Part 6 (1/2)

[Ill.u.s.tration: Was.h.i.+ngton Surrendering His Commission.]

In the New England colonies, the people were far more fierce in their resentment toward the requirement that they must buy stamps to make legal almost every transaction. This method of getting money for the British government was so offensive to Boston that a publicly encouraged mob hanged the stamp distributor in effigy, the windows of his house were broken, and the building to be used as his office was broken to pieces, and the fragments burned in the streets. The officers of the town, trying to disperse the crowd, were driven away with stones. The next morning the stamp distributor renounced his office in the public square and no one could be found willing to take his place.

Down in Virginia, the stamp distributor did not try to fulfill his office, but came on to Williamsburg and amidst much applause publicly denounced the Stamp Act and vacated the office.

On the first of November, 1765, when the act was to become law and go into operation, there was tolling of bells throughout New England.

s.h.i.+ps in the harbors displayed their flags at half-mast. Shops were shut, business was suspended, and every form of defiance they could invent was displayed all day and that night.

At New York, the poster announcing the law was stuck on a pole, under a death's head, from which floated a banner bearing the inscription, ”The folly of England and ruin of America.” The lieutenant-governor with all his official household went into the fort and surrounded himself with marines from a s.h.i.+p of war. Then the mob went to his stables, brought out his carriage, put his effigy into it, dragged it up and down the street till they were tired, and then hung his effigy on a gallows. That evening they took the effigy down, put it again into the carriage, this time by the side of an image of the devil, had a howling torch-light procession to Bowling Green, and there, under the guns of the fort, burned the carriage with the effigies in it. So bitter and so general was the disapproval that no one attempted to enforce the law.

CHAPTER IX

SOWING THE WIND AND REAPING THE WHIRLWIND

I. MOUNT VERNON AT FIRST IN A ZONE OF CALM

In all this storm, Was.h.i.+ngton remained engrossed in his extensive business affairs. It can not be inferred that this meant any indifference on his part. It must be remembered that by nature he was of a retiring disposition and never put himself forward as a leader in any agitation. He was one who believed in regularity and discipline.

He could not destroy except as a process of building. His fighting spirit was always in accomplis.h.i.+ng a definite design for foreseen ends. It is thus always seen that the man who is an agitator and a leader of agitation, however heroic and n.o.ble he may be in the cause of right, is never the calm, judicial mind necessary to construct material and form forces into a const.i.tutional government. The mind of man seems first to require a forerunner. There was the determined, uncompromising John the Baptist for the gentle and peace-loving Christ, and there were numerous colonial Patrick Henrys for Was.h.i.+ngton, even as there were Lovejoys, Garrisons and John Browns for Lincoln. Thus it appears, without irreverence, that agitation is as essential to education as legislation is to government.

Was.h.i.+ngton's large interests in trade with England, and his many Old-England friends and connections, would have turned any man, who would serve his own personal profit, into partisans.h.i.+p for Great Britain. There is no doubt that the inducements to favor the mother country were large, and the promise of loss for doing otherwise was very heavy and convincing. But he had seen much of English arrogance and tyranny. He had also seen much of American freedom and human rights. There was probably never any debate in his mind as to which meant the most to him in personal duty or as an American. He had a deeper view of humanity than business interests. But his hour had not yet struck. The time had not yet come when the colonies needed Was.h.i.+ngton.

Something of great significance took place in 1766. Benjamin Franklin was called before the House of Commons and questioned concerning the Stamp Act.

”What,” they asked him, according to the Parliamentary Register of that year, ”was the temper of America towards Great Britain, before the year 1763?”

”The best in the world,” was his reply. ”They submitted willingly to the government of the crown, and paid, in their courts, obedience to the acts of Parliament. They were governed at the expense of only a little pen, ink and paper. They were led by a thread. They had not only respect, but an affection for Great Britain, for its laws, its customs, and manners, and even a fondness for its fas.h.i.+ons, that greatly increased the commerce. Natives of Great Britain were always treated with particular regard; to be an Old-England man was, of itself, a character of some respect, and gave a kind of rank among us.”

”And what is that temper now?”

”Oh! it is very much altered.”

”If the act is not repealed, what do you think will be the consequences?”

”A total loss of the respect and affection the people of America bear to this country, and of all the commerce that depends upon that respect and affection.”

”Do you think the people of America would submit to pay the stamp duty if it was moderated?”

”No, never,” Franklin replied, ”unless compelled by force of arms.”

II. GIVING THE APPEARANCE AND KEEPING THE SUBSTANCE

On March 18, 1766, the obnoxious Stamp Act was repealed, but the repeal contained a clause that took all the merit out of the repeal, by maintaining the principle that the King, with the consent of Parliament, had the authority and power to ”bind the colonies, and the people of America, in all cases whatsoever.”

If the colonies consented to this repeal with its clause, they would be affirming the very thing they were opposing in the Stamp Act. Such ”sharp practice” could not win. It was not the stamps they were opposing alone, nor the imposing of taxes. They repudiated the idea and the motive of the right to tax them without their consent, one of the ways of which was to make them buy stamps to legalize any of their business transactions. This explicitly proves that the Revolutionary War was not ”an economic war,” as some theorists endeavor to prove, but a war of principle, liberty and justice, as it claimed to be.

The King was now a.s.serting a right over the colonies which he did not have anywhere in his own country. This was his will, his ”divine right,” as it were. If he tried to establish and enforce that will and the colonies endeavored to establish and enforce their will against that will, then it would be, as had so often happened before in English history, a war of the King against the People. So it is often described in history as ”the King's war” against the colonies. To such an extent did the people refuse to fight it that the Hanoverian King had to hire Hessian mercenaries.

We have long since learned that it was not the people of England against the people of America, but the war of a foreign-minded King to retain a personal mastery over a branch of the English people, a right lost forever among English-speaking people through the successful revolt of the American Colonies in the name of American liberty.