CHAPTER 1
It began in late 1773.
December 16 was a dark, dank night, the thin crescent moon having at first been obscured by showery overcast, only to pass below the horizon just as the drizzle tapered off.1 The waters in the harbor were calm as the waves lapped softly against the sodden wharves. Except for the gentle wooden creaking of the various sail ships against their hemp moorings, all was eerily quiet in the little New England town of Boston.
Splash! The stillness of the night was shattered only for a moment, then instantly silent once more. Hack! Smack! The tranquility was broke once more, this time from the cracking of hatchets into hollow wooden crates. This hacking echoed across the harbor, followed by another heavy splash. Then more hatcheting. Splash!
These sounds came from Griffin’s Wharf on the southeast side of Boston, where the two transports Dartmouth and Eleanor were docked, each holding 114 chests of detested East India Company tea onboard. Moored nearby was the brig Beaver with another 112 chests. Altogether, the shipment was 92,616 pounds of dutied tea (about 21 million cups of tea), worth about £9,659 then, and more than a million U.S. dollars today.2
All along the wharf, a large but hushed crowd of spectators, including Bostonians and curious folk in from the countryside, watched as an extraordinary event unfolded. Parties of men dressed as “Mohawk Indians” worked to hoist the tea chests onto the decks of the three ships, while more worked to hatchet those chests open, pulling the loose-leaf tea from within and then tossing the tea and the chests overboard into the harbor.3
• • •
For several years, the East India Company had been suffering financial problems, due in part to its own poor business practices, resulting in overdue loans to London banks and a massive surplus of unsold tea amounting to nearly three times its annual turnover. By December 1772, company officials had determined they could safely reduce their inventory to one year’s worth of tea and sell off the remainder to inject some much-needed income, for some ninety percent of the company’s profits came from tea.
But selling this surplus in Britain would mean unfavorable tax liabilities as well as restrictions to sell only at wholesale. If the company instead sold the surplus in Europe, that would depress the tea market there and encourage smuggling of the cheaper tea back to England, thus undercutting the company’s sales at home. So the company ultimately devised a plan to sell the surplus tea at a steep discount in America. The problem was that, by law, the company had never before been permitted to export to America; that was a service provided by various merchants serving as middlemen. Consequently, the proposed plan had to be laid before the British Ministry, which had already deemed the company too powerful to let it founder and was even now moving to take some degree of control over it.4
There was one important nuance to this scheme that seemed irrelevant at the time. Upon import to America, the tea would be subject to a tea duty of three pence per pound—the only remaining import tax left from the otherwise repealed Revenue Act of 1767, which the colonists had vehemently opposed. But ever since that partial repeal, American protestations had almost disappeared. In their place, colonists had returned to their avid consumption of tea, especially in Boston, where tea imports reached near-record highs. The British Ministry therefore had little reason to worry about this remaining tax on what was to be otherwise discounted tea.5 After all, it was expected that the colonists should be delighted to pay less for their tea.
Of the various teas the East India Company offered, their primary product was consumer-grade Bohea black tea, grown in the Bohea Hills (now Wuyi Shan) of Fujian Province, China.6 The company determined to sell this bestselling Bohea leaf at a steep discount of two shillings per pound, which included the tax. Though such a low price would still not undercut illegally smuggled Dutch tea—the primary supply for New York City and Philadelphia—the East India Company could expect a significant profit from the Boston market, whose primary source was legally imported tea from England. The Tea Act of May 10, 1773, made the scheme official.7
Initially, the American response was mild. The first reaction came from New York, where smugglers and conspiring merchants worried that strong enforcement of the new act would cut into their considerable illicit profits. They justified their opposition by warning colonists that the East India Company would create a monopoly in America, squashing small merchants and businessmen. Philadelphia soon followed suit, then went further by demanding that its local East India Company consignees resign, which, after considerable public protest, they did. American merchants also worried about the implications of this huge government-backed monopoly and the precedent it could set for more government controls in other industries.
Slowly, the American resistance grew and reshaped itself into a defensible and legitimate argument: the Tea Act was a renewed effort by the British Ministry to force-feed America a tax it had never consented to. Despite the fact that Americans had accepted the tea tax left over from the former Revenue Act, public sentiment was soon roused against this new massive tea shipment. From their perspective, Parliament appeared to once again be forcing overt recognition of its claim to tax America. And so the Tea Act rekindled the flames of antipathy between the colonies and the mother country.8
Boston, however, was slow to respond to the mounting crisis. Instead, radicals there were preoccupied with another issue: that its governing authorities might soon be paid directly by Parliament, thus stripping the colony of fiduciary control over its crown officers and thereby eliminating the colony’s balance of power with its local government and violating its colonial charter. (John Adams allegedly admitted years later that, had there not been resistance led elsewhere, Boston would probably have accepted the tea, duty and all.) But when Boston saw the response of her sister seaports, she soon responded with a kind of mob violence that had grown typical for the town over the past decade when protesting tax-related acts of Parliament.
It began with harassment and threats, with Boston radicals demanding that once the tea arrived, the East India Company’s local consignees send it back to England. The consignees stalled for weeks until the radicals set a town meeting and demanded the six consignees attend to resign their commissions. When the consignees failed to attend, a mob stormed one of their stores, where the consignees were known to be meeting. The consignees rushed to a secure counting room and there remained until the mob at last dispersed, and then spirited themselves to the safety of the secluded island fortress of Castle William in Boston Harbor, having never agreed to the mob’s demands.9
Amid this turmoil, on November 28, 1773, the transport Dartmouth came up Boston Harbor, carrying with it the first of the detested, dutied tea.10 Dartmouth first moored under the sixty-four protective guns of the HMS Captain,11 the flagship of Rear Admiral of the Blue John Montagu, fleet commander in North America.12 But when Dartmouth’s Capt. James Hall came ashore, the Sons of Liberty, an organized group of radical protesters led by Samuel Adams, either induced or coerced him to bring his Dartmouth up to the town and dock it at Griffin’s Wharf instead. There the Sons of Liberty could guard the ship and ensure the tea was not off-loaded, which would weaken their goal to get the tea sent back to England.13 That position also meant the Royal Navy could not intervene, in case the radicals turned aggressive, for if the Navy dared fire at Dartmouth, they would also be firing into the town.14
The second transport, Eleanor, arrived on December 2, and her captain also was ordered to moor at Griffin’s Wharf, this time by the year-old Committee of Correspondence. This committee acted on behalf of the popularly elected General Assembly, which had gradually grown more defiant against the royal governor because of his perceived support of all the recent controversial acts of Parliament. (Akin to the modern state’s house of representatives, the General Assembly was the people’s only direct representative at the colonial level.) A third tea ship, the brig Beaver, was observed in Massachusetts Bay on December 7. But with her tea, she also brought smallpox, and so she remained to the south for cleansing and smoking before she sailed within sight of the other tea ships on the fifteenth. (A fourth, the brig William, had blown ashore on the back side of Cape Cod and was totally destroyed, but her cargo was salvable and later brought to Castle William.)15
Now that the tea had arrived, the transport captains were in a quandary. They cared little about the political debate surrounding their goods, but worried greatly about their business. First, they offered to deliver their cargo, but the consignees refused to accept it, citing the resolves and fury of the townspeople. The ships’ captains thus had no one to deliver the tea to.
Worse, per a parliamentary act of 1696, customs officials could confiscate a ship’s lucrative cargo if duties were not paid within twenty days after the ship’s arrival, and for Dartmouth, this was December 17. If this happened, the captains would owe the East India Company for the loss. For Boston radicals, confiscation was just as unacceptable as having the tea properly landed. The customs officers would then sell the confiscated tea at a discount, and radical leaders knew well that the tea-drinking populace would not remain so obdurate if discounted tea became widely available.
Nor could the transport captains simply return to England, because trade laws dictated that cargo once exported, if returned to the mother country, was subject to confiscation by authorities there. Not that it mattered. Castle William stood guard over the only water approach into and out of Boston, and both it and the Royal Navy had long-standing orders to seize or destroy any departing vessel without a pass—which Boston customs officers were refusing to issue to the tea ships until the duties were paid. Even Royal Governor Thomas Hutchinson refused to issue a pass, judging it a matter for the customs officers. As it was, the transport captains were stuck, and the bureaucracy of the local officials turned a bad situation worse.16
On December 16 afternoon, the eve of the twentieth day for Dartmouth (the other transports still had a few days more), more than five thousand people from the town and neighboring countryside descended on Boston to see how the quandary would be resolved.17 The still-standing two-story, redbrick Old South Meeting House, with its tall, white steeple adorned with a massive clock, had for decades served both as a public gathering place and a church. Though it was the largest building in town, it could not hold the throng, which spilled onto the street. There the people heard radical leaders preach firmness and resolve against the encroaching powers of Parliament.18 Among them were fifty-one-year-old Samuel Adams (only his enemies called him Sam), thirty-six-year-old John Hancock, and young Josiah Quincy Jr., just twenty-nine.
Portrait of Samuel Adams (c. 1772) by John Singleton Copley (1738–1815). Photograph © 2015 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
At length, Francis Rotch, acting on behalf of his father, Joseph, the owner of the Dartmouth, was sent by the boisterous town meeting to call on the governor at his countryside home in Milton and plead for a pass to allow his ship’s departure along with her tea. But Governor Hutchinson remained resolute, claiming that permitting the ship to sail without clearance from customs would be a violation of the Acts of Trade.19
Boston had already grown dark at quarter till six, when the disheartened young Rotch returned more than two hours later to Old South and gave his pitiful news.20 To this, the crowd erupted, “A mob! A mob!” Some spectators began to slip out to the streets. Eleanor owner John Rowe asked, “Who knows how tea will mingle with salt water?”21 To this, the applause intensified. But order was quickly restored as radical Dr. Thomas Young reminded the crowd that Rotch had endeavored to comply with the town’s demands.
The meeting’s moderator Samuel Savage then asked: would Rotch send away his vessel, tea and all, under the present circumstances? Rotch answered he could not possibly comply, for doing so would completely ruin him. When asked if he would then land the tea, Rotch said he would not, unless forced by the government.22 At this, Samuel Adams said he could “think of nothing further to be done…for the Salvation of their Country”.23
As even more spectators slipped away, the meeting continued with some final formalities for several minutes.24 Then, “hideous Yelling…[came from the street] as of an Hundred People, some imitating…[war whoops] of Indians and others the Whistle of a Boatswain, which was answered by some few in the House”: “Boston harbor a tea-pot tonight!” “Hurrah for Griffin’s Wharf!” “The Mohawks are come!”25 Cheers erupted in Old South as many more poured onto the streets. As one witness wrote, “What with that, and the consequent noise of breaking up the meeting, you’d thought that the inhabitants of the infernal regions had broke loose.”26 Samuel Adams tried to stay the crowd by declaring the meeting not yet done, and Dr. Young gave a speech on the (dubious) ill health effects of tea for maybe fifteen minutes before a crowd that had shrank to less than a hundred. But in truth, Young’s speech was a ruse; Adams and his radical colleagues desired an alibi while events began to unfold outside.27
Meanwhile, the crowd outside parted to reveal upward of one hundred disguised men thought to resemble Mohawk Indians, their faces smeared with grease and soot, some in rags, others “cloath’d in Blankets with the heads muffled, and copper color’d countenances, being each arm’d with a hatchet or axe, and pair pistols”. They spoke in code to one another, but “their jargon was unintelligible to all but themselves.”28
These men knew they were about to commit a crime, and though their fervor had obliged them to participate on moral grounds, they feared retribution. They pulled off their incognitos so well that one participant noted, “[we] should not have known each other except by our voices. Our most intimate friends among the spectators had not the least knowledge of us.”29 Most would take their secret involvement to their graves, but the most famous participant may have been Paul Revere.30
These “Mohawks” quickly formed ranks and marched off through the parted crowd toward Griffin’s Wharf, the spectators following closely behind. As they reached their destination, they split into three parties.31 Two groups boarded the tea ships Dartmouth and Eleanor moored at Griffin’s Wharf, aboard which they found customs officials and forced them ashore. The other went by boat to the nearby Beaver, commandeered her, and warped her alongside the other two vessels.32
As Beaver hauled in, “Mohawks” on the other two ships began their work silently and without fanfare. Some dropped into the hold and secured the blocks and tackles to the heavy tea chests. Others hoisted the chests onto the spar deck. The rest put their hatchets to work, staving in the wooden chests to reveal the aromatic Bohea black tea, only to then pour the loose-leaf overboard, into the water, before finally heaving over the shattered chests themselves.
Aboard one of the ships, a padlock secured the hold. The Americans broke the padlock open, but they were so careful not to damage private property that they afterward replaced the lock. (Their sole objective was the tea.) Dartmouth and Eleanor had already disembarked all of their other private goods, so only their tea remained. But the Beaver still had aboard other cargo and private goods, some of which were stacked atop the tea chests. The “Mohawks” rearranged the ship’s private cargo to get to the tea, careful not to damage those other goods.33
Much of Boston Harbor area turned to mere mudflats at ebb tide, so the water that night was only a few feet deep. As the Americans continued to pour more and more tea overboard, the leaves began to accumulate in heaps well above the water line. Several times the “Mohawks” had to shovel and strew the tea to ensure all of it was ruined before they continued to dump more.34
All the while, the crowd remained silent as the spectacle unfolded. The only sounds were the chopping and breaking of the wooden chests, the tea splashing into the water, and the larger splashes of the chests themselves.
The crowd continued to grow, and the Boston radical leaders who had lingered at Old South may have joined them. Calling themselves Whigs because of their support for the pro-liberty Whig Party in Parliament, these leaders included Samuel Adams, the fervor behind the Sons of Liberty; the wealthy John Hancock, who bankrolled the radical efforts; and an able doctor and political protégé who was still a rather obscure figure outside of Boston.35
That doctor was Joseph Warren III, noted as a handsome man, just thirty-two, with blue eyes and light-brown hair. Though he was a successful doctor, leading the advocacy for smallpox inoculations in a Puritan society that objected to the procedure as dirty and unholy, he had slowly taken to politics, spurred by the Stamp Act crisis some eight years earlier. He had also become a leading member of the Freemasons, where, despite his young age, he quickly rose to become Grand Master of all of North America.36 Earlier that year, in April 1773, his dear wife Elizabeth had died, leaving him alone to raise their four young children, Elizabeth (nicknamed Betsey), Joseph (Josey), Richard (Dicky), and Mary (Polly), all under the age of ten. (Mere days after Warren’s loss, the thirty-eight-year-old Paul Revere also lost his wife, a commonality that led to a bond between the two. Unlike Warren, Revere soon remarried.)
To cope with his anguish, Warren plunged himself into the politics of the day, finding solace in public service. Faced with the need to care for his children and continue his medical business, while also wanting to engage in politics, most men of that era would have immediately sought a second wife to serve as a caregiver, if not a lover. Warren appears to have instead placed his children under the eager care of his widowed mother, Mary, who was able to provide a comfortable home at the family farm in nearby Roxbury, the very house in which Joseph himself had grown up. And yet, about this time he became interested in the affections of Mercy Scollay and, throughout the next year, would begin a courtship for her hand.37
On this night, as Warren watched the “Mohawks” dump tea into the harbor, he grew certain the present course of action was a necessary one. Months later, he would write, “Vigilance, activity, and patience are necessary at this time: but the mistress we court is LIBERTY; and it is better to die than not obtain her.”38 Little did he know, the events unraveling before him would skyrocket him to become one of the most famous men in all America.
Portrait of Dr. Joseph Warren (c. 1772, unfinished) by John Singleton Copley (1738–1815). Adams National Historical Park.
Americans were not the only spectators to this “party”. Royal Navy warships stood idle just a few hundred yards away. Surely, their captains were aware of what was transpiring, yet they received no orders to intervene. The fleet commander, Adm. John Montagu, was also well aware of the tea destruction underway. In fact, he was lodging ashore at the nearby home of a Loyalist, and from there he could overlook the entire scene from a window.39
At nearby Castle William, Lt. Col. Alexander Leslie, commander of the 64th Regiment of troops stationed there, was also aware of the affair, because the customs commissioners and the tea consignees had fled to his island fortress for safety. Leslie later wrote to his superior in New York, Maj. Gen. Frederick Haldimand, Acting Commander in Chief for British forces in North America:40 “I had the regiment ready to take their arms if they had been called upon.”41 Yet just as no call was sent to the Royal Navy, no call was sent to the King’s men on Castle Island.
The man who might have called for their support, native-born Governor Thomas Hutchinson, was unavailable. Frustrated with the constant mobbing and the vituperative attacks against his character after the unauthorized publication of some of his opinionated private letters on the radical politics in Boston, he was eager to escape the harassment and turmoil brewing in town and so had secluded himself at his country estate in nearby Milton. There, he was out of touch with what was happening that night, and he imagined the tea would merely be seized by customs the following day. Thus, he never called for the military to intervene.42
Lt. Gov. Andrew Oliver was also at his country home, in distant Middleborough. Oliver was so greatly stressed by the constant backlash against him and his association with Hutchinson that a few months later he would suffer a fatal stroke.43 (And to the discredit of the Whig movement, Samuel Adams and his radicals would attend Oliver’s funeral only to cheer as his body was committed to the earth.44)
The only authority left in town was the Governor’s Council (akin to the modern state senate), but unlike the councils of other American provinces, which were selected by the Crown, the Massachusetts Council was locally chosen by the popularly elected General Assembly, and thus mostly reflective of the burgeoning antitax political views of the general public.45 In other words, the council would not intervene. Thus, Boston was left that evening without any legal authority willing to enforce the British Parliament’s tea duty or suppress the “Mohawks” from illegally dumping the dutied tea.46
So the Destruction of the Tea, as John Adams initially referred to it, continued unmolested for three hours.
While most “Mohawks” worked honestly to stave the chests and dump the tea, a few dishonest ones could not resist the opportunity for easy booty of their beloved brew, despite precautions to prevent such. One participant, Charles O’Conner, “had ript up the lining of his coat and waistcoat under the arms” and surreptitiously stashed handfuls of the succulent loose-leaf in the lining, nearly filling it up.47 He thought himself clever and unnoticed, but his former master cobbler George Hewes spotted him in the act. Recognizing his old apprentice, Hewes reported the thievery to their captain, Lendall Pitts.
Pitts drew the attention of the other “Mohawks” by shouting, “East Indian!” He and Hewes then moved to seize the looter, while others swarmed to block his escape.
O’Conner recognized his old shoe master and in desperation yelled that he would complain to the governor and so reveal at least one of the disguised “Mohawks”. But Hewes was undaunted and yelled back, “You had better make your will first!” Hewes then seized O’Conner by his coat, but the thief squirmed free, tearing his coat off as he did so.48 O’Conner then leaped onto the dock and scurried through the angry crowd. But each way he turned, spectators kicked or punched him, knocking him a few times to the ground. Trying to block the blows, he frantically plowed and crawled his way through the mob and made his escape. He “was handled pretty roughly. They not only stripp’d him of his cloaths [coat], but gave him a coat of mud, with a severe bruising into the bargain; and nothing but their utter aversion to make any disturbance prevented his being tar’d and feather’d.”49
Another participant, an old man, “had slightly slipped a little [tea] into his pocket, but being detected, they seized him, and taking his hat and wig from his head, threw them, together with the tea…into the water. In consideration of his advanced age, he was permitted to escape, with now and then a slight kick.”50
Finally, around nine o’clock, the “Mohawks” accomplished their deed. Three hundred forty broken chests floated in the harbor, their contents soiled and scattered in the salty tide, which was just beginning to flood back in.51
With their mission a success, the “Mohawks” swept the decks and repositioned any private property they had moved. On each of the transports, they then called the ship’s first mate on deck to report whether they had left everything as they had found it—except for the tea, of course.52
Fearing that any evidence left behind could link them to their criminal act, Captain Pitts commanded the “Mohawks” to pull off their boots once they had disembarked the three vessels to ensure no loose-leaf was hidden inside.53
Satisfied, Captain Pitts drew upon his militia experience and ordered his party to form up, shoulder their “arms” (hatchets, shovels, and the like), and then to march. As the “Mohawks” marched forward, the crowd parted again, allowing them to pass. Admiral Montagu watched with indignation as they approached his window to depart the wharf. Finding the opportunity irresistible, he slid up his window and called out, “Well boys, you have had a fine pleasant evening for your Indian caper—haven’t you? But mind, you have got to pay the fiddler yet!”54
“Oh, never mind!” shouted Pitts, “never mind ’Squire! Just come out here, if you please, and we’ll settle the bill in two minutes!” A few in the crowd cheered as one “Mohawk” drew out a fife and began to toot a lively tune. Incredulous at the affront, Montagu merely slammed his window shut. Pitts probably smirked as he continued to march his “Mohawks” away.55
The next day, townspeople observed that the current and tides had formed a clumpy, windy path of floating tea that stretched from the wharves all the way to Castle Island in the harbor. One participant later wrote, “to prevent the possibility of any of its being saved for use, a number of small boats were manned by sailors and citizens, who rowed them into those parts of the harbour wherever the tea was visible, and by beating it with oars and paddles so thoroughly drenched it as to render its entire destruction inevitable.” With that, the tea was thoroughly scattered, almost none of it salvable.56
This Boston affair was not an isolated incident. In Charlestown (now Charleston), South Carolina, the inhabitants were yet unaware of the events in Boston when the transport London arrived on December 22. They landed the tea and stored it in a warehouse, duties unpaid.57 In Philadelphia, the ship Polly was returned to England along with her loose-leaf. In New York, weather delayed their ship’s arrival until late March, by which time Boston’s response was well known. When the transport Nancy finally arrived, New Yorkers also succeeded in sending back their tea.58
Then on March 6, 1774, another brig, Fortune, arrived in Boston. Among its large and varied cargo were a mere twenty-eight half-chests of tea. This was private tea, unrelated to the East India Company, and though the owners were surprised to discover it onboard, they immediately expressed willingness to send it back. Nevertheless, when the custom officials again refused to grant a pass, Bostonians again destroyed the tea, this time not waiting for the twenty days to expire. Throughout the continent, various other towns held their own anti-tea demonstrations, but none was as flagrant as that of Boston.59
The continent’s initial response to the tea parties was one of solidarity. However, most Americans held private property sacred, and neither the East India Company nor its tea was government owned.60 When George Washington learned of it, he wrote to a friend, “the Ministry may rely on it that Americans will never be tax’d without their own consent[,] that the cause of Boston…now is and ever will be considerd as the cause of America (not that we approve their cond[uc]t in destroy[in]g the Tea)”.61 In truth, the dumping of the tea was tantamount to theft and vandalism, not an act of civil disobedience, and some began to call for Massachusetts to offer restitution to the company. But the debate over repayment would soon become irrelevant.62
Decades later, Boston’s Destruction of the Tea would become known as the Boston Tea Party. It was not boisterous; it was not obnoxious. It was a silent and careful affair. John Adams wrote of it in his diary, “This is the most magnificent Movement of all. There is a Dignity, a Majesty, a Sublimity, in this last Effort of the Patriots, that I greatly admire. The People should never rise, without doing something to be remembered—something notable And striking. This Destruction of the Tea is so bold, so daring, so firm, intrepid and inflexible, and it must have so important Consequences, and so lasting, that I cant but consider it as an Epocha in History.”63
Events would soon unfold to prove how prophetic these words really were. For the Tea Party marked the beginning of the end.