Despite the rising tide of conservatism and anti-Adams
sentiment, there were still signs that Boston remained as patriotic
as ever. Again, Britain's interference in colonial affairs helped
push the homeland's "tyranny" to the foreground. Toward the end
of 1771, Britain determined that it would be more efficient if
Governor Thomas Hutchinson was paid out of the British treasury
rather than by the Massachusetts legislature. The patriots, on
the other hand, saw the taking of the "power of the purse" as the
ultimate usurpation by the empire–without being able to control
the governor's salary, there was nothing to prevent Hutchinson
from becoming a dictator, Adams argued. The following year rumors
began to circulate that the colony's judges were to be paid by
the Crown as well, but these efforts by the Crown were less tyrannical
than Adams made them sound–the measures were merely meant to allow
the judges and the governor a fair set salary as opposed to the
meager and infrequent sums they received.
Adams seized the opportunity to found committees of correspondence
throughout the colony, so set as to link all of Massachusetts into
a "phalanx" against Britain. The committees would reunite the various
factions of the city and the countryside and prevent further defections
while improving coordination and morale. He founded the first one
in Boston and hoped the other towns would soon follow suit. The
move worried many loyal patriots, as the committee was seen as
the most seditious move yet by the colony. Such concerns were certainly
not without warrant: The twenty-one-member committee of correspondence
soon proved itself to be the most revolutionary machine ever created
in the Western Hemisphere.
The committee began by trying to compile a list of supposed rights
and grievances among the colonists to present to the British government.
They met nightly in a Boston tavern in complete secrecy. He drew
upon his education in philosophy and his graduate study on natural
law to arrive at a comprehensive list that shocked many for its
thoroughness. The committees began to spread slowly through New
England, and by 1774 the Boston committee of correspondence was
coordinating with three hundred other Massachusetts towns and other
Sons of Liberty organizations as far south as South Carolina. Now,
the intercolonial unity that earlier efforts had helped spread
paid off, and colonies jostled for the chance to help lead the
fight for liberty. As one colony moved, others would follow suit,
lest they be seen to be fearful and weak. More importantly, though,
for this subject, the efforts of the committees of correspondence
also reestablished Adams as the leader of the revolution in the colonies
and the protector of all liberties. Adams still argued that Britain
and the colonies could live in harmony, but only if the colonies
were allowed to govern themselves entirely. Ironically, his idea would
eventually become the relationship between modern-day Britain and
its remaining colonies, but in 1773–1774 the ideas were too radical
to be adopted.
Adams found a good target for the growing anti-British
sentiment in the tea duty, the only tax remaining after Parliament repealed
the Townshend Acts. This tax allowed Britain to pay the judges
and Governor Hutchinson (and, by now, other colonial governors)
from the royal treasury–thus robbing the colonies of their right
of the power of the purse. Philadelphia got to the issue first, though,
and in October 1773 declared all who traded with British tea companies
in the East Indies were "public enemies." As New York and Philadelphia
Sons of Liberty began to claim that they would burn tea ships as
they arrived in harbor, Adams urged Bostonians to action lest others
surpass them in the rebellion. In Boston, Adams ordered that the
tea ships be brought right up to the wharf, and everything but
the tea was to be off-loaded. Once tied to the wharf, the ships
could not return to England without paying the tea duty–but Adams
had already schemed a way around that. The Sons of Liberty massed
on the wharf each time a tea ship arrived, and the committees of
correspondence proved to be extremely effective in mobilizing the
surrounding towns to battle. Adams managed to craft a stalemate
where the ships could only return to England with the tea if the
governor granted them a special pass, but the governor, by law,
could only grant the pass if the customs office presented a receipt
showing the proper duties had been paid. The merchants, unable to
offload the tea for sale, could not pay the duties, and they refused
to risk legal troubles by returning the tea to England without
the governor's blessing. On December 16, 1773–one day before the
tea was to be seized by customs–several hundred Sons of Liberty stormed
the ships costumed as "Narragansett Indians." They made quick work
of the tea ships and soon three hundred and forty-two chests of
tea lay at the bottom of Boston Harbor.
Britain viewed the Boston Tea Party as an extremely personal attack
on the homeland–after all, little was as British as tea. The Crown
resolved to avenge the attack, and Adams found himself fully committed
to the cause of freedom and independence for the colonies. There
would be no turning back, as one patriot put it, it was now "[n]eck
or nothing."
