The populace in various parts of the colonies were unwilling to wait for the effect of the constitutional measures their representatives were adopting. One day in the month of August the effigy of Andrew Oliver, the proposed distributor of stamps in Massachusetts, was found hanging on a tree, afterwards well known by the name of Liberty tree, in the main street of Boston. At night it was taken down, and carried on a bier, amidst the acclamations of an immense collection of people, through the court-house, down King street, to a small brick building, supposed to have been erected for the reception of the detested stamps. This building beingsoon levelled with the ground, the rioters next attacked Mr. Oliver’s house, and having broken the windows, entered it, and destroyed part of the furniture. The next day, however, Mr. Oliver authorized several gentlemen to announce on the exchange, that he had declined having any concern with the office of stamp master; but in the evening a bonfire was made, and a repetition of this declaration exacted of him. On the 26th the tumults were renewed. The rioters assembled in King street, and proceeded to the house of the deputy register of the court of admiralty, whose private papers, as well as the records and files of the court, were destroyed. The house of Benjamin Hallowell, jun., comptroller of the customs, was next entered; and elevated and emboldened by liquors found in his cellar, the mob, with inflamed rage, directed their course to the house of lieutenant-governor Hutchinson, who, after vainly attempting resistance, was constrained to depart to save his life. By four in the morning one of the best houses in the province was completely in ruins, nothing remaining but the bare walls and floors. The plate, family pictures, most of the furniture, the wearing apparel, about nine hundred pounds sterling, and the manuscripts and books which Mr. Hutchinson had been thirty years collecting, besides many public papers in his custody, were either carried off or destroyed.The whole damage was estimated at two thousand five hundred pounds.[105]
The town of Boston the next day voted unanimously, that the selectmen and magistrates be desired to use their utmost endeavors, agreeably to law, to suppress the like disorders for the future, and that the freeholders and other inhabitants would do every thing in their power to assist them. The officer appointed to receive the stamped paper, which was daily expected, having resigned his commission, the governor determined to receive the paper into his own charge at the castle; and, by advice of council, he ordered the enlistment of a number of men to strengthen the garrison. This caused great murmur among the people. To pacify them he made a declaration in council, that he had no authority to open any of the packages, or to appoint a distributor of stamps; that his views in depositing the stamped paper in the castle, and in strengthening the garrison there, were to prevent imprudent people from offering an insult to the king; and to save the town, or province, as it might happen, from being held to answer for the value of the stamps, as they certainly would be if the papers should be taken away. This declaration the council desired him to publish, but it did not stop the clamor. He was forced to stop the enlistment, and to discharge such men as had been enlisted. The first day of November, on which the stamp act was to begin its operation, was ushered in at Boston by the tolling of bells; many shops and stores were shut; and effigies of the authors and friends of that act were carried about the streets, and afterwards torn in pieces by the populace.
Nor was Massachusetts alone;—the obnoxious act received similar treatment in the other colonies. On the 24th of August a gazette extraordinary was published at Providence, with Vox Populi vox Dei, for a motto; effigies were exhibited, and in the evening cut down and burnt. Three days afterwards, the people of Newport conducted effigies of three obnoxious persons in a cart, with halters about their necks, to a gallows near thetown-house, where they were hung, and after a while cut down and burnt amidst the acclamations of thousands. On the last day of October, a body of people from the country approached the town of Portsmouth, (New Hampshire,) in the apprehension that the stamps would be distributed; but on receiving assurance that there was no such intention, they quietly returned. All the bells in Portsmouth, Newcastle, and Greenland, were tolled, to denote the decease of Liberty; and in the course of the day, notice was given to her friends to attend her funeral. A coffin, neatly ornamented, and inscribed with ‘LIBERTY, aged CXLV. years,’ was prepared for the funeral procession, which began from the state-house, attended with two unbraced drums; minute guns were fired until the corpse arrived at the grave, when an oration was pronounced in honor of the deceased: but scarcely was the oration concluded, when, some remains of life having been discovered, the corpse was taken up; and the inscription on the lid of the coffin was immediately altered to ‘LIBERTY REVIVED;’ the bells suddenly struck a cheerful sound, and joy appeared again in every countenance. In Connecticut, Mr. Ingersoll, the constituted distributor of stamps, was exhibited and burnt in effigy in the month of August; and the resentment at length became so general and alarming, that he resigned his office.
The spirit manifested by the citizens of New York produced a similar resignation; and the obnoxious act was contemptuously cried about the streets, labelled, ‘The Folly of England and Ruin of America.’ The stamp papers arriving toward the end of October, lieutenant-governor Colden took every precaution to secure them. On the first of November, many of the inhabitants of New York, offended at the conduct and disliking the political sentiments of the governor, having assembled in the evening, broke open his stable, and took out his coach; and after carrying it through the principal streets of the city, marched to the common, where a gallows was erected, on one end of which they suspended his effigy, with a stamped bill of lading in one hand, and a figure of the devil in the other. When the effigy had hung a considerable time, they carried it in procession suspended to the gallows to the gate of the fort, whence it was removed to the bowling green, under the muzzle of the guns, and a bonfire made, in which the whole pageantry, including the coach, was consumed, amidst the acclamations of several thousand spectators. The next day, the people insisting upon having the stamps, it was agreed that they should be delivered to the corporation, and they were deposited in the city hall. Ten boxes of stamps, which arrived subsequently, were committed to the flames.
At Philadelphia, on the appearance of the ships having the stamps on board, all the vessels in the harbor hoisted their colors half-mast high, the bells were muffled, and continued to toll until evening. The body of Quakers, with a part of the church of England and of the Baptists, seemed inclined to submit to the stamp act; but great pains were taken to engage the Dutch and the lower class of people in the opposition, and Mr. Huges, the stamp master, found it necessary at length to resign. In Maryland, Mr. Hood, the stamp distributor for that colony, to avoid resigning his office, fled to New York; but he was constrained by a number of freemen to sign a paper, declaring his absolute and final resignation. In Virginia, when the gentleman who had been appointed distributor ofstamps arrived at Williamsburg, he was immediately urged to resign: and the next day he so handsomely declined acting in his office, that he received the acclamations of the people; at night the town was illuminated, the bells were rung, and festivity expressed the universal joy.
Associations had already been formed in the colonies, under the title of the Sons of Liberty, and were composed of some of the most respectable of their citizens. The association in New York held a meeting on the 7th of November, at which it was determined that they would risk their lives and fortunes to resist the stamp act. Notice of this being sent to the Sons of Liberty in Connecticut, an union of the two associations was soon after agreed upon, and a formal instrument drawn and signed; in which, after denouncing the stamp act as a flagrant outrage on the British constitution, they most solemnly pledged themselves to march with their whole force whenever required, at their own proper cost and expense, to the relief of all who should be in danger from the stamp act or its abettors; to be vigilant in watching for the introduction of stamped paper, to consider all who are caught in introducing it as betrayers of their country, and to bring them if possible to condign punishment, whatever may be their rank; to defend the liberty of the press in their respective colonies from all violations or impediments on account of the said act; to save all judges, attorneys, clerks, and others from fines, penalties, or any molestation whatever, who shall proceed in their respective duties without regard to the stamp act; and lastly, to use their utmost endeavors to bring about a similar union with all the colonies on the continent. In pursuance of this plan, circular letters were addressed to the Sons of Liberty in Boston, New Hampshire, and as far as South Carolina, and the proposal was received with almost universal enthusiasm.
Societies were formed also in most of the colonies, including females, and those of the highest rank and fashion, of persons who resolved to forego all the luxuries of life, sooner than be indebted for them to the commerce of England under the restrictions imposed upon it by parliament. These societies denied themselves the use of all foreign articles of clothing; carding, spinning, and weaving became the daily employment of ladies of fashion; sheep were forbidden to be used as food, lest there should not be found a sufficient supply of wool; and to be dressed in a suit of homespun was to possess the surest means of popular distinction. So true were these patriotic societies to their mutual compact, that the British merchants and manufacturers soon began to feel the necessity of uniting with the colonies in petitioning parliament for the repeal of the obnoxious law; and the table of the minister was loaded with petitions and remonstrances from most of the manufacturing and mercantile towns in the kingdom.
PROGRESS OF THE REVOLUTION.
While the colonies were thus brought into a state bordering on insurrection by the injudicious and unjust measures of the Grenville administration, the administration itself was rapidly hastening to its dissolution. George III. had ascended the throne not long after the capture of Quebec and in the following October, the patriot Pitt, who had devised and executedthe grand scheme of expelling the French from North America, resigned the seals of office. Lord Bute, who appears to have been a personal friend of the new king, was appointed Mr. Pitt’s successor; and under his brief administration the peace of Paris was concluded. He was succeeded by Mr. Grenville, whose name will always bear an unhappy notoriety as the author of the stamp act; and whose measures have formed the subject of the preceding division. However the king might approve his political sentiments, and the king was a decided tory, Grenville was not personally in favor with his majesty; and the result was, (after some unsuccessful negotiation with Mr. Pitt, who expressed his unwillingness to go to St. James’ ‘without he could carry the constitution along with him,’) the formation of the Rockingham administration.
On the twenty-second of February, 1766, a bill was introduced in the house of commons for a repeal of the stamp act. The mover of the bill was general Conway, the same individual who in the first instance had denied the authority of parliament to impose it. On the proposed repeal a warm and interesting debate ensued, and it was finally carried by a large majority. In the upper house it was carried by a vote of one hundred and five to seventy-one.