On Sunday morning, November 29, Tom Brandon, looking with the telescope, saw a ship at Nantasket, and knew by the signals that it was the Dartmouth, Captain Hall. When meeting was over at noon, he called upon Doctor Warren and found him writing a circular to be sent to the surrounding towns, asking the people to assemble on Monday morning in Faneuil Hall. Tom took the writing to the printing office of Edes & Gill in Queen Street, and a printer quickly put it in type. On Monday morning the people of Boston, Charlestown, Cambridge, and all surrounding towns were reading it.
FRIENDS! COUNTRYMEN! BROTHERS!
The worst of plagues, the detested tea, shipped for this port by the East India Company, has arrived. The hour of destruction or manly opposition to the machinations of tyranny stares you in the face. Every friend to his country, to himself, and posterity is now called upon to meet at Faneuil Hall at nine o’clock this day, at which time the bells will ring, to make a united resistance to this last, worst, and most destructive measure of administration!
Boston, Nov. 30, 1773.
The bells rang. The people surged into Faneuil Hall. There was a crowd in the square around the building,—so many people that they adjourned to the Old South Meetinghouse, where they voted that the tea must go back to England, and that twenty-five men should keep watch day and night, to prevent its being landed. The meeting adjourned till Tuesday morning to hear what the consignees would do.
Through the night Abraham Duncan and the other watchmen patrolled the wharves. The Dartmouth had sailed up the harbor and was riding at anchor.
A great crowd filled the meetinghouse at nine o’clock Tuesday. The moderator read a letter from Richard Clark and the other consignees, who said they could not send the tea back, but would put it in their stores till they could hear from the East India Company.
“No! no! no!” shouted the people, who were more than ever determined that it should not be landed.
Tom saw the sheriff, with his sword by his side, as the emblem of authority, enter the meetinghouse, with a paper in his hand.
“It is from his excellency, the governor,” said the sheriff, bowing to the moderator.