39. Conflict in Boston

Meanwhile, during 1768, the British government managed only to stiffen American resistance by its frenzied reaction to the circular letter of Massachusetts. Charles Townshend had died suddenly in early September 1767. The Townshend Acts of course remained; the evil that he did lived after him. The subsequent reshuffle of the cabinet swung the balance of forces sharply to the right, with new power accruing to the followers of the arch-imperialist Duke of Bedford. Townshend’s post as chancellor of the Exchequer was filled by the arch-Tory Frederick Lord North, who also replaced the liberal Conway as leader in the Commons. A critical new post of secretary of state for the colonies—in charge of colonial affairs—was filled by the imperialist Lord Hillsborough, formerly president of the Board of Trade.

Hillsborough reacted in horror to Massachusetts’ circular letter. At the end of April 1768, he countered that mild action with a circular letter of his own, ordering the royal governors to dissolve any colonial assemblies that would dare to endorse the Massachusetts letter. For Massachusetts, Hillsborough ordered special punishment: its cherished Assembly was not to be allowed to meet again until it repudiated its circular letter. Here Hillsborough had been anticipated by Governor Bernard of Massachusetts, who had condemned the circular letter as seditious and dissolved the Assembly in early March.

Lord Hillsborough’s bombshell was issued too hastily on several counts. For one thing, it had been sent without consulting the cabinet, where it was severely denounced by the liberals. But the fat was already in the fire. Second, several of the assemblies had already endorsed the letter by the time Lord Hillsborough’s order was received in America. In any case, Hillsborough’s effrontery was enough to influence Americans once more against British tyranny. The colonies were incensed at this ferocious attack on their elementary right to petition, something enjoyed even by the slaves in America. Even someone as conservative as George Washington began to think of taking up arms in defense of American liberty.

Repression had only lit the spark of resistance in America. Colony after colony rushed to commend the Massachusetts circular letter. The spirit of resistance even stirred in Pennsylvania, although here Joseph Galloway was able to table any endorsement of Massachusetts. Massachusetts itself stood firm; Otis demanded that Britain promptly rescind its actions. The Massachusetts Assembly on June 30 defeated the royal order to rescind by the overwhelming vote of 92 to 17. The Assembly was then promptly dissolved by Governor Bernard. Throughout America the “glorious 92” were hailed as heroes of American liberty, while the seventeen rescinders were condemned as traitors and tools of Great Britain. Of the seventeen, twelve had been appointed officials under the royal governor. The town of Marblehead, Massachusetts, in unanimously voting to thank the ninety-two, trenchantly warned that the British were seriously miscalculating in thinking of the resistance as the product only of a minority faction rather than of the bulk of the people. The radical Massachusetts engraver, Paul Revere, depicted the seventeen in an influential cartoon as marching into hell. Sam Adams and the Sons of Liberty mobilized against the rescinders, and no less than twelve of them lost their seats in the elections of the following May.

Meanwhile, Boston was being particularly scourged by the presence of the new Board of Commissioners of the Customs, which began operations at the end of 1767. The customs board soon found to its horror that salutary neglect had indeed been in operation: violation of the imperial trade laws was rampant. Only six seizures of shipping had been made in New England since 1765; and of these violations, only one court case had been won by the Crown. Of the five other cases, two had been acquitted in Rhode Island under severe public pressure, and the three other ships in Massachusetts and Connecticut had been rescued by mobs.

The customs board swiftly and radically transformed the customs service. The old customs officials, who had settled into a mutually pleasant and profitable arrangement with the merchants, were dismissed and replaced by eager and unfortunately incorruptible Scotsmen. The new bureaucracy, led by a network of paid informers, swept down upon ships and managed to suppress the bulk of smuggling, and hence of shipping, in Boston. Boston’s economic depression was thereby greatly intensified. The board did not succeed in suppressing smuggling, and hence shipping, in the other ports, but Boston was seriously crippled. The Massachusetts merchants were understandably embittered; and the customs commissioners were denounced as robbers, miscreants, and “bloodsuckers upon our trade.”

Confronted with the oppression of customs and of Navigation Acts enforcement, the people of the colonies, especially in the northern seaports, were forced to turn once again to their most powerful weapon: rebellion in the streets. The armed rioting was directed against the oppression of the customs officials. First, ships and cargoes were recaptured from the clutches of the government, under cover of night; second, as a supplement, stern warnings were issued to customs officials and their hired informers. Throughout 1768 and 1769, stripping, tarring, and feathering by mobs proved to be highly useful devices for intimidating the enemies of the people. Informers quickly learned a valuable lesson and abandoned their underhanded profession, while customs officials promptly fled the colony. Despite arrogant demands by the governors, local sheriffs and magistrates happily refused to do anything to stop the people’s resistance. And even when officials were foolhardy enough to track down the mob leaders and bring suit, the sympathetic juries invariably freed the resistance leaders. Prosecution of rebel leaders could only take place in common-law courts, and here juries were eager to protect their heroes.

The customs commissioners, like Lord Hillsborough and most of the British officialdom, were nothing if not hard-line scorners of any “appeasement” of the colonies. In this they were aided by the arrival of a British man-of-war sent in answer to their request for armed help. The consequence, each step of the way, was to inflame and redouble the popular resistance. The customs board decided to repress the resistance by concentrating on and crucifying a man who was the leading financial angel of the Massachusetts radicals: John Hancock. Hancock, one of the wealthiest merchants in New England, symbolized the popular struggle. He had refused to lead a parade in honor of the commissioners’ arrival, and had snubbed them socially. More important, he had early and energetically announced in the Assembly that he would not permit any customs officials to board any of his ships.

The first skirmish between the commissioners and John Hancock came in April 1768. He refused to let customs officials search his ship Lydia, and backed up this refusal with the presence of himself and numerous followers. The commissioners tried to bypass a jury trial in prosecuting Hancock, but the attorney general of Massachusetts ruled for Hancock and was upheld by the Treasury in England. Thwarted here, the board struck again on June 10: seizing Hancock’s sloop Liberty in Boston harbor for loading without a license, a regulation hitherto unenforced. Knowing that for months no seized vessel in New England had gone unrescued by the people, the customs men towed the Liberty out close to the British man-of-war Romney.

To the people of Boston this act of oppression was the last straw. The Townshend taxes, the repression by the commissioners, the attempts by the British navy to impress Bostonians as sailors on the Romney—all fused to provoke mob action to defend their popular leader Hancock. In addition, the new customs regime was hated personally by Americans: one commissioner was the execrated John Robinson, formerly of Rhode Island; another, Charles Paxton, was a friend of Hutchinson and an organizer of the customs board.

It was for Boston the time of the Stamp Act all over again. A mob threatened and set upon the customs officers, stoned their houses, and burned one of their pleasure boats. Leaflets were distributed urging the people to rise and clear the country of the customs officials. The commissioners promptly fled to Castle William and continued their operations from that privileged sanctuary.

Four days after this successful riot, James Otis led a tumultuous town meeting in Boston. The meeting demanded that every British naval commander in Boston be under the orders of the Massachusetts General Court, that the Romney be removed, that the customs board be dissolved, that impressments cease, and that anyone who sought British troops in Boston be branded a traitor and a disturber of the peace.

Impressments, incidentally, had been causing intensified bitterness and opposition in Boston during 1768. A Boston mob attacked boats from the Romney that were impressing fellow townsmen. Sailors were treated as criminals by the press gangs, and conditions and pay were poor on the naval vessels. The vice admiralty court went so far as to acknowledge that Americans who killed a British naval lieutenant during impressment, had killed in justifiable self-defense against an invasion of their persons.

The customs commissioners, it was true, had been driven temporarily out of Boston. But what about the Liberty? Under the protection of the Romney, Hancock’s ship was quickly tried in the vice admiralty court without benefit of jury, and condemned. But this was only the first step in the vindictive plan of the commissioners. The Liberty had been seized on a picayune technicality, but the commissioners were out to get Hancock personally. One of their officials, Thomas Kirk, suddenly changed his story and now told a wild tale of casks of Madeira wine being unloaded from the Liberty without payment of duty. Despite a lack of evidence or corroboration of this testimony, the Crown proceeded to try Hancock and five others for the alleged violation. Hancocok was jailed by the vice admiralty court and his bail set at the huge amount of three thousand pounds sterling. Hancock’s trial was launched at the beginning of November 1768.

British officialdom and the people of Massachusetts were now at the point of armed conflict, a point brought nearer by further requests for British troops to put down the Bostonians. News of the Boston resistance fanned the flames of an aggressive tough-line attitude towards the Americans. Tories thundered that measures must be taken to show “those braggarts their insignificancy in the scale of the empire,” and to reduce the great metropolis of Boston to “a poor smuggling village.” Even Lord Rockingham regarded Boston’s resistance as “most dangerous and offensive.” The fatal decision was made to send four regiments of troops to occupy Boston and to put down its virtual rebellion. Few yet had the courage or insight to call for escaping from Britain’s dilemma by repealing the Townshend Act structure. Still, pro-American opinion among the English public was very much alive, and newspaper articles hailed the American “spirit of liberty” in “struggling against oppression” and unconstitutional coercion, and in fact mentioned that the bulk of the British people were wholehearted believers in the American cause. Furthermore, the eminent Whig Sir George Savile perceptively wrote Rockingham that “it is in the nature of things that [the]... colonies... must assume to themselves the rights of nature and resist those of law; which is rebellion.” And the great Newcastle remonstrated with Rockingham about coercing the colonies: “For my own part, whoever is for it, I must in conscience enter my protest against it; and I hope our friends will well consider before they give in to so destructive a measure.”