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Bernard Bailyn's Ideological Origins Bernard Bailyn’s Ideological Origins: A Perspective from 1774 mary beth norton ERNARD BAILYN’s Ideological Origins of the American B Revolution, in print for half a century, makes a com- pelling case for the prevalence of certain themes in the po- litical thought of eighteenth-century Americans based on a comprehensive examination of the pamphlet literature of the revolutionary years, patriot and loyalist alike. But Bailyn’s fo- cus on the pamphlets’ major themes meant that he tended to obscure certain details of how Americans interpreted and re- acted to specific pre-revolutionary events that were primarily evident in newspaper essays and correspondence. Even though pamphlets, as he points out, could be produced quickly and in- expensively, they could never match the immediacy of opinions expressed in letters or newspaper articles.1 Bailyn’s fourth chapter, “The Logic of Rebellion,” is in many ways the heart of the book, for it shows how Americans ap- plied the ideas Bailyn explored in Chapters Two (“Sources and Traditions”) and Three (“Power and Liberty: A Theory of Poli- tics”) to their encounters with British authority in the 1760s and 1770s. Then Chapters Five (“Transformation”) and Six (“The Contagion of Liberty”) illustrate the continuing, long-term sig- nificance and impact of those ideas. Yet a topic that regularly 1Of course, Ideological Origins had its own origins in the extensive introduction to volume 1 of Bailyn’s edition of The Pamphlets of the American Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965), so he cannot be faulted retrospectively for his emphasis on pamphlets to the exclusion of most other sources. Cf. Bailyn, The Ideolog- ical Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967). The New England Quarterly, vol. XCI, no. 1 (March 2018). C 2018 by The New England Quarterly. All rights reserved. doi:10.1162/TNEQ_a_00666. 200 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/tneq_a_00666 by guest on 29 September 2021 A PERSPECTIVE FROM 1774 201 recurred in public and private conversations during the year 1774, one that directly related to the imperatives of the “logic of rebellion,” is largely absent from Bailyn’s study because it was rarely discussed in the pamphlet literature. In this brief contribution to the forum on Ideological Origins, I aim to look beyond disputes that divided patriots from loyalists and to com- plement the overarching themes of Ideological Origins by ex- amining a debate among patriots that threaded through 1774 as a leitmotif. I refer to the ongoing dispute over the legitimacy of the destruction of the 300-plus chests of East India Company (EIC) tea in Boston Harbor, December 16, 1773. In most accounts, including Bailyn’s, the “Boston Tea Party” (which gained its famous name fifty years later) is presented as unproblematic. In Ideological Origins, the tea destruction appears briefly as the motive for the passage of the Coercive Acts. By omission Bailyn leads his audience to conclude that colonists generally applauded the Bostonians’ dramatic act. As a result, readers miss the controversy that soon erupted over the question of repaying the EIC for the tea—and whether Bosto- nians should have destroyed it in the first place. Yet that very controversy was intricately related to a major theme of Bailyn’s book—that is, the threat to liberty posed by the corrupt grasp- ing for power of the British ministry, which threatened the lib- erty of all British subjects, even the EIC, to hold their property securely and unmolested.2 Among contemporaries up and down the eastern seaboard, the events in Boston initiated debates that persisted through- out 1774 and into 1775. Colonists in Massachusetts and beyond argued over whether Bostonians should have chosen another tactic and whether the company should be compensated for its losses, if not by residents of Boston or Massachusetts, then 2The primary reference to the “Tea Party” in Ideological Origins is on 118; see also 152. Chapter Three stresses the perceived corruption of the British government and its ongoing threat to freedom, including property-holding and other rights. Lawrence Glickman located what is evidently the first reference to the “Tea Party” in a New York newspaper in 1826; see his Buying Power: A History of Consumer Activism in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 323n24. Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/tneq_a_00666 by guest on 29 September 2021 202 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY by contributions from other colonists. Their arguments reveal nuances of the political debates in 1774 obscured in more gen- eral studies such as Ideological Origins. EIC tea ships arrived in Charleston, Philadelphia, and New York, not just Boston. In Charleston, customs officials seized the tea and stored it. In New York and Philadelphia, the ships were turned away before they could enter the harbor.3 Ac- cordingly, colonists who commented on Bostonians’ actions had other models of resistance to which they sometimes referred. Thus, in February 1774, Henry Laurens, the wealthy South Carolinian then living in London, praised his fellow Charlesto- nians’ solution to the problem posed by the EIC tea: “I com- mend the proceeding in Charles Town in preference to all the rest.” The tea, he remarked, “must remain in Store & perish or be returned at the expence of those who Sent it.” Signifi- cantly, this major leader in the independence movement added that he hoped Bostonians would be “So wise & So honest as to pay for the Tea.” Benjamin Franklin, another future advo- cate of independence, then also resident in London, initially shared Laurens’s opinion. Soon after he learned of the incident, Franklin advised the Massachusetts Committee of Correspon- dence that a dispute over “Publick Rights” should not involve “an Act of violent Injustice” such as an attack on private prop- erty. Massachusetts should provide “Speedy Reparation” to the company. He insisted that suitable reparation would not bring “Dishonour to us or Prejudice our Claim of Rights.” It took 3Detailed narratives of what happened in all four cities comprise Chapter One of my book, 1774: Year of Revolution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, forthcoming). Two books about Boston—Benjamin Labaree, The Boston Tea Party (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), and Benjamin Carp, Defiance of the Patriots: The Boston Tea Party and the Making of America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010)—contain brief accounts of events in the other cities; see Labaree, Boston, 150–59; and Carp, Defiance, 108–109. See also my “The Seventh Tea Ship,” William and Mary Quarterly 74 (2016): 681–710, on a tea ship bound for Boston that wrecked on Cape Cod instead. Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/tneq_a_00666 by guest on 29 September 2021 A PERSPECTIVE FROM 1774 203 Benjamin Franklin seven months before he changed his mind and expressed approval of the tea’s destruction.4 Americans in London were not alone in expressing doubts about what Bostonians had done and suggesting that compen- sation should be made. Some patriots quarreled openly with those like John Adams, who lauded the action as “magnificent,” even “an Epocha in History.” Just two Massachusetts towns explicitly praised the destruction of the tea in formal resolu- tions, and they were balanced by two others that decried it. Local resolutions in Massachusetts and elsewhere often chose silence as their response to the Bostonians’ action. New En- gland towns adopted strong statements defending Americans’ rights, but commonly and tellingly avoided explicit comment on the destruction of EIC tea.5 Virginians were recognized at the time as fierce proponents of resistance to British measures, yet they, too, had mixed re- actions to what would come to be known as an iconic event. Yes, the tutor Philip Vickers Fithian reported in January 1774 that the news from the north was greeted with “great Profes- sions of Liberty expressed in Songs Toast &c;” but that same month an essayist signing himself “L.H.” criticized the “Sons of Riot and Confusion” who had destroyed the tea. He asked a crucial question for all who treasured property rights: “Is there no Danger to Liberty when every Merchant is liable to have his House, Property, and even Life, invaded or threatened by a Mob”? Another Virginian wrote privately that he believed Charleston had chosen the better course: Bostonians should have landed and stored the tea, and then refused to purchase 4Henry Laurens to George Appleby, February 15, 1774, George C. Rogers et al., eds., The Papers of Henry Laurens (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1981–), 9:277–78; Benjamin Franklin to committee of correspondence, February 2, 1774, William B. Willcox et al., eds., The Papers of Benjamin Franklin (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1959–), 21:76–77; for his change of mind in September, see 287. 5December 17, 1773, L.H. Butterfield et al., eds., Diary and Autobiography of John Adams (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961–), 2:85–86. On resolutions in Massachusetts towns, see Richard D. Brown, Revolutionary Politics in Massachusetts: The Boston Committee of Correspondence and the Towns, 1772–1774 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1976), 167–68. The same pattern held with town resolutions in New Hamp- shire and Rhode Island. Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/tneq_a_00666 by guest on 29 September 2021 204 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY it. “Let it lie in the publick Warehouses & Rott,” he wrote. The arrival in mid-May 1774 of news of the Boston Port Act, closing the port until the tea was paid for, aroused many expressions of sympathy for Boston’s plight. In an oft-quoted passage, Colonel George Washington told a friend that “the cause of Boston .
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