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By Root 594 0

of the important leaders—even Thomas Jefferson, a slave owner—understood that it was hypocrisy to talk about the rights of man and ignore the agony of millions of slaves. But they were not going to let the Revolution break down over this issue, as they feared it might. Throughout the century, Englishmen had predicted that the booming American colonies would try to break free from the Crown, but that, in the end, they would remain in the British Empire because of their inability to get along with each other. What the British Crown failed to understand was that the Revolutionary leaders were pragmatists focused on primary goals and that molasses, cod, and tea were not mere troubling disagreements; they were the issue. Virginians even called the Revolution “the Tobacco War.”

England had shown some flexibility. Gloucester, though a legally recognized trade port, did not even have a customs official. The British also allowed South Carolina to trade rice for fruit, salt, and wine directly with the Mediterranean. The greatest latitude was in trade with British West Indies colonies. For Massachusetts, this trade was cod for molasses, but Connecticut traded vegetables, Maryland wheat, and Pennsylvania corn. By the 1740s, New England had as much trade with the Caribbean as it did with England. Before the English started worrying about an armed war of independence, they were worrying about a de facto independence. The colonies did not need the mother country, and both parties knew it.

Britain’s first major attempt to reassert its colonial monopoly was the Molasses Act of 1733, which imposed such heavy import duties on molasses from the non-British Caribbean that it should have virtually eliminated the trade. By making the purchase of French West Indies molasses unprofitable, the measure should have not only reduced New Englanders’ markets for cod but also reduced their rum industry. It did neither, because the French were eager to work with the New Englanders in a lucrative contraband arrangement. Cod-molasses trade between New England and the French Caribbean actually grew after the Molasses Act.

The act might have been a forgotten failure had the British not tried again a generation later, with the Sugar Act of 1760, which put a six-cents-per-gallon tax on molasses. Again, New Englanders persevered through contraband. In 1764, the British tried a new tactic, actually lowering the tax on molasses, but levying new ones on sugar and on Madeira. This was intended to make colonists switch from Madeira to Port, the latter being available only through British merchants. Instead, the colonists boycotted both. Though Madeira was also traded for a middle-grade cure of cod known as the Madeira cure, rum was their drink. It was so commonplace that the word rum was sometimes used as a generic term for alcoholic beverages. The year of the Molasses Act, it was calculated that the consumption of rum in the American colonies averaged 3.75 U.S. gallons per person annually. In 1757, George Washington ran for the Fairfax County seat in the House of Burgesses. His campaign expenses included twenty-eight gallons of rum and fifty gallons of rum punch. There was also wine, beer, and cider. This may seem modest compared to today’s campaign spending, but in 1757 Fairfax County, Virginia, had only 391 voters.

In 1764, Boston merchant John Hancock, already a known active rebel, was arrested on a charge of Madeira smuggling on his sloop, the Liberty. An angry Boston mob freed him. The following year, the Stamp Act for the first time charged colonists with a direct tax rather than a customs duty. As the British stepped up enforcement of trade laws, relations deteriorated. For the first time, customs agents were assigned to Gloucester, though these unfortunate officials were harassed, brutalized, and sometimes driven into hiding. In 1769, Massachusetts claimed that restraints on trade had resulted in losses for 400 vessels involved in the cod fishery.

Repeatedly, the British seemed to make the worst possible moves. Confronted with resistance to the Stamp