Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. IV, No. 19, Dec 1851. Various
which actuates our enemies, public and private, abroad and in our bosoms, to hope that we shall end this controversy without the sharpest conflicts – to flatter ourselves that popular resolves, popular harangues, popular acclamations, and popular vapor will vanquish our foes. Let us consider the issue. Let us look to the end. Let us weigh and consider before we advance to those measures which must bring on the most trying and terrible struggle this country ever saw." This gifted young patriot did not live to see the struggle he so confidently anticipated; for, when blood was flowing, in the first conflicts at Lexington and Concord, eighteen month's afterward, he was dying with consumption, on ship-board, almost within sight of his native land.
The people, in the "Old South," were greatly agitated when Quincy closed his harangue. It was between three and four o'clock in the afternoon. The question was immediately proposed to the meeting, "Will you abide by your former resolutions with respect to not suffering the tea to be landed?" The vast assembly within, as with one voice, replied affirmatively, and when the purport was known without, the multitude there responded in accordance. The meeting now awaited the return of Mr. Roch, who had been to the governor to request a permit for his vessel to leave the harbor. Hutchinson, alarmed at the stormy aspect of affairs, had taken counsel of his fears, and withdrawn from the city to his country-house at Milton, a few miles from Boston. It was sunset when Roch returned and informed the meeting that the governor refused to grant a permit, until a clearance should be exhibited. As a clearance had already been refused by the collector of the port, until the cargo should be landed, it was evident that government officers had concerted to resist the demands of the people. Like a sea lashed by a storm, that meeting swayed with excitement, and eagerly demanded from the leaders some indication for immediate action. Night was fast approaching, and as the twilight deepened, a call was made for candles. At that moment, a person in the gallery, disguised in the garb of a Mohawk Indian, gave a war-whoop, which was answered from without. That signal, like the notes of a trumpet before the battle-charge, fired the assemblage, and as another voice in the gallery shouted, "Boston harbor a tea-pot to-night! Hurrah for Griffin's wharf!" a motion to adjourn was carried, and the multitude rushed to the street. "To Griffin's wharf! to Griffin's wharf!" again shouted several voices, while a dozen men, disguised as Indians, were seen speeding over Fort Hill, in that direction. The populace followed, and in a few minutes the scene of excitement was transferred from the "Old South" to the water side.
No doubt the vigilant patriots had arranged this movement, in anticipation of the refusal of the governor to allow the Dartmouth to depart; for concert of action marked all the operations at the wharf. The number of persons disguised as Indians, was fifteen or twenty, and these, with others who joined them, appeared to recognize Lendall Pitts, a mechanic of Boston, as their leader. Under his directions, about sixty persons boarded the three tea-ships, brought the chests upon deck, broke them open, and cast their contents into the water. The Dartmouth was boarded first; the Eleanor and Beaver were next entered; and within the space of two hours, the contents of three hundred and forty-two chests of tea were cast into the waters of the harbor. During the occurrence very little excitement was manifested among the multitude upon the wharf; and as soon as the work of destruction was completed, the active party marched in perfect order back into the town, preceded by a drum and fife, dispersed to their homes, and Boston, untarnished by actual mob or riot, was never more tranquil than on that bright and frosty December night.
A British squadron was not more than a quarter of a mile from Griffin's wharf, where this event occurred, and British troops were near, yet the whole proceeding was uninterrupted. The newspapers of the day doubtless gave the correct interpretation to this apathy. Something far more serious had been anticipated, if an attempt should be made to land the tea; and the owners of the vessels, as well as the public authorities, civil and military, doubtless thanked the rioters, in their secret thoughts, for thus extricating them from a serious dilemma. They would doubtless have been worsted in an attempt forcibly to land the tea; now, the vessels were saved from destruction; no blood was spilt; the courage of the civil and military officers remained unimpeached; the "national honor" was not compromised, and the Bostonians, having carried their resolutions into effect, were satisfied. The East India Company alone, which was the actual loser, had cause for complaint.
It may be asked, Who were the men actively engaged in this high-handed measure? Were they an ignorant rabble, with no higher motives than the gratification of a mobocratic spirit? By no means. While some of them were doubtless governed, in a measure, by such a motive, the greater portion were young men and lads who belonged to the respectable part of the community, and of the fifty-nine participators whose names have been preserved, some of them held honorable stations in after life; some battled nobly in defense of liberty in the Continental Army of the Revolution which speedily followed, and almost all of them, according to traditionary testimony, were entitled to the respect due to good citizens. Only one, of all that band, as far as is known, is yet among the living, and he has survived almost a half century beyond the allotted period of human life. When the present century dawned, he had almost reached the goal of three score and ten years; and now, at the age of one hundred and fifteen years, David Kinnison, of Chicago, Illinois, holds the eminent position of the last survivor of the Boston Tea Party! When the writer, in 1848, procured the portrait and autograph of the aged patriot, he was living among strangers and ignorant of the earthly existence of one of all his twenty-two children. A daughter survives, and having been made acquainted of the existence of her father, by the publication of this portrait in the "Field-Book," she hastened to him, and is now smoothing the pillow of the patriarch as he is gradually passing into the long and peaceful slumber of the grave.
The life of another actor was spared, until within ten years, and his portrait, also, is preserved. George Robert Twelves Hewes, was supposed to be the latest survivor, until the name of David Kinnison was made public. Soon not one of all that party will be among the living.
Before closing this article let us advert to the effect produced by the destruction of the tea in Boston Harbor, for to effects alone are causes indebted for importance.
The events of the 16th of December produced a deep sensation throughout the British realm. They struck a sympathetic chord in every colony which afterward rebeled; and even Canada, Halifax, and the West Indies, had no serious voice of censure for the Bostonians. But the ministerial party here, and the public in England, amazed at the audacity of the Americans in opposing royal authority, and in destroying private property, called loudly for punishment; and even the friends of the colonists in Parliament were, for a moment, silent, for they could not fully excuse the lawless act. Another and a powerful party was now made a principal in the quarrel; the East India Company whose property had been destroyed, was now directly interested in the question of taxation. That huge monopoly which had controlled the commerce of the Indies for more than a century and a half, was then almost at the zenith of its power. Already it had laid the foundation, broad and deep, of that British-Indian Empire which now comprises the whole of Hindostan, from the Himalaya Mountains to Cape Comorin, with a population of more than one hundred and twenty millions, and its power in the government affairs of Great Britain, was almost vice-regal. Unawed by the fleets and armies of the imperial government, and by the wealth and power of this corporation, the Bostonians justified their acts by the rules of justice and the guarantees of the British constitution; and the next vessel to England, after the event was known there, carried out an honest proposition to the East India Company, from the people of Boston, to pay for the tea destroyed. The whole matter rested at once upon its original basis – the right of Great Britain to tax the colonies – and this fair proposition of the Bostonians disarmed ministers of half their weapons of vituperation. The American party in England saw nothing whereof to be ashamed, and the presses, opposed to the ministry, teemed with grave disquisitions, satires, and lampoons, all favorable to the colonists, while art lent its aid in the production of several caricatures similar to the one here given, in which Lord North is represented as pouring tea down the throat of unwilling America, who is held fast by Lord Mansfield (then employed by government in drawing up the various acts so obnoxious to the colonists), while Britannia stands by, weeping at the distress of her daughter. In America, almost every newspaper of the few printed, was filled with arguments, epigrams, parables, sonnets, dialogues, and every form of expression favorable to the resistance made in Boston to the arbitrary acts of government; and a voice of approval went forth from pulpits,