When “Clamours run very high” in Philadelphia

As of 8 Sept 1765, the stamp agent for Pennsylvania, John Hughes, had heard demands for his resignation, but he brushed them off. Then on 12 September, he reported to the man who had secured that appointment for him:

Our Clamours run very high, and I am told my House shall be pull’d down and the Stamps burnt. To which I give no other Answer than that I will defend my House at the Risque of my Life. I must say, that all the sensible Quakers behave prudently.

The irony is that Hughes and the man he was writing to, Benjamin Franklin, were leaders of the political alliance that had broken down the Quaker dominance of the Pennsylvania legislature.

On 15 September, Philadelphia received news of the change in government in London: George Grenville, who had sponsored the Stamp Act, was no longer prime minister. That news caused celebrations in the city, which soon turned into actions against the men seen as supporting or carrying out the unpopular law.

Hughes wrote out periodic reports to Franklin about what followed:

Sept. 16. in the Evening. Common Report threat[ens] my House this Night, as there are Bonfires and Rejoicings for the Change of Ministry. The sober and sensible Part of the People are doing every thing towards being in Readiness to suppress a Mob if there should be any Intention of Rising. I for my Part am well-arm’d with Fire-Arms, and am determin’d to stand a Siege. If I live till tomorrow morning I shall give you a farther Account; but as it is now about 8 aClock, I am on my Guard, and only write this between whiles, as every Noise or Bustle of the People calls me off.

9 aClock. Several Friends that patroll between my House and the Coffee House, come in just now, and say, the Collection of Rabble begins to decrease visibly in the Streets, and the Appearance of Danger seems a good deal less than it did.

12 aClock. There are now several Hundreds of our Friends about Street, ready to suppress any Mob, if it should attempt to rise, and the Rabble are dispersing.

Sept. 17. 5 in the morning. We are all yet in the Land of the Living, and our Property safe. Thank God.

In those same days, crowds visited Franklin’s house—though they knew he was three thousand miles away in London. It was up to his wife Deborah (shown above) and their friends to dissuade the crowd from causing any damage.

The stamped paper for the Middle Colonies arrived in the Delaware River on 5 October. With it came Hughes’s official commission as stamp agent. A large crowd gathered outside the State House and chose a committee that included James Allen (1742-1778), Robert Morris, and Charles Thomson to call on Hughes and find out what he planned to do with the paper now.

Hughes was sick in bed, but he received the committee. He told them that he wouldn’t enforce the Stamp Act unless the law was generally accepted in the colonies—which was not looking likely. Hughes refused to formally resign, however. The crowd visited again two days later, but he stuck to his position, and his bed. The people went away, figuring that was the best they could do until November, when the law was to take effect.

TOMORROW: To the south.

“The Instrument Should Be Taken Away”

In July 1740, one of Boston’s representatives to the Massachusetts General Court, James Allen, published a pamphlet titled A Letter to a Friend in the Country, &c. It was an attack on Roland Cotton, representative from the town of Woburn, for how he’d voted on a controversial fiscal measure.

According to Allen, Cotton had tried to abstain from voting on the grounds that he was Clerk of the House and should remain “Neuter.” But then he inserted his vote into the records so he’d look good to his constituents back home (perhaps after knowing that his vote wouldn’t change the outcome).

Politics was never just personal in the 1700s, and the last two pages of Allen’s pamphlet veer off into this anecdote:

A weaver in the County of P[lymout]h made a Business of playing upon a Fiddle and drew away many people to hear the Musick; upon which a Complaint or Memorial was put into the Church against him, and upon the Trial, (not before the Trial) he was order’d to be suspended:

But some Time after, the said Weaver mov’d for a Restoration [of his church membership], making a penitent Confession; and the Parson putting the Question, Brother C——n started up and agreed to said Motion, with an Amendment, That the Instrument should be taken away to prevent any such undue and irregular Practices for the future; which was voted accordingly:

Some Time after it so happen’d that Brother C——n was a Widower (or if a Batchelor, is all one [to be exact, Cotton was a bachelor]) and had a handsome Maid, and happening to be too active, said Maid prov’d with Child; upon which Brother C——n was call’d before the Church and suspended; and afterwards mov’d for Restoration; which charitable Brother Weaver agreed to with this Amendment, That the Instrument should be taken away, to prevent such more than undue and irregular influencing the Propagation of Mankind for the future:

Which was voted accordingly.

I don’t know if any of that was true, but you wouldn’t really expect me to pass it up, would you? And now we’ll return to 1752.

TOMORROW: The Rev. Edward Jackson demands an apology.

[This series of postings started back here.]