The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 (38 page)

On June 10, the day of the seizure, one of the tidesmen, Thomas Kirk, swore that he had lied in his report on the unloading of the
Liberty
in May; that, in fact, after refusing a bribe from one of Hancock's captains, he had been forcibly confined below decks on the night the ship arrived. Locked below, he had heard sounds of unloading for about three hours, and when released he had been threatened with violence if he did not hold his tongue. The other tidesman could give no evidence on any of this because, according to Kirk, he was home sleeping off too much drink. Kirk had decided to come forward, he said, because he was no longer afraid for his life, Hancock's captain who had terrorized him having died. The captain, it should be noted, had died on May 10.
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Whatever the truth in this story -- Kirk's account seems of doubtful authenticity -- it served as a pretext for the action against the
Liberty
. The charge on which she was seized did not mention wine or the circumstances of her unloading in May, but rather indicted Hancock for loading the oil and tar without a permit. By a strict interpretation of the relevant statutes, Hancock was guilty; he had not posted the bonds and other papers before the cargo was taken aboard. He had not because the practice in Boston and almost every other colonial port was to load and then to take out the required papers, when the exact size and composition of cargo were known. The commissioners, emboldened by Kirk's "evidence," obviously ordered seizure on a technicality never before honored in Boston. As in the case of the
Lydia
, they believed they had the opportunity to strike a blow for royal authority by bringing low one of the most obnoxious opponents of the Crown in America. They may have totally believed Kirk's story, though if they did they must have discounted the popular explanation of his new-found honesty and courage: as an informer he stood to collect one-third of the proceeds from the confiscated ship and cargo.
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Hallowell and Harrison seized the ship at sunset and immediately signaled the
Romney
, a fifty-gun man-of-war, to move her away from the wharf and out into the harbor. The
Romney
dispatched a small boat to accomplish the job. Removing the
Liberty
proved to be difficult: a mob gathered and fought the contingent from the
Romney
to keep her tied up at Hancock's wharf. No one was killed or even seriously injured in the struggle, and the men from the
Romney
getting the upper hand towed the
Liberty
out under the guns of their ship. Thwarted at the wharf, the crowd, "chiefly sturdy boys and Negroes" according to Thomas Hutchinson, turned its attention to Harrison and Hallowell, who were lucky to escape with their lives. Hallowell absorbed more blows than Harrison, who ducked into an alley after being hit hard on the body. Left on the ground, bruised and covered with blood, Hallowell was rescued by several gentlemen in the mob -- so much for Hutchinson's "boys and Negroes." The usual reprisals were made on the houses of the officials, windows broken and other minor damage done, though the houses escaped the gutting that had been standard practice in 1765. Before the night ended, the mob evidently grew to several thousand, surging through the streets hunting other Customs officials, beating them

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when it found them, and not calling quits until one in the morning.
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The weekend was quiet -- "Saturday and Sunday evenings are sacred," Hutchinson observed.
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Beneath the surface calm on both sides, Hancock and the Sons of Liberty and the authorities were planning their next moves. The Customs commissioners had little trouble in deciding what they should do and fled with their families and subordinates to the security of the
Romney
. That recourse did not seem appropriate or necessary to Governor Bernard, who on Monday met with the Council in an unsuccessful effort to persuade the councillors to ask for troops. The councillors were cool to the idea, telling the governor that "they did not desire to be knocked on the Head." In contrast, the Sons of Liberty were hot, announcing that they proposed "to clear the Land of the Vermin, which are come to devour them."
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Before the week was out the Sons were, as both Bernard and Hutchinson admitted, in complete control of the town. They converted a mass meeting at Liberty Hall (as the ground under Liberty Tree was called) into a succession of legal town meetings; they listened to all sorts of wild proposals from the cranks in their midst (such as bringing all menof-war in the harbor under the orders of the town meeting) and then quietly petitioned the governor to order the
Romney
to leave Boston; they restated the familiar case against Parliamentary taxation; and they instructed the town's representatives to the House to do all they could to prevent further impressments and to inquire into the report that the Customs commissioners or someone else had requested that royal troops be sent to Boston.
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The town's resolution about troops carried an ominous meaning. Bernard must have read it with a special sort of horror, for he had long wanted troops sent in but dared not ask for them without the Council's approval. The Customs commissioners were under no such restraints and had long since requested troops, explaining in justification that the "Governor and Magistracy have not the least Authority or power in this place." Bernard knew of the commissioners' desires -- he had pleaded his own inability to gratify them often enough -- but he -- would not act on his own, even though he was now admitting that his power had

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evaporated. He does not seem to have been terribly frightened for his own safety, though a friend had told him to "get out of the way" should troops arrive; rather, he was deeply depressed by the weakness of his government in Massachusetts. And he knew that he faced still another crisis, for Hillsborough's instructions to "require" the House to rescind the Circular Letter had just arrived. Bernard must have known that the House would refuse, and he must have known that dissolving the House when it refused, as ordered by Hillsborough, the Secretary of State for the American Colonies, would not answer anything.
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Still, Bernard had no choice, and on June 21, in an atmosphere still acrid with the smoke of the
Liberty
riot, he transmitted Hillsborough's order to rescind. The House stalled for a few days, and Otis gave a feverish speech, once more seemingly unrelated to the issues at hand but in fact calculated to rouse American revulsion at English degeneracy, while the faction carefully measured its supporters. Bernard pressed for a reply three times and on June 3 received what he dreaded: a negative vote of ninety-two to seventeen and a message from the House describing its Circular Letter as "innocent," "virtuous," and "Laudable." The governor then did as ordered: he dissolved the legislature.
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Sending the House packing only made matters worse for Bernard and royal authority. The Sons of Liberty now had still another issue: the freedom of the people's representatives to gather and petition for redress of grievances was now being denied. Hillsborough's bad-tempered letter to Bernard, soon spread all over the newspapers, did not soothe troubled spirits either. Together, Hillsborough and Bernard had given the popular party opportunities it would not fail to use.

House members who had voted against rescinding the Circular Letter, now raised to sainthood as the "Glorious Ninety-two," soon had the exquisite pleasure of reading their names in the
Boston Gazette
. The rescinders, invariably described in less flattering terms, also found their names in print. Those members who had been unfortunate enough to be absent when the vote was taken got the point and began falling all over themselves in their haste to write Speaker Cushing announcing that had they been present the Glorious Ninety-two would have been an even larger group. Speaker Cushing obliged them by giving their letters to the
Gazette
, which printed them.
This sort of pressure to

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conform to the popular line was hardly subtle, but it was mild compared with the attacks in the
Gazette
on several of the rescinders.
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By this time Otis, Adams, and their cohorts were old hands at using the press. They very nearly outdid themselves during summer 1768. Constitutional issues were skillfully explained -- especially the threat to liberty created by the dissolution of the House -- and new versions of the ministerial plot against the colonies relayed. Sam Adams did much of the writing in the summer, often under the name "Determinatus." As "Determinatus" he summed up the reasons for the people's anger in these words:

I am no friend to
"Riots,
Tumult, and unlawful Assemblies," I take upon me to say, any more than his Excellency is: But when the People are oppressed, when their Rights are infringed, when their property is invaded, when taskmasters are set over them, when unconstitutional acts are executed by a naval force before their eyes, and they are daily threatened with military troops, when their legislature is dissolved! and what government is left, is secret as a
Divan,
when placemen and their underlings swarm about them, and Pensioners begin to make an
insolent
appearance -- in such circumstances the people will be discontented, and they are not to be blamed. . . .
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Adams did not exaggerate the popular unease; the governor also reported it to his superiors in London.

There were signs other than newspaper reports. A little more than a week after the dissolution of the House, around fifty Sons of Liberty attempted to capture John Robinson, a Customs commissioner, at his home in Roxbury. Rumor had it that Robinson had left the safety of the castle where he had fled in June. The rumor was false, and the Sons settled for breaking down Robinson's fruit trees and the fence around his house. Later in July a much larger crowd tried to extract a resignation from John Williams, the inspector general of Customs, but he refused to be intimidated.
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