Defiance of the Patriots by Benjamin L. Carp

Author:Benjamin L. Carp
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-300-11705-9
Publisher: Yale University Press

Destroying tea by fire and flood continued to be popular. In early January, local Sons of Liberty stopped a barrel of tea after it crossed on the ferry from Boston to Charlestown. Some merchant was trying to market the tea in the countryside, but the Sons of Liberty put a stop to his plan by dumping the cargo in the river.48 Two months later, John Hancock gave a rousing speech on March 5, commemorating the anniversary of the Boston Massacre at the Old South Meeting House. The next day, a rainy Sunday, Captain Benjamin Gorham arrived from London in the brig Fortune with 28½ chests of Bohea (common black) tea on board. The tea was consigned to Boston merchants—it wasn't a direct East India Company shipment like the tea that arrived in late 1773, although the press was confused about this. Regardless, the Boston Gazette predicted that it would “Certainly not [be] suffered to be landed in Boston.”49

Indeed, the Gazette emphasized that justice and honor obliged Bostonians to oppose the landing of the tea. Since the governor and customs officers would once again prevent the tea from being sent back to London, it would be pointless to try and pressure the consignee. Instead, “The SACHEMS must have a Talk upon this Matter.”50 The Massachusetts Spy took this theme and ran with it. In a fanciful account of what happened next, it described how “His Majesty Oknookortunkogog King of the Narragansett tribe of Indians” summoned a council, which advised him to destroy the tea aboard the Fortune. “Orders were then issued to the seizor and destroyer-general, and their deputies” to proceed to Boston. As Captain Gorham later reported, at 8 p.m. on March 7 a group of men “disguised and dressed and talking like Indians Armed with Axes and Hatchets with force and Violence” boarded the Fortune, searched it for tea, and dumped the tea chests into the dock. Later, when the “Hearts of Steel” took to the pages of the Spy to thank Oknookortunkogog, they wrote, “your late order for the destruction of the poisonous weed Tea, otherwise called Kill-all, is a fresh proof of your Majesty's love to your people, and inviolable attachments to their liberties.” Meanwhile, the owners of the Fortune rushed to assure readers that they had not intentionally imported any tea.51

The tea from the William, however, was still at large: William Palfrey, one of the Boston Sons of Liberty, boasted that “no Person would dare to bring away a Chest of it,” since “the People are so determin'd, that Tar & Feathers would be the least part of the punishment inflicted on any one who should attempt it.” The Sons of Liberty did their best to single out offenders who flouted the rules blatantly. First they would hurt their pocket books, by destroying the tea. If that didn't work, or proved impossible, then they could threaten offenders personally—with ostracism or even bodily harm. Despite Palfrey's enthusiasm, however, small amounts of the Cape Cod tea were found

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