America, 'Colonial Houses' (Philadelphia: 2,100 houses in 1750, 3,600 in 1765, almost entirely brick, generally three storeys). Secondary source
  5. Frank Cousins and Phil M. Riley, The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia (Boston, 1920), Project Gutenberg ebook 29334. Secondary source
  6. Carpenters' Hall, Philadelphia, 'Frequently Asked Questions' and 'The Battle for Philadelphia' (the White Oaks as ship carpenters who rescued Franklin); read through a search summary. Secondary source
  7. Search summary of descriptions of colonial Philadelphia (streets unpaved, brick footways inside a row of posts about six feet wide). Secondary source