The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 (21 page)

While Otis was plunging the popular faction into disarray, news of the Stamp Act arrived in Massachusetts and with it information that Andrew Oliver, Hutchinson's brother-in-law, had been appointed stamp distributor for the colony. The House, confused and irresolute after Otis's apparent defection, could not seem to rally itself. Governor Bernard counseled submission, and the House in effect agreed. To be sure, it joined the Council in an address to Parliament protesting the Act, but by current standards this statement was not far from the description given it in July by the
Boston Gazette
: "a tame, pusillanimous, daubed, insipid thing."
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The full extent of the House's weakness became clear when it failed to block the appointments of Oliver and Hutchinson to the Council. When the governor prorogued the House early in June, it seemed to have swallowed the bitter medicine of the Stamp Act rather meekly.

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The medicine further soured stomachs and minds a few days later when copies of the Virginia Resolves arrived and made their way into the local newspapers. The version published by the
Boston Gazette
indicted anyone who asserted that a body other than the Massachusetts legislature had any right to tax the colony as "AN ENEMY TO THIS HIS MAJESTY'S COLONY."
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And the
Gazette
soon published a piece denouncing the "frozen politicians" of the colony who called the Virginians' action treason, an obvious reference to James Otis, Jr., still off on his own wild tangent.

From this point on, heads, and presumably stomachs, cleared, and the frozen grew warm, heated up by the Resolves. Governor Bernard called them "an Alarm bell to the disaffected."
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The newspapers helped too by printing essays and letters all calculated to rouse public opinion.

A small group of men, resolving to do more than publish and talk, plotted violence against Andrew Oliver, who had been selected Distributor of Stamps in Massachusetts. These men styled themselves the Loyal Nine, soon to be changed to the Sons of Liberty. They included artisans, shopkeepers, and a printer, Benjamin Edes, who with John Gill published the
Boston Gazette
. No legislative leader joined them, though Samuel Adams may have met secretly at times with several; and the only member who had any claim to social status was John Avery, a merchant, Harvard, class of 1759, who came of good stock. The Loyal Nine seem usually to have met at Chase and Speakman's distillery on Hanover Square, and there presumably they planned the riot of August 14.
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To do the rough work of rioting they turned to experience, the recently united North and South End mobs. These groups had entertained themselves for years, most notably in a session on Guy Fawkes Day, November 5, which the two mobs usually commemorated by brawling, a peculiar but apparently satisfying way of celebrating the frustration of an explosion. The fights between the two mobs were not gentle affairs; they used clubs, bricks, stones, and fists on one another, and in the fracas of 1764 a child who got in the way had been killed.

Understandably, neither mob kept a roster of its members, but we know that most were craftsmen, workers of lesser skills, sailors, apprentices, and boys. After the fight of 1764, some sort of rough agreement was apparently worked out between the two groups, and the leader of the South Enders, Ebenezer MacIntosh, a cobbler by trade and a man

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of commanding presence, assumed leadership of the combined group. Persuading Macintosh and his followers to enlist against the Stamp Act probably was not very difficult. All the Loyal Nine had to do was to induce the mob to substitute one local enemy for another -- instead of the opposing mob, the enemy was Andrew Oliver and the crew of placemen who had gobbled up offices for years. Oliver was well known; he and his ilk stood to profit by the stamp tax, and current gossip had it that Oliver's brother-in-law, Thomas Hutchinson, had recommended the tax. Striking a blow for liberty meant hitting such creatures.

The identification of English and local tyranny was made evident early on the morning of August 14. The town awoke to find an effigy of Oliver hanging in a tree; beside it hung a large boot, representing the Earl of Bute, a play on his name. Bute, of course, was no longer in office in England, but he was remembered as an evil man, symbolic of, if not responsible for, the recent dangerous encroachments upon colonial liberties. The point was made clearly in the symbols in the tree, where a devil was shown crawling out of the boot.
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Several people living near the tree offered to take down the effigy of Oliver, but were warned not to do so. Lt. Governor Thomas Hutchinson ordered the sheriff and his officers to remove the effigy, but the sheriff soon reported that removal would cost him and his officers their lives. By this time, Governor Bernard smelled serious trouble and summoned the Council to tell them so. Several agreed but several others dismissed the hanging effigy as "trifling Business"; both groups agreed that any action would make matters worse.
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At the first dark of evening, Ebenezer Macintosh and the mob took the effigy of Oliver and, parading past the Town House where the governor and Council were in worried session, gave three huzzas as if to reassure the Council that affairs were now in the right hands. The mob then marched to a new building on Andrew Oliver's dock on Kilby Street. Oliver had intended to rent rooms in the building to shopkeepers, but the mob, calling the building the "Stamp Office," tore it down in five minutes. Macintosh then led the way to Oliver's house on nearby Oliver Street. Here in front of the house, a part of the mob beheaded the effigy, presumably for Oliver's edification, while others broke the windows in the house. Fort Hill was a few steps away, and the mob moved to it, apparently to give the town -- and Oliver -- a better view of the proceedings.
And interesting proceedings they were: just in case

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anyone was unaware of the stamp tax, the effigy was "stamped" -- with the feet of the mob -- and then burned. The only thing to do then was to return to the house, which the mob did willingly enough, only to find the doors barricaded. These could be broken down and were, accompanied by calls to find Oliver and kill him. Oliver had long since departed, and his friends who had remained within the house to protect it now prudently followed after him. The mob searched several nearby houses -- Oliver was hidden in one -- but gave up when a neighbor told them that Oliver had fled to Castle William in the harbor. Disappointed, the mob contented itself by smashing Oliver's furniture and tearing off the wainscoting.
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Sometime during these events, Governor Bernard ordered the colonel of the militia "to beat an alarm," to summon his regiment which might put down the riot. The colonel replied that if a drummer could be found who was not in the mob, he would be knocked down as soon as he made a sound, and his drum would be broken. The colonel undoubtedly spoke the truth, for the mob would listen to no one in official authority. Thomas Hutchinson and the sheriff proved this to their own satisfaction about eleven P.M. when they appeared at Oliver's house to try to persuade the mob to disperse. Before they could speak, they heard, "The governor and the Sheriff my boys, to your Arms my boys," the cry followed immediately by brickbats and stones. They ran and the mob remained, not to adjourn for another hour.
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The following day, August 15, Oliver received another sort of delegation, a small group of gentlemen who urged him to resign his commission as stamp distributor. Oliver did not have the commission, which had not yet arrived from England, but he promised to resign as soon as it did. That night the mob again convened on Fort Hill around a bonfire, as if to remind Oliver what was expected of him. But the night's agenda was short and tame; the mob moved from Fort Hill to Hutchinson's house, pounding on his doors and shouting for him to come out. It smashed nothing, however, and Thomas Hutchinson, though a brave man, probably breathed easier.
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Hutchinson's turn came eleven days later. He was a natural target:

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he was rumored to be an advocate of the Stamp Act and known by his actions to be a defender of Customs enforcement; besides, he had tried to get Oliver's effigy removed from the tree, and he had appeared at Oliver's house to attempt to convince the mob to go home. And he was proud, even stiff-necked, and brave. How tempting to introduce him to humility while defending colonial rights.
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On the evening of August 26, after a day of rumors that local Customs officials would be attacked, a bonfire was lighted on King Street and a great crowd gathered shouting "liberty and property," which, Bernard sardonically reported, was "the usual notice of their intention to plunder and pull down an house."
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The mob actually had several houses in mind; to dispatch its business more efficiently it divided into two groups and each repaired to a different house. One went to the residence of Charles Paxton, the marshal of the vice admiralty court, only to discover that he rented the place. The owner of the house offered to treat them to a barrel of punch at a nearby tavern, an offer which was accepted. Now, full of liquid and patriotic spirits, the mob moved to William Story's house. Story was the deputy registrar of the vice admiralty court and evidently an unpopular man. The cry went up to kill Story, but he had escaped; the mob destroyed what it. found within and carried the vice admiralty records outside where they were burned. Meanwhile, the second mob had surged to the house of Benjamin Hallowell, the comptroller of Customs. The beauty of Hallowell's house may have provided a special inducement to do a thorough job -- at any rate the crowd left it a shambles, with windows and doors smashed, furniture broken, wainscoting pulled off, books and papers scattered or stolen, and the wine cellar consumed.

By now the action had become almost routine, except that the greatest prize of all lay waiting. The prize, of course, was the handsome house of Thomas Hutchinson. Most of the evening lay ahead when the mob, its two halves back together for the chief work of the night, arrived. Hutchinson and his family were eating supper, probably rather uneasily, for they had heard talk that they would have uninvited visitors. The family left just ahead of the mob, but Thomas Hutchinson decided to stay, a decision he held to until his oldest daughter returned and refused to leave unless he accompanied her. She probably thereby saved his life. As it was, he eluded his pursuers only by running through gardens and backyards to safety.