The book The Shoemaker and the Tea Party by Alfred Young is a biographical essay describing events of the 18th century and life one of the most prominent figures of the American Revolution, George Robert Twelves Hewes. This man took an active part in rebellion during the pre-revolutionary period of time, and was an active participant of the Boston Tea Party. Also, Young describes life and important of such political figures as Michael Kammen and Eric Hobsbawm. The book consists of two parts, 12 and 9 chapters respectively.
The first part, “George Robert Twelves Hewes” is focused on the life and personality fo Hwews. Young describes his childhood, apprenticeship and political activity. Young writes: “Hewes might have been unknown to posterity save for his longevity and a shift in the historical mood rekindled the spirit of ‘76” (Young 5). In the first chapter, “a Man in his Ninties”, Young gives a detailed analysis of historiography on this topic and evaluates historical works his two biographers, James Hawkes and Benjamin Bussey Thatcher.
In the second, third and fourth chapters, Young depicts early life of Hewes and his personal development. The biography has opened up the worlds of the revolutionary lower class illustrating that such folk took revolutionary ideology in directions neither imagined nor countenanced by their social betters. While such investigations have revealed multiple revolutionary impulses, they share the conclusion that slaves, women, and the poor seldom achieved a real improvement in their lives. It is possible to say that Young sought a bridge between the Whig and Progressive models by demonstrating that female, black, and poor Americans actually shared many of the political ideals and beliefs of the revolutionary elite, often pushing equality, freedom, and even democracy in ever more extreme directions.
The next chapters, “the Massacre”, “the Tea Party” and “Tar and Feathers” depict events of the pre-revolutionary period and their impact on the ideology. Hewes took an active part in protests and rebellion against the authorities, and is called by Young as “a citizen and a political man”. The rest of the chapter portrays Hewes family life and patriotism, political struggle and rebellion against unlawful and unjust laws. Severely hit by the post-Revolutionary decline of American commerce, the USA experienced a prolonged depression, and Boston suffered more than any other port on the Atlantic seaboard.
Hewes’ identity as a master shoemaker contributed to his republicanism, but so too did his identity as a freeman. His desire was to establish status by opening its ranks to all men of merit and character, regardless of their social standing, and by offering him opportunities to exercise leadership, leadership that was not readily available to a master artisan in his society. The emphasis on both equality and hierarchy and the dedication to the ideal of a universe based on order, reason, and brotherly love were reinforced by Revolutionary rhetoric and affected his post-Revolutionary conception of social equality. Young writes that Hewes and his wife, Sally, spent the life together and had fifteen children.
The second part of the book is a detailed analysis of the Boston tea Party and its political activity. Changing social and political situation transformed the life of low classes and created new ideology and values. Young writes: “age had replaced class and citizenship”. Young describes that despite constant seizures and penalties and Boston’s standing as the leading importer of dutiable tea, within a year much of the tea drunk in Boston was of Dutch origin. In a blundering attempt to destroy Dutch competition, Parliament decided in 1773 to provide Boston with cheaper tea by permitting the East India Company to export Boston directly from India, thus avoiding the payment of a tax in England.
In the chapters “Taming the Revolution” and “The Destruction of the Tea” Young explains that the Townshend Acts, with the exception of the duty on tea, were repealed in 1770. Since the principle of taxation remained, the merchants were not wholly appeased, but they attempted to carry on in the usual trade channels. The period of non-importation had had an adverse effect on Boston’s foreign trade and placed her in a position inferior to both New York and Philadelphia. Trade with Great Britain and Ireland was still strong, with ship chandlery, drugs, woolen materials, and tea among the leading imports and whaling products, pearl ash and potash, hides, fur, and lumber figuring prominently in the exports. As long as the price of tea continued to be comparatively low, it was consumed duty-paid. But when the price advanced sharply in 1771, the smuggling of Dutch tea became immensely profitable. The contraband was concealed in rice barrels, in wine casks, in every possible receptacle.
The immediate effect of this new policy was to drive Boston merchants, who saw their smuggling profits endangered, into the ranks of the radicals; at fiery mass meetings they urged the people to boycott “monopolized” Boston. Nevertheless, the cargoes continued to be shipped to Boston. The dumping of the tea into Boston Harbor has become a famous incident in American history. On Sunday, November 28, 1773, the tea ship Dartmouth joined shortly afterward by the Eleanor and the Beaver, had moored at Griffin’s Wharf. Refusing to permit the vessels to unload their tea, the agitators placed them under a citizen guard. If the tea was not unloaded in 20 days it would be taken over by the collector of customs, a situation desired by neither the merchants nor the importer. The owner of the Dartmouth was urgently requested to return his ship to London, for the Boston merchants anxiously desired a peaceful removal of this threat to their prosperous trade; but the customs officials refused to issue clearance papers. On the nineteenth day, after the arrival of the ships, December 16, 1773, confronted with the possibility that the tea would be landed on the morrow, 7,000 citizens gathered at the largest protest meeting hitherto held in Boston. After listening to the bitter denunciations Governor Hutchinson had refused a permit for clearance, the aroused multitude advanced upon the waterfront. There a patriotic band of Sons of Liberty and traders, covered with Indian war-paint and brandishing tomahawks, staged the Boston Tea Party. A vast assemblage, silhouetted in the moonlight, watched in solemn silence, while the “Mohawks” unsealed the hatches and piled the tea on deck. Three hundred and forty-two chests were ripped open, dumped overboard, and carried by the wind and the tide to every part of the harbor. Young describes political role of Michael Kammen and Eric Hobsbawm, and their struggle for independence.
In the next chapters, Young underlines that Hewes and his contemporaries, throughout the Revolutionary period believed that the leaders of their society should be men whose liberal education provided them with the ability to think broadly, clearly, and independently about the problems of their society. Hewes’s story is the chronicle of a leaders whose ambition for political success and social distinction drew him to the ideals of liberty and equality; who found a sense of purpose, enhanced social status, and exhilaration in his role as leaders of the American Revolution; and who discovered both the opportunities and the limitations of post-Revolutionary ideas. This story is also a larger chronicle of the historical events and cultural developments that transformed him from colonial subject to citizen of the new republic. Hewes affiliation with the new ideology was more than blind submission to the judgment of his betters or calculated self-interest in which he bowed and scraped before his social superiors in return for their favors. When he deferred to the leaders of his society, Hewes also did so out of a courteous respect for men who shared his ideals. Intimately tied to Hewes’s esteem for men of superior educational and social status who sacrificed private interest to the common good was his desire to emulate such men. Young characterizes the role of Hewes: “he was a nobody who briefly became somebody in the revolution, and for a moment at the end of his life, a hero”. The last years of his life Hewes spent in Ostego County. He became a real hero and the last survivor of the Revolutionary War.
It is possible to say that the book proposes objective description of life and political career of Hewes and his role in the Boston Tea Party. The research is based on biographies and historical documents of this time. This book can be recommended for historians and students interested in the history of American Revolution and development of political ideas. His high expectations for the United States also included hopes for political stability and freedom. This book proposes accurate and detailed analysis of the Revolutionary period through the life and role of a common citizen, George Robert Twelves Hewes.
Works Cited
Young, A.F. The Shoemaker and the Tea Party. Beacon Press, 2000.