Nancy, London, William

In early 1774 the Company’s North American losses were potentially minor: of the vessels sent to Boston, most of the William’s cargo was safe in Castle William, and the Company sought reimbursement for the tea destroyed on the Dartmouth, Eleanor, and Beaver. The Polly was returning from Philadelphia with its cargo, and the Company even hoped to be reimbursed for shipping costs.¹ The London’s tea was secure in South Carolina. The Nancy remained en route to New York. Between the William, London, and Nancy the Company might sell nearly half its shipment, with losses on the rest covered by the state.

Historians have overlooked the possibilities and potential consequences of landing or selling Company tea in 1774. Governor Hutchinson pointed to these, hoping, in January, that the Nancy’s tea would be landed in New York, as “it will cast a great damp upon the heads of the people which destroyed it” in Boston. It would also see the King’s duties and the Company’s purse paid. But he was more cautious with the tea under his charge, explaining to the East India Company after a rough start to March that landing the William’s tea could not be done as it risked “new tumults.” The plotline from the Tea Party to the Coercive Acts was not inevitable. It was a product of choices made in Parliament and in the colonies. The other teas could have different, unpredictable afterlives, as shown by Mary Beth Norton’s study of the 1774 debates over consuming the part of the William’s tea left on Cape Cod.² Surviving Company tea could inflame protests, embarrass boycotts, or move the geography of resistance away from Boston.

North, seeing the matter as a threat to imperial authority and seeing Boston as leading that threat, sought to cow Boston Patriots. The Coercive Acts would restore order across North America by finally dealing with Boston. This ignored significant opposition to Company tea in Charleston, Philadelphia, and New York and elevated the views of the most recalcitrant Patriots. The preference for coercion also ignored ways to divide and rule colonial Patriots from one another by selling the tea from the Nancy and London (or even the William) in other ports. The colonists’ struggles to maintain a boycott in 1770 suggest such an effort to evade and demoralize Patriot boycotts could have worked. The King, hearing of the Tea Party, initially imagined the Company tea would sell elsewhere and “by degrees tea will find its way” to Boston.³ But the ministry preferred the Port Act instead. The Port Act required Bostonians to pay for the destroyed tea (thereby accepting they were wrong to destroy it) and to allow the William’s tea to be offered for sale (thereby accepting the legitimacy of the Tea Act). It was meant to force the embarrassment and submission of Boston Patriots as ends in themselves, with the eventual flow of tea and commerce a by-product.

Captain Lockyer might have unloaded the Nancy’s tea in New York had he reached North America first. In November, the consignees hoped to land and store this tea (but not sell it), which was initially acceptable to local Patriots. As the consignees elsewhere, the New York consignees were businessmen substantial enough to handle the trade and well-connected enough to secure the privilege. Abraham Lott was the provincial treasurer. Henry White was on the governor’s council. Frederick Pigou’s father was a director of the East India Company and the Bank of England. Yet on December 1 the consignees gave up their role in the tea and asked Governor Tryon to take over. The governor thought he could land and store it. The presence of General Haldimand, commander-in-chief of the British Army in North America, and his troops, helped. So did the HMS Swan, which Tryon set to escort the Nancy into New York harbor. On December 17, Local Patriots rejected landing and storage and demanded the tea be returned to Britain. Four days later, news of the Boston Tea Party encouraged a New York crowd to threaten to destroy the Nancy’s tea unless it was returned. On January 3, Tryon wrote Dartmouth that “landing, storing and safe keeping of the tea when stored could be accomplished, but only under the protection of the point of the bayonet and muzzle of the cannon, & even then I do not see how the Consumption could be effected.” The “Outrage at Boston” convinced Tryon that “the Peace of Society” and “good Order,” trumped landing the tea, and that the best he could hope for was an outcome like at Philadelphia (where the ship was turned around), not like at Charleston. Tryon and the Swan’s Captain Ayscough agreed that the Nancy should land outside the city’s customs area at Sandy Hook, where the Swan would see her supplied for a return to Britain. The consignees concurred, explaining to the Company that this was the only way, otherwise “your property must inevitably be destroyed,” and left a letter for Lockyer to this effect.⁴

But a governor and naval officer could not formally condone smuggling around His Majesty’s customs, even if it would maintain order. So Tryon made no official announcement. Instead, Ayscough appeared at a coffeehouse and mentioned dining with Tryon. He “declared before a great Number of Merchants, that as soon as the Tea-Ship arrived at the Hook, he should go down and supply her … and inform the Captain of the Resolutions of the People.”⁵ This pleased Patriots.

The Nancy encountered a storm and put in at Antigua in February 1774. If the Nancy had been too damaged to continue, Lockyer would have unloaded the tea there. Masters were supposed to enter their goods at the customs house upon reaching the Americas, and, having given bond that he would, Lockyer had a financial reason to do so. Lockyer carried no instructions for Antigua, and there was no consignee there. He could have waited for the customs collector to impound and auction the tea, thereby paying the Company and the tax, but this may have left the fate of his own bond uncertain. When Captain Lockyer put in at Antigua, he avoided formal entry into the customs area at English Harbour and did not land his tea.⁶

British West Indians consumed tea.⁷ In 1772 Jamaica and the Lesser Antilles imported roughly 35,000 pounds of legal tea. Antigua imported 6,000 pounds of British tea in 1774 without incident. The Nancy’s 211,778-pound cargo was considerably greater than this, but, roughly price competitive with smuggled tea, it could attract bidders from across the Caribbean and perhaps have been transshipped to North America as “smuggled” tea.⁸

This was possible since Antigua and New York operated under the same tariff regime. After first entry, tea moved between colonial ports without tax. The Revenue and Indemnity acts applied to Antigua and New York. These acts adjusted taxes for “British colonies and plantations in America,” including the West Indies. The American Board of Customs and vice-admiralty courts applied to North America, not the Caribbean. But the Tea Act applied to both, and British Caribbean colonies paid the tea duty peaceably. There is no evidence Antiguans were hostile to Lockyer or his shipment.⁹

On Antigua, Lockyer learned of opposition to the Company’s tea in various cities. A notice appearing in several papers in late December promised Lockyer would be “acquainted” with Patriots’ “Sentiments.” It declared the tea should not be landed and promised to resupply Lockyer for the voyage to England to avoid “Fatality.” The authors did not know whether Lockyer would read this, but he probably did. On February 15, Lockyer wrote ahead to New York consignee Henry White proposing to load supplies outside the city and head for England without stopping at the customs house. White seems to have leaked this to the press, perhaps for his and Lockyer’s safety. Lockyer took care to ensure he arrived in New York well after his letter did. Thus Lockyer carried the Company’s tea from Antigua, where he knew it could be landed and taxed, to New York, where he knew it could not, for reasons that remain murky at best. Had Lockyer unloaded at Antigua, the ensuing years may have unfolded differently.¹⁰

The Company had provided for difficulties in New York. On January 7, the Court of Directors, having heard of opposition to its tea (but not of the Boston Tea Party), decided that any refused shipments should be redirected not to the Caribbean, but to Halifax, the next “properest Place for the Sale and Disposal thereof throughout America.” During the previous boycott, tea had been “smuggled” from Halifax to Boston in 1770, and Nova Scotia merchants had proposed taking tea in 1773. Selling tea in a port without an active Patriot organization made sense. The Company appointed consignees in Halifax and informed its other consignees, writing Governor Tryon as well. Lockyer could have offloaded tea in two colonies outside the thirteen that would eventually rebel.¹¹

Dartmouth supported the Company, instructing Nova Scotia’s governor, Francis Legge, to “give all proper Protection & Assistance to the Agents of the Company in the landing those Teas, and all Facility in your power to the Sale of them.” Dartmouth also authorized New York governor William Tryon to use force. When “every other effort has failed,” Tryon could call on General Haldimand “to remove any unlawful obstruction to commerce.” North also accepted Tryon’s recommendation that it was “more prudent to send the tea back to England, than to risk the landing of it,” in New York. The ministry did not give definitive instructions on redirecting the tea to Nova Scotia, leaving Tryon room to maneuver. For the ministry the primary point was not the tea, but preventing further “insult” to the kingdom, a point Dartmouth reiterated.¹²

Enter the New York consignees. They are often said to have “resigned,” which meant they started cooperating with Patriots, not that they had no more to do with the tea. By March, Alexander McDougall and Isaac Sears, representing the “Liberty Boys,” and White, representing the consignees, reached a “Secret” agreement to resupply the Nancy and send her to England without landing the tea. This suited everyone. Governor Tryon even sanguinely declared to his council that “we should have no Trouble with” the tea ship. The consignees avoided using their connections to prevail upon the governor for help. This avoided putting the kingdom’s authority at stake and gave the colonial government plausible deniability. The consignees also avoided sending the tea to Halifax, which would have enraged Patriots, at no profit to the consignees, while endangered the consignees’ other businesses, which, for Lott at least, included selling smuggled tea wholesale in 1774. The Company’s tea would remain undamaged. Lockyer would still get paid. North could focus on the “ringleaders” in Boston without a distracting riot in New York. And the Sons of Liberty got an easier task. When Lockyer reached Sandy Hook on the night of April 18, 1774, Captain Ayscough and the Swan were away to Boston, absolving him of any obligation to intervene in defense of lawful commerce. In Ayscough’s absence, the Patriots treated Lockyer well, and three consignees, White, Lott, and Benjamin Booth, advised him to proceed quickly to England. He sailed past Halifax.¹³

Nor did Lieutenant Governor Cadwallader Colden intervene (Tryon had left, too). Colden had not been ordered to intervene, and, as he explained to Dartmouth, “Neither the captain nor any other made the least application to me about the ship or her cargo.” However, Colden added that while the Nancy was off Sandy Hook, another vessel, the London, Captain Chambers (not the London bringing Company tea to Charleston), brought a cargo of British tea, resulting in a “riotous” tea party, suggesting the disorder over this cargo justified inaction toward the Nancy. Neither Colden, Tryon, nor Dartmouth mentioned the Nova Scotia plan in their correspondence, and the New York consignees’ correspondence is lost.¹⁴

The one objection came from the ship’s sailors, who were “unwilling to sail with her to London.” The ship had hit a second storm after leaving Antigua, losing its mizzen mast, an anchor, and sustaining damage to its main topmast. As the Nancy set out, some sailors made a raft of “oars and boards” to escape on the tide. Perhaps they feared the ship was unlucky; perhaps they did not want to cross the ocean in a damaged ship. But the captain and the committee, which was watching from a nearby sloop (and empowered by Ayscough’s absence), forced them to. The Nancy reached England on June 6, its crew thankfully alive.¹⁵

Meanwhile, in Charleston, the London’s tea remained in the Exchange awaiting “further orders.” Lieutenant Governor Bull thought the tea might sell. Yet the Treasury, learning of the Boston Tea Party, put off the decision, instructing Robert Dalway Haliday, collector of the customs at Charleston, on February 5 that the tea “be kept in safe custody” while he awaited yet “further Orders.”¹⁶

The Company did not want to wait. On February 16, it asked the Treasury to auction the Charleston tea. Proceeds would go to the Company after deducting customs duty. If the Company’s property were to remain locked up at the King’s pleasure, it requested “other Relief.”¹⁷

The Treasury contemplated these “further orders.” Lord North, the prime minister, served as the First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer. North could, through the Treasury, have directed Haliday to auction the tea, or have directed Haliday to decide about auctioning the tea himself. The Treasury could also have compensated the Company, if it thought the tea permanently lost, or have ordered the tea sent to another port for auction (this may have required an act of Parliament). The Treasury Board dithered and did nothing.¹⁸ In early May, Treasury’s February stand-by order arrived in Charleston. At the end of May Bull reminded Dartmouth that, aside from that order, no real “orders have been received for the Disposal of the Tea,” leaving “no opportunity of judging what will be the behavior of the discontented, when it is produced at sale.” Bull worried Charleston merchants might not bid up “to the true value of the Tea,” but this would not necessarily have been a defeat. Low bids would hurt the Company, but would also make the tea cheaper, and therefore more attractive.¹⁹

The ministry put off selling the Charleston tea and accepted Colden’s non-intervention with the Nancy despite chiding Penn for similar non-intervention with the Polly earlier. Though Charleston’s protest of the Company’s tea was an “Insult to the Authority of this Kingdom,” the ministry eschewed conflict in Charleston and New York to single out Boston for punishment.²⁰

It is impossible to know what would have happened if Haliday had auctioned the London tea, or if someone had tried to send the Nancy to Halifax, or if Lockyer had unloaded in Antigua. Such actions presented risks, but the ministry’s caution in Charleston and New York shielded Patriots there from risk, too. Would the ministry have seen a partial sale of tea in Halifax or Charleston as embarrassing Patriots or embarrassing the kingdom? What would Patriots have thought and done? An accumulation of different men’s choices in London and the colonies precluded selling these other teas. The ministry preferred to avoid embarrassment in other ports with the Nancy and London by focusing on Boston, where the success of the Port Act, which implied the sale of the William’s tea, was to solve all problems.

In the North American public discussion sparked by the Port Act in May 1774 the William’s cargo of tea went unmentioned. This was despite earlier awareness of that tea being stored in Castle William. The castle got a mention. Thomas Gage and Thomas Hutchinson arrived at and departed from, respectively, the castle in May. In mentioning that Hutchinson had moved to Castle William the Pennsylvania Packet noted the “Tea commissioners” were there, but not the tea.²¹ Boston Patriots did not remind their fellow colonists of this tea—for doing so would have highlighted the risk that the tea might be landed and done little for the common cause.

Thus with the Port Act colonial attention turned from the surviving 1773 tea shipments to the destroyed ones. Colonists pondered Parliament’s overreaching rather than Patriots’. One could now imagine a chain of causation, from the Tea Act to the destruction of the tea, to the Coercive Acts, and, soon, to the Continental Congress and Continental Association. Alternative outcomes hinting at the potential frailty of the resistance were ignored (such as selling the William’s and London’s tea). The Nancy was remembered as an example of successful resistance (like the Dartmouth, Eleanor, Beaver, and Polly) rather than for its potential to undermine resistance. Future tea protests were cast similarly, and the ministry lost the opportunity to undermine Patriots by selling Company tea. If the colonists’ trade protests would collapse, they would have to collapse from within.

Protesting Tea Imports

Despite the failure to land Company tea anywhere in North America without it being seized by customs authorities, dutied tea continued to be sent from England to North America on private account. Two of these tea cargoes, send to cities already riled up by protests against Company tea, were destroyed. These were the tea on the Fortune in Boston in March and on the London in New York in April. Other cargoes of tea, including tea arriving in Charleston on the Suky and Katy and at least one other vessel, landed quietly.²²

The destruction of the Fortune’s cargo, like the London’s, was linked to the original Company tea shipments from 1773. Sometimes called the “Second Boston Tea Party,” though contemporary actors did not use that term, the destruction of the Fortune’s tea was in fact more connected to the rescue of the tea from the William than the destruction of the tea from the Dartmouth, Eleanor, and Beaver. Patriots needed to ensure that the Fortune’s tea was not rescued like the William’s had been. A threatened rescue loomed over the affair. There were two points of concern: the tea’s potential delivery to the castle and its potential early seizure by customs authorities. The key actors in preventing the first step were the ship owners and captain, who had the authority to decide where the Fortune should dock after it arrived in Boston Harbor on March 6. At least two of the shipowners, Thomas Walley and Peter Boyer, were members of the Sons of Liberty. These men, unsurprisingly, did not direct the Fortune to Castle Island, where its cargo could easily have been saved. Instead, they directed the Fortune to Hubbard’s Wharf in town, where it arrived on March 7. The tea was destroyed that day. This prevented the second step. As Deputy Naval Officer Nathaniel Taylor explained, the tea was “devoted upon its first arrival to be destroy’d.” Skipping the twenty-day wait prevented seizure by customs officers. This immediacy, sometimes puzzled at, makes more sense when we recall customs officers’ swift seizure of the William’s tea. Whether Walley and Boyer had an active role in destroying the tea (which was owned by other merchants) or simply knew what would happen when the Fortune came to the wharf is less clear, but the tumult over the Fortune during a period of already-heightened street action in Boston also deterred the consignees from selling the William’s tea.²³

In June news of the Coercive Acts catalyzed widespread dockside actions against British tea. Destroying the newly arrived tea showed solidarity with Boston and opposition to the Coercive Acts. The protests varied. In New Hampshire Edward Parry received tea in June and September. Patriots made him redirect them to Halifax. In Charleston tea imported in June on the Magna Charta and in July on the Briton was locked in the Exchange. In the Chesapeake, the Mary and Jane landed tea in August; committees demanded it be sent back. In Massachusetts, more than thirty chests of tea reached Salem in the Julius Caesar (they had been sent to Boston, but that port was closed), and were reshipped to Halifax. In Annapolis, tea arriving in October on the Peggy Stewart was burned along with the brig.²⁴

By November, some colonies had implemented non-importation locally. Continental non-importation began in December. Action against tea imports continued. The Britannia reached Charleston on November 1, its tea tossed into the river as an “Oblation … to NEPTUNE.” The Virginia reached Virginia on November 4; local Patriots threw the tea into the water and forbade it from loading tobacco. Later that month, more tea reached Virginia on the Ross. Patriots sought to stop it. Tea reached North Carolina on the Sally; Patriots asked that it be sent back. In December, Greenwich, New Jersey Patriots dressed as “Indians” burned tea landed from the Greyhound, in from Rotterdam and bound for Philadelphia (it was being smuggled past Philadelphia customs officers). These were the major attempts to stop tea shipments. Of these, all but the last carried British tea.²⁵

These cases varied. Patriots destroyed tea, locked it up, sent it back, or redirected it. Sometimes, after an initial public objection to the tea, records of the tea disappear: perhaps the tea was landed, perhaps records were lost over time. Even attitudes toward tax payment varied. In Annapolis, the brig owner paid duty on behalf of the importing merchant, one reason Patriots burned the brig. Yet in New Hampshire, where Governor John Wentworth hoped getting the duty paid would establish a precedent, the Portsmouth committee permitted this to facilitate re-export. In Salem, the importers gave bond that the duty would be paid in Halifax (it was), and when the William wrecked on Cape Cod, Cape Coders debated whether, since the tea was un-taxed, they could drink it.²⁶

What Did Tea Parties Mean?

Tea and tea parties were contested. There was no consensus even among Patriots about what to do with tea, and the broader public was even less unified, despite the appearance of broad, near unanimous support in the press. When the Greyhound landed tea in December 1774, violating the Association, a mob of young men burned the tea. Patriots were popular in Greenwich. The governor could not find a grand jury to indict the tea burners, even after replacing the sheriff with a King’s man. The tea owners’ action of trespass never saw trial. Nevertheless, Philip Vickers Fithian, who may have been a tea burner himself, noted little enthusiasm for tea burning in Greenwich. “Violent and different are the Words about this Uncommon Manouver,” he wrote. “[A]mong the Inhabitants—Some rave, some curse, some condemn. Some try to reason; many are glad that the tea is destroyed, but almost all disapprove the Manner of Destruction.”²⁷ Here was no consensus, even among Patriots, about how the Association should be fulfilled, but one has to look at a diary, not a press release, to find this.

One must be careful not to equate Patriots’ ubiquity and vociferousness with their popularity. Tea parties were widespread, showing Patriots had a meaningful presence in many towns. These rallies were widely reported in contemporary prints, which cast these events as triumphs of a colonial consensus. But this is not quite proof that Patriots were liked and tea was not, for it is unclear whether Patriots were trying to move the populace with these rallies, or whether they had moved it.

Patriots continued to block tea landings because some colonists wanted to consume it. Thus the conservative Samuel Seabury thought New Yorkers lacked “virtue enough to prevent the tea from being bought and sold, once landed.” The shortage of tea in late 1773, the failure of the Company’s shipments, and the reduced importation of legal tea in 1774 kept supply low but had less effect on demand. Dockside tea parties were “popular” in the sense that they involved the lower orders. But this obscured (and was perhaps even necessitated by) the lack of consensus about non-consumption.²⁸

Consider the Geddes, which brought tea to Chestertown, Maryland, on May 7, 1774. Kent County Patriots held meetings on May 13 and 18 “upon discovery of a late importation of the dutiable tea … for some of the neighbouring counties” in the Geddes. They invited the public “to declare their sentiments respecting the importation of tea” on May 18, at which meeting attendees “unanimously” agreed to the Chestertown Resolves, determining that buyers and sellers of this tea would be “stigmatized.” Subsequently, in popular memory at least, Patriots led the Chestertown Tea Party. But the tea party never happened, and the response to the tea was significantly less effective than it appeared.²⁹

We know the Geddes landed its tea. There are three pieces of evidence for this. First, the reference to a “late” importation meant it had been landed. Second, shipping records show the Geddes imported “E[ast] I[ndia]” goods (a catch-all that sometimes included tea). Third, the Geddes departed with a new cargo on May 24, which required the full inward cargo be entered first.³⁰

James Nicholson, the sole owner of the cargo, likely sold some tea despite the Chestertown Resolves, since on May 16 Annapolis merchant Thomas Brook Hodgkin advertised “East-India goods” “Just imported” by the Geddes. Hodgkin’s advertisement opens up an intriguing reading: that Nicholson realized his tea was troublesome, perhaps after the meeting on May 13, sold some to Hodgkin, then signed the Resolves on May 18 (the signatories of the Resolves are not named, but Nicholson was likely among them). The Resolves appeared to stop the Geddes’s tea from being sold, but in reality they were a promise not to sell tea anymore. Instead of stigmatizing Nicholson, county Patriots added Nicholson to their committee of correspondence.³¹

This is less jarring when one recalls that when the Geddes arrived, tea was not a focus of protest in Maryland. Hodgkin, like Nicholson, eventually became a Patriot. Nor did Marylanders know of the Coercive Acts when the Chestertown Resolves were written. News of the Coercive Acts reached Maryland on May 25, when the Geddes had already left. Kent County Patriots wrote their Resolves on May 19. They were published on June 2. Between these dates the committee added a postscript referencing the Coercive Acts.³²

Kent County Patriots’ press release cast their efforts in the best light, obscuring that the tea might be gone and that the importer was on their committee. This was good politics, letting Kent keep apace with other counties in its resistance to the Coercive Acts—and Kent’s Patriots were politicians. As long as Nicholson would behave in future, other Kent Patriots overlooked his transgression. It was also good leadership. Confirming that the Geddes’s tea had been sold would only embarrass the cause, so Chestertown Patriots encouraged future non-importation by implying they had already stopped the tea—a sort of “fake it ’til you make it.”

Other Maryland Patriots seem to have let in tea before the Coercive Acts became known on May 25. Four vessels brought East India goods to Annapolis between April 16 and May 25. If they brought tea—and some likely did—there was no protest. In June “Amor Patriae” (probably printer William Goddard) noted the continuation of tea sales and that tea “has, not long since, arrived here from England.” Indeed, four more vessels brought East India goods from England in the month after the Coercive Acts were known.³³ Tea advertisements appeared in the Maryland newspapers into July.

A facade of tea resistance obscured an ongoing tea market in the case of the Peggy Stewart as well. The Peggy Stewart arrived in Annapolis on October 14, and a mob forced one of the vessel’s owners, Anthony Stewart, to burn the tea and the vessel. Stewart first publicly denied knowledge of the tea to try to save his brig. But Patriots then forced him and his partners to ask pardon for importing tea and to “voluntarily” burn it. The official Patriot story, printed in the Maryland Gazette, pretended Stewart burned his vessel freely. This helped maintain inter-colonial Patriot unity. Congress announced its Association shortly after the Peggy Stewart was burned. News of the Peggy Stewart fire and the Congress’s Association followed each other around the continent. As the former was ostensibly an attempt to enforce non-importation, it was important it not sour readers on that part of the Association. Committeemen and firebrands on the spot disagreed about burning the brig; Patriots elsewhere would likely have been as divided if they knew.³⁴

Locals knew. William Eddis, a customs collector who witnessed the affair, thought the idea of the owner voluntarily burning his brig an “absurdity.” “I went to Annapolis yesterday to see my Liberty destroyed,” lamented merchant John Galloway. But readers in other colonies were left with what Maryland Patriots put in the press. Thus Bostonian John Andrews could cheer with William Barrell: “burning the vessel with tea at Maryland has elevated their [Patriots’] spirits,” even if he did not normally approve of burning ships.³⁵

Maryland Patriots also confounded the timelines of the Peggy Stewart and non-importation. Charles Carroll of Annapolis “wholeheartedly endorsed” burning the Peggy Stewart. It was “what those who oppose the patriot cause might expect.” Charles Grahame reluctantly agreed it was “what they must expect who import tea or contravene the resolution of the Congress.”³⁶

But the Peggy Stewart reached Annapolis before Congress had passed the Continental Association. Tea imports were not yet banned. To be sure, Annapolis Patriots had been urging an immediate boycott all summer. But in June, the Maryland convention chose to wait until other colonies joined (through the Association). This left the matter open—colonial-level Patriots failed to ban tea, but local Patriots still opposed it, making Thomas Williams’s decision to ship 2,000 pounds of tea from London on the Peggy Stewart risky. It was his largest tea purchase, but he had reasons to make the attempt. He had debts to pay, for which a handsome profit would help. He also had advertised British tea (with no trouble) in May, which may have led him to expect the same in October.³⁷

One reason to burn the Peggy Stewart was for private gain. John Davidson, a local customs official and rival merchant, encouraged the burning and was said, by the anonymous “Americanus,” to be a “PRINCIPAL ABETTOR and PROMOTER” of the riot.” Davidson had heard from his London partner, Joshua Johnson, of Williams’s shipment. Johnson’s comment that August, “I should not be surprised to hear that you made a bonfire of the Peggy Stewart” since she had “tea on board,” was a wink and a nudge. A third partner, Charles Wallace, may also have taken a role in burning the brig. Wallace, Davidson, and Johnson supported the destruction of its rival’s tea because they wanted to corner the pre-embargo market while they sold their tea. Williams’s outsized cargo implied that market was considerable. With the Peggy Stewart destroyed, Eddis thought Annapolis commodities “scarce and dear” in November—ripe for Wallace, Davidson, and Johnson. This aspect of the story did not make the Patriotic press.³⁸

Wallace, Davidson, and Johnson may have imported tea. “Americanus” thought Davidson’s firm had imported tea “three months before” the Peggy Stewart. Customs records show Davidson and Wallace had imported “East India goods” on the Kitty & Nelly, which reached Annapolis on May 12. Their internal order books show tea allocated for retail at their Annapolis store and their satellite on the Patuxent. They took tea orders from Buchanan & Cowan, Clement Brooke, William Bond, and Charles Carroll of Carrollton, who ordered 80 pounds just before the Association took effect. Carroll warned the goods were “not to be bought unless All the Acts mentioned by the Continental Congress as unjust and oppressive” were repealed. Other buyers made no such caveats.³⁹

Stocking Up

In 1774 word of the impending boycott encouraged colonists to stock up. The value of all British exports to the thirteen colonies in 1774 jumped 31 percent over the previous year, much of it driven by increased orders from New York and Philadelphia merchants. There were probably increased orders from Europe as well, including tea. Virginia Patriot Robert Carter Nicholas had not initially wanted to stock up, since it would blunt the boycott. But, as autumn approached, “I learned from different Parts of the Country that People were laying in Stocks of Goods for their Families; at length I thought it prudent to take Care of mine.” General Gage reported, “Merchants are sending for double the Quantity of Goods they usually import.” Continental Congressman Caesar Rodney wrote his brother Thomas, a merchant, that “every Body say[s] half the Quantity of Dry Goods never was before imported, as now are, and likely to be this fall.” Bristol merchant Thomas Frank warned a colonial correspondent that filling orders was difficult: the orders already placed left little room on westbound ships. As a result, many merchants had enough stock to sustain normal sales for months, perhaps a year, after non-importation took effect.⁴⁰

For importers, non-import could be an opportunity. In his advertisement for drugs and East India spices, Baltimore pharmacist John Boyd used the threat of non-importation to drive sales; since non-importation was “probable” buyers should “supply themselves before my present stock is exhausted.”⁴¹ Others took the opposite tack: If non-consumption were broken, whoever had the most goods would profit. “Depend upon it,” Robert Shedden of Portsmouth, Virginia wrote back to Glasgow, “you will never have such another opportunity to make money by dry goods in this country.”⁴²

Most merchants disagreed with Shedden. As Bristol merchant Richard Champion noted, now that colonial merchants had ordered so much, the “Great Stock of Goods” in the colonies made non-importation in their “Interest.” Without it, the colonial market would be flooded and the supply would “become a Burthen.” Others concurred. Samuel Seabury noted that merchants, anticipating non-importation, “have imported much more largely than usual: This makes me suspect, that the bustle about Non-importation &c, has its rise, not from Patriotism, but selfishness”: merchants needed scarcity to profit. For merchant, privateersman, and Son of Liberty Alexander McDougall, there was no conflict between doing good and doing well. “Stocks [of goods] have risen in favor of Liberty,” McDougall assured Samuel Adams in June 1774, ignoring that large orders blunted the Association’s effect on British merchants.⁴³

Tea Smuggling

Dutch tea was smuggled into the colonies. No British tea was landed in Philadelphia or New York in 1774, but tea was still available. His Majesty’s customs collectors and warships watched for smugglers around New York. In the spring of 1774 they caught a small sloop with Dutch tea—they secured the vessel without any trouble from Patriots just a few days after the Nancy arrived. Lieutenant Governor Colden placed his grandson Richard in the post of surveyor and searcher of the port. After turning down a £1,500 bribe, Richard made several seizures, but smugglers were hard to catch. They landed in the “numerous bays and creeks that our coasts and rivers furnish,” and landed contraband in small boats. In July Ayscough’s Swan took one, “a small pilot boat, with about one hundred and forty pounds of tea” near Sandy Hook. Enforcement weakened thereafter as customs officers began leaving their stations.⁴⁴

British intelligence detected colonial vessels bringing tea and gunpowder from Europe. A 300-ton ship loaded arms, gunpowder, and tea in the Elbe in August 1774. Another vessel was loading at Hamburg in October. When Dartmouth ordered it intercepted, it was gone and three more vessels were loading. Dutch-flagged vessels also carried tea. Sir Joseph Yorke, British ambassador to The Hague, reported the New York vessel, Catherine Elizabeth, loaded with tea and liquors for Curaçao, which Yorke thought was “a mask” for the tea’s real destination. Intelligence from Copenhagen reported a scheme to use a Danish vessel carrying timber to St. Croix to smuggle tea to “North America” among the “intervals of its Cargo.”⁴⁵

Tea came from farther south, too. The Swan seized tea from a vessel traveling from Lisbon. Lord Dartmouth received reports of smugglers entering the South Atlantic “to meet with French and other India ships [coming from China] in order to purchase tea of them.” Yorke estimated 5,000 chests of bohea were shipped to the West Indies and North America between January and September 1774. Most chests concealed gunpowder. Yorke estimated that only 1,000 to 1,500 chests contained tea, and the rest held powder. But 1,500 chests was a lot of tea: The Boston Tea Party had destroyed only 290 chests.⁴⁶

British detection of tea was a by-product of efforts to interdict gunpowder. Yorke originally thought tea smuggling too “trifling” to report, but arms in the tea crates got his attention. The Admiralty sent vessels to deter gunpowder shipments from the Netherlands. North American customs staff focused on interdicting arms as well. This left much of the Dutch tea imported in 1774 un-detected, though hints of it appear. In 1774 the firm Scott and Fraser, based in Gottenburg, hoped to supply Newport, Rhode Island merchant Aaron Lopez with tea, in what seems to have been a standing arrangement. They supplied Captain William Tanner, Dolphin, owned by Patriots Samuel and William Vernon, with 68 casks and two boxes of tea in August 1774. Tanner told Gothenburg authorities he was clearing for “New England” rather than St. Croix, as he had previously been instructed. Smuggling required a captain who could successfully change plans on the spot. So when Archibald Graham brought tea from L’Orient, France, into Baltimore in December 1774, he changed plans and reported his cargo to the Baltimore committee, which secured his supply.⁴⁷

Dutch Tea

The prevalence of Dutch tea in 1774 is one reason harborside tea parties should not be taken as evidence of a colonial consensus against the good. Some observers even thought opposition to Company tea would encourage colonists to consume more Dutch tea. “The colonists,” Charles Lee wrote, “one and all, have entered into the most solemn obligations to send” the Company’s tea “back to its exporters, and continue furnishing themselves from the Dutch.” John Adams also thought “honestly smuggled” Dutch tea was a good alternative to English—the syllogistic juggle the epigraph at the start of this book mocked. Conservatives joked “Sawney Sedition” “published, threatened, prayed and lied to delude the inhabitants from buying British tea” to buying Dutch.⁴⁸

How much Dutch tea entered colonial ports in 1774? The general downward trend in Philadelphia bohea prices is one sign that these volumes were substantial in 1774. (See figure C.1.) It would have taken hundreds of thousands of pounds of Dutch tea to accomplish this. One downward force on prices may have been partially decreased demand. But strikingly, while tea prices spiked during the boycott of 1769–1770, this time around tea prices spiked while the boycott was forming and before the Continental Association took hold. Mid-Atlantic colonies allowed Dutch tea to be imported, transshipped, and consumed throughout 1774. Unmet past demand (the tea shortage of 1773), increased current demand for Dutch tea in neighboring colonies that had just banned English tea in 1774, and stocking up to meet future demand in 1775 all mitigated against a substantial drop in demand for Dutch tea. This suggests that new supplies of Dutch tea played a crucial role in lowering prices. There is no evidence that New York and Philadelphia Patriots let in Dutch tea to affect tea prices. However, the Patriot leadership in these cities included merchants (Thomas Mifflin in Philadelphia and John Alsop, Isaac Low, and Philip Livingston in New York) who understood the effect that importing Dutch tea would have on price. Because 1774 tea prices in the Netherlands remained below earlier levels while mid-Atlantic tea prices remained higher, trade in Dutch bohea stood to be profitable. (See table C.1.)

Tea prices still occasionally spiked. The May spike, perhaps caused by consumer hoarding on rumors of a ban, seems to have inspired Amor Patriae to complain that while tea sellers “are publickly avowing the Spirit of Patriotism, they are privately” “advancing the Price of Tea no less than Eighteen Pence per pound, within a few Days!” He urged an “Inquiry” … into the “real Cause” of the rise, which he thought could not be caused by “Scarcity,” since Dutch tea was ubiquitous, but only by “iniquitous Fraud.” Though price rises might dissuade consumers, Patriots could not cheer publicly. To do so would seem callous or, worse, accept blame for hardship, since Patriot action had led to Company tea being locked up in both Boston and Charleston, and since, as John Randolph explained, the Company had been poised to offer tea “at Half the Price” other merchants were selling it. Instead, Congress included price controls in the Association, and colonial-level Patriots admonished merchants to keep prices steady. Patriots’ paradoxical preferences—that tea be cheap and British tea be scarce—worked better if they looked the other way as New York and Philadelphia brought Dutch tea in.⁴⁹

It was easier to stop British tea imports than Dutch imports because customs officers recorded legal tea imports multiple times. Legal tea was taxed (and therefore recorded) upon auction in Britain. The Tea Act then rebated this duty upon re-export to the colonies, which occasioned the documentation of these re-exports in British ports. Captain Chambers’s shipment of tea from London to New York was caught, in part, because other people could find cockets to that effect in the searcher’s office at Gravesend. The bonds that captains gave customs officials for shipping that tea were another form of documentation. Finally, tea legally imported from Britain was recorded in a public register at the colonial customs house. Patriots followed George Washington’s recommendation to check these “authentick Lists” for British imports. Customs officers failed to stop smugglers, but they recorded legal trade well. (Tea imported to other colonial ports could, however, be transshipped without much documentation, one reason Patriots had to include as large a group of colonies as possible within the Association.) The Association’s most important provisions banned not just tea but trade with Britain and the empire. They called for local committees to form and “observe the conduct of all persons touching this association.” Yet the Association presumed the continuation of the British Empire, not independence. With British tea imports the Association tried to influence Parliament, to affect merchants in Britain, and to use imperial customs officials’ records against the empire. By contrast, because there was no official register of smugglers, Patriots found Dutch tea imports harder to stop.⁵⁰

But as article of consumption, the only practical distinction between English and Dutch tea had been price. With that gone, Patriots decided that the only way to keep out one was to avoid consuming either. Thus, after complaining about tea prices, Amor Patriae urged colonists to stop using the drink generally. This move against Dutch tea was gradual.⁵¹

In most colonies where Patriots opposed British tea in 1773 or 1774, they eventually opposed Dutch tea. In Boston, Patriots ignored Dutch tea during the Boston Tea Party. In the last quarter of 1773, twenty separate tea sellers advertised tea in the Boston papers, much of which was assumed to be Dutch. Only after the Tea Party did the town’s tea sellers agree to stop selling all tea. One merchant, Cyrus Baldwin, was caught out and tried to advertise around the problem, noting his tea was “imported before the East India Company’s arrived,” but he soon stopped advertising tea.⁵² After January 1774, Patriotic merchants no longer advertised Dutch tea in Boston.

Elsewhere Dutch tea carried on. In New York, John Watts, who had previously favored non-importation, opposed a general tea ban since it would hurt tea smugglers as much as legal importers (an inversion of the position merchants had taken in South Carolina, reflecting the prevalence of smuggling in New York). New York smuggling and tea advertisements continued. Samuel Seabury thought that “All that is imported,” into New York—especially tea—“is smuggled from Holland, and the Dutch Islands in the West Indies.” In Rhode Island, merchant Samuel Ward urged a general tea boycott at the end of December 1773 but got nowhere. In South Carolina, despite talk of non-importation in December 1773, Patriots only reached an “Agreement” that “NO TEAS” (English or Dutch) be imported at their March 1774 meeting. They set April 16, 1774 as the effective date, but it is unclear how broadly agreed or enforced this was.⁵³

The Coercive Acts accelerated the move against Dutch tea. The just-dissolved House of Burgesses recommended an Association boycott of “any kind of East India commodity whatsoever” in May 1774, and in August the Virginia convention announced an immediate boycott of “tea of any kind” in the Virginia Association. Yet importing Dutch tea remained a lesser offense. When British tea on the Britannia was destroyed in November in Charleston, a separate cargo of Dutch tea was merely sent back “with a Caution to the Shipper to venture no more this Way.” Charleston Patriots thought this a virtue: “This proves that WE do not reject the dutied Teas in order to countenance the Importation of others,” but they upheld separate treatment for the two.⁵⁴

The Continental Association differentiated between Dutch and British tea, banning British tea imports immediately, but allowed Dutch tea to be imported until December 1, 1774 and consumed until March 1, 1775. In New York and Philadelphia, the most important market towns in the colonies, Dutch tea imports continued until the former date. Without Dutch tea, colonial tea prices would have been higher, perhaps high enough to make shipping more British tea worthwhile. To the extent that colonial merchants eschewed British tea, it was partly because Dutch tea imports stopped tea prices from rising high enough to make British tea worth the risk.

Undermining Non-Importation

Seventy thousand pounds of British tea were shipped to the thirteen colonies in 1774. This figure includes 30,000 pounds sent to New England in 1774 and 31,000 sent to the Chesapeake, much of which was not landed. It also includes the tea on the Geddes and perhaps other shipments and 3,661 pounds to Georgia, which was landed. This was a far cry from the 264,000 pounds sent to the thirteen colonies in 1772, but it suggested a small and enduring market for legal tea in post-Tea Party North America. To this must be added the 64,000 pounds of British tea which went to the British West Indies, the Floridas, Quebec, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland in 1774.⁵⁵

The early embargo was fragile, and tea from other colonies was sometimes brought into Patriot zones. The Sally, Captain Joshua Davis, arrived in Salem, Massachusetts, in June from Barbados and St. Eustatius with forty canisters of tea and was entered. Later that month the Welcome, Captain John Smithwick, arrived from Grenada with twenty more canisters. These teas had been imported into Boston previously, perhaps in 1773. They were then shipped to the Caribbean in early 1774, part of the winter New England-Caribbean run, to escape Boston’s ban on tea sales. The sixty canisters shipped from the Caribbean back to Boston in the spring of 1774 and then diverted to Salem on account of the Port Act were probably the remains of larger cargoes. It is not even clear whether these teas were originally English or Dutch. But since they had already been imported once, they owed no further tax regardless and did not need to be mentioned by name in the “authentick lists” at the customs house. We know about them only because customs officers discussed these canisters in separate correspondence. This was why tea was difficult for Patriots to stop beyond the port of entry. Similarly, Boston tea vendor Isaac Winslow could obtain tea from his Newport brother-in-law, Simon Pease, undetected and try to return it the same way.⁵⁶

Initially, Patriots were also hampered in enforcing their embargo because they did not have clear control of Salem. Between June and August 1774, the Massachusetts government relocated there. General Gage, the customs commissioners, and many soldiers were based in Salem. Patriots do not seem to have been aware of the Sally and Welcome teas, but the presence of soldiers in Salem helped ensure the tea that reached Salem in September on the Julius Caesar, which Patriots did know about, was reshipped to Halifax, not destroyed.⁵⁷

Conversely, once implemented in the right choke-points, an embargo could hold back British tea distribution more broadly. The subsequent withdrawal of troops from Salem (in response to the Powder Alarm), Governor Wentworth’s dwindling power in Portsmouth, and the continued closure of Boston empowered Patriots to force residents of northern New England to follow the Association. Likewise, when Charlestonians stopped the Briton’s tea, they prevented tea sent to St. Augustine via Charleston from reaching its destination.⁵⁸

Tea could also be landed outside the embargo zone. East Florida governor Patrick Tonyn, hearing of the St. Augustine shipment held up in Charleston, suggested that St. Augustine replace Charleston as a redistribution point. If tea came to St. Augustine “as a mart, it would finds its way all over America.” Law-abiding Floridians might thus end Carolinians’ non-importation. But British merchants shipped only 2,543 pounds of tea to the Floridas in 1774, hardly enough for large transshipments into Patriot zones.⁵⁹

This was because St. Augustine had “no proper Wharf or Landing place for Goods,” as London merchant Thomas Nixon, whose vessel carrying tea wrecked in St. Augustine in 1773, explained. All the town had was a wood “platform carried from the Shore on the Beach which was built extremely slight, and by reason of the Worm which breeds in the Mud is continually wanting Repairs and is now very unsafe to land goods on.” The town suffered from “great want of a good Wharf and Crane and also of Lighters and other Craft,” and had a sand bar at its harbor mouth. With no facility to unload or receive large vessels, St. Augustine had to conduct its trade via “Coasting Schooners” to Charleston.⁶⁰

The Caribbean was a promising place from which to distribute dutied tea into North America, as the Sally and Welcome showed. High North American tea prices meant merchants could buy dutied tea in the Caribbean and sell it in North America at profit. But new tea was not sent out from Britain to take advantage of this. For while dutied tea could be sold in the Caribbean and resold in North America at profit, Dutch tea could be sold even more profitably. Philadelphia consignee Gilbert Barkley travelled with the Polly and her cargo of East India Company tea back to London, where he offered to buy the Polly’s tea and re-sell it in St. Eustatius. This would have been a political coup in North America, whether it got Company tea in North American hands or simply eroded colonial confidence in Dutch tea’s provenance. But the Company turned him down. Barkley wanted to buy the tea at a discount to allow him to compete with Dutch tea on the island, but the Company did not need to cut prices to sell a cargo which might sell at regular auction. The Company reasonably expected that by importing less tea, it could eventually sell all its cargoes at full price. Selling Company tea to the Caribbean for onward sale to North America made political sense, not business sense, a logic driven in no small part by the ongoing shipment of Dutch tea to the Americas. The Company Directors offered to introduce Barkley and Lord Dartmouth, but it is unclear whether Barkley ever broached the matter with the minister. As such, British tea shipments to the Caribbean remained stable at roughly 30,000 pounds weight between 1773 and 1775.⁶¹

Then there were the northern provinces. Earlier, King George III had thought, “When Quebec is stocked” with tea “it will spread Southward.” But British shipments to Quebec were declining. British merchants sent 6,433 pounds in 1773, but only 3,489 pounds in 1774.⁶²

Others focused on Nova Scotia. “An Enemy to Tea” had seen Halifax as a possible base for distributing tea across the continent. The Nancy never reached Nova Scotia, but Halifax received two cargoes of British tea reshipped from New Hampshire and a third from Salem. English merchants also sent tea directly to Newfoundland and Nova Scotia in 1774, more (27,757 pounds) than in the previous two years combined, some likely intended for sale farther south.⁶³

Tea was contested in Nova Scotia. Most Nova Scotians came from New England. When the Portsmouth tea reached Halifax in July 1774, there was a gathering in response. Magistrate John Fillis objected, linking it to the “unjust and oppressive” Coercive Acts, and some merchants denied importer George Henry Monk use of their stores. William Smith, a merchant and judge, was offered a share in the tea; he declined as it was “against his principles.” Yet the tea was landed, and Smith ultimately took a share.⁶⁴

In September 1774, Smith received another tea shipment, probably the one redirected from Salem. John Andrews had thought Haligonians would give the tea an “unwelcome … reception.” (He based this on speaking with Haligonians in Boston, who breathed “the same spirit of freedom as prevails through the continent.”) This tea was, according to Halifax customs officials, “regularly landed.”⁶⁵ Then Smith notified other Halifax merchants and called a meeting. Whether Smith intended to agitate or explain himself against a “prejudiced” populace is unclear. Magistrate John Newton declared the meeting illegal. Governor Legge stripped Smith and Fillis, whom Smith had consulted, of their posts and forbade further meetings, noting to Dartmouth that it was “persons taking upon themselves the authority of assembling any body of people” which has led to so much “disorder” elsewhere. Any potential Halifax tea party was stopped before it could begin. As Monk explained, “the Governor has effectually cut the throat of the Rebelious Faction, in this Country & destroyed the seeds of Sedition, sewn among the People, who were Irritated to Town Meetings &c on the arrival of some Tea, by a Mr. Smith.”⁶⁶

Nova Scotians had shipped some small cargoes of tea to Maine in earlier years, and they did try to re-export tea to New England in 1774. Nova Scotia merchants sold 300 pounds of tea to John Thomas, who carried it to Plymouth, Massachusetts, where Patriots destroyed it. Rumors surfaced of other men wanting “to buy Tea” in Halifax “and carry the same to Plymouth for sale.” According to the publicly reported version of events, a 150-pound shipment from Liverpool, Nova Scotia to York, Maine, was seized by men disguised as Indians. However, the Tory Judge Jonathan Sayward, who lived in town and may have had something to do with the tea, noted in his diary that “two days after [this event] the tea was replaced” by persons unknown.⁶⁷ Other re-exports may have gotten through as well.

Nova Scotia merchants wanted to replace New Englanders. Legge pushed the possibility of Nova Scotians replacing New Englanders in Atlantic trade in 1774. Haligonian merchants caught more cod and shipped more to the West Indies as Salem and Boston vessels withdrew in 1774 and 1775. The Restraining Acts of 1775 allowed Halifax to trade with the British West Indies, and Dartmouth encouraged Nova Scotia’s timber trade there. But Halifax, like St. Augustine, was too small for the job. The Adamant’s two yearly voyages between Halifax and Britain were Legge’s main means of communication with London—the town was a satellite of Boston, not readily made into a hub of its own. Halifax merchants (resident in a town of roughly 2,500 souls) could not engross Massachusetts’s trade: Halifax entrances and clearances in 1773 were less than half those in Salem, let alone Boston.⁶⁸

A few cargoes slipped into Patriot areas from outside. More could have. That they did not is not only an artifact of colonial resistance but also of the cost-benefit analysis of many merchants, an analysis which was affected by the price, and therefore the benefit, they could expect. Falling tea prices because of ongoing Dutch tea shipments to New York and Philadelphia reduced the benefits. Patriot enforcement against dutied tea increased the cost.

Performing Violations

Patriots caught some importers with tea. The records of these interactions, generated by the committees, reveal the fixed roles Patriots permitted importers to play. If they begged pardon and accepted committee authority, they might survive unscathed. If they defied the committees, they were punished.

Some importers insisted they had never ordered tea. The first time he was caught, Edward Parry accurately claimed the tea had been sent to him “without my advice or knowledge.” In South Carolina, James Wakefield and William Donaldson claimed their tea was “quite unexpected,” “[p]art of some old Orders, which through mere Inattention, had not been countermanded.” Captain Ball of the Britannia declared himself “an entire Stranger to their [tea chests] being on board his Ship” until he was ready to clear from England, at which point he signed a notarized protest objecting to the tea.⁶⁹ This did not always work (Anthony Stewart denied knowledge of tea on board the Peggy Stewart), but by implicitly denying the tea was meant to defy Patriots’ wishes, it usually lessened Patriot ire. “Accidental” tea importation was amusingly common in 1774.

The Charles County, Maryland committee thought the timing of Robert Findlay’s tea importation suggested ill intent. His tea, shipped from London on the Mary and Jane in May 1774, came late enough that his supplier was “acquainted with the passing of the Boston Port Bill and also of the sense of America respecting” dutied tea. Findlay replied that the tea had been ordered in 1773, therefore not intended to defy post-Coercive Acts sensibilities.⁷⁰

Robert Peter went further, insisting to the Frederick County, Maryland committee that legal tea imports had been normal when ordered: “he relied on the custom which had constantly prevailed in the Province of Maryland, since the partial repeal of the Revenue Act [1770], to screen him from censure, and to justify” his ordering dutied tea. Customs records suggest he was right. Peter followed this risky comment by emphasizing that he “submitted” to the committee’s will.⁷¹

Except, we do not know what accused merchants like Peter said. Committee reports are the only evidence, and they were written by a body that served as prosecutor and judge and had a political agenda. We know committees sometimes lied, as with the Peggy Stewart. Committees likely paraphrased what their subjects said, perhaps liberally, a common eighteenth-century practice. Committees sometimes wrote out confessions for the accused to sign, with the appropriate amount of groveling and acquiescence added for them. Yet there were basic truths the committee reports reveal: they were unlikely to claim someone who had submitted was defiant or vice versa, for example. Committees’ records thus show the committees’ self-image superbly, committee opinions reasonably well, and the internal world of the accused poorly. Peter ordered tea; the committee summoned him to explain; he did. But what did submission mean to Peter? Did he intend to continue obeying? When he “submitted to the sentiments of the Committee, and declared an entire willingness to abide by their determination,” he accepted they would write the definitive version of events. If Peter had any quibbles, he kept silent. He had other goods to sell.⁷²

Patriots lauded obedient tea importers. The Frederick committee gave “thanks” for Robert Peter’s “candid and disinterested behavior.” New York Patriots treated Lockyer well. The committee conducted him to the wharf with church bells, a band played God Save the King, and huzzas and cannon salutes saw him off.⁷³ This demonstrated Patriot magnanimity and protected importers from mobs.

Pleased with obeisance, committees and mobs treated evasion firmly. Captain Chambers risked “his life” when he was caught lying about tea and hiding documents. Edward Parry’s claim that his first tea shipment was a mistake looked implausible when a second shipment arrived. The second time, the town meeting was “agitated,” a mob broke his windows, and Parry asked the governor for protection. In South Carolina, Patriots were furious because Maitland had “promised, upon his Honour” not to land tea, then did it. Maitland witnessed the tea affair in Charleston in 1773, and, working a regular Charleston-London shipping run, was no “Stranger” to “the Sense of the People” of South Carolina. “[S]ince he had brought in the Teas with his Eyes open,” Patriots held him responsible for their landing. Consequently, James Laurens thought, “had he fallen into their [i.e., the mob’s] hands it would have cost his Life.” He escaped to the HMS Glasgow just as the mob boarded his vessel.⁷⁴

Illegal, seditious, and possibly treasonous, the committees guarded their emergent legitimacy, watching for contemptuous language since they needed to be respected as proper authorities to function. According to James Laurens, Maitland had “spoken disrespectfully” of “Patriots & their Measures” and was “rather Imprudent in letting his tongue run.”⁷⁵ In colonial honor culture respect for leaders implied acceptance of their legitimacy (one reason North took the Boston Tea Party, as an act of disrespect, so seriously). To keep face, the Charleston committee omitted Maitland’s disrespect in its published account. Meanwhile, Alexander Urquhart arrived in Charleston with tea the day the mob attacked Maitland. But Urquhart held his tongue and was unharmed.⁷⁶

The committee derived authority, in part, from speaking for the public and having its ability to do so accepted. Thus Wakefield and Donaldson refused tea because they “had no Intention to act counter to the Sense of the Community” as expressed by the committee. When Edward Parry sent his June tea shipment away, he explained (according to the committee, at least), “I am unwilling to irritate the Minds of the People.”⁷⁷ These men performed the role the committees scripted for them: acceptance of the premise that committees expressed popular will and obliviousness to the possibility that importing tea implied its salability with no sense that the boycott might be less popular than imagined.

There was truth to apolitical importation. Merchants bought tea for money, not politics. Most importers brought mixed cargoes dominated by other goods, especially British manufacturers. Tea was ancillary to this, and most merchants gave up British tea to sell other goods and collect export cargoes in the booming pre-Association market.

When Edward Parry sent away his tea, he probably hoped to save his business sourcing masts for the navy. Likewise, when London merchant John Norton sent the Virginia to Virginia in 1774, it was to collect tobacco. The value of the tea onboard was trivial compared to the tobacco he hoped to load. Though Patriots destroyed the tea to hit Norton, they forbade the Virginia to load tobacco. Norton sought absolution in the Virginia papers. Hoping to “recover” his “esteem” among “friends and countrymen in Virginia,” he apologized, and noted, sincerely or not, that Parliament had “not the least shadow of a right to tax America.” Norton’s other vessels loaded tobacco later.⁷⁸

The Fiction of Legal Distance

Merchants complied in part because of Patriots’ threats and force. This required the pretense of legal separation between committee and crowd. In many tea parties, regular participants disguised themselves. This amplified the menace: the impossibility of knowing who might harm them was one reason consignees cowered in Castle William. But, as public figures, committeemen could not disguise their identities. The Boston committee of correspondence met the day the Fortune’s tea was destroyed without deciding on an official course of action. But privately, John Adams knew ahead of time that the tea was “to make an Infusion in Water.” The York County, Virginia committee explained that unnamed “inhabitants of York” (not the committee) boarded the Virginia and threw its tea “into the River.” The committee “highly approve of … destroying the tea,” but denied doing it. The Gloucester County, Virginia committee said it would have broken the law but found the tea “committed to the waves” before its mob could act. Dunmore was convinced the York committee had acted, but Virginia authorities could not prove it in court.⁷⁹ The York and Gloucester committees implicitly took credit while minimizing legal exposure.

In December, the Cumberland County, New Jersey committee took control of tea from the Greyhound. By this time the Association banned tea importation and required the tea to be auctioned for Boston relief. This would have put the tea in circulation and reimbursed the owners. To the committee’s “surprise,” “the tea had been destroyed by persons unknown.” The committee “entirely disapprove of the destroying of the above-mentioned tea,” and promised “not [to] conceal nor protect from justice any of the perpetrators.” As one local historian noted, the committee had to “at least publicly disavow the act.” But the committee had failed to protect the tea in its possession, and at least two committee members were among the Greenwich tea burners. Criminal charges were filed, and the tea owners sued the committeemen for damages. The grand jury refused to indict—the sheriff who selected the jurors and the jury foreman were brothers of one of the accused, and the authority of the colony’s courts collapsed before the civil case could proceed.⁸⁰

The fiction of legal distance worked because it was not always fiction. Maryland leaders had little to do with the burning of the Peggy Stewart, which Congressman Samuel Chase and Barrister Charles Carroll both opposed, as did a majority of those gathered to debate the matter. Committees did not always control the Sons of Liberty, and the latter did not always control the crowd.⁸¹

The understanding that Patriot elites did not always control crowds, and that, were committees too lenient, crowds might act anyway, gave a certain menace to committee actions. The existence of committees “presumed the presence of the mob,” as Barbara Clark Smith notes, and committees benefitted from mob violence. In some colonies, the angry mob and the sensible committee was a performance derived from court days.⁸²

In such a performance, the violent and respectable parts of the Patriot movement each had a role. When the Charleston committee ordered merchants to destroy tea from the Britannia, it was to preclude “direct action by the people,” as Pauline Maier suggests. A mob watched the importers dump their tea into the river and gave “three hearty Chears after the emptying of each Chest.” But the committee was both restraining the crowd and “restraining” the crowd. In New Hampshire, when it became unclear when Parry’s tea would depart, customs officers reported that “two Drums began to beat, and the immediate distruction of the Tea was feared … especially as the Committee that had Guarded her [the tea vessel] the preceeding night said it was with the utmost difficulty they had saved the Vessel and Tea” from “a number of Men with Tools [who] came down the Wharf that Night in order to scuttle her.” The committee and the “Men with Tools” appear distinct, but their hand-in-glove work hastened the ship’s departure.⁸³

Sometimes committees wrote the mob out of the story, as in the events surrounding Anthony Warwick and Michael Wallace’s tea importation. The Nansemond committee claimed in the Virginia Gazette that Warwick and Wallace had imported tea and, after questioning, agreed to “keep the tea safe, ready to be delivered up to the committee when required, and that none of it shall be sold or used.” But the committee achieved this because of threats made to Warwick and Wallace while in Williamsburg a few weeks earlier. There, a member of the Nansemond committee had confronted the men. According to Loyalist William Aitchison, Warwick and Wallace’s “lives were threatened.” Patriots threatened the pair with tar and feathers. “Young Nicholas,” son to Robert Carter Nicholas and a comptroller of customs to be, “spoke very Violently against them & asked how they durst insult the Majesty of the People.” Virginia gentry, including Continental Congressmen Peyton Randolph, Edmund Pendleton, and Richard Bland, colonial treasurer Robert Carter Nicholas, and Burgess Robert Munford convinced the merchants to deliver their tea to avoid assault.⁸⁴ The congressmen seemed well-meaning. But could they hold off the mob forever? What would happen when the merchants went home? No one had to spell this out.

Colonists understood that Sons of Liberty and Patriot committees were armed and political wings of a common movement. As one Loyalist writer joked: “What, do you drink Tea? Take care what you do, Mr. C., for you are to know the Committee commands the mob and can in an instant let them loose upon any man who opposes their decrees, and complete his destruction.” The Sons of Liberty, on their own, could be terrifying. Peter Oliver Jr. considered them “Sons of Anarchy,” guilty of the “horrid Crime of Rebellion.” Their menace facilitated the Charleston committee becoming, in Sarah Maitland’s mind, the “Committee of the Usurped Power.” Other Patriots softened things to broaden the movement’s appeal. They said, Edward Parry volunteered to send his tea away. The Charleston committee, in a press release headlined “FACTS,” falsely claimed that Maitland made a “free and voluntary Offer” of his ship’s tea into the river “at his own Cost,” obscuring the violence he faced. As merchant Henry Fleming explained, “whilst some are contending for Liberty they are willing to deprive others of every pretention to it from which I conclude every one here is a Tyrant as far as his power extends.” Without conciliation from Parliament, “our property at least must be very precarious,” under committee rule. This helped stop the importation of tea and English goods.⁸⁵ Stopping consumption however, was another matter and would draw in colonists not previously involved in the imperial crisis.