Paul

Good morning from Virginia. 🇺🇸 On the fifth of November 1773, the freemen of Boston packed Faneuil Hall for a town meeting that would help decide whether America would remain free or become a tributary of a distant Parliament. They chose John Hancock moderator. The merchant-patriot who would one day scrawl the largest signature on the Declaration of Independence now sat in the chair and faced the first great test of whether the people would accept a gilded chain. The Tea Act had arrived that spring dressed as a favor. The East India Company, bloated and near ruin, was granted the exclusive right to dump its surplus tea on the colonies while the Townshend duty of threepence on the pound still clung to every chest. The price would undercut the Dutch smuggled leaf the colonists preferred. Parliament and the Company expected gratitude. Boston saw the snare. Once the duty was paid on even a single chest, the principle of taxation without representation was conceded forever. Assemblies would become ornaments. Governors and judges would draw their salaries from London. The assemblies the colonists had built across generations would be rendered useless. Arbitrary government would follow as night follows day. The meeting adopted, almost word for word, the resolves already passed by the freemen of Philadelphia. Freemen possess an inherent right to dispose of their own property. There can be no property in that which another may take without consent. The duty on tea is a tax levied on Americans without their agreement. Its purpose—to support government, administer justice, and defend the King’s dominions in America—tends directly to render colonial assemblies useless and to introduce arbitrary government and slavery. The East India Company’s decision to ship the tea subject to that duty is an open attempt to enforce the ministerial plan and a violent attack upon the liberties of America. It is the duty of every American to oppose this attempt. Then came the sentence that still rings like a rifle shot across two and a half centuries: whoever shall directly or indirectly countenance this attempt, or in any wise aid or abet in unloading, receiving, or vending the tea sent or to be sent by the East India Company while it remains subject to the duty, is an enemy to America. No one in the crowded hall rose to defend the landing of the tea. A committee headed by Moderator Hancock himself was sent to the consignees with the demand that they resign their appointments at once, for the peace of the town and the honor of their own names. The consignees refused. Their answers were voted “daringly affrontive.” Some in the meeting spoke of taking up arms; the words drew applause. Yet the town kept its discipline. It expected every merchant to refuse the dutied tea under any pretext. It dissolved itself having drawn a line that could not be mistaken. This was no mob. This was a legal assembly of freeholders and inhabitants, moderated by one of the richest men in the province, speaking in the language of English liberty itself. They understood what too many later generations forgot: a right surrendered in a cup of tea is a right surrendered in every other thing. Six weeks later the ships still rode in the harbor, the consignees still would not yield, and the same spirit that filled Faneuil Hall on that November morning emptied three hundred and forty-two chests into Boston Harbor. The meeting of November fifth did not start the Revolution, but it named the enemy and declared the duty. When Hancock put his name to the Declaration three years later, the ink was only the final ratification of the stand already taken under his gavel. America 250 🇺🇸

Good morning from Virginia. 🇺🇸 In the cold dark before dawn on November 4, 1791, near the headwaters of the Wabash in the Ohio country, the young republic met one of its bitterest hours. Major General Arthur St. Clair, a stout, gout-ridden veteran of the Revolution and governor of the Northwest Territory, had brought nearly fourteen hundred men north to plant forts and make the government’s claim real. Many were raw recruits and militia, poorly clothed, poorly fed, and short of seasoned officers. They had been on the march for weeks through forest and swamp, their wagons mired, their spirits low. Before first light the woods around the camp erupted. A large confederacy of Miami, Shawnee, Delaware, and others, led by Little Turtle and Blue Jacket, struck with a sudden, disciplined fire that rolled in from three sides. Officers fell first. The cannon were overrun. Men who had never stood under fire tried to form ranks in the smoke and confusion while the general, too lame to walk, was lifted onto his horse. For hours the struggle continued until the remaining Americans broke through the circle and fled. Behind them they left more than six hundred dead and hundreds wounded—nearly two-thirds of the force. It was the heaviest proportional loss the American army has ever suffered at the hands of Native warriors. The news, when it reached Philadelphia, stunned the capital. Washington was enraged. Congress ordered an inquiry. Out of the wreckage came a harder resolve: the creation of the professional Legion of the United States under Anthony Wayne, whose later victory at Fallen Timbers would at last open the Northwest. St. Clair’s defeat remains a somber chapter in the long, costly work of securing the interior—a reminder of how fragile the new nation’s hold on the western lands once was, and how much was asked of ordinary men in the cold woods of Ohio. America 250 🇺🇸