Читать книгу Rabble on a Hill - Robert Edmond Alter - Страница 6

The men who boarded the Dartmouth and the Eleanor and the Beaver looked no more like Mohawk Indians than a clown looks like a prime minister. But it didn’t matter because there weren’t enough British troops quartered in Boston at the time to do anything about it, and the disguise was only a token disguise—a handful of feathers and some warpaint and even an actual tomahawk or two.

So, with a thousand or more spectators standing mutely on Griffin’s Wharf, about a hundred of the “Mohawks” (who wouldn’t fool a four-year-old imaginative child) dumped and destroyed 342 chests of tea, valued at £18,-000, because they didn’t want any American to have to pay the tax on it—let alone drink it if he didn’t feel like it.

That was in the close of 1773, but the news didn’t reach England and the King until March of ’74, and when he heard the good tidings he nearly had a fit. What were those fool Americans thinking of? He was the King of England, wasn’t he? And America was an English colony, wasn’t it? And if he said that his subjects were going to drink the tea and pay a tax on it besides, then by George, that’s what they were going to do! Whether they liked tea or not.

He also said (after he’d calmed down a mite) : “The line of conduct seems now chalked out . . . the New England Governments are in a state of rebellion. Blows must decide whether they are subject to this country or independent.”

Then he decided to slap the naughty Americans on the wrist to teach them a little lesson so that they would know how to behave themselves the next time some loudmouth like Sam Adams or John Hancock or Dr. Warren came up with a harebrained scheme. He appointed General Gage governor of the province of Massachusetts (with 4,000 regulars to back him up), and on June 1 the Port Act went into effect.

Boston Harbor was sealed off from the world by a tight blockade. No ship could enter, no ship could leave. Everything came to a standstill. Trade rolled over with a groan and died. Merchants closed their shops and tore their wigs. Idle, jobless men roamed the streets and loafed on the docks. And without the lifeline of the sea, Boston was a hungry town.

And an angry one.

The yeast of discontent was beginning to ferment into violence. Secret organizations such as the Committee of Communications, the Committee of Safety, the Sons of Liberty, and the Minutemen sprang up overnight, and all along the eastern coast men began to gather weapons and powder and lead for ammunition, and they formed militia companies and drilled in the commons and in the fields and in the roads.

Farmers and merchants and sailors, dock workers and clerks and backwoodsmen, lawyers and doctors and rowdies were preparing for war.