** This was a little south of Fort Hill, near the present Liverpool Dock.
** The notice for the meeting was as follows: "Friends! Brethren! Countrymen!—The perfidious arts of your restless enemies to render ineffectual the resolutions of the body of the people, demand your assembling at the Old South Meeting-house precisely at two o'clock this day, at which time the bells will ring."
Close of Quincy's Speech.—Breaking up of the Meeting.—Destruction of Tea in the Harbor.—Apathy of Government Officials.
our bosoms, to hope that we shall end this controversy without the sharpest, the sharpest conflicts—to flatter ourselves that popular resolves, popular harangues, popular acclamations, and popular vapor will vanquish our foes. Let us consider the issue. Let us look to the end. Let us weigh and consider before we advance to those measures which must bring on the most trying and terrible struggle this country ever saw." *
When Mr. Quincy closed his harangue (about three o'clock in the afternoon), the question was put, "Will you abide by your former resolutions with respect to not suffering the tea to be landed?" The vast assembly, as with one voice, gave an affirmative reply. Mr. Roch, in the mean while, had been sent to the governor, who was at his country house at Milton, a few miles from Boston, to request a permit for his vessel to leave the harbor. A demand was also made upon the collector for a clearance, but he refused until the tea should be landed. Roch returned late in the afternoon with information that the governor refused to grant a permit until a clearance should be exhibited. The meeting was greatly excited; and, as twilight was approaching, a call was made for candles. At that moment a person disguised like a Mohawk Indian raised the war-whoop in the gallery of the Old South, which was answered from without. Another voice in the gallery shouted, "Boston Harbor a tea-pot tonight! Hurra for Griffin's Wharf!" A motion was instantly made to adjourn, and the people, in great confusion, crowded into the streets. Several persons in disguise were seen crossing Fort Hill in the direction of Griffin's Wharf, and thitherward the populace pressed.
Concert of action marked the operations at the wharf; a general system of proceedings had doubtless been previously arranged. The number of persons disguised as Indians was fifteen or twenty, but about sixty went on board the vessels containing the tea. Before the work was over, it was estimated that one hundred and forty were engaged. A man named Lendall Pitts seems to have been recognized by the party as a sort of commander-in-chief, and under his directions the Dartmouth was first boarded, the hatches were taken up, and her cargo, consisting of one hundred and fourteen chests of tea, was brought on deck, where the boxes were broken open and their contents cast into the water. The other two vessels (the Eleanor, Captain James Bruce, and the Beaver, Captain Hezekiah Coffin) were next boarded, and all the tea they contained was thrown into the harbor. The whole quantity thus destroyed within the space of two hours was three hundred and forty-two chests.
It was an early hour on a clear, moonlight evening when this transaction took place, and the British squadron was not more than a quarter of a mile distant. British troops, too, were near, yet the whole proceeding was uninterrupted. This apparent apathy on the part of government officers can be accounted for only by the fact alluded to by the papers of the time, that something far more serious was expected on the occasion of an attempt to land the tea, and that the owners of the vessels, as well as the public authorities, felt themselves
* Josiah Quincy was born in Boston, February 23d, 1744. As a student he was remarkably persevering, and with unblemished reputation he graduated at Harvard in 1763. He pursued legal studies under the celebrated Oxenbridge Thacher, of Boston. The circumstances of the times turned his thoughts to political topics, and he took sides with Otis, Adams, and others, against the aggressive policy of Britain. As early as 1768 he used this bold language: "Did the blood of the ancient Britons swell our veins, did the spirit of our forefathers inhabit our breasts, should we hesitate a moment in preferring death to a miserable existence in bondage?" In 1770 be declared, "I wish to see my countrymen break off—off forever! all social intercourse with those whose commerce contaminates, whose luxuries poison, whose avarice is insatiable, and whose unnatural oppressions are not to be borne." Mr. Quincy was associated with John Adams in the defense of the perpetrators of the "Boston massacre" in 1770, and did not by that defense alienate the good opinion of the people. In February, 1771, he was obliged to go to the south on account of a pulmonary complaint. At Charleston he formed an acquaintance with Pinckney, Rutledge, and other patriots, and, returning by land, conferred with other leading Whigs in the several colonies. Continued ill health, and a desire to make himself acquainted with English statesmen, induced him to make a voyage to England in 1774, where he had personal interviews with most of the leading men. He asserts that, while there, Colonel Barré, who had traveled in America, assured him that such was the ignorance of the English people, two thirds of them thought the Americans were all negroes! Becoming fully acquainted with the feelings and intentions of the king and his ministers, and hopeless of reconciliation, Mr. Quincy determined to return and arouse his countrymen to action. He embarked for Boston, with declining health, in March, and died when the vessel was in sight of land, April 26th, 1775, aged thirty-one years.
East India Company the only Losers.—Quiet in Boston.—A Smuggler punished.—Names of Members of the "Tea Party."
placed under lasting obligations to the rioters for extricating them from a serious dilemma. * They certainly would have been worsted in an attempt forcibly to land the tea. In the actual result the vessels and other property were spared from injury; the people of Boston, having carried their resolution into effect, were satisfied; the courage of the civil and military officers was unimpeached, and the "national honor" was not compromised.