Sipsey Street Irregulars: "The Committee for Tarring and Feathering"

Monday, January 30, 2012

"The Committee for Tarring and Feathering"

In the wake of the Boston Tea Party, increasing numbers of Maine settlements were turning radical. Falmouth voted to ban the selling and drinking of tea in town, but since its merchants had 2,500 poinds of the stuff on hand -- a heavy investment -- they were not considered trustworthy enough to keep the resolve. A handbill soon appeared, produced by the local Committee for Tarring and Feathering, declaring that no one in town should doubt what would happen to those who bought or consumed tea. The notice was signed: "Thomas Tarbucket, Peter Pitch, Abrahan Wildfowl, David Plaister, Benjamin Brush, Oliver Scarecrow, and Henry Hand-Cart." Falmouth merchants got the idea and stopped selling tea. -- Ten Tea Parties: Patriotic Protests That History Forgot by Joseph Cummins, pp. 138-139.

Insomnia has few positives, but I am catching up on my reading. Just finished Ten Tea Parties: Patriotic Protests That History Forgot by Joseph Cummins this morning. It is an excellent read, covering some of the many anti-British East India Company protests that happened before and after THE Boston Tea Party we all know. (Lexington, Massachusetts actually BURNED their tea before Boston dumped theirs.) From the Epilogue:

Most (present-day) Tea Party constituents have a good grasp of the events that occurred during the Boston Tea Party, but they would do well to understand the details of the other patriotic protests described in this book. All are remarkable, because each town staged its protest in its own unique way. Patriots burned tea in Greenwich and Wilmington and Annapolis; made it disappear (and reappear) in York; dumped it overboard in New York and Charleston; and rejected it in Philadelphia and Edenton. And all manner of people participated in the protests. The working-class laborers of Manhattan, the distinguished ladies of Edenton, the mysterious Swamp Men of Greenwich -- all were united behind a common cause. For the first time in the nation's history, Americans banded together AS AMERICANS. -- pp. 201-202.

I learned a lot from this book and I highly recommend it to present-day Three Percenters.

5 comments:

rdf67 said...: I joined the first TEA Party demo in Madison WI - as a result of the runaway spending. Most were Sixties and older grandparents who could look forward and see who this social plan will hurt the most. There were about 10,000 of us - but we were reported as about 2,000. Bused in from all over the state. I took a moment to talk to my WI state rep who happened to be the majority leader. I had talked to him in my kitchen before his first election and he saw the Hannity book on my table and wanted to get out fast. Anyway, he was happy to see me so he could get rid of the guy he was talking to. I pleaded with him to take a look at WI health care benefits for employees - he had no clue - and suggested that Rolls Royce treatment for public servants would bankrupt the State. It took Gov Walker to make the changes - and now those losing benefits are trying to get rid of him with a recall - petitions signed by Mickey Mouse because they know the Dems on the recall board won't look at the petitions. We are at a crossroads - and individual action (peaceful I presume) is mandatory today or the wonderful country we knew will not be available to our grandchildren.; January 30, 2012 at 7:38 AM
Storm'n Norm'n said...: Thanks for the update.

Norm

http://normanhooben.blogspot.com/2010/08/when-you-finish-your-homework-get-ready.html; January 30, 2012 at 8:12 AM
Anonymous said...: It's a great little book. Should take no more than an evening or two to read. I had one, read it, and passed it on to a friend.; January 30, 2012 at 8:19 AM
Anonymous said...: They would be fortunate to get off that easy.The things these so-called representatives of the people have done to the masses in the last several years,I almost expect to someday see the French "National Razor" at work on the capital mall!.; January 30, 2012 at 12:44 PM
Anonymous said...: If only we had a "Tea Party" with the fiat money.; January 30, 2012 at 1:29 PM

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

Monday, January 30, 2012

"The Committee for Tarring and Feathering"

5 comments:

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