The Gradualism of Disuse

It is tempting to interpret swift bans on tea sales as signs of an emerging consensus against the product. In Massachusetts, some towns responded to the Boston Tea Party with bans on tea sales: forty towns by April 1774. But this was forty towns out of nearly two hundred, hardly an expression of general will. Only five of the towns banning tea banned all tea consumption outright: Worcester, Acton, Lunenburg, Charlestown, and Boston. The rest allowed Dutch tea sales to continue.⁸

It took nearly a year to ban tea in Massachusetts, too. This reflected the difficulty in convincing Massachusettsans to see tea as a political and not a consumer product. Declarations of support were easy: The General Assembly endorsed the tea boycott in the spring of 1774. But when John Hancock advocated in his Boston Massacre speech “total disuse of tea in this country, which will eventually be the saving of the lives and estates of thousands,” his formulation—“eventually”—suggested people in “this country” were not doing it yet. In June, the General Assembly again resolved that colonists should “renounce consumption” of tea. The provincial congress advocated “total disuse” of tea in October.⁹ These announcements were passed to the towns for enforcement, their repetition suggesting not every town heeded at first.

Haverhill announced its resolves against importing, buying, or consuming tea in August. Plymouth County Patriots resolved the same in September. Medford voted not to use tea at home and, in November, set up a committee to “Enquire if any person or persons Sells or consumes” tea.¹⁰

Across the colonies, a similar dynamic played out: a few places, like Middletown, Rhode Island, quickly resolved to “have nothing to do with the East-India company’s irksome tea.” Then, more colonists turned against tea with news of the Coercive Acts. At the end of May Philip Vickers Fithian noted Virginians who “Drank Coffee” for “they are now too patriotic to use tea.” Now—not before. Even then, resolves against tea spread gradually: Windham, Connecticut in June, Patriots in various Virginia counties in June and July; the Virginia Association in August, the North Carolina provincial congress in September. The last deemed “all persons in this province not complying with this resolve to be enemies to their Country.”¹¹ Yet it is still unclear just how well colonists abided by this command.

The campaign against tea was particularly drawn out in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where the governor assisted tea arrivals and got some tea duties paid. After Parry’s failed importation in June, the July town meeting resolved against importing, buying, selling, or consuming tea until the tea duty was repealed and Boston opened. But sales continued. In August, a woman endured riotous insults from a group of “boys and sailors” for selling tea. The town denounced the riot, and Governor Wentworth reported the few “who had tea have sold it without molestation.” Wentworth thought tea sales would dry up “entirely” in a few months, and in September, Patriots compelled six Portsmouth residents to swear they would not sell tea. But it was harder for Patriots to accomplish this than Wentworth thought. On January 18, 1775, a merchant was discovered attempting to sell tea. Patriots claimed it had come from Salem. The owner burned his remaining sixty-pound supply in front of a large crowd—but how much had already been sold or used? The next week, the New Hampshire provincial convention recommended total disuse of tea, as, clearly, it was not yet wholly disused.¹²

Half Abstention

There is evidence of at least some tea disuse. The Newport Mercury, for instance, estimated a third as much tea was drunk in Newport in January 1774 as three months earlier. John Harrower, an indentured servant, wrote in June 1774, “As for Tea there is none drunk by any in this Government [Virginia] since 1^st. June last.” Nicholas Cresswell noted in July that after the election to the House of Burgesses, one of the returned members “gave a ball … Coffee and Chocolate, but no Tea. This Herb is in disgrace amongst them at present.” William Reynolds reported using sage instead. In December, Harrower wrote in his diary, “I have not drunk a dish of Tea this six Mos. Past.”¹³

Yet there is also evidence tea continued to be consumed despite the protests. Boston merchant John Andrews reported that “prodigious shouts” at the Old South Meeting House forced him to interrupt “drinking tea at home” to see what was the matter. After seeing what was the prelude to the Boston Tea Party, Andrews, who sided with the Patriots in 1776, “went contentedly home and finish’d my tea.” In January 1774, with Boston tea dealers having already announced they would soon stop selling tea, future Loyalist William Vassall Sr. wrote to London, ordering “16 Pounds of very best Superfine Hyson Tea”: “Send the very best” “for my Family,” he added. Elihu Ashley found himself both drinking tea and discussing “Liberty Matters” (probably in response to the Coercive Acts) in Goshen, Connecticut, in May 1774. Efforts to bring in non-consumption in response to the Coercive Acts failed in New York and Philadelphia that same month. In June, provincial treasurer, erstwhile Company consignee, and newly minted member of the New York committee of 51 Abraham Lott traveled to Albany, drinking tea in Poughkeepsie and Albany, and selling tea in the latter. That August, Andrews mentioned having tea in his letters as though there were no political significance to it, and it was not until early September that he was finally drinking “coffee (not tea).” Virginia merchant William Allason’s books show fifteen pounds of bohea on hand in October 1773, all of which was gone within a year. Despite the public abstention from tea, Nicholas Cresswell noted in Virginia he still “Drank Tea and Coffee at Captn. Sandford’s” in Alexandria that October. On December 11, 1774, Patriots seized a parcel of tea in a Manhattan store, and nineteen chests the next day in Flushing, New York. This did not prevent New York merchant Jonathan Freebody Jr. from sending a tierce of tea (a large barrel) to Christopher Champlin in Rhode Island.¹⁴

The Newport Mercury’s estimate implied reduced but continued consumption. At Yale, some classes voted in December 1774 not to drink tea until the duty was removed and to boycott the bookseller James Lockwood, who probably sold it. These Yalies also threatened to shun classmates who did not join their boycott. But not every class voted this way, and even among classes that did, “three or four” students dissented. Providence reported an indeterminate “Number of Families in this Town have discontinued the use of Tea,” which, read the other way, also meant an indeterminate number continued using it.¹⁵

Bringing in non-consumption among the general public before the Association’s mandated March 1, 1775, start date was difficult. If a householder had already paid for tea, burning it did not affect British merchants or un-pay any duty that had already been paid, and it could be hard to convince colonists to take the loss. “What Good,” asked one writer in the Norwich Packet, will come from burning tea colonists already had on hand? As Virginia attorney general and conservative pamphleteer John Randolph explained, to boycott tea “already in our Houses,” whether it had paid duty or not, was more “the Overflowing of Zeal, than founded on any solid Principle.” Some Patriots seem to have agreed. Halifax, North Carolina resolved “never to purchase directly or indirectly or use [tea] in any of our families”—“except what we now have.” The questions of what to do with the tea from the William further confused matters. The William’s tea had not paid duty, and salvagers had been paid in tea. Should Patriots wipe out their pay, or allow Company tea to circulate? Only in November did the Barnstable County congress vote against “any kind of India Tea, whether Imported on Account of the East-India Company, or any other.”¹⁶

Even avowed Patriots struggled to maintain a political view of non-consumption in 1774. Philip Vickers Fithian was a tutor in Robert Carter’s household. The Carters, Virginia Patriots, claimed to have stopped drinking tea in May. But Fithian recorded in September that “Mrs. Carter made a dish of Tea.” She passed it round the table until her husband sipped it, realized what it was, and, exclaiming “Poh!,” tossed the dish out into the fire. It is hard to believe this was an honest mistake. Did Mrs. Carter accidentally ask the slaves to make tea? Did they not bring it out in a tea service? How were there tea leaves to brew? One wonders whether Mrs. Carter had forgotten her Patriotism or that Fithian was present. Certainly, Fithian ordered tea when the Carters were not looking at him. He drank tea when he traveled in 1774: in Maryland in April, Delaware in May, and Maryland again in October.¹⁷

Even protesters struggled to stop drinking tea. In January 1774, students at the College of New Jersey (later Princeton) had a tea party, tying a container with twelve pounds of tea left in it around the neck of an effigy of Governor Hutchinson, burning both in the yard. They “tolled the bell” and made “many spirited resolves.” They did this “to show our patriotism,” Charles Beatty explained. “Officers and Students” announced they would not drink tea.¹⁸

But in late February Beatty had tea with a Mrs. Nelson, an acquaintance in Princeton town, mentioning it to his brother Erkuries. That spring he also had tea with a Mrs. Beatty, probably Mary, his brother John’s bride, and a Miss B. Sergeant, with whom he “spent the afternoon very agreeably.” The Coercive Acts helped him back on the Patriot wagon again by June, when he joined a “fine frolick” of roughly forty students “all drest in white,” who went to a house in town belonging to a man “who used to drink tea, and said he would persist in it.” The students “made him deliver up his tea,” and they burned it in the street before running off to intimidate a Tory. “I am as strong a Whig as the best of them,” he assured his brother.¹⁹

And he was right, for the best of them waffled just as much. On July 6, 1774, John Adams made a long ride on the circuit to Falmouth, Maine. Upon reaching an inn he asked the proprietress if it were “ ‘lawful for a weary Traveller to refresh himself with a Dish of Tea provided it has been honestly smuggled, or paid no Duties?’ … ‘No,’ ” she replied, “ ‘we have renounced all Tea.… but I’le make you Coffee.’ Accordingly,” Adams reflected, “I have drank Coffee every Afternoon since, and have borne it very well. Tea must be universally renounced. I must be weaned, and the sooner, the better.”²⁰

In August, traveling through New York to Congress, Adams and the Massachusetts congressional delegation declined tea with the relatively conservative William Smith. But the next day they were joined by Alexander McDougall, leader of the New York Sons of Liberty, for breakfast at Patriot John Morin Scott’s home. Scott served tea. In Pennsylvania, tea continued to be consumed, provided it was smuggled. This could be verified via customs records. In August, the Lancaster committee seized 349 pounds of tea belonging to Josiah and Robert Lockhart. The Lancaster committee noted the container markings and consulted the Philadelphia committee, which responded that the Lockharts’ tea “never had paid any Duty” and had in fact been seized by customs officers as smuggled tea before being bought back by the owner at auction. Having “acquitted” the Lockharts, the Lancaster committee returned the tea. Tea was available in Philadelphia. William Caswell, the son of North Carolina congressman Richard Caswell, “Drank Tea” in Philadelphia on September 18, 1774. George Washington was still drinking tea at Congress, taking tea with Mrs. Roberdeau on October 22, 1774, two days after signing the Continental Association.²¹ Perhaps the mid-Atlantic colonies’ permissive attitude toward Dutch tea wore off on delegates. If so, they must have struggled mightily during the Second Continental Congress.

Tea burnings’ symbolic meaning and generalized non-consumption required a leap of faith. That symbolism flattened distinctions between different kinds of tea and made tea politics seem grand rather than trifling. It was not clear to observers that this symbolism would eventually triumph. Writing in the summer of 1774, John Randolph doubted Virginians would ever refrain from tea.²² And so for much of 1774, non-consumption remained perpetually in progress.

The Campaign: The Limits of Coercion

Public events like Charleston’s Pope Day celebration connected everyday consumer choices to a grand political narrative. That contest between colonists and Parliament gave rallies and consumer tea boycotts “a Dignity, a Majesty, a Sublimity,” as John Adams wrote of the Boston Tea Party. Thus Patriots marked January 20, 1774, the day no more tea was to be drunk in Boston, by burning two barrels of bohea in a bonfire in front of the Customs House, “amidst the loud Acclaims of a vast Concourse of People.” And thus Henry Hulton contested the grandeur of the event by suggesting that only a “small Cask of damaged tea” was burned. These rallies involved the mass participation of consumers who refused to consume and were often performed twice: first in person and again in the press as acts of “conspicuous non-consumption.”²³

Yet the rallies were coercive. Seen as fights between neighbors, as conflicts between political or commercial rivals, or as the intimidation of one group of colonists by another, they seemed not majestic but petty and disturbing. Thus New Jersey farm girl Jemima Condict lamented the general upheaval in late 1774: “They say it is tea that caused it. So then, if they will quarrel about such a trifling thing as that, what must we expect but war?”²⁴

The coercion was usually directed against merchants. According to Wentworth, the tea burned in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in January 1775 was “burnt by the Populace.” Patriots, on the other hand, claimed the trader was “so far convinced of his own Error” in trying to sell it that “he put it in the Fire himself in the presence of a large Number of Spectators.”²⁵ The tea importers on the Britannia, made to drown their tea days before the Charleston Pope’s Day celebration, “volunteered” their tea. Merchants sometimes had to pretend to be like this. This pretense was another level of submission. Radicals sometimes watched for absent Tories at rallies and marched the crowd to their homes. It was a rational choice to toe the Patriot line, burn a little tea in public, and pretend one was not coerced, making the mix of coercion and fervor that brought tea to the flame hard to discern.

Outright violence was used, as at the riot, which Anglican minister Jacob Bailey reported “raging up the river” from Georgetown, Maine, in October 1774. It “destroyed one hundred and fifty pounds of tea”—a supply so large it could only have belonged to a merchant. Nicholas Cresswell noted in Alexandria, Virginia, in October 1774 that “committees are appointed to inspect into the Characters and Conduct of every tradesman, to prevent them selling Tea or buying British Manufactures. Some of them have been tarred and feathered, others had their property burnt and destroyed by the populace.” Governor Dunmore lamented at the end of the year that committees had brought the Association into effect “with the greatest rigour,” inspecting and interrogating whatever and whomever, and “Stigmatiz[ing]” transgressors with an “Outrageous and lawless Mob.”²⁶ But the threat of mob action—made plausible by a few choice examples—was usually enough.

Conversely, the campaign against tea could dissipate without committees and Sons of Liberty, as in Nova Scotia. In response to the July tea landing in Halifax, a “great number of respectable and popular Merchants, Traders and Inhabitants” of Halifax talked of boycotting British tea. Patriotic Haligonians promised “not to purchase any of the said Tea themselves” and to boycott anyone who did. But they were too few to physically block the tea’s landing and lamented their “utter inability to prevent it.” The captain who brought the tea to Halifax reported that it was “much against the Minds of the Inhabitants, who are determined not to purchase it,” but admitted that “Tea is sold there” still. Nova Scotians even tried to hold a tea party in Windsor, Nova Scotia. In one version of the story, a tea chest was stored in a local magistrate’s house. A crowd threatened to burn the house unless he surrendered the tea. But he refused and, without Sons of Liberty to press the issue, the crowd eventually cleared off. In another version, the tea was kept in a store and sent on by water to Cornwallis Township, frustrating the crowd. Some Patriots thought Windsor proof of the “Spirit of Liberty” in Nova Scotia. But while some Nova Scotians boycotted tea, enough consumed it for Governor Legge to report that, despite minor protests, “inhabitants in general have behaved with due decorum” and “tea has been disposed of, Purchased and dispersed thro’ the Country.” If the tea sold in Nova Scotia was “small,” it was only because its “Inhabitants are but few.”²⁷

The following year, Legge noted that non-importation and non-consumption had failed in Nova Scotia. Many Nova Scotians were sympathetic to the common cause. Patriotic Nova Scotians wished “our American Brethren success in their glorious struggles to preserve their Rights and Liberties.”²⁸ But geographical barriers inhibited armed rebellion (Washington was unwilling to risk sending part of the Continental Army over water), and the lack of Sons of Liberty and committees of correspondence prevented Patriotic Nova Scotians from imposing non-consumption on their neighbors.

Likewise, in the summer of 1774, with the Massachusetts government come to Salem and hence with General Gage, the customs commissioners, and soldiers about town, Salem Patriots were unable to stop tea consumption. The Boston Post-Boy even made a joke of it. Only after they were emboldened by the Powder Alarm and empowered by Gage’s withdrawal of troops from Salem to Boston did Salem Patriots begin attacking tea vendors. In October, a “Negro fellow” brought a cask of tea from Boston to Salem. Salem Patriots obliged “the Fellow … to leave the Town immediately” and stored the tea in committeeman David Mason’s home before burning it in front of hundreds of spectators. Patriots “obliged” other tea sellers (but not all) to surrender their tea. Who had been buying? The Essex Gazette assured readers that tea had long been “contrary to the Minds of the People in general,” implying the buyers were few, but who knows?²⁹

When Is a Tea Party Not a Tea Party?

Patriots performed and wrote about their tea parties as though they were signs of widespread, uniform, and already-accomplished tea resistance. This was sometimes just propaganda. Attending a tea party did not a true believer make. Though North Carolina women “burnt their tea in a solemn procession” and boasted of compliance, Scotswoman Janet Schaw thought their “sacrifice was not very considerable,” suspecting they had burned a token amount and left the rest at home. In other instances wherein Patriots’ called upon colonists to burn tea from their cupboards, it is similarly naïve to assume colonists surrendered “every ounce” of their tea, as they supposedly did in Lexington.³⁰

Some riots were not as tea-focused as they seemed. Sylvester Gardiner encountered one at Georgetown, Maine, comprising “one hundred and fifty men, armed with guns and various weapons,” “running about in search of tea.” They “surrounded his house, demanded a sight of him, and insisted upon searching for tea” at midnight. The mob tossed his place and drank “several gallons of” his rum. Probably drunk before they arrived, they continued imbibing until several were “dead drunk,” and the rest went home. Along the way they stole valuables. The revelers were there to drink and to attack and loot Gardiner as much as they were there to look for tea.³¹ A “tea party” was just an excuse.

Tea party attendees sometimes stole tea. This was a known problem at the Boston Tea Party. One participant claimed to have been “careful to prevent any [tea] being taken away,” which meant he knew to be on the lookout. One observer noticed that after the tea was tossed into the harbor, “small Boats were rowed towards the Tea” to take it, and warned off. (The tea supply was so large that, the morning after, Patriots were still trying to drown all the tea in the harbor with oars and paddles to ensure it was ruined.)³²

Peter Oliver claimed that some of the Boston revelers “filled their Bags & their Pockets” with tea. Patriots caught a “Captain Conner,” who had “ript up the lining of his coat and waistcoat under the arms” and had “nearly fill’d ’em, with tea,” and who was “handled pretty roughly” for it. They caught, too, a tall, old man hiding tea in his pockets—the tea was thrown into the water. Others may have gotten through. Jonathan Clarke, salvaging the tea from the William, worried that Cape Cod residents would “think themselves licensed to steal” the Company’s tea once they heard news of the rest of the tea being thrown in Boston Harbor. The Massachusetts Historical Society holds two sets of tea leaves said to be souvenirs taken from Boston Tea Party—if real, then clearly taking tea was possible.³³

Boston tea partiers could let tea “fall” into their boots. Some insisted, perhaps a bit too much, that they destroyed it. Thomas Melvill found tea in his boots the day after the Boston Tea Party. According to his family, he kept a vial as a keepsake but did not drink any. William Russell claimed to have dusted his shoes over the fire to destroy every bit of tea. George Robert Twelve Hewes recalled men were lined up in formation and ordered to empty their shoes after destroying the tea. Well they did, since his wife asked about the tea when Hewes got home. “Well, George,” she said. “Did you bring me home a lot of it?”³⁴

Greenwich, New Jersey tea burner Henry Stacks stole so much tea at that town’s tea party that his name became a joke: “Tea Stacks” for the heaps of tea he took. The joke marked townsfolks’ tacit acceptance of Stacks’s actions. After a mock-hanging of tea in Connecticut, local Patriots burned it, as it was “dangerous to let the said Tea hang all night, for fear of an invasion from our Tea-lovers.” In the summer, colonists broke into Richard Nichols’s shop in Salem, Massachusetts and took “a Quantity of Tea, a small Part of which” ended up “strowed in the Street.” The rest disappeared, which might be why, when Salem Patriots found more tea that October, they hid it “for safe keeping” before burning it. The Charleston, South Carolina committee ordered Maitland to retrieve his tea from the Exchange and burn it, but changed its mind, likely fearing that opening the Exchange would risk theft of the Company tea kept there from the previous December.³⁵

Like the apocryphal New England fishermen who, when the preacher told the crowd that everyone had gathered to pray, shouted back: “We came here to fish and not to pray!” rank-and-file tea partiers did not always share the motives of their leaders.³⁶ This was a point Patriot writers avoided. Patriot publications described crowds uniformly intending to destroy tea, not take it. But colonists did not attend tea parties for ideologically coherent reasons. Some came for a good riot, a stiff drink, or to steal tea, not, as it were, to pray.

Enforcement as a Sign of Consumption

Enforcing a rule implies its violation. Thus the schoolboys who went knocking on doors in Charleston, South Carolina found tea to collect—nearly a year after the tea ships of 1773. Sensing the problem, the South Carolina Gazette explained that the boys “made a considerable Collection of Tea” but found “three-fourths of the Houses without any.”³⁷ Finding tea and not finding tea both became signs of Patriotism. But we may ask whether the three-fourths who turned the boys away had no more tea to give or preferred not to give it.

Catching a tea seller implied some colonists had already bought tea without being caught. Patriots found a sizable amount of tea in possession of a merchant named Graham on November 4, 1774, in Charlestown, Massachusetts. Charlestown merchants had agreed not to sell tea the previous Christmas. The (rather vague) explanation was that in “pursuing a Person who had been guilty of breaking the peace” a barrel and bag of tea “were stumbled on” at Graham’s shop and later burned. Graham’s barrel “contained parcels done up 1 to 2 oz. Bundles for a conveniency to retail,” suggesting he had been and intended to continue selling it. Troubled to have discovered a tea seller they had not even known to look for, Patriots went back, searched his shop, and found enough tea “to fill a large hogshead,” which they burned on the green in front of a tavern.³⁸

It is unclear how much this tea burning deterred the peddlers who sold tea at taverns. “Indians” from Northborough traveled to neighboring Shrewsbury, Massachusetts to confiscate a bag of tea from a peddler in February 1774. They burned it in front of the tavern. This is impressive, but then one realizes that the most likely way for Northborough men to know about this tea would have been if the salesman had already sold some in Northborough. A mob took 100 pounds of tea off an itinerant trader in Lyme, Connecticut. But he seemed to have been “pedling about the country” for some time. In Haverhill—one of the “remotest Parts of our English Settlements”—a “pedling Trader” left his tea with the local innkeeper in the summer of 1774, thinking this it means of safekeeping, only for “honest Savages” to seize and burn it.³⁹ One is as struck by the burning as by the expectation that the tea would be safe.

Marylander John Parks was caught delivering tea to relatives in Pennsylvania. His home committee followed up, publishing Park’s agreement to give up the tea. Parks gave his committee some tea, but the committee suspected his main supply remained. So the committee ordered him to burn his tea publicly and sentenced him to be boycotted. A crowd broke his doors and windows in as well.⁴⁰ This seems like effective enforcement, but the other tea remained at large.

Such enforcement of the boycott was, by definition, an indication of its violation. Yet it was impolitic for Patriots to admit this in public, a sensitivity which requires us to read public Patriot documents carefully. Consider the case of the laborer Ebenezer Withington. Despite Patriots’ efforts to keep the Tea Party tea in Boston Harbor, Withington salvaged a half chest of it from the Dorchester marshes. This was either on December 18, two days after the Boston Tea Party, or December 25. Patriots caught him selling to “divers Persons” and burned his tea on New Year’s Eve on Boston Common.

On January 3, Patriots began to give meaning to these events. That day Withington appeared at a town meeting, begging ignorance of the political significance of East India Company tea. Dorchester decided Withington “proceeded from Inadvertency” (i.e., carelessness) and meant no “Harm.” The town resolved that his buyers hand over their tea, lest their names be posted, an announcement which soon appeared in the press. It is easy to be taken in by this gloss of a rock-ribbed Patriotic town straightening out a wayward neighbor, for it is at least partly true.⁴¹

Dorchester took pains to show “one common Cause” with Boston. The greatest threats to that show were questions about Dorchester’s Patriotism. In November “Several Persons, who are deemed Enemies to this Country” (perhaps tea consignees or customs collectors) had fled Boston for Dorchester and other towns, making Dorchester seem a safe haven for the King’s men. Dorchester promised them “just Indignation,” but news of Withington’s tea—which would have reached Boston no later than the bonfire on December 31—raised more questions.⁴²

For at the same January 3 town meeting that interrogated “old Ebenezer Withington,” Dorchester elected “Captain Ebenezer Withington” to its committee of correspondence. These were different men: Captain Ebenezer Withington was a town leader and Patriot. The other, his second cousin, was a “Labourer.” However, the committee could not send letters to towns like Boston over Captain Withington’s name, after Bostonians had just made a bonfire of the other Withington’s tea, as the names were sure to be confounded. Helpfully, when “Narragasett-Indians” searched for the laborer Withington’s tea, they accidentally searched the captain’s house first—with his “consent.” Finding nothing, they went to the right Withington thereafter. On January 3, the Boston Gazette printed this colorful vignette without mentioning Captain Ebenezer Withington’s role in town, exonerating him to readers who knew, leaving the rest none the wiser. The same day the Gazette ran this story, Dorchester elected Captain Withington to its committee of correspondence and dealt with the laborer Withington tea. Captain Withington served as an assessor and selectman, represented Dorchester in the provincial congress in February 1775, and, that same year, served on the town’s committee of inspection, preventing consumption of “East-India Teas.”⁴³

The town meeting was concerned with what the story of the other Ebenezer Withington would mean. It claimed “Satisfaction” that Withington was “discovered in Selling said Tea,” for this meant they could stop him and disprove the claim that the “Tea said to have been destroyed, was [actually] plundered & thus privately Sold.” But Withington privately sold the tea for a week or two before getting caught. Saying Withington’s sales were inadvertent helpfully implied townsfolk’s purchases were also inadvertent. The meeting was vague about how much tea he sold, and to whom, only demanding these unnamed buyers “deliver” up the tea, or have their names “publickly posted.”⁴⁴ Despite the firm language, it is unclear whether townsfolk actually turned in their tea.

Withington was no “simple old man.” He did not take the tea naively but most likely intended to sell it (a half chest was too large for private use). He rightly judged there would be buyers. Worth perhaps between 4 and 18 pounds sterling, this tea meaningfully added to a laborer’s income. But he was not the only workingman in town and surely not the only person to comb the beach for loot. At the earliest, Withington found his tea the second day after the Tea Party. Family histories tell of a young John Robinson finding a half chest of tea on Dorchester’s shoals the day before.⁴⁵ Who else combed these shorelines for tea? Withington lived “below Dorchester Meeting House” near Dorchester Bay. He found the tea in the “Marshes” on Dorchester Neck, a distance of two, probably three, miles. For people who lived or worked near Dorchester Neck, or the harbor islands, or who fished, such scavenging was easier. Dorchester hinted at the possibility that others took tea, declaring that “if any other Person or Persons” took tea, they should surrender it or face exposure. That is to say, if they got away with it, we would never know, and if they took the tea and later surrendered it, the town kept their names quiet.⁴⁶ (See figure 1.1.)

The tea was difficult to carry inconspicuously. Chests were heavy and cumbersome. A proper half chest held roughly seventy-five pounds of tea, with the wet wooden casing adding weight. Even half this would have been hard to carry unnoticed for several miles, and even harder to carry right into the center of town, especially if it had Company markings still on it. Withington was noticed. On his way home “Some Gentlemen belonging to the Castle” saw him with the tea. (The castle ferry connected to the Heights road, giving the consignees, customs collectors, and soldiers in the castle access to the flats.) The gentlemen spoke with Withington about the tea, explaining that while there was no legal “harm” in salvaging the tea, it could cause trouble with Withington’s “neighbours.”⁴⁷

Dorchester told of political and moral renewal, a righteous town setting a hapless man on the right path. It told past and potential future buyers to desist. But this was a cleaned-up story. Dorchester named a single scapegoat who deferred to his betters (the gentlemen from the castle) in believing the tea was harmless, and then deferred to the meeting in learning it was not. The other Withington is named only to be exonerated. The townsfolk who bought tea, scoured the flats for their own, or saw Withington with his load, are nameless and easily forgotten. Enforcement of non-consumption was predicated on its broader violation, making virtue a work in progress—a progress that proceeded more smoothly when Patriots wrote up progress as virtue achieved.

Buying Tea

Enforcement took unexpected forms. One of the more striking approaches some Patriots took in 1774 was to buy back tea for destruction. Tea buybacks could help keep merchants on-side. These men were worth placating, as sustaining non-importation and non-consumption was easier with merchant support. Another approach was to store tea, awaiting the end of non-consumption. Both presented a challenge to enforcement.

On December 25, 1773 Charlestown, Massachusetts merchants resolved not to sell tea. They formed a buyback scheme that made losses communal. Merchants with large stocks of tea were to be bailed out by others, and the tea to be burned. Three days later, the town supported a buyback with its purse, buying tea from residents at cost and publicly burning it.⁴⁸ This was not the easiest way to get rid of tea—ideologically, symbolically, or financially—but by purchasing rather than confiscating tea, Patriots avoided alienating consumers or merchants.

The Fairfax Resolves recommended all tea present in Virginia by September 1774 be stored in committee-controlled warehouses. A subscription would buy the tea back, after which the tea would be “publickly burn’d.” The Fairfax plan allowed importers to keep the value of their assets and Patriots to make public contributions to the cause, all while maintaining tea discipline. If an unpopular importer failed to raise a subscription, he got no buyback, and his tea rotted in the warehouse.⁴⁹ It is unclear if Fairfax implemented this plan.

A similar proposal was made to the Westerly, Rhode Island town meeting on February 2, 1774. A merchant known for his “indisputable and reputable character” offered to sell the town a “considerable quantity” of Dutch tea. Perhaps fearing the offer might seem self-interested, he promised, as a good Patriot, to sell it cheaply to encourage “a dislike” of tea among the public. (A unique logic.) The Newport Mercury claimed the town “unanimously” agreed, reporting the “hopeful prospect of seeing speedily a total disuse. ’Twas supposed the above tea would be destroyed,” though there is no record of the tea’s purchase or destruction in Westerly town records.⁵⁰

Perhaps the idea of reimbursing Patriotic tea owners echoed the idea of reimbursing the East India Company too closely to get traction. The practice remained uncommon.

Storing Tea

Storing tea was common. It is easy to notice the repeated performances of destruction, from the Boston Tea Party on, and miss the tea that was not destroyed. In Salem, Massachusetts, the tea delivered to that town in October was publicly burned, but the tea which local vendors surrendered was stored, not destroyed. Such public storage helped make non-consumption (and later consumption) collective actions. In December, the Caroline County, Virginia committee “Ordered every person in this County carry all their Tea to some one of the committee who are desired to seal It up & take a memo. of the quantity.” The Wilmington, North Carolina committee announced “all the Tea, in the stores” of Wilmington and Brunswick “is locked up, never to be offered for sale.” Thomas Richardson of George Town, Maryland, turned over 100 pounds of tea to the Frederick County committee “to be safely stored.” The committee in Northampton County, Virginia let residents “deliver their TEA to Colonel L. Savage, to be by him Kept … until the General Association shall be dissolved,” or have it burned at the Court House. Savage had stored 416 pounds of tea by January 1775. In Baltimore County, Maryland, the committee stored 176 cases and chests and 16 quarter-chests arriving in December 1774. Worried British cruisers might get the tea, in 1775 the committee relocated the tea to continue guarding it.⁵¹

Storage was sometimes contested. The Newburyport, Massachusetts committee locked up tea in the winter of 1774–1775. Perhaps eyeing a petition for its release, a local shipbuilder, Eleazer Johnson, led workers to grab it and burn it in Market Square. Fearing such an end, William Holliday, a merchant in Dunmore County, Virginia, demanded to know what the committee “Intend to do with his tea.” Holliday wanted “to sell [tea until] the first of March” as per the “general Association.”⁵²

From a merchant’s perspective, the safest approach was to hold on to the tea privately and simply promise not to sell it. During the prohibition of 1775, vendors sometimes had sizable quantities of tea on hand, held back only by their word. Patriot authorities knew about some of these supplies. In New York, Philadelphia, and other major market towns, merchants petitioned throughout the year for permission to sell. The Patriotic Thomas Greenough hoped his son John would keep his tea from the William “Secrieted untell some future time”—rather than destroy it.⁵³ Of course, tea held without the committee’s knowledge was more easily sold off under the table, too. Merchants held over an unknown quantity of tea this way.

Just how much tea was held in committee warehouses is elusive; Eleazer Johnson’s destruction of the tea in Newburyport, not the committee’s storing it, occasioned a newspaper item. Had the committee guarded it successfully, we might never have known it existed. Patriots faced an overhang of tea stored in 1774 as they began prohibition in 1775, but the extent of it was only partly known to them and is even less clear to us.

Loyalists’ Alarm

What did Loyalists make of all this? Reacting to the prospects of non-consumption and the Association, they feared the Association would be used to silence and control them. Coercive enforcement of non-import, non-export, and non-consumption would mean colonists were “required to support our liberties by dealing out terrors and threats amongst our fellow citizens.” “Will you submit to this slavish regulation?” protested Samuel Seabury. “You must.—Our sovereign Lords and Masters”—Congress—“have ordered and directed it.” Tea drinkers “shall be considered as Out-laws, unworthy of the protection of civil society, and delivered over to the vengeance of a lawless, outrageous mob, to be tarred, feathered, hanged, drawn, quartered, and burnt.—O rare American freedom!” Colonists will have to “open your doors to” prying committeemen and, he later added, “shall probably soon see these lordly Committee-men condescend to go pimping, and peeping, and peering, into tea-canisters.” For Seabury, this was inevitable since the Association made it the business of committees to inspect colonists’ homes and determine “whether they drink any tea or wine in their families.” Only investigations such as what Seabury imagined could enforce the ban. A King’s officer needed a warrant to enter a colonist’s home. Would Patriots need less? Since there would rarely be cause to obtain a warrant, inspections would be lawless and “arbitrary,” as they were in both Withingtons’ homes. Hulton likewise worried non-consumption meant oppressive “political inquisitors are appointed in each town to pry into the conduct of individuals” and enforce behavior. Britons will never be slaves. But, “if I must be enslaved,” Seabury wrote, “let it be by a KING at least.”⁵⁴

Some disparaged Congress for taking their tea. John Ettwein, a Moravian administrator in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, lamented that “one ought to be afraid even to drink a cup of tea.” Eventual Loyalist Hannah Griffitts blamed Congress in a commonplace book (a scrapbook shared among friends who contributed to it). Congress “devis’d the evil Deed / To kill this precious Indian Weed / Come just Resentment guide my Pen / And mark our mad Committee Men … Why all their Malice shewn to Tea[?]” Susannah Wright agreed, wondering whether Congress showed “that Sp[ir]it. of D[e]spotism, so loudly complain’d of in America,—I cannot for my Life see the propriety of making this innocent [drink] the chief object of their Vengeance.”⁵⁵

The specific focus on tea seemed odd to some. “[W]higs have been extremely partial respecting tea,” noted Massachusettensis, which “has been made the shibboleth of party” while “melasses, wine, coffee, indigo, &c, &c, have been unmolested.” A rum or “coffee drinker is as culpable … viewed in a political light” as a tea drinker, but tea had become a symbol, while coffee and rum had not. Burning it showed fealty to Patriots, refusing to do so showed freedom from Patriot power. This symbolism far exceeded its physical and economic significance. Scotswoman Janet Schaw thought the solemn fetishization of tea absurd. To Jonathan Sewall this meant that Patriots mixed signifiers—“mere sounds”—with what they signified, assuming the “words king, parliament, … tea &c carry the idea of slavery with them” while simply uttering “the words congress … independence, coffee &c” called up “all the power of necromancy” to overthrow tyranny.⁵⁶ Saying “tea” or drinking tea did not, Loyalists noted, cause ministerial oppression to exist. Tea symbolized ministerial evils to the point that Patriots demonized tea itself. To Loyalists, this was a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Ultimately, Loyalists’ fears proved half right. Non-consumption would eventually be enforced, the ban on tea was implemented with show, and the Association would become a tool for finding colonists disaffected from the Patriot cause. But at the same time, the tea ban was not as oppressively or effectively enforced as Seabury feared. Patriots did not go “pimping, and peeping, and peering” into every tea canister. They made a violent example of a few colonists pour encourager les autres. How well this worked is less clear.