American Tempest (15 page)

Although Adams and Otis had whipped up crowd hatred against Boston's merchant kings, that hatred had never touched Hancock. Always ready to offer credit to customers, Hancock was not only an outspoken
opponent of the Stamp Act, he was a generous employer and well liked by the hundreds of colonists who depended on him to sell the products of their fields or workshops and relied on him for their own supplies. One of the rare Boston plutocrats who seemed to understand the plight of ordinary men, he had a loyal following of his own, whom Sam Adams recognized as a constituency he would have to court.

The following morning, on Pope's Day, Adams's “trained mob” marched in disciplined military formation before a startled governor and general court at the Town House. To the governor's astonishment, the volatile Ebenezer Mackintosh led the force, marching in uniformed splendor, stride for stride, arm in arm, with—of all people—the colonel of the governor's own militia. A few days later, the governor wrote to England that he had “ordered some companies of militia to be mustered” to thwart the marchers, “but the militia refused to obey my orders.”
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Pope's Day in 1765 marked a sharp turning point in John Hancock's relationship with Boston radicals, and in the months that followed he drew ever closer to them—always motivated by self-preservation. It proved a wise move. Six weeks later Adams's mob hauled poor Andrew Oliver down to the Liberty Tree again, and as all of Boston watched this time, the mob forced him to make a public apology: He cried out that he detested the Stamp Act and swore never to attempt to enforce it. After the crowd released Oliver amid hoots of derision, Hancock left the scene of his friend's humiliation to sign another boycott agreement with other Boston merchants. “In case the Stamp Act is not repealed,” they all wrote to their London agents, “my orders are that you will not . . . ship me one article.” Their common letter, dictated by Sam Adams, said that their boycott reflected the “united resolves of not only the principal merchants . . . of this town, but of those of the other trading towns of this province.”
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By mid-winter 1766 the American merchants' boycott had taken a dreadful toll on English merchants. The Americans owed them about £4 million before the boycott began, and as the flow of orders and cash from America dried up, British exports dropped 14 percent by the beginning of 1766 and continued plunging, with no end in sight. As goods piled up inside and outside warehouses in Bristol, Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Glasgow, and every other trading town in Britain, British merchants in
undated Parliament with petitions demanding repeal of the Stamp Act. London merchants asked Parliament to grant “every ease and advantage the North Americans can with propriety desire.”
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For whatever reasons, Hancock's London agents had ignored his previous entreaties, but when he made good on his threat not to repay them or order any spring goods, they quickly joined the protest. In Virginia, George Washington could not resist mocking the miscalculations of Parliament and the British merchants: “I fancy the merchants of Great Britain trading to the colonies,” Washington laughed, “will not be among the last to wish for a repeal of it.”
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The storm clouds in New England were spreading down the Atlantic coast.

E
arly in 1766 Governor Bernard warned London that he would need massive military support to restore order in Boston: “I am more and more assured that the people of this town, who have now got all the power in their hands, will know no bounds, until the authority of Great Britain shall interpose with effect.”
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Although Grenville expressed his “resentment and indignation at the outrageous tumults and insurrections . . . in North America,” he faced a growing multitude of English merchants on the verge of financial ruin unless trade with the colonies resumed.
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They warned Parliament that the use of troops to enforce the Stamp Act would provoke rebellion. If Parliament wanted to tax the colonies, they counseled, it should continue the traditional practice of external taxation with hidden, indirect taxes such as import duties.

“I have been charged with giving birth to sedition in America,” William Pitt assailed Grenville in Parliament:

William Pitt, Earl of Chatham. As British prime minister,
Pitt tried to crack down on smuggling in America but fought Parliament's efforts to impose a stamp tax on the colonists.
(F
ROM A NINETEENTH-CENTURY ENGRAVING IN THE AUTHOR'S COLLECTION
)

By the end of February the pressure to repeal the Stamp Act grew overwhelming, and when a group of thirty-nine leading English merchants joined in the protests, Parliament promised that repeal was indeed imminent. The merchants sent a circular letter to their American correspondents predicting repeal, but they warned against further rebellion and “intemperate proceedings of various ranks of people on your side of the water. . . .

Only four and a half months after the Stamp Act had taken effect, a chastened Parliament voted to repeal it, without a single stamp ever having been affixed to a colonial document. It was a humiliating defeat—particularly because it had been inflicted by a constituency without a single direct vote in either the House of Commons or House of Lords. In the end, the British government collected no new taxes and left its own treasury—and many British merchants—far poorer than they would have been had they never passed the act. Moreover, passage of the act created the first organized opposition to royal rule and government taxation in the colonies—an opposition that radical rabble-rousers such as Sam Adams would convert from a modest espousal of free enterprise into an unyielding movement for independence.

Tragically for England, Parliament's petty tyrants who ruled the nation's rotten boroughs and pocket boroughs refused to recognize defeat or seek reconciliation with the colonies. Intent on governing the empire as they governed their captive constituents, they lit the fuse for the next colonial explosion by passing what they called a Declaratory Act—on the very day they had repealed the Stamp Act. The act asserted that “the Parliament of Great Britain had, hath and of right ought to have, full power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the colonies and people of America subjects of the Crown of Great Britain in all cases whatsoever.”
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Although a lower court in Britain held the law “contrary to fundamental laws of nature and . . . this constitution,” England's Chief Justice ruled,

Even before the news of repeal reached Boston, Samuel Adams and his followers were satisfied that Hancock had proved his loyalty by supporting the merchant boycott, and Adams recognized that Hancock, as an important New England merchant and member of the mercantile elite, could add a crucial element to the all-but-bankrupt radical movement: money. On May 6, Adams and his supporters assured Hancock's election to the General Court, or legislature, with 437 votes. By allying himself with the radical wing in the Court, Hancock believed he was espousing the cause of commercial freedom, but in fact, London believed his election had made him “one of the leaders of the disaffected”—especially after he foolishly declared that he “would not suffer any of our [English customs] officers to go even on board any of his London ships.”
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On the afternoon of Hancock's election, Sam Adams walked with John Adams, who was still building his law practice, and is said to have told his younger cousin, “This town has done a wise thing today.”

“What?” John Adams inquired.

“They have made that young man's fortune their own.”
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Ten days later, in one of the most fortuitous events of his budding political career, one of Hancock's ships brought him the official notice of repeal. London's merchants had selected him, as one of America's most important merchants, to announce the news to Boston at a selectmen's meeting. The selectmen cheered him and set aside the following day—Repeal Day—for celebration. At 1:00 in the afternoon, church bells—and every other bell in town—began pealing. Bostonians poured from their houses, firing guns in the air and shouting Hancock's name. As the shouts proliferated, they grew convinced—as he apparently did—that he
had been the instigator of repeal rather than a simple messenger. Flags flew from every building in town, and bands marched through the city. Sam Adams and the Sons of Liberty gathered at the Liberty Tree before parading to debtor's prison with John Hancock's cash to buy the release of all the inmates.

Edes published a special Repeal Day issue of the
Gazette
:

Not to be outdone, Hancock set off his own, even larger display of fireworks on a huge stage in front of his mansion. All eyes turned toward the merchant king and his beautiful home, which he swathed in illuminations. Gradually, the crowd worked its way up the Common to Hancock's gate, where he set up a pipe—a cask holding 125 gallons—of Madeira wine. When they emptied it, he sent out another. He came out on his balcony and waved to the cheering crowd, calling out greetings and looking every bit the hero of repeal. He not only convinced the crowd of his new role, he believed it himself. While the mob stood cheering and drinking outside, “John Hancock Esq . . . gave a grand and elegant entertainment to the genteel part of the town” inside the mansion.
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