Murray Rothbard’s history, illustrated
76 paintings of scenes Rothbard tells, set in the order they happened. Open a title for what happened and the sources, or read the book free.
Volume IV to come
☞ Forgotten liberty · § Canonical
30 July 1619
§Canonical. Chapter 3: The Virginia Company
Jamestown, 30 July 1619. In the quire of the timber church, some twenty burgesses stand bareheaded in their pews while the minister prays. Governor Yeardley sits in his chair before them. It is the first representative assembly in America. Rothbard says it came hand in hand with the milder laws, part and parcel of easing the Virginia Company's old tyranny. Chapter 3 of Conceived in Liberty.
1 April 1623
§Canonical. Chapter 18: The Founding of Plymouth Colony
Plymouth, 1623. After years of farming a common field for the company and going hungry, each family has its own plot, and everyone is out setting corn. Bradford wrote that the women, who had pleaded weakness before, now went willingly into the field with their little ones, and it made all hands industrious. Rothbard notes that Bradford had no bias toward individualism. Chapter 18 of Conceived in Liberty.
17 February 1632
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 19: The Founding of Massachusetts Bay
Boston, 17 February 1632. The men of Watertown stand before Governor Winthrop and the assistants and argue that paying a tax laid without their consent would bring them and their children into bondage. Rothbard calls it the first tax strike in America. They were made to sign a retraction, yet that year the freemen won a say over taxes. Chapter 19 of Conceived in Liberty.
28 April 1635
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 8: The Royal Government of Virginia
Jamestown, April 1635. Governor Harvey has just struck a councillor and cried that he arrests him for treason, and now Councillors Utie and Mathews have him by the arms: and we you, they answer. Outside, forty musketeers run for the house. Rothbard calls it the first open rebellion under royal rule, against a governor who taxed exports and sided with a feudal proprietor. Chapter 8 of Conceived in Liberty.
15 January 1636
§Canonical. Chapter 21: Suppressing Heresy: The Flight of Roger Williams
The woods south of Salem, January 1636. Banished by Massachusetts for denying that magistrates may punish belief, Roger Williams trudges alone through deep snow. He is three days ahead of the men sent to seize him, and they will find his house empty. Rothbard says the great flight south from the Bay began with him and ended in Providence, a haven of religious liberty. Chapter 21 of Conceived in Liberty.
26 May 1637
§Canonical. Chapter 27: Joint Action in New England: The Pequot War
First light, 26 May 1637. Inside the Pequot fort at Mystic, Captain John Mason puts a firebrand to a wigwam, and the people asleep inside come out into the lane as the fire spreads. Rothbard counts some six hundred dead within the hour, the bulk of them old men, women and children, and calls surprise attacks the pattern of how whites treated Native peoples. Chapter 27 of Conceived in Liberty.
8 November 1637
§Canonical. Chapter 22: Suppressing Heresy: The Flight of Anne Hutchinson
Newtown, Massachusetts, November 1637. Anne Hutchinson stands alone before Governor Winthrop and the General Court, which has just voted to banish her, and asks one thing: wherefore? Winthrop answers, "Say no more, the court knows wherefore and is satisfied." Rothbard's point is that the court felt no need to justify itself before reason, natural justice or the public, and gave no reason at all. Chapter 22 of Conceived in Liberty.
31 May 1638
§Canonical. Chapter 25: The Planting of Connecticut
Hartford, 31 May 1638. In a log meetinghouse, Thomas Hooker preaches on a verse from Deuteronomy. The foundation of authority, he tells his hearers, is laid in the free consent of the people. A young man takes it down in shorthand. Rothbard calls Hooker scarcely a libertarian and says Connecticut stayed as intolerant as Massachusetts. Yet Hooker largely inspired its Fundamental Orders. Chapter 25 of Conceived in Liberty.
1 August 1640
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 23: The Further Settlement of Rhode Island: The Odyssey of Samuell Gorton
Portsmouth, Aquidneck, 1640. Judge William Coddington is on his feet, crying "You that are for the King, lay hold on Gorton," and Samuell Gorton, gripped by two guards, shouts back, "All you that are for the King, lay hold on Coddington." Rothbard tells how the armed guard won the brawl and Gorton, on trial for defending a servant, was whipped and banished. Chapter 23 of Conceived in Liberty.
1 January 1646
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 39: Governors and Government
In the mid-1640s, on a Sunday morning, Domine Everardus Bogardus is preaching in the stone church inside Fort Amsterdam, and Director Willem Kieft's soldiers beat a drum at the open door and fire the fort's cannon to drown him out. Bogardus preaches on. Rothbard says the minister would not be silenced, and the people stood with him until Kieft had to yield. Chapter 39 of Conceived in Liberty.
1 February 1652
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 24: Rhode Island in the 1650s: Roger Williams' Shift from Liberty
Newport, Aquidneck, early 1652. William Coddington holds a commission to rule the island as a feudal lord, and his court is sitting in his town house when Captain Richard Morris and armed islanders break in and order it to disperse. Rothbard's verdict: it was not easy to impose feudal rule on a free people. Coddington fled to Massachusetts and gave up his claim. Chapter 24 of Conceived in Liberty.
1 January 1656
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 20: The Puritans Purify: Theocracy in Massachusetts
Boston, 1656, as the story goes. Captain Kemble, home from three years at sea, kisses his wife on the doorstep on a Sunday, and for that he sits two hours in the stocks for lewd and unseemly behavior on the Sabbath. Rothbard tells it to show a moral code enforced by law: in Massachusetts even a husband's public kiss was a crime. Chapter 20 of Conceived in Liberty.
20 September 1656
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 12: Maryland
St. John's, Maryland, 20 September 1656. Ordered into the field, Tony, an enslaved man, sits down and will not rise, and his master Symon Overzee stands over him with a switch of pear twigs. Rothbard calls it perhaps the first demonstration of nonviolent resistance in America. Overzee beat him, Tony was dead within hours, and a jury let Overzee go. Chapter 12 of Conceived in Liberty.
20 August 1657
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 41: New Netherland Persecutes the Quakers
Hempstead, Long Island, August 1657. Robert Hodgson, a young Quaker preacher, is hauled out of town roped to the tail of a cart, wrists bound, twelve of Governor Stuyvesant's musketeers around him and two women who sheltered him riding ahead. Rothbard tells how the governor fined him, chained him to a wheelbarrow and had him beaten, and how the persecution failed anyway. Chapter 41 of Conceived in Liberty.
1 January 1660
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 36: The Decline and the Rigors of Plymouth
Sandwich, Plymouth Colony, after 1658. Marshal George Barlow sits in the town stocks, put there by the people he was paid on commission to hunt for heresy, in a town almost wholly Quaker. Rothbard writes that Sandwich resisted him, harassed his family, put him in the stocks, and at last drove him out: a rare victory of a town over the state's own agent. Chapter 36 of Conceived in Liberty.
1 June 1660
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 29: Suppressing Heresy: Massachusetts Persecutes the Quakers
Boston Neck, 1 June 1660, nine in the morning. Mary Dyer walks to the gallows between two drummers and a guard of soldiers, and the drums beat so that none might hear her speak. Rothbard calls her hanging murder for religion and says the Quakers' calm defiance broke the Puritan rulers' bloody laws, and one more Quaker was hanged before the king stopped it. Chapter 29 of Conceived in Liberty.
1 January 1661
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 6: The Social Structure of Virginia: Bondservants and Slaves
York County, Virginia, New Year 1661. In Major Goodwin's yard, the servant Isaac Friend tells the men he will be the first to lead, crying as they go, who is for liberty and free from bondage, and one answers he will be one. Rothbard counts it among the servant revolts that demanded outright freedom; the county court let Friend off with a warning. Chapter 6 of Conceived in Liberty.
2 September 1664
§Canonical. Chapter 42: The Fall and Breakup of New Netherland
Fort Amsterdam, 2 September 1664. English ships lie in the bay, and Colonel Nicolls has sent mild terms. When his burgomasters ask that the letter be read to the people, Peter Stuyvesant tears it to pieces. Nicholas Bayard, a clerk of twenty, gathers the scraps and pieces it back together. Rothbard says the Dutch valued their lives and liberties above a remote patriotism. Chapter 42 of Conceived in Liberty.
1 June 1671
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 43: The Northern Colonies, 1666-1675
Elizabethtown, East Jersey, 1671. Governor Carteret has handed a town lot to a freed servant without asking the town meeting, so the town's leaders tear out his fence and rip the boards off a corner of his house. Rothbard reads it as New Englanders defending their town's rights against a proprietary governor. Carteret could do nothing, and a court fined the leaders. Chapter 43 of Conceived in Liberty.
12 December 1673
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 9: British Mercantilism over Virginia
Surry County, Virginia, 12 December 1673. In the churchyard at Lawnes Creek, fourteen planters declare that they will pay no more of the county levy, and Matthew Swan, their leader, stands on the church step to say it. Rothbard calls it one of the first organized tax refusals in America. Berkeley fined them heavily, then had to remit every fine. Chapter 9 of Conceived in Liberty.
13 July 1675
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 46: King Philip's War
Saybrook, July 1675. Sir Edmund Andros has come ashore with his commission to claim Connecticut for New York while the colony is at war, and Captain Thomas Bull, seventy, answers by reading the colony's protest to his face. Andros calls it a slander and sails away. Rothbard says his bluff was called, and Connecticut kept its self-government. Chapter 46 of Conceived in Liberty.
23 June 1676
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 11: Bacon's Rebellion
Jamestown, June 1676. Governor Berkeley, about seventy, tears open his shirt and dares Nathaniel Bacon's armed men to shoot. Bacon refuses. Minutes later his men aim cocked guns at the lawmakers in the upper window. The commission he came for is his. Rothbard calls Bacon no hero of liberty. Yet he judges the revolt a step toward liberty, even a small American Revolution. Chapter 11 of Conceived in Liberty.
4 December 1677
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 14: The Aftermath of Bacon's Rebellion in the Other Southern Colonies
Albemarle, Carolina, December 1677. Armed planters led by John Culpeper and Valentine Byrd have seized the acting governor, Thomas Miller, and clap him in irons. Rothbard calls it a popular revolt against the man who enforced the hated tobacco tax and locked up George Durant for treason. The rebels then held free elections, and they ran Albemarle for two years. Chapter 14 of Conceived in Liberty.
30 April 1680
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 53: Turmoil in East New Jersey, 1678-1686
Elizabethtown, East Jersey, 30 April 1680. Soldiers sent by Governor Andros of New York break into Philip Carteret's house at midnight, haul him out through a window in his nightshirt, beat him, and carry him off to stand trial in New York. Rothbard says Andros wanted a trade monopoly for his port. A New York jury acquitted Carteret three times over. Chapter 53 of Conceived in Liberty.
1 May 1680
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 54: The Development of West New Jersey
West New Jersey, 1680. A quarrel has walked out to the field where Thomas Olive is plowing, so he halts the oxen, hears both neighbors out, and settles the matter in the furrow with no court in sight. Rothbard calls this Jersey justice, voluntary and peaceful and fast, and in that whole year the colony saw only two or three court actions. Chapter 54 of Conceived in Liberty.
February 1682
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 49: Edward Randolph versus Massachusetts, 1680-1684
Boston, winter 1682. In the General Court, Deputy Governor Thomas Danforth stands almost alone and charges the ministers who want agents sent to the king with treason and betrayal of the colony's liberty. Men on the benches scoff and wave him down, and the Court votes for the agents anyway. Rothbard calls it the critical turn, and Danforth's warning came true. Chapter 49 of Conceived in Liberty.
November 1682
§Canonical. Chapter 55: "The Holy Experiment": The Founding of Pennsylvania, 1681-1690
Under the great elm at Shackamaxon in November 1682, William Penn, hat on his head, takes the hand of a Lenape speaker before the sachem's council. Penn wrote that a chosen speaker rose and took him by the hand in the king's name. Rothbard credits the peace to land bought by agreement and to plain respect: no Quaker blood was ever shed. Chapter 55 of Conceived in Liberty.
27 January 1683
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 48: The Crown Takes Over New Hampshire, 1680-1685
Hampton, New Hampshire, January 1683. Edward Gove rides into town at the head of a dozen armed horsemen, his sword drawn and a trumpet sounding, to raise the colony against Governor Cranfield and his taxes. Nobody else rises, and the Hampton militia arrest the band. Rothbard calls the rising premature, but the fight against Cranfield went on until it broke him. Chapter 48 of Conceived in Liberty.
23 August 1687
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 56: The Dominion of New England
Ipswich, Massachusetts, August 1687. Andros's council has ordered every town to name a commissioner for a new tax, with no assembly asked. In the town meeting the Reverend John Wise tells his neighbors to stand for their privileges, and the whole assembly votes, twice, to refuse. Rothbard says Wise, town clerk John Appleton and four other leaders went to jail for it. Chapter 56 of Conceived in Liberty.
18 April 1689
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 57: The Glorious Revolution in the Northern Colonies, 1689
Boston, 18 April 1689. Captain John Nelson stands at the foot of Fort Hill with the militia at his back and demands the fort and the governor, while Andros looks down from the gate and his redcoats stand with muskets grounded and do not fire. Rothbard calls it a speedy and virtually bloodless revolt: Andros came down and spent a year in jail. Chapter 57 of Conceived in Liberty.
27 July 1689
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 15: The Glorious Revolution and its Aftermath
St. Mary's City, Maryland, 27 July 1689. John Coode and a few hundred armed Protestant Associators march up to the State House, where the deputy governors' men are holed up, and gain its doors and windows. The garrison gives up and walks out with its guns. Rothbard says Coode threw out a tyrannical and feudal proprietary. The win also ended Maryland's old religious toleration. Chapter 15 of Conceived in Liberty.
16 May 1691
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 58: The Glorious Revolution in the Northern Colonies, 1690-1692
New York, 16 May 1691. In a cold drizzle, Jacob Leisler and Jacob Milborne stand on the scaffold before the largest crowd the town has seen, Leisler speaking to people who weep for him. Rothbard says Leisler had ruled like a tax-hungry despot, but the old oligarchy came back thirsting for vengeance, packed the court and hanged them both. Parliament cleared them in 1695. Chapter 58 of Conceived in Liberty.
August 1692
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 59: Aftermath of the 1690s: The Salem Witch Hunt and Stoughton's Rise to Power
In 1692 the Salem witch-hunt is taking neighbors one by one, and the colony's own magistrates are running it. Joseph Putnam, twenty-three, opens his farmhouse to any accused witch and announces, with loaded guns, that anyone who comes to arrest him will come at his own peril. Rothbard counts him among the brave men who literally took their lives in their hands. Chapter 59 of Conceived in Liberty.
August 1692
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 64: Government Returns to Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, summer 1692. Quaker officers carry William Bradford's press and cases of type out of his shop. The printer, under arrest, stands on his own doorstep and watches them go. His crime: he printed the Keithians' paper without a license. Rothbard says the Quaker officials, once the persecuted, had become the persecutors. Chapter 64 of Conceived in Liberty.
July 1700
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 63: The Unification of the Jerseys
Middletown, East Jersey, July 1700. About a hundred Middletown men with clubs stand across the road and face Governor Andrew Hamilton and his armed posse, come to take two rebel leaders. Rothbard says the free men of Monmouth County outnumbered the governor's party six to one, and a compromise followed: the prisoners put up bail, and the revolt in East Jersey went on. Chapter 63 of Conceived in Liberty.
27 June 1705
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 62: Rhode Island and Connecticut after the Glorious Revolution
Newport, Rhode Island, June 1705. Judge Nathaniel Byfield has just declared the colony's privateering commission void. About eighteen Newport men who tried to force a paper on his court follow him out and hoot him down the street. Rothbard cites the scene as Rhode Island's contempt for Governor Dudley's admiralty power, and the colony kept its charter. Chapter 62 of Conceived in Liberty.
April 1712
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 19: Indian War in North Carolina
Fort Barnwell, on the Neuse River, spring 1712. Colonel John Barnwell's men seize Indians who came in trusting a promise of peace, in order to carry them to South Carolina and sell them into slavery. Baron von Graffenried wrote that Barnwell used the pretense of a good peace. Rothbard says this treachery drove the Tuscarora back into war that summer. Chapter 19 of Conceived in Liberty.
July 1715
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 7: New York Land Monopoly
Weiser's Dorf, Schoharie, 1715. When Sheriff Adams rode up from Albany to serve the landlords' demand, the Palatine villagers pulled him off his horse and ran him out of the valley on a fence rail. Rothbard calls them the doughty Germans, defending by force the hard-earned land they had bought from the Mohawks. Chapter 7 of Conceived in Liberty.
21 December 1719
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 23: Proprietary Rule in South Carolina
Charleston, December 1719. Colonel Alexander Parris has his militia present their muskets, and Governor Robert Johnson, who came to break up the muster, is told to stand off. Rothbard calls the revolt a popular revolution by the militia. That same morning Colonel James Moore is sworn in as governor without a shot. Chapter 23 of Conceived in Liberty.
1729
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 18: Slavery in Virginia
Blue Ridge Mountains, 1729. Runaways from a James River plantation, carrying their tools, bedding and a few arms, have begun clearing land in the hills when their owners come up with armed men. Governor Gooch reported a fight in which one slave was wounded. Rothbard stresses that they harmed no one, yet Virginia destroyed their free settlement and sent the survivors back to bondage. Chapter 18 of Conceived in Liberty.
23 April 1734
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 35: Mercantilist Restrictions
Exeter, New Hampshire, April 1734. About thirty woodsmen disguised as Indians burst into Gilman's tavern at nine at night, snuff the candles, and beat the ten men Surveyor General Dunbar hired to seize their timber. Rothbard calls it a pitched battle: the New Hampshire woodsmen lived by cutting pine and refused to let the king reserve their trees. Chapter 35 of Conceived in Liberty.
4 August 1735
§Canonical. Chapter 27: The Communication of Ideas: Postal Service and the Freedom of the Press
New York, 4 August 1735. The jury comes back in ten minutes, and the crowded hall answers with three huzzas as printer John Peter Zenger stands at the bar beside Andrew Hamilton. Rothbard is cooler than the legend: a quarrel between two factions of the landed oligarchy, though it did win truth as a defense and a jury's voice on the law. Chapter 27 of Conceived in Liberty.
September 1737
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 21: Royal Government in North Carolina
Five miles from Edenton, North Carolina, 1737. Five hundred farmers of Bertie and Edgecombe march in arms along the road to free a neighbor they think is jailed over his quitrents. Governor Johnston wrote that they came within five miles of the town. Rothbard shows small landowners resisting his push for heavier quitrents, and in 1741 the Crown sided with them. Chapter 21 of Conceived in Liberty.
9 September 1739
§Canonical. Chapter 22: Slavery in South Carolina
South Carolina, September 1739. Some sixty enslaved men march south on the Pon Pon road behind a captain named Jemmy, a banner raised and two drums beating, crying "Liberty." Their road leads to Spanish Florida, where the Crown has promised freedom to fugitives. Rothbard sees Stono as one front in a guerrilla war for freedom, and the colony answers with terror. Chapter 22 of Conceived in Liberty.
8 November 1739
§Canonical. Chapter 29: The Great Awakening
Philadelphia, November 1739. Night falls on Market Street, and young George Whitefield preaches from the Court House gallery to thousands of silent listeners. Benjamin Franklin stands among them. Rothbard says even the cynical Franklin was greatly impressed by the crowds that Whitefield drew. Chapter 29 of Conceived in Liberty.
1 January 1740
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 10: The Ulster Scots
Worcester, Massachusetts, 1740. By torchlight, English townsmen haul down the raised frame of the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians' new meetinghouse, saw its timbers, and burn what they do not carry off, while the builders watch. Rothbard shows the town forcing the Presbyterians into its own church and taxing them for it; the Scots finally moved west. Chapter 10 of Conceived in Liberty.
30 May 1741
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 8: Slavery in New York
New York, 30 May 1741. Cuffee and Quack stand chained to the stakes with the wood piled around them, after confessing in the hope of a reprieve, but when the sheriff tries to lead them back to the jail, the crowd will not let him. Rothbard likens the frenzy to the Salem witch trials, with torture-driven confessions and a perjured star witness. Chapter 8 of Conceived in Liberty.
1 October 1742
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 12: Pennsylvania: Quakers and Indians
Philadelphia, October 1742. On election day fifty to seventy sailors swing clubs to clear the Quaker voters off the Court House steps, and the Germans and Quakers answer with constables' staffs, driving the sailors into the street. Rothbard says the Quakers won both at the polls and in the streets, staunchly backed by their German allies. Chapter 12 of Conceived in Liberty.
January 1746
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 9: Land Conflicts in New Jersey
Newark, January 1746. Thirty militiamen stand before the county jail while three hundred settlers with clubs, led by Amos Roberts, threaten to kill every one of them if they fire, and not a musket goes off. The crowd breaks in and frees the prisoners. Rothbard treats it as a genuine rebellion against the proprietors' feudal claims, and by 1752 the proprietors gave up. Chapter 9 of Conceived in Liberty.
17 November 1747
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 36: King George's War
Boston, 17 November 1747. A crowd of seamen with cutlasses and clubs marches captured naval officers up to Governor Shirley's door. Shirley draws the officers inside while his son-in-law knocks the hat off the cutlass-armed man who answers him. Rothbard calls it a riot against impressment that worked: Shirley fled to Castle William and the pressed men went free. Chapter 36 of Conceived in Liberty.
April 1755
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 25: Georgia: The "Humanitarian" Colony
Georgia, April 1755. Quaker Edmund Gray leads several hundred followers across the Altamaha River, away from a governor who has called them seditious and thrown their leaders out of the Assembly. Ahead is free land with no government on it. Rothbard admires the band for the free lives they live there. Chapter 25 of Conceived in Liberty.
9 July 1755
§Canonical. Chapter 37: Early Phases of the French and Indian War
On the road to Fort Duquesne, 9 July 1755, General Edward Braddock rides through his bunched regulars while fire pours from the trees, and young George Washington reins in beside him. Rothbard calls the march a grab for Ohio land that the colonists would not supply. A French and Indian force of little more than eight hundred cut the army to ribbons. Chapter 37 of Conceived in Liberty.
5 September 1755
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 38: The Persecution of the Acadians
Grand-Pré, Nova Scotia, 5 September 1755. Four hundred and eighteen Acadian men and boys, called to their church to hear the King's orders, stand before Lieutenant-Colonel John Winslow as he reads that their land and cattle are forfeit and they are to be carried away, while bayonets line the walls. Rothbard says a ruse gathered the men so they could be seized without warning. Chapter 38 of Conceived in Liberty.
28 February 1756
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 13: The Emergence of Benjamin Franklin
Philadelphia, February 1756. Colonel Franklin halts his regiment before the Academy. The governor's friends had met there to back their own companies, and they slip off as the column comes. Rothbard calls it a near war between the governor and Franklin's men, who elect their own officers. Chapter 13 of Conceived in Liberty.
15 May 1758
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 40: The American Colonies and the War
Boston, 1758. Rothbard tells of recruiting squads that dragged drunken men into the king's army, and of crowds that answered by attacking them. Here a red-coated sergeant staggers back as townsmen pull a dazed young man out of the hands of two privates. Massachusetts met conscription and British recruiting methods with riots, mass desertion and going on sick call. Chapter 40 of Conceived in Liberty.
September 1758
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 31: The Quakers and the Abolition of Slavery
Burlington, New Jersey, September 1758. At the Quaker yearly meeting, Friends are urging patience on slavery, and John Woolman stands up to say it is not a time for delay. Rothbard says Woolman swept the day, and by 1780 all the Quakers had freed their slaves. Chapter 31 of Conceived in Liberty.
14 May 1759
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 20: The North Carolina Proprietary
Enfield, North Carolina, 14 May 1759. Armed landowners break open the jail door to free four neighbors, locked up after Lord Granville's agent Francis Corbin went to law against them. Rothbard calls it the armed rising that drove Granville's fee-gouging agents from the district. Governor Dobbs sided with the people, and the rioters stayed free. Chapter 20 of Conceived in Liberty.
6 February 1764
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 14: The Paxton Boys
Philadelphia, February 1764. The Paxton Boys are coming, and the town is afraid. Armed Quakers take their posts in the barracks square, with cannon at their backs, to guard the 140 Moravian Indians inside. Rothbard says it was enough to stretch pacifism to the breaking point. Chapter 14 of Conceived in Liberty.
19 August 1768
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 42: Administering the Conquests
New Smyrna, East Florida, August 1768. By torchlight Carlo Forni and Clotha Corona lead Greek and Italian laborers to the store and seize the colony's muskets, weeks after landing. They came for freedom and abundance and found seven years of forced labor. Rothbard tells it as a rising against servitude. Chapter 42 of Conceived in Liberty.
24 February 1761
§Canonical. Chapter 5: Writs of Assistance in Massachusetts
Boston, February 1761. In the Council Chamber of the Town House, James Otis faces five scarlet-robed judges and argues for hours that an act against natural equity is void. The merchants who hired him feared a general writ that let the king's officers search any house. Chief Justice Thomas Hutchinson sat at the center of the bench. Chapter 5 of Conceived in Liberty.
1 April 1763
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 4: The British Army and the Grand Design
A Devon market town, spring 1763. Mourners in black follow empty cider casks and young apple trees round a bonfire where Lord Bute burns in effigy, while the church bells stay silent. All across the West Country, people answered the new cider tax by marching, burning and refusing to pay, and Rothbard says the American colonists watched and learned from them. Chapter 4 of Conceived in Liberty.
24 June 1763
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 2: The Ohio Lands: Pontiac's Rebellion
Outside besieged Fort Pitt, June 1763, Captain Simeon Ecuyer hands two blankets from the fort's smallpox hospital to the Delaware chiefs Turtle's Heart and Mamaltee, who urge the garrison to abandon its post. Trader William Trent wrote in his journal, "I hope it will have the desired effect." Rothbard calls the gift germ warfare, the hard-liner's answer to a rising he had provoked. Chapter 2 of Conceived in Liberty.
1 December 1763
§Canonical. Chapter 17: The Parsons' Cause
Hanover Courthouse, Virginia, December 1763. The jury awards the parson one penny, and the crowd, wild with delight, seizes twenty-seven-year-old Patrick Henry. They carry him on their shoulders around the yard. Rothbard says his speech pushed the quarrel straight up to the Crown, and it started his defiance of British authority. Chapter 17 of Conceived in Liberty.
3 December 1763
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 18: Wilkes and Liberty, 1763-1764
Cornhill, London, 3 December 1763. As the hangman holds the North Briton to a torch at the Royal Exchange, a crowd of over five hundred pelts the sheriffs with wood, attacks their coaches and snatches the paper from the fire. Rothbard sees the same mass action that inspired the Americans: Londoners who refused to be swayed from their principles. Chapter 18 of Conceived in Liberty.
6 July 1764
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 15: The Newport Case
Fort George, Newport, July 1764. Gunners and fifty townsmen open fire on the naval schooner St. John as she leaves the harbor, after the people of Newport have stoned off her armed party and seized her commanding officer. Two members of the colony's Council gave the order, and Rothbard says the Council afterward scolded the gunners for not trying conscientiously to sink her. Chapter 15 of Conceived in Liberty.
25 November 1764
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 14: Enforcement Troubles
A Maryland tavern, late 1764. The shipowner Graham has talked the merchants into refusing to bid on his condemned molasses, and at the auction he seizes the customs collector Robert Heron and throws him out the door. Rothbard says such force was rare, but the colonists' mood was plain, and British officers thought it wiser not to anger them. Chapter 14 of Conceived in Liberty.
29 May 1765
§Canonical. Chapter 21: Patrick Henry Intervenes
Williamsburg, May 1765. Patrick Henry warns the House of Burgesses that Caesar had his Brutus and Charles the First his Cromwell, and Speaker John Robinson cries treason. Henry backs down, yet his Virginia Resolves spread like wildfire through the colonies. Rothbard says the Stamp Act could only be beaten in the streets. Chapter 21 of Conceived in Liberty.
14 August 1765
§Canonical. Chapter 22: Sam Adams Rallies Boston
Boston, August 1765. A straw Andrew Oliver, the stamp master, hangs from an elm beside a green boot with a devil climbing out. Lieutenant Governor Hutchinson orders the sheriff to cut them down, but the sheriff finds his officers would risk their lives doing it. Rothbard calls the day the first revolutionary blow. Chapter 22 of Conceived in Liberty.
27 August 1765
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 23: Rhode Island Responds
Newport, Rhode Island, August 1765. Three effigies with halters round their necks hang from a gallows before the courthouse: Augustus Johnston, Martin Howard and Dr. Thomas Moffat, the Tory Junto. Three leading merchants stand guard with clubs. Rothbard says Rhode Island, always libertarian, leaped to follow Boston, and within days the stamp distributor had resigned. Chapter 23 of Conceived in Liberty.
16 September 1765
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 27: Response in Pennsylvania
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.
19 September 1765
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 26: Response in Connecticut
Wethersfield, Connecticut, September 1765. Five hundred farmers with white staves have held the colony's stamp master for three hours, and Jared Ingersoll gives in. He climbs a chair in the street, resigns, and throws his hat in the air for "Liberty and Property." Rothbard credits the people themselves: the governor meant to enforce the tax, and Connecticut's farmers made sure nobody could. Chapter 26 of Conceived in Liberty.
19 October 1765
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 28: Response in the Carolinas and Georgia
Charleston, October 1765. Two thousand people take down the effigy of stamp master Caleb Lloyd from a high gallows and carry it off in a mock funeral, a devil and a boot borne beside it. On October 29, under threat of death, Lloyd agrees to suspend his office. Rothbard calls Charleston a notable example of radical resistance to the Stamp Act. Chapter 28 of Conceived in Liberty.
30 October 1765
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 25: Response in Virginia
Williamsburg, October 1765. George Mercer, home from England as Virginia's stamp master, is stopped in the street by a crowd of gentlemen from across the colony who demand his resignation. Rothbard notes that almost all the leading merchants and gentlemen of property stood among them. The next day Mercer gave in. Chapter 25 of Conceived in Liberty.
1 November 1765
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 24: Response in New York
New York, November 1765. Two thousand New Yorkers, sailors and carpenters and old soldiers among them, burn Lieutenant Governor Colden's coach beneath a gibbet hung with effigies of Colden and the devil, under the muzzles of the guns of Fort George. Rothbard says the crowd defied the mayor and Council to do it. Chapter 24 of Conceived in Liberty.
10 June 1772
☞Forgotten liberty. Chapter 53: The Gaspee Incident
Namquid Point, Rhode Island, June 1772. Shot by the Providence men who boarded his schooner, Lieutenant William Dudingston is rowed toward shore in a blanket as the Gaspee burns aground behind him and her guns go off. Rothbard says the locals could hardly tell his crew from pirates. Britain's answer, a commission that could ship the raiders to England for trial, roused the colonies. Chapter 53 of Conceived in Liberty.
16 December 1773
§Canonical. Chapter 56: The Boston Tea Party
Griffin's Wharf, Boston, the night of December 16, 1773. Men with sooty faces and blankets split East India Company chests and pour the tea over the Dartmouth's rail. Down on the low-tide mud, apprentices beat it in with staves. Rothbard calls the Tea Act a bailout: Parliament saved a failing company with a monopoly. Fighting that monopoly was itself a high principle. Chapter 56 of Conceived in Liberty.
