An Empire on the Edge by Nick Bunker

Author:Nick Bunker [Bunker, Nick]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-385-35164-5
Publisher: Random House Inc.
Published: 2014-09-15T16:00:00+00:00

THE FIRST CONFRONTATION

By the end of October, some observers already feared that when the tea arrived, a mob would board the ships and either burn their cargo or throw it into the water. On the evening of November 2, another meeting at the Green Dragon called for the consignees to step down. The following day the first riot took place.9

At the southern end of Boston, there stood a great elm tree, as ancient as the colony itself. According to some, the elm was already mature when the first Puritan settlers came ashore in 1630; others said that it dated from 1646; but either way, the Liberty Tree served as a proud symbol of the town’s integrity. From its branches the people would hang mocking effigies of popes and British politicians, and here they met to jeer at the Stamp Act. As the church bells struck eleven on the morning of November 3, a crowd at least five hundred strong began to gather beneath a flag tied to the elm. A rabble, said Hutchinson, including “boys and negroes,” but it was a rabble with leaders: John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and William Molineux.

Thirty-six hours earlier, under cover of darkness, the consignees had received a summons to come to the tree at noon—“Fail not upon your Peril,” they were told—to resign their commissions to receive the tea. That morning, placards posted up around the town had urged every man in Boston to attend the meeting to witness their humiliation. Ominously, the bills were signed “OC”—for Oliver Cromwell—an allusion to Puritan rebels from the past.

For an hour, the crowd waited until the appointed time. But twelve o’clock came and went, and the consignees failed to appear. Another half hour passed, and then the meeting voted to pursue the guilty men. From the Liberty Tree it was little more than fifteen minutes’ walk to King Street, where the consignees had gone to ground in the warehouse occupied by Richard Clarke. It seems that Adams and Hancock had other duties to perform, because Molineux led the procession. A learned man as well as a merchant—he frequently quoted the Greek and Roman classics—Molineux cast himself in the role of Brutus, the republican tyrannicide, defending liberty and virtue against unjust authority.

Actually, the authorities were absent: the streets already belonged to the people. Boston had no professional police force, and the town’s selectmen—the elected committee that managed its affairs—were mostly allies of Samuel Adams. There was a militia, known as the Corps of Cadets, but who was its colonel? None other than John Hancock. Meanwhile, the army remained at Castle William, unable to move without a request for help from the governor, which Hutchinson could not make for fear of a repetition of the massacre of 1770. Only one brave magistrate dared to intervene, and he came from out of town. Mr. Hatch from Dorchester, a justice of the peace, chanced to be in Boston that day and saw what happened at one o’clock, when the crowd reached King Street.

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