In 1767, when Charles Townshend became Prime Minister of England, he tried to expand import duties to include items such as paper, paint, and tea with the American Revenue Act. The colonists found this unacceptable and there was an immediate and well-organized reaction. It was at this point that the colonists began the non-importation and non-consumption movements.
Tensions eventually lead to the Boston Massacre in front of the Boston Custom's House. "About fifty men and boys gathered to harass seven soldiers guarding the custom house on Boston's main street by hurling snowballs, chunks of ice, sticks and rocks while yelling 'Kill them.' The captain in charge tried to restrain his men, but they feared for their lives. One fired and the rest followed suit, hitting eleven colonists, five of whom died" (Taylor, 110). Paul Revere, as well as many other propaganda illustrators, used this event to spread more seeds of discontent.
[Transcript of poem from Paul Revere’s print] |
The Bloody Massacre - Paul Revere, 1770, Metropolitan Museum of Art
|
"Here are a few of the elements Paul Revere used in his engraving to shape public opinion:
- The British are lined up and an officer is giving an order to fire, implying that the British soldiers are the aggressors.
- The colonists are shown reacting to the British when in fact they had attacked the soldiers.
- British faces are sharp and angular in contrast to the Americans’ softer, more innocent features. This makes the British look more menacing.
- The British soldiers look like they are enjoying the violence, particularly the soldier at the far end.
- The colonists, who were mostly laborers, are dressed as gentlemen. Elevating their status could affect the way people perceived them.
- The only two signs in the image that you can read are "Butcher’s Hall" and "Customs House," both hanging directly over the British soldiers.
- There is a distressed woman in the rear of the crowd. This played on eighteenth-century notions of chivalry.
- There appears to be a sniper in the window beneath the "Butcher’s Hall" sign.
- Dogs tend to symbolize loyalty and fidelity. The dog in the print is not bothered by the mayhem behind him and is staring out at the viewer.
- The sky is illustrated in such a way that it seems to cast light on the British "atrocity."
- Crispus Attucks is visible in the lower left-hand corner. In many other existing copies of this print, he is not portrayed as African American.
- The weather conditions depicted do not match the testimony presented at the soldier’s trial (no snow).
- The soldiers’ stance indicates an aggressive, military posture.
- In the first edition, the time on the clock was incorrect. Revere had it corrected immediately.
- The trial of the British soldiers was the first time a judge used the phrase "reasonable doubt."
- One of the British soldiers named Pierce Butler left the army and became a South Carolina plantation owner. In 1787, he was appointed as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention" (Gilder Lehrman, 2019).
The Mother and the Child - Anon., 1773, The John Carter Brown Library: Image Collections
|
By 1770, the Townshend Acts were repealed but the British Parliament maintained a small tax on tea on the colonies. For the next three years, there was sporadic violence and tension. By 1773, a new Tea Act was passed. It lowered the price of tea from the struggling East India Company, but there was an immediate negative reaction in the colonies once more. Since trust had already eroded between the colonies and England, the colonists believed it was a trap. They thought that once the Dutch were out of the tea trading business, the East India Company would raise the price once more.
Boycotting began in the colonies once again--leading to increased troop garrisons. This policy drained Great Britain's resources. Here, George III is begging his fatigued mother Britannia for more supplies to help him in the colonies. On opposite sides at the top are a full purse under George II, but twenty years later, George III's purse appears empty as he sits on his mother's lap. |
In an effort to help the failing East India Tea Company, Parliament lowered the import duties on all tea they shipped to England to be re-exported later to the Americas. This meant that the East India Tea Company could undersell the smugglers bringing in the cheaper Dutch tea and who had been doing brisk business. "But the Tea Act angered colonial merchants, who stood to lose their profitable business in smuggled tea. They denounced the act as a plot to seduce Americans to sell their liberty for the tea of a British monopoly" (Taylor, 113). When the East India Company Tea ships came into port, Patriots threatened them and then in Boston Harbor, they through the tea overboard. There are significantly no contemporary pictures of the Boston Tea Party of 1773. All such images were published at later dates. However, the fallout from such an act of treason is well documented. The next spring, in response to the Patriots' actions, Parliament passed the Coercive Acts. What follows is a quickly escalating crisis.
|
With England on the left and America on the right, they square up and are ready to fight. Ships are in the harbors laden with tea and to the far right, one ship (17) has been shipwrecked by Cape Cod while several others (16) clog Boston Harbor.
Meanwhile, Lord North and Lord Bute are the first two characters representing the English side and are conferring with the leader of the East India Company. Behind them, figure 4, is King George III being whispered to by the Devil. The rest of the men behind them are company directors and legislators. On the right, America is being represented by two very different groups of people. The first are Natives who are personifying colonial resistance. Then below them are a group of disgruntled merchants who had been promised a share of the trade from the East India Company and are now not going to get it. |
Liberty Triumphant - Anon., 1774, The John Carter Brown Library: Image Collections
|
The Whitehall Pump - Anon., 1774, The John Carter Brown Library: Image Collections
|
The term Whitehall is used as a metonym in Great Britain for civil service. The location used to be the main residence of members of the government up through 1698 when it was destroyed by fire.
In the image, Lord North is controlling the water pump where George III's head sits in profile. Lord North is looking at Britannia through an eye glass who is laying on top of a prostrate American Indian. The people behind Lord North are parliamentary politicians as well as the two in the window. The individual on the far left who is depicted as a fox is Lord Holland, while the one on the right is Lord Bute. A much smaller group of two are trying to stop the mistreatment. |
The accompanying text explains the 'Vision'. North, under Scottish influence, is pumping upon 'that daft unruly body Mistress Britannia . . . with her child America, and all her boasted rattles and gew-gaws such as Magna Charta, Coronation Oaths, Bill of Rights, Charters of Companies and Corporations, Remonstrances, Petitions . . .'. 'All the miscreants and tools of State' rejoice at the sight. Round the head on the pump, though surrounded with fogs, could be read the words, 'His brows thick fogs instead of glories grace, And lambent dulness plays around his face.' 1 May 1774 Etching" (British Museum, 1774)
|
Boston became a hotbed of activity. It was where the Sons of Liberty were first created and continued to serve as the center of Patriot activity.
The exciseman depicted here is John Malcom. The Bostonians who carried out the tarring and feathering justified their actions by claiming to have found him standing over a child, yelling and shaking his cane at him. Those accosting Malcom are requiring him to swallow large amounts of tea as a toast to the King, his health and the rest of the Royal family as well. Malcom was highly unpopular, but his mistreatment reached London when there were intense negative feelings toward the Bostonians. His mistreatment was brought up in Parliament as justification for increased security and restoring the royal government by force. "One hotheaded Member asserted: 'The town of Boston ought to be knocked about their ears and destroyed' because 'you will never meet with that proper obedience to the laws of this country until you have destroyed that nest of locusts'" (Taylor, 114). Behind him is the liberty tree with a hangman's noose implicating a lynching. Meanwhile, the people on the boat are dumping tea into the harbor and the liberty cap and staff are laying on the ground in the forefront. |
The Bostonian's Paying the Excise-man or Tarring and Feathering - Phillip Dawes, 1774, The John Carter Brown Library: Image Collections
|
The Bostonians in Distress - 1774, The John Carter Brown Library: Image Collections
|
Soon after the Boston Tea Party, Parliament passed the Coercive Acts. One of the Coercive, or Intolerable Acts, as the colonists called them, was the Boston Port Bill. This act ensured that Boston Harbor was closed to all imports and exports. Naval frigates were thought necessary by Lord North to guard the harbor and are depicted in the background.
This illustration was meant to draw in sympathy for the Bostonians and their plight. They are being fed codfish by the Marblehead fishermen as a symbol of the aid sent to Boston from other colonies. Those in the cage are being treated like slaves who had been caught committing capital offenses. Below them, garrisons of soldiers are gathered. Lord North had, in fact, sent six regiments and several more were already on their way. This cartoon apparently had the desired affect. There were members of the Opposition in parliament who were able to form relief efforts for the struggling colonists. |
After the Boston Tea Party, 51 ladies, led by Penelope Barker, gathered in Edenton, North Carolina on October 25, 1774. It was the first protest in the American colonies organized and carried out wholly by women. This was a particularly complicated step since the women were anxious about being sure that they appeared to be well-bred, notable housewifes, not rabble-rousers or disreputable females. Penelope boldly stated, “Maybe it has only been men who have protested the king up to now. That only means we women have taken too long to let our voices be heard. We are signing our names to a document, not hiding ourselves behind costumes like the men in Boston did at their tea party. The British will know who we are.” (Barker, 1774). However, within the document, they also acknowledged that they were merely following the examples of their husbands, thus giving them an excuse to get involved in the public sphere of protest and politics.
|
Loyalist newspapers recounted events where women were labeled as being in “‘a certain epidemical phrenzy’ that surpassed ‘all pretended patriotic virtue of the more robustic males’” (Berkin, 24). One of the more famous loyalist commentaries came in the form of a political cartoon called “Society of Patriotic Ladies” drawn by Philip Dawe in 1775.
He depicts the women gathered at the Edenton Ladies’ Tea Party as masculine, boisterous, and neglectful women who are taking on the role of men and neglecting the duties of motherhood. These types of descriptions tore at the very heart of colonial women’s identities as genteel and notable housewives--identities that were of the utmost importance to their social standing. Many women worried about losing this honorable status and the apparent shame they would incur from such slanderous depictions. |
Society of Patriotic Ladies at Edenton in North Carolina - 1775, Library of Congress
|