Marc Liebman's Blog, page 16

Rebuilding a Library

In many large and small ways, the War of 1812 was a disaster for the United States. Despite being at war with France, the British invaded the U.S. and burned our Capitol building and the White House.

There’s the famous story of Dolly Madison saving paintings from being burned. Still, there was another loss, particularly for those who love to research history by delving into old books. When the British officers were stacking material to ensure the Capitol building would be destroyed, they came across a room that housed the Congress’ records and its library.

Roughly 3,000 books and countless other records were fed into the fire. Many of the books were donated by members of Congress and were housed in the room known as the Library of Congress. When this library was created, the Founding Fathers intended it for research. Its existence is not constitutionally mandated.

When the smoke cleared and the British Army gone, James Madison still had a war to fight. Congress had taken up residence about 10 blocks away, and one of the items being considered was how to rebuild the library’s contents.

Now out of office, Thomas Jefferson offered to sell his extensive collection of books to the U.S. Government. In his library at Monticello, Jefferson had approximately 6,500 books valued at $24,950 in 1914 ($410,737 in 2023). It was, at the time, the most extensive collection of books in the U.S. and included many rare volumes of which only few copies existed.

Jefferson’s collection included all of Voltaire’s work, all in French, John Locke, and other philosophers and the works of many English and French novelists. Some of whose works were considered too risqué for the public and therefore should not be in a “public” collection.

So why did Jefferson want to sell, not donate? Simple reason was that he was deeply in debt. He had not managed Monticello well and was already considering selling off pieces of land so his heirs would not have to pay off his debts.

Some in Congress argued they had more important topics to debate than whether to acquire Jefferson’s library. Others believed Jefferson’s collection was an ideal beginning to restart the Congressional library. Still, others objected to the purchase since the books were not all in English and would not, therefore, be accessible to the majority of the U.S. population. Another argument against buying the collection was that the topics were not appropriate for a legislative body since many books did not cover government-related topics.

None other than New Hampshire’s Representative Daniel Webster went on record against the purchase, stating that “all books of an atheistical, irreligious, and immoral tendency” should be removed. Others wanted to not purchase books to which “gentlemen would take exception.”

Many opponents required amendments to be added to prevent its passing that would guarantee it wouldn’t pass. All failed when the bill passed on October 10th, 1814 by a margin of 10 votes. The bill’s supporters said Jefferson’s books were an “admirable base on which to base a national library.”

One condition attached to the authorization to purchase Jefferson’s library and any subsequent additions to the collection was the requirement that the books would be housed in a separate building, not in the Capitol. Jefferson’s collection of books was taken in toto and became the foundation of what we now know as the Library of Congress.

Image of the Capitol Building shortly after it was burned in 1814, Library of Congress.

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We’ve Tried Trade Embargos Before

On June 21st, 1807, the U.S.S. Chesapeake, 36 guns, was stopped and boarded by H.M.S. Leopard, 50 guns in international waters of Virginia. The British captain had intelligence that four Royal Navy deserters were on board the U.S. ship. The offenders were three Americans impressed (fancy word for kidnapped) by the Royal Navy and one Englishman.

It didn’t matter to the court-martial or the Royal Navy that the four men had papers showing that while they were born in England, they had emigrated to the U.S. and had the proper paperwork of the time documenting their American citizenship. The four men were taken back to Great Britain, where the Englishman was hung and the Americans sentenced to 500 lashes with the cat o’ nine tails. Wisely, the English did not carry out the punishment since the men would have died before the cat was applied 500 times and returned the sailors to the U.S.

In the U.S., the incident caused a political firestorm and President Jefferson was forced to act. This was a period during which he had defunded the U.S. Navy despite the continual impressment of U.S. merchant seamen. For the record, between 1800 and 1812, 15,000+ U.S. citizens were forced to serve in the Royal Navy.

At the time, England and its allies were in a life and death struggle against France and her allies. Both the primary antagonists wanted the U.S. to take sides which a succession of presidents – Washington, Adams, and now Jefferson, steadfastly refused to do. U.S. neutrality and the lack of a Navy encouraged the two antagonists to seize U.S.-flagged merchant ships.

What came about was the Embargo Act of 1807 which was a follow-on piece of legislation to the Non-Importation Act of 1806, which prohibited U.S. merchants from bringing goods (leather, silk, hemp or flax, tin or brass, wool, glass, and paper goods, nails, hats, clothing, and beer) into the U.S.

The Embargo Act went one step further and prohibited ships from the warring powers to either deliver or take on board cargos in U.S. ports. By passing the law, Jefferson hoped to pressure both Britain and France to stop seizing our ships.

Like most acts of its type, it failed miserably. The Embargo Act of 1807 caused the U.S. economy to contract by five percent. The country’s economy had been booming because the war created a need for what the U.S. could deliver and was opening other new markets in the Mediterranean and Europe.

The Embargo Act of 1807 also had political consequences. The Federalist Party, which had lost the presidency in the election of 1800 and was increasingly in the minority in both houses, made substantial gains in the 1808 Congressional elections, something that Jefferson noted. In the last 16 days before he left office, Jefferson rammed through Congress the Non-Intercourse Act of 1809, which repealed the Embargo Act of 1807.

Between the two pieces of legislation, Jefferson had significantly damaged the U.S. economy. However, there are two silver linings to these two pieces of legislation. First, the ban on British manufactured goods spurred American businesses to become early adopters of what became the Industrial Revolution.

Second, in 1956, 149 years later, the founders of a new ski area in Vermont named the resort Smuggler’s Notch. While the Embargo Act was in force, smugglers bringing British goods into New England found a narrow track past Mount Mansfield, Mount Sterling, Mount Madonna, and Mount Morse in Northern Vermont that was unpatrolled. During Prohibition, the route was revived to bring alcoholic beverages into the U.S.

Image is of a teapot fashioned in 1807 on which on one side of the is inscribed “Mind your own business” and on the other, “Prudence is the best remedy for hard times.” The teapot was created in support of the Embargo Act of 1807.

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The Senate’s First Impeachment Trial

Ever since the United States was founded, we as a nation, have struggled with how to discipline elected officials. The Constitution delineates how the country can remove its president from office. Still, back in the 1790s, the rules governing malfeasance by members of the House of Representatives and Senate were less clear.

Article II, Section 5, Paragraph 2 of the U.S. Constitution reads “Each House may determine the rules of its proceedings, punish its members for disorderly behavior, and expel a member with the concurrence of two-thirds.”

The Constitution of the United States was ratified on June 21st, 1788, when New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify the document. It took less than nine years for this clause to be tested.

On July 3rd, 1797, President Adams delivered a letter to Vice President Jefferson, who was the president of the Senate and presiding over the Senate the day before it was to adjourn for the year. The document stated that the administration was investigating Senator William Blount of Tennessee.

Blount and others, the administration learned, were planning to attack Spanish outposts in Spanish-controlled western Florida and Louisiana. The raids were to be timed with by an uprising (fomented by Blount and his friends) against the Spanish by the Creek and Cherokee nations.

Space does not permit providing the details on exactly what was planned but note that Blount was in deep financial trouble (along with several of his associates) for land deals that had gone bad in Spanish-held Western Florida and Louisiana. Also, Spain helped the U.S. win its independence and was an ally after signing the Pickney Treaty of 1795.

After evaluating the information that started the investigation, Adam’s Attorney General Charles Lee and well-known lawyers William Lewis and William Rawle agreed that Blount had committed crimes “worthy of impeachment.” More than two-thirds of the Senate agreed and a select committee was formed to collect more evidence and then present what they found to the legislative body in an impeachment trial.

Letters from members of the Senate showed that only a few Senators believed Blount was innocent. The few doubters were all fellow Democratic-Republicans led by Thomas Jefferson, who asserted that impeaching Blount could lead to a misuse of power by a vengeful majority. They questioned the right of the Senate to even hold the trial because Senators were not “civil officers”; therefore, Article II, Section 3, Paragraph 5 does not apply.

It took the Senate from July 3rd, 1797, when it received the letter, until February, 7th, 1798 to write the formal articles of impeachment. The trial began on December 17th, 1798.

Blount flees to Tennessee and forfeits his bond. His departure also created two new problems for the Senate. One, how do they try someone in absentia? And two, now that Blount was no longer a member of the Senate, do they have jurisdiction, and can they try him?

On January 14th, 1799, the Senate decided it didn’t have jurisdiction even though there were enough votes to impeach Blount. The case left two matters unresolved, i.e. –

Is a sitting Senator a civil officer and therefore subject to impeachment?

If the Senator is not present for the trial, can it go forward?

The long-lasting impact of the Blount impeachment proceedings is that the precedent that that no member of the U.S. Senate can be impeached had been set.

History provides an interesting footnote. After the impeachment proceedings, Blount who was elected to the Tennessee House of Representatives and became its speaker.

Portrait of William Blount by Washington Bogart Cooper when Blount was speaker of the Tennessee Senate.

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Class Assignments in the U.S. Senate

No one gave the Senators homework when they were first elected. Nor were they suddenly members of a special class in U.S. society. But a little-known clause in the U.S. Constitution requires that for election purposes, the Senate assign “classes” to group seats for re-election so that roughly one-third of the Senators are up for grabs every two years.

Article II, Section 3, paragraph 2 reads: Immediately after they shall be assembled in consequence of the first election, they shall be divided as equally as may be into three classes. The seats of the Senators of the first class shall be vacated at the expiration of the second year, of the second class of the fourth year and of the third class at the expiration of the sixth year so that one-third may be chosen every second year.

George Washington was elected as our first president, and his vice president, John Adams, was presiding over the Senate as per Article II, Section 3, Paragraph 4. The question of determining which senators would be in each election “class” was being debated. There were only 20 Senators in the room since Rhode Island and North Carolina had yet to ratify the Constitution and could not send Senators. New York hadn’t gotten around to electing its Senators so none were members.

The second problem the Senators faced was creating an enduring system in which Senators from newly admitted states would be assigned a “class.”

On May 14th, 1789, a small committee was formed to solve this problem. Their solution was as ingenious as it was simple. The first step was to arbitrarily divide the 10 states into three groups and each group was assigned a number by drawing one of three small sheets of paper from a box. One sheet had the number 1, another 2 and the third 3.

The second step occurred on the following day, May 15th, 1789 when Tristan Dalton, a recently elected Senator from Massachusetts, walked to the front of the room where the same box with the same three sheets of paper was used the day before rested in front of John Adams.

If Dalton drew the piece of paper with the number 1, he, and his fellow senators in the “class” with Massachusetts would stand for re-election in two years. If he drew the one with 2, then his “class” of states would hold elections for its Senators in four years. A 3 meant the Senators in his “class” for this first term would serve the entire first term.

Dalton drew one of the small slips and read in a loud voice, “Number One.” what was on it so it could be recorded in what would become known as the Congressional Record. A representative from each “class” followed.

The precedent was established and has been tweaked a bit by the Senate over the past 240+ years to accommodate the addition of new states. Now, when each state is admitted, each Senator from the state after he or she is sworn in, reaches into the same box used in 1789 and draws a number. To help ensure the split into thirds continues, the senators will remove the number corresponding to the “class” with  “too many” senators.

For the record, the last time this was done was when Hawaii was admitted as a state in August 1959, there were only two numbers in the box. Senator, Oren Long drew the number 3 and would stay in the Senate for a full term. Hiram Fong drew the number 1 placing his seat in Class 1 meaning he would stand for re-election in 2 years. Hawaii’s other. Today, “Classes” 1 and 2 have 33 seats and “Class 3,” 34, thus proving the system created in 1789 works as desired.

Image is of Hiram Fong, the last Senator who drew an election class number from the little wooden box first used in 1789.

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Leaks in Congress Are Not New

While some pundits try to make it sound as if leaks to the press are new and unique, they’re not. Congress has been a sieve ever since the early days of the country.

For example, in March 1800 the proposed text to the Ross Bill that was still being written was published in its entirety in the Aurora, a paper whose editorial position favored the Democratic-Republican Party led by Thomas Jefferson.

There were those in Congress who wanted the editor, William Deane, to be tried in court and the three senators who leaked the bill, impeached. At the time of the leak, John Adams was the president of the U.S., and Thomas Jefferson was his vice president. Deane’s Philadelphia-based paper was extremely influential and had been publishing editorial after editorial criticizing Adams and the Federalists. Today, we would call much of Aurora’s content “hit pieces” or  “fake news.”

The Ross Bill (named after its originator James Ross) would establish a bi-partisan committee to ensure that all ballots were counted and the electoral votes for each state represented the actual popular vote. Back in those days, electoral votes were apportioned by the votes cast for each candidate.

The committee would consist of six senators, three from each party, six representatives, again with three from each party and the chief justice. It would have the power to disqualify electors who did vote in accordance with the wishes of the state’s voters.

Duane published the contents of the bill along with a series of editorials criticizing President Adams and the senators who sponsored the bill. He portrayed the members as being “the committee of the privileged.” President Adams and the Federalists were furious since Duane’s accusations and hypotheses were inaccurate.

Adams ordered his attorney general, Charles Lee, to investigate and try Duane and his editors if a crime was committed. At the very least, they wanted to punish him for “contempt of Congress.”

Part of the debate in Congress was that protection under the 1st Amendment goes away if the information used by the paper was obtained illegally. In 1800, freedom of the press as granted in the U.S. Constitution was a novel and very new concept not found anywhere else in the world.

Very quickly, the Federalists who had control of both houses of Congress proved that three Democratic-Republican senators had given Duane a copy of the bill. In doing so, the senators violated Senate rules, and the law since bills discussed in committee were considered confidential and privileged information. The Federalists began to prepare impeachment charges against the senators and a criminal trial against Duane.

Then the election of 1800 occurred. Adams lost to Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans gained control of both houses. Jefferson ordered that Duane not be tried and his party members in both houses stopped the impeachment process.

Whether the Ross Bill was appropriate or not, the fact remains that the three senators should never have given a copy of a proposed bill to a member of the press. It was illegal then just as it is illegal today. Unfortunately, even 223 years later, the leaks have not stopped.

1802  portrait of William Deane.

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Allies in the War Against the Barbary Pirates

When Thomas Jefferson declared war on the Barbary Pirates on May 10th, 1801, he committed the United States of America to conduct the most challenging type of military operation to execute successfully – expeditionary warfare.

To conduct expeditionary warfare, one must control the sea to and from your home country to ensure the ships on station and the beachhead is protected and sustained while the military objectives are achieved.

When Jefferson declared war on the Barbary Pirates, the U.S. had been independent for less than 18 years. Between 1783 and 1794, we didn’t have an army, much less a navy.

The U.S. stayed neutral despite Jefferson’s meddling in the French Revolution when he was Washington’s Ambassador to France and John Adams’ Secretary of State. U.S. merchants sent American-flagged ships far into the Mediterranean and to India. The result was that the U.S. economy grew substantially. About 70% of our trade went to England, 20% to France, and the rest to other countries.

While England offered to allow American ships headed for England or an English colony to sail in Royal Navy protected convoys, U.S. merchant ship captains were on their own when headed elsewhere. The pirates based in Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli – collectively known as the Barbary Pirates – began capturing American ships right after we won our independence since we no longer enjoyed the protection of either the Royal or French navies. U.S. ships (as well as those from other nations) and their cargos were resold, and the pirates’ demanded ransoms from the U.S. government to return the sailors.

In the 1800 election, Jefferson criticized Adams for paying tribute. Once in office, Jefferson continued the policy of paying ransoms while at the same time defunding the Navy created under Adams. Jefferson turned what was left into a weak, ineffective coastal defense force.

The ships captured by the Barbary Pirates were owned by shipowners in almost every state, their crews were U.S. citizens AND they were all voters! The ransoms demanded by the pirates grew every year and depending on the year, were 20 – 30% of the Federal budget. Far more than what an effective Navy would cost.

To his credit, Jefferson reversed course and got Congress to fund the U.S. Navy so it could bring ships out of storage, and man, and equip them to take on the Barbary Pirates. To achieve his foreign policy objectives, the U.S. needed allies and overseas bases.

From 1792 to 1802, four of the major maritime powers in Europe – Britain, France, the Netherlands, and Spain – were at each other’s throats in the Wars of the First and Second Coalitions a.k.a., The French Revolutionary Wars. The 1802 Treaty of Amiens provided some breathing space between the French Revolutionary Wars (1792 – 1800) in which the kings and queens of Europe were trying to put the Bourbons back on the French Throne and the start of the Napoleonic Wars.

The Kingdom of Sicily which was, after Napoleon conquered Naples in 1799, moving closer to England. When the Barbary War began, Sicily was the primary Royal Navy base in the Mediterranean and the Kingdom of Sicily offered its ports to the U.S. to be used as bases.

Sweden, for the same reasons as the U.S., had been fighting the Barbary Pirates and offered to help. It contributed three well-built frigates. Now the U.S. had allies and nearby bases, the U.S. Navy was re-constituted and launched a naval campaign that is still studied today.

In the process, the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps re-laid the cultural foundations of leadership, seamanship, initiative, and courage espoused by John Paul Jones, James Barron, and John Barry that exist in our Navy today.

Image is the flag of the Kingdom of Sicily.

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The Massacre That Wasn’t

The most common perceptions are that on March 5th, 1770, the British soldiers fired into a crowd of Bostonians without provocation. Ultimately, 11 people were wounded, and five died, but a massacre it wasn’t.

So what happened? In 1770 Boston, the atmosphere was tense. British rule was becoming more and more unpopular every day. If it wasn’t taxes, it was the efforts by Lord Hillsborough to have all the colonial assemblies dissolved. With each act of Parliament, the list got longer.

The afternoon of March 5th, 1770, started with a mob of 30 – 40 Bostonians were harassing Private Hugh White who was a sentry outside the Boston Customs House. Wigmaker Apprentice Edward Garrick got into a shouting match with White’s superior officer, Captain John Goldfinch. Others bellowed insults at White.

The rocks and insults continued, and White retreated to the top step of the Customs House. Alerted that the mob was threatening one of his soldiers, Captain Thomas Preston, a corporal, and five other soldiers pushed through the crowd to reinforce White.

Along the way, an 18-year-old bookseller named Henry Knox (later a Revolutionary War general) told Preston, “If his soldiers fire, you must die.” Preston responded by saying he was aware of the tense situation.

While his men loaded their muskets and fixed their bayonets, Preston yelled at the crowd to disperse. His shouts were met with more insults, stones, and snowballs.

Many in the crowd were daring the British soldiers to fire. Some even yelled the word “Fire.” Private Hugh Montgomery was knocked down rock thrown by someone in the mob. When Montgomery stood back up, he fired into the crowd. Within a minute or so, the other soldiers and Loyalists inside the Customs House fired a ragged volley hitting eleven Bostonians.

Sensing a riot, Preston called out the rest of the 29th Regiment of Foot to restore order. The crowd backed away and Massachusetts Royal Governor Thomas Hutchinson managed to get the mob to disperse after promising a thorough investigation. Ultimately, five Bostonians died.

The next day, Paul Revere and Samuel Adams began calling the incident a massacre. A media battle ensued; Loyalists defended the British Army’s actions. Patriots called it a massacre and wanted the British soldiers and those who fired from the customs house tried for murder.

Hutchinson was true to his word. When the trial of the eight soldiers began on November 27th, 1770, they were defended by John Adams, the future second President of the United States. In addition to the soldiers, the trial of four members of the mob began in December 1770.

All but two of the British soldiers were acquitted as were the civilians. The two soldiers who were convicted were given a sentence in which their thumbs had to be branded.

Nonetheless, the incident was a clear indication that rebellion was in the air and the British were dealing with a powder keg. On April 19th, 1775, Five years and a month later, the British Army marched out of Boston to seize weapons and ammunition. The rest, as they say, is history.

Image is Henry Pelham’s engraving of the Boston Massacre that was copied by Paul Revere.

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The Vice Admiralty Act of 1768 Led to the Fourth Amendment

Admiralty Courts were first established in England by Edward III in 1360 to handle discipline within the Royal Navy. These courts were presided over by an admiral, and over time, the scope of their jurisdiction expanded to include trying captured pirates and sale of prizes. By the American Revolution, the jurisdiction of admiralty courts had expanded to include settling maritime disputes which involved England and another country.

The “body of law” on which rulings were made was based on a mix of cases adjudicated by the courts themselves and English Common Law. When there was a conflict, the judge, usually a retired admiral, would render a ruling to provide precedent for future rulings.

To handle cases in the Thirteen Colonies, Vice Admiralty Courts in The Massachusetts Bay Colony, and the Royal Colony of Maryland.

When Parliament passed what is known as The Intolerable Acts (see 2/12/23 post – When Did the American Revolution Really Start – https://marcliebman.com/when-did-the-american-revolution-really-start/ ), the last and most egregious to our Founding Fathers was the Vice Admiralty Act of 1768.

The Tea Act listed items what items new duties and taxes were to be imposed and required the goods must be brought to England before being shipped to North America. This act led to a rise in smuggling to avoid the new taxes AND reduce the cost of the goods. Much of the cargo – cocoa beans, sugar, rum, and molasses – was being transported on ships owned by merchants in the Thirteen Colonies.

The Vice Admiralty Act of 1768 created three new vice admiralty courts in Boston, Charleston, and Philadelphia and abolished those that existed. Under admiralty court law, one was guilty until proven innocent and if one did not appear before the court, a guilty verdict was rendered.

“Writs of assistance” were authorized by the Vice Admiralty Act of 1768 as the basis for issuing a search warrant. These writs did not require any evidence or proof of suspicion that a crime had been committed to be presented to the judge. The writs gave the court’s own officers wide latitude when they searched an individual’s property.

The act authorized the courts to hire their own officers so now, a vice admiralty court could investigate, prosecute, render a verdict, collect fees, assess fines, and seize property. The act also authorized the court to retain 5% of any monies it assessed.

The colonists felt their rights as English citizens were being abrogated in three ways. First, by the “writs of assistance” which did meet the standards of British law as practiced in England. Second, those accused were not allowed a jury trial. Third, by moving the court hearing to another court where the accused was unlikely to be able to attend, a guilty verdict was assured.

John Hancock who was a wealthy importer/exporter living in Boston owned a sloop named Liberty. In 1768, he was accused of smuggling wine and the ship and its cargo were seized by the Vice Admiralty Court in Boston using a “writ of assistance.” Hancock was fined £9,000, an enormous sum at the time and sued the court. His attorney was John Adams. Ultimately, Hancock prevailed in overturning the fine, but by then his ship and cargo had been sold by the court which, of course, took its 5%.

Liberty was taken into the Royal Navy to be refitted as a sloop-of-war in Newport, RI. While being modified, the citizens of Newport set fire to the ship which sank off Goat Island.

Now you know why the 4th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution reads “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Image is Kenneth Zirkel’s photo of the plaque in Newport, RI commemorating the July 19th, 1769 act of defiance.

 

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Who Were the Sons of Liberty?

The Sons of Liberty were born out of a desire by several Bostonians to oppose the Stamp Act of 1765. In it, the British Parliament required that anything printed – legal documents, books, newspapers – as well as blank paper bought to write letters and diaries had to either be embossed by the appropriate stamp or an ink “stamp.”

A “stamp tax collector” would collect the tax for King George each time he affixed a stamp. Opposition to the Stamp Act began in Virginia and spread quickly throughout the Thirteen Colonies.

Since there were no Colonial members of Parliament, this led to the commonly used justification opposing paying the taxes imposed by the Stamp Act and the Intolerable Acts as “no taxation without representation.”

Oddly enough, opponents to the Stamp Act (and later the Intolerable Acts of 1773) were spurred on by an Irish MP Isaac Barré’s speech in Parliament on February 6th, 1765. Barré agreed that the Colonists should not be forced to pay taxes on which they did not vote approval.

On the floor of the House of Commons, Barré said “… As soon as you began to care about ’em, that care was exercised in sending persons to rule over ’em, in one department and another, who were perhaps the deputies of deputies to some member of this house, sent to spy out their liberty, to misrepresent their actions and to prey upon ’em; men whose behaviour on many occasions has caused the blood of those sons of liberty to recoil within them….”

Those in the Thirteen Colonies opposing British rule adopted Barré’s phrase Sons of Liberty. So who were these men, and what did they do?

The Sons of Liberty was a clandestine organization that used many tactics such as writing and publishing pamphlets, editorials, making speeches in local assemblies, meetings, and committing violent acts such as tarring and feathering to help foment what became the American Revolution. Today we would classify some of the actions taken by the Sons of Liberty as domestic terrorism.

For example, before the Boston Tea Party, they harassed Boston Stamp Act tax collector Andrew Oliver everywhere he went. Then, they hung him in effigy on the Boston Common. When Oliver continued to pursue his duties, the Sons of Liberty burned his house down.

Leading up to the Boston Tea Party, the Sons of Liberty held several meetings in taverns around Boston to rile up their fellow citizens first against the Stamp Act and then against the Intolerable Acts, (see Blog Post 2/18/23 – The Price of Tea – https://marcliebman.com/the-price-of-tea/ ). Then, on December 16th, 1773, many of its members slipped out of the meetings, donned Mohawk Indian attire and dumped 46 tons of tea into the harbor.

While the Sons of Liberty members are not a complete Who’s Who of our Founding Fathers, many played prominent roles in the American Revolution. A few don’t need an introduction – Paul Revere, Samuel Adams (who founded Sons of Liberty), John Hancock, Benedict Arnold, and Patrick Henry.

Some of the other notable members included Samuel Edes, the publisher of the Boston Gazette; William Goddard who later helped Benjamin Franklin found the U.S. Post Office; financier Haym Salomon who single-handedly funded Washington’s campaign to defeat Cornwallis at Yorktown; and John Allicoke, a man of African ancestry. Many of the Sons of Liberty signed the Declaration of Independence.

Sadly, for security reasons, they left us very few records but the effect of their efforts galvanized the majority of the 2.5 million souls living in the Thirteen Colonies to fight and win an eight-year war for independence.

Image is Philip Dawes 1774 cartoon of the Sons of Liberty tarring and feathering British tax collector John Malcom.

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The Price of Tea

We’ve all heard and read about the Boston Tea Party. In one night, the Sons of Liberty dumped ~92,000 pounds (~46 tons) in 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor. The British East India Company reported the tea was worth £9,659, which today would be worth £1,488,402 or $2,266,082 (at the exchange rate of £1 = $1.20).

How many members of the Sons of Liberty committed this act? Numbers vary between 30 and 130, but there were enough to move the chests of tea from the holds of merchant ships, break them open and dump the contents into the harbor.

So what caused the Boston Tea Party. The best word to describe the root cause is greed by the British government, which gave the British East India Company a monopoly on worldwide tea sales. As a result, in the Thirteen Colonies, tea from British-controlled tea farms in India was much more expensive than tea from Dutch plantations in Indonesia. Enough Dutch tea was smuggled into the Thirteen Colonies to cause a precipitous drop in British East India Company sales which caused the company to  complain to Parliament.

In 1767, it passed The Indemnity Act, which refunded duties paid by the British East India Company on tea re-exported from England to the Thirteen Colonies. The law expired in 1772, so Parliament passed the Tea Act of 1773.

By the time The Tea Act was passed, the British East India Company had warehouses in England full of tea that, due to its high price, no one would buy. This created a financial crisis for the British East India Company and had them teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Their financial crisis also affected the British government, which relied on duties and taxes paid by the British East India Company.

The Tea Act of 1773 restored the refund on duties. It allowed the company to ship tea directly from the plantations to its customers. It also allowed the company to contract with merchants in the Thirteen Colonies who would take the tea on consignment and sell it locally. Merchants in four cities were selected – Boston, Charleston, New York, and Philadelphia. Parliament authorized ships to take 5,000 chests (~250 tons) of tea to Boston, Charleston, and Philadelphia.

However, a three pence/pound tax was built into the act that required the tax to be paid once the tea landed in the Thirteen Colonies. Essentially, the act shifted the payment of the tax onto the actual buyer of the tea.

Most in Parliament wanted to eliminate the three pence/pound of tea tax. Still, Lord North, the British prime minister, was adamant. He didn’t want to lose the tax revenue, so the tax remained.

So the table for the Boston Tea Party was set. Three ships – Beaver, Dartmouth, and Eleanor – arrived in Boston harbor, each carrying about 22 tons of tea. The Royal Governor would only allow the tea to be unloaded once the duty was paid. The local merchants refused. There were several large protests, and after one, men dressed as Mohawk Indians boarded the ship and dumped the tea overboard.

Notice from Boston’s “Chairman of the Committee for Tarring and Feathering” that denounced the tea consignees as “traitors to their country.

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