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On the day of the Boston Massacre in 1770,
Parliament, unaware of the event, made a critical decision. They
repealed the Townshend Acts, but retained one tiny tax—the one on
tea. By doing so, they struck a match and lit a fire under a pot of
water that boiled over three years later.
King George III then kindled New England’s
fires of rebellion when he appointed Thomas Hutchinson royal governor
of
Massachusetts. Because the colonists no longer paid his salary,
Hutchinsonwas now completely indebted to the crown.
Selectman, a type of councilman, John Andrews felt the heat as the kindling grew into a fire that skipped across the ocean.
Because he was elected by his fellow Bostonians to look after town
affairs, Andrews attended many meetings. He heard the fireplace sizzle
when Samuel Adams threw a pot of cold water on the British
government’s fire in 1772. Adams
established Committees of Correspondence, which gave the Sons of
Liberty a pot to clang for alerting their friends, citizens, and
countrymen of any rights violations by the British. These committees
formed throughout the colonies. Andrews was a typical Bostonian. He
enjoyed his fish, ale, and a good cup of tea, but only when he
didn’t have to pay a tax for it. Hence, when ships carrying tea entered
Boston Harbor on November 29, 1773, Andrews knew boiling bubbles would follow in
their wake.
“Hall and Bruce [captains of the ships
carrying the tea] arriv’d Saturday evening with each an hundred and
odd chests of the detested Tea. What will be done with it, can’t
say: but I tremble for ye consequences,” Andrews wrote to his
brother.
Parliament had contributed to the simmering
earlier that year when it ceased all import taxes on tea except for
the three-pence-per-pound tax. Andrews heard the
Boston merchants curse over the decision. The tax gave the British East India
Company an unfair advantage over the Boston
merchants because a surplus allowed this
Londoncompany to sell tea at a lower price.
But what made the tiny bubbles float to the
top of the pot was the benefit the tea tax gave to
Hutchinson’s sons. As customs collectors they were allowed to keep a
percentage of the tea taxes. And their pockets burst while the water
boiled.
“But am persuaded, from the present
dispositions of ye people, that no other alternative will do, than to
have it [the tea] immediately sent back to London again,” Andrews
explained to his brother. But before he could finish his letter, a
commotion interrupted him.
“Ye bells are ringing for a general muster,
and a third vessel is now arriv’d in Nantasket Road. Handbills are stuck up, calling upon Friends! Citizens! and
Countrymen!” he wrote, ending his letter for the moment.
What John Andrews didn’t know as he heard
those bells the night of November 29, 1773, was that the boiling
teapot would soon overflow.
John Andrews nearly spilled his tea over the
commotion outside his
Boston home.
“Such prodigious shouts were made, that
induc’d me, while drinking tea at home, to go out and know the cause
of it,” Selectman Andrews wrote his brother about the night of
December 16, 1773. The shouts stoked his fears that the pot had boiled
over.
Andrews had kept his eye on the brewing
situation since ten o’clock that morning, when five thousand
Bostonians assembled at the Old South Meeting House. They unanimously
demanded the ships carrying the tea should immediately leave
Boston Harbor. Until the ship owners paid the tea tax, the customs officers refused
to give the ships a pass to leave. The assembly waited all day to hear
from the governor.
When Andrews heard those loud shouts that
evening, he raced to the meeting house. There he learned that
Hutchinson had rejected the town’s request to get the ships (and their cargo of
tea) out of the harbor.
“The house was so crouded I could get no
farther than ye porch, when I found the moderator was just declaring
the meeting to be dissolv’d, which caused another general shout . .
. you’d thought that the inhabitants of the infernal regions had
broke loose,” Andrews wrote, explaining he went home and finished
drinking his own tea.
Then he heard a rumor. Some men were planning
to dump the ships’ tea into the harbor. He had to see it for
himself. The situation called for “ocular demonstration,” as
Andrews described it.
“They muster’d . . . to the number of
about two hundred, and proceeded, two by two, to Griffin’s wharf,
where Hall, Bruce, and Coffin [the ship’s captains] lay, each with
114 chests of the ill fated article on board . . . and before nine
o’clock in ye evening, every chest from on board the three vessels
was knock’d to pieces and flung over ye sides,” he wrote of the
overflow.
“They say the actors were Indians from
Narragansett. Whether they were or not, to a transient observer they
appear’d as such, being cloath’d in Blankets with the heads
muffled, and copper color’d countenances, being each arm’d with a
hatchet or axe, and pair pistols,” reported Andrews.
Andrews’s “ocular demonstration” left
behind a eye-witness account of the Boston Tea Party, as it was called
years later. When it was all over that night, the “Indians” dumped
nearly 350 chests of tea. One question remains, however: Was Andrews
an interested observer of the action, or more? As is often the case,
only God and John Andrews know whether Andrews was merely a witness to
the event, or a participant.
The Boston Tea Party left behind an aftertaste
that permeated all of
Massachusetts. “Boston will feel the whole weight of ministerial vengeance,” Boston
Selectman John Andrews accurately predicted. He rightly feared royal
repercussions for the high crimes against tea. King George III, Prime
Minister North, and Parliament were so furious over the Tea Party that
they used their pens to let out some steam and passed the Coercive
Acts.
All
of Massachusetts tasted the over-brewed legislation. The Acts closed
Boston
’s port, revoked the eighty-year-old Massachusetts
royal charter, and sent three thousand British soldiers to
Massachusetts. Worse, the acts quartered those soldiers in the homes of private
citizens. And, worst of all, the legislation abolished town meetings.
No longer could the people legally assemble. Gone was a fundamental
right. Chaos was left to fill its place.
“This was the boldest stroke, which had yet
been struck in
America,” Gov. Thomas Hutchinson wrote. He believed no measure was too
strong to put a stop to the raging patriots, who “had nothing to
fear for themselves. If the colonies were subject to the supreme
authority and laws of Great Britain, their offences, long since, had been of the highest nature,”
Hutchinson continued in his letter, which was one of the last he wrote as
governor.
“And it is certain . . . that the body of
the people had also gone too far to recede, and that an open and
general revolt must be the consequence; and it was not long before
actual preparations were visibly making for it in most parts of the
province,” Hutchinson blamed.
But the Coercive Acts also left an aftertaste
in
Hutchinson’s mouth, one that would last the rest of his
life and take him away from his
homeland. His failure to “secure dependency” in the colonies
resulted in his resignation, or more likely, his firing. Hutchinson
and his family fled Boston
for
England. They never returned to
America.
King George III sent four British regiments to
Boston and replaced Thomas Hutchinson with Gen. Thomas Gage. The change was
more coercive than any other prior action by the king. Gage was not only the
new governor, but he was also the commander-in-chief of the British
armies. Martial law had fully come to
Massachusetts.
Nothing, not soap, soda, or any other
substance, could wash the tea stains from
Massachusetts. Military rule was the king’s solution there. And soon the
aftertaste would bite the other colonies.
