He never desired to split with the Mother Country, though he expected independence might happen within a century of his lifetime. Indeed, as early as he gauged to where radical colonials ventured and began a series of actions to subvert the patriots. However, each action merely added fuel to the Patriotic fire, and ultimately brought the revolution far sooner than without his efforts.
An analysis of major events Hutchinson involved himself in from to , with the climax in , will shed light on this. The currency affair of , when Hutchinson led the way in banning paper money, had two lasting effects.
First, Massachusetts entered a time of unparalleled prosperity, and second, Hutchinson earned the equally unparalleled animosity of Samuel Adams, whose father directed a bank that stood to close at the banning of paper money. Hence, "the part taken by Hutchinson in causing Parliament to close it, was what led to the undying hatred of Samuel Adams towards Hutchinson and the Government. As the Lieutenant-Governor acquired this new appointment, he also acquired an array of new enemies, and, as another judge in Cambridge later conceded in , ".
James Otis, Senior, a colonel in the militia and a powerful man in Boston, led "the popular party, a loose alliance of rural agricultural interests in the province. The other viable candidate for the position was Thomas Hutchinson, who was the party boss for the Crown supporters.
However Hutchinson may have desired the position, he did not lobby for it. While the Otis family began lobbying extensively for the position, Bernard confessed his reluctance to appoint James Otis, Sr. The Otis's had proved to be unscrupulous political figures whose actions were directed at enriching themselves. Furthermore, James Otis, by not enforcing Crown laws, seemed more interested in the rights of smugglers than anything else. Moreover, the Superior Court had historically not exercised the full extent of Crown law, and since Bernard stood to gain from full enforcement of the Navigation Acts since the governor kept a third of all smuggled goods impounded by the police , it behooved him to appoint someone who would support the Crown.
This was Hutchinson. However, the Lieutenant Governor gave his opinion, that a refusal to comply with the solicitations which had been made to [Bernard] by the other person James Otis, Sr.
As Hutchinson later wrote, John R. From that time they were at the head of every measure in opposition, not merely in those points which concerned the governor in his administration, but in such as concerned the authority of parliament; the opposition to which began in this colony, and was moved and conducted by one of them [Otis, Jr.
From so small a spark a great fire seems to have been kindled. He soon had his chance in the monumental Writs of Assistance affair. The writs were a document given to law-enforcement officers for search and seizure of smuggled goods without offering grounds for suspecting the actual presence of smuggled goods.
However, the writs were not a blank check, for if officers searched a warehouse devoid of smuggled goods, they had to pay the owner for the trouble. Hutchinson had often felt judges issued the writs too loosely, and years earlier, had defended a relative in court when a writ had been issued to search his own property. While the writs had always been law, customs officials almost universally ignored them, thanks to bribes from smugglers. However, word came down from Parliament that the law was to be enforced, and Hutchinson had to interpret it appropriately.
James Otis brought a case to trial claiming the Writs of Assistance were unconstitutional. He argued that a man's home was his castle, and coined the phrase "taxation without representation is tyranny. The writs were valid under English law, and frequently issued in England, so why not in English colonies?
Two years later, Parliament passed the Sugar Act of As stated above, Hutchinson thought this bode ill for the colonies, and wrote against the measure to his friends in Parliament, claiming Parliament had historically deferred taxing to the colonies, and this policy should continue. However, Parliament began preparations for the tumultuous Stamp Act. In September, , Hutchinson again submitted a letter to a friend in Parliament, Richard Jackson, to refute the issuance of the Stamp Act.
Hutchinson developed many arguments against such heinous direct taxation, namely, that the Crown had long ago conceded to the colonies their own right to be taxed by their own representatives and Americans were not, after all, directly represented in Parliament, that the colonies owed no debt to Parliament, and that the natural profit Britain earned off the colonies far outweighed any the taxes would produce.
As a member of the Council, Hutchinson was appointed to a joint committee to draw up the Massachusetts Resolves, a petition to prevent the Stamp Act from becoming law. He argued with his committee members against any theoretical demands about constitutional guarantees and natural rights just because they "seemed grand and glittering and somehow pure," but he focused on 47 Galvin, Nowhere did the Massachusetts Resolves challenge Parliament's supreme authority, and they dismissed the difference between external and internal taxes.
In short, moderation reigned in the Resolves. However, in this too, Hutchinson became the loser as events unfurled. The New York petition soon arrived in Boston, and it had been "conceived in a much higher strain than the greatest advocates for the rights of the people had ever proposed in Massachusetts Bay.
Furthermore, the Stamp Act passed. Hutchinson's brother in law, Andrew Oliver, became a stamp collector in Boston, and Otis and the Adamses quickly charged that Hutchinson obviously supported the Stamp Act all along, and in fact, probably conceived of the Act in the first place.
Hutchinson, therefore, implicated himself as a supporter of tyranny. Bostonians rioted across the city in , on one occasion destroyed Andrew Oliver's house and twice surrounded Hutchinson's. The first time, the mob demanded that he "declare that he had not written [Parliament] in favour of the act and they [the mob] would retire quite satisfied. They smashed some of his windows, but withdrew; the second occasion however, Hutchinson and his family barely escaped their dinner before the crowd sacked his home, and destroyed all of his possessions, including a library of books relevant to the history of Massachusetts which Hutchinson was preparing for public use.
Historians have pondered why mobs destroyed only Hutchinson's house, instead of the more obvious symbol of Crown authority, the Governor's mansion. Four events probably led the leaders of the mob to direct the attack on the Chief Justice, and further propelled the coming Revolution. First, his relentless and unpopular campaign to rid the colony of paper money still loomed the minds of many patriots who stood to gain from exploiting the poor and shirking their debts; second his endorsement of the writs of assistance; third his thwarting the will of the committee who, after all, wanted to blast Parliament all along concerning the Stamp Act, and finally his public defense of Stamp Act officials namely, his brother- in-law all combined to infuriate the mob.
In , the worst approached them; Hutchinson wrote to his friend Jackson that the colonies were close to Independence.
Nonetheless, Hutchinson's frequent, if behind the scenes, letters to Parliament delineating their errors may have been some of the primary arguments used to overturn the Stamp Act. No jury would convict the rioters, and Governor Bernard's impotence humiliated the government. However, in the words of Hutchinson, "an unfortunate accident, about this time, contributed also to increase the discontented state of mind in the people,"57 and from this situation, the patriots connived a way to humiliate the loyalist Chief Justice while further limiting the Crown's authority in Two members of a naval impressment gang tried to seize Michael Corbet who, while resisting, killed them.
John Adams and James Otis quickly volunteered to defend Corbet. In Adams's 55 Bailyn, 62 - 8. Adams's ultimate goal was to sacrifice Corbet for the patriot cause, since he knew the court could not accept his unconstitutionality argument.
Merely the specter of the government overstepping its bounds by enforcing a debatably unconstitutional law would provide the patriot cause with the propaganda it wanted. Hence, Hutchinson defied the patriot propaganda "that he was a tool of the ministry and an enemy of liberty,"59and circumvented a potentially embarrassing constitutional argument, the intricacies of which would bode ill for the Crown. Consequently, unlike the patriots, who appeared willing to sacrifice poor Corbet to demonstrate another example of British tyranny, Hutchinson.
Sam Adams boasted victoriously that they were the "objects of contempt even of woman and children. Bernard conveniently fled Boston for England, leaving Hutchinson in charge. The Boston Massacre of was an event just waiting to 58 Pencak, 29 - After Captain Preston's unit fired on the mob that had attacked him, Hutchinson rushed into the crowd, and came between them and the soldiers.
At great risk to his own life, he separated the two groups, though some, who were apprehensive of the lieutenant-governor's danger from the general confusion, called out, "the town house, the town house," and, with irresistible violence, he was forced up by the crowd into the council chamber.
There demand was immediately made of him, to order the troops to withdraw. He refused to comply; and calling from the balcony to the great body of people which remained in the street, he expressed his great concern at the unhappy event, assured them he would do every thing in his power in order to a full and impartial inquiry, that the law might have its course, and advised them to go peaceably to their several homes. Upon this there was a cry --"home, --home," and a great part separated, and went home.
Hutchinson insisted that to move the troops would be to remove all vestiges of British authority from Boston, an altogether unacceptable situation. Consequently, many Bostonians viewed Hutchinson as a despotic tyrant bent on military occupation; though eventually, the pressure on him became so great that he acquiesced, and removed the troops.
Hutchinson had no doubt that the massacre had been staged by revolutionary leaders for the express purpose of driving out the troops.
Therefore, no royal leader in the colonies would dare use troops to enforce royal laws even if troops were available. The revolutionaries maneuvered events such that they had free reign over their affairs while loyalists appeared to be tyrants. Thus, Hutchinson soon tired of he "free-and-easy manners of the Patriots, so called, [and] he not only Hutchinson, 72 - 3.
In , Hutchinson began efforts to subordinate the Assembly while courting allies. After making a strong showing in land negotiations with New York, and some men of power such as Joseph Hawley and John Hancock appeared to be warming up to the Crown, he began to exude more confidence in his administration and the subservience of the assembly to royal authority. However, events soon shook Hutchinson's confidence.
In November of , the Boston town meeting assembled and passed the Boston Declaration, largely written by Samuel Adams, a comprehensive declaration of the rights of the colonials "as men, as Christians, and as subjects. Hutchinson pondered his next actions. He feared by bringing the matter before the assembly. The danger of this charge, and the abuse which he expected to follow it, both in England and America, he did not think would excuse a neglect of a plain duty.
His plain duty was surely to, once and for all, explain to the Assembly their proper place: under Crown authority. Consequently, he called an emergency meeting of the Assembly and instigated a series of debates with them concerning the English constitution. Hutchinson felt that once he clarified the English constitution to the colonials, they would see the folly of their ways, and gladly submit to Parliament's authority. However, these debates may have single-handedly rekindled the dying revolutionary flame.
His first speech, Hutchinson wrote the day after his presentation, "the members seemed amazed, three-quarters of them having taken for granted that all that had been done by Parliament was arbitrary and unconstitutional.
I flatter myself that it will be of service. Regardless, their "Rights by Nature" were not trampled over by the government. Unbelievably, Hutchinson concluded his argument with a dare: "If I am wrong in my principles of government,. Independence I may not allow myself to think that you can possibly have in contemplation. Reid reproduced all of the debates in their entirety.
James Bowdoin probably wrote the Council's response, which apologized for the riots, though insisted on the spontaneity of them, and agreed grievances with the Crown should be fixed legally; after all, "petitions to Parliament have gone from the Colonies, and from this Colony in particular, but without Success.
Therefore, while they may have supremacy over the colonies, which the Assembly admittedly doubted they certainly did not have authority over the constitution. The House also responded, mostly through the hand of Samuel Adams. The House used historical events, ironically taken from Hutchinson's own History of Massachusetts Bay, to show legal precedence that the Crown had not actually annexed the colonies into the realm, and furthermore, never had the king extended Parliament's jurisdiction over them.
Therefore, Parliament could not use a right it never really had. Hutchinson considered if he should reply, or let the Assembly have the last word. The House's answer shocked him greatly, and he felt he must refute their arguments. Therefore, he all but ignored the Council's dissertation, claiming "Bowdoin's arguments were so erroneous they could be dismissed with contempt.
In responding to the House, Hutchinson tried to show that Adams interpreted historical events inaccurately. Therefore, to imply that since the King never expressly gave Parliament authority, which besides Hutchinson doubted the accuracy of that statement, he never actually had to give Parliament the authority.
Regardless, although he raised doubts about Adams's case, he did not conclusively win the argument. The Council and House again replied, and by this time, "it was apparent" to Hutchinson, "that there was no probability that either the council or the house would recede from any point,"76 but he could hardly let the Assembly have the last word. Hutchinson once again reiterated the Assembly's errors as he saw them, and dissolved the Assembly so they could not respond. By engaging the Assembly, the Governor hoped that the irrationality of the revolutionaries would be apparent to all.
This climactic exchange remains unprecedented in American history, and precipitated several events in a time when the colonies seemed to be cooling off.
John Adams wrote in his diary that Hutchinson "will not be thanked for this, his ruin and destruction must spring out of it, either from the ministry and Parliament on one hand or from his countrymen on the other. To the colonials, his logical arguments mattered not a wit; they perceived that just by standing up to Royal authority, the patriots were victorious. England was furious with Hutchinson as "there was a general desire on all sides to avoid a direct decision of the controverted points.
By this point, Hutchinson appeared to the colonists as a tyrant bent on subverting American liberty not just to Crown authority, but also to his own greedy desires. However, after the decisive confrontation with the Assembly, Hutchinson's domestic actions started to re-garner support among the populace.
Meanwhile, cool heads among the revolutionaries conspired to destroy Hutchinson politically, and the shoe dropped in June, In a letter to Bernard, Hutchinson wrote, "After every other attempt to distress me they have at last engaged in a conspiracy which has been managed with infinite art and succeeded beyond their own expectations.
Franklin immediately sent the letters to patriot leaders in the Boston Assembly in early However, the letters contained nothing new or conspiratorial. Even Sam Adams admitted that "in the letters. Further, though many in Massachusetts found the Assembly's actions an unjust invasion of Hutchinson's privacy, Hutchinson's political strength was tainted beyond repair.
In July , Hutchinson 80 Hasmer, Such began the petition beseeching Parliament to remove the Governor. The final showdown, brewing even as the letters affair was closing, between the colonies and Parliament before belligerent actions centered around a tea party, and was almost exclusively provoked by Thomas Hutchinson. The British Ministry moved to bail out the debt-ridden East India Company by subsidizing their sale of tea. Thus the price of tea in the colonies dropped to levels never before enjoyed, and half of the price in London.
Moreover, the monopoly, the patriots thought, could soon be extended to other items besides tea, thus destroying the colonial economy. Consequently, the Tea Act seemed the most despotic and tyrannical act yet by the Mother Country, and committees of correspondence across the colonies resolved that "every man who should be concerned in unlading, receiving, or vending the tea was pronounced an enemy to his country.
A third was the governor's nephew. Consequently, this act also, like so many other moves by Parliament, looked 84 Peter Hutchinson, Diary and Letters, vol 2, A mob demanded that the commissioners publicly resign their licenses, which they refused, and mobs ransacked their homes, while they fled to safety. Boston leaders demanded the commissioners order the ships back to London, which everyone knew to be illegal. Next, Hutchinson ordered the British navy to block the harbor so the tea ships could not escape without having the duty paid, for the captains of the vessels, well aware of their precarious situation, pleaded with the governor extensively for permission to illegally leave.
Hutchinson insisted the law would have its course: the taxes must be paid within twenty days of the ships' arrival. Hutchinson asserted that, "for two years. The property damage in the Tea Party stunned Hutchinson; yet he claimed he had no other course of action. Why did he not allow the ships to leave, as so many other colonial governors had done? Loyalists and "British administrators accused him of provoking a needless showdown,.
Neither side backed down, and Hutchinson looked the tyrant and instigator of violence. He underestimated Adams, assuming the latter would not resort to such violence and the licentious destruction of property. Adams became a hero; all sides blamed Hutchinson for the destruction of property, for if he had allowed the ships to pass, Hutchinson wrote in his History, [Hutchinson] would have saved the property thus destroyed; but he would have been justly censured [by the King], if he had granted it.
He was bound, as all the king's governors were, by oath, faithfully to observe the acts of trade,. His granting a pass to a vessel which had not cleared at the custom-house, would have been a direct violation of his oath, by making himself an accessory in the breach of those laws which he had sworn to observe. It was out of his power to have prevented this mischief, without the most imminent hazard of greater mischief [i. Consequently, Thomas Hutchinson, the man blasted in page after page in Boston newspapers after the Tea Party, probably the most hated man not only in Boston, but in all of the colonies, set into motion the events which culminated in the shot heard the world over.
For years, the patriots had terrorized and physically tortured loyalists into submission, such that no one had spirit left to defend the law; all except Thomas Hutchinson.
Ever since the Boston Massacre, the patriots did as they pleased to whom Pencak, He had stood up to lawlessness and anarchy, and had weathered every disaster, even, to some extent, the letters affair. Despite his personal opinions, he saw that his moral obligation --his very salvation-- was to govern by the principle and spirit of the law. Yet now Adams had triumphed, and Hutchinson sought to retreat to England until such a time as was safe to return.
However in the wake of the Massacre, the government of Massachusetts fell into shambles. One of his brothers-in-law, the Chief Justice, could no longer hold court since juries refused to attend a court headed up by a relative of Hutchinson. His other brother-in-law, the Lieutenant-Governor, had passed away, and thus, the Crown needed the Governor to stay until a replacement could be sent. And replacement they indeed sent, the worst kind, thought the colonials. A military governor, a tyrant of their darkest nightmares, replaced Hutchinson who, on June 1st, , left with his family to England to report on the state of affairs.
Thomas Hutchinson remained a friend of the people from his first days in the House to his reign as Chief Justice and Governor. Whether in aiding the hated Catholics who sojourned in Boston, defended widows and orphans by ending paper money, defending innocent men impressed into the British navy whom patriots wanted to sacrifice, or secretly lobbying for Parliament to cease from her unwise and damaging taxes, Hutchinson remained true to his Christian faith in helping the helpless, and "honor ing the king.
By aiding Catholics, he offended Protestant ministers who found no end to issues with which to blast him from the pulpit. By defending impressed sailors, Hutchinson incensed the anger of the patriot leaders, such as John Adams, who sought to make an issue out of nothing.
Yet most of all, by secretly lobbying for Parliament to change her ways while publicly defending the Crown, he appeared the tyrant bent on undermining the Constitution, colonial liberties, and the rights of Man. By remaining true to his principles as a Puritan and Crown official, he sacrificed his public reputation, property, family, and ultimately his life.
He appeared to hoard power within his family. Always, his family stood to gain by adhering to Crown policy, it seemed. Until his governorship, he himself maintained the highest offices in all three branches of government, the Chief Justiceship, Lieutenant-Governor and often acting Governor, and President of the Upper House. Afterwards, the Chief Justiceship passed to one brother-in-law and the Lieutenant Governorship to another. He symbolized tyranny and greed, power driven by perdition.
By offending Samuel and John Adams, he earned unwavering hatred and conspiracy bent on his undoing. By offending the Otis's, he earned himself and the Crown everlasting assaults both in the Assembly, in court, and in popular literature.
By expressing his well-known opinions privately to friends in London, he appeared the conspirator himself. By choosing the moderate course in the Stamp Act Crisis, he appeared the actual instigator of the whole issue.
By allowing the troops to remain in Boston, he appeared the initiator of the massacre and military despotism; and finally, by forcing the issue with the Tea Tax, he looked as the greedy, uncompromising tyrant. In turning the people against Hutchinson, the patriots turned the people against the Crown. By insisting that Hutchinson, the royal representative, was a despot, the Crown, by association became despotic. To completely remove the despot meant both the shackles of Hutchinson and the Crown must by removed, forcibly if necessary.
As Thomas Hutchinson strolled from his mansion on June 1st, , to the ship which would take him to England, he cheerfully bade his neighbors "on this side and that, it is said, whether Whig of Tory," farewell, for he was friends with all. When he landed in London on July 30th, the King invited him for a conference the next day. He confessed to his diary, "I was not dressed as expecting to go to Court, but his Lordship Dartmouth [insisted].
Specifically, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the original Puritan settlers wanted to separate themselves from the traditional Anglican church, and likewise any dissenters amongst their own ranks soon left to become themselves independent. The self-reliance and resilience of the settlers coupled with the Crown's tendency towards salutary neglect led to a spirit of independence in the colonies which the Crown began to antagonize after the French and Indian War.
England sought to relieve the debt incurred during this war by placing a tremendous tax burden on British citizens. Parliament sought to ease the burden by not only taxing the American colonists, but also enforcing previously held trade regulations designed around the mercantilist theory, which held that colonies existed only to load the mother country with wealth.
The Americans had for generations bribed Crown officials into silence and traded rather openly with other nations, including British enemies, in a sort of proto-capitalist system. However, once the Crown began enforcing their trade laws and moreover imposed taxes upon the colonials, the American Independence movement sprung forth.
Initially, few on either side of the Atlantic perceived this movement; however, one who not only noted it immediately, but also actively tried to stymie the tide of independence was Thomas Hutchinson of Boston, Massachusetts. He worked feverishly and ultimately to the detriment of his health to thwart the Revolution so few saw coming; though in doing so, he made enemies with the wrong people who made him seem the instigator of every act which the Bostonian masses perceived as despotic.
Indeed, in his efforts to dampen the patriotic fervor which swept Boston away from loyalty to the Crown, he actually hastened the coming Revolution. Indeed, without Thomas Hutchinson's intervention, the American Revolution might have been postponed generations or perhaps indefinitely. American Revolution and Early American History colonial, revolutionary, and early republic. Log in with Facebook Log in with Google. Remember me on this computer.
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