The Siege of Boston

by Allen French

This was the idea of Committees of Correspondence, to be permanently maintained by each town and even by each colony. The idea of such committees was not novel. It had been suggested years before by Jonathan Mayhew, and had more than once been used in emergencies. But permanent committees, watching affairs and at any time ready to act, were new. Naturally composed of the best men in each town, they would at all times be ready to speak, and to speak vigorously. The plan, when perfected, eventually enabled the colonies to act as a unit. From the first it gave strength to the Americans; in the present instance it spread the news of the king's action and roused indignation, and before long it brought about an act which startled the English-speaking world.

This was the Boston Tea-Party. The king had a hand in making the fire hot. He had been vexed by his unsuccessful tariff, and was now especially irritated that his concessions had brought about no result in one important particular.

Until the present every shipmaster had been a smuggler, and all the Whigs dealt in smuggled goods. This was according to old English practice, but as a matter of fact illicit trade was more decorous in America than in England. Whereas in Cornwall the forces of the smugglers were so strong that they chased the revenue cutters into harbors and landed their goods by bright moonlight, in America the appearances of legality were gravely preserved.

Nevertheless the result was the same, and in one quarter was actually serious. The recent tariff had brought to the royal treasury scarcely three hundred pounds from tea. The situation was no better now that the tea-duty was the only one remaining. So completely did America, while still drinking tea in quantity, avoid the duly imported article, that the revenue of the East India Company fell off alarmingly. On pathetic representations of the financial state of the company, the king gave permission, through a subservient Parliament, for the company to export tea to America free even of the English duty. The company had lost hundreds of thousands of pounds since the Townshend Acts went in force; now by favorable terms it was to be enabled to undersell in the colonial market even the smuggled teas. Taking advantage of this new ruling, tea was promptly shipped, in the autumn of 1773, to different consignees in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston.

It was confidently expected that the colonies would buy the tea. No one in the government supposed that the Americans would be blind to their own interests. This much, indeed, was admitted by the leaders among the Whigs, that once the tea was on sale Yankee principle might be sorely tempted by Yankee thrift. Indignant at the insidious temptation, determined that no such test should be made, and resenting the establishment of a practical monopoly throughout the colonies, the leaders resolved that the tea should not be landed.

It is an odd fortune that connected the Chinese herb so closely with the struggle of principle in America. To this day, while the issues are obscured in the mind of the average American, he remembers the tax on tea, and that his ancestors would not pay it. Picturesque tales of ladies' associations depriving themselves of their favorite beverage, of men tarring and feathering unpopular tradesmen, have survived the hundred and thirty odd years which have passed since then; and the impression is general that the colonists would not pay a tax which bore heavy on them. But it will be noticed by those who have attentively read this account that the colonists were refusing to pay less, in order that they might have the satisfaction of paying more. They balked, not at the amount of the tax, but at its principle.

In the case of the tea-ships the duty of action fell upon Boston. Charleston and Philadelphia had taken a positive stand resolving not to receive the tea; but the ships were due at Boston first. The eyes of the continent were upon this one town. Boston made ready to act, yet of the preparations we know nothing. While the story as it is told is interesting enough, there is no record of the secret meetings in which the events were prepared. Hints are dropped, and it is asserted that within the Green Dragon tavern, a favorite meeting-place of the Whigs, were finally decided the means by which the workmen of the town should carry out the plans of the leaders. But of these meetings nothing is positively known; all we can say with certainty is that the plans worked perfectly, and that Sam Adams must have had a hand in their making.

The Sons of Liberty took the first step toward forcing the consignees of the tea to resign. "Handbills are stuck up," writes John Andrews, "calling upon Friends! Citizens! and Countrymen!" To Liberty Tree the "freemen of Boston and the neighboring towns" were invited, by placard and advertisement, "to hear the persons, to whom the tea shipped by the East India Company is consigned, make a public resignation of their office as consignees, upon oath."[30]

But the consignees did not come, though the freemen did. The townspeople, forming themselves into a "meeting," sent a committee to the consignees, demanding that they refuse to receive the tea. But the consignees believed themselves safe. They were merchants of family and property, the governor's sons were among them, and it was rumored that Hutchinson had a pecuniary interest in the success of the venture. They refused to give the pledge.