Anchorage Daily News: Words turned the tide during the American Revolution
Before the Fourth of July holiday recedes fully into the forgotten past, it's perhaps intriguing to recall some of the realities of the American Revolution, including the now infamous Tea Party. The real one took place in 1773, three years before the Declaration of Independence, and was something of an act of desperation on the part of the revolutionary cadre, led by Sam Adams. As the revolutionary movements swirling about us today have made clear, revolution can be a dangerous thing. Those who are actively involved risk ... everything.
Historians have called Britain's policy toward its American colonies through the 17th and most of the 18th century "benign neglect." Crown and Parliament did not want to pay for American colonization, so they sent would-be settlers on their way with a hearty "cheerio, and don't call home." As a result, the colonies became largely self-supporting, handling their own internal affairs and taxing themselves to pay the costs. But when the French and their Indian allies attacked the British colonies from the west, beyond the Appalachian Mountains, between 1754 and 1763, the colonial militias were outmatched, and the British Parliament raised a full army to meet the challenge.
Successful, the British decided to take control of colonial affairs, beginning by levying a tax to pay for the war. The colonists protested, arguing that they'd done fine taxing themselves, and Parliament did not need to start now. In addition, taxation only by representatives of the people taxed was already a cherished English liberty, a liberty, with others, the colonists thought it was Parliament's duty to protect, not take away. Parliament thought otherwise, passing an act in 1766 declaring its right to pass any laws regarding the colonies that king and Parliament deemed appropriate.
But protesting the home government's colonial policy was one thing, armed rebellion quite another. Tensions, and protests, ebbed and flowed in the decade after the war, and, while Sam Adams' revolutionaries were vocal and active, most people weren't all that anxious to risk their careers and their lives. Historians estimate that probably not more than 20 percent of the colonial population actively engaged in protest politics. Another 20 percent vigorously supported the crown, agreeing that Parliament had rightful authority over the colonies. Many of these "Loyalists" fled the new United States after 1776. The remainder of the population, though they may have sympathized quietly with the radicals, mostly went on about their business, wishing everyone else would, also.
The rebels worked hard to keep the populace informed and aroused, periodically staging protests while surreptitiously collecting arms. In early March 1770, a mob -- loud, surly, drunk and dangerous, mostly instigated by the rebels -- surrounded the customs house in Boston, taunting the young British soldiers on guard there. Pushing and shoving led to musket shots, killing five colonials, the Boston Massacre. In the aftermath, tempers cooled, and the rebels had difficulty keeping the revolutionary fervor high.
Then Parliament passed a new colonial tax, on tea, in 1773. This gave the rebels an opening. They published broadsides and called protest meetings, and when three shiploads of tea arrived in Boston in November, the populace responded with marches and demonstrations. On the night of Dec. 13, a large group of rebels, loosely disguised, perhaps organized by Sam Adams, boarded the ships and threw the tea into Boston Harbor. Parliament responded with a hammer, passing a series of draconian acts the colonists could only resist.
By the time the second Continental Congress met in May 1775, anti-British sentiment was higher than before the Tea Party, but still not in favor of independence. It would take over a year of discussion, and refusals by the king and Parliament to negotiate, for the rebels to persuade a majority of the population to support a declaration of independence. But eventually words turned the tide. Thomas Paine argued in his pamphlet "Common Sense," published in Jan. 1776, that the king had no legitimate authority over the colonies. And Thomas Jefferson set forth in the Declaration in July the new and astonishing idea that government should be based on the consent of the governed, not on the king or God. From that, there has been no turning back.
