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."[1] Roused by such an appeal, the question was put to the assembled multitude—"Will you abide by your former resolutions with respect to not suffering the tea to be landed?" A unanimous shout was, the reply, and the excitement attained its utmost pitch. It was growing dark, and there was a cry for candles, when a man disguised as a Mohawk Indian raised the war-whoop in the gallery, which was responded to in the street without. Another voice suddenly shouted, "Boston harbor a tea-pot to-night! Hurra for Griffin's wharf!" The meeting instantly adjourned, and the people hurried down to the harbor to see the result. It was now six o'clock, but a fine still evening. Some fifty men, in the guise of Mohawks, boarded the tea vessels, and while the dense crowd silently watched the proceeding, they drew up from the holds of the vessels three hundred and forty-two chests of tea, deliberately broke them open, and emptied their contents into the water. This occupied between two and three hours. No damage was done to anything else, and when the tea had been destroyed, the crowd dispersed, without further noise or trouble, to their homes.[2] Singularly enough, the naval and military force was entirely apathetic, and did not at all interfere to prevent the destruction of the tea; probably they were not very sorry at being relieved from the necessity of attempting to force the obnoxious article on shore. Admiral Montague, it is related, was, on the evening of the 16th, at the house of a friend, and as the party marched from the wharf, he raised the window, and said, "Well, boys, you've had a fine night for your Indian caper, hav'n't you? But mind, you've got to pay the fiddler yet." "O, never mind," shouted Pitt, one of the leaders, "never mind, squire! just come out here, if you please, and we'll settle the bill in two minutes!" The admiral wisely shut down the window, while the crowd went on its way, without further demonstration of popular feeling.[3]
In New York, November 25th, the consignees of the expected tea, declined to act in the capacity, having been
- ↑ "Memoir of the Life of Josiah Quincy, Jr.," p. 266, 267.
- ↑ Consult Mr. Bancroft's account of the famous "Boston Tea Party," vol. vi., pp. 465–489.
- ↑ "Last night," says John Adams, in his Diary, "three cargoes of Bohea tea were emptied into the sea. This morning a man-of-war sails. This is the most magnificent movement of all. There is a dignity, a majesty, a sublimity, in this last effort of the patriots, that I greatly admire. The people should never rise without doing something to he remembered, something notable and striking. This destruction of the tea is so bold, so daring, so firm, intrepid, and inflexible, and it must have such important consequences, and so lasting, that I cannot but consider it as an epoch in history. . . . . . This, however, is but an attack upon property. Another similar exertion of popular power may produce the destruction of lives. Many persons wish that as many dead carcasses were floating in the harbor, as there are chests of tea. A much less number of lives, however, would remove the causes of all our calamities. The malicious pleasure with which Hutchinson the governor, the consignees of the tea, and the officers of the customs, have stood and looked upon the distresses of the people, and their struggles to get the tea back to London, and at last the destruction of it, is amazing. 'Tis hard to believe persons so hardened and abandoned."
