When it comes to tea-related protests, the Boston Tea Party seems to get all the press, even though there was also wanton destruction of tea in Charleston, and then there was the Edenton Tea Party.
But Boston was the first, and abusing tea in one way or another became a popular way to demonstrate your patriotism. (Some modern-day Brits would argue that we never quite stopped abusing tea.)
Today we talk about an effort to actually prohibit the import or consumption of tea in the Colonies. It worked about as well as you’d expect.
Today we meet yet another prominent citizen who thought he had the solution for putting an end to the tension between the Thirteen Colonies and Great Britain.
It’s important to note at this point, we think, that these people weren’t delusional; they were genuinely interested in maintaining a good relationship and therefore invested in repairing the damage that had been done. They liked being British citizens, even though a minority percentage of them had emigrated from England (many were born here; others came from different nations). And it’s also worth noting that when it came to separating from the British Empire…well, that sort of thing had never been done before. Never. So creating an entirely new nation was practically inconceivable for some people.
Unfortunately in the end, while Joseph Galloway’s plan was seriously considered by the Continental Congress, it was turned down, and there was an unfortunate series of events that forced him to leave America forever.
And once again, we have someone (two someones, really) who manage to come up with a plan that will put all this unpleasantness between the Thirteen Colonies and the British Empire to rest, and once again the physical distance between the two threatens the success of those plans.
What’s more, it turns out that the more popular of the two plans has an almost-hidden ulterior motive…
It’s one thing to hear someone hollering “The British are coming!” and quite another to actually see them arriving in your port. And that’s especially true when they’re also seen confiscating the cannons that you’d hidden upriver.
This wasn’t the first time something like this had happened, but there was something different about the Colonists’ response—and it almost touched off the war nearly two months before it actually did.
Today we review two different pieces of correspondence—one local, the other trans-Atlantic—in which the letter writers are clearly coming to the conclusion that things are not going well between the British and the Colonies, and that preparing for war is probably inevitable at this point.
And that’s interesting on its own, but we also wanted to call your attention to the cover art for today’s episode. The person in the picture is Josiah Quincy II, who is discussed in the episode as a “side” character of sorts. The painting is by Gilbert Stuart, who is pretty famous for painting hundreds of American politicians and public figures, and perhaps most famous for the “unfinished” portrait of George Washington that served as the model for the one-dollar bill. There aren’t a lot of portraits of Quincy extant, but this one (which was painted after Quincy’s death in April 1775) gets a lot of attention from Stuart scholars because it provides a very candid representation of Quincy’s strabismus, or misalignment of the eyes. (It’s possible that he simply had amblyopia but we don’t know for sure nowadays.) Most people agree that it actually gives Quincy a little extra dignity and esteem.
The interesting thing about surveillance in the 18th century is that, when you’re dealing with trans-Atlantic distances, the information moves slowly, and errors can be costly.
We told you not long ago about someone who’d heard about the Minutemen, but had their numbers wrong by a factor of thousands. Fortunately in that case, it was just casual gossip rather than actual spycraft. But today in history, a bit of information about Colonial artillery that was reported to the Provincial Congress in Massachusetts leaked to the British, along with information about the Minutemen’s numbers and level of preparedness. But as we’ll discover in the next couple of days, the British were already taking precautions.
Alexander Hamilton isn’t really considered one of the Founding Fathers, largely because he’d only arrived in America from Scotland around the same time that things started getting ugly between the Colonies and the Crown. But he quickly took up the cause, and it’s clear from his writing that he was of a similar mind as Jefferson, Franklin and the rest.
When he joined the Continental Army, he rose quickly through the ranks, becoming Washington’s staff aide and entered politics shortly after the war ended. So while he wasn’t on hand for the initial segment of American statesmanship, he was there when the basic framework of our government was laid down.
But back to his writing: he and the Reverend Samuel Seabury (we first heard from him on January 4) got into the habit of debating each other through pamphlets, written under pen names. They’re quite well-written and easy to understand, and because they’re only pamphlets, they don’t run especially long. They’re worth checking out.
Back when Mike and Claude were kids, February 22 was celebrated as a national holiday, the 22nd being recognized as George Washington’s birthday. Lincoln’s Birthday was February 12, so we had two Federal holidays close together. (To be fair, Lincoln’s was always unofficially recognized.)
Until, that is, 1968, when the Uniform Monday Holiday Act came along, and many holidays were moved to the Monday of that week. Not every state complied right away, but eventually Lincoln’s Birthday disappeared and Washington’s Birthday moved from the malleable February 22nd to the always-on-Monday Presidents Day.
But here’s the part they don’t always tell you: George Washington wasn’t born on February 22. He was actually born on February 11, 1731 but that was under the old Julian calendar. In 1752, Britain and all its colonies switched to the Gregorian Calendar, which changed Washington’s birthday (well, everyone’s, really) by a year and 11 days, to February 22, 1732.
Believe it or not, people did not take the calendar change well. Because it was essentially a Catholic innovation (named after Pope Gregory XIII), Protestants thought it was a Catholic plot to return them to the fold. Other people, especially in the Colonies, thought that time was being stolen from their lives, and they demanded that the “lost” days be returned. It wasn’t until public figures—including George Washington—adopted the new dates and made a big deal about doing so, that people started to calm down.
None of this is relevant to the story you’ll hear in today’s episode, but this whole Washington’s Birthday thing doesn’t get told nearly enough. In the meantime, enjoy Mike’s story of William Seymour.
Of all the indignities we laid upon Claudius Herrick in this episode (okay, there weren’t that many), the worst is that we misspelled his name in the cover art.
Until Israel Gregg came along, steamboat commerce on the Ohio river was considered impractical, largely because the currents were so strong.
But Gregg had an interesting approach to demonstrate that it was, in fact, possible. In some portions of the river, there was a confluence with another river, which meant that there were multiple currents in the river for some distance. This is what made it hazardous in the first place.
Gregg made a point of seeking out the currents of a specific river in each confluence, and navigating only that river’s current. So from Brownsville to Pittsburgh, Gregg used the currents of the Monongahela River. From Pittsburgh to Cincinnati, he used the currents of the Ohio River. Then he remained with the current of the Ohio to Louisville. From there he returned to Pittsburgh, running against the current of the Ohio. A few cycles of this had people convinced, and his ship, the Enterprise, became one of the first of that name to go down in history. (Specifically, it was the third in American history.)
