The Messages from Philadelphia’s “Committee for Tarring and Feathering”

The Boston Tea Party was splashing up in other American cities two hundred fifty years ago today, on 25 Dec 1773.

The Boston committee of correspondence had sent a silversmith named Paul Revere south with its version of the tea destruction on 17 December.

Revere rode through New York and then headed to Philadelphia, arriving on 24 December. The news from Boston was printed as a special supplement to the Pennsylvania Gazette, combining newspaper reports and the committee’s statement.

That news encouraged the people of Philadelphia to maintain their resistance to the East India Company tea—which was plenty strong already.

The following day, the ship Polly appeared in the Delaware River, heading upstream. It carried almost seven hundred chests of tea (I’ve seen sources putting the count at either 697 or 698), more than double the number from the three ships the Bostonians had raided.

Back in mid-November, a broadside had appeared in Philadelphia, warning “the DELAWARE PILOTS” and the populace that “a Ship loaded with TEA was now on its way to this Port.” That handbill was ominously signed “THE COMMITTEE FOR TARRING AND FEATHERING.”

This of course was not an official Philadelphia committee, unlike Boston’s standing committee of correspondence, the ad hoc committees the Boston town meeting named to confer with different men, or even the similar committees later named by “the Body of the People.”

It’s therefore impossible to say how much support Philadelphia’s “committee for tarring and feathering” had at the start of the confrontation. That group could have been just a handful of guys with access to a printing press. But their broadside rallied people to take a hard stand.

In case the initial threat wasn’t clear enough, on 27 November the committee distributed a second broadside promising that any pilot who helped guide the tea ship into the port of Philadelphia would find “TAR and FEATHERS will be his Portion.”

That ship was now identified as “the (Tea,) SHIP POLLY, CAPTAIN AYRES; a THREE DECKER.” As for Samuel Ayres himself, the committee warned him of “a Halter around your Neck----ten Gallons of liquid Tar decanted on your Pate----with the Feathers of a dozen wild Geese laid over that to enliven your appearance!”

The committee spoke again on 7 December. It now said the Polly was not a three-decker after all, but “an old black Ship, without a Head, or any Ornaments.”

As for Capt. Ayres:

The Captain is a short, fat Fellow, and a little obstinate withal.----So much the worse for him.----For, so sure as he rides rusty, We shall heave him Keel out, and see that his Bottom be well fired, scrubb’d and paid.----His Upper-Works too, will have an Overhawling----and as it is said, he has a good deal of Quick Work about him, we will take care that such part of him undergoes a thorough Rummaging. . . .

We know him well, and have calculated to a Gill and a Feather how much it will require to fit him for an American Exhibition.

That sort of pressure had already convinced the East India Company’s consignees in Philadelphia to disavow their assignment and thus any responsibility for the tea. But of course that didn’t necessarily mean anything to His Majesty’s Customs Service.

The Dartmouth had entered Boston harbor, as the Customs department defined it, before anyone in town could warn off Capt. James Hall. That started the clock for the ship’s owners to unload or face confiscation. Customs supervisors refused to bend their rules.

The physical and legal geography of Philadelphia was different. Even though by 25 December the Polly was as far north as Chester, Pennsylvania, clearly within the North American mainland, it was still twenty miles away from the port of Philadelphia. Thus, under Customs standards it hadn’t officially arrived, and Capt. Ayres could turn around without suffering legal consequences, loss of his cargo, or damage to himself.

Which he did.