A tall man in a black cloak, who five years later was a general of artillery in the American army, laid his hand on Preston's shoulder forcibly. "For God's sake, sir, get back to your barracks; if you fire, you must die for it!" exclaimed he, in a deep voice. Preston stared at him, hardly seeming to see him, and quivering with agitation. "Stand aside—I know what I'm about," he replied huskily. As the soldiers reached the sentinel's post and faced about in a semicircle, the crowd fell back, and there were voices calling "Home—home!" The soldiers began to load, pouring the powder and ball into the muzzles of their guns, and ramming the charge home sharply with their ramrods. At this, a dozen men, with cudgels, advanced upon the soldiers, cheering, and passed in front of them, striking the barrels of their muskets with their sticks. "Cowardly rascals!—drop your guns, and we're ready for you," said some between their gritted teeth. "Fire, lobsters!—you daren't fire!" cried others. "Down with 'em! drive the cowards to their barracks!" shouted some. "Are your men loaded?" demanded a citizen, stepping up to Preston; and when the latter nodded—"Will they fire upon the inhabitants?"—"Not without my orders," the captain seemed to say. "Come on, you rascals—fire if you dare—you daren't fire!" yelled the fiercer spirits, now beside themselves with passion; and one struck a soldier's piece. He leveled it and fired, at the same moment that Preston waved his sword and gave the word. A man fell at the shot: the people gave back; the other soldiers fired deliberately and viciously, not in a volley, but one after another, taking aim. Some of them started forward to use the bayonet. It is said that a figure was seen to come out on the balcony of the custom house, his face concealed by a veil hanging down over it, and fire into the retreating throng. The open space in front of the soldiers was overhung with smoke, which slowly dissolved away, and revealed eleven New Englanders stretched along the trodden snow of their native town. Some tried to rise; others lay still. Blood flowed from their wounds, smoking in the icy air, and tinging the white snow red. The deed had been done.
A sullen muttering of horror, swelling by degrees into a roar of rage, burst from hundreds of throats as that spectacle was seen; and in a moment, as it seemed, the town drums had beat to arms, the bells were clanging, and all Boston was pressing tumultuously into King Street. The Twenty-ninth regiment was hurriedly marshaled under arms; it appeared at first as if the populace, thousands strong, and not without weapons, would rush upon them and tear them in pieces. But by this time the saner and stronger men had reached the scene, and set themselves resolutely to withhold the people. "You shall have justice," they told them, "but let it be by due course of law." And there was Hutchinson, promising everything in his dismay, hurrying between the soldiers and the crowd, his feet making blood-stained marks in the snow as he went. To no man more than to him was due the guilt of that night's work.
Prompt and clean measures were taken: a town-meeting was held, and the immediate withdrawal of all troops from Boston was required. The wretched Hutchinson tried to temporize: he denied that he had power to move the soldiers; then he consented to send one regiment away, letting the other remain; the people would accept no compromise; Dalrymple said that he would do as the governor directed. Samuel Adams and Hutchinson finally faced each other in Faneuil Hall. "If you have power to remove one regiment, you have power to remove both," said Adams, in a low but distinct voice, pointing his finger at the other. "Here are three thousand people: they are becoming very impatient: the country is in general motion: night is approaching: an immediate answer is expected: it is at your peril if you refuse." And describing the scene afterward, Adams said, "at the appearance of the determined citizens, peremptorily demanding redress of grievances, I saw his knees tremble and his face grow pale: and I enjoyed the sight!" Truly, it was a subject for a great artist to immortalize. The troops must go: and they went, choking with humiliation.
The news of this affair in England shocked the more reasonable people, and led to criticism of the ministers; but Lord North, supported by the king, would not consent to remove the tax on tea. He made it "a test of authority," and a punishment for "American insolence." It was an expensive punishment for England; the cost of keeping an army in the colonies, and other incidental expenses, footed up about half a million dollars, against a revenue from duties of four hundred dollars only. Americans got their tea from the Dutch by smuggling and by corrupt connivance of the English customs officers; and the loss of the English East India Company was estimated at two and a half million dollars at least. There was great uneasiness at this absurd showing; and Burke declared that "the idea of a military establishment in America is all wrong." Lord Chatham, reading the letters from Boston patriots, and resolutions of assemblies, remarked, "These worthy New Englanders ever feel as Old Englanders ought to feel." The colonists, however, zealous as they were for their liberties, were ready to meet half way any effort toward conciliation on England's part. The agreement to accept no British imports was but slackly kept, in spite of protests from South Carolina and elsewhere. The people were wearied of strife and would have welcomed any honorable means of peace. In this juncture, two things only kept alive the spirit of independence; neither would have sufficed apart from the other. The first was the pig-headedness of the English government, with the king at the head of it, and men like Thurlow, an irreconcilable foe to America, assisting; together with the conspiracy against the colonies of the royal governors and officials, who sent home false and exaggerated reports, all aiming to show that martial law was the only thing that could insure order—or, in other words, secure them their salaries and perquisites. These persons, by continually irritating the raw place, prevented the colonists from forgetting their injuries. In South Carolina, Governor Tryon, a bloody-minded Irishman, went further; he took the field against the "Regulators"—a body of citizens who had organized to counteract the lawlessness of the internal conduct of the colony—and after a skirmish took a number of them prisoners and hanged them out of hand; most of the rest, to save their lives, took to the woods and, journeying westward, came upon the lovely vales of Tennessee, which was thus settled. Daniel Boone had already made himself at home in Kentucky. In Virginia, where the people were disposed to loyalty, the agitation to do away with slavery, both on practical and moral grounds, was harshly opposed by England, and the other colonies, sympathizing with her action, were snubbed along with her. In short, the pompous and hide-bound Hillsborough followed everywhere the policy of alienation, under the impression that he was maintaining English dignity.
But all this would not have sufficed to keep the colonies on their course toward independence, had it not been for the ceaseless vigilance and foresight of Samuel Adams in Boston, Benjamin Franklin in London, and the small but eminent band of patriots whom they worked with. Adams, profoundly meditating on the signs of the times and the qualities of human nature, perceived that England would continue to oppress, and that the longer the colonies abstained from open resistance, the more difficult would the inevitable revolt become. He did not hesitate, therefore, to speak in ever plainer and bolder terms as the peril augmented. Reason was on his side, and his command of logic and of terse and telling language enabled him to set his cause in the most effective light. By drawing a distinction between the king and his ministers, he opened the way to arraign the latter for their "wickedness" in sending an "impudent mandate" to one assembly to rescind the lawful resolution of another. The too eager Hutchinson fell into the trap, and pointed out that it was the king, rather than the ministry, who must be charged with impudence. But this was not to disprove the impudence; it was simply to make the king instead of the ministry obnoxious to the charge, and to enlighten the people as to who their real enemy was. "The king," said Adams, "has placed us in a position where we must either pay no tax at all, or pay it in accordance with his good pleasure"—against the charter and the constitution. "The liberties of our country," he went on, "are worth defending at all hazards. Every step has been taken but one: and the last appeal requires prudence, fortitude and unanimity. America must herself, under God, work out her own salvation." He set resolutely to work to put into execution his plan of a committee of correspondence, to elicit and stimulate the patriotic views of the various colonies. "The people must instruct their representatives to send a remonstrance to the king, and assure him, unless their liberties are immediately restored whole and entire, they will form an independent commonwealth, and offer a free trade to all nations."—"It is more than time," Adams wrote to Warren, "to be rid of both tyrants and tyranny." He prepared a statement of rights, among which was the right to change allegiance in case oppression became intolerable, and to rescue and preserve their liberties sword in hand. A detailed statement of grievances was also drawn up, to be submitted to the king; its specifications were no doubt familiar to Jefferson, when he wrote the "Declaration" four years later. This document was circulated throughout the colony, and was indorsed with unexpected enthusiasm by scores of towns; many of them, with rustic bluntness, telling their thoughts in language even stronger than that of their model. The fishermen of Marblehead (of whom history says not much, but whatever is said, is memorable) affirmed that they were "incensed at the unconstitutional, unrighteous proceedings of the ministers, detested the name of Hillsborough, and were ready to unite for the recovery of their violated rights." In Plymouth, "ninety to one were for fighting Great Britain." The village of Pembroke, inhabited by descendants of the Pilgrims, said that the oppressions which existed must and would issue in the total dissolution of the union between the mother country and the colonies. "Death is more eligible than slavery," said Marlborough; and Lenox refused to "crouch, Issachar-like between the two burdens of poverty and slavery." There was no doubt about the sentiment of the country; and the hands of Adams and his colleagues were immensely strengthened by the revelation.
In the spring of 1773 the next step was taken by Virginia. Young Dabney Carr rose in the assembly and moved a system of correspondence between all the colonies similar to that which had been established in Massachusetts. In other words, the intercommunication of councils in all the colonies was organized, and when these councils should meet, the Continental Congress would exist. The response was earnest and cordial from Georgia to Maine. Things were rapidly shaping themselves for the end. If anything more were needed to consolidate England's offspring against her, it was not wanting. Hutchinson, the veteran plotter and self-seeker, who never did a generous or magnanimous act, who stabbed men in the back, and who valued money more than country or honor, was exposed to the contempt of all men both in America and England, and was forced to resign his governorship in disgrace and to fly to England, where he died a few years later. Franklin was the immediate means of his downfall. A member of Parliament had remarked to him in conversation that the alleged grievances of which the colonists complained had not been inflicted by any English initiative, but were the result of solicitation from the most respectable of the colonists themselves, who had affirmed these measures to be essential to the welfare of the country. Franklin lifted his eyebrows; upon which his interlocutor produced a number of Hutchinson's secret letters to Hillsborough. They proved a conspiracy, on the part of Hutchinson, Oliver and others, to crush American liberty and introduce military rule: they were treasonable in the worst sense. Franklin remarked, after reading them, that his resentment against England's arbitrary conduct was much abated; since it was now evident that the oppression had been suggested and urged by Americans whom England must have supposed represented the better class of the colonists. He sent the letters to Boston; and "as to the writers," he wrote, "when I find them bartering away the liberties of their native country for posts, negotiating for salaries and pensions extorted from the people, and, conscious of the odium these might be attended with, calling for troops to protect and secure them in the enjoyment of them;—when I see them exciting jealousies in the crown, and provoking it to wrath against so great a part of its most faithful subjects; creating enmities between the different countries of which the empire consists; occasioning a great expense to the old country for suppressing or preventing imaginary rebellions in the new, and to the new country for the payment of needless gratifications to useless officers and enemies—I cannot but doubt their sincerity even in the political principles they profess, and deem them mere time-servers, seeking their own private emoluments through any quantity of public mischief; betrayers of the interest not of their native country only, but of the government they pretend to serve, and of the whole English empire."
The letters were read in the assembly in secret session. But in the meanwhile Hutchinson had been led into another mistake. He had denied, in his speech to the legislature, that any line could be drawn between the supreme authority of Parliament and the total independence of the colonies. Either yield, then (he said), or convince me of error. The terrible Adams asked nothing better. Accepting Hutchinson's alternative, he answered, "If there be no such line between Parliament's supreme authority and our total independence, then are we either vassals of Parliament or independent. But since the parties to the compact cannot have intended that one of them should be vassals, it follows that our independence was intended. If, as you contend, two independent legislatures cannot coexist in one and the same state, then have our charters made us distinct states from England."—Thus had the governor unwittingly pointed his opponent's spear, and, instead of driving him to attack Parliament, been placed in the position of implicitly questioning its authority himself.
But this was nothing compared with the revelation of his treacherous letters. His first instinct, of course, was falsehood. "I never wrote any letter tending to subvert the constitution," he asseverated. Being confronted with his own sign-manual, "Their design," he cried, "is not to subvert but to protect." But he knew he was ruined, and sent word to his correspondents in England to burn the letters they held. The letters were published, and distributed all over the colonies. Not a man or woman in the country but knew Hutchinson for the dastardly traitor he was. A petition to remove him and Oliver was sent to the king, but he hastened to submit his resignation, with a whining entreaty that he be not "left destitute, to be insulted and triumphed over." And bringing false charges against Franklin, he begged to receive the latter's office of deputy postmaster-general.
Before this matter could be settled, affairs in Boston had come to a crisis. The East India Company had large consignments of tea ready for shipment to the principal towns along the American coast. The latter warned them of loss, but Lord North said "The king means to try this question with America." It was seen that the connection between England and her colonies could be continued only on a basis of equal liberties, and "Resist all shipments of tea!" was the word. New York and Philadelphia settled the matter by commanding all consignees to resign, which they did; but this was not to be the solution in Boston. When, on November 28th, the "Dartmouth," Captain Rotch, arrived with one hundred and fourteen cases of tea, the representatives of the people ordered him not to enter till Tuesday, the 30th. Four weeks before a meeting at Liberty Tree had been summoned, and the consignees directed to attend and resign. The meeting was held, but Clarke and the other consignees had refused to recognize its authority. They now temporized, and were granted a day to consider; meanwhile a guard was kept on the ship. The next day the consignees proposed to suspend action until they could write to the exporters for advice; but this was seen to be a subterfuge and was indignantly refused. Rotch agreed to take the tea back; but the custom house refused him a clearance. For if the ship remained in port, with her cargo undischarged, twenty days, the authorities could seize and land it by law. If then the people were to prevail, they must do so within that time. It seemed as if they must be defeated; for if the consignees would not resign, and the ship could not get a clearance, nothing but a direct violation of the law could prevent the tea from being landed. To make assurance surer, two frigates kept guard at the mouth of the harbor, and the guns of the Castle were loaded. The governor and the officers were already chuckling over their anticipated victory.
Adams and the committee of correspondence met, in secret session, and what they determined never has transpired and can be surmised by inference only. On Thursday, December 16th, a great meeting was called in the Old South Church. Thousands of people from surrounding towns were in attendance; the willingness and eagerness of them all to resist at the cost of their lives and fortunes had been abundantly expressed. Had there been an armed force with which they could have fought, the way would have been easy; but there was nothing palpable here: only that intangible Law, which they had never yet broken, and their uniform loyalty to which, in their disputes with England, had given them strength and advantage. Must they defy it now, in the cause of liberty, and engage in a scuffle with the king's officers, in which the latter would be technically at least in the right? No doubt they might prevail: but would not the moral defeat counterbalance the gain?