HIST-116: THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Lecture 6 - Resistance or Rebellion? (Or, What the Heck is Happening in Boston?) [January 28, 2010]
Chapter 2. The Stamp Act Congress and Parliamentary Thoughts on the Stamp Act [00:03:48]
…And I'll just mention four of the resolutions passed by the Stamp Act Congress. They declared that they owed their allegiance to the crown like any British subject; they declared that they were entitled to the rights and liberties of any British subject; they said that British subjects in the colonies could not be taxed without their consent; and they declared that trial by jury was the right of every British subject in the colonies. So you can see their — really their statement is saying well, we're British subjects like any other British subject and we're demanding the rights and liberties of other British subjects.
Now it's important to note — the resolutions are not saying that Parliament had no right to regulate trade in the colonies. They're just saying that Parliament cannot directly tax the colonies without their consent. So again, it's a direct statement, it's a strong statement, but it's a respectful statement and it's not boldly sort of altering — at least in the minds of the colonists — an enormous change of policy. They're kind of stating what they think the state of things is. So clearly the Stamp Act Congress is a step toward colonial unity; it's a significant step.
Chapter 3. Mob Protests by the Sons of Liberty [00:10:12]
So far we've largely been talking about speechifying, paper-pushing, resolves, declarations, newspaper announcements, but in Boston we're now about to see some physical resistance. Because there, some radicals decided no more words — action. And these Boston radicals, as you're about to see, they deployed a long-held colonial tradition of resistance. They basically planned a mob action. Now it's important to note that mobs in early America weren't sort of wild, violent, out-of-control, 'oh, my gosh, it's a riot' kind of actions. In a way they were sort of part of the political system, something that people were supposed to do when they felt outraged.
So in the summer of 1765, some Bostonians decided they're going to take advantage of this tradition. A group of Boston radicals who eventually called themselves the Sons of Liberty…So these radicals decide they're going to take action. And the Sons of Liberty basically are artisans and shopkeepers who want to act in resistance to the Stamp Act. Samuel Adams — who's really more a member of the elite, but he nevertheless was kind of a champion of the artisan class — and he's among their number too.
So now we have this radical group, the Sons of Liberty, who have named themselves, so they're organized enough to have names. We have an organized force of men. And we have a focused desire to protest against an act of Parliament. So this is on its way to being a different kind of early American mob action than these other ones might have been.
Chapter 4. The Repeal of the Stamp Act and the Complications of the Declaratory Act [00:15:42]
So we've got this new Prime Minister, the Earl of Rockingham; he's in with the merchants who are being hurt by the boycott. The idea now is — it would be a fine thing if we could figure out a way to repeal the Stamp Act, but the problem of course is figuring out how to repeal it without seeming weak, while holding your ground.
And Rockingham eventually did repeal the Stamp Act in March of 1766, but to save face he assigned blame to the wounded British economy. He did not say anything about colonial rights. He said, 'Well, the economy is suffering and so we will repeal the Stamp Act.' He also passed at the same time the Declaratory Act —— which declared in short that Parliament could pass laws for the colonies, quote, "in all cases whatsoever."…
Now to Britain, the Declaratory Act asserted their control over the colonies, their legal control over the colonies in all cases. To the colonists, because it mentioned legislation but not taxes, it seemed to suggest that maybe they had made their point, that Parliament is not going to assert taxation. So in a way the Declaratory Act makes things worse. It worsens ongoing misunderstandings between Parliament and the colonies — the British not fully understanding the colonial mindset about the workings of the empire, the colonists not viewing their own logic as exceptional in any way. They assume that their logic has been understood.
The Declaratory Act also didn't really encourage compromise, because if you think about it, moderates on all sides were discredited. In England, the Declaratory Act asserted Parliamentary power, so it's a strong statement of power. In the colonies, radicals ruled the day, because it seemed as though they'd made their point. So as far as the colonies were concerned, the Stamp Act crisis moved many to accept radical leadership; it appears to be working. It also revealed to the colonies the power of uniting the colonies to bring pressure against England, which also seemed to have worked.
Chapter 5. Reactions to the Townshend Acts and Samuel Adams's Propaganda [00:19:39]
Now once again in the middle of all this, the Prime Minister yet again is replaced. Clearly, this is not the time to be a Prime Minister in England. It's kind of a rocky time going on. So — Rocky time was not meant to be a pun. Charles Townshend takes his place. Charles Townshend, the new Prime Minister — and he's given the task of balancing the budget in 1767.
… So he decides he's going to ask for customs duties on items that the colonies import from Britain, like glass, silk, paper, paint and — tea. [laughs] You can see where we're going. But this is not an internal tax. This is an external tax. It's not a tax on things within the colonies. It's not a tax on legal documents. It's not a tax on playing cards like the Stamp Act. It's an external tax. It's customs duties. And like before, Townshend wants the money raised by this to go to pay for royal administration in the colonies, so also the money raised isn't going back to England; it's going to be spent on the colonies. These come to be known as the Townshend Acts of 1767.
…Colonial anger is raised yet again by a publication by a colonist named John Dickinson. He's a Pennsylvanian. He's in Pennsylvania and he writes a series of letters. First they appear in a Pennsylvania newspaper. They're eventually published in other colonial newspapers, and then finally they're put together and published in a pamphlet. This is all in 1767 — and the pamphlet is namedLetters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania to the Inhabitants of the British Colonies…
Now Dickinson actually — When you read these, he's pretty moderate in tone. And most of what he does is he uses past precedent to argue against the right of Parliament to directly tax the colonies. He asserts directly: we're not talking about independence; we're just talking about past precedent. However, he also says, and this is a quote from him,
"We cannot be happy without being free. We cannot be free without being secure in our property. We cannot be secure in our property, if without our consent, others may, as by right, take it away, that taxes imposed on us by Parliament, do thus take it away… In short, if they have a right to levy a tax of one penny upon us, they have a right to levy a million upon us. For where does that right stop?...To use the words of Mr. Locke, ‘What property have we in that, which another may, by rights take, when he pleases, to himself?’…Weare therefore—I speak it with grief—I speak with indignation—we are slaves….”"
That's really clear, direct logic. Right? We can't be happy without being free. We can't be free without being secure in our property. We can't be secure in our property if without our consent, others may take it away, and Parliament seems to be taking it away.
… Meanwhile, Parliament, eventually, in 1770, repeals most of the Townshend Acts but does preserve the tax on tea, partly for revenue and partly to prove that they still have the right to tax the colonies.
Chapter 6. Different Viewpoints on the Boston Massacre [00:31:48]
Okay. So given all of these feelings — fears about a tyrannical standing army that's inside a sort of system of tyranny — it makes sense that when these troops arrive in Boston relations are not going to be good between people in Boston and soldiers in Boston, which brings us to yet another sort of bell-ringing Revolutionary War moment, a particularly noteworthy active resistance in Boston later memorialized by clever colonial propagandists as the Boston Massacre. Right? That's how we know it today. They gave it — Colonists gave it that name. It's a snappy name.
A few days later, March 5th, another fight broke out when another civilian said something insulting to another soldier and they began punching each other and there was another street fight — and that would be the first in a series of increasingly agitated clashes on that day, March 5th, 1770, that's going to end in gunfire. …Now from this point we have several accounts. There are a number of accounts about what happened, some of them conflict, and we're going to be looking at two accounts today. We're going to be looking at one by British general Thomas Gage, I mentioned before, the commander-in-chief of the British army in America. He's posted in New York but he had gotten a very detailed report about what happened in Boston from his soldiers — his officers and men — on exactly what they think they experienced. And then the other account is by Samuel Adams, radical propagandist — clearly is going to be a very different point of view.
Okay. So Gage sends a very detailed report to a member of the King's cabinet in London based on what the British soldiers in Boston told him. Assuming that the colonists in general were insolent and were pushing to get more than they deserved, Gage says in his statement, he suspects that the entire thing was deliberate. He thinks that there were some colonists who probably prearranged what happened, armed themselves with sticks, rocks, bricks and snowballs. I'm sorry, but snowballs just never sounds like a scary weapon to me, even though bad things happen here, and I know I would not like to be hit with a snowball, but it's not like a brick. But snowballs are — Everyone's complaining about snowballs in these accounts you'll see. Somehow it just makes it seem less serious. I don't know why. But anyway, he thinks it's deliberate; he thinks the colonists prearranged it; that they armed themselves with sticks, rocks, bricks and snowballs; planned the ringing of the bell so that Bostonians would rise up at the signal and attack the soldiers.
Okay. So this is what Gage assumes — and here is Gage's account. "Many people came out of their houses supposing a fire in the town, and several officers on the same supposition were repairing to their posts; but meeting with mobs were reviled, attacked, and those who could not escape knocked down and treated with great inhumanity." Right? 'Those crude, nasty colonists are treating the soldiers very badly.'
…Captain Preston, hearing the sentinel was in danger of being murdered" — already; we got to murder really fast — "he detached a sergeant and 12 men to relieve him and soon after followed himself to prevent to prevent any rash act on the part of the troops. This party as well as the sentinel was immediately attacked, some colonists throwing bricks, stones, pieces of ice, and snowballs" — once again the snowballs — "at them whilst others advanced up to their bayonets and endeavored to close with them to use their bludgeons and clubs, calling out to them to fire if they dared and provoking them in a most opprobrious language." Right? Again — 'rude colonists behaving badly.' So we have a group of soldiers that are lined up in front of the customs house running to protect a fellow soldier supposedly being murdered at the hands of a crude and angry mob armed with sticks and rocks and snowballs.
... Samuel Adams is writing to the colonial public and he's trying to raise a public outcry against the soldiers and obviously by association, against the British administration, and clearly Adams is going to want to depict these soldiers as cruel and tyrannical as all standing armies are, so in a sense Adams is certainly going to be offering an extreme version of some colonial sentiment at the time about the soldiers and maybe about the British administration generally.
Okay. So here is Adams' version from the moment when the bell starts to ring …boy says, 'A sentry knocked me down,' points at the solider and says, "There's the son of a b[it]ch that knocked me down." [laughter] I love that that detail is in the newspaper [laughs] — and that's another one of those things that like — they said that in 1770? [laughter] And they did. Other people heard this and cried, "Kill him." [laughter] Hey. [laughs] "The sentry ran to the custom-house steps, knocked at the door, but could not get in." 'Excuse me. [laughs] They're going to kill me.' …
The title of the image is “The Bloody Massacre”. This engraving was done by Paul Revere who strived to muster support for the colonists. By titling this as a massacre, it was probably the most effective piece of war propaganda against the British.
So now both narrators have gotten us to the same point. We have soldiers lined up. They have just very visibly loaded their guns. In front of them stands British Captain Preston with — who is in command of the men — and in front of Preston is an angry crowd. So according to Gage, at this point Preston — soldiers behind him — crowd in front of him — he's trying to calm the situation down, and supposedly he's asked, 'Are you going to ask those soldiers to fire on us?' and Preston says, 'Yeah. See, the guns are behind me and you're in front of me. No. Really. [laughter] It wouldn't be a good idea for them to fire now because I'll die.' Right? [laughter] He's like 'No.' It's a good point I think.