A Patriot's History of the United States: From Columbus's Great Discovery to the War on Terror (15 page)

By 1764, then, colonists drew a direct correlation between paying taxes and governing, and between government intervention in the economy and inflation. A few early taxes had existed on land, but land ownership conferred voting status. Other than that, only a handful of other direct taxes were levied, especially in light of the small size and limited power of government. “The more revenue governments had, the more mischief they could create,” was the prevailing colonial view. In sharp contrast to land taxes, Grenville’s new duties were in no way associated with rights, and all subjects—landowners or otherwise—now had to pay.
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There is truth to the British claim that the colonists had received the benefits of government on the cheap for decades, a development that provides a cautionary tale for contemporary Americans. This concealment of the actual costs of government fostered the natural inclination to think that the services were free. Unfortunately, any attempt to withdraw or reduce the benefit is then fought tooth and nail because it is viewed as a right. In the case of the American colonists, they correctly identified their rights to protection from attack and to a fair system of courts and laws, but they had avoided paying for the benefits for so long that by the 1770s they viewed any imposition of taxes as oppression.

Dissatisfaction with the Navigation Acts themselves only reflected the deeper changes in economic thought being developed at exactly that time by Scottish professor Adam Smith, who had formulated his
Theory of Moral Sentiments
in 1754. Arguing that men naturally had a self-interest based on information that only they could know—likes, dislikes, personal foibles—Smith had laid the groundwork for his more famous book,
Wealth of Nations,
which would appear concurrent with the Declaration of Independence. Smith reformulated economics around individual rights rather than the state’s needs. His concepts fit with Thomas Jefferson’s like a hand in a glove; indeed, it would be Alexander Hamilton and some of the Federalists who later would clash repeatedly with Smith’s individual-oriented economic principles. While
Wealth of Nations
in no way influenced the writings of Adams or others in 1776, the ideas of personal economic liberty had already seeped into the American psyche, almost as if Adams and Jefferson had read Smith extensively.
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Thus, at the very time that the British started to enforce a creaky, antiquated system that had started its drift into obsolescence, Americans—particularly seaboard merchants—started to flex their entrepreneurial muscles in Smith’s new free-market concepts. Equally important, Americans had started to link economic rights and political rights in the most profound ways. At accelerating rates the colonists used the terms “slavery” and “enslavement” in relation to British government policies.
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If the king could assault citizen’s liberties when it came to trade, how long before he issued edicts on political speech, and even religion?

The Stamp Act of 1765

Parliament, meanwhile, continued to shift the fiscal burdens from overtaxed landowners in England to the American colonists with the awareness that the former voted and the latter did not. Attempting to extract a fraction of the cost of troops sent to defend the colonies, Grenville—who, as historian Paul Johnson notes, “had a gift for doing the wrong thing”—pushed through a stamp tax, which was innocuous in its direct effects but momentous in its symbolism.
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The act placed a tax on virtually every paper transaction. Marriage certificates, ships’ papers, legal documents, newspapers, even playing cards and dice were to be stamped and therefore taxed. Worse, the act raised the terrifying threat that if paper documents were subject to government taxation and control, how long before Puritan, Baptist, Quaker, and Methodist religious tracts or even Bibles came under the oversight of the state? To assume as much was not unrealistic, and certainly Sam Adams argued that this was the logical end-point: “The Stamp-Act itself was contrived with a design only to inure the people to the habit of contemplating themselves as slaves of men; and the transition from thence to a subjection to Satan, is mighty easy.”
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Although most colonists were alarmed at the precedent set by the Stamp Act, the fact that newspapers were taxed ensured that the publishing organs of the colonies universally would be aligned against England on the issue.
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Hostility to the new act ran far deeper than its narrow impact on newspapers, however. An often overlooked component of the policies involved the potential for ever-expanding hordes of administrators and duty collectors in the colonies. Had the pecuniary burdens been completely inconsequential, the colonists still would have protested the insidious, invasive presence of an army of royal bureaucrats and customs officials. Several organizations were formed for the specific purpose of harassing stamp agents, many under the name Sons of Liberty. They engaged in violence and intimidation of English officials, destroying the stamps and burning the Boston house of the lieutenant governor, Thomas Hutchinson. Sympathetic colonial juries then refused to convict members of the Sons of Liberty, demonstrating that the colonists saw the economic effects as nil, but the political ramifications as substantial.
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Parliament failed to appreciate the firestorm the new policies were causing. Edmund Burke observed of the House of Commons, “Far from any thing inflammatory, I never heard a more languid debate in this House.”
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In the colonies, however, reaction was immediate and dramatic. Virginia again led the way in resistance, focused in the House of Burgesses with Patrick Henry as the chief spokesman for instant response. He offered five resolutions against the Stamp Act that constituted a radical position. Many strongly disagreed with his views, and a Williamsburg law student named Thomas Jefferson, who witnessed the debates, termed them “most bloody.”
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Nevertheless, the delegates did not disagree with Henry’s assessment of the legality of the act, only his methods in responding to them, which many thought could have been more conciliatory. Henry achieved immortality with the provocative tone of his resolutions, reportedly stating: “If this be treason, make the most of it.”

Leaders from Massachusetts, led by James Otis, agreed. They suggested that an intercolonial congress be held at City Hall, in New York, a meeting known as the Stamp Act Congress (1765). Delegates drafted a bill of rights and issued a statement of grievances, reiterating the principle of no taxation without representation. Confronted with unified, outraged opposition, Parliament backed down. A new government under the Marquis of Rockingham repealed the Stamp Act in 1766, in no small degree because of internal dissatisfaction with the program in England, where manufacturers had started to lose sales. But other groups in England, particularly landholders who again faced increased tax burdens themselves, denounced the repeal as appeasement. In retreat, Parliament issued a Declaratory Act, maintaining that it had the authority to pass new taxes any time it so chose, but both sides knew Britain had blinked.

A “Massacre” in Boston

After Rockingham was dismissed under pressure from English landlords, the king recalled ailing William Pitt from his peerage to form a new government. Pitt’s coalition government included disparate and uncooperative groups and, after 1767, actual power over England’s mercantilist policies devolved upon Charles Townshend, the chancellor of the Exchequer. Under new duties enacted by Parliament, the words changed but the song remained the same: small taxes on glass, lead, tea or other products but significant shifts of authority to Parliament. This was Parliament’s shopworn tactic: exchange small initial duties for gigantic new powers that could be used later oppressively.

Townshend persuaded Parliament to suspend the New York Assembly for its refusal to provide necessary supplies under the Mutiny Act (also called the Quartering Act) of 1765. He hoped to isolate New York (even though Massachusetts’ Assembly similarly had refused to vote funds for supplies), realizing that the presence of the army headquarters in New York City made it imperative that the English government maintain control of the situation there. Once again, the colonists did not object to the principle of supporting troops or even quartering them, but instead challenged the authority of Parliament to mandate such support. A series of written arguments by Charles C. Pinckney and Edward Rutledge (both of South Carolina), Daniel Dulany of Maryland, and John Dickinson of Pennsylvania provided a comprehensive critique of the new acts based on English law and traditions. Dickinson’s “Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania” reached wide audiences and influenced groups outside the seaboard elites. British officials were stunned to find that, rather than abandoning New York, other colonies expressed their support for their sister colony.

No more important ally of New York could exist than Massachusetts, where Sam Adams and a group of vocal followers organized resistance in the Massachusetts Assembly. Letters went out from the assembly to other colonies urging them to resist the new taxes and to boycott British goods until the measures were lifted. The missive might have died, except for further meddling by the British secretary of state, who warned that Parliament would dissolve any colonial assemblies that endorsed the position of the Massachusetts Assembly. All of the colonies promptly supported the Massachusetts letter, even Pennsylvania, which had refused to support the earlier correspondence.

Whereas New York had borne the brunt of England’s initial policies, Boston rapidly became the center of revolutionary ferment and British repercussions. Britain transferred four regiments of troops from Halifax to Boston, stationing them directly within the city in a defiant symbol of occupation. Bostonians reacted angrily to the presence of “redcoats” and “lobsterbacks,” whereas the soldiers treated citizens rudely and competed with them for off-hour work. Tensions heightened until on March 5, 1770, a street fight erupted between a mob of seventy or so workers at a shipyard and a handful of British sentries. Snowballs gave way to gunfire from the surrounded and terrified soldiers, leaving five colonists dead and six wounded. American polemicists, especially Sam Adams, lost no time in labeling this the Boston Massacre. Local juries thought otherwise, finding the soldiers guilty of relatively minor offenses, not murder, thanks in part to the skillful legal defense of John Adams.

If Britain had had her way, the issue would have died a quiet death. Unfortunately for Parliament, the other Adams—John’s distant cousin Sam—played a crucial role in fanning the fires of independence. He had found his calling as a writer after failing in private business and holding a string of lackluster jobs in government. Adams enlisted other gifted writers, who published under pen names, to produce a series of broadsides like those produced by Dickinson and the premassacre pamphleteers. But Adams was the critical voice disturbing the lull that Britain sought, publishing more than forty articles in a two-year period after the massacre. He established the Lockean basis for the rights demanded by Americans, and did so in a clear and concise style that appealed to less-educated citizens. In November 1772 at a town meeting in Boston, Adams successfully pressed for the creation of a “committee of correspondence” to link writers in different colonies. These actions demonstrated the growing power of the presses churning out a torrent of tracts and editorials critical of England’s rule. The British were helpless to stop these publishers. Certainly court actions were no longer effective.
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Following the example of Massachusetts, Virginia’s House of Burgesses, led by Jefferson, Henry, and Richard Henry Lee, forged resolutions that provided for the appointment of permanent committees of correspondence in every colony (referred to by one governor as “blackhearted fellows whom one would not wish to meet in the dark”). Committees constituted an “unelected but nevertheless representative body” of those with grievances against the British Empire.
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Josiah Quincy and Tom Paine joined this Revolutionary vanguard, steadfastly and fearlessly demanding that England grant the colonists the “rights of Englishmen.” Adams always remained on the cutting edge, however, and was among the first advocating outright separation from the mother country. Tied to each other by the committees of correspondence, colonies further cemented their unity, attitudes, and common interests or, put another way, became increasingly American.

By 1775 a wide spectrum of clubs, organizations, and merchants’ groups supported the committees of correspondence. Among them the Sons of Liberty, the Sons of Neptune, the Philadelphia Patriotic Society, and others provided the organizational framework necessary for revolution; the forty-two American newspapers—and a flood of pamphlets and letters—gave voice to the Revolution. Churches echoed the messages of liberty, reinforcing the goal of “ting[eng] the minds of the people and impregnat[ing] them with the sentiments of liberty.”
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News such as the colonists’ burning in 1772 of the
Gaspee
, a British schooner that ran aground in Rhode Island during an ill-fated mission to enforce revenue laws, circulated quickly throughout the colonies even before the correspondence committees were fully in place, lending further evidence to the growing public perception that the imperial system was oppressive. Thus, the colonial dissatisfaction incorporated the yeoman farmer and the land speculator, the intellectual and the merchant, the parson and the politician—all well organized and impressively led.

Boston emerged as the focal hub of discontent, and the brewing rebellion had able leaders in the Adamses and a dedicated coppersmith named Paul Revere. Lacking the education of John Adams or the rhetorical skill of Sam, Revere brought his own considerable talents to the table of resistance. A man plugged in to the Boston social networks as were few other men, Revere was known by virtually all. One study found that besides the Sons of Liberty, there were six other main revolutionary groups in Boston. Of the 255 leading males in Boston society, only two were in as many as five of these groups—Joseph Warren and Paul Revere.
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Revere percolated the Revolutionary brew, keeping all parties informed and laying down a vital structure of associations that he would literally call upon at a moment’s notice in 1775. Only through his dedicated planning was an effective resistance later possible.