Category: History

Featured Image: Detail, Congress Voting Independence. The engraving called Congress Voting Independence is the most accurate image of the Assembly Room of Independence Hall during the Revolutionary War era. Artist Robert Edge Pine began his oil painting in 1784 but died before completing the work. Painter and engraver Edward Savage finished the work but died before completing the engraving. 

General Gage and some 3,000 troops of the Army returned to garrison the city of Boston in the early summer of 1774.  On September 1, 1774, General Thomas Gage orders the confiscation of powder and arms from a magazine near Boston.  A rumor that bloodshed occurred at the time brought a large number of patriots toward Boston.  The rumor proved to be false, but the militia continued to gather arms and ammunition in rural Massachusetts.  

The British government declared the colony to be in a state of rebellion in February of 1775.  British spies continued to ferret out colonial military stores around the colony.  General Gage received orders to confiscate the arms and ammunition and arrest several prominent patriot leaders.  Patriot leader Doctor Joseph Warren dispatched Paul Revere, William Dawes and Samuel Prescott to warn of the coming confiscation raid on the night of April 18, 1775.

Approximately 700 hundred British Troops under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith began a night march towards Concord where the military stores were hidden. Doctor Warren’s messengers alerted the countryside, Samuel Adams, John Hancock and other patriot leaders escaped the British as they approached Lexington.  

Under 80 militia men under the command of Captain John Parker were spread across Lexington Green as the sun was rising on the morning of April 19, 1775 to confront the British advance force under the command of Major John Pitcairn.  Captain Parker commanded his men to, “Stand your ground, don’t fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.”  Where the first shot came from is still debated, but 8 militia men lay dead while the British force had one man slightly wounded.

Colonel Smith ordered the march to continue to Concord where according to information the stores were hidden.  The British troops were fired on before they could destroy all the military stores the patriots had hidden in the surrounding area.  The forced march back to Lexington became a nightmare for the British as the minute men used tactics that denied the British the chance to form up and charge as they were trained.  Upon reaching Lexington, a rescue force of approximately 1,700 arrived from Boston under the command of General Earl Percy.  The entire force was then forced to retreat under continuous fire from the patriots.

Charges of atrocities were exchanged by both sides, the patriots claiming that homes were burned for no reason whereas the British claimed they burned homes when they were fired upon.  Claim and counter claim of cruelty and murder, of robbery and rape, many of these claims could not be proven to either sides satisfaction.

When the British reached safety, they found that the patriots had sealed them within the confines of Boston and its harbor.  As hundreds of patriots arrived, the British realized the siege of Boston had begun; it would continue until March of 1776.

On May 10, 1775, Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold captured the Fort of Ticonderoga and the Fort at Crown Point the next day.

In May of 1775, the Second Continental Congress was convened, the New England troops around Boston were adopted as the Continental Army. General Washington was confirmed as Commander in Chief of the Continental Army in June.  Before Washington could reach Massachusetts, the Battle of Breed’s Hill had been fought and Doctor Joseph Warren would perish in the battle.  The British won the battle but at a terrible cost, one that would haunt the British throughout the entire war as many Junior Officers and Non-Commissioned officers were killed in the carnage on Breed’s Hill.  

Washington had grave doubts about the siege of Boston due to the lack of heavy guns to confront the British Army.  Colonel Henry Knox was assigned the task of bringing the artillery from Fort Ticonderoga to Washington’s headquarters at Cambridge November 16. 1775.  Knox would prove his worth to Washington when he arrived back at Washington’s headquarters with 60 tons of artillery and ammunition, thereby facilitating Washington’s effort to drive the British from Boston in March of 1776; thus ending the siege of Boston by fortifying Dorchester Heights above Boston Harbor with the guns from Fort Ticonderoga.

Two assumptions by the British military said that the Americans would “run” at the sight of British troops and that numerous Tories would come to the aid of the British Army, Neither calculation was correct as the Americans did not run and the loyalists did not come to the aid of Britain.  These errors of judgment would prove very costly to the British Empire.

Featured Image: The Robinson half tea chest. It is one of two authenticated surviving tea chests from the Boston Tea Party. It is currently on display at the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum.

The East India Company had once more fallen into debt and was in danger of default, forcing the English government to come to its rescue once more.  Edmond Burke stated that Lord North was seeking to put the company under the umbrella of the Crown, thereby allowing the King to rule without Parliament.  This in the eyes of the Americans threatened both the East India Company and the freedom of the Colonies.  The Tea Act of 1773 placed a small tax on tea imported into America by the East India Company and was supported by Lord North.

 The company reasoned that the repeal of the tax on tea would heal the ailing company and drive the smugglers of other teas from the colonies and restore peace between the government and America.  Lord North believed that by giving America cheap tea they would buy tea, tax or no tax.  He believed that the tax must be retained for Parliament to retain its authority of the right to tax the colonies.  The company was given the right to ship its tea directly to the colonies bypassing the costly regulations that all products bound for the colonies be processed through English ports but the tax on tea was retained.

The East India Company shipped 298 chests of tea to Boston, 257 chests to Charlestown and 698 chests to New York and Philadelphia.  Contrary to widely held beliefs by the English, it was not Boston that harbored the most smugglers, but Rhode Island, New York and Philadelphia. 

In the eyes of the American patriots, the biggest threat from the tax was the maintenance of an Army in the colonies and a civil list that nullified the colonial assemblies.  “What the Parliament could not Fleece from us by Taxes, the Crown will by Monopoly” claimed the merchants of New York.  The colonial patriots believed that Lord North was attempting to “take by ruse, what he could not take by storm”.  It was believed that once the tea tax had breached American defenses, the King would “enter the Bulwarks of our sacred Liberties, and will never desist, till they have made a Conquest of the whole”!

The dispersal of the East India Company tea was consigned to tea agents appointed by the governors of the colonies.  The agents were to see the offloading of the tea but “The Sons of Liberty” paid visits to many of the agents convincing them to renounce their appointment leaving the tea to still be on board the ships.  This led to a standoff between the governors and the captains, leaving many of the agents to seek safety on British naval vessels.

Governor Hutchinson believed that the “Sons of Liberty” would allow the tea to be unloaded at the last moment.  The patriots came to the conclusion that they had to dispose of the tea before December 17,1773 before it would be seized by customs officials for non-payment of duty and sold to pay the salaries of the governor, Tory judges and customs officials.

The “Sons of Liberty” decided to jettison the tea into Boston Harbor on the night of December 16, 1773.  Under the cover of darkness and disguised as Mohawk Indians, they boarded the three vessels carrying the tea and dumped it into Boston Harbor, while the citizens of Boston kept the British Crown officers from being able to identify any of the “Mohawk Indians”.*  Years later, George Hewes said that there were several prominent members of the “Sons of Liberty” among the so-called Indians.

The governor of Massachusetts realized the folly of arresting and trying anyone involved in the affair but many of the citizens felt that the wrath of the English government would not fail to punish them as well as the guilty.  By contrast, the Whigs called the dumping of the tea a legitimate act of self-defense against tyranny as defined by John Locke.

The “Boston Tea Party” was not the only act of rebellion against the Crown. In New Jersey the tea cargo of the ship Greyhound was burned.  In South Carolina several tea chests were thrown into the Cooper River and in New York the tea again was brewed with salt water.  The American patriots insisted that tea be forsworn by all Americans in order that NO TAXED TEA be drunk throughout the colonies.  As a result of patriotic pressure, tea virtually disappeared from the colonies.

The British government was outraged by the acts of the Boston patriots; what followed was retaliation on a scale not before enacted against the American colonies.  The retaliation faced by the colonies would later be called, “The Coercive Acts”.

* Editors note: Whilst searching for illustrations for this piece, I came across an interesting, but somehow obscure, article that stated the Tea Party was blamed on Narragansett Indians rather than the Mohawks as is commonly claimed. This would make sense as the Mohawk homeland was several hundred miles from Boston. The Mohawk were from the eponymous valley in upstate New York and the intervening miles were populated by tribes that were hostile to any native that was part of the Iroquois Confederacy. Meanwhile, the Narragansetts were located in the area between Boston and Rhode Island. Most contemporary local reports referred to the raiders as either indians, natives or Narragansetts. The term Mohawk was used in a single newspaper report and has gained popularity in the intervening years.

Featured Image:  Ethan Allen (standing left, foreground) at a meeting of the Green Mountain Boys, wood engraving, 1858. 

By the spring of 1770, the pact against the non-importation act had begun to fade leaving the more radical elements of the revolutionary leaders with little more to do than hope that Colonial America would wake up to the dangers to their liberties.  This lethargy was mainly due to the fact that things in the colonies were improving with the economy rebounding, roads being constructed and the populace at large was relatively happy. 

The Tory population saw that the more radical elements were not able to stir up the common people as they had in the past.  This too added to the feeling of complacency that the colonies were feeling much to the dismay of Sam Adams, Patrick Henry and Christopher Gadsden who knew that the Parliament would use this period of relative calm as there was dissent among the rural members of the colonies.  The more affluent members of Colonial America were in the act of pushing the common people out of the more productive lands forcing them into lands that were further from the markets driving up their costs to get their products to market.  This set up the next series of issues that confronted the less affluent, mainly that the American Oligarchs were more interested in making money than they were in confronting the Crown and Parliament.

The “Regulators” of rural Carolina and the “Green Mountain Boys” of Vermont did not back off and made life for the more affluent less than comfortable.  They continued to harass the judges and sheriffs that were in the pockets of the planters and landed gentry, with liberal threats of “Tar and Feathers” and rides on “The Rail”, but eventually the planters in the Carolina’s and the land owners in the Hudson Valley finally prevailed over some of the less strident members of these groups.

In England, John Wilkes, John Horne Tooke and other radical Englishmen took up the torch of the Colonials and declared that if Americans could not be free, neither could Englishmen.  John Tooke stated that, “we are stones of one arch and must stand or fall together”.  The sentiment was openly welcomed in the colonies with some going so far as to welcome these English radicals in America should it become necessary for them to flee England.  This was not to be, but the fact that some had considered such a move strengthened the resolve of many Americans.

The lull that encompassed America came to a sudden halt in March of 1772 when one Lieutenant William Duddingston appeared in the waters around Rhode Island and began seizing vessels and cargoes he suspected of being contraband.  Duddingston made Narragansett Bay his hunting grounds, seizing ships and cargoes, both legal and illegal, stealing livestock and cutting down fruit trees for firewood. The local populace decided they had enough of this haughty individual and when his vessel, the schooner “Gaspee” ran aground in Narragansett Bay, the locals boarded the vessel, put Duddingston adrift in a small boat and burned the Gaspee to the waterline.

A commission was sent to Rhode Island to take testimony against the “scoundrels” with the intent of taking them back to England for trail, but to the dismay of the commissioners, no one ever testified against the perpetrators, leaving all who had participated in the burning of His Majesty’s” ship to go free.  This act distressed many of the Officers of the Crown, but little could be done in the absence of credible evidence of wrongdoing.

This signaled an end to the lull of good will between the colonials and Parliament with the enactment of a civil list in Massachusetts to pay the salaries of Crown officials from the customs paid by local merchants.  To add to the dispute, letters written by Governor Thomas Hutchinson and acquired by Benjamin Franklin recommending “a diminution of English liberties in the colony of Massachusetts” did great damage to his post as governor to the colony.  The radicals demanded the removal of the governor but were refused by the Crown.  This action also solidified Franklin’s decision to become one of the radicals seeking freedom for the colonies from the English Crown and driving him to leave England for his home in Pennsylvania.

Frederick North, (Lord North) the second Earl of Guilford was appointed Prime Minister of Great Britain in 1770.  His lack of attention to the ongoing dispute between Parliament and the colonies contributed to an already disintegrating situation that continued almost unabated with a tea tax that would precipitate a new and ever more dangerous situation.