On 16 Aug 1826, the Columbian Centinel newspaper of Boston published this item on the upper left corner of its front page:
Tea Destroyers.—“One of the famous Boston “Tea Party” is still alive in Newburyport. His name is NICHOLAS CAMPBELL, aged 94 years.” —New York Advocate.I read this as the flagship of Boston’s Federalist press claiming full authority on the “Tea Destroyers.” Of course we in Boston know who these heroes are, the writer says; we just don’t want to tell you.
“Why is it, that the names of the persons who destroyed the Tea in Boston in 1773 have been so pertinaciously concealed from the public? They ought not to be ashamed of the exploit.” —Providence paper.
REMARK.—We know nearly a dozen of the “party” alluded to, all now alive and well, and among our most wealthy and enterprizing citizens. To our knowledge they have never concealed their agency in the “exploit;” but they are not boasters.—To hundreds of Bostonians their names have been as familiar as those of Adams, Hancock, Otis, &c.
We have recently seen a phial filled with the tea which two of the party found in their shoes after their return home, and have preserved as a memorial. It may be recollected that the shoes worn in those days did not fit to the ancle so snug as those of our modern dandies, and that boots were then only worn by fishermen.
I particularly like the couple of backhand, scare-quoted allusions to the new term spreading in the national press: “Tea Party.” That phrase seems to have surfaced at the start of the year in an interview with Joshua Wyeth.
In 1826 the Columbian Centinel was still owned by its founding editor, Benjamin Russell (shown above). Years ago I hypothesized that about a decade later he was the “aged Bostonian” who supplied the list of tea destroyers published in Traits of the Tea Party.
The “phial” of tea this article described was probably Thomas Melvill’s, already mentioned in the Boston Daily Advertiser in 1821. That first item said Melvill had collected it from “himself and companions.” This one says “two of the party.” By 1856 that tea was said to have come from Melvill’s clothing alone.
"never concealed their agency"
ReplyDeleteI became interested in history a dozen years ago and soon noticed historians bandying about here and there using the term agency. I had thought the usage in that manner a modern thing. Now I know better.
“Agency” is one of the relatively few bits of jargon in history writing, and I don’t think today’s historians use it in the same way as this newspaper editor in 1826.
ReplyDeleteBack in the early 1800s, these older Bostonians reportedly never denied that they had acted to destroy the tea—i.e., they were the agents of its destruction.
Today if a historian says those men had “agency,” that conveys an argument that in destroying the tea they were making their own decision to alter their historical conditions rather than be moved along by larger historical forces.