Independence (9 page)

His biting essay notwithstanding, Franklin remained hopeful. Perhaps he clutched at straws, but it was more likely that he had been impressed with the steady restraint exhibited by North’s government during its first forty months in office. Franklin was also cheered by the departure of Lord Hillsborough as American secretary in the summer of 1772. Franklin had initially believed that Hillsborough’s “inclinations are rather favourable towards us.” He had been wrong. Hillsborough not only had been prone to malicious and ill-advised actions—by “
my Firmness
” the colonists will be “something mended,” he had boasted loudly—but also had treated Franklin with a callous snobbishness. Soon enough Franklin realized that both the royalization of Pennsylvania and his elevation to a subministerial post were dead letters so long as Hillsborough held his office. Ultimately, Franklin concluded that the boorish Hillsborough was a man given to “conceit, wrong-headedness, obstinacy, and passion” who was “fond of every one that can stoop to flatter him and inimical to all that dare tell him disagreable Truths.” But by the time of the Tea Act, Hillsborough was gone, forced out a year earlier by domestic enemies who believed his land policies in America were injurious to their speculative interests. He had been succeeded in August 1772 by the Earl of Dartmouth, who was quiet and genteel, reputed to be given to calm and rational deliberation, known to have been an advocate of the repeal of the Stamp Act, and, according to Franklin, generally believed to harbor “favourable Dispositions towards the Colonies.”
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If only the Tea Act could be weathered—and Franklin believed it could, provided the colonists responded judiciously—he was hopeful that Anglo-American differences could be resolved.

Ironically, no one did more than Franklin to set the stage for the combustible environment in Boston that greeted the Tea Act. At the very end of 1772—some six months prior to the enactment of the Tea Act—Franklin had made a fateful decision. Someone who has never been identified passed along to him a purloined collection of letters exchanged in the late 1760s between Thomas Hutchinson, by now the royal governor of Massachusetts, and Thomas Whately, a member of Parliament and former undersecretary of the treasury. The missives were filled with volatile passages. Hutchinson had portrayed the popular leaders in Massachusetts as bent on fomenting rebellion, welcomed an unflinching British response to American provocations, and even asked for “an abridgment of what are called English liberties” within the Bay Colony. Given the passionate atmosphere in Boston and the antipathy that residents already felt toward Hutchinson, Franklin knew the letters would have an inflammatory effect.

However, Franklin had convinced himself that the letters would demonstrate that the culprits responsible for imperial troubles were misguided and corrupt lower-level officials, the likes of royal governors and undersecretaries who steered well-intended ministers—such as Lord North—toward bad choices. He was convinced too that the continued presence of Hutchinson, who was widely hated in Boston, only made the already inflamed situation in the Bay Colony even more explosive. Publication of the letters, Franklin reasoned, would lead London to remove Hutchinson. Incredibly, Franklin seemed to believe that by passing along the stolen letters, he was paving the way for the final resolution of Anglo-American differences.
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For all his brilliance as a scientist, essayist, businessman, and civic leader, Franklin the politician not infrequently made monumental mistakes. Dispatching the Hutchinson Letters was his most egregious blunder, both for his own personal fortunes and as a contributory factor to a landmark event in the American Revolution. Seldom has any thoughtful public figure acted on such flawed logic or demonstrated such a shocking lack of political savvy.

Today, it is surprising that a powerful American resistance could be fashioned against a tax that had been in existence for six years and was even being reduced. But by this time many Americans had come to distrust the motives of the mother country. Noxious taxes, occupation by a standing army, and discriminatory commercial regulations had convinced many colonists that the policies pursued by the imperial government “evince[d] a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism,” as the Declaration of Independence would eventually assert. Contrary to Franklin’s expectations, nothing was more important than the Hutchinson Letters—at least in Massachusetts—in confirming the colonists’ suspicions.

Hutchinson’s pilfered correspondence was made public in Boston only weeks prior to the arrival of the first news of the Tea Act. The letters hit like a bombshell, causing many Bostonians to imagine a far-flung conspiracy among malevolent authorities—ranging from colonial officials in America to the ministry itself—to victimize the colonists. Many were now assured that the ultimate goal of these conspiratorial officials was tyranny, just as the leaders of the colonial protest had been saying for nearly a decade. Instead of rehabilitating North’s reputation, as Franklin had hoped would be the case, the letters convinced many Bostonians that by reducing the levy on tea, the ministry had treacherously schemed to find a way to get the colonists accustomed to paying imperial taxes. Once they acquiesced, the Bostonians thought, Parliament would impose a panoply of taxes on America.
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It followed, too, that in due time London would strip the colonists of all autonomy and abuse them in the same manner that it had long victimized the Irish.

Coordinated resistance to the Tea Act was possible because an infrastructure of protest had been fashioned since 1765, at least in the principal cities. Operating through organizations such as the Sons of Liberty, which sported networks that reached from harborside barrooms to the richly paneled offices of affluent merchants, the popular leaders listened, managed, taught, manipulated, and planned. With time, they grew more adroit at organizing and provoking. They learned how to turn out crowds and how to control them once they were in the streets, and they found writers with a keen eye for cant who were capable of giving just the right twist to British policies and actions. These polemicists cast everything done by British officials in a bad light. This is not to suggest that those who followed the popular leaders were unthinking automatons. More and more Americans now questioned whether their vital interests could be secured under the current imperial structure. Increasing numbers of colonists wished to have greater control over their destiny, and steadily more of the best educated and the affluent were growing restive with the limitations for advancement that they faced simply because they were colonists. By 1773 many Americans had come to think along the lines of Samuel Adams, who had recently written that it was “the Business of America to take care of itself.”
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Nor was it solely the residents of the large port cities who had grown disaffected with imperial conditions. Many Chesapeake planters longed to market their tobacco in free markets outside the British Empire. Others, both the wealthy and hordes of land-hungry farmers, some of whom had fought in the French and Indian War to win the trans–Appalachian West for Anglo-America, had grown restive waiting for London to open that lush domain for settlement and speculation. The Tea Act took effect near the tenth anniversary of the Peace of Paris, yet after all that time the lands across the mountains remained nearly as closed to American settlement as they had been when they belonged to France. Nor should it be forgotten that many yeomen in the Carolina and Georgia backcountry, the Scots-Irish in particular, were descendants of immigrants who had fled British victimization, whether economic or religious. To say that they were resentful of London’s long reach would be an understatement.
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If the nascent American resistance was to succeed, the colonists had to demonstrate a common front against London. Colonists throughout the length and breadth of the land had to realize that opposition to parliamentary taxation, even a growing disenchantment with many imperial policies and practices, was widespread. Early in 1773, just prior to the passage of the Tea Act, Richard Henry Lee in Virginia had taken the lead in inducing the House of Burgesses to open an intercolonial correspondence. The idea, as Thomas Jefferson later recalled, was to foster an “understanding with all the other colonies to consider the British claims as a common cause to all, & to produce an unity of action.” Once adopted, Virginia shared information with colonial assemblies throughout America. Within a few months each colony, save Pennsylvania, had its own committee of correspondence and “lovers of liberty in every province”—Lee’s characterization—were coming to understand that Americans from New England’s rugged coastline to the pine barrens of the Lower South felt threatened by the encroaching policies of Parliament.
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The colonists learned of the Tea Act in September, more than two months prior to the arrival of the first ship that brought dutied tea across the Atlantic. From the start, there was a gathering sense in some quarters that this was an epochal showdown. Here, yet again, was another attempt by Parliament to tax them. What is more, the act gave the East India Company monopoly rights in selling the tea, a dangerous precedent that could threaten free trade. Then, too, there was an air of deceit about this law. As the existing tax on tea was lowered, many saw the Tea Act as a sleight of hand to draw the colonists into paying only a light duty. If the maneuver succeeded, the colonists in no time would become accustomed to paying this parliamentary tax; ensnared, they would be ripe for further taxation.

Given months to prepare, those who opposed parliamentary taxation were ready when the tea ships approached the port cities. Confronted by angry mobs, the captains of the
Nancy
and the
Polly
, the tea ships bound for New York and Philadelphia, respectively, turned for home without attempting a landing. The
London
made for Charleston, but when it docked, the local Sons of Liberty seized the cargo, preventing its sale. In Boston, outrage took a different and more destructive form. Late on a frigid, jet-black Saturday night toward the end of November, the
Dartmouth
, carrying 114 chests of tea, slipped into Boston Harbor and tied up at dockside while the city’s residents slept. When the Boston resistance leaders learned the next day that the tea ship was in port, it was too late to seize the dutied cargo, unless they wished to risk a confrontation with customs officials and possibly British soldiers. Things only got worse for the radical leaders in Boston. A week later a second tea ship, the
Eleanor
, arrived and docked, and after another ten days the brig
Beaver
entered Boston Harbor with still more of the East India Company’s tea. (A fourth tea ship, the
William
, ran aground at Provincetown on Cape Cod, but its 58 chests of tea were saved and fell into the hands of the Customs Service.)
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Those in Boston who opposed the Tea Act knew that, under a century-old customs regulation, all duties on taxable goods were to be paid within twenty days or customs officials would seize the ship and sell it and its cargo at auction. Whale oil and assorted winter supplies, which were also part of
Dartmouth
’s contents, were rapidly brought ashore, but longshoremen refused to touch the chests of tea. The clock was ticking. Come December 17, time would run out. On that day the tea aboard the
Dartmouth
was certain to fall into the hands of the Customs Service. There could be no doubt that thereafter the tea would be sold by the East India Company to Massachusetts consumers. Should that occur, it was feared, not only would the tax on tea be collected, but the triumphant ministry and Parliament would also impose additional duties on the colonists. To prevent this from occurring, Boston’s radical leaders pleaded for three weeks with Governor Hutchinson to send the ships with their cargoes of tea back to England. He turned a deaf ear to their entreaties. Hutchinson had taken an oath to enforce British law. Furthermore, after the publication of his private letters, he was anxious to settle old scores.
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Faced with the choice of acting or capitulating, the resistance leaders chose to act. On the bitingly cold, mist-cloaked night of December 16, they took a carefully planned step. Upwards of 200 men, many disguised as Indians, descended on Griffin’s Wharf and slipped aboard all three tea ships. While some men held lanterns or stood lookout, others descended into the holds. With block and tackle, the heavy chests of tea—each chest was lead-lined and weighed 80 to 90 pounds when empty and upwards of 450 pounds when filled—were hoisted on deck, where men, sweating despite the raw weather, wielded axes to smash them open. Other “Mohawks,” as these men called themselves, shoveled the loose tea into the swirling, sable waters of Boston Harbor. The work was difficult and time-consuming, requiring nearly three hours. Still, considering the amount of goods that had to be moved—90,000 pounds of tea in 340 unwieldy chests—the job was completed relatively rapidly, which suggests that most of the work was undertaken by dockhands accustomed to this sort of labor. Customs officials and the leaders of Britain’s armed forces in Boston had known early on that the vessels had been taken over by hostile elements—they could not help but know, as more than two thousand spectators gathered along the waterfront to watch the festivities—but none wished to act without civilian authorization. Governor Hutchinson, who had fled to his country home in Milton, was not present to give the order to stop the plundering. In the crystalline dawn of the following day, December 17, every resident knew of the Boston Tea Party and, in all likelihood, knew it had been a watershed event, what John Adams that morning called “an Epocha in History.”
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