Jack Tar vs. John Bull by Jesse Lemisch

Author:Jesse Lemisch [Lemisch, Jesse]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General
ISBN: 9781317731900
Google: pKRsBgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2015-01-28T01:24:52+00:00

Who and Why

The swift return of peace surprised Colden not a bit. That the mob should disappear as soon as the stamps were in the City Hall was a clue to the identity of those responsible for the rioting: “… the Lawyers of this Place are the Authors, Promoters and Leaders.…” When McEvers resigned the Lieutenant-Governor had realized that “a few Men” were stirring up the people of New York. Thereafter the newspapers were filled with articles “exciting the People to disobedience of the Laws and sedition.… I am persuaded some of the most popular lawyers are the Authors of the seditious Papers….” The Lawyers stirred up the lower classes—they were “easily … seduced”—and now it was questionable whether the lawyers could protect themselves against the destructive forces which they had aroused.96

Colden’s theory was in part a reflection of, and in part a source of, what came to be the English official view of the Stamp Act riots. The theory had three aspects. First, the real leaders were members of the upper class: “several Persons of Consequence” (Sir William Johnson); “the wiser and better Sort” (General Gage); “some Gentlemen of Property” (Colden); Moore doubted that the apparent leaders were the real leaders, for they were not of enough “Consequence.” And among the upper class it was the Lawyers who were “Planners and Incendiaries”: so John Montresor’s friends told him. Second, the people were somewhat cynically used by these “Ringleaders,” who “excited” and “fomented” the mobs. Finally, since the lower class was originally misled toward violent action in behalf of a cause in which they had no real interest, they easily turned to violence for its own sake, thus frightening and disaffecting the upper class which had aroused them. This was the theory of the Stamp Act riots on which the British government acted. It was summarized by General Gage:

The Plan of the People of Property has been to raise the lower Class to prevent the Exertion of the Laws, and as far as Riots and Tumults went against Stamp-Masters and other Obstructions to the Issuing of the Stamps, they encouraged, and many perhaps Joined them. But when they tended towards Proceedings which might be deemed Treasonable or Rebellious, Persons and Propertys being then in Danger, they have endeavored to restrain them.97

When Colden spoke of popular lawyers, there was no mistaking whom he meant. “Three popular lawyers”—William Livingston, John Morin Scott, and William Smith, Jr.—had come from Yale (that “nursery of sedition,” according to a conservative) to oppose him on every major public issue of the mid-century period. The New York Triumvirate (“the wicked triumvirate” to Dr. Samuel Johnson of King’s College) were Colden’s candidates for leadership, but he could not have been more wrong. Livingston’s position, for instance, was a liberal one, but it stopped far short of the radicalism necessary to promote an attack on the King’s Fort. When Colden spoke of papers in which the people were excited to sedition, he meant especially Livingston’s series, “The Sentinel,” in

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