On the first of November, 1765, when the act was to become law and go into operation, there was tolling of bells throughout New England. Ships in the harbors displayed their flags at half-mast. Shops were shut, business was suspended, and every form of defiance they could invent was displayed all day and that night.
At New York, the poster announcing the law was stuck on a pole, under a death’s head, from which floated a banner bearing the inscription, “The folly of England and ruin of America.” The lieutenant-governor with all his official household went into the fort and surrounded himself with marines from a ship of war. Then the mob went to his stables, brought out his carriage, put his effigy into it, dragged it up and down the street till they were tired, and then hung his effigy on a gallows. That evening they took the effigy down, put it again into the carriage, this time by the side of an image of the devil, had a howling torch-light procession to Bowling Green, and there, under the guns of the fort, burned the carriage with the effigies in it. So bitter and so general was the disapproval that no one attempted to enforce the law.
[CHAPTER IX]
SOWING THE WIND AND REAPING THE WHIRLWIND
I. MOUNT VERNON AT FIRST IN A ZONE OF CALM
In all this storm, Washington remained engrossed in his extensive business affairs. It can not be inferred that this meant any indifference on his part. It must be remembered that by nature he was of a retiring disposition and never put himself forward as a leader in any agitation. He was one who believed in regularity and discipline. He could not destroy except as a process of building. His fighting spirit was always in accomplishing a definite design for foreseen ends. It is thus always seen that the man who is an agitator and a leader of agitation, however heroic and noble he may be in the cause of right, is never the calm, judicial mind necessary to construct material and form forces into a constitutional government. The mind of man seems first to require a forerunner. There was the determined, uncompromising John the Baptist for the gentle and peace-loving Christ, and there were numerous colonial Patrick Henrys for Washington, even as there were Lovejoys, Garrisons and John Browns for Lincoln. Thus it appears, without irreverence, that agitation is as essential to education as legislation is to government.
Washington’s large interests in trade with England, and his many Old-England friends and connections, would have turned any man, who would serve his own personal profit, into partisanship for Great Britain. There is no doubt that the inducements to favor the mother country were large, and the promise of loss for doing otherwise was very heavy and convincing. But he had seen much of English arrogance and tyranny. He had also seen much of American freedom and human rights. There was probably never any debate in his mind as to which meant the most to him in personal duty or as an American. He had a deeper view of humanity than business interests. But his hour had not yet struck. The time had not yet come when the colonies needed Washington.
Something of great significance took place in 1766. Benjamin Franklin was called before the House of Commons and questioned concerning the Stamp Act.
“What,” they asked him, according to the Parliamentary Register of that year, “was the temper of America towards Great Britain, before the year 1763?”