Smuggler Nation (61 page)

33
. Elaine Forman Crane,
A Dependent People: Newport, Rhode Island in the Revolutionary Era
(New York: Fordham University Press, 1985), 84.

34
. Letter reprinted in Rhode Island Historical Society,
Proceedings of the Rhode Island Historical Society, 1877–88
(Providence: printed for the Society, 1888), 81–82.

35
. See Sydney V. James,
Colonial Rhode Island: A History
(New York: Scribner, 1975), 272.

36
. McClellan,
Smuggling in the American Colonies
, 36.

37
. Barrow,
Trade and Empire
, 144.

38
. On the rise of American consumer culture, see T. H. Breen, “‘Baubbles of Britain’: The American and Consumer Revolutions of the Eighteenth Century,”
Past and Present
, no. 119 (May 1988): 73–104.

39
. Matson,
Merchants and Empire
, 207.

40
. Colonial Society of Massachusetts,
Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts
, vol. vi. Transactions, 1899, 1900 (Boston: published by the Society, 1904), 6:299–304. Bollan goes on to inform the Lords “That the persons concerned in this Trade are many, Some of them of the greatest Fortunes in this Country, and who have made great Gains by it, and having all felt the Sweets of it, they begin to Espouse and Justify it, Some openly some Covertly, and having perswaded themselves that their Trade ought not to be bound by the Laws of Great Britain, they labour, and not without Success to poison the Minds of all the Inhabitants of the Province.…”

41
. Quoted in Barrow,
Trade and Empire
, 148.

42
. Quoted in Barrow,
Trade and Empire
, 148.

43
. For a more general discussion, see Jack S. Levy and Katherine Barbieri, “Trading with the Enemy During Wartime,”
Security Studies
13, no. 3 (Spring 2004): 1–47.

44
. Fauquier to Board of Trade, as quoted in Barrow,
Trade and Empire
, 163.

45
. Thomas M. Truxes,
Defying Empire: Trading with the Enemy in Colonial New York
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 93.

46
.
Correspondence of William Pitt when Secretary of State with Colonial Governors and Military and Naval Commissioners in America, Edited under the Auspices of the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America
, ed. Gertrude Selwyn Kimball (New York: Macmillan, 1906), 2:351–55.

47
. Francis Bernard, quoted in Charles Rappleye,
Sons of Providence: The Brown Brothers, the Slave Trade, and the American Revolution
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006), 32.

48
. Francis Fauquier, quoted in Barrow,
Trade and Empire
, 162.

49
. Quoted in Rappleye,
Sons of Providence
, 32.

50
. Rappleye,
Sons of Providence
, 32.

51
. Robert Rogers,
A Concise Account of North America
(1765; reprint New York: Johnson Reprint, 1966), 57.

52
. Quoted in Barrow,
Trade and Empire
, 161.

53
. Quoted in Barrow,
Trade and Empire
, 167.

54
. Barrow,
Trade and Empire
, 167.

55
. McClellan,
Smuggling in the American Colonies
, 53.

56
. Quoted in Truxes,
Defying Empire
, 4.

57
.
Correspondence of William Pitt
, ed. Kimball, 2:320–21.

58
.
Correspondence of William Pitt
, 2:373–78.

59
. Joseph Sherwood’s letter is available in
The Correspondence of the Colonial Governors of Rhode Island, 1723–1775
, ed. Gertrude Selwyn Kimball (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1903), 320.

60
. Truxes,
Defying Empire
, 1.

61
. Truxes,
Defying Empire
, 5.

62
. Truxes,
Defying Empire
, 6.

63
. Truxes,
Defying Empire
, 84.

64
. Truxes,
Defying Empire
, 12–18.

65
. Colden’s letter to Amherst is available in New-York Historical Society.
Collections of the New York Historical Society for the Year 1876
(New York: printed for the Society, 1877), 195–96.

66
. Quoted in Truxes,
Defying Empire
, 39.

67
. Truxes,
Defying Empire
, 152–54.

1
. In a survey of the literature, one historian observes that smuggling is an aspect of the economy of British America that “receives nowhere the attention it deserves.” See David Hancock, “Rethinking the Economy of British America,” in
The Economy of Early America
, ed. Cathy Matson (University Park: Penn State Press, 2006), 81.

2
. James M. Volo,
Blue Water Patriots: The American Revolution Afloat
(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), 3.

3
. See Thomas Barrow,
Trade and Empire: The British Customs Service in Colonial America, 1660–1775
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967), 173.

4
. As Morgan and Morgan describe the customs collectors, “Too many of them sat placidly in England enjoying their large salaries, while their ill-paid and irresponsible deputies collected bribes instead of customs in America.” See Edmund S. Morgan and Helen M. Morgan,
The Stamp Act Crisis: Prologue to Revolution
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 23.

5
. Morgan and Morgan,
Stamp Act Crisis
, 24.

6
. Quoted in Barrow,
Trade and Empire
, 179.

7
. For Adams’s description of the Otis speech, see
Novanghus and Massachussettensis: Political Essays, Published in the Years 1774–1775
(1819; reprint Bedford, MA: Applewood, 2009), 244–47.

8
.
Peter Oliver’s Origin and Progress of the American Rebellion: A Tory View
, ed. Douglas Adair and John A. Schutz (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1967), 48–50.

9
. Quoted in Russell Bourne,
Cradle of Violence: How Boston’s Waterfront Mobs Ignited the American Revolution
(Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2006), 83.

10
. Barrow,
Trade and Empire
, 191.

11
. Robert Middlekauff,
The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763–1789
, rev. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 69.

12
. Barrow,
Trade and Empire
, 202.

13
. Historian Oliver M. Dickerson argues that the greatly reduced amount of customs racketeering in Canada, which was due to Governor Guy Carleton’s intolerance for such practices, partly explains why Canada remained loyal to Britain. Dickerson also points out that only the merchant class in Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina remained loyal and suggests that this was because customs racketeering was less prevalent in these places. See Dickerson,
The Navigation Acts and the American Revolution
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1951), 222, 255.

14
.
The Political Thought of Benjamin Franklin
, ed. Ralph L. Ketcham (1965; reprint Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 2003), 262. Italics in original.

15
. Barrow,
Trade and Empire
, 197.

16
. Quoted in Dickenson,
The Navigation Acts
, 230.

17
. Quoted in McClellan,
Smuggling in the American Colonies
, 88.

18
. Stephen Hopkins,
The Rights of the Colonies Examined
(Providence: William Goddard, 1765), 12.

19
. Morgan and Morgan,
Stamp Act Crisis
, 28.

20
. Quoted in John W. Tyler,
Smugglers and Patriots: Boston Merchants and the Advent of the American Revolution
(Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1986), 17.

21
. Middlekauff,
The Glorious Cause
, 194.

22
. Barrow,
Trade and Empire
, 235.

23
. Sir Angus Fraser, foreword to Carl E. Prince and Mollie Keller,
The U.S. Customs Service: A Bicentennial History
(Washington, DC: Department of the Treasury, 1989), xi.

24
. Barrow,
Trade and Empire
, 227.

25
. Quoted in Barrow,
Trade and Empire
, 228.

26
. Middlekauff,
The Glorious Cause
, 170–73.

27
. Barrow,
Trade and Empire
, 233.

28
. Barrow,
Trade and Empire
, 234.

29
. Barrow,
Trade and Empire
, 240; 244–45.

30
. Prince and Keller,
The U.S. Customs Service
, 23.

31
.
Providence Gazette
(10 June 1769), as quoted in Prince and Keller,
The U.S. Customs Service
, 25.

32
. This description of the incident is taken from Barrow,
Trade and Empire
, 246.

33
. Quoted in Barrow,
Trade and Empire
, 246.

34
. Quoted in Barrow,
Trade and Empire
, 247.

35
. Charles Rappleye,
Sons of Providence: The Brown Brothers, the Slave Trade, and the American Revolution
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006), 113–14.

36
. Quoted in Benjamin L. Carp,
Defiance of the Patriots: The Boston Tea Party and the Making of America
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 72.

37
. Quoted in Carp,
Defiance of the Patriots
, 55.

38
. Carp,
Defiance of the Patriots
, 77.

39
. Niall Ferguson,
Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power
(New York: Basic Books, 2004), 72. Other historians also point to the importance of tea-smuggling interests. See especially Tyler,
Smugglers and Patriots
.

40
. Barrow,
Trade and Empire
, 250.

41
. Middlekauff,
The Glorious Cause
, 272.

42
. Quoted in Neil L. York, “Clandestine Aid and the American Revolutionary War Effort: A Re-Examination,”
Military Affairs
43, no. 1 (February 1979): 26; Helen Augur,
The Secret War of Independence
(New York: Duell, Sloane and Pearce, 1955), 194–96.

43
. Ian Williams,
Rum: A Social and Sociable History
(New York: Nation Books, 2005), 162.

44
. As one of the wealthiest merchants in the colonies, Hancock is widely described in the historical literature as complicit in smuggling, but the extent of such involvement remains unknown. What is known is that Hancock played a lead role in publicly defying and denouncing what was increasingly viewed in the colonies as an unjust and abusive crackdown on smuggling.

45
. The essay by “Massachussettensis” is available in John Adams,
Novanghus and Massachussettensis: Political Essays, Published in the Years 1774–1775
(1819; reprint Bedford, MA: Applewood, 2009), 161.

46
. Quoted in Rappleye,
Sons of Providence
, 126.

Chapter 3

1
. William Moultrie,
Memoirs of the American Revolution, so far as it Related to the States of North and South Carolina, and Georgia
(New York: D. Longworth, 1802), I:63–64.

2
. Elizabeth Miles Nuxoll,
Congress and the Munitions Merchants: The Secret Committee of Trade During the American Revolution, 1775–1777
(New York: Garland, 1985), 283–86.

3
. Moultrie,
Memoirs of the American Revolution
, I:78.

4
. Neil L. York, “Clandestine Aid and the American Revolutionary War Effort: A Re-Examination,”
Military Affairs
43, no. 1 (February 1979): 27.

5
. George C. Herring,
From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 18; Orlando
W. Stephenson, “The Supply of Gunpowder in 1776,”
American Historical Review
30, no. 2 (January 1925): 277, 279.