The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 (23 page)

Most Rhode Islanders apparently enjoyed and valued all this political smoke, and the politicians played their parts with enthusiasm if not with aplomb. But not everyone found the spectacle of brawling politicians and a large and apparently unstable electorate to his liking. In Newport a small group, probably no larger than fifteen, despised the course of

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government and politics in Rhode Island. The two most important members were Martin Howard, Jr., of a well-established family, a leading lawyer, an Anglican, a man of supercilious bearing and possessing an aristocratic temperament found only in provincials, and Dr. Thomas Moffat, a physician who had lived in Newport since sometime in the 1730s when he arrived to be near Bishop Berkeley. Among the others were George Rome, an agent of an English commercial house; Augustus Johnston, the attorney general; and Peter Harrison, the architect who designed the Redwood Library and the Touro Synagogue. Most of these men and their followers were Anglicans, most felt some special affinity to England, and several seemed to yearn for place and influence.
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This Tory Junto, as these men have been called, also shared a common revulsion from Rhode Island's coarse factionalism and from the accommodation in the political system of the "Herd," as Thomas Moffat designated the people. They proposed to change this system by securing the repeal of the charter of 1663 and by persuading Parliament to impose royal government on the colony. The contempt they felt for the charter government is manifest in Martin Howard's characterization of it as "Nothing but a Burlesque upon Order and Government."
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The open pursuit of royal government by the Tory Junto was signaled by a letter to the
Newport Mercury
published on April 23, 1764, and signed Z. Y. The letter attacked popular government in Rhode Island and insisted that only Parliament could end the disgraceful disorders of party and factional strife. Six weeks later, the newspaper reprinted, at the request of its readers it said, the commission Charles I issued to Archbishop Laud in the seventeenth century giving him power to revoke colonial charters. The point was obvious: the power to revoke colonial charters had a long history.
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In August "O. Z." made his appearance in the
Mercury
. (Why Howard and Moffat discarded Z. Y. for this designation is not known.) The letters by O. Z. appeared off and on until March 1765. O. Z. professed to offer advice on the production of sheep, hemp, and flax in the colony, a much healthier activity, he implied, than protesting against the Sugar Act and challenging generally the sovereignty of Parliament. Hemp appeared especially attractive to O. Z., for it received a bounty from the

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English government far greater than any taxes imposed on trade.
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These engaging themes probably deceived no one in Rhode Island as to O. Z.'s real purpose -- to attack the charter government. In any case O. Z. soon let his mask slip and in a discourse on politics and government recommended the example of Pennsylvania, where the legislature had recently sought to replace proprietary with royal government. O. Z. did not publish the fact, but the Tory Junto, emboldened by Pennsylvania's action, in October sent Joseph Harrison with a private petition for an end to the charter. And Martin Howard attempted in November to persuade Benjamin Franklin, to whom he attributed "Intimacy with the Great" in the English government, to represent this royalist interest.
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Newport was much too small to keep secret an attempt to get the charter revoked. And the Tory Junto had let the cat out of the bag by their public praise of Pennsylvania's pursuit of royal government. What they were about was soon widely known and brought them unwanted attention: in September they were stained with the charge that they constituted a "club" of conspirators "against the Liberties of the Colony."
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This charge soon grew more specific and seemed more portentous as anonymous writers in the newspapers indicted the Junto as part of the forces behind the Stamp Act. On November 4, 1764, Governor Hopkins sent a message to the Assembly which reported that a petition against the charter had been sent. The governor followed up his address with a full-scale attack a few weeks later in his
Rights of the Colonies Examined
. Martin Howard's answer,
A Letter from a Gentleman at Halifax
, met the governor head-on with sneers and barbs, but also offered a version of the constitution in which colonial rights were severely cut back. From this point on, the printing presses were well oiled, as pamphlets and essays poured out. Hopkins hit the
Halifax Letter
through the columns of the
Providence Gazette
; and he received support from James Otis, who had relatives in Newport, in
A Vindication of the British Colonies against the Aspersions of the Halifax Gentleman in his Letter to a Rhode Island Friend
. Neither man subdued Howard, who issued
A Defense of the Letter from a Gentleman at Halifax
, but Otis
Brief Remarks on the Defense of the Halifax Libel
managed to reduce the constitutional issues to simple abuse of the Tory Junto as a "little, dirty,

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drinking, drabbing, contaminated knot of thieves, beggars and transports, or the worthy descendents of such, collected from the four winds of the earth, and made up of Turks, Jews and other Infidels, with a few renegade Christians and Catholics, and altogether formed into a club of a scarce a dozen at N-p-t. From hence proceed Halifax-letters, petitions to alter the colony forms of government, libels upon all good colonists and subjects, and every evil work that can enter into the heart of man."
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By spring 1765 the anger at Howard, Moffat, and their friends was clear, and the identification of their cause, the replacement of the charter by royal government, with English encroachments upon colonial liberties, had been made. The crude suggestions that these Newport gentlemen were somehow behind both the Sugar Act and the tighter enforcement of trade regulations had convinced many. To attribute plotting for the Stamp Act to them did not seem farfetched.

Still, when news of the Act arrived, no violence occurred even though Newport's libertarian sensitivities were quivering. They were soon to explode, not over the Stamp Act, but over the Royal Navy. Earlier in the year the navy had contributed its bit to the alienation of Newporters by conducting a brutal program of impressment. The navy needed sailors and it was not overly scrupulous in getting them. In May, after a series of raids which had caused trade to stagnate because ships had begun to avoid Newport where their crews might be impressed, the HMS
Maidstone
foolishly sent her boat to the dock. A mob numbering around five hundred seized and burned it.
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Late in June the
Newport Mercury
reprinted the Virginia Resolves, including the two most sensational ones which had not passed. On August 14, of course, Boston provided the edifying example of how a stamp distributor might be persuaded to resign. It was an important lesson, and it was studied closely in Newport.

Although rioting had a long and apparently honorable history in Newport, there was no mob-in-being such as the North and South Enders of Boston. The opposition to the Stamp Act in Newport was organized by Samuel Vernon and William Ellery, both merchants, who proved inventive and unafraid to begin action themselves. They first planned to hang effigies of Stamp Distributor Augustus Johnston, and of Thomas Moffat and Martin Howard, presumably expecting that Johnston's resignation would soon follow.
Their plans leaked out, and Howard and Mof

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fat, who learned on August 20 that their effigies would be hung on August 27, appealed to Governor Ward to stop the demonstration. Ward professed to believe that the whole business had been exaggerated, but he apparently cautioned Vernon and Ellery against going ahead. These two were not easily deterred and may have already begun a campaign they could not stop. A special issue of the
Providence Gazette
appeared four days later, relaying the Providence town meeting's condemnation of the Stamp Act and also reporting that Augustus Johnston had promised not to execute his office against the will of the people. Johnston had made no such statement, but denying it would leave him looking like an enemy of the people. For the next few days Johnston held his tongue.
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The day before the scheduled effigy hanging, August 26, the
Mercury
carried full accounts of the riot against Andrew Oliver of Boston; the same issue contained a plea by Martin Howard for liberty of opinion, an argument calculated to head off the activities of the next day. The argument failed, and the next morning saw the opening of four days of upheaval in Newport.

Early on Tuesday, August 27, the demonstrations began with the effigies hung on gallows hastily erected on Queen Street near the Town House, where the freeholders were to meet later in the day. Adorning the effigies were placards inscribed with language that left no one in doubt as to the meaning of this spectacle. The inscription on Johnston's simply identified him as "THE STAMP MAN." Doctor Moffat did not escape so easily, for a paper pinned to his breast described him as "THAT INFAMOUS, MISCREATED, LEERING JACOBITE DOCTOR MURFY."
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James Otis had tagged Moffat with this name in one of his abusive pamphlets and apparently it had stuck. There was more written across Moffat's figure, but perhaps the most effective touch of all came with the boot hanging over his shoulder with the devil peeping out, an obvious imitation of Boston. Howard's effigy also bore inscriptions, including another inspired by Otis, "THAT FAWNING, INSIDIOUS, INFAMOUS MISCREANT AND PARACIDE MARTINUS SCRIBLERIUS."
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But the most devastating touch was locally spawned: a rope tied Howard's neck to Moffat's, and a placard had them saying "We have an Hereditary Indefeasible Right to a Halter, Besides we Encourag'd the Growth of Hemp you know."
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Vernon, Ellery, and Robert Crook, another merchant, all muffled in big coats

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