Off your cell phones or anything else that might make noise during the program. Thank you for doing that. We are thrilled to tonight to welcome acclaimed historian mary beth norton, the author of five books and coeditor of several others inn her textbook people n the nation a survey of u. S. History has been published in ten additions and has sold mores than a 500,000 copies. Norton is a Pulitzer Prize finalist and 201 in the 2,018th president of the american historical association. She is the Professor Emeritus at cornell university. Her new book 1774 the long year of revolution is available for purchase following the program. So now please join me in welcoming mary beth norton. [applause] its really nice to be here. I want to make sure the clicker is on. It doesnt seem to be. There it is. Okay, great. I dont want to show that one quite yet. It is in the collections in the historical society, and it claims the label that is impossible to read unless so theres a quite wellknown object in colonial america. They coordinated with the sons of liberty in new york and it ran in july 1774. This is the kind of thing that theyve to make up if you didnt find it. Read the first line, my brave boys from the song you shall hear. And that is the most glorious year. Yet 1774 is commonly given short shrift in books on the coming of the revolution. Those of you that are familiar with theti literature know that those books commonly stretch the evidence after the end of the sevenyear floor in 1763 starting with the opposition to the act of 1765 through the kings street riot of the rest of the boston massacre in 1770 at which point people jumped to the Boston Tea Party in december oft 1773 and then conquered up battles 16 months later. All the books that have been written about this period focus on radical leaders and their actions, whether explicitly or not. That means that a primary almost exclusive focus is taken in these books on boston and massachusetts. The story of the coming of the revolution is generally told by historians by the standpoint of the leaders of the coming revolution. We dont give much attention to the centers of any kind. In fact in many of these books one is surprised when the dissenters appear. No context is ever established. Suddenly there is a loyalist being persecuted for somebody arguing about something and you have no idea where that person is coming from or why they are saying what they are saying because you have been given no background for it. My purpose in 1774 in the revolution is quite different. It is to try to understand and interpret what happened asrs contemporary and to give the voice not only to the radicals but also to their critics the men and women who were critics or radicals for that matter were moderate and conservative supporters of resistance or eventual loyalists. In short what i try to do is present american dialogue about the politics in 1774 are evenhandedly and i dont forecast the outcome. But to that end in detail the evidence of what i call along 1774 to show how the colonists who all sold themselves as loyal subjects of king george 3 in 1773 and part of the empire i want to just underscore that. People in 1773 saw themselves as loyal subjects of the king the end of the empire. In 1774, those colonists divided themselves into groups. One of the groups persuaded them that loyalty and eventually began to call themselves loyalists. In 1774, then i realized you cannot have the term loyalists until you have people that are disloyal. You dont come up with a term like this unless and until there are people that are disloyal. So there are those people that depend on themselves loyalists and then there were also those people who begin to favor independence. Malcolm in the ideal that all the colonies that eventually joined the united states. I dont deal with the caribbean or the canadian maritime. It differentiates the buck and because i try not to focus on boston and massachusetts to any greater extent than one has to, but also because i never move the focus across the atlantic to talk about what is happening. Many times in the book that talks about the coming of the revolution they will switch the focus from the american colonies across the atlantic into london to have a chapter or two about dialogs that were occurring. Instead of doing that, i introduced in each chapter a section from usually london and in one case somewhere else but almost always london that conveys the things they heard about what was happening in england. And it is always called advice is from because if any of you are familiar with colonial newspapers, that is the heading that the newspapers use when they were talking about material coming in from somewhere else. And so, i just introduced the material, thei information abot whats happening overseas to the colonists themselves as they would have learned it. Ive summarized my research and im going to do now is provide snapshots so you have a timeline and theand a handout and the developments in this long 1774 that helped to lead to or reveal these in the increasing radicalism in the parts of the populist. Only one of these is known to the public and that is in fact the first one in the Boston Tea Party. All of the incidences of 1873 the story that everyone knows is about the destruction of the tea in Boston Harbor and this is always referred to by the way at the time. More cities than boston were involved and this is very little known, thto the company in factt seven to north america in 1773. Four of them were dispatched to boston and one each to new york, philadelphia and charleston. A very brief background here is necessary to explain what was going on. In the spring of 1773 the members of parliament adopted the purpos purpose to get east t India Company out of the financial difficulty. With the far east with china, asia in general and was facing bankruptcy in 1773. Why was it facing bankruptcy, for two reasons. One is mismanagement of the company and number two, rampant smuggling everywhere. Into the home islands and so forth into the british and the east India Company was being undercut in terms of the price of the goods. Though notin surprising to learn many members of the parliament for stockholders in the east India Company. So, therefore they didnt want them to go bankrupt. Tey wanted to preserve it financially. Now, american settlers at the time. It is a term that was used contemporaneously but the problem is it was known as the dutch tea and its always referred to although it didnt come from the dutch east India Company or the Dutch Caribbean it was always called dutch tv and it made its way into the colonies through the island of the stations. Have you ever been there . Has anybody here ever been there . I had heard so much about it that is the big state statemente caribbean i had. Its a tiny island of thought on anybodys radar these days because it doesnt have any good features. It doesnt have enough water so it can have a golf course. It cant have a resource. Thats what it doebut what it da wonderful anchorage which is protected by these volcanoes that you see here in the background. The extinct volcano is protected ofof the anchorage on the east side of the island from the prevailing wind. And as a result, literally sometimes we have information asabout a thousand ships being anchored off of this tiny island. And what were they doing there . They were trading drugs and selling goods and this sort of thing was driving the east India Company totally crazy and they were losing all their goods or other money to items that were being smuggled through other places especially. Its hard to understand and it was hard for people to understand i should add. It shouldnt surprise people in washington to discover something written by the legislative body was difficult to understand, but that was certainly true of the act. The theme was to lower the tax on east India Company tea in the colonies to be able to undercut the smugglers. It sold about half or two thirds of the price of the legal tea so if you lowered the tax that had to be paid on this, then it could at least approach the cost was being charged by the smugglers. Now the americans keep objection to the act was the symbolism. They argued that accepting it would be accepting the authority of parliament to tax them. W in october 1773 and this is my preface, when the colonists learned the ships were coming to north america directly from these to be a company, men in new york city and philadelphiami way with those tactics one idea was to persuade because of course that meant coerce so that the east India Company t were known as consignees to resign their commissions so the thought was if you dont have people to accept this officially then you cannot have any legal there it cannot be sold and we dont have to worry about it. So that is the way to oppose the arrival of the east India Company t but also with the agreements of the merchants and people with those non consumption agreements it doesnt matter if it lands but just not buy it. Thats a second argument. Thee third is a very well known patriot in philadelphia a i was we have to prevent the t from landing in the first place because then it doesnt matter what happens then they will buy it and trinkets we have to keep them from that by preventing the t from b landing. All of these tactics were tried in 1773 and 74 in various locations because is not widely known they kept coming to the colonies. So we all know about the noBoston Tea Party when it was opposed by the destruction from Boston Harbor. I talk about that inin the book i wont talk about it now so im happy to answer some questions later on i do want to show oneot g slide so looks like it is the tarring and feathering if somebody wants to ask me later ill be happy to answer it but the Crucial Point is what happens up there in this corner is the closest thing to we have to the illustration of what happened at the Boston Tea Party. We dont know if those people in london by the time he drew it we know that because they were testifying before parliament in any event this is his drawing of what happened throwing tea overboard and thats the closest thing we have to the contemporary view of the Boston Tea Party. So it retaliated against the Boston Tea Party which close the port of boston until the t was paid for an officiallyly closed on the first of june 1774 it didnt arrive in north america until may 10th 1774 so bostonians had very little opportunity to get accustomed to the idea before the port was officially closed. But what about theer other cities going to charleston and new york and philadelphia , its not well known, in fact i did not know i it. With the American Revolution for years but until i started researching this book, i did not, realize that charleston was dealing with the t chef at the same time boston was. And i have a slide of Boston Harbor showing a ship arriving which is a magnificent harbor by the way. So this building right here thee, Mercantile Exchange playing a major part in the story between these two churches so what happened in charleston . What are the first things i do is cut back chronologically between whats happening in boston and charleston so my readers know what iss happening in both places but the bostonians didnt know and the charlestonians didnt know it was happening except in very vague terms. By the end of the process there were a few little bits of information basically from sea captains going up and down the coast so there wasnt any communication they were making it up as they went along. Charleston did something very different. Bostonians met and agreed what to do charlestonians met twice in large meetings in that Exchange Building and could not make up their minds what to do or make any type ofy consensus. So what they did was instead they basically punted and in this context it meant to facilitate the customs officers of South Carolina to confiscate the t because at the time there was a rule that once a ship entered the harbor they had to pay a duty on their cargo within 28 days so basically they could make up their mind what to do so for those customs officers to confiscate afteray 20 days. Interestingly i found out that john adams found that out in the essay in 1775 and to indicate he knows what happened in charleston was between the local and customs officers and he probably learned that at the cContinental Congress in the fall of 1774. So the tea was confiscated in the basement of the Exchange Building. Not the driest place. Some of it is reported to have been destroyed by the damp but a couple of years later that was left was sold to support the war effort that was found by a colleague of mine who teaches at the university of hong kong and working on a project on tea is a political issue in this. He found the crucial advertisement indicating the sale of the t was imminent. So then what happens . What happens in philadelphia and new york . Because paulpe revere wrote on road immediately to philadelphia so by the time the t ship reached be philadelphia they knew what had happened in boston. They didnt know charleston but they did know boston. So they were clever and figured out what we do was dont let the tea ship enter the harbor. If it doesnt that we are not confronted with the 20 day deadline that confronted the bostonians and charleston. So they intercepted the. Tea ship to put out big handbells to the pilots to say this is a description to say whatever you do dont let them come by philadelphia. They intercepted the ship , they persuaded the captain he was smart not to come into the harbor and he didnt. He resupplied and headed backun to england. The same thing happened with the ship going to new york although it happened much later because the tea ship was blown off course by the north atlantic gail and ended up spending the winter and in antigua. [laughter] but it made the tea captain in antigua i absolutely what happened in all the areas of north america when the ships came in. He cleverly wrote a letter to new york to say i am due to come to new york i will show up and not try to enter the harbor but merely resupply and head back and that is exactly what he doe does. He arrives in new jerse jersey, everybody welcomes him they know he will not try to enter. He resupplied is the ship and its a wonderful story in the new york newspaper how everyone says what a wonderful gentleman he is and they all stand and wave goodbye and wish them a good voyage back to london. [laughter] but then what about the seventh ship . Look at that timeline there was a fourth ship that went tol, boston but went to cape cod some more damaged and remained on cape cod while most of the others were sent to the british headquarters in Boston Harbor. And also to discover that was eventually sold but by the british, not the americans. So i discuss what happened in the book so in short it was chaos some people wanted to buy the tea after all it didnt pay a tax therefore you plplcould buy it without admittg parliaments right to tax and other people said no stop everybody from buying the t one tea is from the east India Company regardless. So what ended up on the cape there were mobs, competing town meetings, disagreements to the local authority is allowing the tea to be sold by those who salvaged w it. A very chaotic scene on cape cod that no one has ever written about before. Now the British Ministry didnt like what was happening in any of these communities but primarily focused punishment on boston with a boston tort act which i already talkedin about. That not to defy the unity but with those deep divisions in the town about what to do and how tom respond to my second snapshot which is much briefer but also talks about in newspapers and into boston town meetings to occupy a total of three full days of boston between it and late june when people argued about what boston should do to respond to the port act its not that we defy britain they argued a lot about what they should do. One newspaper essayist and i quoted this accurately, as serious as the colors of the rainbow are the opinions of gentlemen in this town. Some people said pay for the te. Other people said how do we do that . Do we accept money from the wealthy people . Some wealthy bostonians have already volunteered to make contributions to pay for the tea. Do we collect from all residents of boston . Massachusetts . Other a colonies . There was a lot of disagreement the people who said how to pay for the te. How . So samuel adams the head of the Correspondence Committee seen here with the engraving of paul revere as well as a silversmith and messenger he was in grave this for the american royal magazine appearing 1774. Samuel adams proposed a different response. He said lets begin a boycott of all British Goods. Not just tse sai, first we will start with massachusetts and then spread to the other colonies so lets do Economic Strategy and adopt by refusing to buy british products this comes from the sense of how important they were to british markets. They were not really as important as they thought they were but they thought what they couldld do if they boycotted all British Goods they could force the british were force the merchants to try to Lobby Parliament to overturn the act. Now the Boston Committee circulated a non consumption agreement to the effect trying to get people in the countryside to sign up not to buy British Goods. If nobody buys it then they will not import it. But they did this without consulting the town meeting first which caused another controversy. And then to argue vociferously for acting without authorization from the town. So to pay for the te, how to pay for the tea to censure the gommittee without authorization this is what