57. The Other Colonies Resist Tea

The rebels had an easier time of it in the other colonies. With no Hutchinson or British fleet to hinder them, and with the inspiring example of the Boston Tea Party before them, the consignees and tea ships put up little resistance to popular pressure. The first public meeting of protest in the colonies against the Tea Act took place in Philadelphia on October 16. The citizens of Philadelphia adopted a comprehensive set of resolutions that served as a model for Boston and the other colonies. The Tea Act and tea duty were denounced, and a committee was appointed to demand resignation of the consignees. The consignees, including Thomas Wharton, saw the way the wind blew and soon resigned. A second public meeting warned against the landing of the tea.

The tea ship sailed up the Delaware on December 25. The vessel was stopped four miles from Philadelphia, thus avoiding the Boston problem of the customs duty. The captain was deeply impressed with the intense feeling of the public against landing the tea. Two days later, a huge public meeting of eight thousand assembled in the town and demanded that the captain sail immediately for England. The meeting also voiced its resounding approval of the Boston Tea Party, doing so over the opposition of its more conservative resolutions committee. The captain of the tea ship agreed to bow to the public will and promptly returned to England. Philadelphia had repulsed the tea threat.

In New York, the story blended many of the same elements of the Philadelphia and Boston episodes. In preparation for the tea ship, an “Association of the Sons of Liberty” was drawn up on November 29, which association called for a boycott against any enemies to its country. Enemies were those who might aid in introducing the British tea into the country or who might buy or sell the tea after it had landed. A boycott was also called against those who had failed to boycott the transgressors. The association was signed by the leading lawyers, merchants and merchant shipmasters, landowners, and mechanics of New York. A committee of the newly formed Sons then pressured the three New York consignees to resign, aided by a public threat of violence issued by the radical “Mohawks,” a direct-action group formed by the Sons of Liberty. Under this pressure and realizing that mass opinion was solidly against them, the consignees resigned their posts on December 1. The Sons then held a mass meeting of two thousand on December 17, headed by the veteran radical leader, the merchant John Lamb. The meeting denounced the landing of any tea and decided to appoint a committee of correspondence to write to other colonies. Harbor pilots were warned against guiding any tea ships into port. The meeting derisively spurned the mayor’s suggestion that the British tea be stored at the local fort.

In reaction to this meeting, the conservative Isaac Low launched a movement to renounce the use of force in opposing the landing of the tea, but this movement was swept aside by popular enthusiasm upon receipt of the news of the Boston Tea Party. When a tea ship arrived off New York the following April, the captain, heeding the counsel of the committee of correspondence, promised not to enter the port and sailed away. A few days later, however, another sea captain was planning to sneak eighteen chests of tea into New York. The angry citizens, on discovering the ruse, emulated the Bostonians by boarding the ship and dumping the tea into the sea. The treacherous captain promptly fled to another vessel and sailed back to England.

The final port to be sent the tea was Charleston. There the radicals were in more difficult straits than elsewhere, since Charleston had not been an important center of the tea trade and the merchants were not as directly threatened. The tea ship London arrived on December 2, precipitating a mass meeting the following day. The meeting, headed by Christopher Gadsden, succeeded in persuading the tea consignees to resign their commissions. It further agreed to circulate among the merchants of Charleston a petition pledging the nonimportation of British tea. Gadsden and the others found, however, that while the planters and artisans (soon to form a “John Wilkes Club”) were eager to pledge a boycott of merchants importing dutiable tea, the merchants themselves were reluctant to join the ranks. A showdown meeting of merchants, planters, and mechanics was held on December 17, each of the three groups having privately caucused in preparation for the critical meeting. The radicals passed a resolution for nonimportation of dutied teas, but the conservative merchants managed to weaken the resolve by including all teas in the interdict—including smuggled Dutch teas—and allowing six months for consumption of their current stocks of dutiable British tea.

While the struggles continued over a boycott, the tea ships remained in the harbor; the twenty-day period for payment of duty would soon expire, after which nonpaying ships were subject to seizure. Would the people of Charleston follow the Bostonians in a bold tea party? On the contrary, the merchants’ opposition discouraged the radicals, and the customs officials seized and landed the tea on December 22 without any opposition. Nothing happened thereafter, however; the easygoing government officials made no attempt to sell the tea and it remained safely in the government warehouse until the outbreak of the Revolution.

Thus, in every one of the four colonies, determined action by the resisting Americans prevented any of the East Indian tea from reaching its consignees. Once again the rebellious Americans had been successful in forcibly thwarting British designs. Moreover, tea parties continued during 1774, and the Americans soon radicalized their opposition to include the tea tax and therefore all dutied tea, even that of private merchants. A group of Boston “Mohawks” destroyed a cargo of tea in March, and tea cargoes were burned during the year at Charleston, Greenwich, Annapolis, and in New Jersey. Indeed, so fiercely did the Americans concentrate upon tea that all tea, even smuggled tea, soon became boycotted and shunned for fear that the tea might be English. Tea, which had been a staple drink throughout America, soon vanished from the colonies. As early as January 30, the Boston tea dealers agreed to suspend the sale of all tea, and the movement soon spread to other towns and provinces.